"Misery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... result that Bosnia hosted a large share of Yugoslavia's defense plants. The bitter interethnic warfare in Bosnia caused production to plummet by 80% from 1990 to 1995, unemployment to soar, and human misery to multiply. With an uneasy peace in place, output recovered in 1996-98 at high percentage rates on a low base; but output growth slowed appreciably in 1999, and GDP remains far below the 1990 level. Economic data are of limited use because, although both entities issue figures, national-level ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... ago; and he felt that the events of that time must in some way repeat themselves, that when he was alone with Lucia he would say to her such things as he had said before, that there would be differences, misunderstandings, as before, and that his second coming would end in misery and separation like the first. It seemed to him that Kitty, kind Kitty, had the same perception and foreboding. Thus he interpreted her very evident compassion. She ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... peace and happiness and rest while we are in it. God indeed made the world beautiful, and intended it to be happy, but Satan persuaded man to sin, and sin has caused man to depart from God, and brought all the disorder and misery and suffering which we see around us. Faith in Jesus Christ can alone remedy all these evils, and I am sure that they will exist till all the world learns ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston
... the world, and at the state that men have brought it to, I confess I say to myself, "Well, if women had fixed it this way I should like to know what they would think of it!" When I see the dreadful misery of mankind and think of the suffering of which at any hour, at any moment, the world is full, I say that if this is the best they can do by themselves, they had better let us come in a little and ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... come with me to the study," she said briefly. Gwen followed in a state of abject misery. Was she never to finish reaping that harvest of tares, the sowing of which she had already so bitterly repented. One initial slip had indeed ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... partizans stept into power, the plundered multitude sat down and sorrowed. Few, very few of them are accompanied with reformation, either in government or manners; many of them with the most consummate profligacy.—Triumph on the one side, and misery on the other, were the only events. Pains, punishments, torture, and death, were made the business of mankind, until compassion, the fairest associate of the heart, was driven from its place; and the eye, accustomed to continual cruelty, could ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... question were known, as a class, to be destitute, depraved—the victims of all forms of social misery. The peculiarity of their fate was, that this was not their condition by accident or transiently, but inevitably and immutably, whilst they remained in their present place, by a law as infallible in its operation, as any of physical nature.' * * 'Their ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... brother—the only place she had where Nettie's own feminine niceties could find expression, and where the accessories of her own daily life and work were all accumulated. She lingered even at that dread moment with a pang of natural reluctance to associate that little sanctuary with the horror and misery of this bringing-home; but when every feeling gave way to the pressure of necessity, that superficial one was not like to resist it. Her companions were not aware that she had hesitated even for that moment. She seemed to them to glide softly, steadfastly, without ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Charmian acquiesced. But she soon had reason to be sorry that she had done so. For much that she saw increased her misery. Boldly now she applied that word to her condition, moved perhaps to be at last frank with herself by the frankness of her quite unintrusive companion. Algiers affected her somewhat as the Petite Fille de Tombouctou ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... cigars, cigarritos, and every procurable variety of tobacco, for, you know, the aforesaid individual is a perfect devotee of the Indian weed. If I should give you a month of Sundays, you would never guess what we use in lieu of a bookcase, so I will put you out of your misery by informing you instantly that it is nothing more nor less than a candle-box which contains the library, consisting of a Bible and prayer-book, Shakespeare, Spenser, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Lowell's Fable for Critics, Walton's Complete Angler, and some Spanish ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... the opportunity of humbling a European—all along the road when the king is expected the people are patiently waiting as for some dreadful disaster; plague, pestilence or famine are nothing to the misery of being subject to the violence and extortion of this ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... in fact—to wear "mourning," and now and then look grave; but "this idea of closing your house," observed our philosopher, "and silencing your piano, and abstaining from your customary amusements and habits for months [only think of it!], because some one has departed from misery to happiness, is not alone supremely ridiculous [though that is bad enough], but it is sublimely preposterous and [what is yet more] disgraceful to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... him by the king of Lydia, the peace which was made, came about, as I am informed, merely because of this. For Alyattes, who thought that there was a great famine in Miletos and that the people had been worn down to the extreme of misery, heard from the herald, when he ed from Miletos, the opposite to that which he himself supposed. And after this the peace was made between them on condition of being guest-friends and allies to one another, and Alyattes built two temples to ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... you saying!" broke out the young girl, surprised, and even horrified. "Do not say so, Aunt, for heaven's sake! I do dislike Col. Bancker; I cannot marry him without misery; but his life! You do not know what words ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... far beyond his surroundings in his letters. What he writes is a continual protest against shallowness and mediocrity. The misery of petty state affairs, of patriotism with a board on the forehead bothered him greatly. This is shown on every page. Whatever he expresses, he always aims at expanding the horizon; as he himself once remarked: the revolutionizing of brains. His sentiments ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... her face level with his, revealing it bravely, perhaps defiantly. Its tense expression, with a few misery-laden lines, answered back to the inquiry of the nonchalant outsiders: 'Yes, I am his wife, his wife, the wife of the object over there, brought here to the hospital, shot in a saloon brawl.' And the surgeon's face, alive with a new ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... founded, surely it is the duty of every honest and every humane, man, to endeavour to dispel an illusion, which certainly has been, notwithstanding any thing that can be said to the contrary, the bona fide, and real cause of unspeakable misery, and of repeated, and remorseless plunderings, and massacres, to an unhappy people; the journal of whose sufferings, on account of it, forms the blackest page in the history of the human race, and the most detestable one in the history ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... She was tossing from side to side in vain attempts to ease a nameless misery. Her head ached, and forms dreary, even in their terror, kept rising before her in miserable and aimless dreams; senseless words went on repeating themselves ill her very brain was sick of them; she was destitute, afflicted, tormented; now the centre for the ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... merely comparative: with a lovely climate—a continual summer—and all the absolute requirements of life at hand, there is not one-tenth of the misery in the Philippines that there is in Europe, and none of that forlorn wretchedness facing the public gaze. Beggary—that constant attribute of the highest civilization—hardly exists, and suicide is extremely rare. There are no ferocious animals, insects, or reptiles that one cannot ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... that success? His marriage with Lily, whether it was to be for good or bad, was now a settled thing, and was not regarded as a matter admitting of any doubt. To do the man justice, I must declare that in all these moments of misery he still did the best he could to think of Lily herself as of a great treasure which he had won,—as of a treasure which should, and perhaps would, compensate him for his misery. But there was the ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... preposterous and monstrous?" Error, however, like disease, is not easily eradicated; but as men get better acquainted with God, those dark and heathenish conceptions regarding him entertained by Calvinists, such as the foredooming of children and men to endless misery, will give place to nobler thoughts of the Author ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... grandfather, the only person who could act for him. Perhaps the stunned condition of his mind made the suspense just within the bounds of endurance, while trust in his wife's innocence rendered his inability to come to her aid well-nigh intolerable; and doubt of her seemed both profanity and misery unspeakable. He could do nothing. He had shot his only shaft by sending Landry Osbert, and had found that to endeavour to induce his grandfather to use further measures was worse than useless, and was treated as mere infatuation. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sin, he took it all home now, and clung to it. He recollected the verses about that One kneeling—nay, falling on the ground, in the cold dewy night, with the chosen friends who could not watch with Him, and the agony and misery that every one in all the world deserved to feel, gathering on Him, Who had done no wrong, and making His brow stream with ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... them when he found that they were from this country, and that they had intended to come to his. He was greatly pained to learn of their captivity and loss, and had much pity for them when he found what misery and hardship they had endured. For their coming was a thing which he desired much on account of the many things which I often told him, because he had always been interested in them, and because of the many conversations which I had with him. I recounted ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... "rough" element is kept away from the French turf, partly because it would find its surroundings there uncongenial with its tastes, and partly by the small entrance-fee required; and one is thus spared at Longchamps the sight of those specimens of the various forms of human misery and degradation that offend the eye at Epsom and infest even the more aristocratic meetings of Ascot and Goodwood. At the French races, too, one never hears the shrieks and howls of an English crowd, save perhaps ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... their bells, their horns and their flutes, but "come, hangmen come, vultures!"' The castle of the tyrant, as pictured by the popular mind, is lofty and solitary, full of dungeons and listening-tubes, the home of cruelty and misery. Misfortune is foretold to all who enter the service of the despot, who even becomes at last himself an object of pity: he must needs be the enemy of all good and honest men: he can trust no one and can read in the faces of his subjects the expectation of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... was the first one to reach her. He spoke some kind words and told her that they were there to help her, to fulfill any wish she might express. And he begged her to cast away any pretence, for he was certain that she was there because of some misery that had ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... subject for pamphlets, poems, plays, songs, and medical treatises, by Ned Ward, George Colman the older, Bickham, Dr. Hugh Smith, &c. Nothing now remains of them but the original chalybeate spring, which is still preserved in an obscure nook, amidst a poverty-stricken and squalid rookery of misery and vice."—George Daniel's Merrie England in the Olden Time, vol. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... in misery from a bridge To heaven... which stands like old gray stone Upon far-off houses. And, like a rope Made of tar, a dead river lies on the snow. Three trees, black frozen flames, make threats At the end of the earth. They pierce With sharp ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... to prove that the popular longing for static happiness would result in misery: that the sharp sides of life sting us into the real joy of living. He loves to take popular proverbs, which sum up the unconscious pessimism of humanity, and then show how false they are to fact. For example, we hear every day the expression, "No rose ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... then the veil will fall utterly, and he will give up his freedom and become a slave of desire. Therefore be warned, you who are but turning toward the life of occultism. Learn now that there is no cure for desire, no cure for the love of reward, no cure for misery of longing, save in the fixing of the sight and hearing upon that which is invisible and soundless. Begin even now to practise it, and so a thousand serpents will be kept from your ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... faculties. I attribute much of the bodily health I enjoy to following the plan adopted by most physicians, who, while engaged in active, laborious efforts to assist the needy, at the same time follow the delightful studies of some department of natural history. The human misery and sin we endeavor to alleviate and cure may be likened to the sickness and impurity of some of the back slums of great cities. One contents himself by ministering to the sick and trying to remove the causes, without remaining longer in the filth than is necessary ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... but the all-pervading principle, PRIDE OF BIRTH, implanted within her breast, imperiously restrained her from bestowing the favors of her patrician person upon 'vulgar plebeians;' and, in consequence, she had sunk lower and lower in want, destitution and misery, until driven, on that terrible winter's night, to supplicate for a slight and temporary relief at the door of one whom she had formerly so much despised, but on whom she was now ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... fortune, and it became necessary that he should go into Parliament and start a yacht. Parliament made his head ache, and the yacht made him sick. Notwithstanding, every summer he would fill it with a lot of expensive people who bored him, and sail away for a month's misery in the Mediterranean. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... slowly creeping through the adjoining shrubs; he had in his mouth a ripe fruit, a parcimon, if I remember right. At every moment he would stop and look as if he were watched, just as if he feared detection. At last he arrived near the paria, and deposited before him his offering to misery and old age. ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... archdeacon fussed and fumed about it, would not give way. Forty pounds, he said, was a matter of serious moment to him, and his friends, if under such circumstances they would be good-natured enough to come to him at all, must put up with the misery of a square room. He was willing to compromise matters by disclaiming any intention of having ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... attempt to penetrate below the surface of the seething dimpling sea. Had the panic-stricken watchers in the canoes saved themselves, without an effort to preserve the father and daughter? Or had they both been suffocated before they could make an attempt to escape? He called to her in his misery, as if she could hear him out of the fathomless depths: "Aimata! Aimata!" The roar of the distant eruption answered him. The mounting fires lit the solitary sea far and near over the sinking island. The boat turned slowly and more slowly in ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... people from the parishes devastated by M. de Julien had taken refuge in Aussilargues, in the parish of St. Andre. Driven by hunger and misery, they went beyond the prescribed limits in search of means of subsistence. Planque hearing of this, in his burning zeal for the Catholic faith resolved not to leave such a crime unpunished. He despatched a detachment of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... green sights and its wonderful sounds, of the drowsy insects in the sunshine, of the sheep-bells, and of the pines whose voices hold within them all the eternal secrets, increased the intensity of his misery. He realized how unstable are the foundations of human happiness, and his house of life ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... from the dwarf, interrupting Tessibel's explanation. Those ominous words recalled his own terror of Auburn Prison. Tears gathered thick in his eyes and ran down his cheeks. The sight of the little man's misery so affected Tessibel that she wound one ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... benevolent yearnings with which I had been seized,—not so suddenly as Milly and Bessie believed; for, for some time past, I had had a secret and rather unwelcome consciousness that I was not doing my share toward mitigating the general load of human misery and ignorance,—a consciousness which Allie's words had only quickened into more active life. "But, girls, I assure you that I am not at all moved by the ascetic notion of taking up the most disagreeable work ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... the dining-room and effaced all traces of his presence as far as she could. She went upstairs to the nursery and sate there, her head on her hand, thinking what was to come of all this misery. It seemed to her very long before they did return; yet it was hardly eleven o'clock. She so heard the loud, hearty Lancashire voices on the stairs; and, for the first time, she understood the contrast of the desolation of ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... been such a fool to-day," he proceeded, "as to go and throw away a tael or two to purchase this bird? I really did it in the hope that it would afford you amusement. I never for a moment entertained such thoughts as those you credit me with. But never mind; I'll let it go, and save you all this misery!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... over again. There was a long and tedious time in here when she looked away out the window to where the prairie grass was blowing in the little winds and the shadows of clouds drifted across the green expanse.... She was numb and far away with misery. She did not care for anything in all this world. It seemed as if she was detached, aloof, dead already in body as she was in soul.... And then she heard the drawling voice of Wylackie Bob—and he was saying something unspeakable—about her! She listened like ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... an ardent sympathy, and finally—and that very speedily too—with a Feeling that had all the Signs and Portents of Love. These two unfortunate People were so shut out from the world, and so spiritually wedded by a common Misery and discomfort, that their mere earthly coming together could not be looked upon but as natural and reasonable; for Mrs. Greenville was the only woman upon whom the Prisoner could be expected to look,—he being, beyond doubt, one of Gentle ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... BROWZER was being crushed by unfair ridicule on his first entry into a noble profession, or art, that of SCOTT and FIELDING. He spoke of mighty poets in their misery dead. He drew a picture of BROWZER'S agonies of mind. He showed that masterpieces had, ere now, been rejected by the publishers. He denounced the licence of the Press. Who was an unheard-of SMITH, who had written nothing, to come forward ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... men, who are not born to unmitigated misery, there are times and seasons of peculiar enjoyment. The happiest hour of all the twenty-four to Martin Rattler was the hour of seven in the evening; for then it was that he found himself seated before the blazing fire in the parlour of the Old Hulk, ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... to be the ruin of my push-cart business and caused me some weeks of the blackest misery I had ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... said one boy, whom the child, even in his flutter and misery, recognised as the boy who had accosted them at the door of Westover's that morning, "can't you answer without blubbering like that? Nobody's going to ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the same force as 'sanative' (sanans), as far as relates to the mind, and not to the body, as in the vulgar signification. To be brief, the meaning of 'medical' is 'diverting' (divertens), that is, turning the mind from misery, evil, and grief. Under this interpretation, the Medical Faculty signifies neither more nor less than the 'Faculty of Recreation.' The thing proposed by the Society is, to divert its immediate and honorary members from unbecoming and foolish thoughts, and is twofold, namely, relating both to ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... delighted; but that does not here concern us. Artificial as are its causes and its consequences, the "scene of the three men," while it lasts, holds us breathless and absorbed; and Andre's fall from the pinnacle of happiness to the depth of misery, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... strange to think of the influence of this one power of Pallas in vibration (we shall see a singular mechanical energy of it presently in the serpent's motion), in the voices of war and peace? How much of the repose, how much of the wrath, folly, and misery of men, has literally depended on this one power of the air; on the sound of the trumpet and of the bell, on the lark's song, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... full force, and he dropt once more on his face, exclaiming, "'I' possess the means of securing good-will! alas! there is but one road to the favour of a Christian, and how can the poor Jew find it, whom extortions have already reduced to the misery of Lazarus?" Then, as if suspicion had overpowered his other feelings, he suddenly exclaimed, "For the love of God, young man, betray me not—for the sake of the Great Father who made us all, Jew as well as Gentile, Israelite ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... were still erect; some natives were moving about, and a few were digging at the ruined houses, apparently searching for the remains of those buried there. They evinced no interest in the arrival of the two shipwrecked white boys, being too utterly cowed and broken to think of anything but their own misery. ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... which the Squire possessed should go to her. Then in his disgust towards his nephew he changed his purpose, and made another will in Isabel's favour. This remained in existence as his last resolution for three years; but they had been three years of misery to him. He had endured but badly the idea that the place should pass away out of what he regarded as the proper male line. To his thinking it was simply an accident that the power of disposing of the property should be in his hands. ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... call him by some disparaging nickname, with an unholy approximation to truth; he will concoct tricky questions to detect his ignorance; he will fling back his benefits with contempt; he will make his life a misery, and will despise him as long as he lives. Let a man of masculine character and evident ability set himself to rule and drill boys, holding no unnecessary converse with them, working them to the height of their powers, insisting on the work being done, not fearing to punish ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... the picture of your lovely face so carelessly traduced by him, which I feigned to hang always in my sight for his sake, but worshipped in torment for years, I loved you madly; in the distasteful work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering through Paradises and Hells of visions into which I rushed, carrying your image in my arms, I ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... repair the boat, and think of seizing the ship; and as for the captain, now he had leisure to parley with them, he expostulated with them upon the villainy of their practices with him, and at length upon the further wickedness of their design, and how certainly it must bring them to misery and distress in the end, and perhaps to the gallows. They all appeared very penitent, and begged hard for their lives. As for that, he told them they were not his prisoners, but the commander's of the island; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of all other troubles. I am sure there was always only peace and happiness on the moon. Strife and hatred, sorrow, want, and misery are all strange words to me, and entirely unknown except as I have heard them in ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... from bird and beast told of joyous life everywhere, and the blessed sun threw a golden haze over wood and lake and hill. It was as though Paradise had been restored to man, and our loving Creator had swept away every trace of evil and misery from the beautiful earth. ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... Benedictine convent on Montecassino. The monks retired to Rome and established themselves in a convent near the Lateran, which they named after S. John Baptist, whence the basilica of Constantine or the Saviour subsequently took its name.... The misery of the Romans was aggravated by some natural calamities. Towards the end of 589, several temples and other monuments were destroyed by the flooding of the Tiber, and the city was afterwards afflicted ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... Wise—ascended the throne in 1364, France, ruined by the disasters of the war, by the weight of taxation, by the reduction in her commerce, and by the want of internal security, exhibited everywhere a picture of misery and desolation; in addition to which, famine and various epidemics were constantly breaking out in various parts of the kingdom. Besides this, the country was incessantly overrun by gangs of plunderers, who ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... retrenchment, for, as she said, whenever she paused to think, the recollection of the poor fellow with his bad five-pound note came over her, and she felt quite dishonest; only if it made her so uncomfortable, what must it not be doing to the directors of the bank, who must know so much more of the misery consequent upon this failure? She almost made me angry by dividing her sympathy between these directors (whom she imagined overwhelmed by self-reproach for the mismanagement of other people's affairs) and those who were suffering like her. Indeed, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... down with wads of hemp which scraped like brickbats, and finally left to recover my breath upon the highest and hottest step of the whole stairway. A douse of cold water finally put an end to the ordeal and to my misery; and, groping my way out into the entry, I proceeded, with chattering teeth, to dress. In a moment I was joined by the Major, and we resumed our walk, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... disgraced and degraded. How the nobles and the ladies will rejoice! Now envy can point at us with spiteful joy—and a minute ago I was praising this day! They say one should exhibit one's happiness in the streets, and conceal one's misery; on the contrary, on the contrary! Even the Gods should not know of one's hopes and joys, for they ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and gesticulated. As to volubility and sonorousness they stood about equal. I am bound to say the pug prevailed. John Fiske retired in discomfiture while the pug was carried off in triumph in the arms of his little mistress. He had fairly barked the great man down. I once shared with him the misery of being a butt. In St. Louis in those days the symposium was held in honour, and particularly N.O. Nelson, the well-known profit-sharing captain of industry, was the entertainer of select groups whose geniality was stimulated by modest potations of ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the knight at home parted with all her jewels, and pledged castle and land. The knight's friends amassed large sums, for the ransom demanded was almost unattainably high: but it was collected at last, and the knight was freed from servitude and misery. Sick and exhausted, he reached his home. But soon another summons came to war against the foes of Christianity: the knight heard the cry, and he could stay no longer, for he had neither peace nor rest. He caused himself to be lifted on his war-horse; and the blood came back ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... "Misery does like company," Mrs. King returned with an unsteady laugh. "I believe I feel better already for having told you. But you must not worry, dear. We shall pull through all right, I guess. How I came to speak of it I don't ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... torment, no man knows, neither was it revealed, neither is, neither will be revealed unto man, except to them who are made partakers thereof: nevertheless I, the Lord, show it by vision unto many, but straightway shut it up again; wherefore the end, the width, the height, the depth, and the misery thereof, they understand not, neither any man except them who are ordained unto this condemnation." (Doc. and Cov. 76:31-48; see also Heb. 6:4-6; B. of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of a novel of the same name, by W. Goodwin (1799). St. Leon becomes possessed of the "elixir of life," and of the "philosopher's stone;" but this knowledge, instead of bringing him wealth and happiness, is the source of misery and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... just idea of the British power. Indeed, I have already received, within the last few days, letters from neighbouring tribes, asking me to attach their territory to Scinde, to be under the British rule, and thus to be protected from the pillage and misery in which they live. 2nd. The moral effect in Scinde will be to give confidence to the people; especially those bordering on the desert frontier, whose cries against the government during the last summer, for not affording ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... effusion of blood cease?" The Tories, who, like herself, wished for peace with all their hearts, adroitly fostered her grief. With her, they deplored the butchery of Malplaquet, the increase of taxation, the misery entailed by the interminable campaigns, and repeated that it was time to put an end to the sufferings of the people. Such hideous carnage seemed at last to cry aloud to Heaven for cessation. Pity and conscience, so long ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... is more painful than the awaking from peaceful unconsciousness to a sense that there is something wrong, we cannot at first think what,—and then groping our way about through the twilight of our thoughts until we come full upon the misery, which, like some evil bird, seemed to have flown away, but which sits waiting for us on its perch by our pillow in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... home, Washington fell into a chair and buried his face in his hands and gave full way to his misery. The Colonel did not know where to turn nor what to do. The servant maid knocked at the door and passed in a telegram, saying it had come while ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a moment had passed, he was pouring forth in a rapid voice, and incoherent manner, such words as men speak only once. He spoke of his early follies, his misfortunes, his misery; of his matured views, his settled principles, his plans, his prospects, his hopes, his happiness, his bliss; and when he had ceased, he listened, in his turn, to some small still words, which made him the happiest of human beings. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... and perhaps we shall do this most intelligibly by use of the antithetical expression, self-assertion. What does the Word of GOD teach us about our rights, our claims, our dues? Does it not teach us that condemnation, banishment, eternal misery, are our own deserts? As unbelievers, we were condemned criminals; as believers, we are pardoned criminals; and whatever of good is found in us is but imparted, and to GOD alone is due the praise. Can we, then, ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... and asked how she could expect him to recommend the Concordia to his acquaintances. On one occasion I saw him push away a plate of something, plant his elbows on the table, and hide his face in his hands; thus he sat for ten minutes, an image of indignant misery, and when at last his countenance was again visible, it ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... Notwithstanding the warnings of my friends, as to the danger attendant even on a walk through its streets, I ventured a little farther; and who ever may have suffered there, I have not, except from witnessing the almost indescribable misery of its inhabitants. Throughout my entire search into its wretchedness, I never received even an uncivil answer but on one occasion, and I am the more desirous to state this fact, because, although "St. Giles" sounds to English ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... made her seem taller than she really was, but this was the only illusion about her. Though her appearance was uncouth and ungainly, her manner was unembarrassed. She looked at Helen with some degree of interest; and to the latter it seemed that Misery, hopeless but unabashed, gazed at her with a significance at once pathetic and appalling. In response to Mrs. Haley's salutation, the woman seated herself ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... brown paper, sir! It's crackling itself," persisted Rae Malgregor very softly. The great blue eyes that lifted to his were brimming full of misery. "Oh, can't I make you understand, sir?" she stammered. Appealingly she turned to the Superintendent. "Oh, can't I make anybody understand? All I was trying to say,—all I was trying to explain, was—that I don't want to be a ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... demonstrates the inevitability of the law of Nature which prescribes that after a certain age it is practically impossible to change our habits, either of work or of play, without physical and mental misery. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... thee, or cast by The pledge in which my soul delighted— That all this wrong and misery Should be avenged at last, and righted, And so ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... heart on earth, is that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all; that God is Love, and in Him there is no cruelty at all; that God is One, and in Him there is no change at all. And therefore we can pray boldly to Him, and ask Him to deliver us in the time of our tribulation and misery; in the hour of death, whether of our own death or the death of those we love; in the day of judgment, whereof it is written—"It is God who justifieth us; who is he that condemneth? It is Christ who died, ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... for merely selfish enjoyments. That her time was not her own to be frittered away by the demands of fashion or to be spent in unavailing regrets. Every reform which had for its object the lessening of human misery, or the increase of human happiness, found in her an earnest ally. On the subject of temperance she was terribly in earnest. Every fiber of her heart responded to its onward movement. There was no hut or den where human beings ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... shock has passed, but not yet. You understand that I like them both most cordially. Those whom father trusted must be men of sterling worth, but just now I feel as must an animal which has been beaten. I want to creep off into a dark and silent place until my misery dulls a little." ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... gambling is the root of misery, and I strove to dissuade the king from it. The king, however, hath sent me to thee. Having known all this, O learned ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... dawning crisis that would call upon me to declare war against my worse or better self, for, of course, they could not both be mistress of the field. How could I, all untaught, suspect that upon the issue of such a victory would depend the happiness or misery ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... of its mediaeval appearance, and within the new had been cleverly and lovingly grafted onto the old. There were still dungeons enclosed in these massive walls, chambers wherein misery and pain had cried aloud to no effect. There were narrow passages down which tortured men must once have been carried, or at the end of which some oubliette opened to sudden destruction. Many horrible things ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... behaves thus all his life through reaches the world of Brahman and does not return' (Ch. Up. VIII, 15). And the Lord himself declares 'Having obtained me great-souled men do not come into rebirth, the fleeting abode of misery; for they have reached the highest perfection. Up to the world of Brahma the worlds return again, O Arjuna; but having attained to me, O son of Kunti, there is no rebirth' (Bha. Gi. VIII, 1, 5-16). As, moreover, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... day, was born in April 1759, in or near London, of parents of whose ancestors little is known. Her father, son of a Spitalfields manufacturer, possessed an adequate fortune for his position; her mother was of Irish family. They had six children, of whom Mary was the second. Family misery, in her case as in many, seems to have been the fountainhead of her genius. Her father, a hot-tempered, dissipated man, unable to settle anywhere or to anything, naturally proved a domestic tyrant. Her mother seems little to have understood her daughter's disposition, and to have been ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... Murray shivered in his misery, and tried to master the desire to glance at his brother middy, but failed, and saw that Roberts was beginning ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... pass on. In spite of the horror and misery that pervade all of his later work, there is in it much less of actual melodrama than here, and rarely, I should say never, that sort of brutality, that useless insufferable violence to the feelings, which is the last distinction ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and night, making the hours longer by their variety. When the showers were heavy, I could feel each drop striking through my jersey to my warm skin; and the accumulation of small shocks put me nearly beside myself. I decided I should buy a mackintosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get wet; but the misery of these individual pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time made me flail the water with my paddle like a madman. The Cigarette was greatly amused by these ebullitions. It gave him something else to look at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... alert with anticipation; but others carried a wistfulness and a weariness that made Billy's heart ache. Her eyes, indeed, filled with quick tears. Later she turned to go, and it was then that she saw in the line a face that she knew—a face that drooped with such a white misery of spent strength that she hurried straight toward it with a ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... happily, my fair ones, in our forest glades," said Ak, stroking his grizzled beard thoughtfully, "that we know nothing of the sorrow and misery that fall to the lot of those poor mortals who inhabit the open spaces of the earth. They are not of our race, it is true, yet compassion well befits beings so fairly favored as ourselves. Often as I pass by the dwelling of some ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... well; and it was a glorious sight to behold how one of them became a blessing to the world, and how much happiness and joy it spread around. But she saw that the life of the other was full of care and poverty, misery and woe. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... movables: I scrap'd up all. My slaves, both male and female, except those Who more than earn'd their bread in country-work, I sold: Then set my house to sale: In all I got together about fifteen talents; Purchas'd this farm; and here fatigue myself; Thinking I do my son less injury, While I'm in misery too; nor is it just For me, I think, to taste of pleasure here, Till he return in safety ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... and doctors in his kingdom, but none could make out what his illness was; and so he lingered on for weeks and weeks trying every remedy that anyone could devise, and passing sleepless nights and days of pain and fever and misery, until at last he was at the point ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... that Sylvie imagined a boy's face, shy and blushing, half frightened, half cross, perhaps a trifle pleased, was so white and patient a face in its misery that her blind tenderness seemed almost like an intentional cruelty. It was an intensity of feeling almost palpable, but Sylvie's mouth remained unburnt, though it removed itself with a pathetic little ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... were gone, and governess, pupils, and the remaining domestics, were obliged to endure all the misery of suspense and apprehension, without any means of ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... anybody." The old man spoke with feeling. "Look at me. I'm nesting with a dodo—darned gray-whiskered milliner! He's so ornery I have to hide the ax every time I see him. I just yearn to put him out of his misery, but I dassent. Of course he has his points—everybody has; he's a game old rooster and he loves me. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... supposed to identify itself with Mr. L., its author. It is, indeed, a compound extracted out of his long observations of the effects of drinking upon all the world about him; and this accumulated mass of misery he hath centred (as the custom is with judicious essayists) in a single figure. We deny not that a portion of his own experiences may have passed into the picture, (as who, that is not a washy fellow, but must at some times have felt the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... cruel sight in those thirsty days to see the poor horses wandering about, mere walking skeletons, deserted by their owners, for strangers were both unable to give them water, and afraid to put them out of their misery lest damages should be claimed against them. How long our own supplies would last was eagerly discussed, as we gathered round the butcher's shop, the great meeting-place, to which, in the evenings, most of the camp would come to talk over ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... to a quiet place where she had been accustomed to sit. As she neared it she saw pieces of an envelope lying on the ground. Something in the writing caught her eye. She stopped, picked up the pieces and put them together. "Oh," she said with misery in her voice, "What does it all mean? Letters everywhere, like the writing ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... mensuration. Then he revived the more salient features of his life, memories of the wife long since dead, her magic influence now gone beyond corruption, of his rivals and friends and betrayers, of the decision of this issue and that, and then of his last years of misery, of fluctuating resolves, and at last of his strenuous studies. In a little while he perceived he had it all again; dim perhaps, like metal long laid aside, but in no way defective or injured, capable of re-polishing. And the hue ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... dare not say what!—though all the colleges in the universe had showered on them their diplomas. "To be weak is miserable": Milton wrested that secret from the Devil himself!—but what shall we say of those whose weakness has subsided from misery into complacency, and who feel all the moral might of their being hourly rust and decay, with the most amiable indifference and lazy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... the kitchen. With his rough, unshaven face resting on his arms, his hair all tossed about, his face drawn in misery, even in his heavy sleep, a young man sat before a table, half lying on it, one hand on a soiled plate still ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... young man carried his tortured spirit forth of the city and all the day long, by one road and another, in an endless pilgrimage of misery; while the other hastened smilingly to spread the news of Weir's access of insanity, and to drum up for that night a full attendance at the Speculative, where further eccentric developments might certainly be looked for. I ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in every direction but the right one, seeking vainly to discover me; and he evidently dreaded that I was drowned, his face being the picture of misery and despair. ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... cruelty to her serfs,—forty of whom had been tortured to death,—it was because she had the educated instincts of a European, not an Asiatic, and she had also the intelligence to realize that no state could be made sound which rested upon a foundation of human misery. She established a Russian Academy modeled after the French, its object being to fix the rules for writing and speaking the Russian language and to promote the study of Russian history. In other words, Catherine was a reformer fully in sympathy with the best methods prevailing ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... thus much is certain in the present, that you, by conquering Rome, will only get the reputation of having undone your country; but if the Volscians happen to be defeated under your conduct, then the world will say, that, to satisfy a revengeful humor, you brought misery on your friends ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the smell of moist, earthy decay reminded her of open graves. Not a soul was visible but herself. She sat on a seat, the only living creature in the scene, and the past rose before her with resistless force: the intensity of her happiness; the base cruelty of his conduct; her misery, her unspeakable misery; her forlorn desolation, which was of a piece with the desolation around her, and which would never again be otherwise, though she lived to be an old woman.—How long she sat thinking things of this kind, she did not know. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... in order that the power of thought which originates in the mind might there be reflected, terrifying the belly with the elements of bitterness and gall, and a suffusion of bilious colours when the liver is contracted, and causing pain and misery by twisting out of its place the lobe and closing up the vessels and gates. And the converse happens when some gentle inspiration coming from intelligence mirrors the opposite fancies, giving rest and sweetness and freedom, and at night, moderation and peace accompanied ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... injunction to take care of them, and never to let them go out of the hands of her own lineage, else the whole family would fall into poverty. She bequeathed the treasures to her three sons; but the youngest son took a wife, who with a light heart gave the fairy gold away. Misery, of course, resulted from her folly; and the race of Hahnen speedily ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... a man hanging by the neck from its supporting bracket. Under this medallion are the words, "Atheism, Perjury, Rebellion, Treason, Anarchy, Murder, Equality, Madness, Cruelty, Injustice, Treachery, Ingratitude, Idleness, Famine, National and Private Ruin, Misery." Below all is the significant question, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... unhappiness, and to deprecate that cruel anger she showed him. Half frantic with grief at the injustice done him, and contrasting it with a thousand soft recollections of love and confidence gone by, that made his present misery inexpressibly more bitter, the poor wretch passed many a lonely day and wakeful night in a kind of powerless despair and rage against his iniquitous fortune. It was the softest hand that struck him, the gentlest ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... you, Monsieur, as he punishes all men who abuse their strength as you have done,—punish you for the misery ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... my ugly wrinkled face, with a bright gratitude so new to me in my experience of my fellow-creatures, that I was at a loss how to answer her. Nothing had prepared me for her kindness and her beauty. The misery of many years has not hardened my heart, thank God. I was as awkward and as shy with her, as if I had been a ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... years they carried on this war: burning the crops, farmhouses, barns, mills, granaries; killing the labourers in the fields; preventing the seed from being sown in the ground; causing famine and starvation; leaving only heaps of ruin and smoking ashes, where they had found rich towns. To crown this misery, English officers and men deserted, and even the favourites of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, seized many of the English ships, turned pirates against their own country, and aided by a storm occasioned the loss of nearly ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... estates forfeited, and landlords, in not a few instances, placed over the clansmen, who were inimical to their best interests. As has been noticed, in 1746 the country was ravaged and pitiless oppression followed. Destruction and misery everywhere abounded. To judge a former condition of a people by their present extremity affords a distorted view ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... it selfe beinge disposed to be skoruie, mighte be occasion againe to enfecte them of newe. The seuenth daye thei make holy day. That, is to say spende awaie in ydlenes and rest: for that on the seuenth daye, they founde reste of theyr wandering, and misery. And when they had caughte a sauour in this holye daye loytering: it came to passein processe of tyme, that thei made a longe holydaye also of the whole seuenth yere: But other holde opinion that thei do obserue suche maner of holyedaies, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... life till some evil hap threw her across the path of Nicholas Trevlyn, who made her his wife. I trow she many a time rued the day when she was thus persuaded; but repentance came too late, and death soon relieved her of her load of misery. That she bequeathed to her children; and here am I this day a wanderer from my father's house, constrained to seek shelter from her kindred, since flesh and blood can no longer endure the misery of dwelling ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... have overwhelmed and cowed him. The cat still in his house, like a rat in his hole, saying nothing, and noticing nothing, but drinking a great deal of brandy. The fiery stuff did not excite him; it merely had the effect of keeping him from sinking into unconsciousness of his misery. He knew that he was a ruined man, and that it was too late to retrieve his ruin. Means and energy were alike lacking, and could never be supplied. He sat in his chair, and brooded over all his life, ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... embraced in the chapter of this book entitled, "Hygiene of the Reproductive Organs." By attending to such lessons as will give the child a knowledge of the physiology and hygiene of his whole system, the errors into which so many of the young fall, and much of the misery which is so often the dregs of the hymeneal ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... you—of late," suggested Clara, rather puzzled to find consolation for a man whose misery ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... God than before. And for this have I been strengthened by the Lord, in a great measure, through the instrumentality of these truths. For in the time of temptation, I have been repeatedly led to say: Should I thus sin? I should only bring misery into my soul for a time, and dishonour God; for, being a son of God for ever, I should have to be brought back again, though it might be in the way of severe chastisement. Thus, I say, the electing love of God in Christ (when ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... for every thing.—For Death it has an entire set; the misery was, they all at once rushed into my father's head, that 'twas difficult to string them together, so as to make any thing of a consistent show out of them.—He took ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... harsh peal of a fisherman's conch shell was heard far off, around the corner. None of these tokens escaped Hepzibah's notice. The moment had arrived. To delay longer would be only to lengthen out her misery. Nothing remained, except to take down the bar from the shop-door, leaving the entrance free—more than free—welcome, as if all were household friends—to every passer-by, whose eyes might be attracted by the commodities at the window. This last act Hepzibah now performed, letting the bar ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... protest, accepting the most disgraceful situations in exchange for love.... And it would always be so! And he who but a few months before used to consider himself a hard and overbearing man, would end by pleading and weeping if she should go away!... Ah, misery!... ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the Mezen and Pechura districts. There will be found fur-clad and half-starved tribes cut off from their usual avenues of trade and hoarding their catches of three seasons while they wonder how long it will be until someone opens the way for the alleviation of their misery. Information travels with amazing speed among these simple people, and they will run knowingly no risk of having their only wealth seized without recompense while en route to the distant markets. The Bolshevik forces have been holding a section of the usual road to Pinega and Archangel, and ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the women of her race had acquiesced in such a fate for stolid generations. She could have understood that. As it was, she felt always the strain of being tried by standards which she did not and could not comprehend; the misery of being in a place for which she was unfitted and which she could not fill, and the fact that no definite demands were made upon her increased her trouble by the double stress of putting her upon her own responsibility, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... God, but God, made manifest in the flesh, in the form of primeval man. But how breaks on the baffled Tempter the sublime revelation? Wearily did he toil,—darkly did he devise, and take, in his great misery, deep counsel against the Almighty; and yet all the while, while striving and resisting as an enemy, has he been wielded as a tool; when, glaring aloof in his proud rebellion, the grasp of the Omnipotent has been upon him, and the Eternal ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... until his business was broken up by the Revolutionary War. In this contest he was a staunch Whig, and suffered for his opinions at the hands of the British occupants of the city, and both he and his wife did much to alleviate the misery of the American prisoners. In this charitable ministry his wife, who possessed a rarely generous and sympathetic nature, was especially zealous, supplying the prisoners with food from her own table, visiting those who were ill, and furnishing them with ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... any excuses to himself. He had a sort of idea that if he saw the magnificence that housed her, it would through her sheer remoteness kill the misery in him. But he regarded himself with a sort of humorous pity, and having picked up a stray dog, he ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hours of anguish, how much incalculable misery has been prevented; in short, how many human beings have been saved from an untimely grave, by the timely interposition of the PRESS! It has said, let it be so, and it was so; its thunders have been heard, and the oppressor trembles like the ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... in some respects, was weak as water in others, and weakest of all in this. Like all the elite of her sex, she was a poor little leaf, trembling at each gust of the world's opinion, true or false. Much misery may be contained in few words. I doubt if pages of description from any man's pen could make any human creature, except virtuous women (and these need no such aid), realize the anguish of a virtuous woman foreseeing herself paraded as a frail one. Had she been ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... I was scarcely older than you. I have been dead while I was alive.... God pity you, young man, if you ever taste the bitter misery of that!" ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... cautiously the child sped on her fatal errand through the storm and the darkness. A moment later she had returned with the key which was to unlock a world of misery to ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... which here assails the traveller is not mitigated by the knowledge that, to reach Yakutsk you must slowly wade, as we had done, through a little hell of monotony, hunger, and filth. To leave it you must retrace your steps through the same purgatory of mental and physical misery. There is no other way home, and so, to the stranger fresh from Europe, the place is a sink of despair. And yet Yakutsk only needs capital, energy, and enterprise to convert her into a centre of modern commerce and civilisation. Gold abounds in all the affluents ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... still greater harm, why, then, should they abstain from it who serve and desire to serve God? Certainly I cannot comprehend it, unless it be that men have a mind to go through the troubles of this life in greater misery, and to shut the door in the face of God, so that He shall give them no comfort in it. I am most truly sorry for them, because they serve God at their own cost; for of those who pray, God Himself defrays the charges, seeing that for a little trouble ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... the dreary, bleak, isolated lives of these American boys, with all the desolation of foreigners hungering always for human companionship, outside of the everlasting camp. And we came to know the misery of homesickness that hides in the phrase, "a stranger in ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... on over the waters to Fujisan. The bosom of the earth thrills with nervous energy; the air is charged with electric force; the blue ether of the universe throbs with motion. Nature knows no environment; but man is fettered, a spirit in a cage, a mournful soul that seeks companionship in misery. Solitude is a word unknown to nature's vocabulary. The deepest recesses of the forest teem with life and joyousness until man appears, then they are filled with solitude. The wind-swept desert is one of nature's play-grounds until man appears, then ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... springing out of the long continued wars betwixt the French and English, added no small misery to this distracted kingdom. Numerous bodies of soldiers, collected into bands, under officers chosen by themselves, from among the bravest and most successful adventurers, had been formed in various parts of France out of the refuse of all other countries. These hireling combatants sold ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... rain. It dripped and pattered off the skin-covering on to the boat and on to the rocks. Now and then a faint scream from high aloft declared the passage of some lonely seabird; and the ceaseless swash and plash of the sleepless sea filled out in my mind a picture of home-sick misery. It is no time, or at least the worst of all times, to reflect on one's woes in the night when just awakened from dreams: better turn over and go to sleep again. But I had not got that lesson quite so well learned then, and so lay ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... father; the being of a lovely wife and helpless infant depend upon thy life. Go, go, along, not to save thyself but Cora and thy child. Alonzo. Urge me not thus, my friend. I am prepared to die in peace. Rolla. To die in peace! devoting her you have sworn to live for to madness, misery, and death! Alonzo. Merciful Heavens! Rolla. If thou art yet irresolute, Alonzo,—now mark me well. Thou knowest that Rolla never pledged his word, and shrank from its fulfilment. And here I swear, if thou art proudly obstinate, thou shalt have the desperate triumph of seeing Rolla perish ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... me the shameful conviction of the truth. The eyes of that monster of wickedness moistened while he was speaking to me—they did, Walter! He declared that at the moment of pointing out the house to the doctor, he thought of my misery if I was separated from Laura, of my responsibility if I was called on to answer for effecting her escape, and he risked the worst that you could do to him, the second time, for my sake. All he ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... bleak spring evening, near the end of February, young Gourlay had gone to the Howff, to escape the shuddering misery of the streets. It was that treacherous spring weather which blights. Only two days ago the air had been sluggish and balmy; now an easterly wind nipped the gray city, naked and bare. There was light enough, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... statesmen have agreed to consider the prosperity or adversity of nations as made up of the happiness or misery of individuals, and to reject as chimerical all notions of a public interest of the community, distinct from the interest of the component parts. It is therefore strange that those whose office it is to supply statesmen with examples and warnings ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sister. The affair ended in the bulk of the nobility and soldiery turning to his side and in Sophia being obliged to leave the throne for a convent, where she spent the remainder of her life in the misery of strict seclusion. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... these things, and behold them with the ardent feelings which ladies are wont to have, sure I am that the cheeks of each separately, and of all when brought together, will be bathed in tears, because of those ills which are alone the occasion of my never-ending misery. Do not, I beseech you, refuse me these tears, reflecting that your estate is unstable as well as mine, and that, should it ever come to resemble mine (the which may God forfend!), the tears that others shed for you will be pleasing to you in return. ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... may die, in the mute question that asks if death would not be merciful and kind. And all night the watchers watched, and the watcher who was absent was afraid to pray, and as the daylight came in, wan and gray, the child on the rack of misery sank to sleep, and smiled a little smile of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... that drives men to all the ways we see in use of signalizing themselves, and that tends to make whatever excites in a man the idea of this distinction so very pleasant. It has been so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort, that they were supreme in misery; and certain it is, that, where we cannot distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other. It is on this ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of heartsickness he would sit all the evening and smoke and stare at some object which his mind failed to register. Cash would sit and watch him furtively; but Bud was too engrossed with his own misery to notice it. Then, quite unexpectedly, reaction would come and leave Bud in a peace that was more than half a torpid refusal of his mind to worry ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... elderly women who, having been spoiled in youth, find the rest of life fall far short of their expectations. Her voice had acquired a perpetual wail, and the corners of what had once been a pretty mouth drooped in an eternal peevishness. She found herself in a morass of misery and shabby discomfort, but had her days continued in an even tenor she would still have lamented. "A dingy body," was Mrs. Morran's comment, but she laboured in kindness. Unhappily they had no common language, and it was only by signs that the hostess could discover her wants and show her goodwill. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... the pangs that racked the enfeebled frame; a fruitless attempt, by the assumption of smiling case and gracious condescension, to hide, even from himself, the approach of that equalising hour when human greatness and human misery ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... long-horned cattle, and of reckless riders who unmoved looked in the eyes of life or of death. In that land we led a free and hardy life, with horse and with rifle. We worked under the scorching midsummer sun, when the wide plains shimmered and wavered in the heat; and we knew the freezing misery of riding night guard round the cattle in the late fall round-up. In the soft springtime the stars were glorious in our eyes each night before we fell asleep; and in the winter we rode through blinding blizzards, when the driven snow-dust burned our faces. There were monotonous ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt |
