"Bitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... action on your bodily system. You can drug your brain and thereby fill it with drowsy suggestions of ideas—of course they would only he SUGGESTIONS, and very vague and indefinite ones too, still they might be pleasant enough to absorb and repress bitter memories for a time. As for me, my poor skill would scarcely avail you, as I could promise you neither self-oblivion nor visionary joy. I have a certain internal force, it is true—a spiritual force which when strongly exercised overpowers ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... night air calmed his throbbing pulses. The moonlight, streaming through the window, flooded the room with a soft light, in which he seemed to see Rena standing before him, as she had appeared that afternoon, gazing at him with eyes that implored charity and forgiveness. He burst into tears,—bitter tears, that strained his heartstrings. He was only a youth. She was his first love, and he had lost her forever. She was worse than dead to him; for if he had seen her lying in her shroud before him, he could at least have cherished her memory; now, even this ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... death, but this, This killing spectacle, this prodigie. My sunne is turn'd to blood, in whose red beams 135 Pindus and Ossa (hid in drifts of snow Laid on my heart and liver), from their veines Melt, like two hungry torrents eating rocks, Into the ocean of all humane life, And make it bitter, only with my bloud. 140 O fraile condition of strength, valour, vertue In me (like warning fire upon the top Of some steepe beacon, on a steeper hill) Made to expresse it: like a falling starre Silently ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... and intricate (it might be said vexatious) transaction of this great affair for near five months together, all bitter oppositions, cunning practices, and perplexed difficulties being removed and overcome, through the goodness and assistance of the only wise Counsellor, the Prince of Peace, it pleased Him to give a good issue and happy success in the conducting of ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... ampler air; and when one day I saw Dick Cludde, returned home on leave, strutting past with Mytton and other boon companions, in all the bravery of cocked hat, laced coat and buckled shoes, I flung down my pen and donned my cap, and set off, with bitter rage and envy in my heart, to pour out my soul to my constant ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... case—he frankly describes his dismissal as brutal—I do not pretend to judge, but can safely assume that the other side have something to say for themselves, if they care to. However, you are not to suppose that this is a bitter book. Most generous are the praises which the Admiral bestows upon his subordinates; his venom he reserves for just the chosen few who, no doubt, can bear it. Apart from personal recriminations, of which some of us must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... from the hearts of all. They clasped hands and separated. And at that very moment, although they knew it not, far away on the broad seas, a man, wrestling on his knees in the cabin of his vessel, was saying with bitter tears, 'E'en take, Lord, an so Thou wilt, though I have no power to give her to Thee. Yet truly she is Thine.' When four bells were sounded on the good ship Woodhouse, and a knock came to the door of ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... a smart reply, than thus to disarm it with respect to themselves. They shew that it stung them, though at the same time they had the address to make their aggressors suffer with them. Of this kind is Aristotle's reply to one who pursued him with long and bitter invectives. You, says he, who are used to suffer reproaches, utter them with delight; I who have not been used to utter them, take ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... Miss Rose—and bitter years have they been; for the whole of that time have I been in chase of my husband, keeping my own secret, and slaving like a ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... in height. The tubers were generally small, but I found one, of an oval shape, two inches in diameter: they resembled in every respect, and had the same smell as English potatoes; but when boiled they shrunk much, and were watery and insipid, without any bitter taste. They are undoubtedly here indigenous: they grow as far south, according to Mr. Low, as lat. 50 degs., and are called Aquinas by the wild Indians of that part: the Chilotan Indians have a different name for them. Professor Henslow, who has examined ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of the head, and tread us under foot. A young wife is brought upon us and permitted to abuse us and our children. What kindness can we show to our female children, equal to that of relieving them from such servitude, more bitter a thousand times than death? I repeat again, would to God my mother had put me under ground, the ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... intended to strike; we create anger where we never meant harm; and these thoughts are the thorns in our Cushion. Out of mere malignity, I suppose, there is no man who would like to make enemies. But here, in this editorial business, you can't do otherwise: and a queer, sad, strange, bitter thought it is, that must cross the mind of many a public man: "Do what I will, be innocent or spiteful, be generous or cruel, there are A and B, and C and D, who will hate me to the end of the chapter—to the chapter's end—to the Finis of the page—when hate, and envy, and fortune, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The bitter feeling against the Whigs engendered by their overbearing and dictatorial conduct whenever in power was increased by a sermon preached at St. Paul's on the 5th November before the lord mayor and aldermen by ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... his big hat well back upon his forehead," she said on one occasion, "and often in winter, forgetful of the bitter cold, would take off his overcoat and carry it on his arm. Occasionally he would stop quite still, as if he were addressing a companion, and with sweeping gestures illustrate some idea or other, although, of course, there was no one present. Then, planting his big cane forcibly with each ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... has had mercy upon me. The sore and sharp trial, the very bitter conflict is over.—This morning also I received a letter, which ought to have come yesterday, and which showed me that my dear wife had not been remiss in writing. She announced her purpose of coming today, and God, in mercy to me, ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... been caused by a fever, under which she had sunk rapidly at last. There had been no question of heart-breaking or pining grief here—so her husband thought with a sort of satisfaction even then, as he remembered his sister's words of bitter reproach over their mother's death- bed; and yet not the less, as he looked at his dead wife's face, did the reflection force itself upon him, that he had made the misery instead of the happiness of her life. He was a man who had accustomed himself to view things from the hardest ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... the world has tried to do in former years, and where it failed and where it succeeded. If education consisted in warning the young student away from some of the false theories on which men have tried to build, so that he may be saved the loss of the time in finding out by bitter experience, its good would be unquestioned. An education which consists of signposts indicating the failure and the fallacies of the past doubtless would be very useful. It is not education just to possess the theories of a lot of professors. ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... the city of the two sons of Rimmon who murdered Ishbosheth, the son of Saul. When it is remembered how Saul had attempted to extirpate the Gibeonites, and how bitter a blood feud the latter entertained against his house in consequence, it becomes very significant that the murderers of his son were ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... last sought a mean existence as teacher of English in a school of a remote seaside village. His spirit broke when the message came of the death of the girl in America who was waiting for him. Isolation from his kind and bitter hours left for thought made life alone too ghastly. He tried to make it more endurable by taking the pretty daughter of the head man of the village as ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... of indignation the soldier felt inclined to add a few bitter invectives of his own; but Edith treating the matter lightly, and affecting to be better pleased at the rude man's absence than she had been with his company, he abated his own wrath, and acknowledged that the desertion afforded ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... aching heads. Heaven for broken hearts. Heaven for anguish-bitten frames. No more sitting up until midnight for the coming of staggering steps. No more rough blows across the temples. No more sharp, keen, bitter curse. ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... direction of the army movements, it may not be without importance to notice that the Italian press has begun to cry out against the darkness in which everything is enveloped, while the time already passed since the 24th June tells plainly of inaction. It is remarked that the bitter gift made by Austria of the Venetian provinces, and the suspicious offer of mediation by France, ought to have found Italy in greatly different condition, both as regards her political and military position. Italy is, on the contrary, in exactly the same state as when the Archduke Albert ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... filled the tiresome little pipe, she puts the silver tube to my lips with a bow. Courtesy forbids my refusal; but I find it detestably bitter. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mundane kindness, and what this world, or rather what this ship affords. I long now to talk with him, to see if I can produce any effect upon his ice-like frame. Shall I make love to the ghoul?" and Amine burst into a bitter laugh. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and bitter. "It's not the newspapers in your country that would have made you so. Lord, they're too incredible! And the ladies have ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... have clustered around it! It is woodsy, and savors of the trees; it is an encampment among the maples. Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plow is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is the sequel of the bitter frost; a sap-run is the sweet good-by of winter. It denotes a certain equipoise of the season; the heat of the day fully balances the frost of the night. In New York and New England, the time of the sap hovers about the vernal ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... your husband, Sir Geoffrey Peveril; and that without any chance of my obtaining reparation at his hand, whereby I may say the hand of a kinsman was lifted up against my credit and my life. These things are bitter to the taste of the old Adam; wherefore to prevent farther bickerings, and, it may be, bloodshed, it is better that I leave this land for a time. The affairs which remain to be settled between Sir Geoffrey and myself, I shall place ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... in nature, even motes and feathers, go by law and not by luck, and that what he sows he reaps. By diligence and self-command let him put the bread he eats at his own disposal, and not at that of others, that he may not stand in bitter and false relations to other men; for the best good of wealth is freedom. Let him practise the minor virtues.[684] How much of human life is lost in waiting! Let him not make his fellow creatures wait. How many words and promises are promises of ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... where she found me, an' both of 'em will believe I'm the worst feller that ever lived!" he whispered to himself; and then tears, bitter and scalding, flowed down his cheeks, moistening the spotless linen, but bringing some slight degree of comfort, because sleep quickly followed in ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... unhappy wretches who perish at the gallows, most pity seems due to those who, pressed by want and necessity, commit in the bitter exigence of starving, some illegal act purely to support life. But this is a very scarce case, and such a one as I cannot in strictness presume to say that I have hitherto met with in all the loads of papers I have turned over to this purpose, though as ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... she might even arrange matters so that, willy nilly, her friends would drive her home instead of taking Colonel Armstrong back to camp. That would be a stroke worth playing. She owed Stanley Armstrong a bitter grudge, and had nursed it long. She had known him ten years and hated him nine of them. Where they met and when it really matters not. In the army people meet and part in a hundred places when they never expected to meet again. She had married Frank ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... four rivers to be passed over—Acheron, whose waters are very bitter; the Styx, a lake rather than a river, and so sacred to the gods, that if any of them swore by it and broke his oath, he was deprived of his godhead, and was prohibited from drinking nectar for a hundred years; the river Cocytus, which flows out of Styx with a lamentable ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... his lips. "They look for a feast of death, but they will be disappointed." He was almost bitter. "I shall survive this plunge. I have no wish for my death to be the holiday for a hundred gloating eyes, I am not handsome enough. When I die, it will be quietly, with some hand near, kind enough to cover my poor face ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... answer to the invitation in our first number, a few bitter objections to simplified spelling, we have felt like apologizing each time we approached the subject. Perhaps the best apology we can make is that apparently the majority of our readers are interested in it. Therefore ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... him. Then [Hector] himself leaped from his all-shining chariot to the ground, roaring dreadfully: and he seized a large stone in his hand, and went straight against Teucer, for his mind encouraged him to strike him. He on his part took out a bitter arrow from his quiver, and applied it to the string: but him, on the other hand, near the shoulder, where the collar-bone separates the neck and breast, and it is a particularly fatal spot, there, as he was drawing back [the bow], the active warrior Hector[281] with a rugged stone struck ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... use of the lancet and other depleting agents. He attributed the four fundamental qualities to different vegetables, in four different degrees; thus chicory was cold in the fourth degree, pepper was hot in the fourth, endive was cold and dry in the second, and bitter almonds were hot in the first and dry in the second degree. When we say "cool as a cucumber," we are talking Galenism. The seeds of that vegetable ranked as one of "the four greater cold ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... home I had an attack of sunstroke, and had my head packed in ice. The umpire was also seriously ill for some time. It was only the international element in the game and the controversy about the relative points that made us fight it out to the bitter end. ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... barrier none arose Around the little vale, a serpent lay, Such haply as gave Eve the bitter food. Between the grass and flowers, the evil snake Came on, reverting oft his lifted head; And, as a beast that smoothes its polish'd coat, Licking his hack. I saw not, nor can tell, How those celestial falcons from their seat Mov'd, but in ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... not understanding her, Joseph Fleming had grown to feel towards Mrs. Temperley a genuine liking, conscious, in his vague way, that she was kind at heart, however bitter or strange she might sometimes be in her speech. Moreover, she was not always eccentric or unexpected. There would come periods when she would say and do very much as her neighbours said and did; looking then pale and lifeless, but absolutely ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... deeper it seemed to him that the solution lay only indirectly in any system of government. It seemed to him that until man had learned how to use directly and freely the power sources of nature, inequalities of wealth would always persist. And he had learned in one bitter lesson that unhappiness and economic inequality ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... glass. The taste in my mouth was suddenly bitter. "No strings, we said," I said harshly. "A flyboy, we said. Guy who can take off and land anywhere, anytime he likes. Stuff like that ...
— The Very Black • Dean Evans
... geographic location, Slavic population, and rich resources, the loss of Ukraine was the final and most bitter blow to the Soviet leaders wishing to preserve some semblance of the old political, military, and economic power of the USSR. After Russia, the Ukrainian republic was far and away the most important economic ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... soft Sleep we give ourselves away, And in a dream as in a fairy bark Drift on and on through the enchanted dark To purple daybreak—little thought we pay To that sweet bitter world we know by day. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... prince he served, the ill-starred Francesco was at first rejoiced to obtain any refuge from the storms of a tempestuous world; and the unceasing efforts of his young and affectionate sister to reconcile him to a bitter lot were not wholly unavailing. Summer had spread her richest treasures upon the lap of Nature; and the fairy hands of Beatrice transformed the bare walls of the dilapidated edifice which they inhabited into bowers of luxuriant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... to drag her forwards. Once again did the anxious sisters see Betsy emerge from the house, with more faltering steps this time, but still inwardly praying, and slowly, tremblingly, they saw her take up the watch, and the deed was done. She never afterwards regretted it, though it was a bitter pang to her when she collected her eighty-six children in the garden at Earlham and bade them farewell, and though she wrote in her journal as a bride, 'I cried heartily on leaving Norwich; the very stones in the street were ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... whatever his birthplace,[3] was the forerunner of a numerous class. Finally, the great raid of 406-7 and its sequel severed Britain from Rome. A wedge of barbarism was driven in between the two, and the central government, itself in bitter need, ceased to send officers to rule the province and to command its troops. Britain was left to itself. Yet even now it did not seek separation from Rome. All that we know supports the view of Mommsen. It ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... under her bitter sternness. Never—never—oh, hard word! This hag, this Reason, would not let me look up, or smile, or hope: she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... side, when all was over, she would rest in the grave, and compel the world to remember with respectful sympathy the royal lovers, Antony and Cleopatra. Her children should be able to think of her with untroubled hearts, and not even the shadow of a bitter feeling, a warning thought, should deter them from adorning their parents' grave with flowers, weeping at its foot, invoking and offering sacrifices to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... plenty of bitter almonds into some stiff flummery, and make it of a pale green with spinach juice. When it becomes as thick as cream, wet the melon mould, and put the flummery into it. Put a pint of calf's foot jelly into ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... cold, bitter, inhospitable, and Jadwin began to suspect that the wheat crop of his native country, that for so long had been generous, and of excellent quality, was now to prove—it seemed quite possible—scant and of poor condition. He began ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... course of five years, on the road near where I reside, 12 or 15 droves at least, passing to the south. They would average 40 in each drove. Near the first of January, 1834, I started about sunrise to go to Lewisburg. It was a bitter cold morning. I met a drove of negroes, 30 or 40 in number, remarkably ragged and destitute of clothing. One little boy particularly excited my sympathy. He was some distance behind the others, not being able to keep up with the rest. Although he was shivering with cold and crying, the driver ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... possible formation of the syndicate, Craven denounced the award with more fierceness than ever, maintaining the redoubled importance of securing the men's terms before the syndicate was launched. Wharton promised him with glee that he should be supported to the bitter end. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said all that was in his mind, he would probably have added that Sidney, though not a great orator or statesman, was one of the very few English politicians who could be as entirely trusted as Bentinck or Zulestein. Caermarthen listened with a bitter smile. It was new, he afterwards said, to see a nobleman placed in the Secretary's office, as a footman was placed in a box at the theatre, merely in order to keep a seat till his betters came. But this jest was a cover for serious mortification and alarm. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... noisy, false to our principles, unworthy of our opportunities. These feelings of his became even more marked as the Spanish-American War drew on. Whenever we met, and most often at a charming house which both of us frequented, he showed himself more and more bitter, so that finally our paths separated. There comes back to me vividly one evening when I sought to turn off a sharp comment of his upon some recent American news by saying: "You must give a young nation like ours more time." On this he exclaimed: "You cannot ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... worse than he has me. I will feed his passion full, tempt him, torture him, play with him, as the angler plays a fish upon his hook. And, when his very life depends on me, then by degrees he shall see me cool, and cool, and freeze into bitter aversion. Then he shall rue the hour he fought with the Devil against my soul, and played false with a brain ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... grows to perfection, especially in mountainous regions. From Canada to Florida and westward to Missouri is its range, and beginning to bloom in August southward, it may not be found until September in the Catskills, and in October it is still in its glory in Ontario. The colorless, bitter juice of many of the gentian tribe has long been valued as a tonic in medicine. Evidently the butterflies that pilfer this "ague-weed," and the bees that are its legitimate feasters, find something more delectable in ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... the reason of this undeniable provincialism of the English Puritans and Protestant Nonconformists, a provincialism which has two main types,—a bitter type and a smug type,—but which in both its types is vulgarising, and thwarts the full perfection of our humanity? Men of genius and character are born and reared in this medium as in any other. From the faults of the mass such men will ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... Christendom. The Netherlands were the wedge by which alone the solid bulk could be riven asunder. It was the cause of German, of French, of English liberty, for which the Provinces were contending. It was not surprising that they were bitter, getting nothing in their hour of distress from the land of Luther but dogmas and Augsburg catechisms instead of money and gunpowder, and seeing German reiters galloping daily to reinforce the army of Parma in exchange for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the empire went the way of all tyrannies. On its ruins the Republic has been established anew, and now it reckons in its service and among its champions the best intellects and the noblest characters in France; while the masses of the people, taught by the bitter lessons of adversity, are also content to enjoy the benefits of ordered liberty and peaceful ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... grossly outraged. In a few cases the government was in the hands of the whole family, or at least the ruler was bound to take their advice; and here, too, the distribution of property and influence often led to bitter disputes. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... which are not soluble in pure water are dissolved in sea-water. In fact, there is a probability that all elements exist to some extent in sea-water, but many of them in extremely minute quantities. Sodium and magnesium salts are the two most abundant, and the bitter taste is due to MgSO4 and MgCl2. A liter of sea- water, nearly 1000 g., holds over 37 g. of various salts, 29 of which are ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... pecuniary straits, but he anticipated my curiosity by informing me that he had raised the necessary funds by pawning his wife's bangles. Unthinkingly I reproached him, and then I saw, coming over his countenance, the bitter expression of one who has met with rebuff when he looked for sympathy. Arranging himself in his proudest attitude, he exclaimed, "Saheb, is it not for your glory? When strangers see me will they ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... somewhat bitter public controversy the Exposition directors, in July, 1911, announced a decision. It caused general surprise. There should be three sites: Harbor View and a strip of the adjoining Presidio, Golden Gate Park and Lincoln Park, connected by a ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... his face, and an expression of deep-seated wrath, illumined by the many-colored fires which rose brightly and soaringly around the scene, produced a terrible spectacle, which every one would have shuddered at, could they only have read into his heart, which was torn by the most stormy and most bitter passions. There was no truce for him now, influenced as he was by jealousy and mad passion. From the very moment when the dark truth was revealed to him, every gentler feeling seemed to disappear; pity, kindness of consideration, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... was too great for the one most interested to answer, but in the glow of pleasure that the compliment brought he forgot for the moment his bitter feelings. ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... tobacco, and have taken to tea-leaves and neem-leaves, and guava fruit-leaves instead, which the poor soldiers are also constantly using." The neem-tree is better known, perhaps, as the margosa. It yields a bitter oil, and is supposed to ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... it. But she did not even listen. The ungoverned tiger-cat part of her nature was in the ascendant, the fierce pride of the woman living near the edge of the half-world. She would gladly have killed him. At length he went, very confused, bewildered, miserable— and relieved! He left behind him a bitter enemy. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... put upon it. It puts us first of all into touch with the problem of life rather than the solution. If the gentle, patient words of the saint are the utterance of one who has suffered, so also are the bitter protests of the disappointed worldling. The fashion of the experience may be the same in each case. It is faith that makes the lesson different. It is a want of faith that makes us expect the lower in life to explain the higher, the outward to ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... Mrs. Jones kicked it out every time, and what happened to it before I found it lying draggled and dead at the bottom of the Ha-ha, with the top of a kettle still fastened to its scraggy tail, I never knew, and it cost me bitter tears to guess. It cost me some hard work, too, to dig the grave, for my spade ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... suddenly and energetically added, with a stern look around and a bitter suggestiveness on the word as if it were enough to pronounce it; and in truth, it silenced both De La Lande and Chamilly, and appeared to make a ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... concentrated upon the Jewish question." The Jews are becoming a great economic power in the South-western provinces. They purchase or mortgage estates, and obtain control of the factories and mills as well as of the grain, timber, and liquor trade, thereby arousing the bitter resentment of the Christian population, particularly in the rural districts. [1] Moreover, the Jewish masses, refusing to follow the lead of the handful of Russified Jewish intellectuals, live entirely apart and remain in the throes of talmudic fanaticism and hasidie obscurantism. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... consciousness of power And life, beyond this mortal hour;— Those mountings of the soul within At thoughts of Heaven—as birds begin By instinct in the cage to rise, When near their time for change of skies;— That proud assurance of our claim To rank among the Sons of Light, Mingled with shame—oh bitter shame!— At having riskt that splendid right, For aught that earth thro' all its range Of glories offers in exchange! 'Twas all this, at that instant brought Like breaking sunshine o'er my thought— 'Twas all this, kindled to a glow Of sacred zeal which could it shine Thus purely ever man might ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... heartbroken at reading these words. He fell to the ground and, covering the cold marble with kisses, burst into bitter tears. He cried all night, and dawn found him still there, though his tears had dried and only hard, dry sobs shook his wooden frame. But these were so loud that they could be ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... and shame wring new strength for a nobler life. The scar will remain, but it is better for a man to lose both arms than his soul; and these hard years, instead of being lost, may be made the most precious of your lives, if they teach you to rule yourselves. O friends, try to outlive the bitter past, to wash the sin away, and begin anew. If not for your own sakes, for that of the dear mothers, wives, and children, who wait and hope so patiently for you. Remember them, and do not let them love and long in vain. And if there be any here so forlorn that they ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... have above exhausted all terms of vituperation, and probably disgusted the reader; and yet I have not spoken with enough severity: I know not any terms of blame that are bitter enough to chastise justly the mountain drawings of Salvator in the pictures of ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... the man, with something of a bitter smile; "it was something else that made you say so; you were ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... and it is equally certain, that by cruelty and dishonesty he might easily have become rich. It is certain that he was never charged with having borne a share in the worst abuses which then prevailed; and it is almost equally certain that, if he had borne a share in those abuses, the able and bitter enemies who afterwards persecuted him would not have failed to discover and to proclaim his guilt. The keen, severe, and even malevolent scrutiny to which his whole public life was subjected, a scrutiny unparalleled, as we believe, in the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... did he mean?" she thought, while for the first time, with a vague sense of his meaning, tears welled hot and bitter into her sunny eyes, while the pained color burned in her face. Those tears were the first that she had ever known, and they were cruel ones, though they lasted but a little time; there was too much fire in the young Bohemian ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... asserted,* sugar-canes. (* On the origin of cane-sugar, in the Journal de Pharmacie 1816 page 387. The Tabayba dulce is, according to Von Buch, the Euphorbia balsamifera, the juice of which is neither corrosive nor bitter like that of the cardon, or Euphorbia canariensis.) Twelve sugar-manufactories (ingenios de azucar) were soon established in the island of Great Canary, in that of Palma, and between Adexe, Icod, and Guarachico, in the island of Teneriffe. Negroes were employed in this cultivation, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the bitter reply, "though I never for a moment imagined that you would so candidly ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... own thought, whatever it was. The devil who had tempted him might have found in the laugh an outcry more bitter than any agony of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... miracles, the evidence is crowned by His sublime character. His life is itself among the most wonderful of miracles. As a child of poverty and a son of toil, He lived thirty years among men. When He afterwards claimed to be the Son of God, He had many bitter enemies. They persecuted Him even unto death, and yet not one of them ever pointed to an act of His private life as inconsistent with, or unworthy of, His divine claim. This simple fact speaks volumes as to the purity of His ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... for her obstinacy and disregard of her mother's advice; and Mrs. Parlin believed she would lay the lesson to heart quite as well without more words. It was a bitter lesson. Susy loved dumb creatures dearly, and was just becoming very fond ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... in the lane Miss Conroy must perforce ride straight ahead, but the lane would not last always. As though with malicious intent, the snow swooped down again and the world became an unreal, nightmare world, wherein was nothing save shifting, blinding snowfloury and wind and bitter, numbing cold. ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... position of head of the wife as Christ takes the position of head of the church—in love. "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." Eph. 5:25. "Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them." Col. 3:19. The love of the husband must be as deep and true for the wife as the love of Christ for the church. He gave himself for it. Man considers not his life for the care and protection of his wife when he loves her. Where there is bitterness there is wanting true ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... can see, side by side, a "Corot" and a "Claude." These men are strangely akin; yet, so far as I know, Corot never heard of Turner. However, he was powerfully influenced by Constable, the English painter, who was of the same age as Turner, and for a time, his one bitter rival. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... once aroused the bitter resentment of the scribes and Pharisees who were present and they began to reason: "Who is this that speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?" Their reasoning was correct. Jesus was a blasphemer worthy of death, or else ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... law, the code by which he lived; and mostly the blue devils had lifted their curse from him. But they were shrieking from the gloom at him to-night. In the late years some of the great tranquility of the forest had reposed in him and the bitter hours of brooding came ever at longer intervals. But to-night they held him ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... driver to make good speed, and remember that we had but nineteen minutes to reach the station. Away we went. Old Crowle's iron grille rolled back before us. I looked on the receding landscape, the giant trees—the palatial, time-stained mansion. A strange conflict of feelings, sweet and bitter, rose and mingled in the reverie. Had I been too hard and suspicious with the inhabitants of that old house of my family? Was my uncle justly indignant? Was I ever again to know such pleasant rambles as some of those I had enjoyed with dear Millicent ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... that duels and wounds would make honourable members speak with better manners. This hope, however, proved to be fallacious. An altercation occurred on the 13th of March, between the speaker and Lord North himself, in which much bitter language was used. Negociations were in progress for the promotion of the attorney-general to the office of chief-justice in the Court of Common Pleas, which office had been promised to the speaker by the Duke ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... or four inches. For a moment she stood breathless with excitement, hesitating before she entered; then she swung the bookcase open. There, as she had expected, was a little room seven feet long by four deep; but, to her bitter disappointment, it was bare and empty. A few scraps of paper lay on the ground, but there was no furniture, chest, or boxes in the room. The revulsion was so great that Mrs. Conway returned into the library, threw herself into a chair, and had a long cry. Then she went back into the ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... beer into a long black jack, such as Scott describes. It is a tankard, made of black leather, I should think half a yard deep. He drew the beer from a large hogshead, and offered us some in a glass. It looked very clear, but, on tasting, I found it so exceedingly bitter that it struck me there would be small virtue for me ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... of Clodius would be surprising did we not know how bitter had been Cicero's tongue. When the affair of the Bona Dea had taken place there was no special enmity between this debauched young man and the great Consul. Cicero, though his own life had ever been clean and well ordered, rather affected ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... mental darkness and moral degradation; no longer to tear husbands from their wives, and children from their parents; no longer to make men, women, and children, work without wages; no longer to make their lives bitter in hard bondage; no longer to reduce American citizens to the abject condition of slaves, of "chattels personal;" no longer to barter the image of God in human shambles for corruptible things ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at Domrmy she had read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... goes on to tell how, at last, weary with wintriness, she travelled towards the southern regions of her globe, to meet the spring on its slow way northwards; and how, after many sad adventures, many disappointed hopes, and many tears, bitter and fruitless, she found at last, one stormy afternoon, in a leafless forest, a single snowdrop growing betwixt the borders of the winter and spring. She lay down beside it and died. I almost believe that a child, pale and peaceful as a snowdrop, was born in the ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... Bobby Smudge, who, never a favourite with his master, now obtained a double allowance of finnams, and a sly rope's-ending whenever opportunities offered. Bobby began to discover that revenge, though sweet, may recoil on the head of the avenger, and become very bitter. More ultimately came ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... with the true self, and too often overcome it. "I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin and death which is in my members." And so there goes up the bitter cry, "Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... good man strove to hearten me, for I thought meanly enough of myself at that time, because I had been so certain that all was well, and now my pride was humbled. Maybe it was good for me that this should be so, but good things are passing bitter if all are like this. Lastly, he gave me his blessing, and I joined the sisters in the boat, and she was cast off, while at that moment the black kitten came to the rail and leapt in after us, which ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... discovery of this land of rest will nerve our arm for the great conflict of life. It will inspire us to work more earnestly and more incessantly for Jesus. It will sweeten every bitter cup of trial and tribulation that we have to encounter here below. It will distil a desire and a loftiness of aim in life, that we may at last reach the rest that remains for the people of God. The struggle with inbred sin will be more easily overcome, and every ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... beautiful oval of the face, the brown eyes, and the fine chiselling of the features. Sometimes, too, I felt a deep pity for so clever a gentleman who had died young, and whose life, were it ever so wicked, must often have been also lonely and bitter. More than once I had been discovered by Mrs. Temple or Constance sitting looking at the picture, and they had gently laughed at me, saying that I had fallen in love ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... me," she resumed. "He paid a visit in unconventional manner—waylaid me, in fact, in this very avenue, and asked me to help him. He declined to meet my husband, and was very bitter about my marriage to a foreigner. However, I forgave him, for my own heart was sore in me, and he also had been unfortunate in a different way. We had a long talk, and I kissed him at parting. I afterwards found that Giovanni had seen us from his bedroom. He thought Robert was David. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... pair of youthful eyes, so lovely that imagination could not invent for them another charm, and saw the misty film of death gather over them, while your heart ached with regret as bitter as it was unavailing. The soft snows of winter have fallen—a veil of purity—over the new made graves of innocence and youth, and its wild winds have been the saddest requiem. The dews of summer have ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... it was empty. That at least gave him a pretext to slip away from the room for the purpose of refilling it; he would spare himself the drawn-out torture of watching that hopeless game played out to the bitter end. He backed away from the circle of absorbed watchers and made his way up a short stairway to a long, silent corridor of bedrooms, each with a guests' name written in a little square on the door. In the hush that reigned in this part of the house he could still hear the hateful click-click ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... him. He did not see that after all his father and mother could have done much otherwise than they actually did. They might perhaps have been less precipitate, and tried to keep the matter a little more quiet, but this would not have been easy, nor would it have mended things very materially. The bitter fact remains that if a girl does certain things she must do them at her peril, no matter how young and pretty she is nor to what temptation she has succumbed. This is the way of the world, and as yet there has been no help ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... "because they differed in manners from themselves," they murdered them, which act was attended by a "dreadful pestilence." It is the opinion of certain writers that these women were of a different religious faith from their captors, and that so intense and bitter was the feeling upon the comparative importance of the sex functions in pro-creation, that their husbands, unable to change their views, put an end to ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... sympathising thousands, until the guilty fears of the executioners proclaimed it illegal to mourn. Think you, sir, if the crown view of this matter were the true one, would the Catholic clergy of Ireland—they who braved fierce and bitter unpopularity in reprehending the Fenian conspiracy at a time when Lord Mayo's organ was patting it on the back for its 'fine Sardinian spirit'—would these ministers of religion drape their churches for three common murderers? I repel as a calumnious and slanderous accusation against the ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... only signalised in Akenside's history by one or two dull odes from his pen. But if not witty at that time himself, he gave occasion to wit in others. Smollett, provoked, it is said, by some aspersions Akenside had in conversation cast on Scotland, and at all times prone to bitter and sarcastic views of men and manners, fell foul of him in "Peregrine Pickle." If our readers care for wading through that filthy novel—the most disagreeable, although not the dullest of Smollett's fictions—they will find a caricature of our poet in the character ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... the great philosopher Heraclitus the weakness of mankind, and the wretchedness of the world: who surely is to be praised, either for compassionate accompanying just causes of lamentation, or for rightly painting out how weak be the passions of woefulness. Is it the bitter, but wholesome Iambic [Footnote: Originally used by the Greeks for satire], which rubs the galled mind, in making shame the trumpet of villany, with bold and open crying out against naughtiness; or ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... sometimes rose to an extraordinary pitch. For the time he would be carried away as he had never been before. He would sing, jest, and quarrel; but his jests were often bitter, and his quarrels gave rise to more talk than his gloom, for before he had been of an even and generous temper. And when the fit passed away he ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... is deeply ingrained in the heart of womankind, and comes from long bitter years of repression and tyranny. An old handbook on etiquette earnestly enjoins all young ladies who desire to be pleasing in the eyes of men to "avoid a light rollicking manner, and to cultivate a sweet plaintiveness, as of hidden sorrow bravely borne." It also declares ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... never having shown any trace of eruption. It appeared as a regularly shaped mountain, somewhat over two thousand feet high, with a central depression about three miles in diameter at the top, and perhaps two miles over at the bottom, which was plainlike in form, with some lakes of bitter water in the centre. The most we know of this central cavity is connected with the insurrection of the slaves led by Spartacus, the army of the revolters having camped for a time on the plain encircled ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... found Australia playing Japan in the famous old tennis center of Newport, R. I., where the National Singles so long held sway. It was a bitter struggle, with the Australians within two little points of victory in two matches they afterwards lost. Shimidzu and Kumagae took all the singles, but Kumagae was two sets down to Hawkes and one to two down to Anderson. Thus Japan in its first year in Davis Cup competition earned the right ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... house began to blaze up. A little after, Hall Gizur's son [the bridegroom] came to the south door, and Arni the Bitter, his henchman, with him. They were both very hard put to it, and distressed by the heat. There was a board across the doorway, half-way up. Hall did not stop to look, but jumped straight out over the hatch. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... society should be kept in its place," observed another, scarcely less bitter than young Richmond in his jealousy of the lad who claimed so much of the attention of the ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... fruit really tasted like they could never decide. It reminded them of many things and of nothing. It was sweet yet bitter; it repelled but at the same time pleased them; it was as perplexing as the voice—as enigmatical. When they had eaten it they resumed their former positions on the ground, and the voice once ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... things which seem to us at the present day of very little consequence, which were then the subjects of endless disputes and of the most bitter animosity. For instance, one point was whether the place where the communion was to be administered should be called the communion table or the altar; and in what part of the church it should stand; and whether the person officiating should be called a priest or a clergyman; ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... fires that would rival the Elizabethan. He saw a second Marlowe and a second Webster. His soul was aflame with hope. He had no doubt as to the result. Even the long retreat from Mons, with its bitter list of casualties, failed to terrorise him. Half the holidays he spent in Wychtown, a little Somersetshire village, and his enthusiasm at one time took the form of buying bundles of newspapers, which he distributed at the cottages, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... had failed to descend to the taste of the Town in offering them Aristophanes, he flung them in the Wedding Day something too imperfect for acceptance, even by the 'critic jury of the pit,' And the bitter humour in which he was now shackling his genius to the honourable task of immediate bread-winning, or in his own words to the part of "hackney writer," comes out clearly enough in the well-known anecdote of the first night of this comedy. In Murphy's words, Garrick, then a new player, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... up at him. The cotton in his throat had suddenly become thick, and intensely bitter. Unsuccessfully, he tried to swallow, and a mental flash told him that whatever he said, he was already convicted. Regardless of what defense he might offer, he knew he would be condemned to whatever punishment these people decided to deal out to him. And that punishment, ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... menacing even in the eyes of the daughter, whose horizon was wider. Sommers had noticed the little signs of this heated family atmosphere. A mist of undiscussed views hung about the house, out of which flashed now and then a sharp speech, a bitter sigh. He had been at the house a good deal in a thoroughly informal manner. The Hitchcocks rarely entertained in the "new" way, for Mrs. Hitchcock had a terror of formality. A dinner, as she understood it, meant a gathering of a few old friends, much hearty food served in unpretentious ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... streets now the June snow fell, not the soft and flaky petals of the North, but a bitter steel-like snow, that whirled. And the winds of the pampas hurried like Furies through the sordid streets, and stopped to snarl, as a dog snarls, and now moaned, and now howled sharply, as a wolf howls. There was something ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... of sovereign grace. Devis['e]d by the gods for to assuage Heart's grief, and bitter gall away to chase Which stirs up anger and contentious rage; Instead thereof sweet peace and quietage It doth establish in the troubled mind ... And such as ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... its complete ruin, at least to give it its most terrible blows. Poor Francis! The last years of his life were indeed a via dolorosa as painful as that where his master sank down under the weight of the cross; for it is still a joy to die for one's ideal, but what bitter pain to look on in advance at the apotheosis of one's body, while seeing one's soul—I would say his ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... upon his work and his intellectual life, but that any dearer hopes she might have based upon their comradeship were to be once for all abandoned? She stood there, lost in a sudden tumult of passionate pride and misery, which was crossed every now and then by a strange and bitter wonder. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you shall afterward rejoin the spirit, which you must now leave behind. She is accepted and will be ever here, as young and as happy as she was when I first called her from the land of snows." When this voice ceased, the narrator awoke. It was all the fabric of a dream, and he was still in the bitter land of snows, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... been brought on by errors of judgment on the part of more than one person. Hazlitt, himself no duellist and even accused of personal timidity, is said to have egged on Scott, and to have stung him by some remark of his bitter tongue into challenging Christie, and there is no doubt that Patmore's conduct was most reprehensible. But we are here concerned with Lockhart, not with them. As far as I understand the imputations made on him, he is charged either with want of straightforwardness ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... may fly with dignity or one may fly in panic. I fled, I trust, like a soldier. My bearing was superb though my legs moved rapidly. My whole appearance was a protest against the position in which I was placed. I smiled as I ran—the bitter smile of the brave man who mocks his own fate. Had all my comrades surrounded the field, they could not have thought the less of me when they saw the disdain with which I ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle |
