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More "Bane" Quotes from Famous Books



... Jesuit missions than Protestants have usually allowed themselves to entertain, and felt both kindly and respectfully toward the padres, who in the earlier days of these settlements had done, he believed, a useful work. But the great bane of the Portuguese settlements was slavery. Slavery prevented a good example, it hindered justice, it kept down improvement. If a settler took a fancy to a good-looking girl, he had only to buy her, and make her his concubine. Instead of correcting the polygamous habits of ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... them of Amsterdam I had thought they would as soone have gone to Rome as with us; for our libertie is to them as ratts bane, and their riggour as bad to us as y^e Spanish Inquision. If any practise of mine discourage them, let them yet draw back; I will undertake they shall have their money againe presently paid hear. Or if the company thinke me to be y^e Jonas, let them cast me ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... at tobacco as a noxious, nauseous weed, filthy in all its uses; and as to smoking, he denounced it as a heavy tax upon the public pocket, a vast consumer of time, a great encourager of idleness, and a deadly bane to the prosperity and morals of the people. Finally, he issued an edict prohibiting the smoking of tobacco throughout the New Netherlands. Ill-fated Kieft! Had he lived in the present age and attempted to check the unbounded license ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... my only comfort; Oh, tell me not of danger, death, and Burleigh; Let every star shed down its mortal bane On my unshelter'd head: whilst thus I fold Thee in my raptured arms, I'll brave them all, Defy my fate, ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... that, if he had smoked a cigar or chewed tobacco. The ancients believed that love might be excited by certain articles taken from the vegetable kingdom. Why then should it be considered impossible to allay the same feeling in a similar manner? Every bane has its corresponding antidote; if so, there may be physic even for a philter. And for the pangs which a virgin has inflicted, what remedy could be prescribed more reasonable than the Virginian weed;— besides, love ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... Now envy is seemingly a most grave sin, for Gregory says (Moral. v, 46): "Though in every evil thing that is done, the venom of our old enemy is infused into the heart of man, yet in this wickedness the serpent stirs his whole bowels and discharges the bane of spite fitted to enter deep into the mind." Therefore envy is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... And in the councils of all the states of Etruria the leading men openly stated, "that the Roman power was eternal, unless they were distracted by disturbances among themselves. That this was the only poison, this the bane discovered for powerful states, to render great empires mortal. That this evil, a long time retarded, partly by the wise measures of the patricians, partly by the forbearance of the commons, had now proceeded to extremities. That ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... end with—hell. There are as many elixirs of every kind as there are caprices and peculiarities in the physical and moral nature of humanity; and I will say further—the art of these chemists is capable with the utmost precision to accommodate and proportion the remedy and the bane to yearnings for love or ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... it, my body tombe my soule, And when I leaue the mid-day-sunne for thee, Blush Moone, the regent of the nether roule. What I hold deerest, that my life controule, And what I prize more precious then imagery, Heauens, grant the same my bane and ruine be, And where I liue, wish ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... not you but I who am miserable, you wretched boy! It's I that am miserable! You've worn me to a threadpaper, you Herod, you torment, you bane of my life! I pay for you, you good-for-nothing rubbish; I've bent my back toiling for you, I'm worried to death, and, I may say, I am unhappy, and what do you care? ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Frithiof raise up the Shield of Peace, and the battle was stayed; and therewith he cried to King Halfdan: "Two choices are in thine hands now, either that thou give up all to my will, or else gettest thou thy bane like thy brother; for now may men see that mine is the ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous

... irregularity of diet, or a confined state of the bowels, and that whatever confidence a physician may have in his own mode of treatment, his services are of questionable value whenever he carries the bane as well as ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... far unlike them must the lot of guilt Be found! Or what terrestrial woe can match The self-convicted bosom, which hath wrought The bane of others, or enslaved itself With shackles vile? Not poison, nor sharp fire, Nor the worst pangs that ever monkish hate Suggested, or despotic rage imposed, 400 Were at that season an unwish'd exchange, When the soul loathes herself; when, flying thence To crowds, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... that they would not trouble to report having seen us in the distance; but it was perfectly certain that if we paid them a visit they would pass word along from mouth to mouth with that astonishing, undiscoverable ease that is at once the blessing and bane of governments. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... excusable; while we march through such difficult paths without any guide or direction. They may even prove useful, by exciting curiosity, and destroying that implicit faith and security, which is the bane of all reasoning and free enquiry. The discovery of defects in the common philosophy, if any such there be, will not, I presume, be a discouragement, but rather an incitement, as is usual, to attempt something more full and ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... years. She was to grow up free from the impending care and responsibility, happy and healthful in her unconscious girlhood—above all, unassailed by the pernicious attempts to bespeak her favour, the crafty flattery, the undermining insinuations which have proved the bane of the youth of so many sovereigns. In order to preserve this reticence, unslumbering care and many precautions were absolutely necessary. It is said the Princess was constantly under the eye either of the Duchess of Kent or the Baroness Lehzen. The guard proved sufficient; ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... detective and his friends, saw them examine the Raffles Relics, heard them discuss me under my own nose, and at last was alone with the anemic clerk. I put my hand in my pocket, and measured him with a sidelong eye. The tipping system is nothing less than a minor bane of my existence. Not that one is a grudging giver, but simply because in so many cases it is so hard to know whom to tip and what to tip him. I know what it is to be the parting guest who has not parted freely enough, and that not from stinginess but the want of a fine instinct ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... down town, we would make the experiment. The trouble with the average woman of the age in which we live, Beatrice, is that she is above her business. She tries to be superior to her husband, and in many instances she succeeds. That is the bane of wedded life. Do not strive to be superior to your husband, Beatrice. If you do, it ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... to be very much surprised and grieved at it, and although the people all thought he had done it himself, they were afraid to say so; and he was made king of Scotland. But wickedness is sure to be punished, as you shall hear; for the two young Princes, Malcolm and Donald Bane, as soon as they heard their father was dead, escaped from the castle, fearing that if they staid they might ...
— More Seeds of Knowledge; Or, Another Peep at Charles. • Julia Corner

... the effect of strengthening the isolation that is the bane of the country regions. It continues to exist because every farmer wants the school near by for the convenience of his own family. The history of the "little red schoolhouse" throws a glamour of romance about the district headquarters, but in actual experience the district school has outlived ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... to a certain extent been partial in this matter? Have you not, in the apprehension of being compelled to blame the conduct of one who has caused me unutterable anxiety, misery and persecution, and who has been the bane of the Bible cause in Spain, refused to receive the information which it was in YOUR power to command? I called on the Committee and yourself from the first to apply to Sir George Villiers; no one is so well versed as to what has lately been going as himself; but no. It was God's will that I, who ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... kinswoman who is the bane and disgrace of my life, as she would be the bane and disgrace of any gentleman who was of her family," he said. "A pretty fool and baby who was my cousin married a reprobate, Jeof Wildairs, and this is his daughter and is a shameless baggage. Egad! you must have seen her on the hunting-field ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... though one has escaped me," said the Dark Master, looking up suddenly at his sightless harper, who seemed to fall atrembling beneath the look. "The one who has escaped matters not, for his bane comes not at my hands. It is the other whom I shall slay—Brian Buidh of the hard eyes. Then the Bird Daughter. But it seems to me that one stands in my path of whom I ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... of leather handle Peeping underneath the sofa! Is tuition worth the candle When the conscience turns a loafer? 'Tis the rich and backward Boarder Proves indeed the Tutor's bane, Sir, When the turf's in ripping order And ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... Wales for a time, and by-and-by found his way to London; in 1803 was sent to Oxford, which in 1807 he left in disgust; it was here as an anodyne he took to opium, and acquired that habit which was the bane of his life; on leaving Oxford he went to Bath beside his mother, where he formed a connection by which he was introduced to Wordsworth and Southey, and led to settle to literary work at Grasmere, in the Lake District; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... rose in declamation. "'Tis the bane," Says he, "of youth;—'tis the perdition: It fills a giddy female brain With vice, romance, ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger

... from which the Lord preserve us all!—syne to the Market, where ye'll see lamb, beef, mutton, and veal, hanging up on cleeks, in roasting and boiling pieces—spar-rib, jigget, shoulder, and heuk-bane, in the greatest prodigality of abundance;—and syne down to the Duke's gate, by looking through the bonny white-painted iron-stanchels of which, ye'll see the deer running beneath the green trees; and the palace itself, in the inside of which dwells one that needs ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... gave the dwarf's ring to his wife, Gudrun. And Brynhild went to her father, and said that a King had come called Gunnar, and had ridden the fire, and she must marry him. 'Yet I thought,' she said, 'that no man could have done this deed but Sigurd, Fafnir's bane, who was my true love. But he has forgotten me, and my ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... of the capriciousness of the human mind that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men who object to the new constitution for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old; and which is, in itself, evidently incompatible with the idea of a government; a principle, in short, which, if it is to be executed at all, must substitute the violent and sanguinary agency of the sword to the mild ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... Yet so far was this author from mistaking the disease, that I have perused few who have so well described it. If then in those early times, the infancy I may call them of the commerce and naval power of England, so many were carried off by that bane of sea-faring people, what must have been the destruction afterwards, upon the great augmentation of the fleet and the opening of so many new ports to the trade of Great Britain, whilst so little advancement was made in ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... Camel, because the god granted him his foolish wish. Perhaps our wishes are often just as foolish, if we only knew it; and perhaps if they were fulfilled they would be the bane of us, as happened to the ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... sermons are headier than these, Master Silas! our new beer is the sweeter and clammier, and wants more spice. The doctor hath seasoned his with pretty wit enough, to do him justice, which in a sermon is never out of place; for if there be the bane, there ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... is this patient entrance into Nature's deep resources But the child's most gradual learning to walk upright without bane? When we drive out, from the cloud of steam, majestical white horses, Are we greater than the first men who led ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... and a dagger he wore by his side, Of many a man the bane; And he was clad in his capull[8] hide Top ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown

... Being a scholar, he kept his rooms in college, and at once began to work for a Fellowship. Rickie got a creditable second in the Classical Tripos, Part I., and retired to sallow lodgings in Mill bane, carrying with him the degree of B.A. and a small exhibition, which was quite as much as he deserved. For Part II. he read Greek Archaeology, and got a second. All this means that Ansell was much cleverer than Rickie. As for the cow, she ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... bark, and a little bog-iron-ore, dried and pounded, and they have various modes of producing yellow. The deepest colour is obtained from the dried root of a plant, which from their description appears to be the cow-bane (cicuta virosa.) An inferior colour is obtained from the bruised buds of the Dutch myrtle, and they have discovered methods of dyeing ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... they go; Blind instruments of many-eyed Rapine And purposes they share not, and scarce know; And this fell hate that makes a gulf between The Lombard and the German, aids the foe Who tramples both divided, and whose bane Is in the love and brotherhood ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... cannot be helped," she said, with a smile. "But I really counted upon seeing it on the string. I'm not lucky at amber. You know little Asian said it would bring bane to the bearer." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... vitiouse lyif, what ellis intend thei bot only thy death and destructioun? as thow may easilie perceave, suppoise thei cullour thair false intent and mynd, with the persute of heresye. For when thy baronis ar putt doun, what arte thow bot the King of Bane?[110] and then of necessitie man be guydit be thame: and thare, (no doubt,) whare ane blynd man is guyd, mon be ane fall in the myre. Thairfoir lett thy Grace tack hardiment and authoritie, quhilk thow hes of God, and suffer nott thair crewell persecutioun to procead, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... old woman at Houghton, had been the bane of her existence. Like an interdict of the Pope in olden times, it had kept her apart from the people of her own rank, as an excommunication would have done in past ages. But all this was removed. As it would seem by a miracle, the bitter prejudices of that old lady had ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... thunder for utterance and lightning for light. The dust of death was the dust of the ways that the tribes of him trod: And he knew not if just or unjust were the might of the mystery of God. Strange horror and hope, strange faith and unfaith, were his boon and his bane: And the God of his trust was the wraith of the soul or the ghost of it slain. A curse was on death as on birth, and a Presence that shone as a sword Shed menace from heaven upon earth that beheld him, and hailed him her Lord. Sublime and triumphant as ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... dubious tone About the fate of Allah's Own. The Young Turk Party's been my bane And caused me hours and hours of pain; But, what would be a bitterer pill, There may be others younger still, Who, if the facts should get about, Would want to rise and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various

... Sophy,' pursued Ulick, changing his note to eagerness. 'La grande nation herself finds that logic was her bane. Consistency was never made for man! Why where would this world be if it did not go two ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of marshmallow, and white of egg, flea-bane seeds, and lime; powder them and mix juice of radish with the white of egg; mix all thoroughly and with this composition annoint your body or hand and allow it to dry and afterwards annoint it again, and after this you may boldly take up hot iron ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... arched entrance. We were aware from the first of the dull red marks on the walls of the room, where bed-bugs had been slain with slipper heels by angry owners of the blood; but we were not in search of luxury, and we had our belongings and a can of insect-bane brought down from the hotel at once. The fact that stallions squealed and fought in the stalls across the courtyard scarcely promised us uninterrupted sleep; but sleep is not to be weighed in the balance against the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... business which government hath to do therewith, Let a man throw aside that narrowness of soul, that selfishness of principle, which the niggards of all professions are so unwilling to part with, and he will be at delivered of his fears on that head. Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society. For myself, I fully and conscientiously believe, that it is the will of the Almighty, that there should be diversity of religious opinions among us: It affords a larger field for our Christian kindness. ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine

... trees and flowers, retaining in summer the freshness of spring, the delicious purity of its atmosphere, and the brightness of its waters, render it most charming. The solitude here has no drawback; the strong currents of air by which it is encircled defy the powers of the musquito,—that bane to all thin-skinned people with pastoral inclinations, and not an insect in the least venomous or annoying is to be ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... said. "Who respects Bredal-bane's fenced deer? Not the most Christian elders in Glenurchy: they say grace over venison that crossed a high dyke in the dead of night tail first, or game birds that tumbled out of their dream on the bough into the reek of a brimstone fire. A man might as well claim the fish of the sea ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... right, for it was a wicked and foolish proceeding; their conduct will tell against them in the country, and when the House of Lords is accused of stopping legislation, people will not fail to ask, What else is the House of Commons doing, or rather how much more? They assert that tithes are the great bane of Ireland, and the cause of the disorder which prevail, and they propose a Tithe Bill as the remedy, but they clog it with a condition which they know, with as much certainty as human knowledge can attain, will ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... the book, apart from the hero, is Jurii, who might easily have been a protagonist in one of Turgenev's tragedies. He is the typical Russian, the highly educated young man with a diseased will. He is characterised by that indecision which has been the bane of so many Russians. All through the book he seeks in vain for some philosophy of life, some guiding principle. He has abandoned faith in religion, his former enthusiasm for political freedom has cooled, but ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... tread By our martyred dead Has been trodden 'mid bane and blessing, But unconquered still Is the steadfast will And ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... In the spirit of fair play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is "rank bosh." She declares that the Dirzee is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every evening for the last month he has watched her getting ready for to drive, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... any rights. It was the bane of my life to be supposed to have them. Nothing but this could have ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... faith, sir, I'm heartily grieved, a beard of your grave length Should be so over-reach'd. I never brook'd That parasite's hair; methought his nose should cozen: There still was somewhat in his look, did promise The bane of a clarissimo. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... insist That I should suffer to be kiss'd, Gae, get a license frae the priest, And mak' me yours before folk. Behave yoursel' before folk, Behave yoursel' before folk; And when we're ane, baith flesh and bane, Ye may ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... Peevishness, that Inclination [is [1]] the best Rule of Life, or Virtue and Vice any thing else but Health and Disease. We had no more to do but to put a Lady into good Humour, and all we could wish followed of Course. Then again, your Tully, and your Discourses of another Life, are the very Bane of Mirth and good Humour. Pr'ythee don't value thyself on thy Reason at that exorbitant Rate, and the Dignity of human Nature; take my Word for it, a Setting-dog has as good Reason as any Man in England. Had you ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... For this bane of juvenile existence, Gram had one constant, sovereign remedy in which she reposed implicit faith, and which she never varied nor departed from, and that was a great spoonful of Van Tassel's Vermifuge, followed ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... of the British Isles. So long as clear and expressive enunciation of English is attained, intelligible differences of vocalisation, pitch, and even of vocabulary, are allowable, and at times positively charming. Monotony is the bane ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... that seemed most busy for good or mischief in human affairs: such gods as Pele, the spirit of the volcanoes, with her five brothers and eight sisters who lived in the flaming caverns of Kilauea; or as Kalaipahoa, poison-goddess of Molokai, and her two sisters, who put a bane on the trees so deadly that they rivalled the fabled Upas of Java, and birds fell lifeless as they attempted to fly above them (a volcanic sulphur vent was probably the origin of this tale); or, as Kuahana, who slew men ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... like thine ne'er may I hold a place Till I renounce all sense, all shame, all grace— That seat,—like seats, the bane of Freedom's realm, But dear to those presiding at the helm— Is basely purchased, not with gold alone; Add Conscience, too, this bargain is your own— 'T is thine to offer with corrupting art The rotten borough[62] of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... school; Damaetas ran through all the maze of sin, And found the goal, when others just begin: Ev'n still conflicting passions shake his soul, And bid him drain the dregs of Pleasure's bowl; But, pall'd with vice, he breaks his former chain, And what was once his bliss appears his bane. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... refin'd, As Firmamental Fires t'a Tapers ray, Or Prodigies to Natures common Clay. Empires in Blood, or Cities in a Flame, Are work for vulgar Hands, scarce worth a Name. A Cake of Shew-bread from an Altar ta'ne, Mixt but with some Levitical King-bane, Has sent a Martyr'd Monarch to his Grave. Nay, a poor Mendicant Church-Rake-hell slave Has stab'd Crown'd Heads; slight Work to hands well-skill'd, Slight as the Pebble that Goliah kill'd. But to ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... turned at Gettysburg. General George Gordon Meade succeeded Hooker in command of the Army of the Potomac. Meade was not a brilliant man, but he was a thorough soldier, and eminently free from that spirit of envy which was the bane of our armies, which had nearly driven Grant from the service, and which was responsible for the loss of more than one battle. Elated by Chancellorsville, Lee determined to invade the North. The South made an extreme effort to replenish ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... majority of them are full-fledged habitual criminals and can be easily recognized by their "degenerative habitus." They are that indolent, obstinate, querulent, unapproachable, and irritable class of prisoners who form the bane of prison officials. Constantly in trouble of some sort, they are subject to frequent disciplinary measures, which, however, serve not in the least to improve their conduct. Their extremely fluctuating ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint but dread of punishment, they thus become absolutely unrestrained. Having ever regarded government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations, and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquillity, who desire to abide by the laws and enjoy their benefits, who would ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln

... may be true, and I believe it is true, that the defeat of Germany will be its salvation, for it will be the overthrow of the spirit of militarism inherited from Frederick the Great, and this has been the bane of the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... has for handy reference a very complete list of prices. It saves the binder from writing out the name of each volume on his bill, and as the librarian must keep a list of books sent, why not keep them this way as well as any other? I have mislaid or lost hundreds of lettering slips, which are the bane of a bookbinder's existence. Lay down some rules for the cutting of books, placing of plates, binding of covers, and advertisements, style of lettering, etc., and ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... our old herbalists, one would imagine that serpents (and those of the worst kind) abounded in "Merrie Englande," and that they were the greatest bane of our lives. It is {40} hard to stumble on a plant that is not an antidote to the bite of serpents. Our old herbals were compiled, however, almost entirely from the writings of the ancients, and from foreign sources. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various

... good-night? My breasts are sere as sand, no flowers bloom, No grass, no forests hide my misery bare; The reaches of the tyrannous poles consume Those gardens of delight we made so fair, And men lie dark in caves, a sullen race, Framed of ray daughter's flesh but now my bane, Yet shall I not withdraw my patient face, Nor tomb them in my hollow caves of pain. Soon shall I creep no more about thee, orb Of Heaven, for all my thews grow stark and dry. When the years drag me to my end—absorb, Embrace, enfold, caress me, ere ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer

... out clear and strong, while in the south the mountains of the Highlands bound the view. The day is warm and the bees are very busy there in that neglected corner of the field, rich in asters, flea-bane, and golden-rod. The corn has been cut, and upon a stout, but a few rods from the woods, which here drop quickly down from the precipitous heights, we set up our bee-box, touched again with the pungent oil. In a few moments a bee has found it; she comes up to ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... been so absorbed that they bane not noticed the entrance of CLYST, a youth with tousled hair, and a bright, quick, Celtic eye, who stands listening, with a bit of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... vital she should hang as straight as a picture on the wall. Had it ever yet befallen any young woman in the world to wish with secret intensity that she might have been, for her convenience, a shade less inordinately pretty? She had come to that, to this view of the bane, the primal curse, of their lavish physical outfit, which had included everything and as to which she lumped herself resentfully with her mother. The only thing was that her mother was, thank goodness, still so much prettier, still so assertively, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... like all madmen, I think just the reverse. When the fit is on me, I assert that this fever—this madness—far from being the bane of my life, is a blessing to it; that I am habitually devoting money, time, and wits to an object at once beautiful and elevating; that I have found consolation in its visions for many sufferings, which all the amusements ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... me," whispered Dick, "this must be Grimstone. It was a hold of one Simon Malmesbury; Sir Daniel was his bane! 'Twas Bennet Hatch that burned it, now five years agone. In sooth, 'twas pity, for it was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... mortal bane! Spite of thy charms, thou causest often pain And sore regret, of which we daily find A thousand instances attend mankind: For thou—O may it not displease the fair— A fleeting pleasure art, but lasting care. And always proves, alas! too dear the prize, ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault

... of all Creole art-effort"—(we take up the apothecary's words at a point where Clotilde was leaning forward and slightly frowning in an honest attempt to comprehend his condensed English)—"the bane of all Creole art-effort, so far as I ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... good in a hurry, An' Campbell is steel to the bane, An' Grant, an' Mackenzie, an' Murray, An' Cameron will hurkle to nane; The Stuart is sturdy an' loyal, An' sae is Macleod an' Mackay; An' I, their gude-brither Macdonald, Shall ne'er be the last in the fray! Brogues and brochin an' a', Brochin an' brogues an' a'; An' up wi' the bonny blue ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... That has been the bane of our family in times past. Being too proud to mate elsewhere, we have kept to ourselves till idiots and lunatics began to appear. My father was the first who broke the law among us, and I followed his example: choosing the freshest, sturdiest ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott

... and as healthful be your flocks as you happy in content. Love is restless, and my bed is but the cell of my bane, in that there I find busy thoughts and broken slumbers: here (although everywhere passionate) yet I brook love with more patience, in that every object feeds mine eye with variety of fancies. When I ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... where the Queen, visibly sinking day by day, lay sleepless and sad, listening for every sound. Terrors surrounded the castle for the personal safety of its occupants as well as for their brethren in the wars; and no doubt there would be whispers of the King's brother, Donald Bane, and of the watchful jealous Celtic chiefs all ready to rise with him, should an opportunity occur, and dash the stranger brood from the throne. All these sad prognostications were quickly realised. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... Hair Dye, colors the hair and not the skin Acoustic Oil, for deafness Vermifuge Bartholomew's Expectorant Syrup Carlton's Specific Cure for Ringbone, Spavin and Wind-galls Dr. Sphon's Head Ache Remedy Dr. Connol's Gonorrhea Mixture Mother's Relief Nipple Salve Roach and Bed Bug Bane Spread Plasters Judson's Cherry and Lungwort Azor's Turkish Balm, for the Toilet and Hair Carlton's Condition Powder, for Horses and Cattle Connel's Pain Extractor Western Indian Panaceas Hunter's Pulmonary ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw

... rendered immensely profitable by a mechanical invention which infinitely lessened the cost of preparing the staple for the market, had thus renewed and prolonged the original and fast-decaying social and political bane of a region associated with the noblest names and most benign prospects. Chief-Justice Marshall aptly described to an English traveller this sad ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... become the very sink of sin and seat of hypocrisy, and gulf where true religion was drowned. Here also now reigned presumption, and groundless confidence in God, which is the bane of souls. Amongst its rulers, doctors, and leaders, envy, malice, and blasphemy vented itself against the power of godliness, in all places where it was espied; as also against the promoters of it; yea, their Lord and Maker ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan

... not for that which cannot be recall'd. Is it your servant's carelessness you 'plain? Tully by one of his own slaves was slain. The husbandman close in his bosom nurs'd A subtle snake, that after wrought his bane. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... drawing nigh, Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry. By this time he was 'cross the foord, Whare in the snow the chapman smoored, {149b} And past the birks and meikle stane Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane: And through the whins, and by the cairn Whare hunters fand the murdered bairn; And near the thorn, aboon the well, Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel'. Before him Doon pours a' his floods; The doubling storm roars through the woods; The lightnings flash frae pole to pole; Near and more ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... his word was as good as his note. He always seemed to have money enough for what he wanted to do. In prosperous times he spent generously, although habitually practising a kind of stoical severity in regard to his private affairs. He considered luxury the bane of wealth, and continually admonished his children to avoid it. He was an old-fashioned Puritan with ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... the maid replied, As her light skiff approached the side,— 'I well believe, that ne'er before Your foot has trod Loch Katrine's shore But yet, as far as yesternight, Old Allan-bane foretold your plight,— A gray-haired sire, whose eye intent Was on the visioned future bent. He saw your steed, a dappled gray, Lie dead beneath the birchen way; Painted exact your form and mien, Your hunting-suit of Lincoln green, That tasselled ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... fire-guard in the absence of our nurses, we obtained some cinders, with which we repaired to our post at the window, thus illustrating that natural proclivity of children to places of danger which is the bane of parents and guardians. Here we fastened up little fragments of cinder in pieces of writing-paper, and having secured them tidily with string, we dropped these parcels through the iron bars as into a post-office. It was a breathless ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... a profound discontent, a grouping of classes. Among the comparatively prosperous there was set up a social competition in luxury that was the bane of large and small communities. Skilled labour banded itself into unions, employers organized to oppose them, and the result was a class conflict never contemplated by the founders of the Republic, repugnant to democracy which by its very nature depends for its existence on the elimination ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... spirit had departed; and they found but the now silent mourner, with folded arms, and a countenance that had in it volumes of unutterable wo, bending over the inanimate form of one whose life and misnamed love had been the bane of hers. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... in thy death, Poet! while yet peace was, and thou might'st live Unvex'd in thy sweet reasonable faith, The gracious creed that knows how to forgive:— Not narrowing God to self,—the common bane Of sects, each man his own small oracle; Not losing innerness in external rite; A worship pure and plain, Yet liberal to man's heaven-imbreathed delight In all that sound can hint, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... related to you as one acquainted with ancient history. It follows that all should lay aside, as unworthy of him, the love of plunder, which has often been the insidious bane of the Roman soldier, and that every one should keep steadily to his own troop and his own standard, when the necessity for fighting arises, knowing that should he loiter anywhere he will be hamstrung and left to his fate. I fear nothing of our over-crafty enemies ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... Leave from my Lieutenant Governour Don Francisco Guitierres in the City of Trinity to proceed to the anchoring place of Mansanillo in the Jurisdiction of Valamo,[3] And After the Robbery they arrived on this Coast at Porte Bane[4] where they took in Necessarys and with my Licence they Sailed to Jamaica in search of said privateer and presenting themselves before his Excellency the Governour Declared the Robbery upon Oath, as did Likewise Henry Myeroffer and William Abbot, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... neeld, Martagon and milleflower spread. On the wall his golden shield, Dinted deep in battle field, When the host o' the Khalif fled. Gold to gold. Long sunbeams flit Upward, tremble and break on it. 'Ay, 't is over, all things writ Of my sleep shall end awake, Now is joy, and all its bane The dark shadow of after pain.' Then the queen saith, 'Nay, but break Unto me for dear love's sake This thy matter. Thou hast been In great bitterness I ween All the night-time.' But 'My queen, Life, love, lady, rest content, Ill dreams fly, the night is spent, Good day draweth ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... distinctions would be fostered; and here, in France, popular legislation would promote the spirit of frivolity, the sudden craze for an idea, and the readiness to split into factions which has always been our bane. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... Smith was much inclined to intemperance, though Mr. Oldisworth has glossed it over with the hand of a friend; nor is it improbable, that this disposition sunk him in that vis inertiae, which has been the bane of many of the brightest geniuses of the world. Mr. Smith was, upon the whole, a good natured man, a great poet, a finished scholar, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... literary men of that nation, such as the Walpoles, Bubb Doddington, Bolingbroke, Congreve, Sir Everard Falkener, and the poet Pope. The effect of these associations in the literary career of Voltaire is marked. They deepened and broadened his mind, and reduced the flippancy of method, which is the bane of French ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... especially thank one of my correspondents for sending me a pamphlet, called "Sectarianism, the Bane of Religion and the Church,"[138] which I would recommend, in the strongest terms, to the reading of all who regard the cause of Christ; and, for help in reading the Scriptures, I would name also the short and admirable arrangement of parallel passages relating ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... the bench, I have not seen justice bow her head in shame in this court until this day. You little realize what far-reaching harm has just been wrought here under the fickle forms of law. Imitation is the bane of courts—I thank God that this one is free from the contamination of that vice—and in no long time you will see the fatal work of this hour seized upon by profligate so-called guardians of justice in all the wide circumstance of this planet and perpetuated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... their fruit and blossom, At all times of the year, Rivers are running over With red beer and brown beer. An old man plays the bagpipes In a golden and silver wood, Queens, their eyes blue like the ice, Are dancing in a crowd. The little fox he murmured, 'O what is the world's bane?' The sun was laughing sweetly, The moon plucked at my rein; But the little red fox murmured, 'O do not pluck at his rein, He is riding to the townland ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats

... walls, so that I was obliged to close it. Being excessively fatigued, I slept heavily—till at early dawn I awaked to find myself in a dying state. Attempting to move my arms, they were like lead by my side—and my breath was but a feeble gasp. Without the knowledge of my theory—my bane, as many of my friends have thought—I should then have had no antidote. But I knew where was the destroying agent, and what was the only means by which I had a chance of removing it; and I used the little strength I had left to ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard

... all metals has been discovered on the upper waters of the Pahang River and tributaries. The Chinese swarm in their thousands on the western slopes, and outnumber the Malays by more than three to one. They are surely the bane ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... and again Comes the ship from the main, And we came once more And no lading we bore But the point and the edge, And the ironed ledge, And the bolt and the bow, And the bane of the foe. To the House 'neath the mountain we came in the morn, Where welleth the fountain up over the corn, And the stream is a-running fast on to the House Of the neighbours uncunning who quake at the mouse, As their slumber is broken; they know ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... substitute ye'll find them for the Attic bee. Now tak' tent. I'm no in the habit of speaking without deliberation, for it saves a man a great deal of trouble in changing his mind. If ye canna traduce to me a page o' Virgil by this day three months, ye read no more o' my books. Desultory reading is the bane o' lads. Ye maun begin with self-restraint and method, my man, gin ye intend to gie yoursel' a liberal education. So I'll just mak' you a present of an auld Latin grammar, and ye maun begin where your betters ha' ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... can there be in the Borah if you have no Dirzee? In the spirit of fair play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is "rank bosh." She declares that the Dirzee is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every evening ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... present to Ithobal. See, I have hidden poison in my breast, and here at my girdle hangs a dagger; are not the two of them enough to make an end of one frail life? Should they dare to touch me, I shall tell them through the bars that most certainly I shall drink the bane, or use the knife; and when they know it, they will leave me unharmed, hoping to starve me out, or trusting to chance to snare ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... whispered Dick, "this must be Grimstone. It was a hold of one Simon Malmesbury; Sir Daniel was his bane! 'Twas Bennet Hatch that burned it, now five years agone. In sooth, 'twas pity, for it was a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... note. He always seemed to have money enough for what he wanted to do. In prosperous times he spent generously, although habitually practising a kind of stoical severity in regard to his private affairs. He considered luxury the bane of wealth, and continually admonished his children to avoid it. He was an old-fashioned Puritan with ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... heavy chain, That does freeze my bones around! Selfish, vain, Eternal bane, That free love ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake

... for I found the red-nosed old gentleman was a veteran fox-hunter of the neighborhood, for whose opinion my father had vast deference. Indeed, I believe he would have pardoned anything in me more readily than poetry; which he called a cursed, sneaking, puling, housekeeping employment, the bane of all true manhood. He swore it was unworthy of a youngster of my expectations, who was one day to have so great an estate, and would he able to keep horses and hounds and hire poets to write songs ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... thy Daughters? And art thou come to this? Edgar. Who giues any thing to poore Tom? Whom the foule fiend hath led through Fire, and through Flame, through Sword, and Whirle-Poole, o're Bog, and Quagmire, that hath laid Kniues vnder his Pillow, and Halters in his Pue, set Rats-bane by his Porredge, made him Proud of heart, to ride on a Bay trotting Horse, ouer foure incht Bridges, to course his owne shadow for a Traitor. Blisse thy fiue Wits, Toms a cold. O do, de, do, de, do, de, blisse thee from Whirle-Windes, Starre-blasting, and taking, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... discipline, Derided, solitary, dumb, they go; Blind instruments of many-eyed Rapine And purposes they share not, and scarce know; And this fell hate that makes a gulf between The Lombard and the German, aids the foe Who tramples both divided, and whose bane Is in the ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... Your character has been sufficiently tempered; you can bear the bitterest of hardships. You are equipped with an inexhaustible store of energy, and you can live for centuries, yea, for thousands of years, under conditions that would prove the bane of other nations in less than a single century. State, territory, army, the external attributes of national power, are for you superfluous luxury. Go out into the world to prove that a people can continue ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... Niagara only the water-power; but a reverence for the facts themselves, or even for the moral meaning of them, so far as it is consciously present in the artist's mind, is just so far from the true intent of Art. This is the bane of the modern German school, both in landscape and history. They are laborious, learned, accurate, elevated in sentiment; Kaulbach's pictures, for instance, are complete treatises upon the theme, both as to the conception ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... Oh! that I had never parted from my dear Jack Pudding! Wou'd I had never left off Pudding and Dumpling! I then had never been thus basely Poison'd! never thus treacherously sent out of the World!——Thus did this good King lament: But, alas, to no Purpose, the Priest had given him his Bane, and ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous

... generous warmth in good old English cheer; I tell you, 't was a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here. 'T is but the fool that loves excess; hast thou a drunken soul? Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... be paraphrased: "a maniac for archaic words, a rhetor indeed, he is as much and as little a Thucydides as he is a British prince, the bane of Attic style! It was a dose of archaic words and Celtic brogue, I fancy, that he concocted ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... brave! And these are the days of the home-stayers,—of the wise, but feeble-hearted. Yet the Norns have spoken; and it must be that another hero shall arise of the Volsung blood, and he shall restore the name and the fame of his kin of the early days. And he shall be my bane; and in him shall the race of heroes have ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... their former Births refin'd, As Firmamental Fires t'a Tapers ray, Or Prodigies to Natures common Clay. Empires in Blood, or Cities in a Flame, Are work for vulgar Hands, scarce worth a Name. A Cake of Shew-bread from an Altar ta'ne, Mixt but with some Levitical King-bane, Has sent a Martyr'd Monarch to his Grave. Nay, a poor Mendicant Church-Rake-hell slave Has stab'd Crown'd Heads; slight Work to hands well-skill'd, Slight as the Pebble that Goliah kill'd. But to make ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... pain.' What had it irked them, had they'd ta'en farewell of him they've left Lone, whilst estrangement's fires within his entrails rage amain? Great in delight, beloved mine, your presence is with me; Yet greater still the miseries of parting and its bane. Ye are the pleasaunce of my soul; or present though you be Or absent from me, still my heart and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... Europe then to be their sprawling-place? Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world's bane? Their place of maudlin, slavering conference Till every ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... that old woman at Houghton, had been the bane of her existence. Like an interdict of the Pope in olden times, it had kept her apart from the people of her own rank, as an excommunication would have done in past ages. But all this was removed. As it would seem by a miracle, the bitter prejudices of that old lady had given way, ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... long without trying their efficiency. Agitation had procured this boon; and the Roman Catholics, thus successful, have sought to obtain other benefits by the same unhallowed means. Agitation is, in fact, still the bane of Ireland. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... he said. "Who respects Bredal-bane's fenced deer? Not the most Christian elders in Glenurchy: they say grace over venison that crossed a high dyke in the dead of night tail first, or game birds that tumbled out of their dream on the bough into the reek of a brimstone fire. A man might as well claim the fish ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... to the kings of France, duke of Orleans, write and make known to you, that with the aid of God and the blessed Trinity, in the desire which I have to gain renown, and which you in like manner should feel, considering idleness as the bane of lords of high birth which do not employ themselves in arms, and thinking I can no way better seek renown than by proposing to you to meet me at an appointed place, each of us accompanied with one hundred knights and esquires, of name and arms without reproach, there to combat together ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... found in the twins willing listeners as the cessation of their school duties, the enforced idleness at the reservation, and the monotony of their existence became a bane to them. They hearkened to the call that had already conquered a vast army of other boys, sons of those who till the soil and labor out-of-doors earning a fair competence, which although it demands hard toil, gives in exchange pure air, healthy food and every comfort and luxury that willing ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... colt has got plenty o' daylight below him, and middlin' clean o' the bane, he'll thrive right enough!" The heir of all Nourn a leggy colt! There was nothing but black looks and pursed-up lips till even the easy-going cause o' the change said drily enough: "They're damned ill tae leeve wi' whiles, a man's ain weemen-folk, ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... done, but vaguely hinted that he had committed some terrible crime, and that since he had done her wrong, she could vindicate both herself and justice by telling his whereabouts. The woman admitted that Atzerott had been her bane, but she loved him, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... Sarsaparilla East India Hair Dye, colors the hair and not the skin Acoustic Oil, for deafness Vermifuge Bartholomew's Expectorant Syrup Carlton's Specific Cure for Ringbone, Spavin and Wind-galls Dr. Sphon's Head Ache Remedy Dr. Connol's Gonorrhea Mixture Mother's Relief Nipple Salve Roach and Bed Bug Bane Spread Plasters Judson's Cherry and Lungwort Azor's Turkish Balm, for the Toilet and Hair Carlton's Condition Powder, for Horses and Cattle Connel's Pain Extractor Western Indian Panaceas Hunter's Pulmonary Balsam Linn's Pills and Bitters Oil of Tannin, for Leather Nerve ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw

... wife, you will forgive me, will you not? I torment you sometimes. Ah, great God, how canst Thou make use of me thus to prove these two angelic creatures! I, who should be their joy, am their bane!" ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... then came the emigrant girls, their hats covered in bright flowers. They were hustled below by the third officer, who was superintending the sluicing of the dusty, black decks. As Marcella went slowly below with Jimmy she heard him declaring that coaling was the bane of his existence, as he pointed out to the ship's doctor marks of black hands deliberately printed high up on the ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... cousin! That has been the bane of our family in times past. Being too proud to mate elsewhere, we have kept to ourselves till idiots and lunatics began to appear. My father was the first who broke the law among us, and I followed his example: choosing the freshest, sturdiest flower I could find to transplant ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott

... "she'll have rat-bane in his broth some day." He kissed her with no more fervour than if she had been a wooden figurehead, but she was not thus to be accepted: she put an arm quickly round his neck and pressed her passionate lips to his. Back he drew wincing. "Oh, damnation!" ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... everything and nothing. Noisy and vociferous among themselves or with inferiors; shy, awkward and blushing with ladies or in refined society—distressing my feeble efforts to talk to them by their silly explosions of laughter when one of them was addressed. They formed the bane of my life for ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... armed: my death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me. This in a moment brings me to an end; But this informs me I shall never die. The soul, secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. The stars shall ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... any possible retreat should make use of it in time and be gone, yet I must say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left and must stand it should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from one end of the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is the bane and mischief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house to house in ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... pride and luxury decrease, So by degrees they leave the seas. Not merchants now, but companies, Remove whole manufactories. All arts and crafts neglected lie: Content, the bane of industry, Makes 'em admire their homely store, And neither seek nor covet more. So few in the vast hive remain, The hundredth part they can't maintain Against th' insults of numerous foes, Whom yet they valiantly oppose, Till some well-fenced retreat ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... curiosity, thou mortal bane! Spite of thy charms, thou causest often pain And sore regret, of which we daily find A thousand instances attend mankind: For thou—O may it not displease the fair— A fleeting pleasure art, but lasting care. And always proves, alas! too dear the prize, Which, in the moment ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault

... relations towards his creatures, that his united justice and love shall follow both holiness and iniquity now and ever, pouring his beneficence upon them to be converted by them into their food and bliss or into their bane and misery. There is, then, no essential need of adventitious accompaniments or results to justify and pay the good, or to condemn and torture the bad, here or hereafter. To be wise, and pure, and strong, and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... peculiarities in the physical and moral nature of humanity; and I will say further—the art of these chemists is capable with the utmost precision to accommodate and proportion the remedy and the bane to yearnings for love ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... this was Richard Saltire's business on the farm—to rid the land of that bane and pest of the Karoo, the prickly-pear cactus. The new governmental experiment was the only one, so far, that had shown any good results in getting rid of the pest. It consisted in inoculating each bush with ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... planet, to the necromancer dear,— Inherit, ancient magic-books make clear, Good share of spleen, good share of wretchedness. Imagination, wakeful, vigorless, In them makes the resolves of reason vain. The blood within them, subtle as a bane, Burning as lava, scarce, flows ever fraught With sad ideals that ever come to naught. Such must Saturnians suffer, such must die,— If so that death destruction doth imply,— Their lives being ordered in this dismal sense By logic of a ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine

... with it, their pockets bulging with ginger cookies which Migwan gave them as a reward for their trouble. Silence fell on the house and Migwan returned to the mastering of the sum of the angles. Geometry was the bane of her existence and she was only cheered into digging away at it by the thought of the money lying in her name in the bank, which she had received for giving the clew leading to little Raymond Bartlett's discovery the summer before, and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... mid flowers where she did pass, Pierced her fair foot with his envenomed bane: So fierce, so potent was the sting, that she Died in mid course. Ah, woe that this ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... with neglect, the lover's bane, Poor maids rewarded be, For their love lost their only gain Is but a wreath ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... of days, this of blessing that of bane * And holdeth Life a twain of halves, this of pleasure that of pain. See'st not when blows the hurricane, sweeping stark and striking strong * None save the forest giant feels the suffering of the strain? How many trees earth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Tom Staple was not a happy man; university reform had long been his bugbear, and now was his bane. It was not with him, as with most others, an affair of politics, respecting which, when the need existed, he could, for parties' sake or on behalf of principle, maintain a certain amount of necessary zeal; it was not with him ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... it," said the clergyman, "but have little knowledge of it. I wish I had more," he added in a tone of so much regret as to cause his hearer to look curiously at him. "Yes," he said, "I wish I knew more—or less. It's the bane of my existence," declared the rector with a half laugh. John looked inquiringly at ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... a friend; one would better be trustful of ninety-nine friends who are false than doubtful of one who is true. Suspicion and super-sensitiveness are at once the badge and the bane of a ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... the substance which had now become the curse of his existence. The despairing king at last implored the god to take back the fatal gift, and Dionysus, pitying his unhappy plight, desired him to bathe in the river Pactolus, a small stream in Lydia, in order to lose the power which had become the bane of his life. Midas joyfully obeying the injunction, was at once freed from the consequences of his avaricious demand, and from this time forth the sands of the river Pactolus have ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... on the strength of a contingency which, if he could but be taught to believe it, is of all earthly anticipations the most remote and uncertain. A passion for unnecessary expense is, under different circumstances, frequently repressed by an inability to procure credit; but it is the curse and bane of Mr. Omnium's nephew, and Miss Saveall's niece, that so far from any obstacle being opposed to their prodigality, almost unlimited indulgence is offered, nay, actually pressed upon them, by the trades-people of their wealthy relations; who take especial care that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... would you have me to do? It's born with me—lies in my very blude and bane. Why, man, the lads of Westburnflat, for ten lang descents, have been reivers and lifters. They have all drunk hard, lived high, taking deep revenge for light offence, and never wanted gear ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... a song of kings and queens And falling leaves and flying rain, With Time to mow, and Fate who gleans Their good and evil, boon and bane. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... and going over the probable consequences, if, as now seemed certain, we had indeed discovered the source of our underground stream. First and foremost, by diverting it we should dry up the "forty rods" and render productive a large piece of land which at present was more bane than benefit; we should bring the county road past our door; we should more than double our supply of water for irrigation purposes—a fact which, by itself, would be of immense advantage ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... to quick bosoms is a hell, And THERE hath been thy bane; there is a fire And motion of the soul, which will not dwell In its own narrow being, but aspire Beyond the fitting medium of desire; And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore, Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire Of aught but rest; a ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... communicative letter on your return from Scotland, where you spent some considerable time, and gave yourself good room to examine the natural curiosities of that extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, as well as those of the highlands. The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry, because men seldom allot themselves half the time they should do, but, fixing on a day for their return, post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey that required despatch than as philosophers investigating ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... run on ahead, for thunderstorms are my bane. Yes, let us run with all possible speed, run ANYWHERE, for soon the rain will be pouring down, and these parts are full ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... to the vanity of the players, who as a rule have a tendency to exaggerate their importance in relation to drama. The error is very common, and the idea that plays should be written primarily to exhibit the players and not the ideas of the author is the bane of our theatre. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... your permission, we will leave it at that, Mr. Mac. The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession. I can see only two things for certain at present—a great brain in London, and a dead man in Sussex. It's the chain between that we are going ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... Then weep no more, and check thy sighs, Sweet lady of the lotus eyes." The queen, who loved her perished lord, For meet reply, the saint adored, And, of her husband long bereaved, She bore a son by him conceived. Because her rival mixed the bane To render her conception vain, And fruit unripened to destroy, Sagar(249) she called her darling boy. To Sagar Asamanj was heir: Bright Ansuman his consort bare. Ansuman's son, Dilipa famed, Begot a son Bhagirath named. From him the great Kakutstha rose: From ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... and spoke well of him, though as yet he had done no deeds, but lived at home on Coldback, managing the farm, for now Thorgrimur Iron-Toe, his father, was dead. But women loved him much, and that was his bane—for of all women he loved but one, Gudruda the Fair, Asmund's daughter. He loved her from a child, and her alone till his day of death, and she, too, loved him and him only. For now Gudruda was a maid of maids, most beautiful to see and sweet to hear. Her hair, like the hair of Eric, was golden, ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... the condition of sailors; but it must ever prove a most difficult endeavor, so long as the antidote is given before the bane is removed. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... recall it. When he opened them again, she was gone and her place was taken by one of the figures of the dream; a man with a thick mop of fair hair and a face of blank good-nature, and whose store of English seemed to be comprised in a single sentence: "Ja, ja; Hae bane ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... very aim which he had at heart when he proposed the classification plan—a just, impartial and equal reimbursement to every player in the game, so far as the finances of each club would permit—and without that bane to all players, ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster

... not dismiss my new wife, who at least is gentler-tongued and truer-hearted than you are. As to the second, you ask that which it is not in my power to give, since children are the gift of Heaven, and barrenness is its bane. Moreover, you have done ill to bring into this matter the name of one who is dead, who of all women was the sweetest and most innocent. Lastly, I warn you before the people to cease from your plottings or traffic ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... deluge-like, they lay whole nations waste. Debauches and excess (though with less noise) As great a portion of mankind destroys. The beasts and monsters Hercules oppress'd, Might in that age some provinces infest; These more destructive monsters are the bane Of every age, and in all nations reign; But soon would vanish, if the world were bless'd With sacred love, by ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... of hospitality—all that the house afforded was quickly spread on the whitest linen. Remember, I had just left the vessel, where, without being fastidious, I had continually been disgusted. Fish, milk, butter, and cheese, and, I am sorry to add, brandy, the bane of this country, were spread on the board. After we had dined hospitality made them, with some degree of mystery, bring us some excellent coffee. I did not then ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... his rank, gypsy as he was, was recognized, he mixed with the proudest of the land. One day he fell in with this accursed Hungarian, a fierce drinker of that Devil's blood called brandy. My child until that hour had avoided this bane of our race. Generous wine he drank, because the soul of the sun our ancestor palpitated in its purple waves. But brandy, which is fallen and accursed wine, as devils are fallen and accursed angels, had never crossed his lips, until in an evil hour he was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... last back-end I was at Gledfoot wi' sheep, and a weary job I had and little credit. Ye ken the place, a lang dreich shore wi' the wind swirlin' and bitin' to the bane, and the broun Gled water choked wi' Solloway sand. There was nae room in ony inn in the town, so I bude to gang to a bit public on the Harbour Walk, where sailor-folk and fishermen feucht and drank, and nae dacent men frae the hills thocht of gangin'. I was in a gey ill way, for I had sell't ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... acknowledged that Mr. Smith was much inclined to intemperance, though Mr. Oldisworth has glossed it over with the hand of a friend; nor is it improbable, that this disposition sunk him in that vis inertiae, which has been the bane of many of the brightest geniuses of the world. Mr. Smith was, upon the whole, a good natured man, a great poet, a finished scholar, and a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... with head and heels on fire, And like the very soul of evil, He's galloping away, away, And so he'll gallop on for aye, The bane of ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... tree, The light is in thee, And as spring-tide shines Through the lily lines, So forth from thine heart Through thy red lips apart Came words and love To wolf-bane's grove, And the shaker of battle-board blesseth the Earth For the love and the longing, ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... and their like, bane of the past, had disappeared; but all nationalities that the world holds seemed to be about. At the next table two Russian officers, with high cheek-bones and wide-set eyes, were drinking, chatting ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... good faith, sir, I'm heartily grieved, a beard of your grave length Should be so over-reach'd. I never brook'd That parasite's hair; methought his nose should cozen: There still was somewhat in his look, did promise The bane of a clarissimo. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... greater bane to friendship than adulation, fawning, and flattery. For this vice should be branded under as many names as possible, being that of worthless and designing men, who say everything with a view of pleasing, and nothing with regard to truth. Now while hypocrisy in all things is blamable ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward

... grave must be dug at the foot o' the wall, All alane and alane, oh! And the foot that treadeth his body upon Shall have scab that will eat to the bane, oh! ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... these cursed women!' muttered Grimsby: 'they're the very bane of the world! They bring trouble and discomfort wherever they come, with their false, fair faces and their ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... fox he murmured, 'O what of the world's bane?' The sun was laughing sweetly, The moon plucked at my rein; But the little red fox murmured, 'O do not pluck at his rein, He is riding to the townland That is the ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats

... on the west coast of Denmark, where the story of Havelok the Dane must needs begin, was Gunnar Kirkeban—so called because, being a heathen altogether, as were we all in Denmark at that time, he had been the bane of many churches in the western isles of Scotland, and in Wales and Ireland, and made a boast thereof. However, that cruelty of his was his own bane in the end, as will be seen. Otherwise he was a well-loved king and a great warrior, tall, and stronger than any man in Denmark, as ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler

... a paradox: yes and no. This learning imparted to Eliot's works a breadth of vision that is tonic and wins the respect of the judicious. It helps her to escape from that bane of the woman novelist—excessive sentiment without intellectual orientation. But, on the other hand, there are times when she appears to be writing a polemic, not a novel: when the tone becomes didactic, the movement heavy—when the work seems self-conscious and over-intellectualized. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... Stockmar, that in order to avert revolution the royal authority over the army must be exercised through a Prince, and not through the channel of a Minister responsible to Parliament. The Duke thought it his mission to resist changes, and his obstruction had been the bane of successive Ministers. Accordingly, the statesmen of Cabinet rank and experience were anxious at all cost to establish the supremacy of the Cabinet over the army, and for this purpose had welcomed the proposal of the Hartington ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... event is the more certain, from the consideration that all the principles for which Lafayette contended were practical. He never indulged himself in wild and fanciful speculations. The principle of hereditary power was, in his opinion, the bane of all republican liberty in Europe. Unable to extinguish it in the Revolution of 1830, so far as concerned the chief magistracy of the nation, Lafayette had the satisfaction of seeing it abolished with reference to the peerage. An hereditary crown, stript ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... there, seeing his men sink into them by squadrons, he beheld the whole army of Wallace close in upon them. Terrific was now the havoc. The very numbers of the Southrons, and the mixed discipline of their army, proved its bane. In the tumult they hardly understood the orders which were given; and some mistaking them, acted so contrary to the intended movements, that Edward, galloping from one end of the field to the other, appeared ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... wise and good have established for the benefit of the whole body. The freedom which we ask for ourselves, and desire to see imparted to all, is a rational liberty, tending to the good, not operating to the bane of its possessors; ministering to the general welfare, not to disorder and confusion. In the enjoyment of this liberty, or rather in the discharge of the duties and trusts which this liberty brings with it, we feel ourselves under an obligation to examine ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... advances his native language towards its perfection; but on the other hand he discourages in some measure any advance beyond his own. Thus, in the parallel case of science, it is commonly said on the continent, that the very marvellousness of Newton's powers was the bane of English mathematics: inasmuch as those who succeeded him were content with his discoveries, bigoted to his methods of investigation, and averse to those new instruments which have carried on the French to such brilliant and successful results. In Literature, also, there is something oppressive ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... these gifts. Oh, how weak is man! Die of Beauty! Die a moral death, or live a useless, foolish life because he is wickedly vain of God's gifts! Beauty is full often the nurse of vanity, and vanity is the bane of womanhood. I am sorry to say it, and more sorry because it is so. It is a pity that so lovely a gift from the Hand Divine should be so wickedly perverted. Beauty ought to inspire rather than weaken its possessor, ought to elevate rather than depress her. ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... colored the picture, but it is certain that the sanitary condition of the provincial camps was extremely bad. "A grievous sickness among the troops," writes a Massachusetts surgeon at Fort Edward; "we bury five or six a day. Not more than two thirds of our army fit for duty. Long encampments are the bane of New England men."[417] Like all raw recruits, they did not know how to take care of themselves; and their officers had not the experience, knowledge, or habit of command to enforce sanitary rules. The same evils were found among the Canadians when kept long in one place. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... has proved my bane, - A harder case you never heard, My wife (in other matters sane) Pretends that ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... his lady fair. 10 Now must he wander o'er the darkling way Thither, whence life-return the Fates denay. But ah! beshrew you, evil Shadows low'ring In Orcus ever loveliest things devouring: Who bore so pretty a Sparrow fro' her ta'en. 15 (Oh hapless birdie and Oh deed of bane!) Now by your wanton work my girl appears With turgid eyelids tinted ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... fight for my land, I will work for my land, Will it foster with love, in my faith, in my child. I will eke every gain, I will seek boot for bane, From its easternmost bound to the western ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... grieved, she was ashamed; but she said nothing, and so became an accessory. Sally was taking candles; he was robbing the store. It is ever thus. Vast wealth, to the person unaccustomed to it, is a bane; it eats into the flesh and bone of his morals. When the Fosters were poor, they could have been trusted with untold candles. But now they—but let us not dwell upon it. From candles to apples is but a step: Sally got to taking apples; then soap; then maple-sugar; then ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... I have been plucking, plants among, Hemlock, henbane, adders-tongue Night-shade, moon-wort, libbard's bane And twice, by the dogs, ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... the bane of tuna fishermen. More tuna are cut off by sharks than are ever landed by anglers. This made me redouble my efforts, and in half an hour more I was dripping wet, burning hot, aching all over, and so spent I had to rest. Every time I dropped the rod on the gunwale the tuna took line—zee—zee—zee—foot ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... remained in England indulging himself in lavish expenditure and display. The consequences of this were the impoverishment of his estates and their eventual management by rack-renters. These rack-renters, whose only interest lay in squeezing money out of the impoverished tenants, became the bane of the agricultural holder. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... debt shall be wrested from them; whether honour, loyalty, free and responsible government are to be established in this province, or whether our resources are to be absorbed in support of pretensions which have proved the bane of religion in the country; have fomented discord; emboldened, if not prompted, rebellion; turned the tide of capital and emigration to other shores; impaired public credit; arrested trade and commerce, and ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... class distinctions would be fostered; and here, in France, popular legislation would promote the spirit of frivolity, the sudden craze for an idea, and the readiness to split into factions which has always been our bane. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald, for the murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's regiment of foot. June, A.D. ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... from Somerset East about ten o'clock on a certain glorious mid-October morning, accompanied by a brand-new, well-loaded wagon drawn by a team of sixteen "salted" oxen—that is to say, oxen immune to the terrible lung sickness which is the bane of South Africa—driven by Jan, my former Hottentot driver, who, with Piet, my former after-rider, had contrived to pick up a living in Somerset East during the war, and now—also with Piet—was more ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... it," answered Eugenia. "I have long wished to spend a few days in New York, but that bane of my life, poverty, has always prevented. Now, however, as old Uncle Nat has kindly furnished us with the means, I propose that Alice and I start day after to- morrow, and return on Saturday. That will give us ample time to see the lions and get ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes

... to blaze again before their eyes, with a rude and vigorous eloquence, all the ruthless bane of the toll-taking years before the truce. He stripped naked every specious claim of honour and courage with which its votaries sought to hallow the vicious system of the vendetta. He told in words of simple force how he and Caleb Harper ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... in the absence of our nurses, we obtained some cinders, with which we repaired to our post at the window, thus illustrating that natural proclivity of children to places of danger which is the bane of parents and guardians. Here we fastened up little fragments of cinder in pieces of writing-paper, and having secured them tidily with string, we dropped these parcels through the iron bars as into a post-office. It was a breathless ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... so absorbed that they bane not noticed the entrance of CLYST, a youth with tousled hair, and a bright, quick, Celtic eye, who stands listening, with a bit ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... after having tied Sultan in a vacant stall, he found that, unknown to the family, another anxious watcher was lingering about. A tow head was suddenly thrust from behind the partly open door, and a hand halted him by catching appealingly at his sleeve. "She bane bater?" asked ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... more: He was the bane and ruin of my peace. This anguish, and these tears, these are the legacies His fatal love has left me. Thou wilt see me, Believe me, my Alicia, thou wilt see me, Ere yet a few short days pass o'er my head, Abandon'd to the very utmost wretchedness. The hand of pow'r has seiz'd almost the ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... earth was nigher heaven than now: And the King's locks curled, Disparting o'er a forehead full As the milk-white space 'twixt horn and horn Of some sacrificial bull— Only calm as a babe new-born: For he was got to a sleepy mood, So safe from all decrepitude, Age with its bane, so sure gone by, (The gods so loved him while he dreamed) That, having lived thus long, there seemed No need the King ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... nerves. At a day school the girls take their worries home at four o'clock, and the mental atmosphere has time to clear before nine next morning; but, when there is no home-going until the end of the term, little trifles are sometimes unduly magnified, and a narrow element—the bane of all communities—begins to creep in. To do Miss Beasley justice, she made a great effort to combat this very evil, and to run her school on broad lines. She recognized the necessity of letting the girls mix sometimes with ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... said accordingly. At dinner we had a great deal of good discourse about Parliament: their number being uncertain, and always at the will of the King to encrease, as he saw reason to erect a new borough. But all concluded that the bane of the Parliament hath been the leaving off the old custom of the places allowing wages to those that served them in Parliament, by which they chose men that understood their business and would attend it, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... the mystical charmer, and as he spoke he carelessly rested his hand on my shoulder, so that I trembled to feel that this dread son of Nature, Godless and soulless, who had been—and, my heart whispered, who still could be—my bane and mind darkener, leaned upon me for support, as the spoiled younger-born on his brother—"what king," said this cynical mocker, with his beautiful boyish face—"what king in your civilized Europe has the sway of a chief of the East? What link is so strong between mortal and mortal as ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... been the bane of my life. The emotional, the rhapsodical, the meditative style of book, in which one garrulously addresses one's soul from beginning to end, is simply torture to me. You see religion is a different thing. The rhapsody may do for the Tabernacle people, but thoughtful ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... upon which Mr. Hathorn had laid the greatest stress Mr. Porson was indifferent—dates, which had been the bane of many a boy's life and an unceasing source of punishment, he regarded but little, insisting only that the general period should be known, and his questions generally took the form of, "In the beginning or at the end of such and such a ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... Pisan frescoes we have, it is true, many a quaint bit of genre (superior to Teniers only because of superior associations), but never again the fairy tale. And as the better recedes, it is replaced by the worse, by the bane of all genre painting, non-significant detail, and positive bad taste. Have London or New York or Berlin worse to show us than the jumble of buildings in his ideal of a great city, his picture of Babylon? It may be said he here continues mediaeval tradition, which is quite ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... throughout the gardens; every one is in motion, and care, that bane of human happiness, for a time seems to have lost her dominion over the human heart. Had the Eastern sage, who was in search of the land of happiness, at this moment been introduced into Vauxhall, I think his most exalted conceptions ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... have done. We have left undone that which we ought to have done. We have regulated that which we should have left to regulate itself. We have left unregulated that which we were bound to regulate. We have given to some branches of industry a protection which has proved their bane. We have withheld from public health and public morals the protection which was their due. We have prevented the labourer from buying his loaf where he could get it cheapest; but we have not prevented him from ruining his body and mind by premature ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... variants in the Poetic Edda have evident marks of contamination with the Volsung cycle, and some points of superficial resemblance. Helgi Hjoervardsson's mother is Sigrlinn, Helgi Hundings-bane's father is Sigmund, as in the Nibelungen Lied Siegfried is the son of Sigemunt and Sigelint. Helgi Hundingsbane is a Volsung and Wolfing (Ylfing), and brother to Sinfjoetli; his first fight, like ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday

... prosecution of so important an enquiry, may be the more excusable; while we march through such difficult paths without any guide or direction. They may even prove useful, by exciting curiosity, and destroying that implicit faith and security, which is the bane of all reasoning and free enquiry. The discovery of defects in the common philosophy, if any such there be, will not, I presume, be a discouragement, but rather an incitement, as is usual, to attempt something more full and satisfactory than has yet been ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... chose the harshest words; With fiery eyes, and contracted brows, He coined his face in the severest stamp; And fury shook his fabric, like an earthquake; He heaved for vent, and burst like bellowing Aetna, In sounds scarce human—"Hence away for ever, Let her begone, the blot of my renown, And bane of all my hopes!" [All the time of this speech, CLEOPATRA seems more and more concerned, till she sinks quite down.] "Let her be driven, as far as men can think, From man's commerce! she'll ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... Though fenced by sanction of a thousand years! Well thirst to drag the wrongful ruler down; Well purpose to pen back Into the narrow path of right The ignorant, headlong multitude, Who blindly follow, ever, Blind leaders, to their bane! ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... the skin-deep beauty Granted that woman is the superior being Held to strict responsibility for her attractiveness History is strewn with the wreck of popular delusions Hot arguments are usually the bane of conversation Idleness seems to be the last accomplishment of civilization Insists upon applying everywhere the yardstick of his own local It is not enough to tell the truth (that has been told before) Knows more than he will ever know again Land where things are so much estimated by what ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner

... not to inquire after times and seasons, to wit, that they might not trust to their own wisdom but wholly depend on him. And to the same purpose is it that that great Architect of the World, God, gave man an injunction against his eating of the Tree of Knowledge, as if knowledge were the bane of happiness; according to which also, St. Paul disallows it as puffing up and destructive; whence also St. Bernard seems in my opinion to follow when he interprets that mountain whereon Lucifer had fixed his habitation to be the mountain ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... called after my father's mother, and her name shall be Thorgerda," for she came down from Sigurd Fafnir's-bane on the father's side, according to the ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders

... complete list of prices. It saves the binder from writing out the name of each volume on his bill, and as the librarian must keep a list of books sent, why not keep them this way as well as any other? I have mislaid or lost hundreds of lettering slips, which are the bane of a bookbinder's existence. Lay down some rules for the cutting of books, placing of plates, binding of covers, and advertisements, style of lettering, etc., and have your binder ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... a sensitive man, who had been some thing of a pariah since his knickerbocker period, and was first the butt and later the bane of the narrow, convention-governed public of a small English village. A fierce defiance of the people amongst whom he had lived his life kept him in his native place till after his twenty-first birthday. He rebelled with all his soul against the animal unreason of these men, women, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... north the wall of the Catskills stands out clear and strong, while in the south the mountains of the Highlands bound the view. The day is warm and the bees are very busy there in that neglected corner of the field, rich in asters, flea-bane, and golden-rod. The corn has been cut, and upon a stout, but a few rods from the woods, which here drop quickly down from the precipitous heights, we set up our bee-box, touched again with the pungent oil. In a few moments a bee has found it; she comes up ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... which, by self-expenditure, seeks to remedy it. If the external world is merely an expression of a remorseless Power, whence comes the love which is the principle of the moral life in man? The same Power brings the antidote as well as the bane. And, further, the bane exists for the sake of the antidote, the wrong for the sake of the remedy. The evil in the world is means to a higher good, and the only means possible; for it calls into activity the divine element in man, and thereby contributes to its realization ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... who snare and stupify the mind, Sophists! of beauty, virtue, joy, the bane! Greedy and fell, though impotent and blind, Who spread your filthy nets in Truth's fair fane, And ever ply your venom'd fangs amain! Hence to dark Error's den, whose rankling slime First gave you form! Hence! lest the Muse should deign (Though ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... the Dacyannes myttee powere; Wythe them a mynnute wurchethe bane for yeares; 320 Theie undoe reaulmes wythyn a syngle hower. Rouze all thie honnoure, Birtha; look attoure Thie bledeynge countrie, whych for hastie dede Calls, for the rodeynge of some doughtie power, To royn yttes royners, make yttes foemenne ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton

... kill the fever poison and make a man himself again. They say—put the cup away, Poole—that wherever a poisonous thing grows there's another plant grows close at hand which will cure the ill it does, bane and antidote, my lad, stinging-nettles and dock at home, you know. I don't know that it holds quite true, but I do know that there are fevers out here, and quinine acts as a cure. But there's one thing I want to know, and it's this, how ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... a certain extent been partial in this matter? Have you not, in the apprehension of being compelled to blame the conduct of one who has caused me unutterable anxiety, misery and persecution, and who has been the bane of the Bible cause in Spain, refused to receive the information which it was in YOUR power to command? I called on the Committee and yourself from the first to apply to Sir George Villiers; no one is so well versed as to what has lately been going as ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... is a beggar, a bastard, a foundling, a fellow in meaner circumstances than one of your lordship's footmen." "And is it possible," cried he, "that a young creature with such perfections should think of bestowing herself so unworthily?" "Alas! my lord," answered she, "consider the country—the bane of all young women is the country. There they learn a set of romantic notions of love, and I know not what folly, which this town and good company can scarce eradicate in a whole winter." "Indeed, madam," replied my lord, "your cousin is of too immense a value to be thrown away; such ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... this bane a queer picnic!" she said. "Which way are you going? Mr. McGill, is he coming ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... Being thus benetted round with villainies,/ Ere I could make a prologue to my brains] [W: mark the prologue ... bane] In my opinion no alteration is necessary. Hamlet is telling how luckily every thing fell out; he groped out their commission in the dark without waking them; he found himself doomed to immediate destruction. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... are contrary to those of Religion and Equity, they are the greatest Depravations of human Nature, by giving wrong Ambitions and false Ideas of what is good and laudable; and should therefore be exploded by all Governments, and driven out as the Bane ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the constable, admiral, and marshal of France [63] commanded an army which did not exceed the number of a thousand knights and squires. [631] These splendid names were the source of presumption and the bane of discipline. So many might aspire to command, that none were willing to obey; their national spirit despised both their enemies and their allies; and in the persuasion that Bajazet would fly, or must ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... of Prawle and half a crown. Before I was off the quay I heard him saying to a lady, "Bane in collision, marm! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the education of a thankless son! Was it for this I took the trouble to cure myself of drinking, to break with my friends, to become an example to the neighborhood? The jovial good fellow has made a goose of himself. Oh! if I had to begin again! No, no! you see women and children are our bane. They soften our hearts; they lead us a life of hope and affection; we pass a quarter of our lives in fostering the growth of a grain of corn which is to be everything to us in our old age, and when the harvest-time ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... he long to interrupt The reign of folly, usurpation ever, Though fenced by sanction of a thousand years! Well thirst to drag the wrongful ruler down; Well purpose to pen back Into the narrow path of right The ignorant, headlong multitude, Who blindly follow, ever, Blind leaders, to their bane! ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... with the doctors, who have long since become the ideals of our school girls.... Referring to the fear some native Christians have shown of sending their girls to a school having manual labour in its curriculum, Dr. Ida exclaimed hotly, 'This fear of work is the bane of China.' Here are two doctors of exalted privileges, educated abroad, honoured alike by native and foreigner, and yet putting their hand to cooking and housework of every kind, as the need may be, without a thought of being degraded thereby; ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton

... saved who now suffer an ignominious and an early death; and many might be so much purified in the furnace of punishment and adversity, as to become the ornaments of that society of which they had formerly been the bane. The vices of mankind must frequently require the severity of justice; but a wise State will direct that severity to the greatest moral ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... harbinger of catastrophe. He who preached wisdom and claimed to be taught by the flowers, who loved life and hated injustice, who mingled with his kind, ever searching for that one who needed him, he must become the woe and the bane and curse of those he would only serve! Insupportable and pitiful fate! The fiends of the past mocked him, like wicked ghouls, voiceless and dim. The faces of the men he had killed were around him in the gray gloom, pale, drifting visages ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... saying softly: "Ah, William, would that it had been so. Too late I begin to think on those things which might have been, had Sybilla de Thouars been born under a more fortunate star. As it is I can only go on—a terror to myself and a bane ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... considerable sum of money, and if his existence is extended to the common period he will die rich. It happens, however, that he is (and long has been) troubled with violent stomachic pains, for which he has hitherto obtained no relief, and which really are the bane and torment of his life. Now, if my excellent laborer were to send for a physician and to consult him respecting this malady, would it not be very singular language if our doctor were to say to him: "My good ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... fare * Abroad, no comrade in thee to gain: I fear when lain on my couch and long * My sickness, thou prove thee nor fond nor fain: I fear me that time groweth scant my good * And my hand be strait thou shalt work me bane: A helpmate I want shall do what do I * And bear patient the pasture ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... my bane, - A harder case you never heard, My wife (in other matters sane) Pretends that ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... it," she said in quiet despair; "that boy is the bane of my life. I'll speak to you shortly, Alexander. Go to your ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume

... stone is gone, anyhow,' said the baker. 'It was the bane of my life. I had no idea how easy it was to remove it. Give me your pickaxes young miner, and I will show you how a baker can ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald

... United States—the States of the Pacific excepted—we are obliged to confine our culture to glazed structures, erected for the purpose, where an atmosphere similar to the vine-growing regions of Europe can be maintained, and that bane of the ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward

... instance of the capriciousness of the human mind that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men who object to the new constitution for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old; and which is, in itself, evidently incompatible with the idea of a government; a principle, in short, which, if it is to be executed at all, must substitute the violent and sanguinary agency of the sword to the mild influence ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... many friends whom he never forgot, being of a very generous and loving disposition. I think that those years at Harrow were the happiest he ever knew, for he was under a strict discipline, and was too young to indulge in those dissipations which were the bane of his subsequent life. But he was not distinguished as a scholar, in the ordinary sense, although in his school-boy days he wrote some poetry remarkable for his years, and read a great many books. He read in bed, read when no ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... wrangling hands Shall grasp you not as prey, nor we ourselves Betray you thus embracing sacred shrines, Nor make the avenging all-destroying god, Who not in hell itself sets dead men free, A grievous inmate, an abiding bane.— Spake I not right, of saving ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... suff'rings." Heaps of dead Trojans were Scamander's bane, Dead dogs, dead cats, and dung-boats shame the Seine, Ten thousand shores and jakes the Thames defile, And gradual mud is working woe to Nile; Yet harder Duddon's fate, her hapless stream Of fifty strains ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... rights. It was the bane of my life to be supposed to have them. Nothing but this could have made ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... thine ne'er may I hold a place Till I renounce all sense, all shame, all grace— That seat,—like seats, the bane of Freedom's realm, But dear to those presiding at the helm— Is basely purchased, not with gold alone; Add Conscience, too, this bargain is your own— 'T is thine to offer with corrupting art The rotten borough[62] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... was more essential than the mosquito net under which I slept every night for nearly four months. Insects are the bane of Africa. The mosquito carries malaria, and the tsetse fly is the harbinger of that most terrible of diseases, sleeping sickness. Judging from personal experience nearly every conceivable kind of biting bug infests the Congo. One of the most tenacious and troublesome of the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... and in deed; lovable, intelligent, vivacious, easily irritated, but still more easily pleased, sharp of tongue, tender of heart, and full to overflowing with humour. In appearance Marie was small and slight, with a sallow complexion which was the bane of her life, black hair and beautiful white teeth. No one could call her handsome, but she had certainly an attraction ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... one righteous man succeeds The seer Amphiaraus, good and brave. His post is at the Homoloian gate. Here he reproaches heaps on Tydeus' head, Calling him murderer and the public bane, Leader of Argos in all evil ways, The Furies' pursuivant, henchman of death, That has Adrastus to his ruin trained. Thy brother too, stained by his father's fate, Great Polynices, with accusing face ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... Constitution and surrender it unbroken to his successor. Accordingly he made to the Southern States all conceivable propositions for peace. Slavery should be left without federal interference. They madly rejected all. War came. He saw at the outset that slavery was our bane. It confronted each regiment, perplexed each commander. It was the Southern commisariat, dug Southern ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy

... have now nearly triumphed over the need for ink, or that our temperaments have become Russian; but that some of us have become infected with the wish to see and record the truth and obliterate that competitive moralising which from time immemorial has been the characteristic bane of English art. In other words, the Russian passion for understanding has tempered a little the English passion for winning. What we admire and look for in Russian literature is its truth and its profound and comprehending tolerance. I am credibly informed that what Russians admire and look for ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... paying a rent computed at so much a sheep. He had, indeed, purchased the ground on which his house stood, but this he had done simply to guard himself against other purchasers. These other purchasers were the bane of his existence, the one great sorrow which, as he ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope

... valerian, in masses of squashed strawberry, and the fig-wort, tall, square-stemmed, and set with small carmine knots of flower. In autumn these become brown seed crockets, and are most decorative. The fourth tall flower is the flea-bane, and the fifth the great willow-herb. The lesser plants are the small willow-herbs, whose late blossoms are almost carmine, the water-mints, with mauve-grey flowers, and the comfrey, both purple and white. The dewberry, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... shoon thou ne'er gavest nane, Every nighte and alle; The whinnes shall pricke thee to the bare bane, And Christe ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... reinforced by those who are ever and anon being born. Let no one of you think that I am ignorant of the many disagreeable and painful features that belong to marriage and child-rearing. But bear in mind that we possess nothing at all good with which some bane is not mingled, and that in our most abundant and greatest blessings there reside the most abundant and greatest woes. If you decline to accept the latter, do not strive to obtain the former. Practically all who possess any real excellence and pleasure are obliged to work ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... sister," squeaked back Lulu in the character of Victoria. "I wish they wouldn't come at all. Children are the bane ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... himself with the honor of a soldier and the purity of a Christian,—triumphantly sustaining himself throughout a Congressional investigation set on foot by political malice, and confronting with equal credit a military inquiry which had its origin in the jealousy that is often the bane of army service. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... people say, "He is charming, that man, but he is a girl, a regular girl." They are alluding to the effeminates, the bane ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... me so cruelly tormenteth So pleasing is in my extreamest paine, That, all the more my sorrow it augmenteth, The more I love and doe embrace my bane. Ne do I wish (for wishing were but vaine) To be acquit fro my continual smart, But ioy her thrall for ever to remayne, And yield for pledge my poor and captyved hart, The which, that it from her may never start, Let ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... these circumstances it is difficult to say what is to become, financially, of the people of Cuba. Sugar is their great staple, but all business has been equally depressed upon the island, under the bane of civil wars, extortionate ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... ain'd it? Yust you climb opp dat odder box, Mester Kent, and hol' you' hair on. Ve bane gone to maig dat time, als' ve preak somedings, ja!" and he sent the light engine spinning down the yards to a quickstep ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... this series contains different varieties, no Stamp being included in two Packets, and purchasers will by this novel method be saved the inconvenience of acquiring duplicates, which is as a rule the bane of most ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell

... children towards each other. Instead of opposition, they displayed mutual good-will, inculcated to the greatest degree, so as to destroy in the minds of the children that selfishness which was the bane of our nature. Such effects appeared almost to realize the golden age, for the children appeared always happy, and never so happy as when attending the schools."—W. Smith, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... [fly-bane]. Amanita muscaria, or Agaricus muscarius (fly-agaric). This is the Siberian ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... from nowhere! Don't I know that type?" said the magnate, who confounded all scientists with inventors, the capital-seeking inventor being the bane and torment ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... have fled away from us, Mr. Alwyn!" she said with a slight smile—"I do not wonder at it. These receptions are the bane of one's social existence." ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... faint sigh of assent. She was disappointed by her sister's tone; for in the time past she had more than once suspected that Geraldine Challoner loved George Fairfax with a passionate half-despairing love, which, if unrequited, might make the bane of her life. And, lo! here was the same Geraldine discussing her engagement as coolly as if the match had been the veriest marriage of convenience ever planned by a designing dowager. She did not understand how much pride had to do with this reticence, or what volcanic ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... requiring that all its sprawling runners shall be gathered up in one gentle, tactful pull; the tender shepherd's purse coming easily on a straight twitch; the tough ragweed that yields to almost any kind of jerk. Even witch-grass, the bane of the farmer, has its rewarding side, when one really does get out its handful ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... with thy flocks to Cleitor's bounds thou'st hied, Take from this fount a draught, and grant a rest To all thy goats the water nymphs beside. But bathe not in't when full of drunken cheer, Lest the mere vapour may bring thee to bane; Shun my vine-hating spring—Melampus here From madness once washed Proetus' daughters sane, And all th' offscouring here did hide, when they From Argos came to ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... deeply the emptiness and futility of much of the religious talk. He was interested only in those emotions and professions which could get themselves translated into character and action. Words have always been the bane of religion as well as its vehicle. Religious emotion has enormous motive force, but it is the easiest thing in the world for it to sizzle away in high professions and wordy prayers. In that case it is a substitute ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... the soil of fallow land when he was smitten with the curse; and Heracles bade him give up the ploughing ox against his will. For he desired to find some pretext for war against the Dryopians for their bane, since they dwelt there reckless of right. But these tales would lead me far astray from my song. And quickly Hylas came to the spring which the people who dwell thereabouts call Pegae. And the dances of the nymphs were just now being held there; ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... the ranks, the Department of Defense could do little to insure a fair representation of Negroes in technical occupations or increase the number of black soldiers in higher grades. The problem tended to feed upon itself. Not only were the statistics the bane of civil rights organizations, but they also influenced talented young blacks to decide against a service career, in effect creating a variation of Gresham's law in the Army wherein men of low mentality were keeping out men of high intelligence. There seemed ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... hound, A hound both fleet and strong: He ate at my board, and he slept by my bed, And ran with me all the day long. But my wife took a priest, a shaveling priest, And 'such friendships are carnal,' quoth he. So my wife and her priest they drugged the poor beast, And the rat's bane is waiting ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... which had now become the curse of his existence. The despairing king at last implored the god to take back the fatal gift, and Dionysus, pitying his unhappy plight, desired him to bathe in the river Pactolus, a small stream in Lydia, in order to lose the power which had become the bane of his life. Midas joyfully obeying the injunction, was at once freed from the consequences of his avaricious demand, and from this time forth the sands of the river Pactolus have ever contained ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... not sufficiently thankful; and it never was more strongly manifested than in my own case, for both fear and apprehension vanished with habit, and I became fearless of those animated creatures which at first seemed to be the bane of my existence. When living in Cape Coast Castle, I used to see the rats come in troops past my door, walking over my black boys as they lay there, and who only turned themselves over to present the other sides of their ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... western sand, Spirits of earth, spirits of air; Spirits foul and spirits fair, My power obey! I break the rainbow's arched line; That herald of approaching calm. Thunder I send by cold moonshine,— Mine is the bane and mine the balm. My beck upwhirls the hurricane: The sun and moon and stars in vain Their wonted course would keep; Honey from out the rock doth weep When I command. My potent wand, Stretched on the mighty northern ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... made this man the bane of other lives, that were to be brought into contact with mine. I found that the happiness of two noble beings was being wrecked by this same man. One of these two had been my benefactor, had saved me from a fate ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... an old practitioner ventures to offer (from the respect he bears you) the fruits of his long experience. Half-price is a very proper privilege for those whose time or pockets do not afford them an opportunity of visiting the theatre earlier; but it is often the bane of an author on the first night of a five-act play. The new-comers know nothing of the foregone part of the drama; and having no context with which to connect allusions in the fourth and fifth acts, are ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... man saved him by his wit. Yes, and at times he came to visit me, for he still loved me as of old; but now he has fled north, and I shall hear his voice no more. Nay, I do not know all the tale; there was a woman in it. Women were ever the bane of Umslopogaas, my fostering. I forget the story of that woman, for I remember only these things that happened long ago, before I ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... his business manager. "But you know better than anyone else how unscrupulous gangs have tried to steal your inventions. At first it was Happy Harry the tramp, and the last was Doctor Bane. No telling how many thugs were after you and your father in between. You'd be wise ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton

... rarely brought into the encampment, that did not contribute to support the family of Mahtoree. But the policy of the chief seldom permitted more to remain than sufficed for the wants of the day, perfectly assured that all must suffer before hunger, the bane of savage life, could lay its fell fangs on ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... chief difficulty with this curious "monk-bane" etymology is its absurdity. The real origin of the word has given etymologists ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... had once been allowed to order were changed, greatly to her annoyance; Mrs. MacGregor liked such honest stuff as mutton chops and potatoes, just as she insisted upon oatmeal for breakfast. Porridge, she called it. In the afternoon they motored; Mrs. MacGregor, who detested speed, became the bane of ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... thou wast bonnie, my Marion, And lovesome thy rising breast-bane; The dew sat in gems ower thy ringlets, By the thorn when we ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... harmony.[5] In the laws, usages, and feelings of the people upon this subject we had the means of preventing that eternal subdivision of landed property, which ever has been, and ever will be, the bane of everything that is great and good in India; but, unhappily, our rulers have never had the wisdom to avail themselves of them. In a great part of India the property, or the lease of a village held in farm under Government, was considered ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... 30th, 1845, contains an article on the damage sustained by the potato crops here and in Ireland, full of matter calculated to enlighten our first rate reformers, who seem profoundly ignorant that superstition is the bane of intellect, and most formidable of all the obstacles which stand between the people and their rights: one paragraph is so peculiarly significant of the miserable condition to which Romanism and Protestantism have reduced a peasantry, said to be 'the finest ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... relative to Rome: but the diplomacy of the mission ill-suited him. Of the Royal ladies at court who befriended him, the marriage of one, the death of another, increased his insecurity. He had inherited, to his bane, another estate—Gonor—from his elder brother. It was encumbered, the cause litigious, and he had inherited with it the tutelage of a sickly child. He never shook off the burden. A tragic error marked his end. He died, certainly broken-hearted, just when ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc

... really guiltless in one respect—he had not desired his cousin's death; he would have gone back to the rescue had he not dreaded that he would share George's fate. Lack of courage had been his bane, and it was so now, for instead of speaking to Batley he temporized. The man had made no further attempt upon Crestwick, and Gladwyne decided that until he did so there was no need for him to interfere. Still, as the next few weeks passed, he was conscious of a growing ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... constructing the whole Irish Legislature and Ministry on this principle. But the objections appear to be considerable. Local bodies in the future should not be mixed up in national politics. That has been their bane in the past. Besides, the principle of indirect election is under a cloud everywhere, most of all in the United States. Australia rejected it in 1900, and the South Africans, while giving it partial recognition in the Senate, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... gratis, only metals and wood are charged for at cost price. Unfortunately workmen only go there at night when worn out by ten hours' labour in the workshop. Moreover, they carefully hide their inventions from each other, as they are hampered by patents and Capitalism—that bane of present society, that stumbling-block in the path ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... and said again: "Cousin, forsooth of this opinion Thou hast a vain imagination. This prison caused me not for to cry; But I was hurt right now thorough mine eye Into mine heart; that will my bane* be. *destruction The fairness of the lady that I see Yond in the garden roaming to and fro, Is cause of all my crying and my woe. I *n'ot wher* she be woman or goddess, *know not whether* But Venus is it, soothly* as I guess, *truly And therewithal on knees adown ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... I am determined to have my revenge. While we remain together on earth, I will pursue you—whatever your course in life may be, I will find you out; I will balk you in your dearest wishes—I will prove your bane in whatever you undertake—I will destroy your happiness—I will stand like a lion in your path, and bar your progress. I will not injure you in life or limb—I might kill you, but I will not do that—as you have injured me by legal means, so will I keep within ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... of Campania seems to have been equally infamous: and as much dreaded by mariners, as that of Rhegium, and Sicily. Here the Sirens inhabited, who are represented, as the bane of all, who navigated those seas. They like the Lamii were Cuthite, and Canaanitish priests, who had founded temples in these parts; and particularly near three small islands, to which they gave name. These temples were rendered more than ordinary famous on account of the women, who officiated. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... of manner, and as to that tenderness of character which was the bane of his existence,—as to his real and great goodness, which made him loved always and everywhere, and which caused such bitter tears to be shed at the news of his death,—these qualities are not to be sought in the strange, fanciful being who is styled Byron by M. Taine. These qualities ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... shuddering consciousness of its probability? Had she no reflection that each step she took, was taking her further and further from those who would aid her in all extremities? It would seem not, for she walked onward, unheeding, and apparently unthinking of the presence, possible or probable, of that bane ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... if we can't get in?" suggested Billie, waving her hand to Nellie Bane, another girl in her class, who passed on the opposite side ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler

... poor Allan Cunningham dead! A young man, only fifty-eight, strong and tall as a giant, might have lived to a hundred and one; but he bothered himself about the affairs of this world far too much. That statue shop [of Chantrey's] was his bane! Took to bookmaking likewise—in a word, was too fond of Mammon. Awful death—no preparation—came literally upon him like a thief in the dark. I'm thinking of writing a short life of him; old friend of twenty years' standing. I know a good deal about ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... departed; and they found but the now silent mourner, with folded arms, and a countenance that had in it volumes of unutterable wo, bending over the inanimate form of one whose life and misnamed love had been the bane of hers. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... fierce a king is here The stayer of falling folks, the bane of fear! Fair life he liveth, ruling passing well, Disdaining praise of Heaven and hate of Hell; And yet how goodly to us Great in Heaven Are such as he, the waning world that leaven! How well it were that such should never die! How well it were at least that memory Of such should ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... have made plenty of money in the winter, and spent it all in the Carnival—as is the common custom. Summer comes, the foreign visitors depart; no more work and no more money. Moral training, which might sustain them, is wholly wanting. The love of show, that peculiar disease of Rome, is their bane. The wife, if she be pretty, sells herself, or the husband does what he had better ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... death and destructioun? as thow may easilie perceave, suppoise thei cullour thair false intent and mynd, with the persute of heresye. For when thy baronis ar putt doun, what arte thow bot the King of Bane?[110] and then of necessitie man be guydit be thame: and thare, (no doubt,) whare ane blynd man is guyd, mon be ane fall in the myre. Thairfoir lett thy Grace tack hardiment and authoritie, quhilk thow ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... Emphasis is the bane of all story-telling, for it destroys the delicacy, and the whole performance suggests a struggle in conveying the message. The indecision of the victory leaves the ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... well-to-do parents, but homeless, living in hotels and boarding-houses, is awfully handicapped. Children are only little animals, and travel is their bane and scourge. They belong on the ground, among the leaves and flowers and tall grass—in the trees or digging in sand piles. Hotel hallways, table-d'hote dinners and the clash of travel, are all terrible perversions ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... inasmuch as natural selection meant the emergence of a "higher" type, and as there was no room for design within the process, might not the process itself be an expression of design? There might still be room for what Huxley, with one of those foolish concessions to established opinion which is the bane of English thought, called the "wider teleology." This was a teleology which placed a designing mind at the back of the evolutionary process, and arranging it with a view to a preconceived end. The process ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... thought: "she'll have rat-bane in his broth some day." He kissed her with no more fervour than if she had been a wooden figurehead, but she was not thus to be accepted: she put an arm quickly round his neck and pressed her passionate lips to his. Back he drew wincing. "Oh, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... born from friction of the deodars, A scudding fire should prove the mountain's bane, Singeing the tails of yaks with fiery stars, Quench thou the flame with countless streams of rain— The great have power that they may ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... passed the first range of pits; but a second and wider awaited him; and there, seeing his men sink into them by squadrons, he beheld the whole army of Wallace close in upon them. Terrific was now the havoc. The very numbers of the Southrons, and the mixed discipline of their army, proved its bane. In the tumult they hardly understood the orders which were given; and some mistaking them, acted so contrary to the intended movements, that Edward, galloping from one end of the field to the other, appeared like a frantic man, regardless of every personal danger, so that he could but fix others ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... debility and dyspepsia, as well as for a vermifuge. The lipad, owing to its heavy nauseous odour, is believed to keep off evil soirits. In some places, occupying the sides and hollows of ravines, are found the rose bay (Nerium Oleander), called in Persian khar-zarah, or ass-bane, the wild laburnum and various ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... able to perform with ease feats beyond the reach of any English Cabinets. He will dare to be strong because he knows he is popular: he will punish conspirators with a severity unknown to modern English governments; he will feel that anarchy is the bane of his country, and he will not tolerate disorder. Boycotters, Moonlighters, Dynamiters or Assassins will find that they are called upon to meet a force of which they have had before no experience. They will discover that they are engaged in a contest with ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... on his guard against showy virtues, which of their very nature encourage vainglory, the bane of all good works. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... banks we loitered, observing at our leisure the products of these new fields. He who traverses the woodland paths, at this season, will have occasion to remember the small drooping bell-like flowers and slender red stem of the dogs-bane, and the coarser stem and berry of the poke, which are both common in remoter and wilder scenes; and if "the sun casts such a reflecting heat from the sweet fern," as makes him faint, when he is climbing the bare hills, as they complained who first penetrated into these ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... Nay, then I am familiar with thy haste. Bane to my fortunes! what meant I to marry? I, that before was rank'd in such content, My mind at rest too, in so soft a peace, Being free master of mine own free thoughts, And now become a slave? What! never sigh; ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... Argus. All would be in leaded type, and written in a style and manner that would attract attention, for he felt that he was first on the ground, and would not have the usual rush in preparing his copy which had been the bane of his life. It would give the Argus practically the lead in this case, which he was convinced would become one of ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr

... thou art eager to hear,—save, indeed, as to whence he came, for, many as the Argives be, not one can tell that clearly. Only we guess that some one of the Immortals, in wrath for sacrifice unoffered, sent this bane against the children of Phoroneus. For over all the men of Pisa the lion swept, like a flood, and still ravaged insatiate, and chiefly spoiled the Bembinaeans, that were his neighbours, and ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... often a symbol of malevolence and enmity. It appears among the emblems of Siva-Roudra, the power of desolation and death: it is the bane of AĆ«pytus, Idom, Archemorus, and Philoctetes: it gnaws the roots of the tree of life in the Eddas, and bites the heel of unfortunate Eurydice. In Hebrew writers it is generally a type of evil; and is particularly so in the Indian and Persian Mythologies. When ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... ken whether the bobbie meant rinnin' ower the grund, or coverin't efter he was turned into gooana or bane-dust; but I saw the lauch in his ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond

... said she) To hallow it, my body tombe my soule, And when I leaue the mid-day-sunne for thee, Blush Moone, the regent of the nether roule. What I hold deerest, that my life controule, And what I prize more precious then imagery, Heauens, grant the same my bane and ruine be, And where I liue, wish all ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald, for the murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's regiment of foot. June, ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... passed on to "him," who was addressed as Bane, or Dane, or something of that ilk; and I was sorry for poor Sir Samuel, whose face showed how little he enjoyed the prospect of being cooped up ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... for thy pleasure be it, That Phillis, wrathful Phillis that repines me All grace but death, may deign to come and see it, And seeing grieve at that which she assigns me. This only boon for all my mortal bane I crave and cry for at thy mercy seat: That when her wrath a faithful heart hath slain, And soul is fled, and body reft of heat, She might perceive how much she might command, That had my life and death ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... far down in the trachea, or only at its anterior opening? Are they voice tones or flute tones? These questions will be answered as we proceed to examine the bird's lyrical apparatus without going into wearisome detail, or making use of many difficult scientific terms, which are the bane ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... 'but a short while is hand fain of blow,' and so it will be here; but still Gunnar will set thee free from this matter. But if Hallgerda makes thee take another fly in thy mouth, then that will be thy bane." ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left and must stand it should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from one end of the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is the bane and mischief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house to house ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... space.'[388] In 1597 Issobell Richie, Margrat Og, Helene Rogie, Jonet Lucas, Jonet Dauidsone, Issobell Oige, and Beatrice Robbie were accused of a meeting at Craigleauche, near Aberdeen: 'Thow art indyttit for the being at the twa devylische dances betuixt Lumfannand and Cragleauche, with vmquhile Margerat Bane, vpon Alhalowewin last, quhair thow conferrit with the Dewill.'[389] In Ayrshire in 1604 Patrik Lowrie and his companion-witches were accused that they 'att Hallowevin in the yeir of God foirsaid, assemblit thame selffis vpon Lowdon-hill, ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... by the issue we discern God's blessing, and the bane. Count Louis' dust would fill an urn, His deeds are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... infant fortunate and strong. Then weep no more, and check thy sighs, Sweet lady of the lotus eyes." The queen, who loved her perished lord, For meet reply, the saint adored, And, of her husband long bereaved, She bore a son by him conceived. Because her rival mixed the bane To render her conception vain, And fruit unripened to destroy, Sagar(249) she called her darling boy. To Sagar Asamanj was heir: Bright Ansuman his consort bare. Ansuman's son, Dilipa famed, Begot a son Bhagirath named. From him the great Kakutstha rose: From him came Raghu, feared by foes, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... humiliation of going through the Insolvent Debtors' Court. It is not always easy to understand the justice of these things: and it has often appeared to me that something of the favouritism which is the bane of our governments on earth must needs obtain at a higher tribunal. One man enters life with an entailed estate worth seventy thousand a-year, while another finds himself in the hands of the Jews before he is twenty years of age. 'There's something in this world amiss shall be unriddled by-and-by,' ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... is as if language could not come by its full meaning save on the lips of those who regard it as an evil necessity. Every word is torn from them, as from a reluctant witness. They come to speech as to a last resort, when all other ways have failed. The bane of a literary education is that it induces talkativeness, and an overweening confidence in words. But those whose words are stark and terrible ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... advocates of his time the disgraceful art of hiring applauders by profession. This was the bane of all true oratory, and, for that reason, Maternus was right in renouncing the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... trouble with the average woman of the age in which we live, Beatrice, is that she is above her business. She tries to be superior to her husband, and in many instances she succeeds. That is the bane of wedded life. Do not strive to be superior to your husband, Beatrice. If you ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... said Media, "that, bane or blessing, Bello will yield his birthright? Will a tri-crowned king resign his triple diadem? And even did Bello what you propose he would only breed still greater perplexities. For if granted, full soon would Verdanna be glad to surrender many things she demands. And all she now asks, she has ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... spirit of contradiction. But the truth is, he had the good sense to see that he might "go farther and fare worse;" and that, at any rate, he would thus secure himself from the intrusions of that "good company," which had been his bane. By-the-by, his last "good thing" appertains to his residence here. Some one asked him how he could think of residing in "such a place as Calais?" "I suppose," said he, "it is possible for a gentleman to live between ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various

... Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, By the cross are sanctified; Peace is there that knows no measure, Joys that ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton









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