"Ill-starred" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Vincennes was formerly a royal palace of the French court: it then dwindled to a state-prison; in its fosse, March 21, 1804, the Duke d'Enghien was murdered, the grave in the ditch on the left being where the body of the ill-starred victim was thrown immediately after being shot. The reader knows this act as one of the bloody deeds—the damned spots—of Bonaparte's career; that, subsequently, by order of the Bourbons, the remains of the duke were disinterred, and removed to the chapel of the Castle; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... the battalion,—and that one, as he had been frequently told, was himself. This, however, was a matter which he could not at all be induced to believe. Of the Academic Board in general, of his instructors in large measure, but of the four or five ill-starred soldiers known as "tactical officers" in particular, Mr. McKay entertained very decided and most unflattering opinions. He had won his cadetship through rigid competitive examination against all comers; he was a natural mathematician of whom ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... cargoes, to return. A vessel of this description had arrived at the port of London. The subject of the traffic having become invested with interest, a portion of the members of the House paid a visit to the ill-starred craft. The deplorably narrow quarters where hundreds of human beings were to be stowed away during the weeks that might be necessary to make their passage produced upon the minds of these gentlemen a most unfavorable impression. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... country's twofold tyranny, My father's slayers, spoilers of my home. Erst were they royal, sitting on the throne, And loving are they yet,—their common fate Tells the tale truly, shows their trothplight firm. They swore to work mine ill-starred father's death, They swore to die together; 'tis fulfilled. O ye who stand, this great doom's witnesses, Behold this too, the dark device which bound My sire unhappy to his death,—behold The mesh which trapped his hands, enwound his feet! Stand round, unfold it—'tis the trammel-net That wrapped ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... (so to speak) antithetically with the last misfortune of the unlucky Spithridates. His ill-starred likeness to Cyrus, assisted by a suit of armour which Cyrus has given to him, make the enemy certain that he is Cyrus himself, and he is furiously assaulted in an off-action, surrounded, and killed. His head is taken to Thomyris, who, herself ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... far as he could tell nobody besides Littimer knew anything of the matter. And no starved, cowed, broken-hearted puppy was ever closer under the heel of his master than Littimer. He still held all the cards; he still controlled the fortunes of two ill-starred houses. ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... off to some spa accompanied by her masseur and her negress, was totally indifferent to the ruin of the establishment; Bompain—the man in the fez—in frightened bewilderment amid the demands for money, not knowing how to approach his ill-starred master, who persistently kept his bed and turned his face to the wall as soon as business matters were mentioned. His old mother alone remained behind to face the disaster, with the knowledge born ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... examined all of the "Invincible" except for her main weapon,—her beak; for the trireme is really herself one tremendous missile to be flung by the well-trained rowers at the ill-starred foe. Projecting well in front of the prow and close to the water line are three heavy metal spurs serrated one above ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... eyes for the sight of it, the sight of the simple name "Agnes Bibby" at the head of her first signed story—the story that was to take away the reproach from the name that the ill-starred ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... of it originally, had been the very first thing to perish aboard our ill-starred ship; the officers, I am afraid, were not much better than poor Ready made them out (thanks to Bendigo and Ballarat), and little had been done in true ship-shape style all night. All hands had taken their spell at everything as the fancy seized them; not a bell had been ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... who makes those that own his influence, having been born when he was in the ascendant, grave and stern as himself: another we call 'mercurial,' or light- hearted, as those born under the planet Mercury were accounted to be. The same faith in the influence of the stars survives in 'disastrous,' 'ill-starred,' 'ascendancy,' 'lord of the ascendant,' and, indeed, in 'influence' itself. What a record of old speculations, old certainly as Aristotle, and not yet exploded in the time of Milton, [Footnote: See ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... Oh, ill-starred creatures! wretched beyond all others, to inhabit a place so hard to speak of—better had ye ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... counted so securely on the effect of experience and the pressure of events to teach Hadria the desirable lesson, and they were dismayed to find that, unlike other women, she had failed to learn it. Henriette was in despair. It was she who had brought about the ill-starred union. How could she ever forgive herself? How repair the error she had made? Only by devoting herself to her brother, and trying patiently to bring his wife to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... moment there was no reply. I almost began to hope that there would be none. I felt that here "Silence was golden," and if maintained, all might be comparatively well; when, to my dismay, there was a sort of flank movement in the ranks and the ill-starred Estella raised her hand. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... darkest part of the forest. The body was found shortly afterward and buried in the cottage garden. Harris then left the country and has never since been heard of. All this, according to Uncle Ashby, happened twenty years ago. The ghost of the ill-starred Ailsee had occasionally been seen by the country folk, but always with dire results. Bad luck, disease, and in some cases death, had been the fate of those who saw the 'ha'nt.' One man lost his house by fire within forty-eight hours after the shadowy form crossed his path. The body ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... I know not whither, outcast, fated At fortune's whim, A soul unholy, steep['e]d in Its mortal sin, Against the God who had created Me like to Him. 65 I am that soul ill-starred, unblest, That by nature shone in gleaming Robe of white, Of angel's beauty once possessed, Yea, loveliest, Like a ray refulgent streaming Filled with light. 66 And by my ill-omened fate, My atrocious ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... put aside her veil in turning to my wife, and showed a face which had all the ill-starred beauty of poor Tedham, with something more in it that she never got from that handsome reprobate—conscience, soul—whatever we choose to call a certain effluence of heaven which blesses us with rest and faith whenever we behold it in any human countenance. She ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... his object and the total separation of Ireland his ambition. The United Irishmen favored the invasion, which the Volunteers had been formed to repel. The feud between moral and physical force broke out. The failure of the sterner policy in 1798 did not daunt Emmet from his ill-starred attempt in 1803. He combined Lord Edward's chivalry with some abilities worthy of Tone, but he failed. The failure he redeemed by a swan-song from the dock and a demeanor on the scaffold which have become ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... dark eyes, the forlorn condition of a man who is very clever, who never makes a bad joke, who is such "good company," such a "jolly dog," such a "happy creature" and "fortunate fellow"! Oh the calamity of possessing a romantic country-seat and fine horses!—the ill-starred luck of a person who is always finding a moon that shines beautifully, a sun that is never too hot, long walks that cannot be too long, and drives that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... was built, and a fort was erected. Then buildings quickly followed, and by the autumn the whole party was well housed in its settlement, called Sainte Croix (Holy Cross). The river they named differently, but it has since borne the title of that ill-starred colony. ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... healthy, rational, and honorable nature. No nerve in his bosom vibrated to the sound of Claudia's name. The passion of his heart was perfectly cured; its wounds were quite healed; even its scars were effaced. He could have smiled at the memory of that ill-starred ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... them food and sent them safe to the Pearl Island [Cubagua], where some Christians dwelt, whom he could have slain, without any one knowing it, and did not: all the Christians finally called Nigoroto's town the mansion and home of everybody. 23. An ill-starred tyrant deliberated within himself to attack this place, as the people felt so safe: so he went there with a ship and invited many people to come on board, as they were used to, trusting the Spaniards. When many men, women, and children ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... there came into my head the ill-starred thought of leading them off the road and through the fields close alongside of it on our left hand. The road itself I knew pretty well, and that it bore gradually to the left, all the way to Alton. Carey, whom I consulted, agreed that we ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... ingenuity and characteristic dogmatism in his Bishop Butler and the Zeitgeist; and, inasmuch as no task can be more distasteful than to attack the teaching of a man whose genius and character one recognizes among the formative influences of one's life, I will leave the upshot of this ill-starred endeavour to be summarized by Butler's great ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... culprits extraordinary refinements of cruelty were reserved. The aventuriers, when so ill-starred as to fall into the hands of justice, were customarily burned alive at the stake.[76] The same fate overtook those who were detected in frauds against the public treasury. More frightful than all the rest was the vengeance taken by the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Kentucky home from the ill-starred Californian trip, Mary Anderson seems to have determined to essay again the lowest steps of the ladder of fame. She took a summer engagement with a company, which was little else than a band of strolling players. ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... her greatest triumphs seemed to have turned to hatred in the heart of her brilliant and erratic son. In his short and disastrous sojourn in Boston, when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb, it is not likely that his thought once turned to the old house on Haskins, now Carver, Street, where his ill-starred life began. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... evidence of an encampment of some of the men was discovered, and at Beechey Island, near by, carpenters' tools, empty meat cans, and the graves of three of the men threw more light on the mystery of the ill-starred expedition. A few years later, at Victory Point, Lieutenant Hobson found a record of the death of Franklin, the date being July ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... directed toward Chesapeake Bay was well under way before Prevost's ill-starred invasion began. On August 19, General Ross landed his forces on the banks of Patuxent River, within striking distance of Washington. Marching leisurely across country toward the capital, the British finally met at Bladensburg a motley array of some seven thousand Americans, hastily summoned ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... pestilence, the bodies were thrown into pits. "Nine years later ... the mouldering remains were unearthed, and deposited in a building ... on the shore of the lake, near the village of Meyriez.... During three succeeding centuries this depository was several times rebuilt.... But the ill-starred relics were not destined even yet to remain undisturbed. At the close of the last century, when the armies of the French Republic were occupying Switzerland, a regiment consisting mainly of Burgundians, under ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... took up his pen—and hesitated. His ill-starred medical colleague had been his fellow-student and his friend, in the days when they were both young men. They had seen but little of each other since they had gone their different ways—one of them, on the high ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... communicated like a game of forfeits through a circle of the more fermentable sinners present, serves the purpose of parliamentary cheering and gets Mr. Chadband's steam up. From mere force of habit, Mr. Chadband in saying "My friends!" has rested his eye on Mr. Snagsby and proceeds to make that ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, the immediate recipient ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Farnese, Duke of Castro, the pope's own abominable son. For some months my father had been enjoying the shelter of the Perugians, and he had repaid their hospitality by joining them and bearing arms with them in the ill-starred blow they struck for liberty. They had been crushed in the encounter by the troops of Pier Luigi, and my father had been ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... Chandarnagar, and was one of the small party who followed Law when that officer took command of those, who refused to share in the surrender of the place to the British. After the capture of his ill-starred chief, Reinhardt (whom we shall in future designate by his Indian sobriquet of " Sumroo," or Sombre) took service under Gregory, or Gurjin Khan, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... merely remains for me to substantiate these accusations; and then, with my ill-starred family, to disappear from the landscape on which we appear to be an encumbrance. That is soon done. It may be reasonably inferred that our baby will first expire of inanition, as being the frailest member of our circle; and that our twins will follow next in order. So be it! For myself, my Canterbury ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... seat next the roof of the theater; even in the prompter's hole [Note: On the Italian stage the prompter rises from a hole in the floor behind the foot-lights, and is hidden from the audience merely by a canvas shade.] places were sought to witness the admired work.... And whilst they wept over the ill-starred love of Imelda, and all hearts palpitated in the touching situation of the drama,—where the public and the personal interests so wonderfully blended, and the vengeance of a people mingled with that of a man outraged in ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... factious spirit and the oppression of the ruling caste did the rest. There is no need to dwell here on the horrors of the rising of 1798, and of its repression, or on the political and financial chaos that marked the collapse of an ill-starred experiment. England, struggling for her existence, had had enough of French invasion, civil war, and general anarchy on her flank. The Irish Parliament died, as it had lived, by corruption, and Castlereagh and Pitt conferred ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... of her ill-starred marriage, Sans Souci had waned like a waning moon; and the bridegroom saw, with dismay, his fairy bride slowly fading, passing, vanishing from his sight. There was no very marked disorder, no visible or tangible symptoms to guide the physicians, who were in succession summoned ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... in one phrase of all he could have done for the ill-starred debutante who had been hungry in the wrong place, Cecil lounged out of the club to drive with half a dozen of his set to a water-party—a Bacchanalian water-party, with the Zu-Zu and her sisters for the Naiads and the Household for ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the last revolt against the Martian government, an ill-starred revolt that ended almost before it started when the troopers turned loose the heavy heaters and swept the streets ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... praised his bravery, pointed out the uselessness of further resistance, and offered to allow the garrison to march out with the honours of war and rejoin the Emperor, where they could fight to more advantage. The Governor, who bore the ill-starred name of Moreau, finally gave way, and his troops, nearly all Poles, marched out at 4 p.m., furious at his "treason"; for the distant thunder of Marmont's cannon was already heard on the side of Oulchy. Rumour said that they were the Emperor's cannon, but rumour lied. At dawn Napoleon's troops ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... where the Massachusetts men fought sternly and met with cruel loss. Her father raged with anxiety when the news came of the withdrawal from the Peninsula, the triumphant rush of Lee and Longstreet on Jackson's trail, of the ill-starred but heroic struggle made by Pope along the banks of Bull Run. A few days and nights of dread suspense and then came tidings that Lee was across the Potomac and McClellan marching to meet him. Two more letters reached her from the marching—th Massachusetts, and a telegram from Washington telling ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... which Gillian was driving there had been added yet another memorial to a Craven who had died tragically and far from home; a record of disastrous calamity that, beginning four hundred years before with the Elizabethan gallant, had relentlessly pursued an ill-starred family. The church lay on the outskirts of the village and close to the south entrance of ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... the frightened raven flies, Soon as the rising eagle cuts the air; The shaggy wolf unseen and trembling lies, When the hoarse roar proclaims the lion near. Ill-starred did we our forts and lines forsake, To dare our British foes to open fight: Our conquest we by stratagem should make; Our triumph had been founded in our flight. 'Tis ours by craft and by surprise to gain; 'Tis theirs to meet in arms, and ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... career!" This having sworn, and what beside may our returning stay, Straight let us all, this City's doomed inhabitants, away, Or those that rise above the herd, the few of nobler soul; The craven and the hopeless here on their ill-starred beds may loll. Ye who can feel and act like men, this woman's wail give o'er, And fly to regions far away beyond the Etruscan shore! The circling ocean waits us; then away, where nature smiles, To those fair lands, those blissful lands, the rich and ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... held by the most sacred of ties, had brought with it misery and despair; for I was childless, and could scarcely still acknowledge myself a husband, till I knew how far I had been betrayed. Yet when I looked upon the ill-starred and suffering being before me, my angry feelings became appeased, and the words of reviling and bitterness expired ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... had enjoyed and lost. She followed with the warmest sympathy the varying fortunes of the lovers in the books she read aloud during the winter evenings; her heart understood that love, which brings the highest joy, may also cause the deepest sorrow. But apart from the sorrows of ill-starred love, she caught glimpses of something else—a terrible something which she did not understand. Dark forms would now and then appear to her, gliding through the paradise of love, disgraced and abject. The sacred name of love was linked with ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... screaming and cursing of the convicts below, their blasphemous shrieking to be let out! To this turmoil and uproar were added the frantic appeals and inquiries of the passengers who, more or less dressed, had hurried to the deck and who were now speaking to the master of the ill-starred vessel. He answered them briefly: what could be ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... us, as always in this ill-starred voyage. I, watching from my sand dune, saw a second figure emerge from the arroyo's mouth. It appeared to stagger as though hurt; and every eight or ten paces it stopped and rested in a bent-over position. The murky light was too dim ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... lying upon the pillow, she gave a deep sigh as she bent over and kissed him. Must he go through life handicapped? she asked herself, for no fault of his own? Would he always be looked upon as a waif, an ill-starred child, and in the eyes of ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... not permit his master to forget the three promised ass-colts; so Don Quixote wrote an order to his niece in the notebook of the ill-starred Cardenio. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... commemorated by the erection of the old castle, it having been built upon the final annexation of Normandy to the crown of France, in consequence of the weakness of our ill-starred monarch,—John Lackland. The French King seems to have suspected that the citizens retained their fealty to their former sovereign. He intended that his fortress should command and bridle the city, instead of defending it. The town-walls were razed, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... has weighed the alternative of success, and she sees now, every sensible man in the South sees, that the greatest calamity that could have befallen the South would have been the ascendency of this ill-starred Confederacy. [Applause.] Because that Confederacy carried to the utmost extreme, to the reductio ad absurdum, the right of secession, carried in its bosom the seed of its own destruction, and even in ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... believe that wealth and want are to stand ever side by side as desperate foes; that culture must ride only on the back of ignorance; and feminine virtue be guarded by the degradation of whole classes of ill-starred men, as in the East, or the degradation of whole classes of ill-starred women, as in the West; but while we neglect the means of help God puts in our power, why, the present must be like the past—"property" must be theft, "law" the strength of selfish ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... twenty-four hours after the events narrated in the preceding chapters that Mr. Sherlock Holmes assumed command of the Gehenna, which was nothing more nor less than the shadow of the ill-starred ocean steamship City of Chicago, which tried some years ago to reach Liverpool by taking the overland route through Ireland, fortunately without detriment to her passengers or crew, who had the pleasure of the experience of ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... fell victims to the prevailing fascination of the gaming-table. What destroyed Charles James Fox, as a statesman? Gambling! What brought the brilliant Sheridan to the grave? Intoxication, brought on by the ill-starred luck of the ruined gamester? "Holland-house!" immortalized as the resort of genius, as well as for its orgies of dissipation, is not less renowned to infamy, as having been ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... now had changed little enough in its purpose. The rules may have received modification, but the spirit was still the same. Men were still struggling for victory over some one else, and beneath the veneer of a growing civilization, passions, just as untamed, raged and worked their will upon their ill-starred possessors. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... quite as ill-starred as the French. Paoli accepted Buonaparte's plan, but appointed his nephew, Colonna-Cesari, to lead, with instructions to see that, if possible, "this unfortunate expedition shall end in smoke."[31] The disappointed but stubborn young aspirant remained in his subordinate place as an ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... sweet fountain of Hyetis and Byblis, and ye that dwell in the steep home of golden Dione, ye Loves as rosy as red apples, strike me with your arrows, the desired, the beloved; strike, for that ill-starred one pities not my friend, my host! And yet assuredly the pear is over-ripe, and the maidens cry 'alas, alas, thy ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... sort of blight seemed to hang over France during Louis XV.'s reign, as overshadowed the Russia of the ill-starred Nicholas II. Nothing could possibly go right with either of them, and it may be that the prime causes were the same: the assumption of absolute power by an irresolute monarch, lacking the intellectual equipment ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... instrument of magic. You are not to be congratulated on this method of procedure. Your accusation reveals no shrewdness, and has not even the merit of impudence. Do not think so for a moment. No! it shows naught save the ill-starred madness of an embittered spirit and the pitiable fury of cantankerous old age. The words you used in the presence of so grave and perspicacious a judge amounted to something very like this. 'Apuleius kept certain things wrapped in a cloth among the household gods in the house of Pontianus. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... for the French Government would have been to send to the Rhine all the seasoned troops left available by Napoleon III.'s ill-starred Mexican enterprise, so as to help the hard-pressed South German forces, offering also the armed mediation of France to the combatants. In that case Prussia must have drawn back, and Napoleon III. could have dictated his own terms to Central Europe. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... for the potentates of Europe, including the King of England. They appear to have sailed from the port of Zayton (as the Westerns called T'swan-chau or Chin-cheu in Fo-kien) in the beginning of 1292. It was an ill-starred voyage, involving long detentions on the coast of Sumatra, and in the South of India, to which, however, we are indebted for some of the best chapters in the book; and two years or upwards passed before they arrived at their destination in Persia.[19] The ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... themselves that this mob, like that of the week before, would, after making an uproar for a day or two, disappear and leave the community in quiet, they were destined to disappointment. The popular exasperation and apprehension which the Squire's ill-starred attempt to regain authority had produced, gave to the elements of anarchy in the village a new cohesive force and impulse, while, thanks to the news of the spread and success of the rebellion elsewhere, the lawless were encouraged by entire confidence of ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... footpath by the river in the late evening light, almost in silence; such vague words as they uttered, low as the murmur of the Loire, stirred their souls to the depths. Just as the sun sank, a last red gleam from the sky fell over them; it was like a mournful symbol of their ill-starred love. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Mexico, I met him in New Orleans, in company with that ill-starred man, General Shields, of Illinois, and who, Irishman as he was, fell fighting to fasten upon the South the fetters she now wears. We had not conversed ten minutes before, taking my arm, he walked apart from his visitors and Shields, and commenced to converse upon the consequences of the war. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... when an armed force could be sent to collect it. As late as 1837 the great Sikh leader, Hari Singh Nalwa, fell fighting with the Afghans at Jamrud. The Barakzai, Dost Muhammad, had been the ruler of Kabul since 1826. In 1838, when the English launched their ill-starred expedition to restore Shah Shuja to his throne, Ranjit Singh did not refuse his help in the passage through the Panjab. But he was worn out by toils and excesses, and next year the weary lion of the Panjab died. He had known how to use men. He ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... that taught to thousands of unfortunate Mahomedan peasants in the Frontier Province who were persuaded to give up their lands and trek into Afghanistan to seek the blessings of Mahomedan rule, and came back starved and plundered from their ill-starred exodus undertaken for the sake of Islam. In Lahore and in the other chief urban constituencies "Non-co-operation," with its usual methods of combined persuasion and intimidation, was so far successful that not 5 per cent of the electors went to ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... slightly as he said hurriedly: 'Old chap, don't think that I don't appreciate what you have attempted for us; it was quite the most amazingly splendid thing I ever heard of! But now, with matters as they stand, there is nothing for us to do but withdraw. Let them have the mine; it is blood-stained and ill-starred. I wouldn't have a thing to do with it if ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... had the precaution to fasten a long shawl round her waist, and again to the staunchions of the cabin window. She had drifted somewhat under the keel of the vessel, and her being out of sight occasioned the delay in finding her. And thus the ill-starred girl died a victim to my senseless rashness. Thus, in early day, she left us for the company of the dead, and preferred to share the rocky grave of Raymond, before the animated scene this cheerful earth afforded, and the society of loving friends. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... General Douay saw the exhausted condition of the troops, and was convinced that it would be useless to attempt to reach la Besace that day. What particularly influenced his determination, however, was the arrival of the train, that ill-starred train that had been trailing in his rear since they left Rheims, and of which the nine long miles of vehicles and animals had so terribly impeded his movements. He had given instructions from Quatre-Champs to direct it straight on Saint-Pierremont, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... cried, springing from his seat, "and what profit did the immortal and ill-starred Torquato Tasso win from all his genius? A few stolen kisses on the steps of a palace. And he died of famine in a madhouse. I say it: the world's opinion, that empress of humankind, I will tear from her her crown and sceptre. ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... her mother, her good-natured father, and the monkey-tricks of her little brothers; and she told all this with a simple grace and innocent frankness not a little alluring. Yet I was pretty near the truth; for, without being aware of it, she uniformly concluded with the one favourite theme: her ill-starred love. Still I went on acting the part of the UNAMIABLE, in the hope that she would take a spite against me. But whether from inadvertency or design, she would not take the hint, and I was at last fairly compelled ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... like a drunken man, fell headlong, raising clouds of smoke and a shower of sparks in his fall. Alas! poor Oreeque, the newly risen sun was now shining on your ashes, and on the dead bodies of the ill-starred Bondia and her child, whose bones, ere his setting, the birds of the air, and beasts of the forest, will leave as white and fleshless as your own. The officer, who belonged to the army investing Carthagena, now treated us with great civility; he heard our story, and desired his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... not the storm that raged savagely above them, if they felt not the sand that pressed heavily upon them, what was there to warn, what to arouse them from that ill-starred slumber? ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... man poured forth his tale, and the Red Cross Knight learned that once he was happy and free, like other men, till on an ill-starred day he and a friend had fallen in with a cursed wight who called himself 'Despair,' who had plucked all hope from their breasts, and bade them seek death, the one with a rope, the other with a knife. His friend, whose love had been disdained by ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... tincture of blue and brave blood, is perhaps one of her characteristics, as is many another well born woman's. She had a long list of worthy ancestors in colonial and revolutionary days, and the McNeils, and General Knox, figure largely in her genealogy, as well as the hero who killed the ill-starred Paugus. ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... ill-starred cathedral an inept precentor gave out, by way of liturgical canticles, a perfect menagerie of outlandish tunes, which, let loose on Sunday, seemed to scamper like marmosets up the pillars and under the roof. And the artless voices of ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... imperceptible smile playing on the king's lips—"sire, I perceive that your majesty is laughing at me; nevertheless, I deem it incumbent on me to raise my warning voice. Etiquette is something sublime and holy—it is the sacred wall separating the sovereign from his people. If that ill-starred queen, Marie Antoinette, had not torn down this wall, she would probably have met ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... item of the show, the performer came round with an escallop shell into which the more generously disposed dropped small copper coins. The place was nearly always crowded with men in black frock-coats and crimson fezzes. Ill-starred Valentine Baker had been employed by the Sublime Porte to create an English gendarmerie, and this fact had brought a large number of English military men into Constantinople, who were anxious to enlist under his banner. Many of them were men who ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... knew the place; for by nearly starving there, years before, with the others of Governor la Barre's ill-starred expedition, he had contributed to ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... reply; but when that traveller's back is turned, the things that Madame Faragon can say about the upstart coxcombry of the wretch, and as to the want of all real comforts which she is sure prevails in the home quarters of that ill-starred complaining traveller, are proof to those who hear them that the old landlady has not as yet lost all her energy. It need not be doubted that she herself religiously believes that no foul perfume has ever pervaded the sanctity of her chambers, and that ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... a rebel at heart, or that she was actuated by higher principles of humanity than he had a right to look for in exciting and demoralizing times of war. And then could she possibly have recognized him?—for it was no other than he that had borne the ill-starred flag. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... bullock upon shamble-sill, Thus fell the ill-starred stripling, in despite Of king Cymosco, worst among the ill; So was the impious king of Friesland hight Who did my brothers and my father kill, And, in my state to found a better right; In wedlock wished to join me with his son, Haply to slay me when ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... of the Confederacy, scarred with the wounds he took at Bull Run, looking back over a wasted life to the youth he sacrificed in that ill-starred cause, remembers now as he remembers nothing else of the whole year of revolution the last plea of Douglas for the old party, the old ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... struck right and left. Desgrais, chief of the police, by a crafty ruse, penetrated into the secret circle of La Voisin, and she, with a crowd of associates, perished in the fires of the Place de Greve. She left an ill-starred daughter, Marie Exili, to the blank charity of the streets of Paris, and the possession of many of the frightful secrets of her mother and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the funeral, Dr. Merrick called in for the last time at her lodgings. He brought in his hand a legal-looking paper, which he had found in searching among Alan's effects, for he had carried them off to his hotel, leaving not even a memento of her ill-starred love to Herminia. "This may interest you," he said dryly. "You will see at once it ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... The ill-starred gentlewoman whose passion for the magnificent prompted her to adorn her floating bower thus luxuriously, and who, like Cleopatra, was attended on her barge by Ethiop slaves, had not relinquished her faith in Burr's dream ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... yearning, searching his heart to discover whether his own influence or example had helped to bring about this lamentable fall; he turned over in his mind plans for bringing the wanderer back to the fold; he ceased to think about the coming election, and thought of his ill-starred love hardly otherwise than as a possible sin which had helped perhaps ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... Scandinavian legend. Sigurd discovered Brynhild, encased in a complete armor, lying in a death-like sleep, to which she had been condemned by Odin. Sigurd woke her by opening her corselet, fell in love with her, promised to marry her, but deserted her for Gudrun. This ill-starred union was the cause of an ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... connected with the Cobb was the landing of Monmouth thereon in June, 1685. The ill-starred prince knelt on the stones and thanked God "for having preserved the friends of liberty and pure religion from the perils of the sea." Not many days passed before some enthusiasts from Lyme who had followed the gallant lad were ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... the story of the ill-starred colony of 'Nouvelle France,' which was given the tacit support of the French Government, the blessing of the Church, and the hard-earned savings of the wretched dupes of French, Italian and Spanish peasantry who believed in it—until ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... thrilling tales have reached us from the Pacific coast, although the newspapers are very reticent about publishing reports of accidents. It would seem that some agency is suppressing accounts of ill-starred ventures. Certainly, the papers hold out the golden possibilities of the trip, while the dangers and privations are ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 11, March 17, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... royal colours were, much to the chagrin of Charles, unexpectedly hauled down from the stronghold, and the garrison, 1000 strong, tamely walked out. The Parliamentary commander made a huge "bag" by the capture. It was, however, in connection with Monmouth's ill-starred enterprise that Bridgwater attained its chief historical notoriety, for it was here that the Duke had his headquarters before the fatal engagement on Sedgemoor. Of the castle—founded by a De Briwere, who is ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... splendid compositions seem to have missed fire through sheer bad luck. To go no further than Sir Arthur Sullivan, some of his finest and most important works have had an ill-starred existence, and even several of his best songs, though introduced to the public under the most favourable auspices, have not "taken on." Sullivan's splendid ditty "Love laid his sleepless head," though sung by Mr. Edward Lloyd all over the country, did not make a hit, whilst ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... cloisters by night, and sometimes glimpses of it were seen in other parts of the Abbey. Its appearance was said to portend some impending evil to the master of the mansion. Lord Byron pretended to have seen it about a month before he contracted his ill-starred marriage ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... sometimes make us forget the paucity of incident in a play. 'Tristan und Isolde' is a case in point. Practically, its outward action is summed up in each of its three acts by the same words: Preparation for a meeting of the ill-starred lovers; the meeting. What is outside of this is mere detail; yet the effect of the tragedy upon a listener is that of a play surcharged with pregnant occurrence. It is the subtle alchemy of music that transmutes the psychological action of ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the face of the country; a rigorous winter was approaching, and the city was almost destitute of provisions. The people sank into deep despondency. They called to mind all that had been predicted by astrologers at the birth of their ill-starred sovereign, and all that had been foretold of the fate of Granada at the time of the capture ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... forsake your tempting fiend, for such is ambition to the female heart. Yes, you will spend the springtime of your life chasing a painted specter, and go down to a premature grave, disappointed and miserable. Poor child, it needs no prophetic vision to predict your ill-starred career! Already the consuming fever has begun its march. In far-distant lands, I shall have no tidings of you; but none will be needed. Perhaps when I travel home to die your feverish dream will have ended; or, perchance, sinking to eternal rest in some palm grove of the far East, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... unfortunate Andre, who had been taken prisoner hard by; and was universally known by the name of Major Andre's tree. The common people regarded it with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake, and partly from the tales of strange sights, and doleful lamentations, ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... carriage. He found in a cash box 40,000 francs, in the pockets a snuff-box set with diamonds, and a pair of pistols and two swords; the hilt of one of these latter was studded with precious stones, a gift from the ill-starred Selim. M. Moulin returned across the court, carrying these things. The Damascus blade was wrenched from his hands, and the robber kept it five years as a trophy, and it was not until the year 1820 that he was forced to give it up to the ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was used to quiet his perturbation, which at length yielded so far as to subside into a continual fever and confirmed delirium, during which he ceased not to pour forth the most pathetic complaints, touching his ruined love, and to rave about the ill-starred Monimia. The Major, half distracted by the calamity of his friend, would have concealed it from the knowledge of his family, had not the physician, by despairing of his life, laid him under the necessity of making them acquainted ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... about his arms nor the pillory around his neck could contain the gladness of his heart. From within came the sounds of instruments of wood and string with the measured beating of a drum; nothing had fallen short, for on that forbidden day, incredibly blind to the depths of his impiety, the ill-starred Mandarin Shan Tien was ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... Torquato, heaven to us The rich gift of thy genius gave, to thee Nought else but misery. Ill-starred Torquato, whom thy song, So sweet, could not console, Nor melt the ice, to which The genial current of thy soul Was turned, by private envy, princely hate; And then, by Love abandoned, life's last dream! To thee, nought ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... neighbours, exclaiming that he had seen a most marvellous thing, for which he could conceive of no better name than CLICKMITOAD. After recovering from their surprise and terror, this 'bold peasant' and his neighbours, all armed with pokers and other formidable weapons, crept up to the ill-starred ticker, and smashed ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... wall to your true lover? What bones, pray, did the Sieur Pyramus, that ill-starred Babylonish knight, make of a wall? did not his protestations slip through a chink, mocking at implacable granite and more implacable fathers? Most assuredly they did; and Pyramus was a pattern to all lovers. Thus ran the meditations ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... ill-starred one! In love's chain, Full hard to loose, he captive lies! Not soon his senses will regain Whom ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the suggestion of the gifted, emancipated and ill-starred Charlotte von Kalb, Jean Paul visited Weimar, already a Mecca of literary pilgrimage and the centre of neo-classicism. There, those who, like Herder, were jealous of Goethe, and those who, like Frau von Stein, were estranged from him, received the new light with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... unutterable indignation, rose slowly into the air, followed by the bewildered Owl, who had not had time to explain the boy's 'new departure' to himself on scientific principles. It was not till they were fully half a mile from the ill-starred spot that the Owl opened his beak to murmur, with an air of long-suffering melancholy but scientific ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... the whole kingdom and every rank of France, just in time to prepare all minds for the deadly blow which Her Majesty received from the infamous plot of the diamond necklace. From this year, crimes and misfortunes trod closely on each others' heels in the history of the ill-starred Queen; and one calamity only disappeared to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Then there are the female soakers, whom doctors find to be the most troublesome of all their patients. There is not a medical man in large practice who has not a shocking percentage of lady inebriates on his list, and the cases are hard to manage. An ill-starred woman, whose well-to-do husband is engaged in business all day, finds that a dull life-weariness overtakes her. If she has many children, her enforced activity preserves her from danger; but, if she is childless, the subtle temptation is apt to overcome her. She seeks unnatural ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... An ill-starred town in England seems to have enjoyed so unenviable a reputation for some centuries for the folly and stupidity of its inhabitants, that I am induced to send you the following Query (with the reasons on which it is founded) in the hope that some of your readers may be able ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... historic outburst of rage; Nathanael Greene for his masterly conduct of the war in the South; Horatio Gates, first for a victory over Burgoyne which he did very little to bring about, and second for his ill-starred attempt to ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... its hand to the process, too; and romance—it is not an insipid chain of flowerbeds we have to follow, but the holy warriors of Saint Louis, the roistering braves of Henry the Great, the gallant Bourbons, the ill-starred Bonapartes. These as they passed have left their monuments; it may be only in a crumbling old chapel or ruined tower, but there they are, eloquent of days that are dead, of a spirit that lives forever staunch in the heart of the fervent ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... felt in ourselves such a stupendous capacity for loving the same that we would fall to weeping on each other's shoulders. Full well I knew, even as if they had formed a part of my own personal experience, all the passion and tenderness, all the wasted anguish of her brief, ill-starred motherhood: the very ache of my jealousy that she should have borne a child to another man was forgotten in that keen and thorough comprehension! Ah, yes ... that hungry love, that woful pity, which not ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Shays rebellion to Lee, the movement toward a better union, which he had begun, was on the brink of success. That ill-starred insurrection became, as he foresaw, a powerful spur to the policy started at Mount Vernon, and adopted by Virginia and Maryland. From this had come the Annapolis convention, and thence the call for another convention at Philadelphia. As soon as ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... course working on, inferior creatures"; comp. L'Alleg. 112, "whose bright eyes Rain influence"; Par. Lost, iv. 669, "with kindly heat Of various influence." Astrology has left many traces upon the English language, e.g. influence, disastrous, ill-starred, ascendant, etc. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... me all that last night?" cried the ill-starred Lancaster. He dared not tell Bullard that the Green Box was safe in his house. Bullard would never, however great the compensation, forgive trickery against himself; and Bullard's theory remained to be proved. Lancaster's soul now seized on its last hope: that Doris would be able ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell |
