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More "Misfortune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Florent hasn't an idea about politics, and would have done far better to seek a berth as writing master in a ladies' school! It would be nothing short of a misfortune if he were to succeed, for, with his visionary social sentimentalities, he would crush us down beneath his confounded working men! It's all that, you know, which ruins the party. We don't need any more tearful sentimentalists, humanitarian poets, people who kiss and slobber over ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... attempt made to emigrate Mick, but it was futile, Mick declaring that 'he'd deserve any misfortune, so he would, if he was ever to turn his back on the old woman again.' Mrs. Sheehy has forgiven us our innocent share in keeping Mick at home with her. The mother and son still live together, with varying times, just as the working mood is on or off Mick. I believe his favourite ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... Mr. Galbraith, Robert Morton had had all he could do to keep from Willie the assurance that Janoah's accusations were false and that instead of misfortune good luck was winging its way toward the low gray house on the bay. Bob was a generous fellow and it added tenfold to his present happiness to know that joy was also coming to one toward whom he cherished ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... gathered, and the waters are out, and the great deeps are broken up. God's sceptre does not fall from His grasp, nor is snatched by alien hands. The throne abideth. Joy will rise from the apparent chaos as springs are unsealed by the earthquake. He will bring fortune out of misfortune; the darkness shall be ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... opinion the sooner the funeral ceremonies are finished the better. The body of the unfortunate Marcia ought not to be deposited in these silent retreats of death without some living token of our respect. She was amiable while living, and notwithstanding the misfortune of a disordered brain, and an innocent, unsuspecting confidence in another's honour, is, in my way of thinking, no less amiable when dead.—Our friend, the Indian will, I know, be complaisant enough on this occasion to give us a few sentences, and then the venerable ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... certain Lord Was of her family, tho' dispossessed Of all he had: of course you know the rest, He had been acting very ill, you see. But they should make acquaintance with the best, For think what claims they had of pedigree! (Misfortune always lends a grace ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... itself underwent many changes of owners. It was originally founded in 1183, by Henry II. King of England and Duke of Normandy, as a priory, under the invocation of St. Julien, for the reception of unmarried females of rank, who, having the misfortune to be affected with leprosy, devoted themselves to a religious life. That terrible disease, happily almost unknown except by tradition, in our days, was in those times of so frequent occurrence, that legislative enactments were repeatedly necessary to restrain its ravages. In the history ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... what not, as my conductor observed. A glance was all I bestowed on this caricature upon English gardens; I then went off in a huff at being chased from my bower, and grumbled all the road to Entsweigen; where, to our misfortune, we lay amidst hogs and vermin, who amply revenged my quarrels with ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... world is but the antechamber of the next," said the prelate. "By suffering and tribulation the soul is cleansed, and the true victor may be he who by the patient endurance of misfortune ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "I'm up to most dodges. But look here, my girl: it wouldn't be prudent in me, lest there should be such a personage as you have just mentioned, to be hard upon any of my fellow-creatures: I am one day pretty sure to be in misfortune myself. You mightn't think it of me, but I am not quite a heathen, and do reflect a little at times. You may be as wicked as myself, or as good as Joseph, for anything I know or care, for, as I say, it ain't my business to judge ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... facts before the mind, it is not difficult to perceive that the colored population of Jamaica can not but still labor under the disadvantages of hereditary barbarism and involuntary servitude, with the superadded misfortune of being inadequately supplied with Christian instruction, along with their recent acquisition of freedom. But while all this must be admitted, of the colored people of Jamaica, it is not true of those of our own country; for, long since, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... She came to complain to the cardinal that his nephew, the cadet, had entertained her for two days without giving her a farthing. His Eminence smiled modestly: 'Lady, the Church is poor, but I do not wish that for this misfortune the good name of the family should suffer. Take this and it will be remedied,' and he handed her two duros. The Portuguese, encouraged by her good reception, began to bawl and complain, thinking she would terrify ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... expressed in many parts of the world by merely shrugging the shoulders, without turning inwards the elbows and opening the hands. The man or child who is obstinate, or one who is resigned to some great misfortune, has in neither case any idea of resistance by active means; and he expresses this state of mind, by simply keeping his shoulders raised; or he may possibly fold his arms ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... for a resort by the legal owners of property to legal means of recovering the possession of it from persons who fail to comply with the terms on which it was put into their keeping. Whether this failure results from dishonesty or from misfortune is a consideration not often allowed, I think, to affect the right of the legal owner of the property concerned to his legal remedy in any other country but Ireland, nor even in Ireland in the case of any property other than property ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... this mischief had not then befall'n, And more that shall befall, innumerable Disturbances on Earth through Femal snares, And straight conjunction with this Sex: for either He never shall find out fit Mate, but such As some misfortune brings him, or mistake, 900 Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain Through her perverseness, but shall see her gaind By a farr worse, or if she love, withheld By Parents, or his happiest choice too late Shall meet, alreadie linkt and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... 1 When dread misfortune's tempests rise, And roar through all the darkened skies, Where shall the anxious pilgrim gain A shelter from the wind and rain? Within the covert of thy grace, O Lord, there is a hiding-place, Where, unconcerned, we hear the sound, Though storm and ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... your Excellency, and believing it," Mrs. Clephane answered,—"and at the end not being too severe on me for my misfortune ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... into the forbidden precinct of Zeus, not knowing the law, and being pursued by her own son and the Arcadians, was about to be killed because of the said law; but Zeus delivered her because of her connection with him and put her among the stars, giving her the name Bear because of the misfortune which had ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... of reckoning was at hand; the retribution fell on but part of the real criminals, and bore most heavily on those who were innocent of any actual complicity in the deed of evil. Nevertheless it is impossible to grieve overmuch for the misfortune that befell men who freely forgave and condoned such ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Riccabocca's, an incident occurred to Leonard that served to carry his mind into new directions. One evening, when his mother was out, he was at work on a new mechanical contrivance, and had the misfortune to break one of the instruments which he employed. Now it will be remembered that his father had been the squire's head carpenter: the widow had carefully hoarded the tools of his craft, which had belonged ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instrument I was holding, for death instead of life. I remember now that a sudden impulse seemed given to my arm as if some one had struck it a blow. Then a sound which it had never before been my misfortune to hear—and I pray God I may never hear it again—startled me to an agonized sense of the disaster I had wrought. Too well I knew the meaning of the lapping, hissing, sucking noise that instantly smote our ears. I had made a deep cut across the jugular vein, the wound ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... period had passed away, during which a small army, the last gleanings, as it seemed, of the English sword, had been assembled at Blois, under Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles, and other chiefs, who to their natural valour were now beginning to unite the wisdom that is taught by misfortune. It was resolved to send Joan with this force and a convoy of provisions to Orleans. The distress of that city had now become urgent. But the communication with the open country was not entirely cut ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... class must necessarily affect the whole course of my life. A certain kind of man declares himself proud of such an origin—and most often lies. Or one may be driven by it into rebellion against social privilege. To me, my origin is simply a grave misfortune, to be accepted and, if possible, overcome. Does that sound mean-spirited? I can't help it; I want ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... them. He says there are several of his old parishioners who remember when the village had its bar-guest, or bar-ghost—a spirit supposed to belong to a town or village, and to predict any impending misfortune by midnight shrieks and wailings. The last time it was heard was just before the death of Mr. Bracebridge's father, who was much beloved throughout the neighbourhood; though there are not wanting some obstinate unbelievers, who insisted that it was nothing but the howling ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... separate the combatants; and when they had separated them in one place, they began again in another. This lasted the better part of the night. Nevertheless with great labour and endurance at last they were separated. And be it known to you that this was the greatest misfortune that ever befell a host, and little did it lack that the host was not lost utterly. But ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... by this sad calamity, no one was more to be pitied than Louis Perron: deeply did the poor boy lament the thoughtless folly which had involved his cousin Catharine in so terrible a misfortune. "If Kate had not been with me," he would say, "we should not have been lost; for Hector is so cautious and so careful, he would not have left the cattle-path; but we were so heedless, we thought only of flowers and insects, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... although the orders were repeated almost every day for a month. He lingered, and loitered, and excused himself, and at last was taken prisoner. This disposed of him for a time very satisfactorily, but meanwhile he had succeeded in keeping his troops from Washington, which was a most serious misfortune. ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... you have read, and have no doubt been able to trace through history the source of prosperity and misfortune among the nations. The curse of India is her overpopulation and the inability of her people to extract from the earth sufficient means for existence. If I may say so, the ordinary native is a dreamer who prefers to starve on a ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... till to-morrow: that which belongs to the moment we drink up in all its bitterness, before the spirit evaporates. We probe minute mischiefs to the quick; we lacerate, tear, and mangle our bosoms with misfortune's finest, brittlest point, and wreak our vengeance on ourselves and it for good and all. Small pains are more manageable, ore within our reach; we can fret and worry ourselves about them, can turn them into any shape, can twist and torture them how we please:—a grain of ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... tired to remain on guard, Eloise," I said, forgetting I should not use that name, "or I might bid you watch here, and, if any misfortune befall me, call the others. Besides, if there are enemies at hand there is no knowing from what direction they may chance upon us. However, all we have observed were probably old marks, or made by roving beasts, and I shall soon return ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... and dismay, and said to his fellow-passengers, "This priest, whom we have just lost, was my cousin; he was going to Kiyoto, to visit the shrine of his patron; and as I happened to have business there as well, we settled to travel together. Now, alas! by this misfortune, my cousin is dead, and I am ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... scattering desolation where they go. To thee I owe that fatal bent of mind, Still to unhappy restless thoughts inclined; To thee, what oft I vainly strive to hide, That scorn of fools, by fools mistook for pride; From thee whatever virtue takes its rise, Grows a misfortune, or becomes a vice; Such were thy rules to be poetically great: "Stoop not to interest, flattery, or deceit; Nor with hired thoughts be thy devotion paid; Learn to disdain their mercenary aid; Be this thy sure defence, thy brazen wall, Know no base action, at no guilt ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... am I to do?" thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly indicated that Natasha had some terrible intention. "The count is away. What am I to do? Write to Kuragin demanding an explanation? But what is there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince Andrew asked me to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she really has already refused Bolkonski—she sent a letter to Princess Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away...." To tell Marya Dmitrievna who had such faith in Natasha seemed to Sonya terrible. "Well, anyway," thought Sonya as she stood in the dark passage, "now ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... had been the misfortune of the M. N. 1 that she poked her tail into a mass of this long, tough grass, which was now wound about ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... friend," said Isabelle, pressing her horse to the gallop, "and thou, good fellow," she added, addressing Hans Glover, "get thee off to another road, and do not stay to partake our misfortune and danger." ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... It is a decided misfortune to a community to be divided in its national leanings, and to have no great fusing interests within or without itself, such as those which knit vigorous Victoria to the mother country, or distant Oregon to the heart of the Republic at Washington. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... is committed by those who assert, that Scripture, by this general calculation of years, only intended to mark the period of the regular administration of the Hebrew state, leaving out the years of anarchy and subjection as periods of misfortune and interregnum. (7) Scripture certainly passes over in silence periods of anarchy, but does not, as they dream, refuse to reckon them or wipe them out of the country's annals. (8) It is clear that Ezra, in 1 Kings vi., ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... days before, I had never heard of. The worthiness of the cause for which this great army had been created to fight, was not entirely clear to me; it is true that I appreciated the fact that in former days, before my misfortune had deprived me of data upon which to reason, I had decided my duty as to that cause; yet it now appealed to me so little, that I was conscious of struggling to rise above indifference. I reproached myself for lack of patriotism. I had read the morning's Dispatch ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... wore the ashen hue of long confinement. Some were shamefaced, some reckless, some sullen. A few white convicts among them seemed doubly ashamed—both of their condition and of their company; they kept together as much as they were permitted, and looked with contempt at their black companions in misfortune. Fetters's man and Haines, armed with whips, and with pistols in their belts, were present to oversee the unloading, and the colonel could see them point him out to the State officers who had come in charge ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... until we turned an angle of the river, and found ourselves too near to retreat. In such a moment, without knowing what was before them, the coolness of the men was strikingly exemplified. No one even spoke after they became aware that silence was necessary. The natives (probably anticipating misfortune) stood leaning upon their spears upon the lofty bank above us. Desiring the men not to move from their seats, I stood up to survey the channel, and to steer the boat to that part of it which was least impeded by rocks. I was obliged to decide upon a hasty survey, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... might have been expected, decided in favor of Aphrodite, who had promised him that the fairest woman living in the whole world should be his wife. This promise had to be kept, being given by a goddess, but it was the source of endless misfortune, for Paris had a young and lovely wife who was tenderly attached to him, while the fairest of living women—acknowledged as such by fame in all known countries—was Queen Helen of Sparta, herself the wife of ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... to keep calm, and assured them that it was no joke, but that San Francisco was really in the hands of the Japanese. It was the duty of the employees and the citizens, he said, to refrain from all resistance, so that a worse misfortune—a bombardment, he added in a ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... in the same method, but actuated by the like spirit, we abridge of their liberty, and torment by scorn, all who either fall short, or exceed the usual standard, if they happen to have the additional misfortune of poverty. Perhaps we are in no part more susceptible than in our vanity, how much then must those poor wretches suffer, whose deformity would lead them to wish to be secluded from human view, in being exposed to the public, whose observations are no better than expressions of scorn, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... actually a section in the penal code taking cognisance of the crime. The Hindoo will not touch a dead carcase, so that when a bullock mysteriously sickens and dies, the Chumars haul away the body, and appropriate the skin. Some luckless witch is blamed for the misfortune, when the rascally Chumars themselves are all the while the real culprits. The police, however, are pretty successful in detecting this crime, and it is not now of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... me a source of unavailing grief, that after the expenditure of so much time, and labour, and suffering, and means, one of the most important measures of my life may prove a misfortune to the Church of my affections and the country of my birth. I have only to say, that as long as there is any prospect of my being useful to either, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... as a prisoner, though melancholy, was not undignified; he paid no allegiance, he met the men of his own rank, nor was he of a kind to whom poverty, the chief thorn of his misfortune, ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... AND MOTION STUDY IS UNLIMITED.—It is a great misfortune that the worker does not understand, as he should, that motion study and time study apply not only to his work, but also to the work of the managers. In order to get results from the start, and paying results, it often happens that the work of the worker is the first to be so studied, ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... about you which makes people stare. Dear Kathie could pass along quietly, or sit in a corner of a room and be conveniently overlooked, but you—I am not paying you a compliment, my dear, I consider it is a misfortune!—you take the eye! Wherever you go, people will notice you and gossip about your movements. At twenty-six, and with your appearance, I ask you candidly, as aunt to niece—do you consider yourself a suitable person to live alone, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... arrived one after the other,—his outlook continued to darken and darken, till it had become very dark indeed. There is perennially the great comfort, immense if you can manage it, of making front against misfortune; of looking it frankly in the face, and doing with a resolution, hour by hour, your own utmost against it. Friedrich never lacked that comfort; and was not heard complaining. But from December 13th, 1744, when he hastened home to Berlin, under such aspects, till June 4th, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... him with mild interest. In front of the two-story frame building that seemed to stagger, or at least to shrink, under the weight of its own importance, the stranger—a man—paused to glance at one of the placards heralding the misfortune and at the same time the far from parsimonious regard of the lady who had been despoiled of a fashionable bulldog. Having perused the singularly comprehensive notice, he deliberately tore it down, folded it with some care, and stuck it ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... section, I must say one word as to PUNNABLE names, names that stand alone, that have a significance and life apart from him that bears them. These are the bitterest of all. One friend of mine goes bowed and humbled through life under the weight of this misfortune; for it is an awful thing when a man's name is a joke, when he cannot be mentioned without exciting merriment, and when even the intimation of his death bids fair to carry ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has wise saws and modern instances quoted to him in his distress. For instance, whilst hesitating about utterly annihilating the Wu reigning family, he was advised: "If one will not take gifts from Heaven, Heaven may send one misfortune." This is a very hackneyed saying in ancient Chinese history, and is as much used to-day as it was 2500 years ago: it comes from the Book of Chou (now partly lost). It will be remembered that the distinguished Japanese statesman, Count ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... went on Sir Henry, "my only and younger brother, and till five years ago I do not suppose that we were ever a month away from each other. But just about five years ago a misfortune befell us, as sometimes does happen in families. We quarrelled bitterly, and I behaved unjustly to ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... that the first time he sat on the royal throne of Persia, under the canopy of gold, Demaratus, the Corinthian, who was much attached to him and had been one of his father's friends, wept, in an old man's manner, and deplored the misfortune of those Creeks whom death had deprived of the satisfaction of seeing Alexander seated on the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Jehovah and said, "Jehovah, why hast thou brought misfortune upon this people? Why is it that thou has sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name he has wronged this people, and thou hast done nothing at all ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... influences in which they delight are to be found, and where they encounter men and women still in the flesh who are like-minded with themselves. For such an entity as one of these to meet with a medium with whom he is in affinity is indeed a terrible misfortune; not only does it enable him to prolong enormously his dreadful life in Kamaloka but it renews for perhaps an indefinite period his power to generate evil Karma, and so prepare for himself a future incarnation of the most degraded character, besides running the risk of losing ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... to richly deserved misfortune, our commiseration, and be not over-hasty meanwhile in our censure of the French people, left for the first time to govern themselves, remembering ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... will cease to be miserable if it be duly faced; and something is done towards conquering our miseries, when we face them in any degree, even if not with due courage. Herbert had taken his plunge into the deep, dark, cold, comfortless pool of misfortune; and he felt that the waters around him were very cold. But the plunge had been taken, and the worst, perhaps, was ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... of constituencies by a comparatively small number of busybodies interested in some particular fad. A large number of members of Parliament really had to bend to some two or three hundred electors, although there might be 20,000 in the whole constituency. He had the misfortune to be elected by only a gross. It was strictly true that in many cases a candidate was compelled to consent to support something that he felt strongly against, merely because a certain percentage ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... ghosts. Fourth, a deification of certain abstract ideas, such as War, Fate, Victory, and Death. But the average heathen Anglo-Saxon religion was merely a vast mass of superstition, a dark and gloomy terrorism, begotten of the vague dread of misfortune which barbarians naturally feel in a half-peopled land, where war and massacre are the highest business of every man's lifetime, and a violent death the ordinary way in which he meets ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... second thoughts, if I could find out that the dear creature carried any of her letters in her pockets, I can get her to a play or to a concert, and she may have the misfortune ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... writes, "This morning I leave 39 Castle Street for the last time." It was something to have written a book sought for by him at such a moment. Even at Malta, in December, 1831, when the pressure of disease, as well as of misfortune, was upon him, Sir Walter was often found with a volume of Miss Austen in his hand, and said to a friend, "There is a finishing-off in some of her scenes that is really quite above ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... privations, and making perforce the most faithful study ever made of their life. It must be confessed that the picture has few features attractive to people at peace with society. Most of the brigands are men who have placed themselves beyond the law by some hideous crime,—or misfortune, as they would call it in Naples,—and in other cases they are idle ruffians, who have taken to robbery because they like it. They generally look forward to a time when, having placed a sufficient amount of money at interest, they can surrender themselves to the authorities, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... envied families in control of the government. His mother's family, the Glinskis, were especially unpopular; and when a terrific fire destroyed nearly the whole of Moscow it was whispered by jealous boyars that the Princess Anna Glinski had brought this misfortune upon them by enchantments. She had taken human hearts, boiled them in water, and then sprinkled the houses where the fire started! An enraged populace burst into the palace of the Glinskis, murdering all they ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... life is urged as being only secondary in importance to possessing a big family; that there is an intimate association between the two there can be no doubt, since the latter beyond peradventure would entail the former. It has ever been the habit and misfortune of sages now and then to desert the field of their own peculiar activities and to make incursions into unknown regions—generally giving advice with a dogmatism and finality proportionate to their ignorance ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... effectually destroyed all pleasure on her part, and had made the change appear an unmitigated misfortune, even though she did not know what she would have thought the worst. Congratulations were dreadful to her, and it was all that Isabel could do to persuade her to repress her dislike so as not to ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... misfortune, but his fault; and any view that falls short of this fact is radically defective. Sin not only brings a corruption and bondage, but also a condemnation and penalty, upon the self-will that originates it. Sin not only renders man unfit for rewards, font also ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... that France may be animated by a spirit of rational liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest policy, to provide a permanent body in which that spirit may reside, and an effectual organ by which it may act, it is my misfortune to entertain great doubts concerning several material points in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... keep each other in countenance. I had been but a few weeks in our present miserable abode, and had fully recovered my health, though I think that I was a little crazed with the prints, and the subjects of them, over which I daily pored in the large Bible, when the greatest misfortune of all came upon the poor Brandons—and that was, to add to their other losses, the loss of my ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... vote, Camillus appeared openly against it, shrinking from no unpopularity, and inveighing boldly against the promoters of it, and so urging and constraining the multitude, that, contrary to their inclinations, they rejected the proposal; but yet hated Camillus. Insomuch that, though a great misfortune befell him in his family (one of his two sons dying of a disease), commiseration for this could not in the least make them abate of their malice. And, indeed, he took this loss with immoderate sorrow, being a man naturally ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... day.... The new saw-mill has just been raised; we had 20 men to supper on 6th day, and 12 on 7th day." But there were quilting-bees and apple-parings and sleighing parties and many good times, for the elastic temperament of youth rallies quickly from grief and misfortune. Susan went to Presbyterian church one Sunday, and the gray-robed Quaker ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Robert Lansing's real misfortune was not knowing how to play his luck. It is curious the fear men have of death. The former Secretary of State's only hope of immortality was to commit political suicide, and he lacked the courage or the vision to ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... sincerely for writing to me so soon after your most heavy misfortune. Your letter affected me so much. We both most truly sympathise with you and Mrs. Fox. We too lost, as you may remember, not so very long ago, a most dear child, of whom I can hardly yet bear to think tranquilly; yet, as you must know from your own most painful experience, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... than a message came to him to desist from the assault; because "it was more reasonable that the Roman soldiers, who had fought the Aetolians in the field, should reap the fruits of the victory." Thus was Lamia relieved, and the misfortune of a neighbouring city proved the means of its escaping ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... poor honest people, to indulge themselves in their debaucheries; that they would do well to think of amending before the Justice of their country fell upon them; and that after such warning they must not expect any assistance from him, in case they should fall under any misfortune. The next thing that followed after this fine harangue was that they were put into the information of some of Jonathan's creatures; or the first fresh fact they committed and Jonathan was applied to for the recovery of the goods, he immediately ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... after a second marriage, a victim to phthisis. Thus Gorki was left an orphan. His stern grandfather now took charge of him. According to the Russian custom he was early apprenticed to a cobbler. But here misfortune befell him. He scalded himself with boiling water, and the foreman sent him home to his grandfather. Before this he had been to school for a short time; but as he contracted small-pox he had to give up his schooling. And that, to his own satisfaction, was the end of his education. ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... bear. They fired their machine guns, and the Germans replied in kind, but with more terrible effect, for two of the Allied planes were shot down. It was a sad loss, but it was the fortune of war, or, rather, misfortune, for the Zeppelin was not engaged in a fair fight, but seeking to bomb ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... enter the apothecary's shop which stood at the corner of Chiavica, and there he stayed a while transacting it. I had just been told that he had boasted of the insult which he fancied he had put upon me; but be that as it may, it was to his misfortune; for precisely when I came up to the corner, he was leaving the shop and his bravi had opened their ranks and received him in their midst. I drew a little dagger with a sharpened edge, and breaking the line of his defenders, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... safety against Bulgaria, while there was yet time, the Allies, said M. Delcasse, acted on the advice of M. Venizelos, who told them that the Graeco-Servian Treaty was purely defensive: that it did not provide for action unless Bulgaria attacked; and what a misfortune if Servia, by such measures, should appear to take an initiative which would give Bulgaria an excuse for the aggression she meditated. Therefore, they bade Servia devote her whole attention to the security of her ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... moment for clever manoeuvring. What a disaster if this big industry should fall into the hands of one so incapable as Theodore! What a misfortune if Casimir took charge! Neither side thought that a partnership could be possible, and the two cousins share alike. Each wanted ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... with these personages, Robespierre being the only name of consequence mentioned in his letters; and then it appeared in much the same fashion practised by her father in alluding to the Governor of the State, who had the misfortune to be unpopular with Mr. Carewe. But this did not dim her great-uncle's lustre in Miss Betty's eyes, nor lessen for her the pathetic romance of the ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... yet they were trying to make talk among themselves as usual; they seemed as though they dared not let themselves be silent, when Sylvia, sitting opposite to the window, saw Philip at the top of the brow, running rapidly towards the farm. She had been so full of the anticipation of some kind of misfortune all the morning that she felt now as if this was the very precursive circumstance she had been expecting; she stood up, turning quite white, and, pointing ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... gone from the undissembled sternness of his old resolutions. If he could but be rid of that altogether! He thought he had obtained a mystic recognition of the terrorless but uncommunicating Joy of life which while men live they pursue, desiring it with the one human craving which survives every misfortune, every thwarted hope, all enslavement of the heart's small freedom—the thirst for happiness. Was man, whom God had made in His own Image, but a shadow on the unstable wind? Could it be true that he came in with vanity ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... mother's counsel finally deterred him), and above all his creation of the curse of Rome, a hungry and brutal proletariate, by largesses of corn, present his character as a public man in darker colours. As Mommsen says, "Right and wrong, fortune and misfortune, were so inextricably blended in him that it may well beseem history in this case to reserve her judgment." [25] The discord of his character is increased by the story that an inward impulse dissuaded him at first from ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the mother of cows was once weeping in the celestial regions. O child, Indra took compassion upon her, and asked her, saying, "O auspicious one! why dost thou weep? Is everything well with the celestials? Hath any misfortune, ever so little, befallen the world of men or serpents?" Suravi replied, "No evil hath befallen thee that I perceive. But I am aggrieved on account of my son, and it is therefore, O Kausika, that I weep! See, O chief of the ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... state-room; and Sumner and Mrs. Hasty, meeting in the cabin, clasped hands, with these few but touching words: "We must die." "Let us die calmly, then." "I hope so, Mrs. Hasty." It was in the gray dusk, and amid the awful tumult, that the companions in misfortune met. The side of the cabin to the leeward had already settled under water; and furniture, trunks, and fragments of the skylight were floating to and fro; while the inclined position of the floor made it difficult to stand; and every sea, as ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in falling from a slippery ledge. When Jan, from his wood-chopping in the edge of the forest, saw the team race up to the little cabin and a strange Cree half carry the wounded man through the door, he sped swiftly across the open with visions of new misfortune ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... against the moral darkness of the land. The gloom of Los Hatos woods was preferable; a life of hardships in the train of a robber band less debasing. Antonia embraced with all her soul her uncle's obstinate defiance of misfortune. It was grounded in the belief in the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... seemed pleased to see me near her, and extended her hand to me with a little smile. The doctor had told her she must not attempt to speak. I held her hand for awhile, and told how grieved I was over her misfortune. And then I told her I would bring her a tablet and pencil, so that she might communicate her wants to us; and then I said to her that I was out of a job at my trade (I know that the angels in heaven do not record such lies), and that I had nothing ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Even her most affectionate looks, and smiles, and pressures of the hand, while they agitated me, produced a feeling of salutary respect mingled with compassion. One evening, I remember, when suffering under a sad misfortune, the poor girl threw her arms round my neck, and wept as if her heart would break. She had not the least idea of impropriety; no daughter could embrace a father with more perfect innocence and unsuspecting ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... uncle that would gladden any boy's heart; he delighted to have us staying in the house; he said it made the old place cheery and pleasant, for he had the misfortune to be a bachelor; and with the exception of his old housekeeper—whom we boys half worried to death—and his female servants, he saw no 'women folk,' all the year round, but our mother. He was one of the right sort, always planning pic-nics, fishing and rowing excursions; and kept ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... her Spirits; but after, consulting what they should do in this Affair, Villenoys ask'd her, Who of the House saw him? She said, Only Maria, who knew not who he was; so that, resolving to save Isabella's Honour, which was the only Misfortune to come, Villenoys himself propos'd the carrying him out to the Bridge, and throwing him into the River, where the Stream would carry him down to the Sea, and lose him; or, if he were found, none could know him. So Villenoys took ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... recognizable by their names rather than by their features.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} He, however, it was who most of all persuaded us men, as being men, not to despise men nor to dishonor Christ, the head of all, by inhuman treatment of them; but in the misfortune of others to establish well our own lot and to lend to God that mercy, since we ourselves need mercy. He did not therefore disdain to honor disease with his lips; he was noble and of noble ancestry and of brilliant reputation, but he saluted them as brethren, not out ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... fast as possible. Charley and Gus said they had engagements and left the table as soon as they finished their apple pie. Anna sat primly and ate with great elegance. When she spoke at all she spoke to her father, about church matters, and always in a commiserating tone, as if he had met with some misfortune. Mr. Kronborg, quite innocent of her intentions, replied kindly and absent-mindedly. After the dessert he went to take his usual Sunday afternoon nap, and Mrs. Kronborg carried some dinner to a sick neighbor. Thea and Anna began to clear ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... black list of dunces. At the same time it roused a number of authors to fury, as it well might. His satire is often unjust, and he includes among the dunces men wholly undeserving of the name, who had had the misfortune to offend him. To place a great scholar like Bentley, an eloquent and earnest preacher like Whitefield, and a man of genius like Defoe among the dunces was to stultify himself, and if Pope in his spite against Theobald found some justification for giving ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... sure that of the few prisoners selected for invitation to the ball, none was within earshot. The Vicomte de Tocqueville, a stoical young patrician, had chosen a partner for the next dance, and was leading her out with that air of vacuity with which he revenged himself upon the passing hour of misfortune. "Go on," it seemed to say, "but permit me to remind you that, so far as I am concerned, you do not exist." Old General Rochambeau and old Rear-Admiral de Wailly-Duchemin, in worn but carefully-brushed regimentals, patrolled the far end of the room arm-in-arm. The Admiral seemed ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... orchestra had played "God Save the King," and a buzz of sympathetic interest spread through the audience. He had risen and bowed. For the next few days the Old Province House was beset with callers. The fashion and intelligence of the city paid their respects to royalty in misfortune. The Princess Henrietta, the King's only child, a stout, hearty-looking girl of eighteen, without beauty, made her debut into society under these auspices. The first year, despite the change in their circumstances, had been passed happily and with ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... our work that night was intended to be preparatory to a big bombardment, and I had the misfortune to learn from the German trenches what ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... the enemy. Thereupon, according to what I have heard related by several officers who were in this terrible tumult, the streets of Leipzig presented a most horrible sight; and our soldiers, now compelled to retire, could do so only by disputing every step of the ground. An irreparable misfortune soon filled the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and though they may not speak of it often, yet its existence is the narrow ledge on which they have reared their stronghold in the perilous pass. And the English boy and girl had really lived a joint life, in their sympathies and surroundings, for years before a joint misfortune had overtaken them. In their meeting after a long separation they felt at the same time the rare delight of friendship renewed, and the still rarer charm of finding new acquaintances in old friends; but besides the well-remembered bond of habit, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... that "it belongs to a great soul so to bear what seems troublesome, as nowise to depart from his natural estate, or from the dignity of a wise man." And Aristotle says (Ethic. iv, 3) that "a magnanimous man does not grieve at misfortune." Now troubles and misfortunes are opposed to goods of fortune, for every one grieves at the loss of what is helpful to him. Therefore external goods of fortune do ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... said Milady to herself, at the height of joy at having obtained so quickly such a great result. "Oh, know him? Yes, yes! to my misfortune, to my eternal misfortune!" and Milady twisted her arms as if in a ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... forever. But there was fifty-two dollars between the leaves of the diary. He had come from home with a good stock of clothing, and had saved nearly all he had earned, including his advance for the West India voyage. At Havana Mr. Carboy had the misfortune to lose his watch overboard, and, as he needed one, Harvey had sold him his—a very ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... of the Bolsheviks is a misfortune for the Russian Revolution, the Russian Republic and all the oppressed nations of Europe. So long as the German Social Democracy permits the working masses to be brought to the battlefield in the ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... good I drew from it, that whomsoever many years had used and worn, they had not yet broken any fibre of your force:—a pure joy to me, who abhor the inroads which time makes on me and on my friends. To live too long is the capital misfortune, and I sometimes think, if we shall not parry it by better art of living, we shall learn to include in our morals some bolder control of the facts. I read once, that Jacobi declared that he had some thoughts which—if he should entertain ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the force at Ti. In the middle and late days of July, they reported to runners the southward progress of the British. They were ahead of Herkimer's regiment of New York militia on August third when they discovered the ambush—a misfortune for which they were in no way responsible. Herkimer and his force had gone on without them to relieve Fort Schuyler. The two scouts had ridden post to join him. They were afoot half a mile or so ahead of the commander when Jack heard the call of the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... himself as others see him, would truly know himself. How much misunderstanding might be avoided, how much hidden shame be removed, hopeless because unspoken love made glad, honest admiration cheer its object, uttered sympathy mitigate misfortune,—in short, how much brighter and happier the world would become, if each one expressed, everywhere and at all times, his true and entire feeling! Why, even Evil ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... not a permanent calamity; it was a misfortune. The period which followed was one of distress, but the energy of Camillus reorganized the military force, and new alliances were made with the Latin cities. Etruria, humbled and restricted within narrower limits, and moreover enervated by luxury, was in no condition to oppose a people inured to ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... another misfortune of people in love; they always think highly of the beloved object, and lowly of themselves, such a dismal ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... mean that a child should have no responsibilities, for that is the misfortune of the city child, but it is important to recognize the truth of old adage that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," which modern psychology has given a scientific basis. One of the most fundamental needs for the promotion ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... ominous-looking black bag was sufficient to raise apprehension in every heart. Indeed, Mrs. Duffy, who lived nearly opposite the Frasers and who regarded the village nurse with something akin to superstitious fear, would throw up her hands at the sight of the herald of misfortune passing the door and exclaim, "God bless me ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... by Pope; Swift cared for him more than for any other man, and the letter in which Pope conveyed to him the sad tidings of Gay's death bears the endorsement: "On my dear friend Mr. Gay's death. Received December 15th [1732], but not read till the 20th, by an impulse foreboding some misfortune." Gay was on intimate terms with Arbuthnot and Lord Burlington, and Henrietta Howard, Lady Suffolk, was devoted to him and consulted him in the matter of her matrimonial troubles. He was the protege of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry. His "Fables" ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... also said that earthquakes had occurred, two hundred leguas in the interior, and as far as Canton, which lasted for two months. They were so terrific that they shook the very strong palaces, while other houses and mosques were overthrown. This misfortune and plague has been by the permission of heaven. At another part, the Japanese of Great Corria have revolted, and are warring with these Chinese, so that four hundred thousand of them have banded against the latter, by which the Chinese are receiving great injury. [25] Thus, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... the life of one among thousands who go down inarticulate into the depths, They die and make no sign, or, worse still, they continue to exist, carrying about with them, year after year, the bitter ashes of a life from which the furnace of misfortune has burnt away all joy, and hope, and strength. Who is there who has not been confronted by many despairing ones, who come, as Richard O—— went, to the clergyman, crying for help, and how seldom have we been able to give it them? It is unjust, no doubt, for them to blame the ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... as a serious misfortune, and even envying those whose daily toil can alone bring them the necessaries of life; for, have they friends—they are true friends—there is no selfishness in the bond which unites them—while she, unhappy child that she ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... Henry (referring to Mr. Dittoe) "had too many irons in the fire." His warning in regard to the enterprising merchant proved a prophecy, for "too many irons in the fire" brought about Mr. Dittoe's bankruptcy, although this misfortune did not befall him till long after I had left his service. I am glad to say, however, that his failure was an exceptionally honest one, and due more to the fact that he was in advance of his surroundings than to any ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... for and belief in her boy. Why, it would soften your heart to see how she looks on me. She thinks I am the most everlastingly brilliant man she ever knew—excepting father, of course, who has always been a hero of heroes in her eyes, because he never rails at misfortune, never spoke an unkind word to her in his life, and just lives gently along and waiting for the ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... my employ." (The old fox had not the slightest idea such a contretemps was possible, but in order to play safe he considered it good policy to hearten Ole for the fray.) "Should he defeat you, captain, I have no hesitancy in saying to you now that such a misfortune would have a most disastrous effect on your future in my employ. You know me. When I order a job done, I want it done, and I want it done well. Understand! I don't want you to maim or kill the man, but just give him a good sound—er—commercial ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... love what it finds amiable. Surely you cannot but know that there is nought lovely in the universe but God. Know ye not that He has created you, that He has died for you? But if these reasons are not sufficient, which of you has not some necessity, some trouble, or some misfortune? Which of you does not know how to tell his malady, and beg relief? Come, then, to this Fountain of all good, without complaining to weak and impotent creatures, who cannot help you; come to prayer; lay before God your troubles, beg His grace—and above all, that you may love ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... They regarded her genius (the thing which had been tacked on to her) more as a crime than a misfortune. It was a power in the highest degree destructive and malign, a power utterly disintegrating to its possessor, and yet a power entirely within her own control. They refused to recognize in it any divine ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... should be left out. In this I find a great difficulty for many reasons; in the first place, because I have not the aptitude of expressing myself in writing, and it may well be that the phrases I employ may fail in the correctness which good French requires; and again, because it is my misfortune not to agree in all points with my Martin, though I am proud to think that he is, in every relation of life, so good a man, that the women of his family need not hesitate to follow his advice—but necessarily there are some points which one reserves; and I cannot but feel the closeness ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... thou in the cauld blast On yonder lea, on yonder lea, My plaidie to the angry airt, I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee: Or did misfortune's bitter storms Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, Thy bield should be my bosom, To share it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... fitted to executive duties than his rival, Lincoln. But Davis' foreign policy was wholly a matter for speculation, and his Cabinet consisted of men absolutely unknown to British statesmen. In truth it was not a Cabinet of distinction, for it was the misfortune of the South that everywhere, as the Civil War developed, Southern gentlemen sought reputation and glory in the army rather than in political position. Nor did President Davis himself ever fully grasp the importance to the South of a well-considered and energetic ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... much attached to her that she raised her to be housekeeper, and intrusted the whole household management to her. Agafya again returned to power, and again grew plump and fair; her mistress put the most complete confidence in her. So passed five years more. Misfortune again overtook Agafya. Her husband, whom she had promoted to be a footman, began to drink, took to vanishing from the house, and ended by stealing six of the mistress' silver spoons and hiding them till a favourable moment in his wife's box. It was opened. He was sent to ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... dread anticipation, he had hurried back to the bench, only to find his fears realized. The book had disappeared! His frenzied search yielded no hint of its probable mode of removal. Overcome by a sickening sense of misfortune, he had sunk upon the bench in despair. But fear again roused him and drove him, slinking like a hunted beast, from the park—fear that the possessor of the book, appreciating its contents, but with no thought of returning it, might be hovering ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... unfeminine, untrue, coarsely abusive; she had shown herself to be mercenary, incapable of true love, a scold, fickle, and cruel. But yet he loved her. There was a gallant feeling at his heart that no misfortune could conquer him,—but one; that misfortune had fallen upon ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... States we recognize the truth that the interests of each State are identical with the interests of the Union, and that no State can permanently prosper by reason of the misfortune of its neighbor. In the German Empire since its unification each principality similarly recognizes that the interests of the German Empire and the interests of the several principalities are essentially identical. But there is no such recognition of the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... his influence was, in consequence, immense. No one ventured to disagree with him, for to disagree with the Old Timer was to write yourself down a tenderfoot, which no one, of course, cared to do. It was a misfortune which only time could repair to be a new-comer, and it was every new-comer's aim to assume with all possible speed the style and customs of the aristocratic Old Timers, and to forget as soon as possible the date of his own arrival. ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... a misfortune. Mr. Fogg, in order not to deviate from his course, furled his sails and increased the force of the steam; but the vessel's speed slackened, owing to the state of the sea, the long waves of which broke ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... to promote and secure the return of Mr. Paull for Westminster; and if he could have secured the return of that gentleman by his own interest and popularity, Mr. Paull would have been returned; but the misfortune was, that Mr. Paull had himself become very popular, deservedly popular, sufficiently so, indeed, to have secured his seat by his own exertions, if Sir Francis Burdett had stood neuter. But Mr. Paull had no wish of this sort; he by no means desired to push himself above ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... was twenty-eight, and over-tall, so that he carried himself with an almost apologetic drooping stoop, as if he were conscious of his length and sought to make it less noticeable. It was an added misfortune in his eyes that he was spare. In sharp contrast to his sister, he was pale—a paleness accentuated by his dark hair, which was thick, and slightly curly, and piled itself up in an unconquerable pompadour that added to his height. Those who saw Mrs. ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... new grief is this? What unforeseen misfortune has surpris'd thee, That racks thy ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... people aboard, and a long trail of nineteen fishing boats we eventually got back to Indian Harbour, where every one joined in helping our friends in misfortune till the steamer came and took them South. They waved us farewell, and, quite undismayed, wished for better luck ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... not, however, I entreat you, to bear in mind that this has not been the fault of your rulers at any time. It has been their misfortune—an original sin in the constitution of the society wherein they were born. Circumstances which they did not make and could not control have impelled them onward in ways which neither for themselves nor the nation were ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... German: from Dumno-rix, that ambitious but fierce agitator, who wished to make the conqueror of the Gauls an instrument, but not a master, to that Vercingeto-rix, so pure, so eloquent, so true, so magnanimous in misfortune, and who wanted nothing to take a place amongst the greatest men, but to have had another enemy, above all another historian, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... those which, during the last eighteen hundred years, have been active in effecting so many moral revolutions in the world, and which must ultimately triumph over all error and all oppression. On this occasion, as on many others, I had to regret my want of Gaelic. It was my misfortune to miss being born to this ancient language, by barely a mile of ferry. I first saw light on the southern shore of the Frith of Cromarty, where the strait is narrowest, among an old established Lowland community, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... trees and wild flowers once more, after such an illness, is a pleasure that only those long deprived of such beauties by a similar misfortune can ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... not only refrained from referring to the slip which the parson made in his spelling lesson, but spoke in such high terms of his success with Nellie, that every one conceded the right teacher had been selected, and it would be a misfortune for any one to assume to take ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... angling abound in his early plays and poems. {27} And his sporting experiences passed at times beyond orthodox limits. A poaching adventure, according to a credible tradition, was the immediate cause of his long severance from his native place. 'He had,' wrote Rowe in 1709, 'by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, among them, some, that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him with them more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... might. When Good Fortune calls, and the called 'will not when they may,' then, 'when they will' Good Fortune has become Misfortune. Welcome a pleasure or a gain at once, or don't answer it at all. It was on this rock, Ethel, the bark that carried my love went to pieces. I ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... carry out that deal I arranged with you, because I have had the misfortune to lose five hundred dollars ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... While the Jesuits were building a church for her she would often descend from her temporary altar and stand in an antipolo tree (Astocarpus incisa). People cut pieces from this tree for charms against disease and misfortune, until Father Salazar ordered that the trunk should be its pedestal. In an early rebellion the Chinese insurgents threw the statue into the fire. Flames were all about it, yet not a hair, not a thread of lace was singed, and the body of brass was ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... inconveniences and disappointments which he had experienced, began to prey upon his mind, and to affect his health. Notwithstanding the continued liberality of the Emperor, and the kindness of his friends and pupils, he was yet a stranger in a distant land. Misfortune was unable to subdue that love of country which was one of the most powerful of his affections; and, though its ingratitude might have broken the chain which bound him to the land of his nativity, it seems only to have rivetted it more firmly. His imagination, thus influenced, acquired ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... have been rejoiced to have vanquished the man, had the adventure terminated in an unavoidable encounter. But now that Red Fox was in distress, all hard feelings and resentment had left the lad's heart. He was all sympathy for misfortune. That is the ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... first, that you escape danger; and second, that when you have temperately stated your views, and when, in consequence of opposition, your advice has not been taken, should other counsels prevail and mischief come of them, your credit will be vastly enhanced. And although credit gained at the cost of misfortune to your prince or city cannot be matter of rejoicing, still it is something to ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... had they placed a couple of frigates in the East River, between Long Island and New York, the escape would have been impossible, and General Washington and his army of 15,000 men must have been taken prisoners. Whether this misfortune would have proved conclusive of the war it is now too late to speculate; but so splendid an opportunity was never before let slip by an English general, and the negligence was the more inexcusable inasmuch as the fleet of boats could be seen lying alongside of the American position. Their ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... loved you from my earliest days—everything grand and beautiful hath borne the image of Ambulinia; while precipices on every hand surrounded me, your GUARDIAN ANGEL stood and beckoned me away from the deep abyss. In every trial, in every misfortune, I have met with your helping hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love, till a voice impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired thy favor should win a victory. I saw how Leos worshiped thee. I felt my own ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... loved Julia Jowler—loved her to madness; but her father intended her for a Member of Council at least, and not for a beggarly Irish ensign. It was, however, my fate to make the passage to India (on board of the "Samuel Snob" East Indiaman, Captain Duffy,) with this lovely creature, and my misfortune instantaneously to fall in love with her. We were not out of the Channel before I adored her, worshipped the deck which she trod upon, kissed a thousand times the cuddy-chair on which she used to sit. The same madness fell ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... now glance at what has been done since 1860 in the way of occupation. South Australia has founded on theNorth Coast a Settlement at Adam Bay, on the Adelaide River, but its progress seems to have been marked from the onset by misfortune. The officer charged with its formation, in a short time managed to raise so strong a feeling of dissatisfaction and dislike amongst the settlers as to call for a Commission of Enquiry on his administration, which resulted in his removal. His successor seems, by latest accounts to have raised up ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... little 'Villa,' so tastefully erected by Smith and Rainey and kept for some time past by Mr. Clatterbuck, on the R. R., six miles from Lex., was destroyed by fire on the night of Monday last together with most of the furniture, liquors and a considerable sum of money. This misfortune will be seriously felt not only by Mr. C——, but by the travellers on the R. R., who were always sure of a kind reception and the solace of a cup of hot sparkling coffee at daylight after making the first stop ...
— A Pioneer Railway of the West • Maude Ward Lafferty
... Rubes' land was a great man in a certain world. He had become great when young, which is perhaps a misfortune. It indisposes men to be great at their maturity. He was famous at twenty, by a picture hectic in color, perfect in drawing, that made Paris at his feet. He became more famous by verses, by plays, by political follies, and by social successes. He was faithful, however, to his first love in art. ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... numerous assery laden with horn-spoons, pots, and pans, and black-eyed children. We should not be surprised to read some day in the newspapers, that the villain who leads the van had been executed for burglary, arson, and murder. That is the misfortune of having a bad physiognomy, a sidelong look, a scarred cheek, and a cruel grin about the muscles of the mouth; to say nothing about rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not made for the wearer—long, sinewy arms, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... much as my want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and so marked. And why had I these aspirations and these regrets? It would be difficult to say: I could not then distinctly say it to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... was to suggest the belief that I was blind: that disease is known to assail us in a moment and without previous warning. This, surely, was the misfortune that had now befallen me. Some ray, however fleeting and uncertain, could not fail to be discerned, if the power of vision were not utterly extinguished. In what circumstances could I possibly be placed, from which every particle of light should, by ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the Miller's Daughter, and Relation of her Misfortune— A frugal Couple; their Kind of Frugality—Plea of the Mother of a natural Child; her Churching—Large Family of Gerard Ablett: his apprehensions: Comparison between his state and that of the wealthy Farmer his Master: his Consolation—An Old Man's Anxiety for an Heir: the Jealousy ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... man replied: "Many questions you ask, O King, but every one will I answer. My name belongs to me alone and I'll not give it. My birth-place was misfortune and all I possess is want. I have come hither from the wolf so fierce and gaunt. In youth I bestrode a dragon on the blue waters, but now I am old and feeble and must live upon the land. As to my errand, I came to see your wisdom, renowned far ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... happiness. Let us but have peace and tranquillity, and we have enough for every earthly enjoyment whilst it pleases Heaven to bless us with good health. Alas, poor Lady W.! how sensibly I feel for the misfortune that has deprived her excellent husband of all prospect of ever again enjoying comfort in this life. She was, indeed, all you have ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... The chief misfortune, however, and one mourned by the few French political economists who have looked below the surface, is the gradual disappearance of family life and its absorption into that of ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... being back to his lair in the shanties, but he crawled abjectly toward them, begging to join the carouse notwithstanding his great misfortune. They would still have rejected him, but the old man had learned craft with his age, and when pleading was of no avail, betook himself to threats, which proved more effectual than his tears. Fearing that he might expose them ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... got a 'temperament,'" said Doctor Fleming, the Post surgeon. "That's as good as having a star. You know there are persons who attract misfortune just as sickly children catch all the diseases that are going. I knew that boy was sure to be found. Anything of Moya's ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... in the world after all, though it has been my misfortune to chiefly come across the bad," she admitted ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... negro means the same thing as freedom for them. They readily enough admit that the Government has made him free, but appear to believe that they still have the right to exercise over him the old control. It is partly their misfortune, and not wholly their fault, that they cannot understand the national intent, as expressed in the Emancipation Proclamation and the Constitutional Amendment. I did not anywhere find a man who could see that laws should be applicable to all persons alike; and hence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... said the mother, brightening at once into lively interest. "Hans-Joachim, sleep," she added sharply to her son, who tried to raise his head to interrupt with fresh doubts a conversation grown thrilling. "That is indeed a misfortune. It is a rash?" ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... woman will deny herself the romantic luxury of self-sacrifice and forgiveness when they take the form of doing something agreeable. Shes almost sure to say that your misfortune will draw ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... is so long since I wrote that I must write, I must ruffle your thoughts with a little breath from my side. Listen to me, my dear friend. That I have not written has scarcely been my fault, but my misfortune rather, for I have been quite unstrung and overcome by agitation and anxiety, and thought that I should be able to tell you at last of being calmer and happier, but it was all in vain. I do not leave England, my dear friend. It is decided ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... fist into palm. "Superb!" he said, fiercely. "To cull fortune from misfortune, to turn loss into profit, that ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... converse. Coeur-Volant could not conceal from his Highness that there was no conversation in Pianura; but he did his best to fill the void by the constant exercise of his own gift in that direction, and to Odo at least his talk seemed as good as it was copious. Misfortune had given a finer savour to the Marquis's philosophy, and there was a kind of heroic grace in his undisturbed ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... hall of your kind hosts and employers by the use of language which I shall not characterise save by telling you that it would be comprehensible only in a citizen of the nation to which you have the misfortune to belong. Luckily you were not allowed to proceed for more than a moment with your vile harangue which (if I understand rightly) was in praise of wine. You will go to prison for twelve months. I shall not give you the option ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... of the month the Queen had the misfortune to lose her old and faithful servant Sir Thomas Biddulph, who died at Abergeldie Mains. When she went to see him in his last illness and took his hand, he said, "You are very kind to me," to which she answered, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... matters stand, Sir Charles no doubt thinks still that you would make a desirable parti for his niece. His wife, Lady Wray, unquestionably shares that opinion. Their combined influence might in time prevail, and Jocelyn Wray yield to their united wishes. This misfortune," with cutting deadliness of tone, "it is obvious must be averted. You will consent to withdraw all pretensions in that direction, or you will force me to make public this paper. A full exposition of the case I think would materially affect Sir Charles and Lady Wray's attitude ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... days, the passage from the Pacific, or Great Ocean, to the Indian Sea; without other misfortune than what arose from the attack of the natives, and some damage done to the cables and anchors. Perhaps no space of 31/2 deg. in length, presents more dangers than Torres' Strait; but, with caution ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... "they would know whether Rome or Carthage should give laws to the world; and that neither Africa nor Italy, but the whole world, would be the prize of victory. That the dangers which threatened those who had the misfortune to be defeated, were proportioned to the rewards of the victors." For the Romans had not any place of refuge in an unknown and foreign land, and immediate destruction seemed to await Carthage, if the troops which formed her last reliance ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... spell-bound friend. If a man leaves home after his wife's confinement, some of his clothes should be spread over the mother and infant, or the fairies may carry them off. It is good for a woman, but bad for a man, to dream of fairies. It betokens marriage for a girl, misfortune for a man, who should not undertake serious business for some time ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" Moreover, he has set his heart on the one thing which cannot be taken from him. God will not take it from him; and man, and fortune, and misfortune, cannot take it from him. Poverty, misery, disease, death itself, cannot make him a worse man, cannot make him less just, less true, less pure, less charitable, less high-minded, less like Christ, and ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... We do not wish a young king who may be fractious. An old man tempered by misfortune is ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... allay them; a circumstance alone sufficient to give them just reason to fear that those means were not originally well considered, or properly adapted to their ends. That they were satisfied by experience that the misfortune had, in a great measure, arisen from the want of full and perfect information of the true state and condition of the colonies being laid before parliament; by reason of which, measures injurious and inefficacious had been carried into execution, from whence no salutary end could have ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... had died when Gustave was twelve and his mother found it easy to spoil an only son who was handsome and popular. He suffered the misfortune of a mental brilliancy that learns too readily and of a personal charm that wins its way too easily. He danced well; he was facile at the piano; and he had so pronounced a gift as an amateur actor that a celebrated professional had advised him to ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... strength-inspiring aid that bore The hardy Byron from his native shore. In torrid climes, where Chiloe's tempests sweep Tumultuous murmurs o'er the troubled deep, 'Twas his to mourn misfortune's rudest shock, Scourged by the winds and cradled ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... bad taste—or perhaps it was misfortune—to blurt out an agonised "I told you so" at a time when the family was sitting numb and hushed under the blight of the first horrid blow. He did not mean to be unfeeling. It was the truth bursting from his ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the 'Firefly' touched at the island of Zanzibar, and there landed our hero Harold Seadrift and his comrade in misfortune, Disco Lillihammer. ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... and contempt of danger, by his dauntless example, and inspires them with confidence by his tranquillity in the tumult of action and the invincible fortitude with which he meets the most adverse stroke of misfortune. His modesty in victory shows him to be one of the greatest among men, and his magnanimity under defeat confirms him to be ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... Occupation. This should be made in Childhood. The part Parents should take in this. Duty of all Persons to engage in some Useful Pursuit shown from the Relation of the Individual to the State, from the Possibility of Future Misfortune, from the Excessive Prodigality of those who have been brought up in Idleness. Law of the Athenians. What Parents should consider in their selection of an Occupation for their Children. Injudicious Course of some ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... country. But it's unjust. He happened to go in for sheep raising. I wish he hadn't. It was a mistake. Dad always was a cattleman till we came heah. He made enemies—who—who ruined him. And everywhere misfortune crossed his trail.... But, oh, Uncle John, my dad ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... UNCLE: I seat myself by the stand to write for the last time, to thee and thy family. Though far from home, and overtaken by misfortune, I have not forgotten you. Your generous hospitality toward me during my short stay with you last Spring is stamped indelibly upon my heart; and also the generosity bestowed upon my poor brother, at the same time, who now wanders an outcast from his native land. But thank God he ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... Firket all things were contrary. One unexpected misfortune succeeded another. Difficulties were replaced by others as soon as they had been overcome. The autumn of 1896 was marked by delay and disappointment. The state of the Nile, the storms, the floods, the cholera, and many minor obstacles, vexed but did not weary the commander. The ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... fashion, and after that two female blians danced. Next morning I returned and asked permission to photograph the dancing. The kapala replied that if a photograph were made while they were working—that is to say, dancing—they would have to do all their work over again, otherwise some misfortune would come upon them, such as the falling of one of the bamboo stalks, which might kill somebody. Later, while they were eating, for example, there would be no objection to the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... any other sport where there is a likelihood of getting his head or his bones broken, and if he survive, he will remember you with a kindness peculiar to himself to the last day of his life—will drub you from head to heel if he finds that any misfortune has kept you out of a row beyond the usual period of three months—will render the same service to any of your friends that stand in need of it; or, in short, will go to the world's end, or fifty miles farther, as he himself ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... Rose were so deeply affected by Allison's misfortune that they scarcely took note of Isabel's few bruises, greatly to that young woman's disgust. She chose to consider herself in the light of a martyr and had calmly received the announcement that Allison's left hand would probably have to ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... some grandee of Spain or personage of distinction," replied the youth, "I should have been safe to get it; for that is the advantage of serving good masters, that out of the servants' hall men come to be ancients or captains, or get a good pension. But I, to my misfortune, always served place-hunters and adventurers, whose keep and wages were so miserable and scanty that half went in paying for the starching of one's collars; it would be a miracle indeed if a page volunteer ever got ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sez Crook, an' he took us on, but not before Toomey that was in the Tyrone sez aloud, his voice somewhere in his stummick: "Fwhat in the name av misfortune does this parrit widout a tail mane by shtoppin' ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... also," added Gottlieb; "poor mother, misfortune has always been her lot; and although she has much trouble, she has nevertheless ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... It has treated 45,000 freedmen, and made the graves for 6,000 of the number. Transportation has been furnished to 1,700 refugees and 1,900 freedmen. In the schools there are 80,000 people that have been instructed by this bureau. And now it is proposed to leave all these children of misfortune to the tender mercies of a people of whom it is true by the Spanish maxim, 'Since I have wronged you I have hated you.' I never can. Our authority to take care of them is founded in the Constitution; else it is not worthy to be our great ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... began to climb slowly up the rocks in the direction where Gloria had gone. His reflections were not altogether as philosophical as usual, because as he said to himself—"One can never tell how a woman is going to meet misfortune! Sometimes she takes it well; and then the men who have ruthlessly destroyed her happiness go on their way rejoicing; but more often she takes it ill, and there is the devil to pay! Yet—Gloria is not like any ordinary woman—she is a carefully selected ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... said, "and I would say parenthetically, my sister, that it may be that our views on that subject, coming from the northern States as you and I have done, have not been according to the mind of the Lord. I would have no man a slave because of misfortune, but if a man proved himself unfit to rule himself, I'm not sure ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Confederacy sprang into existence as an oligarchy of slaveholders, willing (if need be) to live under a military despotism (as is the fact to-day, and will be hereafter if the world should witness the dire misfortune of its success), rather than submit to the searching scrutiny of republican ideas, with freedom of speech and press and person. And so it is that we recur to the simple fact of the Southern Confederacy for the vindication of the proposed amendment in all its bearings, finding ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... born of the union to live forever under the unspeakable horror that overshadowed the unfortunate parents. Love, hatred, sorrow, and joy—every passion that enters into the complex structure of the human heart even here, in this scene of sadness and despair, was playing apparently as freely as where misfortune and disease had never crossed the ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... acquired such or such a virtue and I can practise it'; or again: 'My God, Thou knowest I love Thee too much to dwell on one single thought against faith,' straightway I should be assailed by the most dangerous temptations and should certainly yield. To prevent this misfortune I have but to say humbly and from my heart: 'My God, I beseech Thee not to let ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... is my misfortune, but that you allow your detestation to generate discord in our small circle is an error which I trust you will endeavor to correct. That I have many faults I shall not attempt to deny; but mutual forbearance will prove a mutual ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Felix Holt, in the work which bears his name, is little more than an occasional apparition; and indeed the novel has no hero, but only a heroine. The same remark applies to "Adam Bede," as the work stands. The central figure of the book, by virtue of her great misfortune, is Hetty Sorrel. In the presence of that misfortune no one else, assuredly, has a right to claim dramatic pre-eminence. The one person for whom an approach to equality may be claimed is, not Adam Bede, but Arthur Donnithorne. If the story had ended, as I should have infinitely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... in an easy narrative style the story of his and Bert's adventures, to which Mason listened breathlessly, while Washington, who had been permitted to stand behind O'Connor's chair, alternately grinned and stared in amazement. The story of the misfortune of Villamonte seemed to amuse him greatly, and as Harry described his expression as he lay bound and gagged in the prison, the negro slapped his leg in glee, and for a moment ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... in obedience to your summons. If I can prevent any misfortune from falling upon you I am ready to help you, with my life. You have guessed that I love you. If my love is returned I am prepared to dispute ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... it a jerk and it caught somehow or other in the bird's foot or leg, and he pulled it in, squeaking and fluttering all the time, its companions circling round it in alarm, and cawing in concert over its misfortune. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... fate of Andrew King was spread over the village and the greatest sympathy felt for the bereaved family. To have lost a flock of sheep, a dog, and an only child at one blow is a terrible misfortune. Old King, I am told, was prostrated, and the girl, Bessie Prawle, violent in her lamentations over her "lad." The only person unmoved was the youth's mother, Miranda King the widow. She, it seems, had no doubts of his safety, and declared that he "would come ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... loss was carried on board the Mayflower, and a heavy sense of misfortune and danger settled upon the little community already depressed by ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... It was Henry's misfortune to have inherited the antipathy of his father to the charter of Runnymede, and to consider his barons as enemies leagued in a conspiracy to deprive him of the legitimate prerogatives of the crown. He watched ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Monsieur Bonnet, "there is a cause of antagonism between Russia and the Catholic countries which border the Mediterranean, in the very unimportant schism which separates the Greek religion from the Latin religion; and it is a great misfortune ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... place, so that he stands helpless and destitute. Oh! how totally is he in my power, just as I had wished! But does a person ever change from contempt to love? No, never. Little does he know that for a twelvemonth I have been his adversary, and the misfortune is, that when he does know he will hate me! But hatred is not the opposite of love, it is merely the obverse of the golden coin. I shall tell him everything; I ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... for the first time addressing me by a title of respect, "your magic is too strong for us. Great misfortune has fallen upon our land. Hundreds of people are dead, killed by the ice-stones that you have called down. Our harvest is ruined, and there is but little corn left in the storepits now when we looked to gather the new grain. Messengers come in from the outlying land telling us ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... some points which I deem of vital importance, it has been my misfortune to differ from you. It has been my decided opinion, which for some time past I have urged at various meetings of the Cabinet, that additional troops should be sent to reenforce the forts in the harbor of Charleston, with a view to their better defense, should they be attacked, and that an armed ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... persons, and many others who incurred like misfortune, had been regarded as opulent merchants or bankers, and were men of position and influence. Mr. Robinson was, at the time of his failure, a governor of the Bank of England; Sir John Rae Reid had lately filled that office. Mr. Gomer and Mr. Settle were bank directors at the time ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the answer, "my people are now enjoying a period of happiness in which I have no part. If misfortune should ever overtake them, I should go back and strive to lighten it, or at least I ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... years in prison, an experience which cast a stigma on his name and which made it impossible for him, for many years after, to obtain honest employment. But the world is richer, and safer, by Muller's early misfortune. For it was this experience which threw him back on his own peculiar talents for a livelihood, and drove him into the police force. Had he been able to enter any other profession, his genius might have been stunted to a mere pastime, ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... ivy was still creeping; and how there was a tradition, that, if the ivy ever reached the top, the spire would fall upon the roof of the old gray church, and crush it all down among its surrounding tombstones. [Endnote: 1] And so, as this misfortune would be so heavy a one, there seemed to be a miracle wrought from year to year, by which the ivy, though always flourishing, could never grow beyond a certain point; so that the spire and church had stood unharmed for thirty years; though the wise old people ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... relinquished them, and without the help of a single kind word from you, by which the sacrifice might at least have been mitigated. I wondered. Later, when you heaped one small humiliation upon another, I concluded that I must have had the misfortune to incur your personal dislike, and told myself, after searching for the cause and finding none, that personal dislikes are usually inexplicable. But now I see that I have been doing you an injustice; that your affronts were not considered; that you have all along, likely enough, ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... all your experience shown you nothing of my character yet? I am a man of the antique type! I am capable of the most exalted acts of virtue—when I have the chance of performing them. It has been the misfortune of my life that I have had few chances. My conception of friendship is sublime! Is it my fault that your skeleton has peeped out at me? Why do I confess my curiosity? You poor superficial Englishman, it is to magnify my own self-control. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... intolerable, than if they had left them entirely to the Lord, and to add to their miseries, deep down into which they have plunged them, tell them, that they are an inferior and distinct race of beings, which they will be glad enough to recall and swallow by and by. Fortune and misfortune, two inseparable companions, lay rolled up in the wheel of events, which have from the creation of the world, and will continue to take place among men until ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... heavily visited than England. The disease seems to have scarcely reached the mountainous districts of that kingdom; and Scotland, too, would, perhaps, have remained free had not the Scots availed themselves of the misfortune of the English, to make an irruption into their territory, which terminated in the destruction of their army, by the plague and by the sword, and the extension of the pestilence, through those who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... bear our misfortune as best we can," remarked Stephen. "However, we will lose no opportunity of trying to ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... son-in-law, lost his life in 1843, during an earthquake. The papers of the colony and of the metropolis related at the time how he had fallen a victim to his devotion to others. After this fearful misfortune, the young widow hastened to recross the sea with her daughter. She settled in Fontainebleau, in order that the child might live in a healthy atmosphere. Fontainebleau is one of the healthiest places in France. If Mme. Sambucco had been as good a manager as she was mother, ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... luxuriant images, and promoting a voluptuous vacuum. But when the person's ill fate tempts him to taste it in a melancholy mood, it protracts the gloomy moments, and gives the woes of life a longer duration: he utters sighs and lamentations, he apprehends nothing but misery and misfortune, till the effect of the drug is exhausted, and he awakes from his ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... family is a fire company. It has seasons of good fortune, when there are neither sick leaves nor hospital cases to report; and it has periods of misfortune, when trouble and disaster stalk abruptly through the ranks. Gray Horse Truck company is no exception. Calm prosperity it has enjoyed, and of swift, unexpected tragedy it has had full measure. Yet its longest mourning and most sincere, was when it ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... was sitting a young handsome man in the uniform of a captain in the British Army. Froissart was frowning and speaking in savage disrespect of Dawson, his immediate chief. "This English Dawson, with whom it is my misfortune to work, is of all men the most impossible. He is clever, as the Devil, but secretive—my faith! He tells me nothing. He lives in disguise of body and mind. There are twenty men in his face, his figure, and his dress. He comes to me as a police officer, a doctor, ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... used for quit; as, "That eminent actor expects soon to leave the stage." It would be a misfortune if he should take the stage with him. ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... "It is your misfortune, then," said Pomp. "To have boasted so, and now to fail to perform, will simply cost you your life. Will you write? ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... this city, as in like cases commonly happens, exasperated the people of Florence against the members of the government; at every street corner and public place they were openly censured, and the entire misfortune was laid to the charge of their greediness and mismanagement. At the beginning of the war, twenty citizens had been appointed to undertake the direction of it, who appointed Malatesta da Rimini to the command of the forces. He having exhibited ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... not join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. I cannot concur in a blind and servile address, which approves and endeavors to sanctify the monstrous measures which have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us. This, my lords, is a perilous and tremendous ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... outside the sramas is the condition of standing within an srama. The latter state may be due to misfortune; but he who can should be within an srama, which state is the more holy and beneficial one. This follows from inference only, i.e. Smriti; for Smriti says, 'A Brhmana is to remain outside the sramas not even for one day.' For one who has passed beyond the stage of ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself. The danger, however, was at present unperceived, and did not by any means rank as a misfortune with her. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... could heartily wish it were devolved upon my brethren, the makers of songs and ballads, who perhaps are the best qualified at present to gather up the gleanings of this controversy. As to myself, it hath been my misfortune to begin and pursue it upon a wrong foundation. For having detected the frauds and falsehoods of this vile impostor Wood in every part, I foolishly disdained to have recourse to whining, lamenting, and crying for mercy, but rather chose to appeal to law and liberty and the common rights of mankind, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... way, could feel that there were disquieting symptoms of inactivity in his son. The name of Cointet Brothers haunted him like a dread; he saw Sechard & Son dropping into the second place. In short, the old man scented misfortune in the wind. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... set forth there had been some trouble in the fairway, and a mined neutral, whose misfortune all bore with exemplary calm, was careened on ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... permits himself in the travel sketches. In "From Galway to Gorumna," which he wrote for the "Manchester Guardian's" investigation of the congested districts, is one of such rare avowals, an avowal to treasure along with those of his all too short prefaces: "It is part of the misfortune of Ireland that nearly all the characteristics which give color and attractiveness to Irish life [he has been speaking of 'men dressed in homespuns of the gray natural wool, and the women in deep madder-dyed petticoats and bodices, with brown shawls over their heads'] are bound ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... hands of a banker. Here, therefore, was a treasure worth some little risk, and a situation that promised next to none. These attractive circumstances had, by accident, become accurately known to one or both of the two M'Keans; and, unfortunately, at a moment of overwhelming misfortune to themselves. They were hawkers; and, until lately, had borne most respectable characters: but some mercantile crash had overtaken them with utter ruin, in which their joint capital had been swallowed ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... when she heard of Patricia's misfortune she put a consoling arm about her sister. "Never mind, Miss Pat dear," she said. "Perhaps when Madame Milano knows how bad you feel about missing her reception she'll do something that's a lot nicer ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... in his unquiet thought, What he may do her favour to obtaine; What brave exploit, what perill hardly wrought, 220 What puissant conquest, what adventurous paine, May please her best, and grace unto him gaine; He dreads no danger, nor misfortune feares, His faith, his fortune, in his breast ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... poor babe should pay the penalty and be buried with the mother. The reasons given for this cruel act was that the child was the cause of the mother's death, and that there was no one to nurse and care for it. No woman would dare to nurse such an orphan, lest it should bring misfortune upon her own children. Therefore the poor child was often placed alive in the coffin with the dead mother, and both were buried together. That was the old cruel Dyak custom, but I am glad to say it is a long time since ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... of Han; and, through their dread and mysterious protection, was preserved to daybreak. After daybreak, the Brahmans deliberated together and said, "It is having this Sramana on board which has occasioned our misfortune and brought us this great and bitter suffering. Let us land the bhikshu and place him on some island-shore. We must not for the sake of one man allow ourselves to be exposed to such imminent peril." A patron of Fa-hien, however, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... the chances of an easy victory over England's bitterest foes had passed away! But for the vacillation of the icy virgin, Drake's Portugal expedition would have put the triumph of the Spanish Armada to the blush, and the great Admiral might have been saved the anguish of misfortune that seemed to follow his future daring adventures for Spanish treasure on land and sea until the shadows of failure compassed him round. His spirit broken and his body smitten with incurable disease, the fleet under his command anchored at Puerto Bello after a heavy passage from Escudo de Veragua, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... forebode a funeral, and four a wedding; or, when on a journey, to meet two magpies portends a wedding; three, a successful journey; four, unexpected good news; and five, that the person will soon be in company with the great. To kill a magpie, indicates or brings down some terrible misfortune. The Sparrow Hawk was sacred with the Egyptians, and the symbol of Osiris. The Yellow Hammer is superstitiously considered an agent diablerie. The Wheat-Ear is, in the Highlands, a detested bird, and fancied one of evil omen, on account of its frequenting old ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... when he was informed of his mother's death, but his was not a temperament to be seriously affected by the misfortune of another. His own interests were uppermost ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... 'Our misfortune was very sudden,' said Kate, turning away, 'or I might perhaps, at a time like this, be enabled to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... absurd poem, with an ingeniously absurd title, written in a strange, namby-pamby sort of style, between the weakest of Shelley and the strongest of Barry Cornwall." The book "fell dead from the Press," far more dead than "Omar Khayyam." Nay, misfortune pursued it, Miss Stoddart kindly informs me, and it was doomed to the flames. The "remainder," the bulk of the edition, was returned to the poet in sheets, and by him was deposited in a garret. The family had a cook, one Betty, a descendant, perhaps, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... punishment on the person who has sinned some special sin, or who has, at all events, done (or not done) something which, in the popular judgment, he should not have done (or done, as the case may be). Misfortune or accident comes to some one who has roused popular clamour. "I told you so," cries the ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... wife; it was an awful explosion at the Zeppelin shed over yonder," replied Dennis. "We had the misfortune to be flying over the spot when it happened, and my observer was struck. I am the Lieutenant Blumberger of whom you may have heard." And he imitated the overbearing manner ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... Secreti, where none was admitted but those elect who had communicated some secret; for, in the early period of modern art and science, the slightest novelty became a secret, not to be confided to the uninitiated. Porta was unquestionably a fine genius, as his works still show; but it was his misfortune that he attributed his own penetrating sagacity to his skill in the art of divination. He considered himself a prognosticator; and, what was more unfortunate, some eminent persons really thought he was. Predictions and secrets are harmless, provided they ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... for my pert letter to my uncle Harlowe. Yet I did not intend it to be pert. People new to misfortune may be too ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... Clementina's mood; and as to Florimel, but for the thought of meeting Caley, her fine spirits would have laughed the weather to scorn. Malcolm was merry. His spirits always rose at the appearance of bad weather, as indeed with every show of misfortune a response antagonistic invariably awoke in him. On the present occasion he had even to repress the constantly recurring impulse to break out in song. His bosom's lord sat lightly in his throne. Griffith was the only miserable one of the party. He was tired, and did not relish the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... Through this misfortune her afflictions grew worse. In January, 1884, she fell and broke one bone and dislocated another in the left wrist. Notwithstanding all that medical help could do, the shock brought on a severe sickness, and when, after eight weeks, she left her ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... quite another thing: I wish he may hold out till spring!" Then hug themselves, and reason thus: "It is not yet so bad with us!" In such a case, they talk in tropes, And by their fears express their hopes: Some great misfortune to portend, No enemy can match a friend. With all the kindness they profess, The merit of a lucky guess (When daily how d'ye's come of course, And servants answer, "Worse and worse!") Wou'd please 'em better, than to tell, That, "God be prais'd, the Dean is well." Then he, who prophecy'd the ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... when I was Civil Service Commissioner and Assistant Secretary of the Navy. All I ever had to do with either was to convince him that a given measure I championed was right, and he then at once did all he could to have it put into effect. If I could not convince them, why! that was my fault, or my misfortune; but if I could convince them, I never had to think again as to whether they would or would not support me. There were many other men of mark in both houses with whom I could work on some points, whereas on others we had to differ. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... law is faithfully fulfilled or neglected. Of course their prophecies always come exactly true, and in this way is seen an astonishing harmony between inward worth and outward circumstance. Never does sin miss its punishment, and never where misfortune ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... special-pleading practitioners, for whom barges 'drifted away of their own selves' - they having no hand in it, except first cutting them loose, and afterwards plundering them - innocents, meaning no harm, who had the misfortune to observe those foundlings ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... SIR: A great misfortune has given me more than one solemn and important duty to fulfill, and the ardent desire of accomplishing with fidelity my father's last will emboldens me to claim the patronage of the President of the United States and his benevolent ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... hero sometimes must walk in chains in the triumphal procession of his victorious enemy. But he is proud and beautiful still in adversity. And looks follow him as well as the fortunate one who has conquered him. Beauty's tears and wreaths belong to him still, even in misfortune. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... early is a great thing," he continued, earnestly. "To disbelieve in it in early life, and cavil at all the caricatures and imitations, and only come to find out its reality comparatively later on, is a great misfortune—a great misfortune." ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... (which soon followed these events) between Antony and Augustus, Phoenicia had the misfortune to give offence to the latter. The terms on which they stood with Antony, and the protection which he had afforded to their cities against the greed of Cleopatra, naturally led them to embrace his cause; and it should scarcely have been regarded as a crime ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... wonderfully few resources within themselves. Even in depressed times it is astonishing how well men who can turn their hand, as it is called, can manage to live. Men of this stamp are not beaten and rendered helpless by the misfortune of losing their usual employment; they are capable of devising fresh methods of earning a livelihood; they are persistent, persevering, energetic; they are not content to stand by with their hands in their pockets and their back at the wall; at times they even create an occupation, and devise ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... our contemptible ship was ready; to sea we went, bound for Honolulu and the letter-bag, on Christmas Day; and from then to now have experienced every sort of minor misfortune, squalls, calms, contrary winds and seas, pertinacious rains, declining stores, till we came almost to regard ourselves as in the case of Vanderdecken. Three days ago our luck seemed to improve, we struck a ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... marvelous virtues of medicinal plants. The terror that the necromancers inspired was due, to a considerable extent, to the use they made of the old belief in ghosts. They exploited the superstitious belief in ghost-power and slipped metal tablets covered with execrations into graves, to bring misfortune or death to some enemy. But neither in Greece nor in Italy is there any trace of a coherent system of doctrines, of an occult and learned discipline, nor ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... and his wife to Reading, but only to be tossed back to London and the safer protection of John. We have seen him under that protection in Aldersgate Street, all through the time of Milton's marriage—misfortune and the Divorce pamphlets. There was some comfort, on the old man's account, in the picture given of him by his grandson Phillips, then in the same house, as living through all that distraction "wholly ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... our fortunate misfortune to imagine her in evening gowns and furs," said Lawrence; "but I always fail and end by getting her into some sort of barbaric costume belonging ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... for the voyage, a green house was set up on the quarter deck of that ship; and the plants collected in the Investigator from the south, the east, and north coasts of Terra Australis were deposited in it, to be conveyed to His Majesty's botanical garden at Kew; and as we had had the misfortune to lose the gardener of the expedition, and Mr. Brown, the naturalist, remained behind, a man from Port Jackson was engaged to take care of the ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... continued and undismayed acquiescence in his physical misfortune was fostered, indirectly, by the captivating poetry of myth and legend with which his mind was fed. He had an insatiable appetite for stories, and Mademoiselle de Mirancourt was an untiring raconteuse. On Sunday afternoons upon the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... miles. The door of the woodshed was fastened as it had been many times; but no noise or disturbance, so far as the lad could judge, sounded from within the structure. The prisoner seemed to have accepted his misfortune philosophically, and, perhaps, had lain down to rest himself after his stirring experiences of ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... composure, her face blanched. Carroll's anger vanished, because the truth was clear. Vane had triumphed through disaster; his peril and ruin had swept his offenses away. The girl, who had condemned him in his prosperity, would not turn from him in misfortune. In the meanwhile the others sat silent, gazing at the bearer of evil news, until he ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... makes a difference in your backbone when people are kind and when they are not. I don't believe unkindness and misfortune and suffering will ever make me good. If anybody is mean to me, I'm stifferer than a lamp-post, and you couldn't make me cry. But when any one is good to me, I haven't a bit of firmness, and am no better ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... "Does misfortune cleanse the unclean?" Pentaur asked himself. "Does it indeed possess a purifying efficacy, and is it possible that the Gods, who gave to fire the power of refining metals and to the winds power to sweep the clouds from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... himself known in his turn, and being unable to think of any other expedient, he did as the girl had done: asked for a bowl of cool water, and pretended clumsily to upset the full jar. He then said: "Aya! Here is another misfortune! But it does not matter. Come to my house, and you shall be well recompensed. I am Erh-lang, brother of Fan. We are proprietors of THE PAVILION OF THE QUICK HEDGE. I am nineteen, and no one has yet cheated me in my business, ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... our happiness. Let us but have peace and tranquillity, and we have enough for every earthly enjoyment whilst it pleases Heaven to bless us with good health. Alas, poor Lady W.! how sensibly I feel for the misfortune that has deprived her excellent husband of all prospect of ever again enjoying comfort in this life. She was, indeed, all you have said ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... still he was resolved to go. Two of the men fell ill. A canoe was made for them and the journey continued. Two men were sent to Point St. Ignace to learn if any news had come of the Griffin. At Niagara, where he learned of further misfortune, he left the other two Frenchmen and the faithful Mohigan Indian as unfit for further travel and pushed on with three fresh men to Fort Frontenac, which he reached in sixty-five days from the day of his starting from Fort Crevecoeur. This gives intimation and illustration ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... courteous letters, one to George III., the other to the Emperor Francis, proposing an immediate end to the war. The close of the letter to George III. has been deservedly admired: "France and England by the abuse of their strength may, for the misfortune of all nations, be long in exhausting it: but I venture to declare that the fate of all civilized nations is concerned in the termination of a war which kindles a conflagration over the whole world." This noble sentiment touched the imagination ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... golden hours, rock and river and greenwood tree. We must also banish resolutely from our past all recollections of enemies and wrongs, troubles and trials, and throw all our heart into doing so. Forgive and forget all enmities—those of Misfortune and Fate being included. Depend upon it that the brighter you can make your Past the pleasanter ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... but after all, to their great annoyance, they find when they least expect it, or when they have taken considerable pains to avoid it, that they have roused by their publication what they would style the bigoted and bitter hostility of a party. This misfortune is easily conceivable, and has befallen many a man. Before he knows where he is, a cry is raised on all sides of him; and so little does he know what we may call the lie of the land, that his attempts at apology perhaps only make matters worse. In other words, an exclusive line of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... as impressively as he presented himself to an audience; and with the glow of pleasure still in her heart, she found her keen and observant mind watching him almost as if he were a stranger. This had been her misfortune always, the ardent heart joined to the critical judgment, the spectator chained eternally to the protagonist. She received a swift impression that he had prepared his words and even his gestures, the kiss on her fingers. Yet, in spite of this suggestion of ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... a merry face laughing and beaming around; and my own old classmate, my solitary classmate, so loved, ah! so loved even unto this day. It was only yesterday I saw him, old and care-worn, yet in all the nobility of his soul, bearing with stern philosophy the miseries of misfortune inflicted by the red hand of merciless war, yielding with dignity and graceful resignation to the necessities imposed by unscrupulous power, conscious of no wrong, and sustained by that self-respect the result of constant and undeviating rectitude which has marked his long life. From childhood ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... been expected, decided in favor of Aphrodite, who had promised him that the fairest woman living in the whole world should be his wife. This promise had to be kept, being given by a goddess, but it was the source of endless misfortune, for Paris had a young and lovely wife who was tenderly attached to him, while the fairest of living women—acknowledged as such by fame in all known countries—was Queen Helen of Sparta, herself ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... before us was this: There was small chance of any immediate fighting. If there were fighting we would not see it. Confronted with the same conditions again, I would decide in exactly the same manner. Our misfortune lay in the fact that our experience with other armies had led us to believe that officers and gentlemen speak the truth, that men with titles of nobility, and with the higher titles of General and Major-General, do not lie. In that we ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... settlements of the land revenue. Where the Government demand is imposed with moderation, and enforced with justice, there will the people be generally found happy and contented, and disposed to perform their duties to each other and to the state; except when they have the misfortune to suffer from drought, blight, and other calamities ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... neighbouring piratical communities! The cause of their presence was explained, when I observed that several of them had been driven on shore on the weather side of the island, the remainder having taken shelter to leeward of it. The wind which had blown the Fraulein off the coast, had, to my misfortune, blown them on it. I consoled myself with the hope that they might soon take their departure, and that I should have simply to undergo the inconvenience of lying hid in the cavern, and was about to hurry away from my conspicuous situation, when, to my dismay, I saw, from ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... from the beginning," she said in a low voice, "and then you will understand. It must not take me long. You see me as I am to-day because of a dreadful misfortune that befell me when I ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... established, the troops were prepared to return to their homes and resume their work as citizens. At no time in history had any people been able against such apparently overwhelming perils and difficulties to maintain a national existence. There was, therefore, notwithstanding the great misfortune, for the people South and North, in the loss of the wise ruler at a time when so many difficulties remained to be adjusted, a dramatic fitness in having the life of the leader close just as the last army of antagonists ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... asleep? Too bad of me. He is a little noisy—I know so little about music. There is Bach, for instance. Would you believe it, he gives me no pleasure? A great misfortune to be no musician!" He ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... does not prove an effectual safeguard from persistence in sin, you will ask what other means can be hopefully employed. None—none whatever; that from which real prayer cannot preserve us is an inevitable misfortune. But think you that any kind of sin can be among those misfortunes that cannot be avoided? No, my friend: "He is able to succour them that are tempted;"[26] and we are also assured that He is willing. Cease, then, from accusing ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... a verbal and hasty message to the astrologer, announcing the cause of his departure. Volktman was a man of excellent heart; but one would scarcely like to inquire whether exultation at the triumph of his prediction was not with him a far more powerful sentiment than grief at the misfortune to his friend! ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... allies, and attacking the revellers, defeated them with great slaughter, so that less than half of them escaped in their ships. Yet this was only the first of the many mishaps which befell the ill-starred Ulysses. So persistently did misfortune pursue him that the superstitious Greeks declared that he must have incurred the hatred of the sea-god, Neptune, who would not ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... of July, being then in latitude 9 degrees 39 minutes 30 seconds S and longitude 142 degrees 59 minutes 15 seconds East of Greenwich, they fell in with an island which obtained the name of Tate's Island, and at which they had the misfortune to stave a boat as before mentioned. The circumstances of the murder of Captain Hill, Mr. Carter, Shaw the first mate of the Chesterfield, and the boat's crew, were related by Mr. Dell. It appeared from his account, that they had landed to search for fresh water, and purposed remaining one ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... little girl. "Mother says it is my greatest misfortune. She says that I shall have to make a great many friends to make up for it, and that if I don't I will grow selfish. Wouldn't you hate to be selfish? I 'spect you have dozens and dozens of little girls to play with. How happy you must make everybody with your lovely garden ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... the working people? My dear, because I had misfortune with moneys invested, because I am old and can no longer win the brave young men, because I have outlived the men of my youth and there is no one to go to, because I live here in the ghetto with Barry Higgins and prepare to die—why, my dear, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Capri. On the 29th we traveled by carriage to Pompeii and thence to Naples. On the 30th we drove about Naples as well as we could, but here we began to feel the heat, which was damp and depressing. It is the misfortune of this city that, although surrounded on all sides by the most beautiful and picturesque scenery of sea and mountain, in a land rich in historical and poetical annals, yet a large portion of the inhabitants impress a stranger with the conviction that they are ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... were it not for that, the country would be but an appanage of Burgundy or France. Heavy imposts would be laid upon the people, their franchises abolished, and the trade greatly injured; and it would therefore be a sore misfortune for the country were the Earl of Flanders to crush Ghent, for did he do so he could work his will ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... my misfortune," she said, "I know. I am losing both what I see, and what I don't see. It is most inconsistent: yet what can ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the latter. The facilities of locomotion have made people restless; the times have passed by when grandchildren would live in the same house in which their grandparents lived or when they consider it a hardship and misfortune to move out of such a habitation, or to see it change owners; time has been, when only the adventurer left his native place, and when it was considered dangerous to go into the world, which at that time could be circumscribed by ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... in alongside his friend and leaped to the ground. The Austrians, perceiving the lad's misfortune, bore down on them with ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... who had the misfortune to be captured, together with their nest and six young ones, were placed in a double cage, with a pair of canaries, which had a brood of young; there was a division of wirework between the cages. At first the goldfinches seemed careless ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... to go down to Brighton with her brother, it was that he might have just one more glimpse of one whom he always had known was lost to him. He had nothing to reproach her or himself with. It was all a misfortune, and nothing more. But his life had been changed for him by that mere ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... short-sighted as Schiller's lament over the prosaic present, as a world bereft of the gods. It is a loss to which we can well resign ourselves, that we no longer see God throned on Olympus, or anywhere else outside of the world. It is no misfortune that the mind has recognized under these alien forms a spirit akin to itself, and therefore no longer gives bribes to Fate by setting up images to it. The deity it worships is thenceforth no longer powerless to exist, nor is there any existence out of him; it needs not, then, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... asked the accused if he had any objection to the case being postponed until the next assizes, on the ground, as the prosecution had alleged, that their most material witness could not be produced. His lordship put the case as somewhat of a misfortune for the prisoner, and made it appear that it would be postponed, if he desired it, as ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... perfect unreserve; for bad conduct, though considered no less deplorable than illness with ourselves, and as unquestionably indicating something wrong with the individual who misbehaves, is nevertheless held to be the result of either pre-natal or post-natal misfortune. I should add that under certain circumstances poverty and ill ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... supreme figure in that struggle was Abraham Lincoln; who in his public capacity illustrated how the most complicated problems of statesmanship find their best solution through good-will, resolution, patience, and homely shrewdness; while in his own life he showed that a man may rise above misfortune and melancholy, unaided by creed or church, working only by absolute fidelity to the right as he sees the right, till he renders to his fellows a supreme service and ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... nude save for the loin cloth, paddled the boat round the bends of the narrow creek with a dexterity due to habit; and then by chance or misfortune wedged her firmly into a glutinous mud-bank from out of which it took the five men two hours and every ounce of their united strength ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... pacing up and down the room. But she had not spent the two hours since Arthur had left her in vain sorrow or in vainer anger. She had felt that it behoved her to resolve how she would act, and what she would do; and in those two hours she had resolved. A great misfortune, a stunning blow had fallen on her; but the fault had been with her rather than with him. She would school herself to bear the punishment, to see him occasionally, and bear with him as she would ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... evening, and covering their heads with their cloths, beat their breasts and make lamentations. Rich men may hire as many as ten mourners for a period of one, two or three months. The Marwaris, when a girl is born, break an earthen pot to show that they have had a misfortune; but when a boy is born they beat a brass plate in token ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... was killed as she was passing the palace gates under the belief that a parley having come from his camp, the firing would be suspended, as in fact it was on our side. This government, informed of the misfortune, sent for the husband of the deceased, and ordered twenty-five dollars to be given him; but the unfortunate man, though plunged in grief, declared that twelve were sufficient to supply his wants. Such was the horror inspired by the atrocious conduct of the ex-government ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... excited unrest and expectancy. The sensible ones by the hundreds, and indeed I suppose I may say by the thousands, went to the morning service, as usual, and heard the children's sermon, delivered by Dr. Newton; and those who did not, and who afterward had the misfortune to fall in with those who did, bemoaned their folly in not doing likewise. On the whole, the children, and those who had brains enough to become children for the time being, were the only comfortable ones ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... "But the misfortune is," said her mother, "that we cannot afford to wait. November will soon be here, and your clothes may be suddenly wanted before they are ready, if we do not bestir ourselves. And Miss Rice is coming in a few days I ought to have the merino ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... tragic encounter. It was not any immediate affection for the old man, who had been no more to him than a strange force driving him on for its own purposes; it was the others he had evoked—and, above all, the sense of common misfortune which no man can avert for ever. For the moment he lost faith in his own power to maintain himself against a ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... civilization. Ah, that I might see such a people! The nearest I ever came was at Honolulu, and there was the taint of the Christian, alack-a-day! The White Man's Burden is the weight of the load of sin, disease, death, and misfortune he has dropped on the happy ones who never knew a Christian creed. We have given them bath tubs in exchange ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... left it, in case of his return. But Monsignor Talbot never returned. Manning's feelings upon the subject appear to have been less tender than the Pope's. In all his letters, in all his papers, in all his biographical memoranda, not a word of allusion is to be found to the misfortune, nor to the death, of the most loyal of his adherents. Monsignor Talbot's name disappears suddenly and for ever— like a ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... evening was a function. Mrs. Rhodes would rather have suffered a serious misfortune than fail in any of the social refinements of her adopted land. Rhodes had suggested that Keith be placed next to Mrs. Lancaster, but Mrs. Rhodes had another plan in mind. She liked Alice Lancaster, and she was trying to do by her as she would have been done by. She wanted ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... And dark round Lynden grew Misfortune's troubles; and foreboding fears, That rose like distant shadows nearer drew O'ercasting the calm evening of his years; Yet still amidst the gloom fair hope appears, A rainbow in the cloud. And, for a space, Till the horizon closes round of clears, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... end the professional grave-digger and corpse-bearer of a Maori village was tapu, and lived loathed and utterly apart. Sick persons were often treated in the same way, and inasmuch as the unlucky might be supposed to have offended the gods, the victims of sudden and striking misfortune were treated as law-breakers and subjected to the punishment of Muru ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... overworked cattle, and crouched or stretched like worn-out, homeless dogs, they had never wakened as he had noiselessly harnessed himself, and he looked at them with that interest in other lives that had come to him through adversity; for if misfortune had given him strength it had also given ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... where he told him he always breakfasted when he had not great company. After the visitor had endured one act of insolence after another, he says:—'I left him without any intention of seeing him again, unless some misfortune should restore his understanding.' Rambler, No. 200. See post, May 15, 1776, where Johnson, speaking of the charge of meanness brought against Garrick, said, 'he might have been much better attacked for living with more splendour than ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... father's death, I would be living in luxury and comfort to-day; but, even regretting my poor judgment, I can now thank a good Providence that I have been sustained through a long life, which has had an undue share of misfortune, by the splendid fortune which came to me in that happy ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... was standing near the golden lilies at home, when suddenly one of them bent over and fell to the ground. 'Good heavens!' cried he, 'some great misfortune has befallen my brother. I must set off at once; perhaps I may still be ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... however, were obliged to take to the sea, and soon afterward a great storm arose, which destroyed many of their vessels. Owing to this misfortune they had to return to Aulis, where they set about repairing their damaged ships and getting ready to start again. While the Greeks were thus engaged, they were surprised by the appearance of King Telephus, who came to their camp to beg Achilles to cure his wound, an oracle ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... can, of course, exercise his discretion in enforcing Rule 5—can allow time for payment, and in certain cases of misfortune, such as the failure of the potato crop, remit it entirely. But this power must be sparingly used, otherwise every one would endeavour to find excuses ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... believe, is true, Sir. The people did then receive the doctrine; they had never entertained it before. Down to that period, the constitutionality of these laws had been no more doubted in South Carolina than elsewhere. And I suspect it is true, Sir, and I deem it a great misfortune, that, to the present moment, a great portion of the people of the State have never yet seen more than one side of the argument. I believe that thousands of honest men are involved in scenes now passing, led away by one-sided views of the question, and following their leaders ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... this trade was promoted by the mother country as one means of preventing the colony from aspiring to independence. They admitted the abstract injustice of slavery, and one remarked, that a difference of the color of the skin was a misfortune, not a crime. They were not, however, disposed to entertain a thought of emancipation, without being fully ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... none: I concluded she was the daughter, till she informed me, that Mons. Saigny, her husband, was gone to Avignon. What added, perhaps, to this lady's beauty in my eyes, or rather ears, was her misfortune,—she could not speak louder than a gentle whisper. After seeing her sumptuous apartments, I told her I would not ask what her price was, but tell her what I could afford only to give; and observed, that as it was winter, and the snow ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... part, not weariness, nor neglect: I thought of you; I was convinced that the Cerceris [a digger wasp] cave had more fair secrets to reveal to us, that the chase of the Sphex held fresh surprises in store. But time failed me; I was alone, deserted, struggling against misfortune. Before philosophizing, one had to live. Tell them that; and they will ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... second of the cardinal doctrines is that of Trishna. Trishna is that inborn element of desire whose tendency is to lead men into evil. So far, it is a misfortune or a form of original sin. Whatever it may have of the nature of guilt hangs upon the issues of a previous life. Upadana is a further stage in the same development. It is Trishna ripened into intense craving by our own choice and our own action. It then becomes uncontrollable ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... 'bout ship, and instead of pursuing to be themselves in turn fugitives. But they were not destined to escape without injury. Another shot from the Raker bore away their foretop-sail, and sensibly checked their speed. To remedy this misfortune, studding-sails were set below and aloft, and for a long time the chase was continued without the shot from the Raker taking serious effect on the pirate; and, indeed, the latter in a considerable degree ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... crowd looked on impassively. One youth only, Gilbert Potter, whose name for those few days passed into fame's trumpet, ventured to exclaim, "The Lady Mary has the better title." Gilbert's master, one "Ninian Sanders," denounced the boy to the guard, and he was seized. Yet a misfortune, thought to be providential, in a few hours befell Ninian Sanders. Going home to his house down the river, in the July evening, he was overturned and drowned as he was shooting London Bridge in his wherry; the boatmen, who were the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... assumption, residence, and other matters, have been agitated with a warmth and intemperance, with prolixity and threats, which, it is to be feared, have lessened the dignity of that body, and decreased that respect which was once entertained for it. And this misfortune is increased by many members, even among those who wish well to the government, ascribing in letters to their respective states, when they are defeated in a favorite measure, the worst motives for the conduct of their opponents, who, viewing matters ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... more successful in Italy. Lautrec, who commanded the French, lost a great battle at Bicocca, near Milan; and was obliged to retire with the remains of his army. This misfortune, which proceeded from Francis's negligence in not supplying Lautrec with money,[*] was followed by the loss of Genoa. The castle of Cremona was the sole fortress in Italy which remained in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... several of the witches to death. The thought of this affected Hawthorne's imagination with a pleasing horror, and he utilized it afterward in his House of the Seven Gables. Many of the old Salem houses, too, had their family histories, with now and then the hint of some obscure crime or dark misfortune which haunted posterity with its curse till all the stock died out or fell into poverty and evil ways, as in the Pyncheon family of Hawthorne's romance. In the preface to the Marble Faun Hawthorne wrote: "No author without a trial can conceive of the difficulty of writing ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... amateurs from grossly overloading the double-shotted pieces. 'Another 42-pound gun burst at the Grand Battery.' 'Captain Hale is dangerously hurt by the bursting of another gun. He was the mainstay of our gunnery since Captain Rhodes's misfortune'—a misfortune due to the same cause. But, in spite of all such drawbacks on the British side, Louisbourg got much the worst of it. The French had to fire from the centre outwards, at a semicircle of batteries that fired back convergingly at them. Besides, it was almost as hard ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... and dumb, she fixed her eyes on a flower which was hanging from a vase. This red flower fascinated her. She could not take her eyes off it. Within her a persistent thought recurred: that of her irremediable misfortune. Madame Desvarennes looked at her for a moment; then, gently ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... philosopher, that he is said to have been forbidden by Ptolemy from delivering his lectures in the schools, because some who heard him made away with themselves. There is, too, an epigram of Callimachus[20] on Cleombrotus of Ambracia, who, without any misfortune having befallen him, as he says, threw himself from a wall into the sea, after he had read a book of Plato's. The book I mentioned of that Hegesias is called [Greek: Apokarterteron], or "A Man who starves himself," in which a man is represented as killing himself by starvation, till ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... well as misfortune in the affair of the yawl. When at last it dropped it avoided the period of ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... supreme feature of importance and attraction. A second copy in shabby attire may plead in vain its merits of production; but it fares as ill as a person of the highest respectability who labours under the misfortune of being ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... quarters, ready, with the rest of the good gentlemen belonging to the Court, to carry my litter up to my bedside. In this manner I came to Angers from St. Jean d'Angely, sick in body, but more sick in mind. Here, to my misfortune, M. de Guise and his uncles had arrived before me. This was a circumstance which gave my good brother great pleasure, as it afforded a colourable appearance to his story. I soon discovered the advantage my brother would ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... Artillery were poor shots. Far from it. Their range was very good, and, as they had plenty of practice every day, shot after shot went home. I ascribe our comparative immunity to a Higher Power, which averted misfortune from us. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... 13. But the great misfortune is, that they who need instruction, are not qualified to choose their instructor; and many who must make this choice for their children, have no adequate means of ascertaining either the qualifications of such as offer themselves, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... stings misfortune flings Can give me little pain When my narcotic spell has wrought This quiet in my brain: When I can waste the past in taste So luscious and so ripe That like an elf I hug myself; And so ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... his own vanity and that of his subjects, by receiving him with great state and magnificence, as a mighty monarch who had fled to an ally for succour in misfortune. All the lords and ladies of the court were assembled, and Bemoin was conducted with a splendid attendance into the hall of audience, where the king rose from his throne to welcome him. Bemoin then made a speech with great ease and dignity, representing ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... to be in a great hurry, and as they flew towards him, they noticed that he had no hat, and there was a look of terror on his face that froze Elena's heart with the certainty of some unknown but terrible misfortune. ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of oppression. Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I submit; 'tis my fate. I am alone in the world—let ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... riding along looking for a job. We were short-handed then and needed men desperately, and so we hired him, but I made up my mind that as soon as things got slack, and we had to lay some of the men off, he'd be the first to go. There may be good Indians and good Mexicans, and it may be my misfortune that I never met them. But Pedro is a half-breed—half Mexican and half Indian—and I've always noticed that that kind is apt to have the worst qualities of both. I've never liked him, but I've set that down to prejudice, and always tried ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... and perhaps of enjoying those treasures to the extent I coveted, had such an effect upon me, that I could not hearken to his remonstrances, nor be persuaded of what was however but too true, as to my lasting misfortune I ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Sir John Hawkins, "he and his fellow pupils were appointed Gentlemen Extraordinary of the Royal Chapel; and in 1704 they were jointly admitted to the place of organist thereof, in the room of Mr. Francis Piggot. Clark had the misfortune to entertain a hopeless passion for a very beautiful lady, in a station of life far above him; his despair of success threw him into a deep melancholy; in short, he grew weary of his life, and on the first day of December, 1707, shot ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... when you see a family waste out an' run to seed like that it usually means that the good Lord is havin' His way about matters. It takes a mighty sharp eye to tell the difference between judgment an' misfortune, an' I've seen enough in this world to know that, no matter how skilfully you twist up good an' evil, God Almighty may be a long time in the unravelling, but He'll straighten 'em out at last. Now as to Bill Fletcher, his sins got in the bone an' they're ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... charm still binds the murderers. He will not forget his promise; and though they may not be punished immediately, as Liveing was, nor suffer like the wicked hawk, Saint Cuthbert will bring sorrow upon their heads at last and misfortune to the cruel hands which ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... of the Tenth, and its movements were so involved with those of the volunteers as to be somewhat obscured by them; the loss also of its commander just as the first position of the enemy fell into our hands, was a great misfortune to the regiment. The Ninth, however, was with the first that mounted the heights, and whatever praise is to be bestowed upon the Rough Riders in that assault is to be distributed in equal degree to the ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... even been to her. He had been the son of a banker at Norwich; but, just as she had become acquainted with him, the bank had broke, and he had left Oxford to come home and find himself a ruined man. But he had never said a word to her of the family misfortune. He had been six feet high, with dark hair cut very short, somewhat full of sport of the roughest kind, which, however, he had abandoned instantly. "Things have so turned out," he had once said to Mary, "that I must earn something to eat instead of riding after foxes." She could not ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... specific, he drank even more deeply, and, as might be expected, was carried away at an earlier period and in rather a worse state, than was usual with him. When some of his friends condoled with him next day, and attributed his misfortune to six bottles of claret which he had imbibed, the Alderman was extremely indignant—'the claret,' he said, 'was sound, and never could do any man any harm—his discomfiture was altogether caused by that damned single strawberry' ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... well-illustrated, and Godwin, writing under the pseudonym of Edward Baldwin, to avoid the odium which had now overtaken his own name, compiled a series of histories with his usual industry and conscientious finish. Through years darkened with misfortune and clouded by failing health, he worked hard at the business of publishing. His capital was never adequate, though his friends and admirers twice came to his aid with public subscriptions. In 1822 he was evicted for ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... / Yet shalt thou tell to me, Why the king my brother / cometh not with thee. Brunhild's prowess is it / hath taken him, I ween; And so this lofty wooing / hath naught but our misfortune been." ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... preparing and saying fourth lesson, during which Williams was bottling up his wrath; and when five struck, and the lessons for the day were over, he prepared to take summary vengeance on the innocent cause of his misfortune. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... on the 15th of May 1824, after a life much chequered by misfortune. He left various MSS. on subjects connected with his favourite studies, which have fortunately found their way into the possession of Mr Laing, to whom the history of Scottish poetry is perhaps more indebted than to any other living writer. The poems in this collection, though bearing marks of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... been displayed relating how, owing to a shift of the wind, the fire had spread, causing a sudden evacuation of the forces battling in the passages and rooms of the castle; and also how through some misfortune the lovely heroine was really and truly caught up there in that lonely tower room, hemmed in by ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... most part Tarzan had fed well always. Today, though, he had gone empty, one misfortune following another as rapidly as he raised new quarry, so that now, as he sat perched in the tree above the feasting blacks, he experienced all the pangs of famine and his hatred for his lifelong enemies waxed strong in his breast. It was tantalizing, indeed, to sit there hungry ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... smiling through her tears; and the girls all went out to prepare the refreshments. Miss Phillips flashed Mrs. Johnson a grateful look; the tact and good sense of the older woman had prevented the misfortune from becoming ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... his case also {kai touton} there was an unpleasing misfortune of the slaying of a child {paidophonos} which troubled him," i.e. he like others had misfortunes to temper ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... of ignorance about all this. He had not the remotest idea of that one who now stood so near. He came as a martyr. He came to make a call. It was a thing he detested. It bored him. To a man like him the one thing to be avoided on earth was a bore. To be bored was to his mind the uttermost depth of misfortune. This he had voluntarily accepted. He was being bored, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... against religion, dear?" she asked very softly. "Is it such men as Mr. Forbes, or just the bitterness from misfortune?" ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... everything you wish, should such a misfortune happen, but I do not believe that the bullet is cast that is to deprive you of life, Jack," answered Adair. "You'll get your flag, as I hope to get mine one of these days; although I know it is possible that a bit of lead may find me out, yet the ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... its own sorrows, it is not overtroubled by those of others, however tender and helpful its sympathies may be. It is impossible to weep much for that in others which we should smile at in ourselves; and when we see a soul writhing like a worm under what seems to us a small misfortune, our pity for its misery is much mitigated by contempt for ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... as lure o' placer gold Brings North the best ye breed, As long as tales of camps and trails Are planted with your seed, As long as red blood courses thru And warms adventure's sons, They'll sally forth, bound for the North, Misfortune's ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... strongly," he continued, "the danger and the misfortune of a church depending on any one personality. It is difficult not to centre too closely around a ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... the grief that he had witnessed really that of a wife for her husband's misfortune? For whatever reason she had married Mutimer—and that could not be love—married life might have engendered affection. He knew Adela to be deeply conscientious; how far was it in a woman's power to subdue herself to love at the ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... miseries, deep down into which they have plunged them, tell them, that they are an inferior and distinct race of beings, which they will be glad enough to recall and swallow by and by. Fortune and misfortune, two inseparable companions, lay rolled up in the wheel of events, which have from the creation of the world, and will continue to take place among men until God shall dash ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... The great misfortune of Ireland is that the mass of the people have been given up for a century to a handful of Protestants, by whom they have been treated as Helots, and subjected to every species of persecution and disgrace. The sufferings of the Catholics have been so loudly ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... be weakness and apathy. When I write it is because I have something to do; my books are not productions, but deeds. Before all, here in Italy we must be men. When we have not the sword, we must take the pen. We heap together materials for building batteries and fortresses, and it is our misfortune if these structures are not works of art. To write slowly, coldly, of our times and of our country, with the set purpose of creating a chef-d'oeuvre, would be almost an impiety. When I compose a ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... heart. She grew cold, callous, indifferent. Her mouth, a really beautiful feature, that used to be a picture of serenity and charity personified, hardened. She became austere, cold. Not difficult, so much as unsympathetic. She was still a good hostess, and those who had known her before her misfortune still loved her. But she made no new friends, and she sat down within herself, as it were, and gave herself up to her fate, and would probably have died or grown reckless but for her ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... David Dubbs's misfortune, had grown overcast, and flung down spiteful little sallies of snow as he crossed the river on his way to Mr. Griffin's. The creaking of the bridge's huge timbers and the splitting ice below it made him shiver and pull his threadbare coat close about him and sacrifice his old hands to the wind ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... own mind, "This comes when like marries not like—when a man forms an unnatural union with a sea-maiden." Excusing himself, as we all love to do, he would add: "I did not, in fact, know that she was a maid of the sea. It is my misfortune that my steps are haunted and disturbed by the wild humours of her kindred, but it is ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... the peasants in the fields of Thuringia might have been an irreparable misfortune to Germany and to Christianity, we cannot deny that Luther's appeal to the secular arm, to suppress the rebellion, may have thoroughly altered the character of the first Reformation. Till then it had been established by preaching; but from the moment ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... a thoughtless, expensive, headlong and irascible master, but never one more so than the present owner; added to which, he had the misfortune of being unpopular. Other men, thoughtless, and headlong, and irritable as he, have lived and had friends; but there was something about O'Grady that was felt, perhaps, more than it could be defined, which ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... "It was the most miserable place within the ring of Ireland. It lay under the blight of a good landlord, no better. That was its misfortune, and especially my misfortune. If the Gobstown landlord was not such a good landlord it's driving on the box of an empire I would be to-day instead of whacking tips on the heels of your boots. How could that ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... world, out in the street, Nothing to wear and nothing to eat, Fatherless, motherless, sadly I roam, Child of misfortune, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... HENSLEY HENSON) expressed the hope that the appointment of bishops would not be governed solely by an anthropometric standard. It would be a misfortune if the impression were created that preferment to the episcopal bench was confined to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... Kwan-she-yin and the monkish communities of the land of Han; and, through their dread and mysterious protection, was preserved to day-break. After day-break, the Brahmans deliberated together and said, "It is having this Sramana on board which has occasioned our misfortune and brought us this great and bitter suffering. Let us land the bhikshu and place him on some island-shore. We must not for the sake of one man allow ourselves to be exposed to such imminent peril." A patron of Fa-hien, however, said to them, "If you land the ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... came running up, hearing the governor's cries. He went to meet her, took her by the arm, and drew her quickly towards the edge; after which, as they both bent over it together, 'Look, look,' cried he, 'what a misfortune!' ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sail in the Ceres, however, to his sorrow, for the voyage home was a long and dreadful one. The record of those terrible fifty-eight days, carefully set down in his journal, reads like an Odyssey of misfortune and almost of disaster. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... solicitude. His head was racking. All his limbs ached and burned. He desired nothing but the cold sheets of his bed and a bottle of embrocation. He swore at the fog, with a fine relish for the colour of sounds. He swore at things that were in no way responsible for his misfortune. Somewhere, he conjectured, in warmth and safety, Henry Wiggin, the copper's nark, was perfectly enjoying his supper of fried ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... single exception, every other modern Government that has lasted so long, has occupied an unsatisfactory position in its fourth year. The Government of 1880 in the year 1884 was brought very low, and was deeply involved in disastrous enterprises beyond the sea which ultimately resulted in sorrow and misfortune. The Conservative Government which took office in 1886 was by the year 1890, owing to its strange proceedings against Mr. Parnell, brought to the depths of humiliation. The Government of 1895 was in the year ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... he would begin to cry and say that his house had been stolen. Then my sister used to scream. It was always she who used to find the house. One morning la mere Colas got angry with us and told us that we were children of misfortune, and that she would not feed us any longer. She said we could go and look for our father, who had gone away nobody knew where. When her anger had passed she gave us our breakfasts as usual, but a few days afterwards we were put into pere ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... "It is the misfortune of professed book writers, when they arrive in the United States, to fall into the hands of certain cliques in our principal cities and town, who make themselves the medium of interpretation—their own modes of life, the representation of those of the elite of the country; their ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Sigognac with the bravo Lampourde. But some make it a reproach, not, I think, of very damaging validity, that so much of the book is little more than a "study off" the Roman Comique;[215] and it is, though not exactly a reproach, a great misfortune that in time, kind, and almost everything else it enters into competition with Dumas, whose gifts as a manager of such things were as much above Gautier's as his powers as a writer were below Theo's. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Such things have been heard of as coaches being snowed up, and even railways blocked with the innocent-looking snow. But when the travellers have to cross the sea in places where it is at no time very smooth, the risk of such a misfortune is always much greater. It was often utterly impossible for boats to reach the Farne Islands from the mainland; and no one could say, until the time came, that the Darlings would not be kept from home by stress of weather. It ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... the apple and looked at it with eyes brimful of tears, for he knew the whole extent of his misfortune. His heart ached, he felt a loathing for the world, and he said with ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Sneerwell would have sent him to the kitchen. If he had made love to Lady Teazle as this one does, she would have suspected him of weak intellect. Sheridan's Joseph was a man of culture: Mr. Henley's is a buffoon. It is not, perhaps, so much this gentleman's fault as his misfortune that his acting is without either art or craft; but then he was not compelled to play Joseph Surface. Indeed, we may go further, and say that if he is a man with friends he must have been dissuaded from it. The Sir Peter Teazle of Mr. Ruskin reminded us of other Sir Peter ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... 189: Olopana. A celebrated king of Waipio valley, Hawaii, who had to wife the famous beauty, Luukia. Owing to misfortune, he sailed away to Kahiki, taking with him his wife and his younger brother, Moikeha, who was his puna-lua, settling in a land called Moa-ula-nui-akea. Olopana probably ended his days in his new-found home, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... It is a misfortune for all honest critics, that hardly any quality of art is independently to be praised, and without reference to the motive from which it resulted, and the place in which it appears; so that no principle can be simply enforced but it shall seem to countenance a vice; while the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... sir," said the Chairman. "It is a terrible misfortune; terrible indeed. And just when we were on ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... another, and it was discovered that Macarroni was going to sing. As a matter of fact, the fat Silenus did sing, and everybody was startled to hear a high tenor voice issue from within that voluminous human being. The fat Silenus had the misfortune to sing false in the midst of his bravest trills, and the poor soul was overcome, despite ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... in favour of real freedom for woman; that is, I wish her to follow her own nature, whether she be an exceptional or an ordinary woman ... I recognize fully the right of the feminine individual to go her own way, to choose her own fortune or misfortune. I have always spoken of women collectively and ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... journalism, here to-day and gone to-morrow. At his highest he is very high, but it was not given to him to enjoy the conditions under which great work is produced: he had neither peace of body nor health of mind, his life from first to last was a struggle with sickness and misfortune. How is it possible to maintain an interest in all he wrote, when two-thirds of it was produced with duns at the door and a nurse in the other room and the printer's-devil waiting in the hall? Of his admirable ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... your misfortune a heavy one,' said Mr Haredale, looking restlessly towards the door: 'and this is not a time to comfort you. If it were, I am in no condition to do so. Before I leave you, tell me one thing, and try to tell me plainly, I implore you. Have you ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... of the sectarian protests against President Grant's policy in regard to manning the Indian agencies, I believe that religious prejudice has been a real misfortune to our people. General Armstrong, in an address given at Lake Mohonk in 1890, expressed the well-founded opinion that the industrial work of the Catholic schools is as good as any, often superior; the academic work generally inferior, ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... O Simmias, what are you saying? I am not very likely to persuade other men that I do not regard my present situation as a misfortune, if I cannot even persuade you that I am no worse off now than at any other time in my life. Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... man would be ashamed to take advantage of the misfortune of a woman for the satisfaction of his lowest passions. I will give you good advice as a well-meaning friend, as one who has a boundless respect for you. You tell me you have an uncle in Belgrade: go to him. He is your blood ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... one day going to Egina, he was taken by pirates, who brought him to Crete, and exposed him to sale. He did not appear to be in the least disconcerted, nor to feel the least uneasiness on account of his misfortune. Seeing one Xeniades, corpulent and well-dressed, "I must be sold to that person," said he, "for I perceive he needs a master. Come, child," said he to Xeniades, as he was coming up to purchase him, "come, child, buy a man." Being asked what he could do, he said ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... progress that people could expect from me, and that I need not doubt of my abilities. He told me that he himself was a peasant youth of three and twenty, older than I myself was, when he began his studies; the misfortune for me was, that I ought to have been treated differently to the other scholars, but that this could hardly be done in a school; but that things were progressing, and that I stood well both with the teachers and my ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... also who had refrained from sexual intercourse for some time before marriage were believed to pass at death immediately into the abode of the blessed. "Their behavior, on all occasions, seems to indicate a great openness and generosity of disposition. I never saw them, in any misfortune, labor under the appearance of anxiety, after the critical moment was past. Neither does care ever seem to wrinkle their brow. On the contrary, even the approach of death does not appear to alter their usual vivacity" (Third Voyage of Discovery, 1776-1780). Turnbull visited Tahiti ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... these volumes. The effect of these poems on the public mind will not be soon forgot. Here appeared a new poet and a new critic, a man of unquestionable taste and luxuriant fancy, combined with such powers of satire, as became tremendously formidable to all who had the misfortune to fall under his displeasure. It was acknowledged at the same time, that amid some personal acrimony, and some affectionate preferences, not far removed, perhaps, from downright prejudice, he in general grounded ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... innamorata di Ruggiero (ma [Footnote: "Bradamante is enamored of Ruggiero, but"]—she is to marry Leone, but will not) fa una povera Baronessa, che ha avuto una gran disgrazia, ma non so la quale; recita [Footnote: "Pretends to be a poor Baroness who has met with some great misfortune, but what it is I don't know, she performs"] under an assumed name, but the name I forget; ha una voce passabile, e la statura non sarebbe male, ma distuona come il diavolo. Ruggiero, un ricco principe innamorato di Bradamante, e un musico; ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... fortune long before he began to share in the real profits of his books—that if the publishers met next week, and resolved henceforth to make this royalty bargain and no other, it would be an enormous hardship and misfortune because the authors could not live while they wrote. The pamphlet seems to me just another example of the old philosophical chess-playing, with human beings for pieces. 'Don't want money.' 'Be careful to be born with means, and have ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
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