"Miserable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hyde, "the miserable Irish alone had no part in contributing to his Majesty's happiness; nor had God suffered them to be the least instruments in bringing his good pleasure to pass, or to give any testimony of their repentance for ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... I gave a miserable groan and was tempted to damn the autobiography of the great van Manderpootz. A gleam of sympathy showed in his eyes, and he took my arm, dragging me into the ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... arriving at our inn of rest, Whose roof exposed to many a winter sky, Half shelters from the wind the shivering guest, By the pale lamp's dreary gloom I mark the miserable room, And gaze with angry eye On the hard lot of honest poverty, And sickening at the monster brood Who fill with ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... March, 1740, says:—'Orpheus and Eurydice' draws the whole town to Covent Garden, whether for the Opera itself (the words of which are miserable stuff) or for the Pantomimical Interlude, with which it is intermixed, I cannot determine. The music is pretty good, and the tricks are not foolisher than usual, and some have said that they have more meaning than most that have preceded them. The ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... boxes or from the stage. Even that painful exposure of an optical illusion would be trifling compared with the imposture of Khartoum. The sense of sight had been deceived by distance, but the sense of smell was outraged by innumerable nuisances, when we set foot within the filthy and miserable town. After winding through some narrow, dusty lanes, hemmed in by high walls of sun-baked bricks that had fallen in gaps in several places, exposing gardens of prickly pears and date palms, we at length arrived at a large open place, that, if possible, smelt more strongly than the landing ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... bedstead made, under Ned's weight in his new suit! It didn't break down though; and there Ned lay, like the anonymous vessel in the Bay of Biscay, till next day, drinking barley-water, and looking miserable: and every time he groaned, his good lady said it served him right, which was all the consolation Ned ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... disqualifications; and for the young females of a family I could mention, well may they excite parental solicitude; for I, a common acquaintance, or as my vanity will have it, an humble friend, have often trembled for a turn of mind which may render them eminently happy—or peculiarly miserable! ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... girl went on crying, not loudly or passionately, but with no sign of discontinuance, as she stood there, large and miserable, before him. He settled his shoulders obstinately against the wood pile, thinking to wait till she should speak or make some further sign. Nothing but strength of will kept him in his place, for he would gladly have fled from her. He had now less guidance than before to what was ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... might continue missing in the flesh, in the spirit he and his miserable affair seem to have been ever present and ubiquitous, and a ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... monuments of almost equal importance to the world which are in jeopardy of the same fate as the Cathedral of Rheims, viz., the Cathedrals of Noyon and Laon. That these will be respected is to be hoped, in spite of the ruthless and miserable attempt to reduce the glorious ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... French; and again she felt a sudden thrill of joy, and had a vague memory of some big hall in which she had once danced, or of which, perhaps, she had once dreamed. And something at the bottom of her soul dimly and obscurely whispered to her that she was a pretty, common, miserable, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the utmost tension. My mouth fell open, and my eyes felt as if they were straining to leap from my head. It was Laura—the loved, adored Laura—my Laura! My friends heard me repeat the name, and marked with surprise and concern my inexplicably miserable condition. They gathered round me, and endeavoured to divert my attention from the dead and now gory body. It was in vain. I heeded not their words, but gazed steadfastly at the sad features of Laura, with my hands still uplifted. I was speechless, deaf, and immovable. No ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... murdering the illegitimate offspring of her own daughter. Every thing about this devoted house melted away—sheep rotted, cattle died, 'and blighted was the corn.' Of several children none reached maturity, and the savage proprietor survived every thing he loved or cared for. He died blind and miserable. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... of God—brought into the same aspect image with that of the Saviour of the World! We are scarcely satisfied that even to quote such passages may not be criminal. The subject is too repulsive for us to proceed even in expressing our disgust for the general folly that makes the Poem as miserable in point of authorship, as in point of principle. We know that among a certain class this outrage and this inanity meet with some attempt at palliation, under the idea that frenzy holds the pen. That any man who insults the common order of society, and denies the being of God, is essentially ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... danger in crossing the Tagus at its broadest part, which is opposite Aldea Gallega, at any time, but especially at close of day in the winter season, or I should certainly not have ventured. The lad and his comrade, a miserable-looking object, whose only clothing, notwithstanding the season, was a tattered jerkin and trousers, rowed until we had advanced about half a mile from the land; they then set up a large sail, and the lad, who seemed to direct everything, and to be the principal, took the helm and steered. ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... this inquiry took the whole court by surprise, and made her solicitor, Houseman, very miserable. "None, my Lord," said she. "Half-justice is injustice; and I will lend it no color. I will not set able men to fight for me with their hands tied, against men as able whose hands be free. Counsel, on terms so partial, I will have none. My counsel shall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... and fine linen shall know the state of their neighbours. They cannot at least plead ignorance for the nonfulfilment of their duty. Before St Lys's time, the family at Mowbray Castle might as well have not existed, as far as benefiting their miserable vicinage. It would be well perhaps for other districts not less wretched, and for other families as high and favoured as the Mowbrays, if there were a Mr St Lys on the spot ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... time after he again called on them to lower their sails. "I would sooner die first than surrender!" replied the French commander. The order was given to fire a second shot, which carried off five or six men; but, as these miserable devils are very good sailors, they maneuvered so well that we could not take one of them; and, notwithstanding all the guns we fired at them, we did not sink one of their ships. We only got possession of one of their large boats, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... or some miserable canaille of that sort. He will soon be out of your way." Our guard craned over to look at him. "Oui—da! He is a dying man! A priest must be sent to him soon. I remember he demanded one ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... "Miserable that you are, you throw yourself at Caesar's feet asking only permission to be his slave. You sought for yourself that state of slavery which it has ever been easy for you to endure. Had you any command from the Roman people to ask ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Russia, Italy, and Mexico, soaked through with men's blood, gloriously decomposed, torn, blackened with powder, and riddled with bullets. Now the strong arms of German non-commissioned officers carried them in the sultry heat of the midsummer afternoon, these miserable remnants hanging heavy and limp without a flutter, without a spark of trembling life in the silken folds; they looked like imprisoned kings, who with heads bowed down, and despair in their eyes, walked in chains behind the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... awful week it was after that! I was never so miserable in all my life. I cried till my eyes were quite red, and then I bathed them for an hour, and then I went to the pier, and you were there—and I mightn't ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... said Tam, following him and deftly strapping himself, "ye'll turn that propeller—pull it down so, d'ye hear me, ye miserable chauffeur!" ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... best for me to do what you told me—to buy my dress and go back with the vicar, and be a good girl, and not bother you, because you were so good to me, and it was wrong for me to worry you and make you miserable." ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... the sass-wood drink it is allowed to settle before administration, and in the bean that you get a very heavy dose, both arrangements tending to produce the immediate emetic effect indicative of innocence. If this effect does not come on quickly you die a miserable death from the effects of the poison interrupted by the means taken to kill you as soon as it is decided from the absence of violent sickness ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... that night was a miserable affair, since in the first place provisions were running short and there was little to eat, and in the second no one spoke a word. Benita could swallow no food; she was weary of that sun-dried trek-ox, for since Meyer had blocked the wall they had little else. But by good fortune there remained ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... crevice that might be the mouth of a cave. Then, either in the rowboat or by scrambling down the cliffs, I visit the indicated point. It is bitterly hard labor, but it has its compensations. I am growing hale and strong, brown and muscular. Aunt Sarah won't offer me any more of her miserable decoctions when I go home. Heading first toward the north, I am systematically making the rounds of the island, for, after all, how do I know for certain that Captain Sampson buried his treasure near the east anchorage? For greater security he may have chosen the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... and crush him. Behold him blotted from the number of men, perhaps condemned to die of misery and of hunger! more securely imprisoned, more entirely forgotten by the world than the most hardened criminal plunged in the lowest depths of the Bastile! He at least, has a jailor! Miserable Stradling! ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... have rendered my life miserable by your treacheries, and now you have robbed me of her! This is no place to settle our quarrels; but I have sworn it once, and I swear it again now, some day I will ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... finding out how ignorant I am of the meaning of the New Testament, and how miserably I have read my own miserable notions and glosses into the words of St. Paul. I am sure that the solution of the greatest problems which concern humanity is to be found in his Epistles, if we could only approach them without bias and with more childishness. I feel certain that the Incarnation is the great fact ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... persecuting the Christians. It has goaded countless multitudes of various creeds to endless forms of self-torture. The cities of India are full of cripples it has made. The hill-sides of Syria are riddled with holes, where miserable hermits, whose lives it had palsied, lived and died like the vermin they harbored. Our libraries are crammed with books written by spiritual hypochondriacs, who inspected all their moral secretions a dozen times a day. ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... without restraint and it would befit him better to carry the psalter in the church or to bear the lights with the great burning candles. Guiraut de Bornelh is like a sun-bleached cloth with his thin miserable song which might suit an old Norman water-carrier. Bernart de Ventadour is even smaller than Guiraut de Bornelh by a thumb's length; but he had a servant for his father who shot well with the long bow while his mother tended the furnace." The satiric sirventes soon found imitators: ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... harrowing occupation. With him came his aged wife and spinster daughter. Both appeared to be over fifty, and, like the head of their household, also deeply depressed by mathematics. These three, looking so learned, looking so miserable with learning, were surely the best evidence that could be advanced in support of the truth of the Inner Light; for they were all convinced adherents of the Order. Sir Joseph arrived punctually at three, the hour appointed for the meeting. With him came Malster, and one of ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... resumed the duchesse, without taking notice of the irony, "that you really draw back from a miserable sum of five hundred thousand francs, when it is a question of sparing you—I mean your friend—I beg your pardon, I ought rather to say your protector—the disagreeable consequences which a party ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... bondage certain to affect both health and temper? Their first feeling is one of pain and suffering; they find every necessary movement hampered; more miserable than a galley slave, in vain they struggle, they become angry, they cry. Their first words you say are tears. That is so. From birth you are always checking them, your first gifts are fetters, your first treatment, torture. Their voice alone is free; why should ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... question "When are you going to the Front?" assuming that was a question he could settle himself, and that he would be anything but in the way and a nuisance at the Front, owing to his lack of discipline and training. The public in this way made the men's and officers' lives very miserable. It was almost impossible to settle down to a hard course of training. Lord Kitchener had placed the period necessary for getting a man into shape as a soldier at six months. By great effort that period might be shortened, but from the experience we gained ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... vanity was hungry and miserable. Surely, though she would not be his wife, she had been John's best friend!—his good angel. Her heart clamored for some warmer, gratefuller word—that might justify her to herself. And, instead, she realized for the first time ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dropped his eyes. Then the prosecutor, realizing the danger of letting the old hypnotic power return, even for an instant, quickly stepped between them. Miller raised his eyes and smiled, and those who heard knew that this miserable creature had been through the fire and come forth to speak ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... which these lonely fugitives among the mountains are sometimes reduced. Having received wherewithal to allay his hunger, he disappeared, but in the course of a day or two returned to the camp, bringing with him his son, a miserable boy, still more naked and forlorn than himself. Food was given to both; they skulked about the camp like hungry hounds, seeking what they might devour, and having gathered up the feet and entrails of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the side of one whom I so much loved, and from whom I had such hope. Oh! dear Mrs. Egerton, you are surely not going to treat me as a mere master. You would render me miserable if you did so. How can I help admiring one whom I so fondly loved, and with whom I hoped ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... idleness; in this, the hundredth case, it constrains to energy, because it is rapidly bleaching the puce-colored boards in which Mr. Davidson's plays are bound—and (which is worse) bleaching them unevenly. I have tried (let the miserable truth be confessed) turning the book daily, as one turns a piece of toast—But this is not ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he makes appear to me to refute each other. He says, that to the continental European protesting against the abstract iniquity of slavery, his answer would be, 'the slaves are infinitely better off than half the continental peasantry.' To the Englishman, 'they are happy compared with the miserable Irish.' But supposing that this answered the question of original injustice, which it does not, it is not a true reply. Though the negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... American editions can be found of Burke, of Gibbon, of Hume, or even of Robertson, the historian of the continent; but if one imports such an edition, he finds himself taxed at the Custom-house to pay for the miserable thing he refuses. You look in vain for an edition of Jeremy Taylor; and if you import that of Bishop Heber, you pay a guinea to the Customs to sustain the privilege of American publishers to publish it if they choose. The writings of Lord Clarendon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... king, named Marraboo: we arrived before he had moved abroad, and, after going through winding narrow paths or streets, we were conducted by one of his people to his palace, a wretched hovel, built with mud, and thatched with bamboo. In our way to this miserable habitation of royalty, a confused sound of voices issued forth from almost every hut we passed, which originated from their inhabitants vociferating their morning orisons to Allah and Mahomet; their religion being an heterogeneous ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... hundred thousand dollars O N Pomeroy eloped with poor Lady Chetwynde She acted out of a mad impulse in flying She listened to me and ran off with me She was piqued at her husband's act Fell in with Lady Mary Chetwynd Expelled the army for gaming N Pomeroy of Pomeroy Berks O I am a miserable villain ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... or even to conceal them. When I am led by conversation to express them, I do it with the same independence here, which I have practised every where, and which is inseparable from my nature. But enough of this miserable tergiversator, who ought indeed either to have been of more truth, or less trusted by ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... earless, thumb-fingered Gentile! [Throwing open the window] Here, Johnny! You can't practise your scales if you leave 'em here! [He throws out the music-roll and shivers again at the cold as he shuts the window.] Ugh! And I must go out to that miserable dancing class to scrape the rent together. [He goes to the fire and warms his hands.] Ach Gott! What a life! What a life! [He drops dejectedly into the armchair. Finding himself sitting uncomfortably on the big book, he ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... about? He don't seem to be usin' my language," he said, in a tone of wrathful perplexity. Ranald was too miserable to answer, but Kenny was ready with ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... the wealth, cultivation, and populousness of China and Indostan, he found, in St. Domingo, and in all the other parts of the new world which he ever visited, nothing but a country quite covered with wood, uncultivated, and inhabited only by some tribes of naked and miserable savages. He was not very willing, however, to believe that they were not the same with some of the countries described by Marco Polo, the first European who had visited, or at least had left behind him any description of China or the East Indies; and a very slight resemblance, such as that ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... her into his private office, and Ernestine was too sincere a lover of beautiful things to be wholly miserable in a ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... in a gossamer sort of way," The words echoed in her mind, and vaguely, beside her own image in the glass, there rose a vision of girlhood—pale, gold hair, pink cheeks, white frock—and she turned away, miserable, from that conscious, that intellectual distinction with which, in general, she could persuade herself to ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been taught in any school? No. Can the parents read? No. Shall we find a Bible in the cabins? No. Weak, wicked, and absolutely poor, in dumb and stolid content with animalism and dirt, here families are herding like cattle, in windowless and miserable cabins of one room. The children who fail to receive the benignity of death grow up here and exist and suffer in this dreadful life. Yet we can ride by this plantation and in sight of it any day on our way to Florida, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... possible for a sea-faring man to be perfectly temperate, Jack took more than his share of grog; and, when on shore, spent all his time in dissipation. Luckily, he had no wife to be made miserable by his errors, though perhaps a good woman might have had an excellent influence on him. As he had no home of his own, his time when in port was spent at some miserable tavern by the water-side, where he could meet the crews of vessels from all quarters of the world, and join ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... case are hardly distinguishable from the end; and thus, according to the above rigid reasoners, the human race will not have reached the lowest depths of misery so long as it rejects the one thing which ex hypothesi might render it less miserable. Either then all this talk about truth must really be so much irrelevant nonsense, or else, if it be not nonsense, the test of conduct is something distinct from happiness. The question before us is a plain one, which may be answered ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... some temper. "I must have disgusted you last night. What sort of a miserable, spineless, cowardly, caddish travesty of a man do you take me for, to think I would let you ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... uomini perle femminelle."[38] If the Black party furnished types for the grosser or fiercer forms of wickedness in the poet's hell, the White party surely were the originals of that picture of stupid and cowardly selfishness, in the miserable crowd who moan and are buffeted in the vestibule of the Pit, mingled with the angels who dared neither to rebel nor be faithful, but "were for themselves"; and whoever it may be who is singled out in the setta dei cattivi, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the Batignolles. I had an hour and a half for that; at half-past eight I had to return, and stay until ten or half-past. In accepting this position I believed that I should be able to finish my education, interrupted by the death of my father, and to study law and become something better than a miserable clerk of a business man. It was impossible with Monsieur Caffie, so I left him, and this was the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that? Clotaldo? Who are you, I say, That, venturing in these forbidden rocks, Have lighted on my miserable life, And ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... preserving the traces of an old civilisation and institutions as venerable and noteworthy as any in Christendom, but to make of her a chosen nation like that people, long ago dispersed by a sufficiently miserable catastrophe, to whom was given of old the mission of showing forth the will of God before the world. Whether what he gained for his country was not much more important than what he thus deliberately sacrificed is a question that will never be answered with ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... that we have mistaken our own interest. The first years of man must make provision for the last. He that never thinks, never can be wise. Perpetual levity must end in ignorance; and intemperance, though it may fire the spirits for an hour, will make life short or miserable. Let us consider, that youth is of no long duration, and that, in maturer age, when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and phantoms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no comforts but the esteem of wise men, and the means of doing good. Let us, therefore, stop, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... expression of grief, and comforted the children, and poor Aunt Hominy, with silent tears streaming down her cheeks to see him eat and suffer, kept up a clatter of epicurean talk, lest he might turn and see her miserable. As he finished his meal, and took out his gold tooth-pick, and felt a comfortable joy of such misery and sympathy, Vesta opened the door, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... so to-day. He ordered the lawyers to come to him, and I believe they were here when I started to this miserable concert. It was not on account of the money, but for fame, that I desired to become a prima donna. But I renounce my intention; this evening has shown me many thorns where I thought to find only roses. I renounce honor and renown, and ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... unfortunate king to Paris, where he was reduced to support a wife and seven children (for his lot had horns in it) by cleaning shoes and snuffing candles at the opera. In which situation, after he had spent a few miserable years, he died half-starved and broken-hearted. He then revisited Minos, who, compassionating his sufferings by means of that family, to whom he had been in his former capacity so bitter an enemy, suffered him to ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... weeks after the Doctor and his young disciple met again at the "Mitre," and Goldsmith was present. The poet was full of love for Dr. Johnson, and speaking of some scapegrace, said tenderly, "He is now become miserable, and that insures the protection of Johnson." At another "Mitre" meeting, on a Scotch gentleman present praising Scotch scenery, Johnson uttered his bitter gibe, "Sir, let me tell you that the noblest prospect ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... disguise myself in the daytime in a cardinal's robe and hat, and pass my time trotting about from church to church, from consistory to consistory, when I ought properly to be leading a magnificent army in the battlefield, where you would enjoy a captain's rank, instead of being the chief of a few miserable sbirri?" ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tyranny of the Christians; and I truly believe, nor think I am deceived, that it is more than fifteen. 15. Two ordinary and principal methods have the self-styled Christians, who have gone there, employed in extirpating these miserable nations and removing them from the face of the earth. The one, by unjust, cruel and tyrannous wars. The other, by slaying all those, who might aspire to, or sigh for, or think of liberty, or to escape from the torments that they suffer, such as all the ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... inclose many thousand acres of ground, the owners, as well as tenants, are turned out of their possessions, by tricks, or by main force, or being wearied out with ill usage, they are forced to sell them. By which means those miserable people, both men and women, married and unmarried, old and young, with their poor but numerous families (since country business requires many hands), are all forced to change their seats, not knowing whither to go; and they must ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... like millstones; if you do not put the wheat into them to grind, they will grind each other's faces. So some of us are fretting ourselves to pieces, or are sick of a vague disease, and are morbid and miserable because the highest and noblest parts of our nature have never been brought into exercise. Surely this promise of Christ's should come as a true Gospel to such, offering, as it does, if we will trust ourselves to Him, a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... enraged officer, on this, thundered down invectives on poor Paddy's head, and finished off in a most un-officer-like way by kicking him down the hatchway from whence he had just emerged. Adair returned crestfallen and miserable, brooding over the injury and insults he had received. There could have been no doubt that a formal complaint made to the captain would have brought down a severe reprimand on the head of the marine officer, but the idea of making a complaint ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... for a miserable 80; of which 30 had been put on by one man. Of course they had to follow on, and as the time was short, it was agreed to curtail the usual interval, and finish up the match ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... mean that I was miserable!" she said; "but there's something now that does make everything ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the State of the Church in North Carolina is very miserable; which is of greatest Moment, and requires the most charitable Direction and Christian Assistance; not only for the Conversion of the Indians and Baptism of Negroes there, but for the Christening and Recovery ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... That was a very miserable time for me, even before my last visit to Checkshill. My long unemployed hours hung heavily on my hands. I kept away from home all day, partly to support a fiction that I was sedulously seeking another situation, and partly to escape the persistent question in my mother's eyes. "Why ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... poor thatched cottage, like a poor barn, or stable, peeling of hemp, in which I did give myself good content to see their manner of preparing of hemp; and in a poor condition of habitt took them to our miserable inn, and there, after long stay, and hearing of Frank, their son, the miller, play, upon his treble, as he calls it, with which he earns part of his living, and singing of a country bawdy song, we sat down ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... have? What right has any one, without regard to her pain, her ideas, or her requirements, to hammer her out, as a cheap metal, out of which a workman fashions a candlestick or an extinguisher? Is it because the poor creatures are already so feeble and miserable that a brute claims the power to torture them, merely at the dictate of his own fancies, which may be more or less just? And, if by this weakening or heating system of yours, which draws out, softens, hardens the fibres, you cause frightful ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... believed my story, if at all. One thing was clear: the magic check now made it all real to him. As he handed me back the strip of paper he gave me a look that seemed to say: "So you are a manufacturer, you whom I have always known as a miserable ragamuffin." ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that the order of Nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition[56] counts ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... crying had really made my head ache more badly than it had ever ached before. I got up and dressed, but had to lie down again, and thus I spent the day; and when my sisters came in to see me I would not speak to them. Never, I think, was child more perfectly miserable; and though I gave little thought to that part of the matter, I can now see that I must have made the whole household wretched. And yet by this time I was doing myself the greatest injustice. I was no longer angry ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... went to the blockhouse where the ammunition is kept, and here I found the two soldiers, one hiding in a corner, and the other with a lighted match in his hand. 'What are you going to do with that match?' I asked. He answered, 'Light the powder, and blow us all up.' 'You are a miserable coward,' said I, 'go out of this place.' I spoke so resolutely that he obeyed. I then threw off my bonnet; and, after putting on a hat and taking a gun, I said to my two brothers: 'Let us fight to the death. We are fighting ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... where before I should have had the whole; perhaps it was all this together, combined with the secret evils I had not hitherto found out in my own heart and disposition; but the result was, that I had now and then such miserable moments of being angry, and provoked, and unhappy, not because my cousin had done anything unkind, but simply because he had, in some unintentional manner, interfered with my pleasure, that I was ready to wish I had never had a cousin, or that he ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... spectator who knew nothing of the world, and who was put into it merely to make his observations, he would take a great part of the old world to be new, just struggling with the difficulties and hardships of an infant settlement. He could not suppose that the hordes of miserable poor with which old countries abound could be any other than those who had not yet had time to provide for themselves. Little would he think they were the consequence of what in such countries they ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... miserable that I couldn't fight against it any longer, I got up and walked slowly out the rear door of the ferry-boat cabin. No one was there, and I slipped quickly over the rail and dropped into the water. Oh, friend Hetty, it ...
— Options • O. Henry
... world be closed against this trade, we may then indulge a reasonable hope for the gradual improvement of Africa. The chief motive of war among the tribes will cease whenever there is no longer any demand for slaves. The resources of that fertile but miserable country might then be developed by the hand of industry and afford subjects for legitimate foreign and domestic commerce. In this manner Christianity and civilization may gradually ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... was a baby. Later her mother had married unhappily a man who followed the night paths of the criminal underworld. Afterward he had done time at Sing Sing. Through him Annie had been brought for years into contact with the miserable types that make an illicit living by preying upon the unsuspecting in big cities. Always in the little Irish girl there had been a yearning for things clean and decent, but it is almost impossible for the poor in a great city to escape from the ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... KLAHAUIA. Poor; miserable; wretched; compassion. Ex. Hyas klahowyum nika, I am very poor; mamook klahowyum, to take pity ...
— Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or, Trade Language of Oregon • George Gibbs
... By the pasha's salt which I have eat, by your soul, by the mother who bore you, by the stars and the heavens, I swear that all the Wahabi say is false. Where is the mare they pretend to have lost, and where the miserable jade that fell to my lot? I got a mare, 'tis true, but so lean, so wretched, that I sold her to an Arab the day after the battle. You may have the bridle and saddle, if you please; but as for the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... is it: I'm going to feed the motormen and conductors. I got the idea yesterday when I was coming up from Louisville by trolley, when I saw the poor fellows eating such miserable lunches out of tin buckets with everything hot that ought to be cold and cold that ought to be hot. I heard them talking about it and complaining and the notion struck me. I went up and sat by the men and asked them how they would like to have a supper handed them every ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... A miserable man am I, cries the poet; for Orlando, beyond a doubt, died in Roncesvalles; and die therefore he must in my verses. Altogether impossible is it to save him. I thought to make a pleasant ending of this my poem, so that it should be happier somehow, throughout, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... method of making rich men richer and poor men poorer; of making distressed families more distressed; of making a portion of the human family utterly and hopelessly miserable, debasing the moral nature, and thus clouding with despair their temporal ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... and her aunt entered the cottage. It had but one room, and that was wretched enough. Many of the windows were broken, and pieces of shingle were stuck over the holes in the glass. In one corner stood a miserable bedstead, with a ragged coverlet partially spread over a dirty bed tick filled with leaves. There was only one chair, and that was a broken rocker, on which the unhappy mistress of the cottage was seated. But there were two or three rough ...
— Aunt Amy - or, How Minnie Brown learned to be a Sunbeam • Francis Forrester
... "unless you take pity on me, and promise to become my wife, they will indeed cause my death." As I said this, she sprang up, tore her hand away from me, and cried with mocking laughter, "What does the knave mean? Ha! ha! the poor, miserable varlet!" ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... be dated from the time of his death, and manifestly point out the end of his particular mission to them. From the making this declaration, as it stands in St. Matthew, his discourses are to his disciples, and they chiefly relate to the miserable and wretched condition of the Jews, which was now decreed, and soon to be accomplished. Let me now ask, Whether, in this state of things, any farther credentials of Christ's commission to the Jews could be demanded or expected? He was rejected, his commission was determined, and ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... animation had come to her. The miserable nervous energy that once sustained her had given place to healthy activity, to bustling, restless, overflowing gayety. She had no trace now of the weakness, the dejection, the prostration, the supineness, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... first he did know, she was walking by his side, erect and proud, in the dim gray of the dawn. To the gang, however, she was known; for there was much looking and turning of heads, and a smothered yet apparent exultation among the miserable, ragged, half-starved creatures by ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... they had so nobly contended in England, and were ready to employ against those who differed from them, the same 'carnal weapons' that had already driven them from their mother-country. His sufferings were indeed light, in comparison of those which were afterwards inflicted on the miserable Quakers by the government of Massachusetts; but still they were hard for flesh and blood to bear, and galling to a free spirit to receive from those who boasted of ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... sorry for me; and the third looked on the floor, and frowned as if something had hurt his feelings. He was the oldest and gravest-looking of the three, and I knew before he had been ten minutes in the room that he adored Vere with his heart, and disapproved of her with his conscience, and was miserable every time she did or said a ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... paradise. I know the story of your struggle with that coward and of your noble act of renunciation. It cut into my heart like a knife to speak to you those necessary words the other day, and I have been miserable ever since. I said to myself at last that I would go to you and tell you that I could not be happy apart from you; and that your happiness was mine. This seems presumptuous, intrusive: I wish to be neither. I have merely come to ask that I may be free to call upon you and to try to make you ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Leofwin. "I think these parties get worse every year." These were soothing words. "Particularly those damned charades," he went on. "Now, my dear fellow, you know perfectly well that yours was a miserable failure." ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... causing great excitement in the minds of the natives. The gig was soon lowered and came as close as she could. There was not water enough for her to come within four miles of the shore, but we went out to meet her occupants. Tom, who was one of them, looked so ill and miserable that I felt quite alarmed for a few minutes, till the doctor comforted me by assurances that it was only the effect of the Chinese dinner last night—an explanation I had no difficulty in accepting as the correct one after perusing the bill of ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... was a boy, in a sudden mood of adventure one day, he enlisted in the United States Navy. Shortly afterwards he regretted having done so. Some one went to his father and told him that the boy was on board a warship at Hampton Roads, homesick and miserable. Dr. Talmage went directly to Washington, straight into the office of Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Navy. "I am Dr. Talmage," he said promptly; "my son has enlisted in the Navy and is on a ship near Norfolk. I want to go to him and bring him home. He is homesick. Will ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... different kinds and degrees, suitable to the relishes and perfections of those who are settled in them: every island is a paradise accommodated to its respective inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirza, habitations worth contending for? Does life appear miserable that gives thee opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be feared that will convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not man was made in vain, who has such an Eternity reserved for him.' I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I, 'Show me ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... the desolation of rocks and snow, till early in the night they met a man whom they knew as a servant of Rogers, and who said that he could guide them to Fort Edward. One of them had lost his snow-shoes in the fight; and, crouching over a miserable fire of broken sticks, they worked till morning to make a kind of substitute with forked branches, twigs, and a few leather strings. They had no hatchet to cut firewood, no blankets, no overcoats, and no food except part of a Bologna ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... floor, and must have appeared miserable. She passed her hands back over her forehead many times as if brushing something away. "If ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Poor Mr. Froehling looked very miserable. Mrs. Hegner felt very sorry for Mr. and Mrs. Froehling. When her husband had heard of what had befallen the unfortunate barber, and how he had been ordered to pack up and leave his shop within a few hours, he had said roughly: "Froehling ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... rapids before we reached the mission of Mandavaca. The village, which bears also the name of Quirabuena, contains only sixty natives. The state of the Christian settlements is in general so miserable that, in the whole course of the Cassiquiare, on a length of fifty leagues, not two hundred inhabitants are found. The banks of this river were indeed more peopled before the arrival of the missionaries; the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... giggled, and since then Laura had made poor Connie's life miserable—or so Connie declared. She could not have forgotten Paul Martinson, even ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... clothed, it continues to awaken the conscience and to convert the soul. Its dissemination at this period either in the original or in translations, contributed greatly to the extension of the Church; and the gospel, issuing from this pure fountain, at once revealed its superiority to all the miserable dilutions of superstition and absurdity presented ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... a little of that first dreary feast of ours," she said. "You knew what it was like then to feed a genuinely starving girl. And I was miserable, Leonard. It didn't seem to me that there was ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Sex, The admiration of ours. She lived universally belov'd, and admir'd She died as generally rever'd, and regretted, A loss felt by all who had the happiness of knowing Her, By none to be compar'd to that of her disconsolate, affectionate, Loving, & in this World everlastingly Miserable Husband, Sir JOHN SHELLEY, Who has caused this inscription ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... pretended things, he and they also; his position, too, had come gradually, he had got to accept it without thinking before it was an established fact. But now the truth had been brought home to him—more or less—and he was miserable, and, according to the custom of his sort, set to making bad worse as soon as ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... that live and struggle and die, in the more easily resolvable portions of the water-drop, she was fair and delicate and of surpassing beauty. But of what account was all that? Every time that my eye was withdrawn from the instrument, it fell on a miserable drop of water, within which, I must be content to know, dwelt all that could make ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... Debate on the Scotch Judicature Bill. Lord Wynford made a miserable speech, which proved he knew nothing about the subject. The Chancellor was very angry with him, and once interrupted him improperly. The debate was dull, and there was ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... two ladies, naturally turned the laugh against them, and the phrase, repeated from mouth to mouth, was adopted by the people of the faubourgs as a title glorifying their miserable condition ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... was all arranged with a miserable Jew, the guardian of the house, whose family has had charge of the funds for three generations; he had no doubt some secret instructions, in case he suspected the detention of any of the heirs, for this Marius de Rennepont had foreseen that our Company ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... attack Johnson on the side of his pension. One thought he varies three times. 'Such pamphlets,' he writes, 'will be as trifling and insincere as the venal quit-rent of a birth-day ode.' This again appears as 'The easy quit-rent of refined panegyric,' and yet again as 'The miserable quit-rent of an ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... for me to know myself?—A. Then thou knowest thyself, when thou art in thine own eyes, a loathsome, polluted, wretched, miserable sinner; and that not anything done by thee, can pacify God unto thee (Job 42:5; Eze 20:43,44; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... relating to them have on our memory; the vivid recollection we retain of minute circumstances which accompanied any object or event that deeply interested us, and of the times and places in which we have been very happy or very miserable; the horror with which we view the accidental instrument of any occurrence which shocked us, or the locality where it took place and the pleasure we derive from any memorial of past enjoyment; all these effects ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... line of profession, the public will not be long in making a discovery of its existence, and the bounty, as is most usually the case, would quickly follow upon the heels of approbation. But many a meritorious man in the Metropolis is pining away his miserable existence, too proud to beg, and too honest to steal, while others, with scarcely more brains than a sparrow, by persevering in a determination to leave no stone unturned to make themselves appear ridiculous, as a first step to popularity; and having once excited attention, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... feed them? Nipples, quills, spoons—none of them would fit these mites of mouths. What a miserable mother I was! How poorly equipped for foundlings! They were dying for lack of food; and as they pawed about and whimpered in my hands I devoutly wished the shot had put them all out of misery together. I was tempted to turn heathen and ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... and pecuniary embarrassments rarely have the effect of sweetening such. He removed to an inland town, and embarked in mercantile pursuits; but misfortune followed him, and reverses came thick and fast. One miserable day, when from early morning everything had gone wrong, an importunate creditor, of wealth and great influence in the community, chafed at Mr. Aubrey's tardiness in repaying some trifling sum, proceeded to taunt and insult him most ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Miserable, utterly miserable. We have camped in the 'Slough of Despond.' The tempest rages with unabated violence. The temperature has gone to 33 deg.; everything in the tent is soaking. People returning from the outside look exactly as though they had been in a heavy shower of rain. They drip ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... of the year has kicked in, I thought everything would be as merry as a marriage bell, but as yet there hasn't been a ripple on the water. The only thing that acts as a star of hope to my miserable existence is a date with a Summer stock that opens the first of June, and there is a heap of smoke around that. I wish some one would tip me off to some way of earning an honest living without having to resort to a sock full of sand ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... once spent a black month of misery at Dinan)—"and there was a fellow there who had got two storks. And one stork died—it was the she-stork." ("What did it die of?" put in Harold.) "And the other stork was quite sorry, and moped, and went on, and got very miserable. So they looked about and found a duck, and introduced it to the stork. The duck was a drake, but the stork didn't mind, and they loved each other and were as jolly as could be. By and by another duck came ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... respect as the white people. It is a cheering thought throughout life that something can be done to ameliorate the condition of those who have been subject to the hard usages of the world. It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him. In the American Revolutionary war sacrifices were made by men engaged in it, but they were cheered by the future. General WASHINGTON himself endured greater physical hardships than if he had ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... grating of the lock he turned. The gaoler had left him with no light but the rays of the moon, which, shining through a barred window some eight or ten feet from the ground, shed a gleam upon a miserable truckle-bed and left the rest of the room in deep obscurity. The prisoner stood still for a moment and listened; then, when he had heard the steps die away in the distance and knew himself to be alone at last, he fell upon the bed with a cry more like the roaring of a wild ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... body, which he might destroy at a shot!" However, that no imputation might rest on his courage, he consented to meet his adversary—for whom, by the way, he expressed the most thorough contempt—next morning, at the Bois de Boulogne. They met; and this miserable man received the reward of his perfidy and malice, by a ball through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... fact, that eight days ago a poor devil who begged for his livelihood had thrown himself into the water because he had no more money. Simon had been there when they fished him out again, and the sight of the fellow, who had seemed to him so miserable and ugly, had then impressed him—his pale cheeks, his long drenched beard, and his open eyes being full of calm. The ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... strange, that the conclusion of his Preface should be expressed in terms so desponding, when it is considered that the authour was then only in his forty-sixth year. But we must ascribe its gloom to that miserable dejection of spirits to which he was constitutionally subject, and which was aggravated by the death of his wife two years before[876]. I have heard it ingeniously observed by a lady of rank and elegance, that 'his melancholy was then at its meridian[877].' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... do you think about it now? I want you to look and think. I want every one to look and think. Half the misery in the world comes first from not looking, and then from not thinking. And I do not want you to be miserable. ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... madness was only madness, and nothing more, and that it seized him in the same way, week by week, through the months and the years, leaving him thus on the stroke of twelve each Wednesday night, a broken, miserable, self-deceived man. As in certain dreams, we dream that we have dreamed the same things before, so with him an endless calendar of Wednesdays was unrolled before his inner sight, all alike, all ending in the same terror ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... that likeness by wrong-doing, he might understand that the fullness of the glory of God's image could not shine through his own face. Yet he believed that he was, in spite of all his imperfections, made in the image of his Maker. Now comes this horrible linkage with a miserable brute to either shock and confound him or to degrade him. We can easily imagine, some of us have bitterly experienced, the shock of this changed conception. But it was only because we mistook the clothing for the truth in both cases. We read science in ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... old man—old no longer, but erect and gallant—bearing in his hand the false white hair that had won his way into their desolate and miserable home. He saw her listening to him, as he bent his head to whisper in her ear; and suffering him to clasp her round the waist, as they moved slowly down the dim wooden gallery towards the door by which they had entered ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... cross, platter, and straw. The first two are, they say, supreme for the health. Does not that excite our pity? Lo, a poor sick person, whose body is hot with fever, whose soul foresees the end of his days, and a miserable sorcerer orders for him as the only cooling remedy, a game of cross. Sometimes it is the invalid himself who may perhaps have dreamed that he will die unless the country engages in a game of cross for his health. Then, if he has ever so little credit, you will see those who can best play at ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... and do not ask to see me until we have passed the fifteenth of the month. You will see me that night at La Scala. I wish to embrace you, but I am miserable to think of your being in Milan. I cannot yet tell you where my residence is. I have not met your brother. If he writes to me it will make me happy, but I refuse to see him. I will explain to him why. Let him not try to see me. Let him send by this messenger. I hope he will contrive ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... four or five sailors who were unloading the goods. The captain went forward interfering rather than assisting. I was alternately despairful and desperate. Once or twice as I stood waiting there for things to accomplish themselves, I could not resist an impulse to laugh at my miserable quandary. I felt all the wretcheder for the lack of a breakfast. Hunger and a lack of blood-corpuscles take all the manhood from a man. I perceived pretty clearly that I had not the stamina either to resist what the captain chose to do to expel me, or to force myself upon ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... of miserable disciples arrived in Tiberias. For an hour and a half they had been soaked to the skin. The wind had become quite cold, and they were chilled through. Only after they entered the city of Tiberias did they find an inn where there was room ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... you believe it, this miserable fortune-hunter is actually either engaged to her or on the eve of being engaged! Poor Mrs. Milton-Cleave is so unhappy about it, for she knows, on the best authority, that Mr. Zaluski is unfit to ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... suppose, is dead. The most we can hope for is that he died fast. It's very like another kind of miserable hope I felt once, a long time ago, for a lot of people who could be offered little more than hope for a fast death, because of something somebody was trying to prove. There's some consolation this time. ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... upon these chances, I began to feel very miserable, not with mental anguish alone, but with bodily pain. Worse than thirst it was, or the soreness of my bones. A new misery was fast growing upon me. My head swam with dizziness, the sweat started from my brow, and I felt sick both at the heart and in the stomach. ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... of Commons, where I am all powerful; I am given—not this earldom, which, as belonging to my house, would alone have induced me to consent to a removal from a sphere where my enemies allow I had greater influence than any single commoner in the kingdom,—I am given, not this, but a miserable compromise of distinction, a new and an inferior rank; given it against my will; thrust into the Upper House to defend what this pompous driveller, Oxford, is forced to forsake; and not only exposed to all the obloquy of a most infuriate party opposed to me, but mortified by an intentional ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hands of the instructors, and how languidly and dully is that power employed by the mission! Too much concern to make the natives pious, a design in which they all confess defeat, is, I suppose, the explanation of their miserable system. But they might see in the girls' school at Tai-o-hae, under the brisk, housewifely sisters, a different picture of efficiency, and a scene of neatness, airiness, and spirited and mirthful occupation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and comfortable environment, even Hapgood for the moment forgot to be miserable, and as he smoked a good cigarette and watched the water running into the tub now and then hummed a Broadway air. As for Conniston, his serene good nature under most circumstances, his greatest asset in the small frays he had had with the world, ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory |
