FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • More 'Wretched' Quotes from Famous Books

... of eating lemons will testify. Sometimes the pleasurable recollection of a delightful dinner will cause the mouth to water years afterward, or the "image" of particularly atrocious medicine will wrinkle the nose long after it made one day in boyhood wretched. ...

— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... tone sounded less cordial. She had withdrawn her hands, and her humour, at such a moment, jarred on him. In spite of his good resolutions he had managed to put his foot into it after all. Perhaps she had begun to suspect his secret and was displeased. He departed feeling utterly wretched and out of heart, and got very scant comfort from his book, for it only reminded him of how seriously he had compromised himself. He was in two minds whether or not to send it back, but decided not to do so in fear lest he might give fresh offence. The next day at dawn the ...

— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... I should observe, it was also Gabrielle's, for the sisters shared the same room. The moon cast strong lights and shadows, and I kept in the shade till close to the house, when what was my disgust to hear the wretched tinkle of a guitar under the window! Serenades might be all very well for Italy, but we did not favor them in Nismes; and stepping briskly up to the musician, I said abruptly, "We want none ...

— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning

... various sources, and contains much that is Alfred's own and highly characteristic of him. The last words of it may be quoted; they form a fitting epitaph for the noblest of English kings. "Therefore he seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear.'' Besides these works of Alfred's, the Saxon Chronicle almost certainly, and a Saxon Martyrology, of which ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... bringing similar results, draws up a heavy burden buried in those depths. But only youth has energy, with fixed unwinking gaze, to contemplate grief, to hold it in the arms and to the heart, like a child which makes it wretched, ...

— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... because he could not brook subjection to the Son of God, a failing which was noble compared with treachery to the Son of man. The hatred of Judas is not altogether virtuous. We compound thereby for our neglect of Jesus and His precepts: it is easier to establish our Christianity by cursing the wretched servant than by following his Master. The heinousness also of the crime in Gethsemane has been aggravated by the exaltation of Jesus to the Redeemership of the world. All that can be known of Judas is soon collected. ...

— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... Gothic architecture is,—that style which, in its efforts to escape beyond the tragic contradiction in its mediaeval heart, yelled its hysterical cry heavenwards and even melted the stones of its structures into a quivering and fluid jet, in order to give adequate expression to the painful and wretched conflict then raging between the ...

— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... his wretched company a dozen times a day, He used to quit his charger in a parabolic way, His method of saluting was the joy of all beholders, But Ahasuerus Jenkins had a head ...

— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... away to the meagre table of the smallest of our Anthidia (A. scapulare, LATR. (A Cotton-bee, cf. idem: chapter 9.—Translator's Note.)), who makes her nests in dry bramble-stems. The scanty fare makes a wretched dwarf of the offspring belonging to either sex, without depriving them of any of their racial features. We still see the Burnt Zonitis, with the distinctive sign of the species: the singed patch at the ...

— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... still at the office, yet I shall think D. Gauden do well in it, and what I would advise him to, because I love him. I up to my Lord Brouncker at his lodgings; and sat with him an hour on purpose to talk over the wretched state of this office at present, according to the present hands it is made up of; wherein he do fully concur with me, and that it is our part not only to prepare for defending it and ourselves against the consequences ...

— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... opposing the motion. On the fifth and last night Mr. Cobden said that his chief objection to the motion was, that it did not include agricultural as well as manufacturing distress. The agricultural labourers were in a wretched state; neither them nor the farmers were any gainers by the corn-laws. With neither of these classes had landlords any right to identify themselves. The landlord was no agriculturist: he might live all his days in London or in Paris. ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... packets were sailing every day, filled with men of fashion and ladies of note, on their way to Brussels and Ghent. People were going not so much to a war as to a fashionable tour. The newspapers laughed the wretched upstart and swindler to scorn. Such a Corsican wretch as that withstand the armies of Europe and the genius of the immortal Wellington! Amelia held him in utter contempt; for it needs not to be said that ...

— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... escaped us by a miracle," he said. "All day long we had sentinels on all the heights commanding the sea, and at night we patrolled the waters in our ship. Yet for all our vigilance he has slipped through our hands. But I will not be baffled thus," he added, stamping with fury. "This wretched boy must die, or we shall never accomplish our purpose. Let us make haste and slay him before he comes back to the town, or he will call a meeting of the people and proclaim to all Ithaca that we sought to slay him, and failed. Then the ...

— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... van came rolling down the street the other day with a big spirited Percheron in the center and two wretched nags on either side. The Percheron was doing all the work, and it seemed that he would have got along far better in single harness, than he managed with his ...

— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman

... forgetful: what if Lady Leveret, for example, had come into that shop? It seems to me you are never satisfied with meeting the people you ought to meet, but that you must go and associate with all the wretched cripples and beggars you can find. You should remember you are a woman, and not a child—that people will talk about what you do if you go on in this mad way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh or her daughter do any of ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... and such as she, somewhere, and people are beginning to see and feel the importance of it here; but until the thought and hope become a reality the State will simply put the child in with the idiots and lunatics, to grow more and more wretched, more hopeless, more stupid, until the poor little light is quenched in utter darkness. There is hope for her now, I am sure of it. If Mrs. Grubb's neighbours have told me the truth, any physical malady that may be pursuing her is in its very first stages; ...

— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... imponderably near him. Wretched and bereft though I was, I could not have left him ...

— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... the bells of Heaven The wildest peal for years, If Parson lost his senses And people came to theirs, And he and they together Knelt down with angry prayers For tamed and shabby tigers And dancing dogs and bears, And wretched, blind pit ponies, ...

— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... results, was the most momentous recorded in history, Pope Urban preached the First Crusade. He said little about the dangers which threatened the Roman Empire in the East from the Turks, but dwelt chiefly on the wretched condition of the Holy Land, with its churches polluted by unbelievers and its Christian inhabitants tortured and enslaved. Then, turning to the proud knights who stood by, Urban called upon them to abandon their wicked practice of private warfare and take up arms, instead, against ...

— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... heavily. He turned into a quiet restaurant to get a meal and ate without noticing what was put before him. At the earliest opportunity he sought the train and buried himself in the corner of a compartment praying that the wretched night might lessen the number of travellers. Behind an evening paper which he did not attempt to read he smoked in silence, which the two other men in the carriage did not break. Foreigners both, they huddled in great coats in opposite corners and were asleep ...

— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... convent until the spring of 1812. She was still very unwell, and could not be moved without great difficulty. The priest lodged with a poor widow who lived in the neighbourhood, and Anne Catherine had in the same house a wretched little room on the ground-floor, which looked on the street. There she lived, in poverty and sickness, until the autumn of 1813. Her ecstasies in prayer, and her spiritual intercourse with the invisible world, became more and more frequent. She was about ...

— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... been more or less absorbed by the stronger races, and the result in the archipelago has been the formation of several tribes of half-breeds numbering considerably more than half a million. Side by side with them, and equally poor and wretched, are the Manthras, a cross between the Negritos and Malays and the degenerate descendants of the Saletes, a warlike tribe conquered by the Malayan Rajah Permicuri in 1411. Then come the Malay Sulus, all Mohammedans and still governed by their ...

— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... English-French, and long loaves of bread. They think the long loaves very humorous! There are Y.M.C.A. canteens at most stations, so we are well fed. The horses are miserable, of course. They were unhappy on board ship. A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to. And now they are wretched in their trucks, Rinaldo and Swallow are, of course, terrified, while Jezebel, having rapidly thought out the situation, takes it all very quietly. She has just eaten an enormous lunch. Poor Rinaldo wouldn't touch his, and Swallow only ate ...

— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson

... however, not wholly to abandon him in this wretched state, but he comforted him with the cheering promise that the seed of the woman should some time or other completely subdue sin, or to use the scriptural language, "should bruise the serpent's head;" or, in other words, as sin was of a spiritual nature, so it ...

— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... government of the emperor Arcadius, they laid waste the Illyrian provinces down to the Peloponnesus, and made repeated irruptions into Italy, in 400 and 402, under their valiant leader Alarich. In 408 he besieged Rome, and exacted considerable sums from it. He renewed the siege in 409, and made the wretched prefect Attalus emperor, whom he afterwards deposed, and recognised Honorius again. At last he took Rome by storm on the 24th August, 410. The city was completely plundered, but the lives of the people spared. He withdrew ...

— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... one of the most invariable characteristics of Genius, and by which its most glorious efforts are achieved, if excited into unhealthy action by over-exercise, not unseldom renders its possessor unreasonable and wretched, while his works are benefiting or delighting others, and while the very persons who most highly appreciate them are often the least disposed to pardon ...

— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... looked at each other, the same thought with us, and then on a sudden the wretched woman made a step forward and clutched me by the arm, her face like death, her breath ...

— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... injury. How could I have the heart to force her to forego such a glory, merely for the sake of the poor insignificant kazi that I am! I should never get over it; 'tis done! I will immolate my happiness to hers! I shall be very wretched; but—but—I shall be divan-beghi." ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various

... like to dine and fall asleep, but you don't!—You remember that you live in the country—that is, you are a slave, a rag, a bit of string, a bit of limp flesh, and you've got to run round and do errands. Where we live a pleasant custom has grown up: when a man goes to town every wretched female inhabitant, not to mention one's own wife, has the power and the right to give him a crowd of commissions. The wife orders you to run into the modiste's and curse her for making a bodice too wide across the chest and too narrow across the ...

— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... destructively as was necessary to accomplish the purpose of forcing Naples to let the Sicilian rebels alone. But then it is said, and it is the pitiful pretext of equal treatment to both parties, that the orders were alike to prevent action of the King's troops and the revolters. Was ever there a more wretched shift, a more hollow pretence, than this? Keep the Sicilians from breaking an armistice enforced to save them from utter and final destruction! Keep the beaten Sicilian rebel from overpowering his victorious masters! Keep ...

— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... had ceased on their approach and as they stood hesitating a strange figure suddenly appeared round the corner of the wretched rookery of a place. The man, who stood facing them, a startled look in his light blue eyes, was apparently about middle age. He wore a full beard of a golden brown color and was barefooted and hatless. His clothes consisted of a tattered shirt and a pair of ...

— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... my dear Julien," he continued, "a certain education is necessary for you. If only I had a little more time I should be invaluable. You have taken all your life too narrow a view. That wretched Eton training! You would have been better off at a ...

— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... seem favorites of fate, In Pleasure's lap caressed; Yet think not all the rich and great Are likewise truly blest. But oh! what crowds in every land Are wretched and forlorn! Through weary life this lesson learn, That man was ...

— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... poor Jim six long months on the rack. First she'd say she'd marry him, and then she'd say she wouldn't (not that she ever really meant that she wouldn't), for she just wanted to torment him; and she succeeded so well that Jim became utterly wretched, and went to his master to know "ef'n he couldn't make dat yaller gal ...

— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... sea or into the side of the mountain; and there by torchlight they suffered the cruel tortures of their overseers without having power to make their groans heard above ground. No lot upon earth could be more wretched than that of these unhappy men; to all of them death would have been ...

— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... bed, every one of you. It's a thankful man I'll be when your father and mother come home. The wretched bachelor who undertakes to look after a houseful of children like you is to be pitied. Nobody will ever catch me doing it again. Felicity, is there anything fit to ...

— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... never, where the flame Sprang to the roofs, and Helen ne'er he found Where flock'd the wretched women in their shame The helpless altars of the Gods around, Nor lurk'd she in deep chambers underground, Where the priests trembled o'er their hidden gold, Nor where the armed feet of foes resound In shrines ...

— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... and sisters parted at the door of the sitting-room Brother Nathan plucked at the Eldress's sleeve; "Is she very wretched—Lydia? Where is she now, Eldress? Poor ...

— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland

... that," declared John. "If you stand for sense and experience and try to learn them, they think you're a fossil and out of sight of reality; and if you attempt to be young and interest yourself in their wretched little affairs and pay the boy with the boys and the girl with the girls, they think ...

— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... in God's creatures, no blessings in his own life. He can tell you all his misfortunes, but ask him what good things God has done for him, and he cannot remember. My brothers, guard against the discontented tongue. It is a grievous sin against God, and it makes its owner and all around him wretched. Let the praises of God be in your mouth, and the two-edged sword of faith in your hand, and you will make your way through all difficulties, and triumph over all troubles. Count up God's mercies and blessings every day, and you cannot murmur. Sing the Te Deum oftener, and you ...

— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... spoken of now haunted and perplexed me so constantly, that I became moody and wretched. While in this state, a man from a neighboring ward fell one morning into conversation with the chaplain, within earshot of my chair. Some of their words arrested my attention, and I turned my head to see and listen. The speaker, who wore a sergeant's chevron and carried ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... eaten, they added, in order to cheer him, that he was to be washed down with a really pleasant drink called kawi. The king's son then tied Stade's legs together in three places. "I was made," says the wretched man, "to hop with jointed feet through the huts; at this they laughed and said 'Here comes our meat hopping along,'" Death seemed imminent. They did Stade, however, no injury beside shaving off his ...

— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... their limbs with pains, and load their lives with the guilt of their parents? why should they hinder that trade to which they must owe all the comforts which plenty affords? why should they endeavour to intercept their existence, or suffer them to exist only to be wretched? ...

— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... grossly inconsistent with himself. For, after drawing his distinction between Parsing and Construing, as above, he takes no further notice of the latter; but, having filled up seven pages with his most wretched mode of "PARSING," adds, in an emphatic note: "The Teacher should direct the Pupil to CONSTRUE, IN THE SAME MANNER, any passage from MY CLASS-BOOK, or other Work, at the rate of three or four lines per ...

— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... glorying in Christ Jesus. If a man has learned his emptiness he will look about for something to fill it. Unless I know myself to be under condemnation because of my sin, and fevered, disturbed, and made wretched, by its inward consequences which forbid repose, the sweetest words of Gospel invitation will pass by me like wind whistling through an archway. But if once I have been driven from self-confidence, then ...

— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... humanity—not over-wretched, for the condition of the slaves in the household of Arminius Quirinius had not been an unhappy one—they all seemed astonished, some even highly pleased, at thus finding themselves the centre of attraction in the ...

— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... of God in his inward man; but he found another law in him, in his body, warring against the law of his mind—that is his conscience and reason, and making a slave of him till he was ready at times to cry, "Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the ...

— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... beneath an exterior that commends itself to the reverence of his flock, while he sees the softer partner of his guilt standing in the full glare of exposure and humbling herself to the misery of atonement—between this more wretched and pitiable culprit, to whom dishonour would come as a comfort and the pillory as a relief, and the older, keener, wiser man, who, to obtain satisfaction for the wrong he has suffered, devises the ...

— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... the people to see the King for themselves, and make sure he was uninjured, as they cheered, and followed it in surging throngs to the very gates of the Palace,—while in another and reverse direction the wretched youth whose miserable effort to commit a dastard crime had so fortunately failed, was marched off, under the guard of a strong body of police to the State-Prison, there to await his trial and condemnation. A small crowd, hooting and cursing the criminal, pursued him as he ...

— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... contain the story Which Mr. H——— related to me. While he was telling it, a gentle wind arose; the miniature sloops drifted feebly about the ocean; the wretched owners flew from point to point, as the deceptive breeze promised to waft the barks to either shore; the early robins trilled now and then from the newly fringed elms; and the old young man leaned on the rail in the ...

— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... several nights, and, since his afflicting insanity, could seldom be prevailed on to enter his own room. After pausing a few minutes, while her lips appeared to move with the prayer her heart so fervently formed, she undid the bolt, quietly opened the door, then partially closed it, and left her wretched parent ...

— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... away in haste, as the process had already occupied half an hour, and I was telephoning to avoid delay. Five minutes later I passed the bureau. The landlord was still at that wretched instrument. I hurried by without daring to look up, fearing that I should be appealed to again. I dared not even ask whether the message ever reached ...

— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... those faces, in which her ignorance of Parisian types did not permit her to distinguish the type of probity from that of dishonesty. The appearance of misery alarmed her, and all whom she met seemed wretched and miserable. Her toilet, which was the same she had worn during the previous evening, was elegant even in its careless disorder: for it was the one in which she had presented herself to the queen-mother; and, moreover, when she drew aside the mantle which covered ...

— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... signs of winter: the olives were now ripe, and appeared on each side of the road as black as sloes; and the corn was already half a foot high. On the second day of our journey, we passed the Rhone on a bridge of boats at Buccaire, and lay on the other side at Tarrascone. Next day we put up at a wretched place called Orgon, where, however, we were regaled with an excellent supper; and among other delicacies, with a dish of green pease. Provence is a pleasant country, well cultivated; but the inns are not so ...

— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... IV. gained his throne, the country was in a most wretched condition. In the desolating wars, population had fallen off. Everywhere there were poverty and lawlessness. Yet war with Spain was inevitable. In this war, Henry was the victor; and the Peace of Vervins restored the ...

— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... not hear the taunting reply or heed the sneer. He was still staring at this counterpart of himself, this very image yet who was not himself, but a human derelict, a wretched, sodden outcast. All at once, an overwhelming, horrible suggestion rushed across his brain. Could it be, was it—his long lost twin brother? Almost gasping, ...

— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... of all efforts to keep a stiff upper lip, the night was wretched. The rain fell in torrents. The only way to keep the fire alight was by keeping it under the blanket shelter, and Milton was half smothered with smoke. He insisted on the others going to sleep, but in spite of their utter weariness, the ...

— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... me happy. But an hour ago I was the most wretched of men. I have lost my sister, and I feared your esteem. Both are restored to me. My sister is by my side, and the gem that sparkles on my finger tells me that even calumny has failed to rob me of your friendship—your love. ...

— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... reins alone relieved the monotony of appointment by being of rope. Small wooden pegs supplied, by some ingenuity I could not fathom, the absence of buckles. The carriole itself had not even a piece of iron to act in any way as a spring, and the agony we suffered when this wretched machine creaked, and squeaked, and jolted over the stones, is indescribable; and, to the eye, it was one of the clumsiest pieces of carpentry I ever met with; nor do I hesitate in saying, that an approximation to a civilized condition was more evident ...

— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... Sally, shortly. She had never felt so wretched in her life. Foreign travel, she decided, was a mistake. It might be pleasant and broadening to the mind, but it seemed to put you so out of touch with people when you got back. She analysed her sensations, and arrived at the conclusion that what she was resenting was the fact that Gerald was trying ...

— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... know," she said, "I have got the most racking headache; I wonder if you would hear me through my English History questions, Kitty. It would be awfully kind of you. I am so wretched about every thing and things seem so hopeless, and it is so perfectly miserable to think of spending all the holidays here, for I don't believe Mrs. Clavering is going to take us to the seaside after all. Really, I think life is not ...

— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... usual teasing way, he made signs behind that worthy's back to the effect that his sister ought to ask him to sit by her. However, when Hirzel saw that his sister looked really troubled, he came immediately like a good brother and did what his sister wished. All this was not lost on that wretched Jacques, who between present circumstances, and his own thoughts of what must come before he gained Marguerite, had by no means ...

— Legend of Moulin Huet • Lizzie A. Freeth

... society. She was condemned to wear a dress different from that of other people; she was liable at any moment to be stoned for her conduct; she was one whom it was a ritual impurity to touch. She was wretched beyond measure; but while so corrupt, she was not utterly hardened. Incapable of virtue, she was not incapable of gratitude. Weltering in grossness, she could still be touched by the sight of purity. Plunged ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... this new exercise. He became more witty, more masterful, while the repartee of his adversaries sank to wretched piffle. He met disaster only once. That was when his conscience began to hurt him after a particularly bitter assault on Bulger in which the latter had been more than usually contemptible in the matter of the overdue debt. He felt that he had really been too ...

— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... gross, that after the third visit I could endure him no longer; and incurred, by dismissing him, the censure of all my friends, who declared that my nicety was greater than my prudence, and that they feared it would be my fate at last to be wretched with ...

— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... ye, and let your own flesh and blood see ye. If that's too much to do for your old dad, ye might do it to please that digger squaw as a Christian act." Whether in the hidden depths of the old man's consciousness there was a feeling of paternal vanity in showing this wretched aborigine the value and importance of the treasure she was about to guard, I cannot say. Flip darted an interrogatory look at Lance, who nodded a quiet assent, and she flew into the inner room. She did not linger on the ...

— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... ourselves? Not only weakness and nothingness, but wickedness: for the thoughts and imaginations of a man's heart are only evil, and that continually. We are by nature children of wrath, and are conceived in sin, and born in unrighteousness! O this wretched and vile thing, sin! But thanks be to God, who hath redeemed me from it. O Lord, take me to thyself. Behold, dear mother, he has prepared a place ...

— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley

... envy him? He would be going away for one, two, or three months; and all that time, instead of our wretched privations, he would be transformed into a ...

— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... won her heart, even before she heard the pitiful story of the wretched little musician, and when Peace had finished recounting the morning's events, the mistress of the stone house turned toward her aunt with blazing, wrathful eyes, exclaiming impetuously, "Isn't that shocking? Oh, how dreadful! We must help him, Aunt ...

— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown

... she cried in an agonizing tone, "your kindness will kill me more than cruelty. I am unworthy of so much tenderness; forgiveness, only forgiveness, is the melancholy boon that the wretched, the guilty Theodora craves from ...

— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... is sublime, and yet His manly shyness is absurd; Of all the girls he ever met It was myself he most preferred; He'd try and try, but couldn't get His wretched tongue to say ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... it's bad enough for you to have thrashed me as you did, without bringing mother and Aunt Enna, and maybe grandfather too, down on me about those wretched masks and things; so give 'em up and let Dick and me put 'em back before ...

— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... however, told him he must go and tidy his Hair, which he was preparing to obey. Oh! these are the People who somehow interest me; and if I were not now too far advanced on the Road to Forgetfulness, I should be sad that my own Life had been such a wretched Concern in comparison. But it is too late, even to ...

— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... understand what the guide-books mean when they call the market of Gafsa "rich and well-appointed": a five-pound note, I calculate, would buy the entire exhibition. The produce, though varied, is wretched; but the scenery fine. Over a dusty level, strewn with wares, you look upon a stretch of waving palms, with the distant summit of Jebel Orbata shining in the deep blue sky. Here are a few butchers and ...

— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... windows, and on a card he saw the words "To Let." Gone! Had he after all cleared out for good? But how-without money? And the girl? Bells were ringing now in the silent frostiness. Christmas Eve! And Keith thought: 'If only this wretched business were off my mind! Monstrous that one should suffer for the faults of others!' He took a route which led him past Borrow Street. Solitude brooded there, and he walked resolutely down on the far side, looking hard at the girl's window. There was a light. The curtains just failed ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... on the last Sunday before the close of the war. A detachment of Confederate prisoners, possibly two thousand in all, had just been brought in. They were in rags, starved, sick, and altogether as wretched a sight as one would be willing to see in a lifetime. A train of cars was standing on the siding. The President came out of a car and stood on the platform. As he gazed at the pitiable sufferers, he said not a word, but his breast heaved with ...

— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... I strayed in Charing Cross as wretched as could be With thinking of my home and friends across the tumbling sea; There was no water in my eyes, but my spirits were depressed And my heart lay like a sodden, soggy doughnut in my breast. ...

— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... eve Of Julia's travail. When the babe was born, Its presence tempted him to cherish schemes Of future happiness. "You shall return, 190 Julia," said he, "and to your father's house Go with the child.—You have been wretched; yet The silver shower, whose reckless burthen weighs Too heavily upon the lily's head, Oft leaves a saving moisture at its root. 195 Malice, beholding you, will melt away. Go!—'tis a town where both of us were born; None will reproach you, for our ...

— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... wrong," she proceeded, rather aimlessly, "but I can't make it seem right. I don't know whether I can make you understand, but the idea of being happy, when everybody else is so miserable, is more than I can endure. It makes me wretched." ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... villany he premeditated. There was another claimant for the crown as usual, Turlough O'Brien. He was defeated, but nevertheless the Earl turned to his side, got Brian Roe into his hands, and had him dragged to death between horses. The wretched perpetrator of this diabolical deed gained little by his crime,[337] for O'Brien's sons obtained a victory over him the following year. At one time he was so hard pressed as to be obliged to surrender at discretion, after living on horse-flesh for several days. In 1281 the unprincipled ...

— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... will blab—it's the nature o' the beast—that stupid little much-divorced animal that married him—" he glared at two innocent young shoppers who were passing, "Gad, women are such sophisticated cows nowadays—" Spring always made him wretched, spring always made him fretful, spring always sent him off for the woods somewhere, any woods so long as it was woods. He pondered over whether he could get away Friday or would have to wait till Saturday morning, and eventually ...

— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... turned out of the old Canterbury way and pointed south toward the coast, leaving the chalk lands and coming down into the clay of the Weald. It was a wretched, rutted mule-track running through thick forests with occasional clearings in which lay the small Kentish villages, where rude shock-headed peasants with smocks and galligaskins stared with bold, greedy eyes at the travelers. Once on the right they caught a distant view of the Towers ...

— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... prejudice and cruelty. Fear and physical pain extorted confessions and complicated accusations of their neighbors from multitudes of innocent people.[241] Indeed the parallel between these unfortunate smearers and no less wretched witches is a close one. I am inclined to think that, as some crazy women fancied they were witches, so some morbid persons of this period in Italy believed in their power of spreading plague, and yielded to the fascination of malignity. Whether such moral mad folk really ...

— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... unscrupulous Bohemians. Not long since, a collection of paintings was offered for sale in New York, the owner being dead. They had been collected at great expense, and were the pride of their former owner. With a few exceptions they were wretched copies, and in the whole lot, over five hundred in number, there were not six genuine "old masters," or "masters" of ...

— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... through the joint influence of parents and husbands, to join the latter; and those only who have been acquainted with the life of slavery and degradation a native female is subject to, can at all form an opinion of the wretched prospect before her. ...

— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... And the wretched girl strove to throw the guilt of the sin she premeditated upon her victim, upon the Intendant, upon fate, and, with a last subterfuge to hide the enormity of it from her own eyes, upon La Corriveau, whom she would lead on to suggest the crime and commit it!—a course which Angelique ...

— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... through many chambers, there came forward to receive him the most sweetly mannered gentleman alive, who not only gave him his hand, but retained his guest's, saying, "We are a sort of cousins, I believe, and ought to have been acquainted before, but you know perhaps my wretched state," though what that was nobody exactly did know, particularly as Lord Montfort was sometimes seen wading in streams breast-high while throwing his skilful line over the rushing waters. "I remember your grandfather," ...

— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... of indifference to Flossie. A rejected lover is useful in so many ways. It may be a triumph to make one man supremely happy; but the effect is considerably heightened if you have at the same time made another man supremely wretched. Flossie found that the spectacle of young Sidney's dejection restored all its first fresh piquancy to her engagement. At Tavistock Place he more than justified his existence. True, he did not remain depressed for very long, and there was something not altogether ...

— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... Morgan song, and obliged him to dance, fat and fagged as he was, to his own music, while they applauded him with shouts of "Go it, old Yank! Louder!" till their commanding officer ordered them to harness a worn-out crow bait to his wagon, and bring him three wretched jades for the horses he wanted to recover, and ...

— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... when the full soul loatheth the honey-comb. Nevertheless, although I speak thus in my poor judgment, I would not put force on the conscience of any man, leaving to the learned to follow the learned, and the wise to be instructed by the wise, while poor simple wretched souls are not to be denied a drink from the stream which runneth by the way.—Ay, verily, it will be a comely sight in England when men shall go on as in a better world, bearing with each other's infirmities, joining in each other's comforts.—Ay, truly, the rich drink out of silver flagons, ...

— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... cotton yarn. By this toilsome industry she fed herself and found food for her son Alaeddin the scapegrace who, seeing himself freed from bearing the severities of his sire, increased in idleness and low habits; nor would he ever stay at home save at meal-hours while his miserable wretched mother lived only by what her hands could spin until the youth had reached his fifteenth year.—And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and ceased ...

— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... of the cork grips of his handlebars—the road being in a wretched condition after the recent hauling of the crop—and quickened his pace. He told himself that, no matter what the time was, he would not stop for luncheon at the ranch house, but would push on to Guadalajara and have a Spanish dinner at Solotari's, ...

— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... grew more pale than a corpse, and tottered so that she was forced to hold by a chair: and I, wretched man, who would readily have sworn away my life for her, when I saw and heard this, my senses forsook me, so that I fell down from the bench, and Dom. Consul had to call in the constable to ...

— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold

... Shakespeare's time," Mrs. Pitt reflected. "You must know that sanitary conditions were fearful then, and that Stratford was as bad, if not worse, than other towns in that respect. Even as late as 1769, when Garrick visited here, he considered it 'the most dirty, unseemly, ill-paved, wretched-looking town in all Britain.' The people had absolutely no idea of cleanliness. In Stratford, there were six places where it was lawful to dump rubbish,—right in the street! Just fancy! Sometimes these dumps prevented a man from making his ...

— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson

... camp. He was quickly drenched to the skin, but realising how excellent a screen for rushing the camp this downpour would make, he remained at his post, shivering with cold, for the rest of the night; and by the time that morning dawned, was feeling weary and wretched. ...

— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... long-legged coward!" sneered Jack, angrily. "You know about how much punk you'd have if I had my hands and legs free, and stood before you on even terms. How you'd beg, you wretched craven!" ...

— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... face fell. She was a wretched sailor, and Virginia knew it. Even the crossing from Dover to Calais was torture to ...

— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson

... born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the wretched look of the walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the ...

— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... he said to himself, "leads a wretched life. How much more respected are the glass-blowers, the clock-makers, and ...

— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... XV. or those of the Revolution of 1789. He founded the Abbey of Solignac, near Limoges, and it is not improbable that the reputation of this city for metal-work and enamelling may be dated from his foundation. With such works as those of Eloy before them, it is difficult to believe that the wretched and puerile attempts at ornamental penmanship and illumination which are shown at Laon and other places as the work of this period can possibly represent the highest efforts of the calligrapher. But we must remember that St. Eloy was an extraordinary genius in his art, and that the ...

— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... surveyed the city then went they to their ships and led the Archbishop with them. Then was he a captive who erewhile had been the head of the English race and of Christendom.[I] There might then be seen misery there where oft erewhile men had seen bliss, in that wretched city whence had first come to us Christendom and bliss before ...

— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey

... this year and for ever may all be well with you, my dear sir, for your care of us. A good kind man! We're letting Eunoe get squeezed—come, wretched girl, push ...

— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... Terry. "All you've got to know is that I won't have anything further in any way whatever to do with you. I won't have you helping us with our mortgage; I won't have you advancing money to us; I won't stand one little minute for any of your—your wretched interference with our affairs! If you think you can—can butt in on our side of any fight ...

— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... beneath the leaves, spawn and slime. He came up like a cork, choking and sputtering, and started to wade to the shore as the water was only up to his arm-pits. But as he attempted to scramble out, he was pushed back and forced to stand in his wretched plight for several minutes. At length he was allowed to leave the pond, and with teeth chattering with cold and fear, he was told to dress himself as ...

— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... wretched face, and strode back toward the tent. He must get away from them for a little, he must try to think, he must find something to do. And as he turned a yell of derisive triumph from two hundred throats went booming and thundering ...

— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... of me. Of course I was unhappy, wretched,—miserable. I knew why he was there. You can understand, Polly, that when a man really loves he must be the miserablest or ...

— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... calculated, with the seeming high regard for accuracy that marks all efficiency experts, that these wretched devices cost her twenty-eight cents and a half each per diem. Estimating the total of them on the ranch at one hundred, this meant to her a loss of twenty-eight dollars and a half per diem. I used per diem twice to impress the woman. I added that it was pretty slipshod business ...

— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... day that seemed endless dragged away. Bertie went home to his wife in the afternoon, taking Tawny Hudson, subdued and wretched, with him. ...

— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... he first joined the Court, he found Francis travelling from city to city with a retinue of eighteen thousand persons and twelve thousand horses. Frequently they came to places where no accommodation could be had, and the suite were lodged in wretched tents. It is not wonderful that Cellini should complain of the French being less civilised than the Italians of his time. Francis among his ladies and courtiers, pretending to a knowledge of the arts, sauntering with his splendid train into the goldsmith's workshop, encouraging Cellini's violence ...

— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... for utterance, but it was denied her. Roy's simple statement of Dale's love had magnified her emotion by completely changing its direction. She forgot what she had felt wretched about. She ...

— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... used violence to us. You did not come to vindicate our honor, while we were virgins, against our assailants; but do come now to force away wives from their husbands and mothers from their children, a succor more grievous to its wretched objects than the former betrayal and neglect of them. Which shall we call the worst, their love-making or your compassion? If you were making war upon any other occasion, for our sakes you ought to withhold ...

— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... high on the beach. How unfeeling it was o' him to rob you o' your little property in the very first o' your grief! But, see, he is so worn out that he can hardly walk over the rough stones. Ah, me, he is down! wretched old man. I must run to his assistance—but no, he has risen again. See he is coming straight to the house; an' now he is at the door." In a moment after, ...

— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... preposterous. The spectacle of the pot calling the kettle black, never edifying, aroused Dan's ire against Thatcher. And Bassett was not that sort; his old liking for the man stirred to life again. Even the Rose Farrell incident did not support this wretched tissue of fabrication. He had hated Bassett for that; but it was not for the peccable Thatcher to point a mocking finger ...

— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... never get a good living. But the moment I entered Halle, the university town, all my resolutions came to nothing. Being now more than ever my own master, I renewed my profligate life afresh, though now a student of divinity. Yet in the midst of it all I had a desire to renounce this wretched life, for I had no enjoyment in it, and had sense enough left to see that the end, one day or other, would be miserable. But I had no sorrow of heart on account of ...

— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller

... Helen all his elaborate precautions for the preservation of his China tea. Helen was wholly sympathetic. The utter correctness of her attitude towards Mrs. Butt was balm to him. Only one theory was conceivable. The wretched woman must have had a key to his caddy. During his absence from the house she must have calmly helped herself to tea at five shillings a pound—a spoonful or so at a time. Doubtless she made tea for her private consumption exactly when she chose. It was even possible that she walked off from ...

— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... Dick," she whispered. "I know something right inside my heart tells me that you will come back. It is only like putting aside our happiness for a little. Dear, you would be wretched if you could not go. Just having me would not make ...

— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... long time Brown did not speak; sat bleak-browed in the wretched room; Slowly a tear stole down his cheek, and he kissed her hand in the dismal gloom. To break his oath, to brand her shame; his well-loved friend, his worshipped wife; To keep his vow, to save her name, yet at the cost of what? ...

— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... marriages favoured the deceit, and Jacob found that he was wedded to Leah, and not to the object of his affection. The deceit was most unjustifiable. The disappointment and the resentment must have been proportionally great; and miserable was the excuse of Laban, and wretched the device which was offered as an atonement. Yet Jacob must have bowed before the retributions of an avenging God, and the remembrance of his own treachery may have ...

— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... betray too much interest in any man who was not of a certain fortune.—It is the cold, vulgar truth, madam, nor are we in the slightest degree exaggerating.—Elderly gentlemen, twisting single gloves in a very wretched manner, came up and bowed to the dowagers, and smirked, and said it was a pleasant party, and a handsome house, and then clutched their hands behind them, and walked miserably away, looking as affable as possible. And the dowagers made a little fun of the elderly gentlemen, ...

— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... How can you think of such a thing? But it would be so much better if you could wait here until I—Oh, what a wretched thing to have to seem so cowardly to you! But the difficulties are so great, darling. I shall be a perfect stranger in Bordeaux. I don't even speak the language at all well. When I reach there I shall be ...

— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... deploring Pitt's junction with "a man whose imbecility and falsehood, under Mr. Pitt's own sanction," had weakened the country. Pitt would now gain a few votes, no additional talents, and an increase of rancour in the Opposition. "We shall," adds Rose, "drag on a wretched existence and expire not creditably. What next will happen God only knows."[702] Canning was equally annoyed at the new Coalition.[703] His sharp tongue and still sharper pen had deeply annoyed Addington. Who, indeed, would not have resented this reference ...

— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... the kingdom about A.D. 1592, since which time it has been frequently burned. It stands closely surrounded by mountains, on the banks of a lake constructed by the last King of Kandy, in 1807. The habitations of the people were most wretched, as the king alone, and members of the royal family, enjoyed the privilege of having glazed windows, whitened walls, and tiles; the palace, and some of the Buddhist temples, are the only ancient edifices which remain, and even these are crumbling ...

— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... gods,' says this primitive man, 'compare our times with yours; see how happy you are, and how wretched were we. The earth, newly formed, the air heavy with moisture, were not yet subjected to the rule of the seasons. Three-fourths of the surface of the globe was flooded by the ever-shifting channels of rivers uncertain of their course, and covered ...

— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... we covet Without thee would be but wretched, Without thy voice to banish sorrow, Or sweet help from thee ...

— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... service to his fellow soldiers, and especially to those who were most sullen, most brutal or most miserable. He spoke sometimes of the next life with a cheerful certainty which made death seem less than an end of things, and he was upborne with a strange fervour which gave a kind of glory to the most wretched toil. ...

— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... perched in a mere heron's nest, formed of light wood arranged upon most fragile boughs; this wretched contrivance has swayed before the wind to an extent that would have rendered accurate aim impossible; fortunately upon such occasions I have never obtained ...

— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... horses. They are bred, fed, trained, groomed, housed, cared for, in a way to remind one of the Houyhnhnms, and strikingly contrasting with the conditions of life among the wretched classes whose existence is hardly more tolerable than that of those quasi-human beings under whose name it pleased the fierce satirist to degrade humanity. The horses that are driven in the hansoms of London are the best I have seen in any public conveyance. I cannot say as much of those ...

— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... me the circumstances minutely. I think that he had been at the trial, but I know that he was at the execution, and saw the wretched woman fixed to the stake, fire put to the faggots, and her body burnt. But I know two persons still alive who were present at her execution, and I endeavoured, in 1848, to ascertain from one of them the date of this event, and "made a ...

— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various

... then and there I promised the Lord if he would spare me I would seek and serve Him, and I never fully broke that promise. My mother prayed for me a long time. At length we lay down, but there was little sleep for me. Next morning I rose, feeling wretched beyond expression. I tried to read in the Testament, and retired many times to secret prayer through the day, but found no relief. I gave up my race-horse to my father and requested him to sell him. I went and brought my pack of cards and gave them to mother, who threw ...

— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... Here I saw one wretch thrust through with a lance, doubling backward in his death-agony as he fell; there, another turned fiercely, and fired his pistol full at the dragoon who charged him, but missed, and was cleft next moment to the chin. In another place a wretched man had dropped on his knees, and, while in a supplicating attitude, was run through the neck by a lancer. But, to say truth, little quarter was asked by these Bashi-Bazouks, and none was granted. They fought ...

— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... the remark that he had now found out who were his real friends; and Douglas followed him, absurdly smaller, and imitating his walk, like a curate following an archbishop.[7] You remember it the other way about; but just consider this. Douglas was in the wretched position of having ruined Wilde merely to annoy his father, and of having attempted it so idiotically that he had actually prepared a triumph for him. He was, besides, much the youngest man present, and looked younger than he was. You did not make him welcome: as far as I recollect ...

— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... found the C.C. on the site of the now camp, surrounded by confusion and an angry crowd of experts. There had been words and more words; there had only just not been blows, and all with regard to this wretched and incessant subject of April 7th. The C.C., never broad-minded on the point, had become positively ridiculous and tiresome about that irrevocable date, April 7th. It was a dull subject in any case, said the ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various

... horseshoes. "And to you I offer the best means of saving yourself—let me go—and of retrieving your great reputation. You boasted of making the Capataz de Cargadores famous from one end of America to the other about this wretched silver. But I bring you a better opportunity—let ...

— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... back to Paris I left Madame d'Urfe, and walked to the Porte St. Denis to see my brother. He and his wife received me with cries of joy. I thought the wife very pretty but very wretched, for Providence had not allowed my brother to prove his manhood, and she was unhappily in love with him. I say unhappily, because her love kept her faithful to him, and if she had not been in love she ...

— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... more do the tradespeople believe in it; or they wouldn't go home from sermon to sand the sugar, and put sloe-leaves in the tea, and send out lying puffs of their vamped-up goods, and grind the last farthing out of the poor creatures who rent their wretched stinking houses. And as for the workmen—they laugh at it all, I can tell you. Much good religion is doing for them! You may see it's fit only for women and children—for go where you will, church or chapel, you see hardly anything but bonnets and babies! I don't ...

— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... will have got into the habit as the necessary enjoyments of life. Take away then from persons in such habits the power of these their ordinary gratifications, and you will make them languid, and even wretched. There will be a wide chasm, which they will not know how to fill up; a dull vacuum of time, which will make their existence insipid; a disappointment, which will carry with it a lacerating sting. In some of the higher circles of life, accustomed to such rounds of ...

— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... for Gouroo's suggestion, you would have allowed him to die; and he refused to show you any mercy. Your fate seemed sealed—unless I could contrive a scheme to save you; but I could think of nothing; and the anticipation of your death made me feel so utterly wretched, that at last I entreated my father that, if he would not spare you, he would at least not compel me to witness your sufferings. He was still dreadfully angry with me for interceding in your behalf, but I persisted; and at length he told me that if I did not wish to witness the Customs ...

— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... mockingly that he so soon received into favour the fallen and the repentant. But St. Martin answered him sorrowfully, saying, 'Oh most miserable that thou art! if thou also couldst cease to persecute and seduce wretched men, if thou also couldst repent, thou also shouldst find mercy and ...

— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... spot it is scarcely possible to imagine any place more completely wretched. It was a swamp, containing a small space of firm ground at one end, and almost wholly unadorned with trees of any sort or description. There were, indeed, a few stinted [sic] firs upon the very edge of the water, but these were so diminutive in size as hardly ...

— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... Mellasys left us. It was, he said, the day of the election for President. How wretched that America should not be governed by hereditary sovereigns and an order ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... had found the Man whom I had sought till then in vain. In expectation of hearing you again, every day I visited your Cathedral: You remained secluded within the Abbey walls, and I always withdrew, wretched and disappointed. The Night was more propitious to me, for then you stood before me in my dreams; You vowed to me eternal friendship; You led me through the paths of virtue, and assisted me to support the vexations of life. The Morning dispelled these pleasing visions; I woke, and ...

— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... with them. In this wider sense, the spiritualistic theory is perfectly admissible; but what is not at all admissible is the narrow and pitiful interpretation which its proponents too often give it. They see the dead crowding around us like wretched puppets indissolubly attached to the insignificant scene of their death by the thousand little threads of insipid memories and infantile hobbies. They are supposed to be here, blocking up our homes, more abjectly human than if they were still alive, vague, inconsistent, garrulous, ...

— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... mad,' said Cortes, scanning me; 'he says that this wretched creature is an Englishman. Come, be off both of you, or somebody else may make the same mistake,' and he waved his sword in token to us to go, deeming that I could not understand his words; then added angrily, as de Garcia, speechless with rage, ...

— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... Running Deer's peltries would be spread out, and after a half hour of silent consideration on his part and trader's talk on mine, furs to the value of so many beaver skins would be passed across for the coveted gun. I remember it was a wretched old squaw with a toothless, leathery, much-bewrinkled face and a reputation for knowledge of Indian medicines, who first opened my eyes to the sort of trade the Indians had been driving with Hamilton. The old creature was bent almost double ...

— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... or thirty have really available voices, well trained and divided, it was infinitely more beautiful than any ordinary church service—like the Trinita di Monte Convent service more than anything else, and must be very good for them, quite different in its effect on their minds from our wretched ...

— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... you had seen him, I think you would have said he was a hundred times too handsome. Well, from what I could see at vacation time she was never sufficiently in love with him to let him have her money; and I am sure the last years of his life were wretched and full of hard places because of his financial ill-success. Poor father." The girl's voice failed and she waited, looking down at the gloved hands in her lap. "I had been at home from school only a few months when he died," she went on. "My stepmother endured me and that was all. She is ...

— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham

... Me." He takes our yoke and we take His and we find it a thousand times easier to carry one of His burdens than to carry our own. How much more delightful it is to spend an hour in supplication for another than five minutes in pleading for ourselves. Are we not weary of carrying our wretched loads? ...

— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... either makes it impossible for the objects of his care to borrow at all, or places them at the mercy of the worst class of usurers. A lawgiver who, from tenderness for laboring men, fixes the hours of their work and the amount of their wages, is certain to make them far more wretched than he found them. And so a government which, not content with repressing scandalous excesses, demands from its subjects fervent and austere piety, will soon discover that, while attempting to render an impossible service to the cause of virtue, ...

— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... is strikingly shown in the fact that in some cases, where the county relief funds are distributed through a Mormon clerk of paupers for out-door relief, the Mormon bishop even collects one-tenth of this money, from the wretched recipients, as their contribution ...

— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... —"Bringing me into this wretched alley!" he silently thought. His foot slipped on a mossy brick. Oh, no doubt they thought they were punishing some negligent friend or friends by letting themselves down into this sort of thing. Never mind! He recalled the tender, confiding, ...

— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... example for the rest of the ships. She was an old Indiaman, bought into the service, and now fitted out as a man-of-war, but also deeply laden with stores and merchandise of all sorts. Her crew consisted of men pressed from long voyages, while her land forces were a wretched detachment of infirm and decrepit invalids from Chelsea Hospital, desponding under the prospect of a long voyage. Her commander, Captain Kidd, before his death, predicted that misfortunes would overtake her. The Centurion, however, under the judicious management of Commodore Anson, performed ...

— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... foundation of their tenets. These theologians were now of great importance in the world; and no poet or philosopher, even in ancient Greece, where they were treated with most respect, had ever reached equal applause and admiration with those wretched composers of metaphysical polemics. The German princes told the king, that they could not spare their divines; and as Henry had no hopes of agreement with such zealous disputants, and knew that in Germany the followers ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... of this revolting food had been consumed." "The scenes I have witnessed of misery are something dreadful; and I must say that your wish for me to return with the work incomplete would not be expressed if you saw the state of these poor people. The horrible furtive looks of the wretched inhabitants hovering about one's boats haunts me.... I hope to get the Shanghai people to assist, but they do not see these things: and to read that there are human beings eating human flesh produces less effect ...

— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... without pain have acquired a complete impunity for all sorts of crimes; for with them reproach is a stronger check than conscience. From whence we have that scene in Afranius borrowed from common life; for when the abandoned son saith, "Wretched that I am!" the ...

— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... village we found the people on the eve of one of those terrible outbursts of superstitious passion which rarely if ever pass away without some wretched human creature perishing under ...

— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... examined the whole crew, which consisted of about two hundred soldiers, for the most part, men who had never touched a musket, and who could have been killed as ducks or who would have run away. Moreover they were in a wretched condition, and of a low order. The weather was favourable to the French, as the tide was low, and the wind from the south-east was driving the vessels towards France, so that there was no assurance for either the ...

— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... in its stead. Charles replied by telling her to remember whom she was speaking to; that he could not be treated in that manner; and then the queen, giving way to lamentations and tears, said she was wretched and miserable; every thing that she wanted was denied her, and whatever she recommended was refused on the very account of her recommendation. Charles tried to speak, but she would not hear; she went on with her lamentations ...

— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott

... more than ever convinced that the sooner we got rid of the wretched station, miscalled a colony, the better. It still supplies hides from the tipper country, ivory, bees'-wax, and a little gold. The precious metal is found, they say, in the red clay hills near Macarthy's Island; but ...

— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... which he tells his countrymen—"If ye have endured sorrow from your own baseness of soul, impute not the fault of this to the gods. Ye have yourselves put force and dominion into the hands of these men, and have thus drawn upon yourselves wretched slavery." ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... leaves to the next chapter, thou art before all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul,—and openest all its powers to receive instruction and to relish virtue.—He that has thee, has little more to wish for;—and he that is so wretched as to want thee,—wants every ...

— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... reasonable. Patricia's temper isn't a temper at all. It's—it's a possession—a wretched family inheritance. She can't help it, poor child, any more than she could help a squint or a crooked nose, and she doesn't inherit it from your mother but only from your step-father, so why on earth ...

— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... of the lower classes in large towns. Along with prostitution, venereal disease and alcohol, the wretched dwellings in many places lead to infamous promiscuity. In factories and mines things are still worse. In these places there is a swarm of people continually engaged in most unhealthy occupations, and only leaving their work to indulge in the most repugnant sexual excesses. ...

— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... you" in secret, a grasp of the hands behind locked doors—a sum of money pressed on me slyly—that hurt most of all—to put it away with a smile, and keep my temper. Good God! Does a Renault serve his country for money! Why, why, can they not understand, and spare me that!—the wages of the wretched trade! ...

— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... Nice, and in February, 1898, meant to go to Africa. He wanted to visit Algiers and Tunis, but Kovalevsky, with whom he meant to travel, fell ill, and he had to give up the project. He contemplated a visit to Corsica, but did not carry out that plan either, as he was taken seriously ill himself. A wretched dentist used contaminated forceps in extracting a tooth, and Chekhov was attacked by periostitis in a malignant form. In his own words, "he was in such pain that he climbed up ...

— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... gaped before the cock to suck in every one of those shrunk forms, so indigent of vital impulse, so pauper of civism, lust, so draughty, so vague, so lean—but not before they have had time to dower with the ah and wo of their infirmity a whole wretched "army of grand-children." And yet this man of wisdom is on the point, in his old age, of marrying once again, of producing for the good of his race still more of this poor human stuff. You see the lurid significance, the point of resemblance,—you ...

— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... High-priest is some Roche-Aymon, some Necklace-Cardinal Louis de Rohan. The voice of the poor, through long years, ascends inarticulate, in Jacqueries, meal-mobs; low-whimpering of infinite moan: unheeded of the Earth; not unheeded of Heaven. Always moreover where the Millions are wretched, there are the Thousands straitened, unhappy; only the Units can flourish; or say rather, be ruined the last. Industry, all noosed and haltered, as if it too were some beast of chase for the mighty ...

— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... was an asylum for dope fiends. I've got a bedroom, sitter and bath on the top floor. The house is a rabbit warren of bedrooms, sitters and baths, and in every one of them there's some poor devil trying to squeeze a little kindness out of fate. That wretched taxi driver! He may have a wife waiting for him. Do you think that red-haired feller's got to the hospital yet? He had a nice cut on his own silly face—and serve him right! I hope it'll teach him that ...

— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... of burden beside their husbands, have to drudge and wear themselves out from early morn till late to earn a bit of bread for the current day,—of all of these the learned gentleman knows nothing. With all these wretched beings, hard, raw reality wipes off the poetic coloring more easily than does the hand the colored dust of the wings of a butterfly. One look, cast by the professor at those unnumbered female sufferers, would have ...

— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... his language and manner heightened still more the passions of the hour. The marshal, of tall and imposing stature and aspect, accompanied by his constables, brought in the prisoners. Sarah Good, a poverty-stricken, wandering, and wretched victim of ill-fortune and ill-usage, was put to the bar. Every effort was made by the examining magistrate, aided by the officious interference of the marshal, or other deluded or evil-disposed persons,—who, like him, were permitted ...

— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... different course, almost every man returned to them. I do not believe there is any observation upon human nature better founded than this; and, in many cases, it is a very painful truth; for where early habits have been mean and wretched, the joy and elevation resulting from better modes of life must be damped by the gloomy consciousness of being under an almost inevitable doom to sink back into a situation which we recollect with disgust. It surely may be prevented, by constant attention and unremitting exertion to ...

— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... than the foolish creature you took so easily with a marriage ring, because you could not have her in an easier way! But the old, silly country girl has gone and left me this——Why did it have to be?" she exclaimed more incoherently. "Why did you not let me read what you are? I had only a few wretched weeks to learn you—and I was ignorant and foolish and young. You had me helpless at Barrington! Was it such a clever thing to cheat a girl from a ...

— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... the first time I got out of work. One Saturday, without a minute's warning, a lot of us were told that we wouldn't be wanted for a week or two. Lizzie and I were both told. She could hardly keep herself from crying but I couldn't cry. I was too wretched. I thought of everything and there seemed nothing to do anywhere. At home they couldn't help me. I shrank from asking aunt, for she'd only offered to help me to come back and what could I do in Toowoomba if ...

— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... the walls, huts were erected to shelter the fugitives, who were exposed to all the inclemency of the weather. Thus passed some wretched days and worse nights, sleep being constantly interrupted by alarms, due to the fact that the rebels were in possession of all the buildings in the place, except the fort, many ...

— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty

... honour, and is about to lose the poor consolation of his stolen riches as much as I blame you, for, by Heaven! I can very well see how he was brought to it. I can understand, and pity him. It is such women as you that strew this degraded coast with wretched exiles, that make men forget their ...

— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... miserable agony—I withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy strength, Hester; but let it be guided by the will which God hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old man is opposing it with all his might!—with all his own might, and the fiend's! Come, Hester, come! ...

— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... after precious things, And leaps for joy when some poor worm he fingers! That such a human voice should dare intrude, Where all was full of ghostly tones and features! Yet ah! this once, my gratitude Is due to thee, most wretched of earth's creatures. Thou snatchedst me from the despairing state In which my senses, well nigh crazed, were sunken. The apparition was so giant-great, That to a very dwarf my soul had shrunken. I, godlike, who in fancy saw but ...

— Faust • Goethe

... cellars and alleys—while the cats are out spending the summer in the country. And all the old women that couldn't get away sit peeking through the blinds gossiping about their neighbors—"See, he has his winter suit on"—and sneer at the worn-down heels of the passers-by. And from the poor quarters wretched beings drag themselves out of their holes, cripples, creatures without noses or ears, the wicked and unfortunate—filling the parks and squares as if they had conquered the city—there where the well-dressed ...

— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg

... girl told me not long ago that she was wretched at the thought she must soon leave school, for she dreaded the society life from which there seemed no escape. She wished to find some charitable work instantly which would be on the face of it so absorbing that it would be a complete excuse for her to ...

— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... become both a widow and an orphan in the dread night of St. Bartholomew. She had made her own escape to Switzerland; and ten years afterwards she had united herself in marriage with the Prince of Orange. At the age of thirty-two, she now found herself desolate and wretched in a foreign land, where she had never felt thoroughly at home. The widow and children of William the Silent were almost without the necessaries of life. "I hardly know," wrote the Princess to her brother-in-law, Count John, "how the children and I are to maintain ourselves according to the honour ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the Emperor, when the wretched Lesage had been conducted from the room. 'We have not done such a bad piece of work between the coffee and the breakfast. It was your idea, Josephine, and I give you credit for it. But now, de Laval, I feel that we owe ...

— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... believe that we shall receive the due reward of our deeds, whether they be good or whether they be evil. {8} But how shall any receive in heaven the due reward of evil deeds done on earth? and how, in hell, shall any wretched soul receive in any truth the due rewards of good deeds done on earth? Yet in each, there was some good even in the worst, and some evil ...

— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson

... hard by, with peasants in bright blue smocks, and grunting pigs.... And on Sunday, at church, the precentor, who sang out of tune, and the old priest, who went to sleep as he was saying Mass: the family walk along the station road, where all the time he had to take off his hat politely to other wretched beings, who were under the same impression of the necessity of going for a walk all together,—until at last they reached the sunny fields, above which larks soared invisible,—or along by the still mirror of the canal, on ...

— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... much of his time with his friend the bishop; much with his daughter Mrs. Bold, now, alas, a widow; and had almost daily visited the wretched remnant of his former subjects, the few surviving bedesmen now left at Hiram's Hospital. Six of them were still living. The number, according to old Hiram's will, should always have been twelve. But ...

— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... getting entangled in the thickets. All the details of the interview presented themselves before his mind with remorseless clearness. He seemed more lonely, more unfortunate, more disgusted with himself and with all else than he ever had been before. Ashamed of the wretched part he had just been enacting, he felt almost childish repugnance to returning to Vivey, and tried to pick out the paths that would take him there by the longest way. But he was not sufficiently accustomed to laying out a route for himself, ...

— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... what that means," she went on, working herself back into a sort of despairing anger again. "You do not know. To have built one's whole life on one thing, as I did! To have believed only one thing, as I did! To find that it is all gone, all untrue, all a wretched piece of acting—oh, you do not know! That woman's face haunts me in the dark—she is always there, with him, wherever I look, as they are together now at her house. Do you understand? Do you know what I feel? You pity me—but do you ...

— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... after the physicians had gone about their business, Zerviah Hope wandered, a little forlornly, through the wretched town. Scip, the negro boatman, found him a corner to spend the night. It was a passable place, but Hope could not sleep; he had already seen too much. His soul was parched with the thirst of sympathy. He walked his hot attic till the dawn came. As it grew brighter ...

— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... In this wretched mood they went in to tea, sitting at the table like two dark shadows falling across a room full of sunshine. Everybody was kind to them. Jessie did her utmost to restore them to good humor. Uncle Morris said funny things, hoping to make them smile. But it was no use. Smile they would ...

— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester

... eldest girl screaming and screeching at the thoughts of going to bed, because Sally, in order to bring her under her authority, had told her a frightful 'raw-head-and-bloody-bones' story; the horse had broken into the garden, and made wretched work with the vegetables; and fifty pounds of butter had become fit for the grease-pot, because the hoops of the firkin had sprung, and Sally had so much to do, that she never thought of going to see whether the butter was covered ...

— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... people would not accept this position. They sent a brother to bully me. It was an unwise move. My temper was wilder in those days, and I had strong provocation; yet I repent that I did not keep my hands off the throat of that wretched, blustering civilian. It was all arranged peacefully at last, and I have not seen her since, though I hear of her from time to time, as I did yesterday. This happened eleven long years ago, and she has never given me a chance of ridding myself of her since. She is always carefully ...

— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... Practical Effect of Illogical Reasons, and An Estimate of the Practical Influence of False Assertions. How the hive was buzzing when these titles were written down: but now I really hardly remember anything of what I meant to say, and what I remember appears wretched stuff. The effervescence has gone from the champagne; it is flat and dead. Still, it is possible that these subjects may recover their interest; and the author hereby gives notice that he reserves the right of producing an essay ...

— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... us!' sighed my aunt. 'I know all about it, Trot! Barkis and myself had quite a gossip while you were out with Dick. I know all about it. I don't know where these wretched girls expect to go to, for my part. I wonder they don't knock out their brains against—against mantelpieces,' said my aunt; an idea which was probably suggested to her by her ...

— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... proctor of the three estates, formally renounced their homage and fealty, and Sir Thomas Blount, steward of the household, broke his staff of office, and announced that the royal establishment was disbanded. Thus the calamitous reign of Edward of Carnarvon came to a wretched end. His utter inefficiency as a king makes it impossible to lament his fate. Yet few revolutions have ever been conducted with more manifest self-seeking than that which hurled Edward from power. The angry spite of the adulterous queen, the fierce vengeance and greed of Roger Mortimer, the craft ...

— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... Dir to escort him he swung round to the left. A screen of hillside and grey rock moved across the face of the country behind him. The last outpost was left behind. The Fort and the Signal Tower on the pinnacle opposite and the English flag flying over all were hidden from his sight. Wretched as any exile from his native land, Shere All went up into the lower passes of the Himalayas. Days were to pass and still the high snow-peaks which glittered in the sky, gold in the noonday, silver in the night ...

— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... nowhere. When she was alive, wherever I might be without her, everything said to me, You are going to see her. Nothing says so now. I find no solace but in my tears. I cannot bear the weight of my wounded and bleeding heart, and yet I know not where to rest it. I am wretched; for so it is when the heart is set on the love of things that pass away.'" "The days of this affliction were soon shortened," says St. Simon; "from the first moment I saw him, I was scared at his fixed, haggard ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... did her best to comfort me, but I was in no frame of mind to talk it all over, which was, I knew, her main idea of solace,—that and frequent offers of tempting food. On the other hand, my father made no allusion to the wretched incident during the fortnight he remained at Tinker's Reach. He treated me exactly as if nothing had happened, except that every morning after breakfast he proposed a walk through the woods or up the mountain. Indifferent to everything as I was at the moment, I had a consciousness that ...

— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... Germans. Thus, at the close of this period, this unhappy country, desolated of its inhabitants, abandoned by its masters, stripped of its artisans, and deprived of all its spirit, was in a condition the most wretched and forlorn. ...

— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... crawled all over. They winked at me. The way grew so narrow that we had to walk one by one through lines of wall perforated with holes for dead bodies. Once in a while we would come to a small chapel, for miserable variety's sake, and be told to admire some very old, very wretched painting. Jonah and the whale were represented in a double-barreled miracle picture. Not only was the whale about to swallow Jonah, but he was only as large as a good-sized brook trout, while Jonah towered away above him like a Goliath. I found myself wondering ...

— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason

... let doubt die. He overshadowed the ship. Invulnerable in his promise of speedy corruption he trampled on our self-respect, he demonstrated to us daily our want of moral courage; he tainted our lives. Had we been a miserable gang of wretched immortals, unhallowed alike by hope and fear, he could not have lorded it over us with a more pitiless assertion ...

— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... errand that had made her sail on the vessel a week after the spectacular torpedoing of a sister-ship? Did she know this Van Blarcom or did she merely dread any notice? And above all, who was the man and had he been watching when I tossed that wretched extra across ...

— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... respect. The Sultan[31] received me at once on the day of arrival, and made his return visit to me yesterday. I confess I was not much impressed with either his appearance or general ability. He is, to say the truth, a wretched creature, prematurely aged, and having nothing whatever to say for himself. A few commonplace civilities was all the conversation which passed between us. I said everything I could think of to make a conversation, among other things messages of civility from yourself; but though he appeared ...

— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... The wretched George Deaves played with the objects on his desk. "All very well to say I'll send it," he muttered. "But where am I going to get it? Useless ...

— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... always unwell. This was the reason why Asclepius and his sons practised no such art. They were acting in the interest of the public, and did not wish to preserve useless lives, or raise up a puny offspring to wretched sires. Honest diseases they honestly cured; and if a man was wounded, they applied the proper remedies, and then let him eat and drink what he liked. But they declined to treat intemperate and worthless subjects, even though they might have ...

— The Republic • Plato

... mad; you can only save him with a hair of the same dog," one of the prisoner's measuredly suggests, folding his arms, and looking mechanically upon the wretched man. ...

— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... you, with my own wretched affairs!" cried the young count reproachfully. "I must not trespass upon ...

— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock

... laborers they may only find employment in the proportion of one "unprotected alien" to two "Roumanians" under any one employer. In short, by the cumulative effect of successive restrictions, the Jews of Roumania have become reduced to a state of wretched misery. Shut out from nearly every avenue of self-support which is open to the poor of other lands, and ground down by poverty as the natural result of their discriminatory treatment, they are rendered incapable of lifting themselves ...

— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf

... pre-eminently so to Maurice on this occasion; but he was inflexible as adamant. The mother, the wife, and the son of Groeneveld, threw themselves at his feet, imploring pardon. Prayers, tears and sobs were alike ineffectual. It is even said that Maurice asked the wretched mother "why she begged mercy for her son, having refused to do as much for her husband?" To which cruel question she is reported to have made the sublime answer—"Because my son is guilty, and ...

— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... earth is Syria, as thou knowest, my lord, where live the wretched Hittites, that is the hereditary land of the Hebrew, Canaan. The black earth is that of the ...

— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... Englishmen, under a German adventurer, Count Mansfeld, through France into the Palatinate. The French insisted that he should maroh through Holland. It mattered little which way he took. Without provisions, and without money to buy them, the wretched troops sickened and died in the winter frosts. Buckingham's first military enterprise ended ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... pierce With sharp knives the rough air, In which a scrap of bird hangs all alone. A few street lights wade towards the city, Extinguished candles for a corpse. And a smear Of people shrinks together and is soon Drowned in the wretched white swamp. ...

— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... why Fitz had started. The poor, gawky, long-legged, tearful, frightened, overgrown, wretched girl had not struck him as ugly; she had struck him as the most pathetic and to-be-pitied object that he had ever seen. I do not account for this. I state it. Had she been pretty and self-possessed he would have left the room presently on some excuse, but now he stayed—not attracted, ...

— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... odious. She employed her in the meanest work of the house: the young girl scoured the dishes, tables, etc., and scrubbed madam's chamber, and those of misses, her daughters; she lay up in a sorry garret, upon a wretched straw bed, while her sisters lay in fine rooms, with floors all inlaid, upon beds of the very newest fashion, and where they had looking glasses so large that they might see themselves at their full length from head ...

— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... marks, but Fate, Providence, or whatever you choose to call it, favored them, or else the Germans were wretched shots, which last, in a measure, is ...

— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young

... had read Ian Maclaren's story of the wretched beadle who, newly inflated, but not profited, by his lonely wedding journey to a Presbyterian synod, resolved to experiment in the exercise of authority upon his bride. But, alas! he had read to his destruction. He remembered with what ...

— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... seagull shrieking soars, The lurid atmosphere portentous lours; Night's sullen spirit groans in every gale, And o'er the waters draws the darkling veil, Sighs in thy hair, and chills thy throbbing breast— Go wretched mourner!—weep thy griefs to rest! "Yet, though through life is lost each fond delight, Though set thy earthly sun in dreary night, Oh! raise thy thoughts to yonder starry plain, And own thy sorrow selfish, weak, and vain: Since, while Britannia, ...

— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... completely, if their lives were only spared; of one of the passengers hiding under the seat, and only being dislodged by pulling his coat-tails; of incredible sums promised, and even offers of menial service, for the preservation of their wretched carcases—are received with the greatest gusto; but we are in possession of facts which may lead to more serious accusations. Although one of the passengers is said to have lost a large sum of money intrusted to him, while attempting with barefaced effrontery ...

— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte

... here, I would soon prove to you that it is impossible for me, with my wretched handwriting, to imitate the fine and regular hand of my father. What is your ...

— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint

... you are all my good. And who am I that I should dare to speak to you? I am the poorest and least of your servants, a wretched little worm, far more miserable and contemptible than I know or dare to say, Yet remember me, Lord, because I am nothing, I have nothing, and am worth nothing. Do not turn your face from me; do not defer your coming; do not withdraw your consolation, lest my soul become like ...

— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... From this wretched listlessness of mind, alternated now by vehement resentment against Louise, now by the reproach of my own sense of honour in leaving that honour in so questionable a point of view, I was aroused by a letter from ...

— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... critical faculty. Even the tremendous shock of disappointment, discomfiture, and exile which resulted from the success of Napoleon the Third, though it started a new wave and gust of oceanic and cyclonic force, range, and volume in his soul, found little prose vent, except the wretched stuff of Napoleon le Petit, to chequer the fulgurant outburst of the Chatiments, the apocalyptic magnificence of the Contemplations, and the almost unmatched vigour, variety, and vividness of the ...

— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... plate-glass is insured. His bunch of keys is insured. He's insured against employers' liability. He's insured against war. He's insured against loss of business profits. The interest on his mortgage securities is insured. His wretched little automobile is insured. I do believe he was once insured against the eventuality ...

— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett

... whose number I profess myself to be one), in the obedience and death of my only Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ. In whom, by Thy mere grace, I doubt not myself to be elected to eternal salvation, whereof Thou hast given unto me (unto me, O Lord, most wretched and unthankful creature) most assured signs. For being drowned in ignorance Thou hast given to me knowledge above the common sort of my brethren; my tongue hast Thou used to set forth Thy glory, to oppugne idolatry, errors, and false doctrine. Thou hast compelled me to forespeak, ...

— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... best to write to my poor dear Aunt, for whom this will be a sad blow; but I abstained from doing so to the dear Queen of the French just as yet. I have no letters, and only learnt the melancholy event by the papers. Poor wretched Alexander! What a loss, what a ...

— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... time has any French aviator penetrated into Belgium, nor has any French aviator committed either in Bavaria or any other part of Germany any hostile act. The opinion of Europe has already done justice to these wretched ...

— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... silent by law, and journalists either do not hear these things, or, believing that hate is a valuable asset, suppress all mention of them. If England could ever be disgraced by a mishap, she would be disgraced by having given birth to those Englishmen, few and wretched, who, when an enemy behaves generously, conceal or deny the fact. And consider the effect of this silence on the Germans. There are some German officers, as I said, who are better than the German military handbooks, and better than their monstrous chiefs. ...

— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... make the accepted belief in his death a fact. What could she do but act, since the day she got a letter from the Far North, which took her out to Jansen, nominally to nurse those stricken with smallpox under Father Bourassa's care, actually to be where her wretched husband could come to her once a year, as he had asked with ...

— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... he appeared satisfied and consented to come on board. Good God! Margaret, if you had seen the man who thus capitulated for his safety, your surprise would have been boundless. His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition. We attempted to carry him into the cabin, but as soon as he had quitted the fresh air he fainted. We accordingly brought him back to the deck and restored him to animation by rubbing him with brandy and forcing him to swallow a small quantity. As soon as he showed signs ...

— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... he paused, The lady of his love re-entered there; She was serene and smiling then, and yet She knew she was by him beloved; she knew— For quickly comes such knowledge—that his heart Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw That he was wretched, but she saw not all. He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp He took her hand; a moment o'er his face A tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced, and then it faded, as it came; He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps Retired, but not as bidding her ...

— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... croaking voice, which combined, in anything but an agreeable manner, a discordantly high tone with a drowsily languid utterance. "Pray sit down. And don't trouble yourself to move the chair, please. In the wretched state of my nerves, movement of any kind is exquisitely painful to me. Have you seen your studio? Will ...

— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... in the trade, wrote in 1768: "Yet I never saw an instance of cruelty in ten or twelve years' experience in that branch equal to the cruelty exercised upon those poor Irish.... Self interest prompted the baptized heathen to take some care of their wretched slaves for a market, but no other care was taken of those poor Protestant Christians from Ireland but to deliver as many as possible alive on shoar upon the cheapest terms, no matter how they fared upon the voyage nor in what condition they ...

— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... a third division, is the place to which Laki Tenangan consigns suicides; wretched and woe begone in appearance, their souls wander about in the jungle and in the clearings trying to pick up a living by eating what roots and fruits they can find. This joyless Hereafter is calculated to make those who contemplate suicide, rather perform some self-sacrificing ...

— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness

... quarters were like in the mediaeval towns, one must visit the Ghetto of Rome or ancient Prague. The latter place especially has, in all respects, preserved its antique appearance. We must picture to ourselves a large enclosure of wretched houses, irregularly built, divided by small streets with no attempt at uniformity. The principal thoroughfare is lined with stalls, in which are sold not only old clothes, furniture, and utensils, but also new and glittering articles. The inhabitants of this ...

— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... was about to leave the room, but Feodor held her back. No reserve, no concealment were any longer possible to him. He only felt that he was infinitely wretched, and that he had lost the hope of his life. "Elise," he said, in that soft, sad tone, which had formerly charmed her heart, "I came to you to save me; you have thrust me back into an abyss. Like a drowning man I stretched out my hand to you, that in your arms I might live ...

— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... pour some strengthening mixture. He gave me no medicine, except some digestive pills four days ago, and a lotion for my ears. I certainly do feel better and stronger, but my ears are buzzing and ringing perpetually, day and night. I can with truth say that my life is very wretched; for nearly two years past I have avoided all society, because I find it impossible to say to people, I am deaf! In any other profession this might be more tolerable, but in mine such a condition is truly frightful. Besides, what would my ...

— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace

... Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls That stay his cure: their malady convinces The great assay of art; but at his touch— Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand— They ...

— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... point the startled look of the poor girl alarmed the father. She bent her head, in a listening attitude, as if eager to catch every word that was spoken by some one in the distance. Ah, too well the wretched parent knew on what her thoughts were running. Too well he knew where and when the blow had fallen that smote his child to the dust—perhaps had opened to her the gate of death. A deep, stifled, half sigh, half groan escaped from her lips, and she ...

— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... The Rat did. It must always be remembered of him that his wretched father, who had each year sunk lower and lower in the under-world, had been a gentleman once, a man who had been familiar with good manners and had been educated in the customs of good breeding. Sometimes when he was drunk, and sometimes when he was partly sober, he talked to The Rat of many things ...

— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... leisure for reflection, the dire doubt returned in full strength, and I bitterly pondered upon it. Need I name the subject of my wretched ...

— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... had taken the wretched murderer in hand. Robert Damiens was a lackey out of place, a native of Artois, of weak mind, and sometimes appearing to be deranged. In his vague and frequently incoherent depositions, he appeared animated by a ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... have been touched at the appearance this deserted spot presented. It was like the skeleton of something that had formerly lived. A few wretched trees bordered a plain where the ground was hidden under the black dust of the mineral fuel, but no cinders nor even fragments of coal were to be seen. All had been carried ...

— The Underground City • Jules Verne

... majesty of AEnothea, the undulating priestess of the Abominable Shape. His nerves macerated by this sinful apparition, Baldur struggled to resist her mute command. What was it? He saw her wish streaming from her eyes. Despair! Despair! Despair! There is no hope for thee, wretched earthworm! No abode but the abysmal House of Satan! Despair, and you will be welcomed! By a violent act of volition, set in motion by his fingers fumbling a small gold cross he wore as a watch-guard, the heady fumes of the ...

— Visionaries • James Huneker

... Julia! That wretched girl said something to me about our life together. What—what's the ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... discussion over the adoption of the Constitution had long since given way to newspaper and pamphlet writing on political issues. These writings, frequently scurrilous and abusive, were caused by the rise of parties and, in turn, aided in forming parties. None of the wretched stuff survived. Peter Porcupine, the Aurora, and the much loftier Columbiad are alike forgotten. Yet it is indicative of the extent to which politics ruled the day to note that in Knickerbocker's History of New York, Washington Irving turns aside from the ostensible ...

— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... he suspected her of connection with the wretched criminal whose body had only just now been hidden from mocking eyes? How much did he suspect? how much did he know? Her pale face and frightened eyes seemed to ask these questions of him; but not a sound escaped her lips. The imploring look, so strange upon her ...

— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... no social intercourse, and constantly maintaining an unnatural position. The convict's place is lower than the most degraded menial; he must ask for permission even to get a drink of water. No serf of earth, no slave, however wretched, has a sadder lot. These unhappy mortals have yielded to temptation, have fallen, and are paying the penalty of violated law. Who can think of these degraded beings, without, to some extent, its calling ...

— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds

... was that Delville Wood was captured and lost several times and became "Devil's" Wood to men who lay there under the crash and fury of massed gun-fire until a wretched remnant of what had been a glorious brigade of youth crawled out stricken and bleeding when relieved by another brigade ordered to take their turn in that devil's caldron, or to recapture it when German bombing-parties and machine-gunners had followed in the wake of fire, and had crouched ...

— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... persuade us that, according to your system, we not only should decline the succour of the wretched, but avoid the sympathies that poets and historians would awaken in us. Probably for the sake of introducing some idle verses, written by a friend of his, he says that, following the guidance of Epicurus, we should altogether shun the theatre; and not only when ...

— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... the steamer, where we remained quiet all the next day, attending to the wounded, and ascertaining the exact extent of our loss. On the 22d we again reached Patusen. We found everything in the same wretched state as when we left; and a pile of firewood, previously cut for the use of the steamer, had not been removed. After dark a storm of thunder, lightning, and heavy rain, came on as usual, and with it a few mishaps. A boat belonging to the old Tumangong was capsized ...

— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... she herself looked so heroic, so radiant, so unattainably the woman I wanted, that a sneer may have escaped me:—was she so sure then that Briga was a hero? I remember her proud silence and our wretched parting. I went away feeling that at last I had really lost her; and the thought ...

— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... generally remains in this condition until the next fall, and sometimes until the next spring. When a road is repaired in this way, it follows as a matter of course that it is in a bad condition all the year round. Just after repairs the road is wretched, for it is then in better condition to be planted than to be travelled over; when trodden down a little, the wash of the rains and the loose stones make it bad again; it then grows worse and worse until another ...

— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... "Now that wretched boy will most certainly tell him you are here." And indeed, the boy was just about to run out again, when they caught hold of him and set him up behind the lamp. But hardly had they turned their backs on him for a moment, when he slipped out before any could move, and they heard the ...

— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown

... nothing else to do," gloomily "Life is such a wretched bore that the only thing to do is to seize what little spice there is in it, and the spice, alas! ...

— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... sky,—a scene, in short, which nature had too much good taste and calm simplicity to realize. My mind had struggled to adapt these false conceptions to the reality, and finding the effort vain, a wretched sense of disappointment weighed me down. I climbed the precipice, and threw myself on the earth, feeling that I was unworthy to look at the Great Falls, and careless ...

— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the house. Since she had confessed her true position to him, moreover he treated her as one who knew well that the smallest slight would doubly hurt one who was not in a position to complain. He was kind and attentive to the woman, who, beneath the appearance of happiness, was wretched, though innocent. To the uninitiated, she was the lady of the house; to the better informed, she was the favorite of her master, and that was nought but a maiden in the disguise of wife, and Lorand was able to read ...

— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... families are now to seek! Would that the parliaments of our country held such a proportion of noble-minded men as was once to be found in the clay huts on a hill-side, or grouped about a central farm, huts whose wretched look would move the pity of many a man as inferior to their occupants as a King Charles's lap-dog is to a shepherd's colley. The utensils of their life were mean enough: the life itself was often elixir vitae—a true family life, looking ...

— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... Wind. "Why do you come to me with such news as that? What difference can it make to me what such a wretched creature as the Ash Goblin is doing? Let him amuse himself with ...

— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield

... one side," would appear from the fact that the town's defenders were pelted upon retiring to the castle by the inhabitants, treatment which they seem to have deserved in setting fire to the town, bombarding St. Leonard's, burning the adjoining buildings and driving the wretched population in search of such shelter as ...

— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall

... formed a settlement on the east side of the Fontaine. A characteristically squalid and miserable place it was, with the dwellings—they scarce deserved the name of houses—built in the side of the bluffs very much as animals might burrow in the ground. Part dug-out and part adobe were those wretched habitations, and the shed-like parts which projected from the hill were composed of all conceivable and inconceivable kinds of rubbish. Sticks, stones, bits of old iron, worn-out mattings and gunny-sacks entered more or less into the construction ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... beautiful lady more nearly of his own age than his wife was. Her name was Rosamond. She is known in history as Fair Rosamond. A full account of her will be given in the next chapter. All that is necessary to state here is that Queen Eleanora was made very wretched by her husband's love for Rosamond, though she had scarcely any right to complain, for she had, as it would seem, done all in her power to alienate the affections of her husband from herself by the levity of her conduct, and by her bold and independent behavior in all respects. At last, ...

— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... It was an ugly, wretched scene. It ended abruptly on the landing, where she let go her hold with a cry of pain and Robert Stonehouse rolled down the stairs, bumping his head and catching his arm cruelly in the banisters. He was on his ...

— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... ambush came he, Striding terrible among them, And so awful was his aspect That the bravest quailed with terror. Without mercy he destroyed them Right and left, by tens and twenties, And their wretched, lifeless bodies Hung aloft on poles for scarecrows Round the consecrated cornfields, As a signal of his vengeance, ...

— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow

... man, now so thoroughly angry that he let go Anne's hand, "I have a good mind to give you what you deserve. As for you, undutiful, wretched girl," he added, his voice rising to an emotional tremolo, "you shall be well punished ...

— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower

... this concoction; and the conventional agreement with which, under the impression he was waxing eloquent concerning views and architecture, we had met his enthusiasm he had attributed to sympathetic interest in this wretched wash of his. ...

— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... of his cruel deed, One common sepulchre for both decreed; Intombed the wretched pair in royal state, And on their ...

— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... I felt perfectly wretched for a whole week, and imagined myself cruelly abused. You see he was a foreigner, without money; he was heir to a title, but that would have brought him no advantages ...

— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... as if his deep, fierce eyes had tears in them. "Perhaps it is because I am miserable that I have come to you," he said, quite glaring down at her. "I used to hate you; I have been jealous of you. This wretched, disgraceful business has changed that. After seeing that repulsive woman who calls herself the wife of my son Bevis, I actually felt it would be a relief to look at you. I have been an obstinate old fool, and I suppose I have treated you badly. You are like the boy, and the boy is ...

— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... rather in better humour;—but, after all, Southwell was a detestable residence. Thank St. Dominica, I have done with it: I have been twice within eight miles of it, but could not prevail on myself to suffocate in its heavy atmosphere. This place is wretched enough—a villanous chaos of din and drunkenness, nothing but hazard and burgundy, hunting, mathematics, and Newmarket, riot and racing. Yet it is a paradise compared with the eternal dulness of Southwell. Oh! the misery of doing nothing ...

— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... he lodged, and he never passed it without being conscious of its trodden and decaying leaves. They were enough to make his morning foul. The middle-aged woman, who had to handle carrots with her frozen fingers, was less wretched than he who saw her, and thought of her after he went by. A thousand such impressions came boring in upon his mind and made him squirm. He could not toss them aside like the callous and manly; he could not see them in their due relation, and think them unimportant, ...

— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... return of new dangers, or at least of fears, Abelard left the Paraclete to make trial of another refuge, accepting an invitation to preside over the abbey of St Gildas-de-Rhuys, on the far-off shore of Lower Brittany. It proved a wretched exchange. The region was inhospitable, the domain a prey to lawless exaction, the house itself savage and disorderly. Yet for nearly ten years he continued to struggle with fate before he fled from his charge, yielding in the end only under peru of violent death. The misery of those years ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... young wife sat in her carriage before this wretched little home and watched that slatternly sister of her husband approach, she rose on a wave of self-appreciation. Haney lost in dignity and power by this association. For the first time in her life the girl acknowledged a fixed difference between her blood and that of Mart Haney. She was disgusted ...

— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... plot, which was to have been carried out in this August time. To her mind it was like reading a confirmation that Tito had won his safety by foul means; his pretence of wishing that the Frate should exert himself on behalf of the condemned only helped the wretched conviction. She crushed up the paper in her hand, and, turning to Savonarola, she said, with new passion, "Father, what safety can there be for Florence when the worst man can always escape? And," she went on, a sudden flash of remembrance coming from the thought about ...

— Romola • George Eliot

... daughters, which was all inlaid, had beds of the newest fashion, and looking-glasses so long and broad, that they saw themselves from head to foot in them; while the little creature herself was forced to sleep up in a sorry garret, upon a wretched straw bed, without curtains, or anything to make ...

— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... and it was not difficult for each to read something of the other's thought. The King knew that behind all that aspect of deference and humility lay a sense of triumph, almost malignant in its intensity. He knew that circumstances had beaten him; and that the bomb of some wretched assassin had made his abdication impossible. The Prime Minister had said that he had no wish to press him; but what a pretense and hypocrisy that was, when that very night the Cabinet would have to meet and register its decision ...

— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman