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More "Wretch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and most merciless wretch who ever threw stones at a woman was pitiful in comparison with ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... agitators: by major-generals: by a new kind of representatives from the three kingdoms: by the keepers of the liberties of England; with other schemes that have slipped out of my memory. Cromwell was dead; his son Richard, a weak, ignorant wretch, who gave up his monarchy much in the same manner with the two usurping kings of Brentford.[9] The people harassed with taxes and other oppressions; the King's party, then called the Cavaliers began to recover their spirits. The few nobility ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... marry the daughter of such a man as Melmotte, must do so under the stress of pecuniary embarrassment? Would it not be an understood bargain that, as he provided the rank and position, she would provide the money? And yet the vulgar wretch took advantage of his assumed authority to ask these dreadful questions! Sir Felix stood silent, trying to look the man in the face, but failing;—wishing that he was well out of the house, and at the Beargarden. 'You don't seem to be very clear about your own circumstances, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... the energy of your mind on me," cried Vivian, breaking from Lady Sarah, and striking his forehead violently; "I am not worthy of such attachment! It is done—it cannot be undone: I am a weak, ruined, dishonoured wretch!—I tell you, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... evening: she knew her father and brother too well to be put on the wrong scent; and although, immediately after Alfonso's death, the Duke of Valentinois had arrested the doctors, the surgeons, and a poor deformed wretch who had been acting as valet, she knew perfectly well from what quarter the blow had proceeded. In fear, therefore, that the manifestation of a grief she felt this time too well might alienate the confidence of her father and brother, she retired to Nepi with her whole household, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thoughts indeed would wrong him. The world is full of slander; and every wretch that knows himself unjust, charges his neighbour with like passions; and by the general frailty, hides his own. If you are wise, and would be happy, turn a deaf ear to such reports: 'tis ruin ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... for company. I 'll just whisk off my regimentals, and Polly, the maid, becomes Polly, the missis. It was lovely of you to come early; take off your things. Another new bonnet? you extravagant wretch! How is your mother and Maudie? It 's a nice day, and we 'll have a walk, ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... weeks to months, and the months to years, and Hilda grew tall and fair, unconsciously eating her mother's portion of the daily bread. No hermit ever lived upon so little as sufficed for the baroness; no perishing, shipwrecked wretch ever measured out so carefully the ounce of biscuit that must maintain life from day to day; no martyr ever submitted more patiently and silently to his sufferings. But Hilda grew, and the years sped on, and Greif ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Frank, sincerely. "That little squirrel never harmed me, but I murdered him. He was one of God's creatures, and I had no right to lift my hand against him. I feel like a brute, a wretch, a murderer!" ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... wretch, indeed, to do it," I answered, plucking up a little spirit, "for she lives only to show ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... risk of his limbs, and cross ferries at that of his life; he must visit Bloody Run, the Burning Springs, and Indian curiosity-shops, which have nothing to do with them at all; and when the poor wretch is thoroughly bewildered and wearied by "doing Niagara," he is allowed to steal quietly off to what he really came to see—the mighty Horse-shoe Fall, with all its accompaniments of majesty, sublimity, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... volunteered the dangerous service of reconnoitering the enemy, returned within an hour, bringing in a straggler from the English camp. His life was promised him on condition of his revealing the strength of the advancing army. The terrified wretch did not hesitate; and from him they learned that it was commanded by Sir John Segrave and Ralph Confrey, who, deeming the country subdued by the two last battles gained over the Black and Red Cummins,** ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... noble wine at Cana and equally of that sustaining wine we had in the little upper room in Jerusalem when the hour of trial was near and our Master would have us at our best! With me, who have since tasted of that unimaginable wine which the Master promised us in His kingdom, the busy wretch would be arguing! and would have convinced me, in the face of all my memories, that my Master, Who was a Man among men, was nourished by such thin swill as bred this niggling brawling wretch to ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... and had a reward set upon his head. It very nearly cost the poet AEschylus his life, for speaking too freely of it in some of his tragedies. The disgrace of Alcibiades proceeded from the same cause. Whoever had violated this secresy, was avoided as a wretch accursed and excommunicated.(73) Pausanias, in several passages, wherein he mentions the temple of Eleusis, and the ceremonies practised there, stops short, and declares he cannot proceed, because he had been forbidden by a dream ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... kindliness which had so endeared him to his boyhood's friends pervaded every action of his maturer life, and he never displayed more energy, more unceasing vigilance, more irresistible eloquence, than when pleading the cause of some poor wretch who could only ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... alone, of sheer old age I die; for hunger slays not all. I hoped my misery's closing page To fold within some hospital; But crowded thick is each retreat, Such numbers now in misery lie. Alas! my cradle was the street! As he was born the aged wretch must die. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... for that mad man of mine. Here he came to the ends of the earth and took a hall, not a house, and all that we might not be neighbours. The jealous wretch, always the ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... sort us'd; the worst, whose spirits brake out in noise, (33) He cudgell'd with his sceptre, chid, and said, "Stay, wretch, be still, And hear thy betters; thou art base, and both in power and skill Poor and unworthy, without name in counsel or in war." We must not ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... thing for a man in this warlike country to be employed in doing that which is considered as the lowest woman's work. Slaves are not allowed to go to war; but this perhaps can hardly be considered as a hardship. I heard of one poor wretch who, during hostilities, ran away to the opposite party; being met by two men, he was immediately seized; but as they could not agree to whom he should belong, each stood over him with a stone hatchet, and seemed ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small moneys belonging to his master, and who had taken this hopeful mode of putting a possible accuser out of his way. All of which he confessed next day, like a sulky wretch who couldn't be troubled any more, now that they had got hold of him, and meant to make an end of him. I saw him once again, on the day of my departure from the Inn. In that Canton the headsman still does his ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... Horror!' 'And what meanest thou by horror?' said the Companions; and he replied, 'SLAUGHTER! SLAUGHTER!' This beheld the Prophet in vision 600 years ago. And could there well be worse slaughter than there was in Rei, where I, wretch that I am, was born and bred, and where the whole population of five hundred thousand souls was either butchered or ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the jail, to the penitentiary, and find there the wretch most sullen, brutal, and hardened. Then look at your infant son. Such as he is to you, such to some mother was this man. That hard hand was soft and delicate; that rough voice was tender and lisping; fond eyes followed him as he played, and he was rocked ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... purpose accomplished here is the exhibition of domestic comfort and content, and this is further emphasised by Ruth's recital of a written tribute that Aram's pupils have sent to him, on the eve of his marriage. Wounded by this praise the conscience-stricken wretch breaks off abruptly from his pastime and rushes from the room—an act of desperate grief which is attributed to his modesty. The parson soon follows, and Ruth is left alone. Houseman, their casual guest, having accepted the vicar's hospitable offer ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Humor of Princes! Is this wretch indu'd With any merit worth a thousand crownes? 145 Will my lord have me be so ill a steward Of his revenue, to dispose a summe So great, with so small cause as shewes in him? I must examine ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... their inundation, or not reach the elevation indicated by the position of the transverse beam upon the upright, would reign in all his horrors over their desolated lands. This symbolical personification was, therefore, represented as a miserable emaciated wretch, who had grown up 'as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground, who had no form nor comeliness; and when they should see him, there was no beauty that they should desire him.' Meagre were his looks; sharp misery had worn him to the bone. His crown of thorns indicated the ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... shutters and give you the money." Mary Goddard was almost overcome with exhaustion. It was a terrible struggle to maintain her composure under such circumstances; but necessity does wonders. "Where will you sleep to-night?" she asked presently. She pitied the wretch from her heart, though she longed to see ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... was the proprietress of a public house. To a shrill voice and a complaining disposition she added a dismal sort of piety which showed itself in much going to meeting, in considering her husband a lost and sinful wretch and in the entertaining of a prim-faced, red-nosed, rusty old hypocrite of a preacher who sat by her fireside every evening consuming quantities of toast and pineapple rum, and groaning at the depravity of her husband, who declined to give money to the preacher's society for sending ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... I said, "Are you sure?" "Yes." "It may be your husband's" (for Hannah's hints came to my mind). "He!—he!—the miserable, contemptible little wretch!—he?" She left off feeling my cock, raised herself on her elbow, and looking at me said, "Who told you I was married?" "No one." "Some one has." "No one,—but I have more than once fancied you were married by the difficulty I have in ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... "Wretch!" cried the King, unsheathing his consoler-under-disappointment; "how dare you claim my daughter when you have done nothing ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... bitter sarcasm, the unhappy wretch was put into the cutter, and was soon left far behind. He made no effort to row, but was seen lying on his back with his legs up, when last made ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... pollutes the air!" Another, jeering, asked, "How long to-night Shall such a miscreant cur offend our sight?" "Look at his torn hide," sneered a Jewish wit,— "You could not cut even a shoe from it," And turned away. "Behold his ears that bleed," A fourth chimed in; "an unclean wretch indeed!" "He hath been hanged for thieving," they all cried, And spurned the loathsome beast from side to side. Then Jesus, standing by them in the street, Looked on the poor spent creature at his feet, And, bending o'er ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... was the same Width all the way up and down, the same as a Poster Girl, and used to sport a Velvet Shroud with Black Beads on it, and could wield a Tooth-Pick and carry on a Conversation at the same time, he knew that sooner or later some Handsome Wretch with Money would try to ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... just beyond. In the instant he fell back, and confronted the other two with such a look on his face that both started in vague alarm. They saw the sickened look of one who turns from a revolting sight. A wretch stricken suddenly blind may know at once the fact of a terrible grief, yet he cannot quite at first gather to himself the fullness of the horror. He is only aware that, afterward, the meaning will slowly take shape, like a ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... friendship but a name, A charm that lulls to sleep, A shade that follows wealth and fame, But leaves the wretch to weep. ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... of all, who on their coast arrive The wretch, who unforewarn'd approaching, hears The Sirens' voice, his wife and little ones Ne'er fly to gratulate his glad return; But him the Sirens sitting in the meads Charm with mellifluous song, although he see Bones heap'd around them, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... with Strings. The tears were in his eyes. "Mistress Nell, you are so good to me," he said; "and I am such a wretch." ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... so far above this earthliness, that in so many hours I am to shake off for ever, that I can trust myself to meet her soul to soul. She must believe me now, and I would tell her, Adrian, that my deceit was not premeditated, and that the man she once honoured with her love is not the base wretch she deems. I think it may comfort her. If she does mourn for me at all—she has so proud a spirit, my princess, as I used to call her—it may comfort her to know that I was not all unworthy of the love she once gave me, of the tears she ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Tallboys commenced cuffing the poor wretch right and left, who received so many swinging boxes of the ear that he was soon reduced to merely pitiful plaints of "Oh dear!—such inhumanity—I purtest—oh dear! must I get up? ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... "You little wretch!" breathed Charlotte, between her teeth, as she seized the sketch-book and whirled the baby to her feet. "Oh! Is this the way you pay me for all I've ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... them who passes as the wife of the lancer whom the captain killed yesterday. She is dressed like a lancer, and she tortured me the most yesterday, and suggested burning me; and it was she who set fire to the wood. Oh! the wretch, the brute! Ah! how I am suffering! My loins, my arms!" and he fell back gasping and exhausted, writhing in his terrible agony, while the captain's wife wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and we all shed tears ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... The wretch gasped and groaned. He struggled to escape from that iron hold in vain. The hand which had seized him was not to be shaken off. Despard had fixed his grasp there, and there in the throat of the fainting, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... how rudely they addressed him, ... how they threatened him, and the threats they used to him!—only because he was a working man! That young officer, too, was no doubt just such an unprincipled, heartless wretch as I have ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... place with alacrity, and, as he entered the Chapel-yard, remarked, sufficiently loud to be heard by several persons near him, "Now, then, as Dr. Dodd said, I shall soon know the grand secret." On reaching the scaffold, the miserable wretch mounted the drop without the slightest assistance, and when he got to the centre, he bowed to the spectators twice, a proceeding which called forth a tremendous cheer ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... for Surgeon Porter, and in less than two hours that little wretch, with his orderly, packed up his blankets and I saw him or them no more. I had never dressed a thigh stump, but must dress a good many now; I rolled that one in a wet cloth, and covered it carefully, ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... Ardelia say? That I had bless'd your Soul with Hopes! That I would cast you away to Antonio!—Can they who safely arrive in their wish'd-for Port, be said to be shipwreck'd? Or, can an abject indigent Wretch make a King?—These are more than Riddles, Madam; and I must not think to expound 'em. No, (said she) let it alone, Don Henrique; I'll ease you of that Trouble, and tell you plainly that I love you. Ah! (cry'd he) now all my Fears are come upon me!—How! (ask'd she) were ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... save that of "my child." When Jacques grew up, he displayed a taste for painting, and of course had every advantage which royal protection could afford him. He was privileged to approach the queen unannounced. But when the Revolution broke out, this miserable wretch, to avoid popularity, joined the Jacobins, and was one of the queen's bitterest ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... more melancholy, remorse-stricken wretch than Cap'n Davis? Or a gentler and seedier poet than Herrick? Or a more finely sodden and soaked old rum sport than Huish (not—Whish!) But it was not until they fell in with Attwater that their weakness as scoundrels ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... pointing to the woman, "See this woman,—this wretch. I entered thy house; thou gavest me no water for my feet; but she has washed my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. She kisses my feet; she anoints them with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and requires proof which Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps upon his adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds,' 'a pert teacher of his betters,' 'an unsociable animal,' 'an obstinate and intractable wretch,' and much more to the same effect, is unworthy of a Christian clergyman, and calculated to damage rather than do service to the cause ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... temper before, I could help being touched by such an one as he sets me? If this goodness makes him know no mean in giving, shall I be so greedy as to know none in receiving? Come, come, my dear child, your poor father is not so sordid a wretch, neither. He will shew the world that all these benefits are not thrown away upon one, who will disgrace you as much by his temper, as by his condition. What though I cannot be as worthy of all these favours ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... what was I to do? After the lapse of a few days, when I was in the street, I perceived a young girl who, as to her face and her raiment, was the exact image of her whom I had beheld in my dream. But I said to myself, 'What is this girl to me? If I, poor wretch that I am, take to wife a girl dowered with naught, except a crowd of brothers and sisters, it will be all over with me; forasmuch as I can hardly keep myself as it is. If I should attempt to carry her off, or to have my will of her by stealth, there will of a surety be some tale-bearers about; ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... heinous offense, given up a servant of his to the rest of his fellows, with charge to whip him first through the market, and then to kill him; and while they were executing this command, and scourging the wretch, who screwed and turned himself into all manner of shapes and unseemly motions, through the pain he was in, the solemn procession in honor of Jupiter chanced to follow at their heels. Several of the attendants on which were, indeed, scandalized at the sight, yet no one ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... was a free man now,—by virtue of his nickname, "quiet Stevy," in part. It startled him as much as the jailer, when his release was sent in a year before the time, "in consideration of his uniform good conduct." The truth was, that M. Soule took an interest in the poor wretch, and had said a few words in his favor to the Governor at a dinner-party the other evening, so the release was signed the next day. Soule had called to see the man when he came to Pittsburg, and spent an hour or two in his cell. The next morning he was free to go, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... his paw with his tongue, pausing now and then as his courage increased to glare and stare and growl at his enemy with looks and tones wonderfully human, as if saying: "You confounded fishy, unfair rascal! What did you do that for? What had I done to you? Faithless, legless, long-nosed wretch!" Intense experiences like the above bring out the humanity that is in all animals. One touch of nature, even a cat-and-loon touch, makes all ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... his pensioner, and bestowed the usual benefaction, he could not help saying, after they had proceeded a few yards further, "Do you know anything to the old man's discredit?" Upon which the youth burst into tears, and cried, "Oh no, sir, God forbid!—but I am a poor wretch to be ashamed to speak to him—he is my own father. He has enough laid by to serve for his own old days, but he stands bleaching his head in the wind, that he may get the means of paying for my education." Compassionating the young man's ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... told that they were afraid of me at home. Heaven knows why! for I should have thought that pompous, heartless, rigid, tyrannical wretch, my husband, was the one to be afraid of; and not a ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... candidly confessed, that his proposal was not likely to be useful, while the evidence of slaves continued inadmissible against their masters. But he could even bring testimony to the inefficacy of such regulations. A wretch in Barbadoes had chained a Negro girl to the floor, and flogged her till she was nearly expiring. Captain Cook and Major Fitch, hearing her cries, broke open the door and found her. The wretch retreated from their resentment, but cried out exultingly, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... said. "You are awfully good to a clumsy wretch who might have crushed you. I shall endeavor to repay you both for your kindness." He started to arise from Hugh's chair, but that ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... fortunate," replied the baroness, "for I wish to inform you that he is a villain, a wretch, a miserable fellow!" Her anger was rising again, but she struggled to control it. When Nino realised what she said he came forward and stood near the count, facing the baroness, his arms folded on his breast, as though to challenge accusation. The count raised ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... him as his brother after we were married: he had too much respect for me to insult me with such a brother. Would such a selfish wretch as Peter have come thirty miles to see Timothy hanged, do you think? Not thirty yards, not he. However, I must bear my cross as best I may: least said is ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... could have saved Paul Linmere. His fate was decided. Twice I waylaid him in the streets, and showed him my pale face, which was not unlike the face of the dead. And as he believed that I was drowned, the sight of me filled him with the most abject terror. How I enjoyed the poor wretch's cowardly horror! ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... other trifle of the enemy's, without ever a word of censure or a question asked. Why, man, it is but two days since His Majesty had a poor devil hanged at Kendal for laying violent hands upon a pullet. Pox on it, Cris, my gorge rises at the thought! When I saw that wretch strung up, I swore to fall behind at the earliest opportunity, and ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... reports came the shrill, entreating cries of the unfortunate gold washers. Shot after shot rang out, and cry after cry, until the cries ceased and only a few scattering reports indicated that perhaps one poor wretch had sought safety in the river only to afford ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... evidence against Mr. Wood,(482) that dirty wretch Webb,(483) and the messengers, for their illegal proceedings against Mr. Wilkes. At midnight, Mr. Grenville offered us to adjourn or proceed. Mr. Pitt humbly begged not to eat or sleep till so great a point should be decided. On a division, in which though many said aye to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... hesitate," said Cameron; "for when your trumpets shall sound to attack M'Callum More, not a man of these glens will remain deaf to the summons. Glengarry—Keppoch—I myself—would destroy, with fire and sword, the wretch who should remain behind under any pretence whatsoever. To-morrow, or the next day, shall be a day of battle to all who bear the name of M'Donnell or Cameron, whatever be ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... he was such a handsome and engaging little wretch, attracting all eyes wherever he went, and so full of saucy drolleries, that it seemed to Mrs. Pennel that everything and everybody conspired to help her spoil him. There are two classes of human beings in this world: one class seem made to give love, and the other to take it. Now Mrs. Pennel ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a little gray mouse. Dick watched her till she was out of sight, but he did not hear her say to herself, very soberly, "I'm a wretch,- -a horrid, selfish wretch. But it's Dick, and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... drift-wood, not lounge there and waste My father's food dreaming his time away. For then as now the common-minded rich Grudged ease to those whose toil brought them in means For every waste of life. At length I spoke, Insulting both my inarticulate soul And her with acted anger: "Lazy wretch, Is it for eyes like yours to watch the sea As though you waited for a homing ship? My father might with reason spend his hours Scanning the far horizon; for his Swan Whose outward lading was full half a vintage Is now months overdue." She turned on me Her languor knit and, through its homespun ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... was passing heavy, and wist not what to do. So he arose, sore weeping, and cursed the time when he was born, for he thought never to have honour more. Then he went to the cross, and found his helm, his sword, and his horse taken away. Then he called himself a very wretch, and the most unhappy of all knights. And he said: "My sin and my wickedness have brought me unto great dishonour. When I sought worldly adventures from worldly desires, I ever achieved them, and had the better ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... bung of one of the casks till she loosened it; and than all the wine ran out, without the carter seeing it. At last he looked round, and saw that the cart was dripping, and the cask quite empty. 'What an unlucky wretch I am!' cried he. 'Not wretch enough yet!' said the sparrow, as she alighted upon the head of one of the horses, and pecked at him till he reared up and kicked. When the carter saw this, he drew out his hatchet ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... woman jumps out of window without caring whether she breaks her neck or no, she's not to be mistaken; and this being the case I have come to a conclusion: that it is wrong to so torture a fellow-creature any longer; and I won't be the inhuman wretch to do ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... that was necessary. "You don't get away from me in that manner. I will stop your grumbling before I have done with you, by a remedy a little worse than the disease—plenty of my own gabble! I said literature—do you see that desk littered with papers, you ungrateful wretch?" (It will be seen that Josephine Harris had a habit of using strong Saxon words, as well as some that were "fast," not to say bordering upon popular slang; and the reader may as well be horrified with her, and get over it, first as last.) "You have sent out from that desk ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Empire on land, and made its fleets the terror of the Mediterranean; but the year before he died his pashas had failed disastrously in their attempt on Malta, and his successor, Selim II (whom Ottoman historians surname "the Drunkard"), was reported to be a half-imbecile wretch, devoid of either intelligence or enterprise. So Europe breathed more freely. But while the "Drunkard" idled in his seraglio by the Golden Horn, the old statesmen, generals, and admirals, whom Suleiman had formed, were still ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... for the holy cause is vain. Blair had other listeners than the ear to which he spoke. Unconscious of all around him, he had but striven to touch and uplift the soul of the dying man. The group of sailors gathered round the departing wretch would soon be scattered far and wide on the rolling seas, thousands of miles from the home of Blair Robertson, and the solemn truths he had spoken might spring up in their hearts and bear ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... that the goods of the church are the treasurie of Christ (or at leastwise ought to be) and that none ought to alienate or change the propertie of such goods, as the canon law hath prouided. Besides, the wretch ought to haue remembred that which euen the verie pagans did not forget; namelie, [Sidenote: Prop. lib.] Haud vllas portabis opes Acherontis ad vndas, Nudus ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... he next a cross's handle broke; Wherewith her back, and arms, and head he plies: His mercy with loud voice the wretch bespoke, And hugged that angel's knees with suppliant cries. Michael suspends not the avenging stroke Till hunted to the Moorish camp she flies, Then thus: "Believe worse vengeance yet in store, If I beyond these ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... all the torments exercised on that poor wretch Damien, for attempting the least bad of all murders, that of a king. They copied with a scrupulous exactness horrid precedents, and the dastardly monarch permitted them! I don't tell you any particulars, for in time of war, and at this distance, how to depend ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... children here no longer. The same shaking, wild-eyed, blood-shot-eyed and blear-eyed drunks and disorderlies, though some of the women have nerves yet; and the same decently dressed, but trembling and conscience-stricken little wretch up for petty larceny or something, whose motor car bosses of a big firm have sent a solicitor, "manager," or some understrapper here to prosecute ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... know not how many, were cutting each other's throats for its legitimate business. At this juncture dear George invested all his earnings as a contractor, in the despised original stock,—he actually bought it for 3 1/4 per cent,—good shares that had cost a round hundred to every wretch who had subscribed. Six thousand eight hundred dollars—every cent he had—did George thus invest. Then he went himself to the trustees of the first mortgage, to the trustees of the second, and to the trustees of the third, and told them what ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... "You mercenary wretch!" said he. Louis Quillan then did what seemed advisable; and presently he added, "In any event, the ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... than you think over the farm." She was wanting to correct the proofs of the book and rewrite the prefatory memoir. In her irritation she wrote to Agnes. Agnes replied sympathetically, and Mrs. Failing, clever as she was, fell into the power of the younger woman. They discussed him at first as a wretch of a boy; then he got drunk and somehow it seemed more criminal. All that she needed now was a personal grievance, which Agnes casually supplied. Though vindictive, she was determined to treat him well, and thought with satisfaction of our distant ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... they had in her; and lo, said he, I shall ally myself to, perhaps, a numerous family of vagabonds; at least, whether it be so or not, the manner in which these children were exposed, being publicly known, may furnish a pretence for any wretch to boast a kindred. ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... are 2 or 3 more ill and absent, which was the plea for refusing me. I will never commit my peace of mind by depending on such a wretch for a favor in future, so shall never have heart to ask for holidays again. The man next him in office, Cartwright, furnished ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... as they passed in the street below, and listened. Trent was pronouncing an encomium upon his wife, and they were both wondering by what enchantment she had been brought to marry such a misshapen wretch as he. The dwarf after watching their retreating shadows with a wider grin than his face had yet displayed, stole softly in the dark ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... moment's glance showed that the gaping hole had been caused by a gun-shot wound; the gun must have been fired with the muzzle almost touching the back. The shooting-coat, being intact, had been drawn over the body after death, which must have been instantaneous. The secret of the poor wretch's death was plain to me in a flash. Some one of the crater, presumably Gunga Dass, must have shot him with his own gun—the gun that fitted the brown cartridges. He had never attempted to escape in the face of the rifle-fire ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... thinking how kind and good her husband was. She wished she had not refused so hastily such a simple request; she began to think herself a wretch for ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... was touched inexpressibly by the glance the convict gave him, so charged was it with question, hope, dread, and the appetite for some human sympathy. He had seen that look before in men condemned—once in front of his own rapier,—and with the utmost feeling for the unhappy wretch he stood, when the cavalcade had gone, looking after it and conjuring in his fancy the last terrible scene whereof that creature would be the central figure. Thus was he standing when another horseman came upon him suddenly, following wide in the rear of the troops—a civilian who shared the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... hateful and merciless as they were, did not wish, or perhaps did not dare, to destroy the souls as well as the bodies of their victims, and so they contrived it that the last act which the poor wretch should perform before going down into this dreadful pit should be an act of devotion. To this end there was made a little niche in the wall, just over the trap door, and there was placed there an image of the Virgin Mary, who is worshipped ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... and false dissembling wretch! That slayest me with thy harsh and hellish tale, Thou for some pettie guift hast let him goe, And I am thus deluded of my boy: Away with her to prison presently, Traytoresse too keend ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... has, perhaps, no investment to watch but one small loan, about which he is as anxious and as noisy as a hen with one chicken, he is the clamorous creditor, the harsh little egoist, who for fear of risking a crown piece would bring the Garden of Eden to the hammer. Now we are rid of that little wretch, Bonard, and have Perrin on our side; so there is literally ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... bear To see you waste that youth and excellent beauty, ('Tis now the golden time of the day with you,) In tending such a broken wretch as I am. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Purveez was encamped on the banks of the Karasoo River when he received the letter of Mahomed. He tore the letter and threw it into the Karasoo. For this action, the moderate author of the Zeenut-ul-Tuarikh calls him a wretch, and rejoices in all his subsequent misfortunes. These impressions still exist. I remarked to a Persian, when encamped near the Karasoo, in 1800, that the banks were very high, which must make it difficult to apply its waters to irrigation. "It ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... tables, should soil their gay clothes by sitting on the floor." He would pay five pounds (equal nearly to fifty pounds of our money) for a single dish of eels. Once riding through London with Henry, the King seeing a wretched, shivering beggar, "It would be a good deed (said he) to give that poor wretch a coat." "True, (said Becket.) and you, sir, may let him have yours." "He shall have yours" said Henry, and after a heavy scuffle, in which they had nearly dismounted each other, Becket proved the weakest, and his coat was allotted to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... head soberly, and chose from among the guests four women of the saddest and most grievous, and no man of their kindred spake for going along with them; then she went her ways home, leading one of them by the hand, and strange was it to see those twain going through sun and shade together, that poor wretch along ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... Another, jeering, asked, "How long to-night Shall such a miscreant cur offend our sight?" "Look at his torn hide," sneered a Jewish wit, "You could not cut even a shoe from it," And turned away. "Behold his ears that bleed," A fourth chimed in, "an unclean wretch indeed!" "He hath been hanged for thieving," they all cried. And spurned the loathsome beast from side to side. Then Jesus, standing by them in the street, Looked on the poor, spent creature at his feet, And, bending o'er him, spake unto the men, "Pearls are not whiter ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... shall have a full year in which to prove that your management of your department is good, or a failure. If you succeed, you're made for life. If you fail you can expect nothing at all in the way of leniency from old Tom Sayers, because he's as hard hearted an old wretch as ever began at the very bottom and worked himself to wherever he now is by hard knocks and ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... people of Ireland a direction to give no quarter to the troops fighting for its defence! My lords, let me say thus, that if there be any acquaintances in this crowded court—I do not say my intimate friends, but acquaintances—who do not know what I say is truth, I shall be reputed the wretch which I am not; I say if any acquaintance of mine can believe that I could utter a recommendation of giving no quarter to a yielding and unoffending foe, it is not the death which I am about to suffer that I deserve—no punishment could be adequate ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... letter— believing the contents of that known, there were inducements to sincerity which the recovery of that letter, and the finding it unopened, perhaps annihilated. Pride resumed its power. Before so partial a judge as Mrs. Fielder, and concerning a wretch so worthy of discredit as I, how easy, how obvious to deny, and to impute to me the imposture ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... of the tournament, and the secret of this sullen wretch's great industry was known ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... I wouldn't know you. I've been watching out for you these ten years, to send you to hell with my own hands! You robbed my poor mother of her boy." The wretch cowered beneath the planter's gaze, and essayed to deny his identity, but his voice died in his throat. Browne at length turned on his heel, and strode rapidly toward ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... last. Now, as we may fairly suppose, he would not allow much time to pass before he spoke to the lady, and as he does not appear to have spoken yesterday, it is not unlikely that he should be at Mrs. Goddard's to-day; and she may be detained by a visitor, without thinking him at all a tiresome wretch." ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... gray-haired old wretch? No, sir! I—I—" She struggled to express herself. "I liked him, and I hated to lose all my faith in men. I thought he was good and honest when he prayed—Oh, I've seen him pray in church, the old hypocrite!" Her fury returned at ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of the jailer's lantern a dozen figures stretched on straw pallets, and between the sleepers as many more empty couches, for which the newcomers were left to scramble. Tristram secured one as the door clanged and left them in pitch-black night, but gave it up to a pitiful wretch who crept near and kissing his hand implored leave to share it. Curling himself up upon the bare floor, he was quickly asleep and ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I am going to be put on the mess crew. God pity me, poor wretch! How shall I ever keep my hands from becoming red? What a terrible war ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... established the truth of Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was cast forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some wretch whose villany she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at the thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. A negro steward unfastened a slide and peeped at Reybold knocking in the hall; and, seeing him of respectable appearance, bowed ceremoniously ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... his eyes, He views the wretch, and sternly thus replies: "Peace, factious monster, born to vex the state With wrangling talents formed for foul debate, Curb that impetuous tongue, nor, rashly vain, And singly mad, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... one of the principal parts in my composition is a kind of pride of stomach; and I scorn to fear the face of any man living: above every thing, I abhor as hell the idea of sneaking in a corner to avoid a dun—possibly some pitiful sordid wretch, whom in my heart I despise and detest. 'Tis this, and this alone, that endears ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... highly cultured take up a stone to throw at the poor, untaught Zulu, which I notice the most dissolute and drunken wretch of a white man is often ready to do, generally because he covets his land, his labour, or whatever else may ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... "Miserable wretch that he is! not only does he squander my finances, but with his ill-gotten plunder he corrupts secretaries, friends, generals, artists, and all, and tries to rob me of the one to whom I am most attached. And that is the reason why that perfidious girl so boldly took his part! Gratitude! ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of Hale, says that a woman at Dorchester, and another at Cambridge, were executed, not far from this time, for witchcraft; and that they asserted their innocence with their dying breath. He also says, that, in 1650, "a poor wretch,—Mary Oliver,—probably weary of her life from the general reputation of being a witch, after long examination, was brought to a confession of her guilt; but I do not find that ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... "I am so sorry for her. You can't think how she's been planning this party for months. Why did she ever ask down that wretch of a nephew? David, do try and make friends with him. Maybe there's something good in him after all, and it will help things along if Mrs. Gray feels that we want to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... know the name of my divine protectress? Methought thou namedst thy father. Is it possible? Can Manfred's blood feel holy pity! Lovely Lady, thou answerest not. But how art thou here thyself? Why dost thou neglect thy own safety, and waste a thought on a wretch like Theodore? Let us fly together: the life thou bestowest shall be ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... the basest and meanest passions, reason as if they were possessors of all the knowledge, sensibilities and refinements of their own country and times. Of this class of men, comes the ordinary demagogue, a wretch equally incapable of setting an example of any of the higher qualities, in his own person or practice, and of appreciating it when exhibited by others. Such men abound under all systems where human liberty is highly privileged, being the moral fungi of freedom, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Let the wretch go," she said. "The blame is not his. What is he but my lord's tool?" And her eyes scorched Rotherby with such a glance of scorn as must have killed any but a shameless man. Then turning to the demurely ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... fell upon his person, where their moisture was distinctly visible; and from the bottom of his chest to his gorge, rose and receded, with almost every breath, a spasmodic action, as if a body, as large or larger than a billiard-ball, were choking him. The miserable wretch repeatedly struck his chest with the palm of his hand to abate this sensation, but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... mountain-like billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves—'Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!' I exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore; he was upon his legs but was evidently half-smothered with the brine; high above his head curled a horrible billow, as if to engulf him for ever. 'He must be drowned! he must be drowned!' I almost shrieked, and ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... in the country, just the right size for a church in a tiny village and assured me that he had never once locked the door in his fifty years—day and night it was open to any one to enter. It was a refuge and shelter from the storm and the Tempest, and many a poor homeless wretch had found a dry place to sleep in that church during the last half a century. This man's feeling of pity and tenderness for the very poor, even the outcast and tramp, was a passion. But how strange all this would sound in the ears of ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... disputado, malpacado. Wrap faldi, kovri. Wrapper kovrilo. Wrath kolerego. Wrathful kolerega. Wreath garlando. Wreathe plekti, girlandi. Wreck (ship) sxippereo. Wreckage derompajxo. Wren regolo. Wrench ektiregi. Wrest tiregi. Wrestle barakti. Wrestler baraktisto. Wretch malbonulo, krimulo. Wretched mizera. Wriggle tordi, tordeti. Wring (twist) tordi, premegi. Wring (the hand) premi. Wrinkle sulkigi. Wrinkle (facial) sulko. Wrist manradiko. Write skribi. Writer (author) verkisto. Writer skribisto. Writing skribajxo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... "O heaven-abandoned wretch! is all this care To save your stores for some degenerate heir, A son, or e'en a freedman, who will pour All down his throttle, ere a year is o'er? You fear to come to want yourself, you say? Come, calculate how small the loss per day, If henceforth ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... first against a brick wall. The latter being considerably harder than my skull, concussion followed. Some villagers picked me up insensible, I was taken to the inn, and the nearest doctor—an uncertificated wretch—was summoned. He knew little of trepanning; besides, I was a foreigner, a German, and it did not matter. He bled me, it is true, and performed other of the ordinary means of relief; but these producing no apparent effect, he ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... sent him an answer, I was so furious at being dragged to his post like a wretch who had robbed traps; but during the night I found a way to escape from the cabin, and taking an old canoe, I fled down the river. The rest you know already. That is my story in a nutshell, boys. I could talk for hours, and even then fail to tell you all I've gone through since I was a little shaver, ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... but by Jupiter and Minerva. Thus he dared to boast that these divinities, by whom he had sworn falsely in the day, had descended to hold communication with him in the night, and to inform him of futurity. Seven days had now scarcely elapsed since the death of his daughter when this wretch, before he had performed the usual rites of mourning—before he had duly paid her funeral honors—crowned his head with a chaplet, put on his white robe, made a solemn sacrifice in despite of law ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... it fought, or over which it exercised a strong and somewhat tyrannical upper-hand. In society there was a constant war going on between law and crime. Extirpation—not reform—was the end aimed at; the prison officials of that time looked upon a criminal as a helpless wretch, presenting fair game for plunder, torture and tyranny. The records in Howard's journals, and the annals of Mrs. Fry's labors, amply enlighten us as to the result of this state ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... "Oh! this dastardly wretch is profiting by his knowledge of secrets which a long intimacy has enabled him to discover. Do not believe him, I entreat you, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... On these Obed sprang. One went down before his shot. The others, with a cry of terror, ran down the stairs, and out of the house. Obed pursued. They ran wildly up the road. Again Obed fired, and one wretch fell. Then he put the revolver in his pocket, and chased the other man. The distance between them lessened rapidly. At last Obed came up. He reached out his arm and caught him by the collar. With a shriek of terror ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... but I Thus truly taken with uncertainty? Where shall that Man be found that loves a mind Made up in Constancy, and dare not find His Love rewarded? here let all men know A Wretch that lives to love ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the satisfaction of bringing Mahomet Her, who had instigated his men to mutiny at Latooka, to justice. He was seized and carried before the governor, when he received one hundred and fifty lashes. How often had the wretch flogged women to excess! What murders had he not committed! And now how he howled for mercy! Mr Baker, however, begged that the punishment might be stopped, and that it might be explained to him that he was thus punished for attempting to thwart the expedition of an English traveller ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... more bitter against the world as his struggles became harder. What little money he had accumulated—Heaven alone knew how: he came by it—dwindled to nothing, and he was in actual squalor when, later, Bansemer found him in an attic in Baltimore. Even as he engaged the half-starved wretch to become his confidential clerk the lawyer shuddered and almost ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... allowed to go on being in love, and was never in the least disturbed in his passion; and if he was not successful, at least the little wretch could have the pleasure of HINTING that he was, and looking particularly roguish when the Ravenswing was named, and assuring his friends at the club, that "upon his vort dere vas ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of this man. The tears are on the point of coming to my eyes, and I advanced a step to tell him how heartily I appreciated him, for all he had taught me, and to beg him not to hurt me; I was only a poor bungling wretch, who had had a sorry enough time ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... young to adore some man," said Marjorie, sagely. "I was a miserable homesick wretch, spending the winter in a ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... There was no one outside; the doors were open and Vali went in. It was dark within, and suddenly there leapt a man out of the side-room and struck between the shoulders of Vali, so that he fell on the spot. Said Vali: "Look out for yourself, poor wretch! for Odd is coming, hard by, and means to have your life. Send your wife to him; let her say that we have made it up; and you have agreed to everything, and that I have gone on about my own gear down the valley!" Then said Uspak: "This is an ill piece of work; this ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... the forty-eight hours," were handed to Hotham for transmission to his Court. An interesting Leather Bag, this Ordinary from Berlin. Reichenbach, we observe, will get his share of it some ten days after that alarming rebuke from Townshend; and it will relieve the poor wretch from his worst terrors: "Go on with your eavesdroppings as before, you alarmed wretch!"—There does one Degenfeld by and by, a man of better quality (and on special haste, as we shall see) come and supersede poor Nosti, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... "Indeed? The wretch! I will have her broomed out of the house. What a shame to spoil your morning out like this! As for Khema, where are the hussy's manners to go and disturb you when you are engaged? Anyhow, Chota Rani, don't you worry yourself with these domestic squabbles. Leave them to me, and ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... that among the imperfect beings who compose the human species, there is not, perhaps, a single one who, without some advantage to himself, without personal fear, in a word, without folly, would consent to punish everlastingly the wretch who might have the misfortune to offend him, but who no longer had either the ability or the inclination to commit another offence. Caligula found, at least, some little amusement to forsake for a time the cares of government, and enjoy the spectacle of punishment which he inflicted on those ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... Goat, at Charing Cross, and there I went and drank with them a good while, whom I found in very good health and very merry Then to my father's, and after supper seemed willing to go home, and my wife seeming to be so too I went away in a discontent, but she, poor wretch, followed me as far in the rain and dark as Fleet Bridge to fetch me back again, and so I did, and lay with her to-night, which I have not done these eight ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the sins which are due to clear physical causes, then the total of active sin is greatly reduced. Could one, for example, imagine that Providence, all-wise and all-merciful, as every creed proclaims, could punish the unfortunate wretch who hatches criminal thoughts behind the slanting brows of a criminal head? A doctor has but to glance at the cranium to predicate the crime. In its worst forms all crime, from Nero to Jack the Ripper, is the product of absolute lunacy, and those gross national ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the wilderness, behold A lone heartbroken wretch in me, Who dreams in his embrace to fold His love, as wild ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... striking a post or pillar of the house where he had his headquarters. An interesting entry in Welles's Diary, made soon after the battle, reflects somewhat the feeling at the time. "Sumner expresses an absolute want of confidence in Hooker; says he knows him to be a blasphemous wretch; that after crossing the Rappahannock and reaching Centreville, Hooker exultingly exclaimed, 'The enemy are in my power, and God Almighty cannot deprive me of them.' I have heard before of this, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... most interesting paper on the wild dog appeared in the South of India Observer, of January 7th, 1869, alludes to "Evangeline" in the following terms:—"I saw the beast at the People's Park, and a more untameable wretch I never met with; and why so fair a name for such a savage de'il, I know not." It is strange that the most dog-like of the wild canines should refuse domestication when even the savage European wolf has become so attached as to pine during the absence of his ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... settee—playfully, through his pain] Ah, my dear Mrs. Ebbsmith, how can you have the heart to deceive an invalid, a poor wretch who begs you—[sitting on the settee] to allow him to sit down for a moment? [AGNES deposits the ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... poor emaciated man, in the same blood-stained county, while in a state of starvation pulled a turnip in a turnipfield, and was caught by the owner in the act of satisfying his hunger upon it; the inhuman wretch shot the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to have some effect, for there were dead and wounded lying in the way, and some from breathlessness, some from shame, now slackened their pace and stooped to form litters of their muskets, on which some poor wretch who was crying for help with extended hands ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... men and women ran frantically hither and thither, unable to lend a helping hand to those drowning close to land. A rope was tied round the body of one, who, rushing into the boiling surf, firmly clasped one poor wretch in his arms, and both were drawn safely to shore. Again, and yet again, did the noble fellow rush into the angry sea, each time rescuing one from death. How eagerly we bent over each, as they were brought to shore, to see if our Ned was the fortunate one, and how heavy ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... her import clearly I did not know. There was a commotion in the forward part of the car. That same drunken wretch Jim had appeared; his bottle (somehow restored to him) in hand, his hat pushed back ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... revolution which overthrew his father-in-law, the infamous Phocas, and placed Heraclius upon the throne. But notwithstanding that service, the attitude of the general towards the new regime was not considered satisfactory, and with the cruel taunt, 'Wretch, thou didst not make a good son-in-law; how canst thou be a true friend?' Heraclius relegated him to political nonentity by forcing him to become a monk at the Chora. The new brother did not live long, but his wealth furnished the fraternity with the means ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... "That little wretch has told her, and she is laughing at my presumption," was his distressed conclusion. "I'll wring his neck for ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... "Don't object; it's useless! I won't have you go alone. You've done more than enough already. I'm a wretch to let you slave for me, your first day out of bed! But I daren't call at Peterson's alone, not because I'm afraid for myself, but because of Roger. Besides, I can depend on you ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... up," panted the boy; "and you can be proud of having mastered a poor starving wretch who never did you ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... white, and, especially, if the white be clothed with the authority of an ambassador of Christ. "A negro was executed in Autauga Co., not long since, for the murder of his master. The latter, it seems, attempted to violate the wife of his slave in his presence, when the negro enraged, smote the wretch to the ground. And this master—this brute—this fiend—was a preacher of the gospel, in regular standing!" In a former part of this communication, I said enough to show, that slavery prevents children from complying with the command to obey their parents. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Never make a blessing; Seek not e'en a throne By one wretch distressing. Better toil a slave For the blood-earned penny, Than be rich, and have A curse on ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... interpreter, whose look and speech he regarded as a revelation of villainy. He was tall and slim, with ricketty legs, dark shifty eyes, a low receding forehead, and a mouth and chin that indicated the animal. The captain felt instinctively the approach of trouble, and frankly told the wretch, who he knew was deceiving him, that every bale of tobacco would be held until after the freight was paid over in gold sovereigns; and with an air of ostentatious authority he gave instructions to have all the muskets and revolvers ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... two of the soldiers. Then the wretch whom Simms bestrode was treated to some of the same sort of consideration. The pair of Mexicans were laid side by side, after which the soldiers sprang to get ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... that—you don't mean that!" cried Mary, sweeping the hair with her hand back from her forehead—and her hand still remaining on her head—"O God! O God! what a wretch I am! Hear me, Jacob, hear me," cried she, dropping on her knees, and seizing my hands; "only get him his discharge—only let me once see him again, and I swear by all that's sacred, that I will beg his pardon on my knees as I now do yours. I will do everything—anything—if he will ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... attract his eyes, His wandering feet the magic paths pursue; And while he thinks the fair illusion true, The trackless scenes disperse in fluid air, And woods and wilds, and thorny ways appear: A tedious road the weary wretch returns, And, as he ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... greatly with famine and disease. At last a pretended traitor, Bellido Dolfos, offered to deliver the city into the hands of Sancho. While riding along with the king, under pretence of pointing out the gate whereby the troops might enter Zamora, this lying wretch stabbed the unsuspecting Sancho through and through with his own royal golden spear, given by the king to the knave to carry. Bellido then fled fast to the city. On the way he was seen by the Cid, who called to the flying horseman to stop, though knowing nothing of his crime. The villain only ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... agreed perforce, though she mistrusted her of the fat wretch, whose appearance poor Cicely also disliked. Still, for very fear Emlyn was humble and civil to her, for if she were not, who could know if she would put out all her skill upon behalf of her mistress? Therefore she did her bidding like ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... with him and listened to hear what the prince said, for she had not yet heard what he was saying, he was so feeble. When she heard him whisper: "Oh! how be-au-ti-ful is the doll; con-sid-er," and saw the doll, she cried: "Ah! wretch! it was you who had my doll! Leave it to me, I will cure you." When he heard these words he came to himself and said: "Are you the doll's mistress?" "I am." Just think! he returned to life and she began ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... imprisonment, because it is gentlemen's game, as they say. Neither must they keep cattle, or set up a house, all ground being enclosed, without hiring leave for the one or buying room for the other of the chief encloser, called the Lord of the Manor, or some other wretch as cruel as he.... Now all this slavery of the one and tyranny of the other was at first by murder and cruelty one against the other. And that they might strengthen themselves in their villany against God's Ordinances and their Brother's Freedom and Rights, they ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... as I am concerned, the poor wretch! Yesterday I could curse her. I pity her to-day. She has gone her way and I go mine. Monsignor has declared me ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... I find, but they are alive still, and I found them waking when I realised that Mayes was alive and in England. The words 'sane' and 'insane' are elastic in their application, but I doubt if you would have called me strictly sane of late. I evolved mad schemes for the destruction of this wretch, and I was ready to devote myself and everything I possessed to the purpose. More than once I contemplated coming to you—seeing that you had met the man in one of his villainies—with the idea of enlisting your aid. But I reflected that you would probably ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... this wretch thinks me very simple or very depraved? He must come to one or the other conclusion," ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... in this house again, the deceitful, ungrateful wretch. And he shall not care for her, or befriend her in any way. She must love him, and it is no child's love, either. Why, I have been blind and silly all ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... breech-loading gun, and as the smoke of the discharge lifted, she saw a writhing, sinuous form fall heavily to the earth. After a brief inspection Webb came toward her in smiling assurance, saying: "The wretch got only one of the little family. Four birds are left. There now, don't feel so badly. You have saved a home from utter desolation. That, surely, will be a pleasant thing ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... your finger at me and say, "What an ungrateful wretch of a bird! It is gnawing at its chain day ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... more at having to spell correctly. Yet one may ask, Do we not a little over-estimate the value of orthography? This is a natural reflection enough when the maker of artless happy phrases has been ransacking the dictionary for some elusive wretch of a word which in the end proves to be not yet naturalised, or technical, or a mere local vulgarity; yet one does not often hear the idea canvassed in polite conversation. Dealers in small talk, of the less prolific kind, are continually falling back ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... I think, when this wretch rang the bell. The restlessness I speak of as born of undisciplined bigness, of moneyed magnitude, is visible everywhere, and more so in the hours of relaxation than those ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the country for our trade and to parley between us and the natives. Now the lot fell upon the Genoese caravel (which had joined the explorers), to draw into the shore and land a prisoner, to try the good will of the natives before any one else ventured." The poor wretch, instructed to enquire about the races living on the river and their manners, polity, King's name and capital, gold supply, and other matters of commerce, had no sooner swum ashore than he was seized ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... reading his work out: "Music, sparkling wine, massive plate, rose-water in the hand-glasses, soup, fish—shall I have three sorts of fish? I will; they are cheap in this market. Ah! Fortune, you wretch, here at least I am your master, and I'll make you know it—venison," wrote Triplet, with a malicious grin, "game, pickles and provocatives in the center of the table; then up jumps one of the guests, ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... and embrace; Nay, cry not, poor wretch, nor plead, But haste, for life strikes a swift pace, And I burn with envious greed: Know you not, fool, we are the mock Of gods, time, clothes, and priests? But come, there is ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... flourishing a knife with which he had threatened to carve any one who came near the wicket of his prison, Constables were called in to quell this real or dramatised maniac, but they fell back in terror from the door of the prison. Their show of firearms made no impression upon the demented wretch. After awhile my father returned and was told of the trouble, and indeed he heard it before he reached home. The whole family implored him not to go near the man who was cursing, and armed with a knife. But father could not ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... being a beast, hating humanity, he grew to love other people, and be ready to sacrifice himself to save another. You remember how he voluntarily gave himself up to the law in that courtroom scene, just to save a miserable wretch who was about to be punished under the belief that he was ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... because it sets forth in a definite shape a picture of the struggle in which so many perish, and because every individual life is implicated in it through memory. Ah! I, hapless wretch, should have been too happy to hear the sound of those heavenly voices I ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... valuable item, and saw to it that no other paper got it. And so his paper—the principal one in the town—had it in glaring type on the editorial page in the morning, followed by a Vesuvian opinion of our wretch a column long, which wound up by adding a thousand dollars to our reward on the paper's account! The journals out here know how to do the noble thing—when ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... on the head, or draw the blade of a cuchilla across her throat, and so stop her grunting at once and for ever. The old wretch deserves no better fate and hanging's too good for her. But they'd find her dead body all the same; though not with a tongue in it to tell who stopped her wind, or, what's of more consequence, how and which way we went off. Besides, I dare say, the Senor Ludwig wouldn't agree to our ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the worms of the earth. A second-hand book-shop always reminds me of a Necropolis. It is a kind of Serapeum where lies buried the kings and princes with the helots and underlings of literature. Ay, every book is a mortuary chamber containing the remains of some poor literary wretch, or some mighty genius.... A book is a friend, my brothers, and when it ceases to entertain or instruct or inspire, it is dead. And would you sell a dead friend, would you throw him away? If you can not keep him embalmed on your shelf, is it not the wiser part, and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... because I'm ill that I sent for you, or rather let her ladyship send for you. Lord bless you, Thorne; do you think I don't know what it is that makes me like this? When I see that poor wretch, Winterbones, killing himself with gin, do you think I don't know what's coming to myself ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... to look round? Lucky for me if she pictures some terrible fate. What sort of confused nonsense is running through her head now? Soup and Marie take a prominent place, I wager. So precious hard up does one become in this rat's hole, that I make her my problem as she makes the soup hers, poor wretch! Yet, my excellent friend, Jean Didier, I would counsel you to keep your compassion for yourself, for, believe me, you want it at least as much. As much? Rather, a hundred times more! For she—she knows nothing of the blessings ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... pursued Bella, 'I'll make a confession to you. I am the most mercenary little wretch that ever lived ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... picture, No. 93, in the same room, is larger and more ambitious. It represents a carpenter's workshop, with a mechanic at each end of the long bench; one of these, a half-starved, hideous wretch, with hardly a trace of the human anatomy in his composition; and the other, a respectable and rather sagacious-looking person, with immeasurable legs. Behind the bench is a frightful old woman, of the lowest class; and before it another, younger, but repulsively ugly and vulgar, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... the monarch cried, "Amid the throng, and dare to give Their aid, and bid this wretch to live? I pledge my faith and crown beside, A woeful plight, a sorry sight, This outcast from all ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... the ottoman.) Don't look at me so—for God's sake! Let us go before it is too late. You're an infamous wretch! ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... The connection established the truth of Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was cast forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some wretch whose villany she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at the thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. A negro steward unfastened a slide and peeped at Reybold knocking in the hall; and, seeing him of respectable ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... declared Aunt Hattie emphatically. "Look at poor Madge here, and that wretch of a husband ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... across his forehead and the stem to run down his nose. Captain Jack got his tattooing kit ready, and the fellow was thrown upon the ground and held there. The Captain took his head between his legs, and began operations. After an instant's work with the needles, he opened his mouth, and filled the wretch's face and eyes full of the disgusting saliva. The crowd round about yelled with delight at this new process. For an hour, that was doubtless an eternity to the rascal undergoing branding, Captain Jack continued his alternate pickings and drenchings. At the end of that time ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... ancestral home. We have all been led to believe that love is splendid and wonderful, and the greatest thing in the world, and it pains us to part with it. Faith, we will not part with it. The man who would bid us put it by is a knave and a fool, a vile, degraded wretch, who will receive pardon neither in this ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... blank and ashen, like the face Of some poor wretch who drains life's cup too fast Yet, swaying to and fro, as if to fling About chilled Nature its lithe arms of grace, Smiling with promise in the wintry blast, The optimistic ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and promise; forth he went, Spoiled of the livery that till now had made him Enviable with the vulgar. And in vain He hoped another lord; the tender dames Were horror-struck at his atrocious crime, And loathed the author. The false wretch succumbed With all his squalid brood, and in the streets With his lean wife in tatters at his side Vainly lamented to ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... little wretch did spoil our mill, but Rufus mended it; and as I thought Polly had been marauding on you, I brought ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it with her eye; He said, he did it with his dart; Betwixt them both (a silly wretch!) 'Tis I that have ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... with you as a man can be, my dear," she said to Margaret "Not worthy of him? Your past a barrier between you and him? Nonsense, Daisy; that is his affair. I know you are as good a girl as ever lived. Your father was poor, no doubt, and that wretched Mr. Cranley—yes, he was a wretch—had a spite against you. I don't know why, and you won't help me to guess. But Mr. Barton is too much of a man to let that kind of thing disturb him, I'm sure. You are afraid of something, Margaret Your nerves have been unstrung. ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... his life. He went right down the school list, and then he began again. Any lack of personal cleanliness drove him frantic. I myself have heard him order a boy with dirty nails and hands out of the room, crying, "Out of my sight, unclean wretch! Go and cleanse the hands God gave you, before I allow you to associate with clean gentlemen, and write out for me two hundred times, 'Cleanliness ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... oppressive rights of the feudal nobility of the empire so remorselessly exercised by one who had risen from the very dregs of the people. His adventure, although carefully concealed, began likewise to be whispered abroad, and the clergy already stigmatized as a wizard and accomplice of fiends, the wretch, who, having acquired so huge a treasure in so strange a manner, had not sought to sanctify it by dedicating a considerable portion to the use of the church. Surrounded by enemies, public and private, tormented by a thousand feuds, and threatened by the church with excommunication, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... who was stealing upon him was near the steed, which, without any preliminary warning, let out both his heels, knocking the unsuspecting wretch fully a dozen feet and stretching him, badly wounded, ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... that is shown for all the gods fills me with grief and indignation. There is nothing that I should see, nothing that I should hear, with more pleasure, than the expulsion of Athanasius from all Egypt. The abominable wretch! Under my reign, the baptism of several Grecian ladies of the highest rank has been the effect of his persecutions." [133] The death of Athanasius was not expressly commanded; but the praefect of Egypt understood that it was safer for him to exceed, than to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... tempted to tell you all, to grow egotistical, and pour out the long history of a private governess's trials and crosses in her first situation. As it is, I will only ask you to imagine the miseries of a reserved wretch like me thrown at once into the midst of a large family, proud as peacocks and wealthy as Jews, at a time when they were particularly gay, when the house was filled with company—all strangers: people whose faces I had never seen before. In this state I had a charge given ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... killed the souls and bodies, of all poor abused subjects, exposed to its influence. Gerard avowed himself to have been so long goaded and stimulated by these considerations—so extremely nettled with displeasure and bitterness at seeing the obstinate wretch still escaping his just judgment—as to have formed the design of baiting a trap for the fox, hoping thus to gain access to him, and to take him unawares. He added—without explaining the nature of the trap and the bait—that he deemed it his duty to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a dozen startled men, gambling about a blanket; two or three sleeping off a drunk, and one hunted, haunted wretch nervously pacing up and down among the pines, were no match for the dash of a dozen blue jackets coming thundering into view. There was no thought of fight. Those who could catch their horses threw themselves astride bareback and shot for the heart of the hills; two or three scrambled ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... more than one instance of demons who have requested prayers, and have even placed themselves in the posture of persons praying over a grave, to point out that the dead persons wanted prayers. Sometimes it will be the demon in the shape of a wretch dead in crime, who will come and ask for masses, to show that his soul is in purgatory, and has need of prayers, although it may be certain that he finally died impenitent, and that prayers are useless for his salvation. All this is only a stratagem of a demon, who seeks to inspire ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... desperate easiness have you seen in me, or what mistaken merit in your self, should make you so ridiculously vain, to think I'd give myself to such a Wretch, one fal'n even to the last degree of Poverty, whilst all the World is prostrate at my Feet, whence I might chuse the Brave, the Great, the Rich? [He stands spitefully gazing at her. —Still as he fires, I find my Pride augment, and when he cools I ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome worm, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... novel of his I read, pretty well turned my stomach. Mr Aronson's strong point was jokes about the war. If he heard of any acquaintance who had joined up or was even doing war work his merriment knew no bounds. My fingers used to itch to box the little wretch's ears. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... never meant for a snake," said Drew, as he painfully dragged himself along. "Ugh, you little wretch!" he cried, and thrusting forward his gun, he passed the muzzle under a little short thick viper, which lay basking just in his way, ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... perfectly remember the horrible sorcerer. One spring I was at the hunt with your father near Penemunde, when this wretch suddenly appeared driving two cows before him on a large ice-field. He pretended that while he was telling fortunes to the girls who milked the cows, a great storm arose, and drove him out into the wide sea, which was a terrible ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... opening at the appointed hour, disclosed One human countenance, the lamp's red flame Cowered as it entered, and at once sank down. Oh miserable! by that lamp to see My infant quarrelling with the coarse hard bread 215 Brought daily; for the little wretch was sickly— My rage had dried away its natural food.[830:1] In darkness I remained—the dull bell counting, Which haply told me, that the all-cheering sun Was rising on our garden. When I dozed, 220 My infant's moanings mingled with my slumbers And waked me.—If you were a mother, lady, I should ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... she gobbled, "who is this you have in your chamber? Ah, I've caught you! The ingratitude! You terrible old wretch!"—this to Granfa—"close that door instantly while I ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... indeed pleaded that they should leave him the money, or some of it, but this proposal Jim scouted, and in his zeal relieved the robber of a good deal more than he had stolen from Charlie. Then with kicks and blows they drove the wretch away as fast as ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... feel in the least inclined to offer her treats, though I'm sorry for her all the same. She does look such a woe-begone little wretch! It's my belief she thought it was a good opportunity to examine the scent-bottle when we were all upstairs, and that she put it down too roughly or let it slip from her hands and hadn't the nerve to own up at once. I don't wonder she is afraid to confess now; ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... done with the wretch, for ever. I hope he has got nothing from you; and, if you have promised him any thing, ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... baby, indeed!' said Ida scornfully. 'Nasty little wretch, I say. One good thing is, up in that cold place all this time he's sure ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is the most abject piece of business that I ever read. It shows Landor to have a most rancorous and malicious heart. Nothing but a rooted hatred of his country could have made him dedicate his Jacobinical book to the most contemptible wretch that ever crept into authority, and whose only recommendation to him is his implacable enmity to his country. I think you might write to Southey; but I would not, on any account, have you publish such a ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... and she started, thereby showing that she knew me again, though it must have been hard for Marina to recognise her friend Teule in the blood-stained, starving, and tattered wretch who could scarcely find strength to climb the azotea. But at that time no words passed between us, for all eyes were bent on the meeting between Cortes and Guatemoc, between the conqueror and ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... did I see—And in the dominions of the great being I saw man [reduced?][97] far below the animals of the field preying on one anothers [sic] hearts; happy in the downfall of others—themselves holding on with bent necks and cruel eyes to a wretch more a slave if possible than they to his miserable passions—And if I said these are the consequences of civilization & turned to the savage world I saw only ignorance unrepaid by any noble feeling—a mere animal, love ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... consequences. In a few weeks he had been raised from penury and obscurity to opulence, to power which made him the dread of princes and nobles, and to notoriety such as has for low and bad minds all the attractions of glory. He was not long without coadjutors and rivals. A wretch named Carstairs, who had earned a livelihood in Scotland by going disguised to conventicles and then informing against the preachers, led the way. Bedloe, a noted swindler, followed; and soon from all the brothels, gambling houses, and spunging houses of London, false ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seamen, who had been previously directed, threw a rope round his neck, and dragged him in a moment down to the boat; his cries brought a number of his friends into the skirts of the wood, from whence they threw many lances, but without effect. The terror this poor wretch suffered, can better be conceived than expressed; he believed he was to be immediately murdered; but, upon the officers coming into the boat, they removed the rope from his neck to his leg, and treated him with so much kindness, that he ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... infamous cruelties, even among the bloody records of the buccaneers. He was a Dutchman by birth, who had settled in Brazil during the occupancy of that country by the United Provinces. On the restoration of the Portuguese to their Brazilian possessions this bloody wretch retreated to Jamaica. His name not being known, he received the soubriquet of Rock Braziliano, by which he was henceforward known. Very soon after his arrival at Jamaica, he joined the pirates, first as an ordinary mariner; and acquitted himself so well ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have been exchanged for it. The value of riches, and all else for which men toil and toil on while health and strength remain, were becoming as nothing in our sight. One thing alone called any of us to exertion. It was when some wretch, happier, perhaps, than we were, breathed his last, and the shrieks and wails of his relations or friends summoned us to commit his body to the ocean-grave, yawning to receive us all, the living as well as the dead. I must pass over that night. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Never had he seen such disconcerting pallor. It was not the waxen hue of the convalescent, not the lifeless grey of the perfume-or snuff-maker, it was a prison pallor of a bloodless lividness unknown today, the ghastly complexion of a wretch of the Middle Ages shut up till death in ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... they are tenacious of reputation with a vengeance; for they don't choose anybody should have a character but themselves! Such a crew! Ah! many a wretch has rid on a hurdle who has done less mischief than these utterers of forged tales; coiners of ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... offers his own right honourable intervention to bring so beautiful a business to bear. I am struck dumb with the assurance of his folly—absolutely mute and speechless—and how to prevent him making me further a fool is not easy, for the wretch has left me no time to assure him of the absurdity of what he proposes; and if he should ever hint at such a piece of d——d impertinence, what must the lady think of my conceit or of my feelings! I will write to his present quarters, however, that he may, if possible, have warning not to continue ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... cloth, on which are placed escutcheons, by way of dreary ornament; these escutcheons contain the arms of the covetous, viz. three vices, hard screwed, with the motto, "BEWARE!" On the floor, lie a pair of old shoes, which this sordid wretch is supposed to have long preserved for the weight of iron in the nails, and has been soling with leather cut from the covers of an old Family Bible; an excellent piece of satire, intimating, that such men would sacrifice even their God to the lust of money. From these ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the wretch roughly by the arm, and was about to hurry him away, Curly emitted a cry of fear, ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... is in general kept up as well as the Chinese comic scene of entreating and imploring a man to stay with you, with the implied compact between you that he shall by no means think of doing it. A poor wretch he must be who would wantonly sit down on one of these bandbox reputations. A Prince-Rupert's-drop, which is a tear of unannealed glass, lasts indefinitely, if you keep it from meddling hands; but break its tail ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... thou, slanderer! rouge makes thee sick? And China Bloom at best is sorry food? And Rowland's Kalydor, if laid on thick, Poisons the thirsty wretch that bores for blood? Go! 'twas a just reward that met thy crime; But shun ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... There found they solace. One day toward it moved, Dread apparition and till then unknown, Like one constrained, with self-abhorrent steps, A leper, long in forest caverns hid. Back to their cells the nuns had shrunk, o'erawed: Remained but Frideswida. Thus that wretch With scarce organic voice, and aiding sign, Wailed out the supplication of despair: 'Fly not, O saintly virgin! Yet, ah me! What help though thou remainest? Warned from heaven, I know that not thy fountain's healing wave Could heal my sorrow: not those ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... would he stand At the swing of my hand! For obscurity helps him, and blots The hole where he squats." So, I set my five wits on the stretch. To inveigle the wretch. All in vain! Gold and jewels I threw, Still he couched there perdue; I tempted his blood and his flesh, Hid in roses my mesh, 20 Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth: Still he ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... travellers; of the cow-shed where I slept with the cow; of my idiot half-brother always sitting at the door, or limping down the Pass to beg; of my half-sister always spinning, and resting her enormous goitre on a great stone; of my being a famished naked little wretch of two or three years, when they were men and women with hard hands to beat me, I, the only child of my father's second marriage—if it even was a marriage. What more natural than for you to compare notes with me, and say, 'We are as one by age; at that same time I sat upon my mother's lap ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... fastidious, ungrateful wretch," he said to himself, as he saw his trunk started off to a better neighbourhood and prepared to follow it. "They've been very kind to me, and little Maggie would do almost anything for me"—little Maggie, whom he treated as a mere asexual biped and hectored in ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... horse's tail." Then, in despair, and wishing to put an end to his torments, he cried out, "Kill me," and, in struggling, kicked one of the men who held him in the lower abdomen. On the instant he is pierced with bayonets, dragged in the gutter, and, striking his corpse, they exclaim, "He's a scurvy wretch (galeux) and a monster who has betrayed us; the nation demands his head to exhibit to the public," and the man who was kicked is asked to cut it off.—This man, an unemployed cook, a simpleton who "went to the Bastille to see what was going on," thinks that as it is the general opinion, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... more The joyful house and best of wives shall welcome, Nor little sons run up to snatch their kisses And touch with silent happiness thy heart. Thou shalt not speed in undertakings more, Nor be the warder of thine own no more. Poor wretch," they say, "one hostile hour hath ta'en Wretchedly from thee all life's many guerdons," But add not, "yet no longer unto thee Remains a remnant of desire for them" If this they only well perceived with mind And followed up with maxims, they would free Their state ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... Queen of the Dew-drops. The young knight had as usual been betimes at the well, but the maiden did not appear there. Then he questioned the cripple—who by day was an absolute helpless cripple— but the man utterly denied all knowledge of any such circumstance. He, why, poor wretch that he was, he never hobbled further than the shed close behind the well; he would give the world if he could get as far as the wood—he knew nothing about ladies or pilgrims—such a leg as his was enough to think about. And the display to ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... If such there be, go, mark him well; For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentered all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... this sudden burst of passion, he fell back upon his pillow, muttering and flushed. I bent over him, and caught a scattered phrase from time to time. He was dreaming of wealth, fancying himself rich and powerful, poor wretch! and ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... trusts its weight upon that treacherous crust. For one fleeting instant it will sway beneath the tread, then, in the flash of a thought, it will break, and once the surface gives no human power can save the victim. Down, down into the depths must the poor wretch be plunged, with scarce time to offer a prayer to God for the poor soul which so swiftly passes to its doom. Such is the muskeg; and surely more terrible is it than is that horror of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... la Chanterie heard of this through a letter of farewell which her husband wrote to her. Instantly, giving her little girl to the care of a neighbor, she went to the town where that wretch was imprisoned, taking with her the few louis which were all that she owned. These louis enabled her to make her way into the prison. She succeeded in saving her husband by dressing him in her own clothes, under circumstances almost identical with those which, sometime later, were so serviceable ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... you do not know my situation, or you would see in the first instant, as you will so soon as I can speak to you, that if I continued at Paris, I should be the meanest and most contemptible wretch that was ever born into the world; I should falsify my word, I should betray my honour, I should repay the confidence that was reposed in me with the most cowardly treachery, I should disgrace every feeling that is honourable ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... Enchant of all, who on their coast arrive The wretch, who unforewarn'd approaching, hears The Sirens' voice, his wife and little ones Ne'er fly to gratulate his glad return; But him the Sirens sitting in the meads Charm with mellifluous song, although he see Bones heap'd around them, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... unequally punished, and sought to restore the balance of justice by exiling the Cardinal to La Chaise-Dieu, and suffering Madame de Lamotte to escape a few days after she entered l'Hopital. This new error confirmed the Parisians in the idea that the wretch De Lamotte, who had never been able to make her way so far as to the room appropriated to the Queen's women, had really interested ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... to this tale, and now she asked, 'And what says Master Andrew to such wild talk? I suppose he will use the poor deluded wretch gently and kindly, that's his nature; but sure he ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... better evidence than that which you would utterly reject. You would not disgrace the British peerage, you would not disgrace this court of justice, you would not disgrace human reason itself, by confiscating, on such evidence, the meanest property of the meanest wretch. You would not subject to the smallest fine for the smallest delinquency, upon such evidence. I will venture to say, that, in an action of assault and battery, or in an action for the smallest sum, such evidence would ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... And the little wretch told me I wasn't playing the game! What did he mean? Oh, Harry, I wouldn't have come if I hadn't wanted to play the game fairly. I'm sorry for what I said." She spoke now ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... my fault, my lord," replied the boy. "That old wretch doesn't like the gentry, and he has said he would be glad to see M. Tristan and all his sons hanging from ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... know what to do," he answered her doubtfully. "Put him across my saddle, poor wretch, I suppose; the fray must ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... metropolitan advanced to the royal throne with downcast eye but unfaltering voice; accused himself of weakness and folly, and firmly refused to sign the articles. "Miserable wretch that I am," cried he, with bitter tears coursing down his cheeks, "I see the Anglican Church enslaved, in punishment for my sins. But it is all right. I was taken from the court, not the cloister, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... but I apprehend, that all his motions, and mine own too, are watched by the execrable wretch: and indeed his are by an agent of mine; for I own, that I am so apprehensive of his plots and revenge, now I know that he has intercepted my vehement letters against him, that he is the subject of my dreams, as well as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... dress, so unlike that which he had worn from his infancy, and wished to awake from what seemed at the moment a dream, strange, horrible, and unnatural. 'Good God!' he muttered, 'am I then a traitor to my country, a renegade to my standard, and a foe, as that poor dying wretch expressed himself, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... he will win it? Oh, if he only would! But supposing that he does not win it, it would be just as well that—that someone else should win it—someone in—in his own home. Oh, what a wicked wretch I am! What's that? It's baby! I do hope she won't wake up. There's all this mending, and I've only milk enough for one more bottle. There! She is waking up! You ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... A mychare seems to denote properly a sneaking thief. Way. Prompt., p.336. Mychare, a covetous, sordid fellow. Jamieson. Fr. pleure-pain: m. A niggardlie wretch; a puling micher or ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... wonder God will let His joyous sunshine gild my guilty head with its smiles, An outcast barred beyond the pale of hope, Beyond the lamp of their mercy's flickering light, They would scarcely wonder if the earth should ope And swallow up the wretch from ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... feel that the brutal wretch had any reasonable cause to complain of him, and especially no right to revenge himself for an injury received while his assailant was the aggressor. He had done his duty to his country. He had been compelled to act promptly; and he had not aimed ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... spearhead seize, And the bold sea-rover slay, Him whose blows on headpiece ring, Heaper up of piles of dead. Then on Endil's courser[17] bounding, O'er the sea-depths I will ride, While the wretch who spells abuseth, Life ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... covetous wretch Whose heart's at full stretch To gain an inordinate treasure; Him leave with the rest, And such mortals detest, Who sacrifice life ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... statements were so exquisitely performed that one could not help regretting their unsubstantial nature and the impossibility of preserving them under glass for instruction and delight of posterity. And all the time the wretch was drawing his chair nearer and nearer. Once or twice he looked about to see if we were observing, but we were in appearance blankly oblivious to all but one another and our several diversions. The low hum of our conversation, the gentle tap-tap of the cards as they ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... followed in quick succession. Some were beheaded, some were hanged, some were burned alive. All who had borne arms or worked at the fortifications were, of course, put to death. Such as refused to confess and receive the Catholic sacraments perished by fire. A poor wretch, accused of having ridiculed these mysteries, had his tongue torn out before being beheaded. A cobbler, named Blaise Bouzet, was hanged for having eaten meat-soup upon Friday. He was also accused of going to the Protestant preachings for the sake of participating ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the plague choke him with his considerateness, the wretch, the cut-throat that he is! Did ever anyone hear of such usury? Is he not satisfied with the outrageous interest he asks that he must force me to take, instead of the three thousand francs, all the old rubbish which he picks up. ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... meant to shield modesty, threw jeers and mockery in return. But the Gentile boys ran away soon, or ran away punished. A chemise and a petticoat turn a frightened woman into an Amazon in such circumstances; and woe to the impudent wretch who lingered after the avengers plunged into the thicket. Slaps and cuffs at close range were his portion, and ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... enchanted Montesinos, where he found people to make more of him than if he had been in his own house; for it seems he came in for a table laid out and a bed ready made. There he saw fair and pleasant visions, but here I'll see, I imagine, toads and adders. Unlucky wretch that I am, what an end my follies and fancies have come to! They'll take up my bones out of this, when it is heaven's will that I'm found, picked clean, white and polished, and my good Dapple's with them, and by that, perhaps, it will be found out who we are, at least ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... misery began? That poor little wretch ... she's lying dead too. They're both dead together now. ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... seemed a thankless wretch, my dear Miss Mitford,' etc. etc. 'You, my dear friend, know too well what it is to have to finish a book, to blame my not attempting,' etc. etc. 'This is the thirty-ninth letter I have written since yesterday morning,' says Harriet Martineau. 'Oh, I can ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... the hot and desperate struggle for breath, sounds came from her, but no words. But she ran forward blindly, and kneeling, caught him by the knees; he could not but find pity in his heart for the witless poor wretch, who seemed to be fighting, not with regret nor for need of his pity, but with some maggot in the brain which drove her deeper into the fiery centre of the storm. Richard did what he could. A religious man himself, he pointed her to the Christ on the wall; but ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... now," I said to myself passionately; "I don't think I'm a coward, but I cannot fire at the poor wretch, and I must accept ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... she reiterated, between vast sobs, that Captain Bean was a soulless wretch, that she would never set foot on Sculpin Point, and that she would die there on the sofa rather than ride in such an ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... "Come down here, ye wretch!" he exclaimed, taking up a knife from the table and holding it up threateningly. "Come down here, ye foul fiend. How dare ye touch a feather ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... Reginald Scot as an illiterate wretch, but admits that he had never read him. It was Wierus whom he chiefly sought ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... of falling in love with her; but it sickened him to think that a girl who had been brought up by his aunt, who had been loved at Bragton, whom he had liked, who looked so like a lady, should put herself on a par with such a wretch as that. In all this he was most unjust to both of them. He was specially unjust to poor Larry, who was by no means a wretch. His costume was not that to which Morton had been accustomed in Germany, nor would it have passed ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... had saved the life of Mrs. Jeffreys, Robert Seymour looked about him and listened. Now and again he heard a faint, choking scream uttered by some drowning wretch, and a few hundred yards away caught sight of a black object which he thought might be a boat. If so, he reflected that it must be full. Moreover, he could not overtake it. No; his only chance was to make for the shore. He was a ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... Spaniards has been shed," continued the muleteer, "men who had no ill-will towards our cause; and, shame to say, the only one in this our province who now carries the banner of the insurrection is the worthless wretch, Antonio Valdez." ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... Hogarthian, Manetesque in its directness, but with its own queer sharp beauty of paint, he was perfectly satisfied still that he had made no error, heavy though the price had been—heaviest he had ever paid. And next to it was hanging the copy of "La Vendimia." There she was—the little wretch-looking back at him in her dreamy mood, the mood he loved best because he felt so much safer when she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... perceived by the light of the jailer's lantern a dozen figures stretched on straw pallets, and between the sleepers as many more empty couches, for which the newcomers were left to scramble. Tristram secured one as the door clanged and left them in pitch-black night, but gave it up to a pitiful wretch who crept near and kissing his hand implored leave to share it. Curling himself up upon the bare floor, he was quickly asleep and ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Champlain, sickening at the sight, begged leave to shoot him. They refused, and he turned away in anger and disgust; on which they called him back and told him to do as he pleased. He turned again and a shot from his arquebus put the wretch out of misery. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
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