"Luckless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, were of little avail, for the owner of the animal accompanied by a party of his friends, made his appearance at Clarence the next morning, and preferred his complaint in strong terms against the luckless Kroomen, whom, it appeared, he knew perfectly well. The Kroomen were accordingly mustered, and the very four, who had gone on this unfortunate expedition, were pointed out with exultation by the natives. The law took its course, the Kroomen each received ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... boy's agitation, or the luckless mention of the gold-pieces sent a sudden dismayed suspicion ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... signed for the message, and imagined all manner of catastrophes, from world-wars, earthquakes, pestilence and loss of wealth, down to bad news from Hicks, after the fashion of those receiving telegrams but seldom, had scanned the yellow slip. Never before, or afterward, not even when the luckless Butch fell in love, and T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., assisted Cupid, did the pachydermic Butch act so insanely as ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... Alice, 'twas all for thy locks so bright, And 'twas all for thine eyes so blue, 270 That on the night of our luckless flight, Thy ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... organisation, as he knew it in his own age, was too good a weapon to be neglected by those who sought about for means of defence for their own individualistic theories; whereas others, like the friars of whom Wycliff and Langland spoke, and who headed bands of luckless peasants in the revolt of 1381 against the oppression of an over-legalised feudalism, were blind to this remarkable expression of Aquinas' opinion, and quoted him only when he declared that "by nature all things were ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... meantime the new house progressed towards its ridge-poles, and it was Jane's daily speculation whether the boudoir designed for Rosy would ever be occupied by her—or by somebody else. By somebody else, she was afraid; for since that luckless Sunday dinner, Theodore Brower had called but twice, and had been as distant as if he ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... ball from the twenty-five-yard line. It was stopped by Huddleston, who started to run with it. Luckless plan! Gridley's line came thundering down upon him almost ere Huddleston had stepped off! Bump! The combatants piled into and over each other. Huddleston was downed on his fifty-yard line. At this instant Dick bethought himself. Placing his mouth to ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... brands and vented his rage on the luckless Eagle. The native was a big powerful man, but Mick took him by surprise. With a sudden twist the white man sent him sprawling on the ground, and, before he had a chance to get up again, was holding the black down with a wrestling grip he had learnt when he was a lad. He grabbed his ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... those enormous habiliments, that were not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swollen-out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of Bran,—our Professor fails not to comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his devoir on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galoons and slashes ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... with some Touaricks, who gave them a little bread, and in this dreadful plight they got to Ghat. One died after his arrival. What became of the Touaricks is not yet known. They are probably massacred. I made the acquaintance of these luckless Touaricks, and gave them some medicine to take to Touat. In this foray the Shânbah killed a little child of three years old. When they struck down a man, they ripped open his belly and left him. These Shânbah banditti (who, to my surprise, are lauded in the French ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... from the Swan's Bath, Death Gods grip the Dead Man's hand. Look where lies her luckless husband, Bolder sea-king ne'er swung sword! Asmund, keep the kirtle-wearer, For last night the Norns were crying, And Groa thought they told of thee: Yea, told of ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... all departed, in compliance with the rather pressing request of Mrs. Raddle, the luckless Mr. Bob Sawyer was left alone to meditate on the probable events of the morrow, and the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... interposed the old man hastily, "has she too tumbled in love with you? Has the luckless word already past to and fro ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... hands of its architect. Instead of rescuing the drowning, the wreck serves only to beat her down. If we accept the hypothesis of a lover at all, it will furnish the one missing link in the terrible chain that clanks around the luckless prisoner. The disappearance of the three hundred and twenty dollars has sorely perplexed the prosecution, and unexpectedly the defence offers us the one circumstance we lacked; the lover was lurking in the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... death, panic went through the markets like a hurricane; for it came at a luckless time. Prices tottered and crashed like towers in an earthquake. For two days Wall Street was a clamorous inferno of pale despair. All over the United States, wherever speculation had its devotees, went a waft of ruin, a plague of suicide. ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... within easy reach of their capital, the later French sovereigns had little reason to take the air in the dreariest province of their kingdom. Chambord therefore suffered from royal indifference, though in the last century a use was found for its deserted halls. In 1725 it was occupied by the luckless Stanislaus Leczynski, who spent the greater part of his life in being elected King of Poland and being ousted from his throne, and who, at this time a refugee in France, had found a compensation for some of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Gurnemanz Had watched the knight, and as he saw him pray And saw the face upturned to the light, He knew him, and to Kundry softly spake, Who now drew near: "Thou knowest him. 'T is he Who long ago laid low the snow-white swan,— He whom in anger I thrust out-of-doors. Where has he wandered since that luckless day? But look! Behold the spear! It is the Spear For which my eager heart has longed and prayed! O holy day, on which the Spear comes home! O happy day ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... then ring up with the message: "The gun is loaded, and pointed at the town." Almost simultaneously a panting little bell, not much louder than a London muffin-bell, but heard distinctly all over the town in the clear atmosphere, would give tongue, and luckless folk who were promenading the streets had about three seconds to seek shelter, the alarm being sounded as the flash was seen by the look-out. One afternoon they gave us three shots in six minutes, but, of course, this rapid firing was ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... and nursed me with the gentlest care. Yet Sue had a tongue, and could use it too when occasion, in her judgment, required its employment. But she always took the side of right and virtue against wrong and vice, and woe betided the luckless wight who fell under the ban of her just displeasure. She would belabour him, not with her hands, but by word, look, and gesture, till he shrieked out for mercy and promised never again to offend, or took to ignominious flight like a thief ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... show other troops how to mount a breach. It may be guessed with what stomach the Fifth Division digested this; and among them not a man was angrier than their old general, Leith, who now, after a luckless absence, resumed command. The Fifth Division, he swore, could hold their own with any soldiers in the Peninsula. He was furious with the seven hundred and fifty volunteers, and, evading the Marquis's order, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... money from his fellow taxpayers, he not only incurred bitter and incessant animosities, but, what was harder to bear, he lost the priceless time of which his own land was only too sorely in need. In the Limousin the luckless creature had a special disadvantage, for here the collector of the taille had also to collect the twentieths, and the twentieths were a tax for which even the privileged classes were liable. They, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... king of archers. The exploits of this renowned outlaw and his merry men form the subject of many old ballads and romances, and the old oaks in Sherwood Forest could tell the tale of many an exciting chase after the king's deer, and of many a luckless traveller who had to pay dearly for the hospitality of Robin Hood and Little John. The ballads narrate that they could shoot an arrow a measured mile, but this is a flight of imagination which we ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... of dice men separate, He, who hath lost, remains in sadness fix'd, Revolving in his mind, what luckless throws He cast: but meanwhile all the company Go with the other; one before him runs, And one behind his mantle twitches, one Fast by his side bids him remember him. He stops not; and each one, to whom ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... or even to have thought his conduct singular. The Bishop, always ready to take the worst advice, got ready for his task, and on Easter Eve embarked upon the river, leaving his Vicar-General under orders to proclaim the general ban. This was done, and the edict so contrived as to catch the luckless Governor in every church. The practical effect was to close all the churches, for to whatever church the Governor went the priest refused to celebrate the Mass. Several other persons were mentioned in the ban, which ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... of his family. Cloridan cautiously put the sword's point in his throat, and there was an end of his dreams. Four other sleepers were despatched in like manner, without time given them to utter a syllable. After them went another, who had entrenched himself between two horses; then the luckless Grill, who had made himself a pillow of a barrel which he had emptied. He was dreaming of opening a second barrel, but, alas, was tapped himself. A Greek and a German followed, who had been playing late at dice; fortunate, if they had continued to do so a little longer; ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... duck-pond, Melindy began to dry it in her apron, and I went to help her; I thought, as I was rubbing the thing down with the apron, while she held it, that I had found one of her soft dimpled hands, and I gave the luckless turkey such a tender pressure that it uttered a miserable squeak and departed this life. Melindy all but cried. I laughed irresistibly. So there were no more turkeys. Peggy began to wonder what they should do for the proper Thanksgiving dinner, and Peter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... final vigorous shake, pointed the nozzle toward the poster and cut the cork. There was an explosion and then the contents rose like a geyser and spread over the ceiling and the luckless ballet dancer who ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... me in a condition to start at an early hour in the morning. Hereupon, consigning my companion to the charge of a servant, he ushered me into a saloon adjoining his study, and introduced me to his family, consisting of two grown-up sons, three daughters, and their mother, to whom I had to tell my luckless adventures over again. That, however, was not the worst of it. As the hour of dinner drew near, the house began to fill with visitors: it was plain that my arrival, and the circumstances connected with it, had been ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... battle of Actium as the 'boy Caesar' who 'wears the rose of youth' (Antony and Cleopatra, III., ii., 17 seq.). Spenser in his Astrophel apostrophizes Sir Philip Sidney on his death near the close of his thirty-second year as 'oh wretched boy' (l. 133) and 'luckless boy' ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... however, did not last long. He soon dried his eyes and braced himself up for another effort. Snorro had gone to sleep the instant he was laid on the ground. As his luckless guide raised him he opened his eyes slightly, murmured "O'af," and again went off to the ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... misdemeanor; a little farther on, thirty or forty soldiers are engaged in driving, with repeated strokes of heavy mallets, sharp pointed pieces of timber, six or eight inches square, up the posteriors of some luckless insurgents who had had the audacity to endeavor to defend their country and their liberty; the women of the country meantime standing at a distance, and exclaiming, "that it was scandalous to make men die in so indecent a manner, and protesting that such a ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... German Professor that he had persuaded another of his old pupils to include a prize-symphony by Lancelot in the programme of a Crystal Palace Concert. This was of itself sufficient to turn Lancelot's head away from all but thoughts of Fame, even if Mary Ann had not been luckless enough to be again discovered cleaning the steps—and without gloves. Against such a spectacle the veriest idealist is powerless. If Mary Ann did not immediately revert to the category of quadrupeds in which she had started, it was only because of Lancelot's supplementary knowledge of the creature. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... to compress the story of a cold and luckless life, death, and burial into fewer words, or more impressive ones; at least, we found them impressive, perhaps because we had to re-create the inscription by scraping away the lichens from the faintly traced letters. The grave was on the shady and damp ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... our luckless crowned philosopher has been the common mark at which so many quivers have been emptied, should be quite obvious when so many causes were operating against him. The shifting positions into which he was ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Porteous was the commander, were scarcely more popular than their chief. Ferguson, the luckless tavern-haunting poet, the Francois Villon of Edinburgh, the singer whose genius some critics believe to be somewhat unfairly overshadowed by the greater fame of Burns, has branded them to succeeding generations ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... whip!" And the old lady would explain what a hard and dangerous life was lived by lion-tamers, how their safety depended upon life-long distrustfulness of the creatures over whom they ruled. She would tell stories of the rending and maiming of luckless ones, who had forgotten for a brief moment the nature of the male animal! "Yes, my dear," she would say, "believe in love; but let the man believe first!" Her maxims never sinned ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... a writer or a romancer," said Monsieur Gravier, "I should take the side of the luckless husbands. I, who have seen many things, and strange things too, know that among the ranks of deceived husbands there are some whose attitude is not devoid of energy, men who, at a crisis, can be very ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... dropped to the bottom of the trench far below. To Smith's grief and Brewster's delight the automobile was hopelessly ruined, a clear loss of many thousands. Monty's joy was short-lived, for it was soon learned that three luckless workmen down in the depths had been badly injured by the green meteor from above. The mere fact that Brewster could and did pay liberally for the relief of the poor fellows afforded him little consolation. His carelessness, and possibly his indifference, had brought suffering ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... camp with two Indian scalps, taken from a Shawnese village be had found on a creek running into the river; and he announced to the circle of grim wilderness veterans that "he had been that day to Lulbegrud, and had killed two Brobdignags in their capital." To this day the creek by which the two luckless Shawnees lost their lives is ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... him hither and thither as the wind scatters the leaves over a field. Then Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, saw him and took pity on him. She took the form of a bird, and, perching on his raft, she said to him: "O, luckless man! why is Poseidon so angry with thee? Fear nothing, however; he cannot take thy life. Obey me and thou shalt not suffer much longer. Lay aside thy clothes, leave the raft to the mercy of the winds and waves, and swim to the land. Take my veil and wind it about thy breast, and thou shalt ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... the vital interests of the Commonwealth. But, while striving to avert all possibilities of Caesarism, they now sinned against that elementary principle of strategy which requires unity of design in military operations. Bonaparte's retort was unanswerable, and nothing more was heard of the luckless proposal. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the precise crime with which he was charged, he was, nevertheless, upon his own evidence, guilty of having "faked" a cheap Nicholas violin into a Strad., and of having offered it for sale for the exorbitant price of five thousand dollars. This luckless piece of evidence undoubtedly influenced the jury ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... despair!" she cried wildly, raising her hand. "The retribution of a lifetime fallen on my luckless head in ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... his own side. In this conjuncture, the postilion was obliged to drive from what, Hibernice speaking, is called the perch,—no ill-applied denomination to a piece of wood which, about the thickness of one's arm, is hung between the two fore-springs, and serves as a resting-place in which the luckless wight, weary of the saddle, is not ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the whole Colony is its fisheries—the ever-recurrent pursuit of the luckless cod, salmon, herring, halibut, and lobster in summer, and the seal fishery in the month of March. It is increasingly difficult to overestimate the importance, not merely to the British Empire, but to the entire world, of the invaluable food-supply procured by the hardy fishermen ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... and body are really one) is a pair of large, glassy eyes, which send a shudder over the beholder. At the bottom of the sea the creature turns its eight arms down, and walks like a huge submarine spider, thrusting its arms into the crevices of the rocks, and extracting thence the luckless crab that had thought itself secure from so bulky a foe. Each of the arms is covered with what are called suckers. Each sucker consists of a little round horny ridge, forming a little cup, which is attached to the arm by a stem. When the arm is pressed upon an object, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... in thy clue, By magic seeks to dissipate the strife, Thy furtive fingers snatch his faulchion too; The luckless wizard loses ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... rules my luckless lot, Has fated me the russet coat, An' damned my fortune to the groat; But, in requit, Has blest me with a random-shot O' ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... the wood burst the long skirmish line. It yelled; it gave the "rebel yell." It rushed on, firing as it came. It leaped the stream, it swallowed up the verdant mead, it came on, each of its units yelling death, to envelop the luckless two companies. One of these was very near at hand, the other, for the moment more fortunate, a little way down the stream, near the Front Royal road. Cleave reached, a grey brand, the foremost of ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... expect that this sum would, at all events, afford to pay for a permanent and resident clergyman, with a roof over his head, "be it ever so humble;" but no, the parish is but the receptacle for the luckless, roaming deacon, and its poor parishioners are ever doomed to be as sheep without a shepherd, and ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... chapel with his shoestring untied, and forthwith sprung towards that unfortunate person, to set him an imposition. Everything, in fact, but tobacco he could forgive. Why did cursed fortune bring him into the rooms over mine? The odor of the cigars made his gentle spirit quite furious; and one luckless morning, when I was standing before my "oak," and chanced to puff a great bouffee of Varinas into his face, he forgot his respect for my family altogether (I was the second son, and my brother a sickly creature THEN,—he is now sixteen stone in weight, ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the Hindu mind. Gautama was compelled therefore to bridge a most illogical chasm as best he could. Kharma without a soul to cling to is something in the air. It alights like some winged seed upon a new-born set of Skandas with its luckless boon of ill desert, and it involves the fatal inconsistency of investing with permanent character that which is ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... knew it had been a victory, and had often heard the guests of her patroness mention it with triumph; and she fancied their feelings would find a sympathetic chord in those of every British soldier. Unfortunately, M'Nab had fought throughout that luckless day on the side of the Pretender; and a deep scar that garnished his face had been left there by the sabre of a German soldier in the service of the House of Hanover. He fancied that his wound bled afresh at Mabel's allusion; and it is certain that the blood rushed to his ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... word in his backlaid ears, raised him quickly with the bit, leaning forward as he rose in air. Like a bird that animal took the bushes and the gully beyond, while close behind him crashed the two luckless troopers. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... India, leaving his wife and family to remain some time longer in Sydney; and from this period may be dated her extraordinary efforts for meliorating the condition of poor female emigrants. What fell under her notice in connection with these luckless individuals was truly appalling. Huddled into a barrack on arrival; no trouble taken to put girls in the way of earning an honest livelihood; moral pollution all around; the government authorities and everybody ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... that posture which is the distinctive characteristic of man, he did not attempt to administer his vindictive retribution by proxy. Laying hold on a tough cudgel, he gave it one ominous swing, describing an arc of sufficient magnitude to have laid an army prostrate. He then pursued the luckless emissary of the Evil One, roaring and foaming with this unusual exertion. There was now no lack of activity. A hawk among the chickens, or a fox in a farm-yard, were nothing to it. Sometimes was seen the doughty Sir Ralph ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that I rued the luckless mishap which cost me Sunnyside, and learned—alas! not for the first time—the true value of lessons taught by experience. For knowing how much depends upon their horses, in expeditions of this kind, the Indians take ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... lightning had been a vortex-magnet at the moment when a luckless wight had attempted to abate the nuisance of a "loose" atomic vortex. That wight died, of course—they almost always do—and the vortex, instead of being destroyed, was simply broken up into an indefinite number of widely-scattered new vortices. ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... that over there, speaking as though he were addressing the Chambre, and as though he had known Africa intimately from his childhood, he noticed gradually and with alarm that the topic was changing; just a moment ago it was Africa and its luckless niggers; the Provencal imagination picturing them in glowing colours, and the Provencal tongue rolling off their disabilities and woes. One would have fancied from the fervour of the man that is was Ferminard who had just returned from the Congo, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... hotly, and, by the general scandalized look on the faces of the others, Irene judged that luckless Peachy must have been on the verge of betraying some secret. She tactfully turned the conversation with a remark upon the beauty of the sunset, and the clanging of the garden bell opportunely broke up the gathering, ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... should coast on. Being blown back to France in his vessel, these forlorn exiles were left for five years on that dreary waste, and only twelve survivors then remained to be rescued. Some wild cattle that had propagated from predecessors left by luckless wanderers on a previous voyage, or which had swum ashore from a wreck, had furnished them a partial supply. Pontgrave and Chauvin attempted a settlement at Tadoussac, the dismal wilderness at the mouth of the Saguenay, thenceforward the rendezvous of European and Indian ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Loire, still edifies and scandalises the lover of happy badinage in verse; one is the young and unfortunate NICOLAS-JOSEPH-LAURENT GILBERT (1751-80), less unfortunate and less gifted than the legend makes him, yet luckless enough and embittered enough to become the satirist of Academicians and philosophers and the society which had scorned his muse; and the third is JEAN-PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN (1755-94), the amiable fabulist, who, lacking La Fontaine's lyric genius, fine harmonies, and penetrating ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... to him that there was no reason why he should not go down to the rectory and see Miss Eversleigh again under pretense of inquiring after the luckless baronet, whose title and fortune had, nevertheless, been so strangely preserved. He began at once his preparations for the journey, and was nearly ready when a servant entered with a telegram. Randolph's heart leaped. The ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... first view of the Elbe approached under the wings of peace ready for flight away from the luckless shores of Europe. Our visual impressions remain with us so persistently that I find it extremely difficult to hold fast to the rational belief that now everything is dark over there, that the Elbe lightship has been towed away from its ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... Nor question me too closely! "Argentines!" That fatal word sums up the evil spell That in these latter luckless days has fallen ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... Sol Felt warm, and try'd, but try'd in vain, to dip Beneath the sea. The frozen polar snake, Sluggish with cold, and indolently mild, Warm'd, and dire fierceness gather'd from the flames. Thou too, Booetes, fled'st away disturb'd, Though slow thy flight, retarded by thy teams. And now the luckless Phaeton his eyes Cast on the earth remote,—far distant spread Beneath the lofty sky; pale grew his face With sudden terror; trembled his weak knees; O'ercome with light his eyes in darkness sunk: Glad were he now, his father's steeds untouch'd: ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... plead with the wagon-boss for food, and he thought if the teamster had not lost his equanimity and made that first luckless shot the massacre of the Nine Mile Ridge would never have become a thing ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... he meant to return to their countrymen as a means of concluding the long projected triple alliance between the English, the Iroquois, and the tribes of the lakes. This bold scheme was now completely crushed. All the English were captured and carried to Niagara, whence they and their luckless precursors were sent prisoners ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... the afternoon, Rabourdin came home to dress for dinner, his wife presided at his toilet and presently laid before him the fatal memorandum which, like the slipper in the Arabian Nights, the luckless man was fated to meet ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... wont to rise with a gasp, and gaze in bewilderment straight before him, as if he were rediscovering the law of gravitation. No phrenologist ever conceived half the number of bumps that were developed on his luckless cranium. ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... folly, he begged his tormentor to free him. Each precious gift he offered for a ransom was refused, until he named his beautiful sister Aino. Wainamoinen, happy in the promise of Aino for a wife, freed the luckless youth from his enchantment, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... was only to be expected on that occasion. But there ran a special note through my poem—a thought that only Israel Rubinstein or Beckie Aronovitch could have fully understood, besides myself. For I made myself the spokesman of the "luckless sons of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... lay there in the dark, incident after incident of her luckless evening coming back upon her, her heart grew hungry for David. Nay, her craving for him mounted to jealousy and passion. After all, though he did get on so much better in grand houses than she did, though they were all kind to him ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... saw right before me a small brown hawk, poised motionless, resting on the wind, with quivering wings, and he hung there, looking down for his prey—some luckless lizard or rat. He seemed suspended on wires. There, down like a brown flash he was gone, and surely that swoop meant a ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... new scandals about its immortals than tiresome belated justifications. It prefers its villains to grow blacker with time, and welcomes proof of fallibility and frailty in its immortal exemplars. For rehabilitation it has neither time nor inclination, and it pursues certain luckless reputations beyond the grave with a ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... is the fate of simple bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starred! Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... and the handles of their knives and forks, which, by a mysterious inspiration, were always hot. When they were ready to go, March experienced from the apathy of the baggage clerk and the reluctance of the porters a more piercing distress than any he had known at the railroad stations; and one luckless valise which he ordered sent after him by express reached his bankers in Paris a fortnight overdue, with an accumulation of charges upon it outvaluing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... gravely regarding the two, and his glance when it rested on North was troubled and uncertain. The difficulties which beset this luckless fellow were only beginning, and what would ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... sleepers to them, and the travel of its meditations is daily and customary; insomuch that the very thought of all others which one was born to utter he may forget to mention, as presuming it to be no news. Indeed, if a man of fertile soul be misled into the luckless search after peculiar and surprising thoughts, there are many chances that be will be betrayed into this oversight of his proper errand. As Sir Martin Frobisher, according to Fuller, brought home from America a cargo of precious stones which after examination were thrown out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... darkness, looking to the right hand and to the left; there was no land to be seen, nothing but the great green waves, crested with foam, which came springing up like angry wolves, eager to swallow the gallant ship and her luckless crew. ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... "Ah! luckless was the day he learned to chew! Embryo of ills the quid that pleased him first; Thirsty from that unhappy quid he grew, Then to the ale-house went to ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... this had placed him at. He would have laughed if, at this outset of his wonderful fortune in literature, his genius acknowledged by all without misgiving, young, popular, and prosperous, any one had compared him to the luckless men of letters of former days, whose common fate was to be sold into a slavery which their later lives were passed in vain endeavors to escape from. Not so was his fate to be, yet something of it he was doomed to experience. He had unwittingly sold himself into a quasi-bondage, and had to purchase ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... though, in order to provide Paris with a cosmopolitan population, the world was drained of its rulers, of its prosperous and luckless financiers, of its high and low adventurers, of its tribe of fortune-seekers, and its pushing men and women of every description. And the result was an odd blend of classes and individuals worthy, it may be, of the new democratic era, but unprecedented. It was welcomed as of good augury, for instance, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the Queen, Is a dismal failure—is a Might-have-been. In a luckless moment he discovered men Rise to high position through a ready pen. Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore—"I, With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high." Only he did not possess when he made the trial, Wicked wit of C-lv-n, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... introduces the lovely, luckless Fatima, sitting at her cottage window, dreaming the dreams of girl-hood. She has received Bluebeard's message of love, and is awaiting his coming as the hero of her heart's romance. This "Traum" theme is almost precisely like the "Guileless Fool Motive" of "Parsifal," ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... an infant, he naturally felt a great affection for her, and intrusted her with the exclusive management of the culinary department, little negroes and all. His confidence in her was not misplaced, for from morning till night she was faithful to her trust, and woe to any luckless woolly head who was found ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... said Lingard. "The wife of one of the luckless gentlemen Daman got hold of last evening. . . . This is Jorgenson, the friend of whom I have been ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... better, cancel from the scroll Of universe one luckless human soul, Than drop by drop enlarge the flood that rolls Hoarser with anguish ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... a moment. Hasty speech has been the downfall of many; ill-considered silence was the undoing of the luckless Court functionary. ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Still in the same namby-pamby style, and with the same soft voice and sweet smile, Sir Amyas talked on of pictures and battles, and carnage and levees, and drawing-rooms and balls, and butterflies.—He has a museum for the ladies, and he took me to look at it.—Sad was the hour and luckless was the day!—Among his shells was one upon which he peculiarly prided himself, and which he showed me as an unique. I was, I assure you, prudently silent till he pressed for my opinion, and then I could not avoid confessing ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... mortal. Many a poor fellow has to leave this world under a cloud of mistrust and a bad odor of past deviltry to which he is not entitled, and suffer all this in addition to all his physical ills, owing to his having been ornamented through life with an annoying prepuce,—the luckless heritage of having been born a Christian. Columbus in chains moralizing on the ingratitude of this world is nothing to the poor invalid with a swollen prepuce, innocently acquired, silently "cussing" the ignorance ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... houses (communistic households of several families) ... a certain clan (gens) always reigned so that the women chose their husbands from other clans. The female part generally ruled the house; the provisions were held in common; but woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too indolent or too clumsy to contribute his share to the common stock. No matter how many children or how much private property he had in the house, he was liable at any moment ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... This luckless adventure not only nipped in the bud a little scheme he had been revolving, for materially befriending Ethan Allen and his comrades, but resulted in making his further stay at Falmouth perilous in the extreme. And as if this were not enough, next day, while hanging ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... gone! I can Nor hold him back, nor save him from destruction. And so the Wolfshot has deserted us;— Others will follow his example soon. This foreign witchery, sweeping o'er our hills, Tears with its potent spell our youth away. O luckless hour, when men and manners strange Into these calm and happy valleys came, To warp our primitive and guileless ways! The new is pressing on with might. The old, The good, the simple, all flee fast away. New times come on. A ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... nerve which good women have, she made him give her every detail of Lucy Passmore's story and of all which had happened from the day of their sailing to that luckless night at Guayra. And when it was done, she led Ayacanora out, and began busying herself about the girl's comforts, as calmly as if Frank and Amyas had been sleeping in their cribs ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... thoroughly familiar with it; but his imaginary interviews had taken only the one form, and he had never counted upon such an ending as this. However, he was resolved to carry it through to the close; and, after a hasty review of the ways of rejected lovers, he recalled the case of the luckless Alphonso Ludovico, and felt himself prepared to meet the ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... I wish him to know exactly what I think of his conduct." She whirled upon the luckless erstwhile haberdasher's clerk; but he held out his hand for ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... deception, and ties him hand and foot with her magic girdle, and hangs him upon a nail; Siegfried pitying the condition of the king, promises his aid in depriving the haughty queen of the girdle, the source of all her magic strength. He successfully accomplishes the feat, and in a luckless hour presents the trophy to Chriemhild, and confides the tale to her ear. A dispute having afterwards arisen between the two queens, Chriemhild, carried away by pride and passion, produces the fatal girdle, a ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... days; bring down one's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; come to grief; be all over, be up with; bring a wasp's nest about one's ears, bring a hornet's nest about one's ears. Adj. unfortunate, unblest[obs3], unhappy, unlucky; improsperous[obs3], unprosperous; hoodooed [U.S.]; luckless, hapless; out of luck; in trouble, in a bad way, in an evil plight; under a cloud; clouded; ill off, badly off; in adverse circumstances; poor &c. 804; behindhand, down in the world, decayed, undone; on the road to ruin, on its last legs, on the wane; in one's utmost need. planet-struck, devoted; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... for the right word. Still ignoring his obvious hint, Ethel Dent supplied the word, without charity for her luckless chaperon. "Horridly seasick." She pointed out to the level steely-gray sea. "And ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... attendants sprang on the luckless Movo and began to beat him with their sticks. Still, before he reached the gates he succeeded in turning round weeping ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... Luckless members of the Fairport Guard who had not had the precaution to tie on their head-gear, might be seen breaking rank and running indecorously in various directions in pursuit of hat or cap, while the skirts of the captain's time-honored ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... brought on the luckless Lochbuy by his wife did not end with his life, for he died fasting, and his ghost is frequently seen to this day riding the very horse on which he was mounted when he was killed. It was a small, but very neat and active pony, dun or mouse-coloured, to ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... was lights, and woe betide the luckless inmate of Leslie Manor who needlessly used electricity. The girls often said that if the house ever caught fire Miss Woodhull would pause in rushing from it to switch off any electric bulb left burning. From sheer force of habit she had switched off the lights ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... I ought to say," went on the luckless Walt. "I really did think you were the crowd I should join, but something has come up and I ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... mouse ate a hole in one's clothes, evil, it was thought, was about to befall the luckless owner. The people had days of good luck and of bad omen. They cut their hair, and sacrificed it to rivers. They marked the flight of birds, particularly that of the owl. On seeing this night bird flying ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the latter stood at the entrance, silent, sternly scanning the young offenders, just beginning to be conscious of offence. A surprise of any kind is exceedingly paralyzing to young lovers, caught in a situation like that in which our luckless couple were found on this occasion. It is probable, that, but for this, Ralph Colleton would scarcely have borne so meekly the severe look which the father now bestowed upon ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... from Morris Island, we passed two steamers, which had successfully run the blockade last night, besides the luckless Ruby, which had also passed the blockading squadron before she came to grief. The names of the other two are the Anaconda and Racoon, ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... terminates in a most remarkable fashion, for the top of the head is not only innocent of feathers but also destitute of skin—"Flintheads," the people call the bird. Its bill is nearly ten inches long, slightly curved and very massive. Woe to the unlucky fish or luckless rat upon whom a blow falls from the Flinthead's heavy beak! There were probably one hundred thousand of these birds inhabiting Corkscrew Rookery at the time of my visit. There were also large colonies of the smaller White Ibis and several varieties of Heron. Eight of the almost extinct Roseate ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... mentally to wage a winning battle against those black vapours which flock so frequently about luckless youth, had suffered and yielded and gone down in misery. She had been crying, just why she knew not; crying because she could not help it. Hers was a state of overwrought nerves which forbade clear thinking, which distorted and warped and magnified. The babble of the water which had ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... Poets chiefly before Dante, we have specimens of the Sicilian school—a canzone by the great Frederick, and a sonnet by his luckless son Enzo, who died in prison at Bologna after a confinement of nearly twenty-three years. Of more importance are the poems of Guido Guinicelli, of which the philosophical one entitled "Of the Gentle Heart" was a nine days' wonder, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... some luckless mortal to give to certain mysterious compounds the appellation of cosmetics! But here is an atonement; for even in our unmythical, unbelieving days, the god 'Terminus' is made to stand guard over ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... daughter who amply made up for his shortcomings. She was the only one who could meet Farrar on his own ground, and rarely a meal passed that they did not have a tilt. They filled up the holes of the conversation with running commentaries, giving a dig at the luckless narrator and a side-slap at each other, until one would have given his oath they were sworn enemies. At least I, in the innocence of my heart, thought so until I was forcibly enlightened. I had taken rather a prejudice to Miss Trevor. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... did she know of him! She did not see him remove his cap as he gently placed the luckless man in his last resting-place, or hear the short whispered ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... Rugovo refused to accompany them; in consequence of which there was a fight, some houses were burned, some women and cattle were seized. And afterwards the men of Rugovo repaired to Gusinje and exacted a vengeance which, the most Serbophobe person will admit, had nothing to do with the Serbs. The luckless village of Gusinje was again laid waste in 1919 by the Montenegrins, but this came to pass as the result of the Montenegrin clan of Vasojevi['c] having their property ravaged by some Albanian marauders who were prompted by the same Great Power. The Vasojevi['c] ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... thus a pessimist, sat beside fat Uncle Joseph during their long, long drive, relatives of hers were indeed going into fits; at least, so Florence would have described their gestures and incoherences of comment. Moreover, after the movies, straight into such a fitful scene did the luckless Herbert walk when urged homeward by thoughts of food, at about six that evening. Henry Rooter had strongly advised ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... think, Miss Jane," he replied, passing the matter of railroads, "that I really could turn to you for help sometimes. If there's a fellow in all the world who needs it, and who abominably hates to let people see he needs it, it's the luckless devil ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Lajeunie, the luckless novelist, went to Pitou, the unrecognized composer, saying, "I have a superb scenario for a revue. Let us join forces! I promise you we shall make a fortune; we shall exchange our attics for first floors ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... compassion. To these are added the burden of their maternal function, and the burden of unequal laws. "The moment which shall deliver the girl from subjection to her parents is come; her imagination opens to a future thronged by chimaeras; her heart swims in secret delight. Rejoice while thou canst, luckless creature! Time would have weakened the tyranny that thou hast left; time will strengthen the tyranny that awaits thee. They choose a husband for her. She becomes a mother. It is in anguish, at the peril of their ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... officers in attendance seized upon the luckless wazir, and dragged him out of the king's presence towards the narrow doorway, through which unhappy criminals were wont to be led to prison or execution. As the door opened to receive him, the wazir muttered something into his great white ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... been a luckless, ill-brought-up, passionate child and girl. In her Mayfair nursery she had been as little trained as a young savage. Since her black hour she had forgotten nothing, allowed herself no palliating moments. Her brief dream of young joy had been the one real thing ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... severe pain, during which he remained with her, holding her hand, soothing her, and lifting her still great bulk in his thin arms with unexpected strength. In her better hours she talked to him, telling him stories about the other patients, anecdotes of nurses and doctors, and mimicking several luckless victims ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... a single guest—a young priest, who, arriving that very day from Damascus, had sought the palace of his countryman. The service at his table had not pleased the prince. Leaping from his couch, he struck down a slave and ordered his crucifixion. It was a luckless Arab, who many times had ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... entered his friend's room, where he had the shock of being at once addressed by the short-sighted Bernhard as Herr von Fink. A dreadful suspicion crossed his mind; and, pretending to be in the utmost haste, he carried the luckless cloak home, over a heart full of grief and anger. If it were, indeed, Fink that Ehrenthal's fair daughter had been expecting! The longer Anton had to wait for his friend, the more angry he grew. At last he heard his step in ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... out of Pouilly the coach was overturned. My luckless comrade, thinking to save himself, jumped to the edge of a newly-ploughed field, instead of following the fortunes of the vehicle and clinging tightly to the roof, as I did. He either miscalculated in some way, or he slipped; how it happened, I do not know, but ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... considerably damage the empty family carriage. When told of it, she was indifferent until the idea of danger to her father struck her; then, exclaiming, "My God! had M. Necker been in it, he might have been killed," she rushed to the luckless driver, and burst on him with a storm of denunciations, mixed with expostulatory precautions as to the future. When her father died, Madame de Stael was plunged into despairing grief, from which she aroused herself for a vain effort to make the public ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... day will scour the booths Of bibliopoles, Aquinii, Caesii and Suffenus, gather all their poison-trash And with such torments pay thee for thy pains. 20 Now for the present hence, adieu! begone Thither, whence came ye, brought by luckless feet, Pests of ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... no immediate reply. In fact, he was still dazed by this puzzling turn in the strange little adventure. He had believed that in helping the luckless victims of the accident he was furthering his own interests, in that he would reach home long before his chums. Now it began to look as though he had jumped from the ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... he returned home, where his first act was to smash the luckless hat and replace it with another. But it was some time before he recovered from the horrors of that near approach to extermination, and he passed a very wakeful ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... aghast, at proceedings which they were powerless to stop. But it is safe to say that there was not a man in the court-martial who did not blush as he admitted the justice of the sentence finally passed upon the luckless prisoner. The proceedings lasted, altogether, a fortnight; during which time all of Russia and a great part of Europe rang with the scandal.—Ivan did not even attempt a defence; though Irina, coming to him on the first evening, went down on her knees in her plea to be allowed to save him. Even ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... as puss inflicts a caress on the face of some too careless or reckless dog. A howling village cur has rashly ventured too near. 'Pincher' has him by the hind leg before you could say 'Jack Robinson.' Leaving the dead cat for 'Toby' and 'Nettle' to worry, the whole pack now fiercely attack the luckless Pariah dog. A dozen of his village mates dance madly outside the ring, but are too wise or too cowardly to come to closer quarters. The kangaroo hound has now fairly torn the rope from the keeper's ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Ah! luckless speech, and bootless boast! For which he paid full dear; For while he spake, a braying ass Did sing most loud ...
— The Diverting History of John Gilpin • William Cowper
... a rain-storm I became a universal absorber; swabbing bone-dry the very bulwarks I leaned against. Of a damp day, my heartless shipmates even used to stand up against me, so powerful was the capillary attraction between this luckless jacket of mine and all drops of moisture. I dripped like a turkey a roasting; and long after the rain storms were over, and the sun showed his face, I still stalked a Scotch mist; and when it was fair weather with others, alas! it was ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... say," cried this over good-natured lady, interspersing her commands with a volley of sixteenth century Billingsgate, and ending by declaring that nothing fared well without her, and hurrying off to pounce down on the luckless damsels who had let their dog play with the embroidery yarn destined to emblazon the tapestry of Chatsworth with the achievements of Juno. The good nature was so far veritable that when she found little harm done, and had vented her wrath ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Covent Garden Theatre, of which he was part proprietor. And I always associate this my only recollection of his venerable white hair and beautiful face, full of an expression of most benign dignity, with the earliest mention I remember of that luckless property, which weighed like an incubus upon my father all his life, and the ruinous burden of which both I and my sister successively endeavored ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... is most catholic in his choice, taking his readers to soar in a balloon with the luckless Andree, to wander in African forests and Australian deserts, to seek for the North Pole with Nansen, and even to note such an up-to-date expedition as that of the 'Discovery' in the Antarctic Regions, to cite but the most prominent. Mr. Williams has done ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... the red flame that burst from Wetzel's rifle came a sharp yelp of agony from the leader. He rolled over and over. Instantly followed a horrible mingling of snarls and barks, and snapping of jaws as the band fought over the body of their luckless comrade. ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey |
