"Bitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strange bridal, more sad than joyous, for though in the hearts of bride and groom there was perfect love for each other, there were too many bitter memories crowding upon them both to make it a moment of unmixed bliss—memories of Nina, who seemed to stand by Arthur, blessing him in tones unheard, and a sadder, a living memory of the poor blind man whose low wail, when all was done, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... peninsulas, and the temperature is liable to sudden changes. The winter, though short, is often intensely cold, especially in the Danubian plain and in Thrace, the rigorous climate of which is frequently alluded to by the Latin poets. Bitter north-easterly winds prevail in the spring, and snow is not uncommon even in the low-lying districts of Greece. The autumn weather is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King, The saint, the father, and the husband prays: Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"{22} That thus they all shall meet in future days: There ever bask in uncreated rays, No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear, Together hymning their Creator's praise, In such society, yet still more dear; While circling time moves ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... connected with this school-room my first and perhaps most bitter martyrdom. In order to make plain what I would say I must explain a little. Even in the infant-school all the elements are to be found which the maturer man later encounters in an intensified degree, in the world. Brutality, deceit, vulgar cleverness, hypocrisy, all are represented, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... "We are bitter enemies," Wingate confessed, "and shall be till one of us goes down. We are a very terrible example of the evils of this age of restraint. In more primitive days we should have gone for one another's throats. One would have lived and the other died. ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of l'Olonoise was by no means rapid. He worked his way up by dint of hard labor and through much ill fortune. But by and by, after many reverses, the tide turned, and carried him with it from one success to another, without let or stay, to the bitter end. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... It is bitter cold here these last days. I don't stir out, but must this afternoon. I've to go out to dinner and work at the Arundel Society. And if you only knew what was in my thoughts you would be so sorry for me, that I ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... against the flogging of English soldiers by German mercenaries. In that savage dispersal of a peaceful meeting which was called the Massacre of Peterloo, English soldiers were indeed employed, though much more in the spirit of German ones. And it is one of the bitter satires that cling to the very continuity of our history, that such suppression of the old yeoman spirit was the work of soldiers who still bore the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... her voice would slip up, raucous sobs tore through her words, tears rained down her frankly distorted face, carrying their bitter taste of salt to ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Rahal rose and a servant came in and began to clear the table and carry away the remains of the meal. Then Rahal rose and took Thora's hand and Ian went with them to the parlour. She spoke kindly to Ian who at her first words burst into bitter weeping, into an almost womanly burst of uncontrollable distress. So she kissed and left him with the only woman who had the power to soothe, in any degree, the sense of utter helplessness ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... forego such an opportunity, even though she were dead,) yet she forgave him, and added,—"Think no more about it now, for here are three more numbers, just as good." The husband, who had eaten the bitter food of experience, was determined at all events not to let his fortune slip again through his fingers, and played the highest possible terno in the lottery, and waited anxiously for the next drawing. He could scarcely eat his breakfast for nervousness, that morning,—but at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... his;—said 'opinion' on most things, on Medicine among others, being always excellent. Thinks French Literature surpasses that of the Ancients. Small opinion of English Literature: turned Shakspeare into ridicule; and made also bitter fun of German Letters,—their Language barbarous, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... slightly 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 ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Castle Dare. No doubt she would stand aghast at the mere mention of such a thing; perhaps in her sudden indignation she might utter sharp words that would rankle afterwards in the memory. In any case he knew the struggle would be long, and bitter, and harassing; and he had not the skill of speech to persuasively bend a woman's will. There was another way—impossible, alas!—he had thought of. If only he could have taken Gertrude White by the hand—if only he could have led her up the hall, and presented her ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... drank the bitter tea. Miss Grant looked friendly and she liked the engineer. They were frank, human people, and she thought them kind. Robertson began to talk about carpets, gas-stoves and pans, and Miss Grant told Barbara what the articles cost. They had ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... indoors. Perhaps this will give some idea of the cold of Gafsa. There is no heating these bare rooms with their icy walls and floorings: out of doors a blizzard is raging that would flay a rhinoceros. And the wind of Gafsa has this peculiarity, that it is equally bitter from whichever point of the compass it blows. Let those who contemplate the supreme madness of coming to the sunny oasis at the present season of the year (January) bring not only Arctic vestment, eiderdowns, fur cloaks, carpets and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... could learn, there was nothing that amounted even to ordinary friendship between Mr. Wardour and the young widow. She was in the family but as a distant poor relation—"Much as I am myself!" thought Sepia, with a bitter laugh that even in her own eyes she should be comparable to a poor creature like Letty. The fact, however, remained that Godfrey was a little altered toward her: she must have been telling him something against her— something she had heard from that detestable little hypocrite who was turned ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... money and the physiognomy of Mr. Dunkelsbaum—whose photograph had appeared in the paper that very morning, to grace an interview—with marked acerbity. Once in a while a ripple of laughter from Adele came to my ears, but for the most part it was a grave discourse, for Berry felt very bitter, and Adele, whose father's father was the son of an English squire, had taken to heart the imminent disseizure ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... the confidences of many working-women,—some in professions, some in trades, and some in service,—and on these confidences I have founded my belief that every woman who works for her living must eat with her bread the bitter salt of insult. Not even the plain girl escapes paying this penalty put upon her ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... who was—who was like my sister Molly! I want Miss Lowe and her helpers to have that high and bright place, sir, for their workshop. It must have sun and air, sir, and books and toys and—and music, too, for the fight is a hard and bitter one and the days and ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... World War II, Yugoslavia became a federal independent Communist state under the strong hand of Marshal TITO. Although Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, it took four years of sporadic, but often bitter, fighting before occupying Serb armies were mostly cleared from Croatian lands. Under UN supervision, the last Serb-held enclave in eastern Slavonia was ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... husband was gone and was in danger. Until this dauntless worldling came in and broke the spell, and lifted the latch, we too have forborne to enter into that sad chamber. How long had that poor girl been on her knees! what hours of speechless prayer and bitter prostration had she passed there! The war-chroniclers who write brilliant stories of fight and triumph scarcely tell us of these. These are too mean parts of the pageant: and you don't hear widows' cries or mothers' sobs in the midst of the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... years after the reception of the sacred stigmata. They were years of continual suffering and persecution. The violence and coarse selfishness of her mother's nature was vented on her in every way and on all occasions. She was made the object of the most bitter reviling, and had to listen to a torrent of abuse, and what was worse, of blasphemous cursing, whenever she appeared in her presence. Once her mother threw her so violently against the wall as to cause her to rupture a blood vessel; yet she bore ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... himself slowly, made his way down through the clear, cruel element beyond all hope of recapture. My blind impulse to follow and try to seize him was very strong, but I kept my hold and peered and peered long after the fish was lost to view, then looked my mortification in the face and laughed a bitter laugh. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Silver and Grey'—'Word Pastels'—' Lyrics in Stone!'" he chuckled. "And what was it the fat fellow said?' A Siren Song in Marble!' Phew!... Well, I'll get along. I shall just be in time to get a pint of bitter to wash it all down if I'm quick... Bah!" he broke out suddenly. "Good men build up Form and Forms—keep the Arts each after its kind—raise up the dikes so that we shan't all be swept away by night and nothingness—and these rats come ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... surface gleams white with salt crystals, covering a mass of hard irregular lumps said to be formed of gypsum, which makes walking almost impossible. Further inland, smaller marshes were often met with, and a hole dug in them soon filled with bitter water, quite undrinkable, but valuable to wash away the sand. South of the great Sabkhet, the everlasting sand ridges began again, spotted with clumps and low bushes of scrub, and rising in the distance to pure yellow ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... New Testament, bound in excellent taste, on her toilet-table! The occasion suggested reflection on the system which produces average Christians at the present time. Nothing more was said by Mrs. Presty; Mrs. Linley remained absorbed in her own bitter thoughts. In silence they waited for the return of the carriage, and the appearance ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... tone of bitter suffering and self-reproach was something new and frightful to Laura. She clung to his arm and tried to say—'O, don't speak in that way! You know you meant the best. You could not help ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... embraces given, we started, and rattling away to Margate, were soon on board the "Royal Adelaide" on our way up the Thames. Bitter as was the cold, I was too much occupied in running about and examining everything connected with the steamer to mind it. The helm, the machinery, the masts and rigging, the huge paddle-wheels, the lead ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... of its own publication, the novel is treated in a long review which hesitates between an acknowledged lack of comprehension and indignant denunciation. The reviewer fears that the author is a "Pasquillant oder gar ein Indifferentist" and hopes the public will find no pleasure (Geschmack) in such bitter jesting (Schnaken). He is incensed at Timme's contention that the Germans were then degenerate as compared with their Teutonic forefathers, and Timme's attack on the popular writers is emphatically resented. "Aber nun kmmt das Schlimme erst," he says, "da ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... to surrender her prisoner, had rounded Nova Scotia and was on the home-stretch toward Quoddy Roads. She was, in fact, less than thirty miles away from Grande Mignon Island, and Code had thought with a great and bitter homesickness of the joy just a sight of her ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... and a self-confident spirit in the pursuit of them, wanton revelling in worldly pleasures, partiality towards the rich and contempt of the poor, defrauding the poor of their wages, ambition to assume the office of teaching, censoriousness, a lawless and slanderous tongue, bitter envying and strife, mutual grudging and murmuring, wars and fightings; all these with an unbelieving and complaining spirit towards God. But these are not merely Jewish vices. They are deeply rooted in man's fallen nature, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... of Capodoca was not at the fire, he pushed it more than once through the aforesaid hole in the wall and put as much salt as he wished into his neighbour's pot; wherefore Capodoca, returning either for dinner or for supper, more often than not could not eat or even taste either broth or meat, so bitter was everything through the great quantity of salt. For once or twice he had patience and only made a little noise about it; but after he saw that words were not enough, he gave blows many a time for this to the poor woman, who was in despair, it appearing to her that she was more ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... On those bitter, starlit nights, as we sat around the old stove that fed us and warmed us and kept us cheerful, we could hear the coyotes howling down by the corrals, and their hungry, wintry cry used to remind the boys ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... rinse in cold water, wipe dry, cut out the oil sack, remove craw from neck, draw the fowl, being careful not to break the gall in the process, as that would cause the meat, as well as giblets, to have a bitter taste. Take out the lungs, the spongy red pieces lying in crevices near the bones of the back, and pour cold water through the fowl until you have thoroughly rinsed and chilled it, and no blood remains inside. I think fowls should ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... rule in this new world, and intellect had taken its throne. I was the inferior of this man, whose trained mind was the heir of the generations that had toiled and fought while I had slept. I was little better than a savage before him, and I knew it, and he knew it, and, bitter as the thought was to me, yet it was only the truth. I was conquered, and a new gleam in his eyes told me that he had read my thoughts ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... selues to the worshippe of God, and echeone taketh vpon him to be the true and best worshipper of him, and whilest echone thinke theim selues to treade the streight pathe of euerlastyng blessednes, and contendeth with eigre mode and bitter dispute, that all other erre and be ledde farre a wrie: and whilest euery man strugglethe and striueth to spread and enlarge his owne secte, and to ouerthrowe others, thei doe so hate and enuie, so persecute ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... been presented and cashed two circumstances led him to fear. The first was that he had never seen it among those returned to him when his bankbook had been made up; and the second was that Hannah had shared the bitter poverty of her nephew, and therefore could not have received and appropriated the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Colonel. "I would not for the world take away any real grounds of hope which you may have; but on the other hand, there is no use in preparing bitter disappointments for ourselves. If we had been listening to an attack, we should have heard some reply. Besides, an Egyptian attack would have been an attack in force. No doubt it is, as you say, a little strange that they should have wasted their cartridges—by ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and seen at the meeting of the Honey-Bees. That impatience with the vanity of his own pursuits and with the injustice of existing conditions, which hovered like a phantom at the feast of life, had at last found form and utterance. Parini's satires and the bitter mockery of the "Frusta Letteraria" were but instruments of demolition; but the arguments of the Professor's friends had that constructive quality so appealing to the urgent temper of youth. Was the world in ruins? Then here was a plan to rebuild it. Was humanity in chains? ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... anything connected with the man who certainly occasioned Kelly's death, awoke a keener and more intense sorrow for his loss. The wailing was thus continued until the coffin was laid opposite Ghimes's door; nor did it cease then, but, on the contrary, was renewed with louder and more bitter lamentations. ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... give to our beloved? A little faith all undisproved, A little dust to overweep, And bitter memories to make The whole earth blasted for our sake,— "He giveth ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... factories, in workshops, in dark mines under ground—when we think of the soldier on the march under the sultry sun of India, the sailor on the stormy sea—when we think of this our bleak inclement climate, our five months of winter every year;—no man's food and clothing to be gained but by bitter toil, either of himself or of others—and then when we compare our lot with that of the dwellers in hot countries, in India and in Africa, and the islands of the South Seas, where men live with no care, no labour—where clothes and fire are never needed—where every tree bears ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... of the 1905 blackhundreds. They all are there, and instead the "Boje Tsaria Khrani," they shout the International. They all understand their people (the agent said) and they all are with the Lenine and others, to return to the sweet past by destroying the bitter present. Sir George, the Major continued, knew all about these significant political blocks, and reported them to London, but the Foreign Office and the Conseil de Guerre seem to be either ignorant (I would not be very much surprised), or know more than the Ambassador, ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... the eucharist united again in an instant his bitter and despairing thoughts, their cries arising unbroken ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... hundred volumes, without finding anything; there was not much of any value. On my return to Mardn, Iquestioned people right and left; no one knew anything about it. At length I summoned up courage one day, and went to the Chaldan monastery. The different sects in Mardn are most bitter against each other, and as I unfortunately lodged in the house of an American missionary, it was very difficult for me to gain access to these Catholics, who were unknown to me. Luckily my servant was a Catholic, and could state ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... ago had anyone told me that the day would come when I would feel thankful for the loss of my grandfather, I would have struck him. But for the last week I have been almost thankful that he is dead. The worst that could occur has happened. I am in bitter disgrace, and I am grateful that grandfather died before it came upon me. I have been dismissed from the Academy. The last of the "Fighting" Macklins has been declared unfit to hold the President's commission. I am cast out irrevocably; there is no appeal against ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... Felix said, "have had our periods of bitter enmity. With your marriage to Lucille these, so far as I am concerned, ended for ever. I will even admit that in my younger days I was prejudiced against you. That has passed away. You have been all your days a bold and unscrupulous schemer, ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the first nine days after a death, the house is invariably crowded with friends and acquaintances, and the widow, or orphan, or childless mother must receive the condolences of all and sundry, in the midst of her first bitter sorrow. There seems to be no idea ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... Take two ounces and a half of rhubarb, and half an ounce of lesser cardamon seeds; steep them for a week in a quart of brandy, and strain off the tincture. To make the bitter tincture of rhubarb, add an ounce of gentian root, and a dram of snake root. The tincture is of great use in case of indigestion, pain or weakness of the stomach; and from one to three or four spoonfuls may ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... a yellowish green color; it has a strong, narcotic, and foetid odor, with a bitter ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... broad basis, still refuses to ordain its most influential women preachers, and, within the year, has even deprived them of license, though one of them[215] has brought more converts to the Church than a dozen of its most influential bishops during the same period. To such bitter lengths has the opposition to woman's ordination been carried, that a certain reverend gentlemen, in debating the subject, declared that he would oppose the admission of the mother of our Lord into the ministry, the debate taking on a most unseemly form. The Syracuse Sunday Morning ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Gilbert altogether failed in reaching any part of the main land of America. The weather became very bad, the winter approached, and provisions began to fail: there was no alternative but to return, and with bitter regret and disappointment he adopted that course. The two remaining vessels proceeded in safety as far as the meridian of the Azores; there, however, a terrible tempest assailed them. On the afternoon of the 9th of September the smaller of the two boats was observed to labor dangerously. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... before them a veritable war, in which they could hope to defend themselves successfully, and if beaten here escape to renew it elsewhere, and which promised them an abundant opportunity for encountering the Romans. This was what they most longed for. Not one there but hated Rome with a bitter hatred, as the author of unnumbered woes to their tribes, their families and themselves. Death had no terrors whatever to these men, so that they could die fighting with Romans. Rising to their feet they returned with exulting shouts ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... am afraid." She responded to his look with a certain bitter, sarcastic insistence. "I have reason to be," said she. "You know I have, Arthur Carroll. We are all on the edge of a precipice, but I, for one, do not intend to let you drag me over, and I do not intend that Amy and the children shall go, either, if I can help it. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell—what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Pandavas, is dragged by the veni or braid of hair into the public assembly by the hand of Duhsasana, one of the Kaurava princes, a disgrace that weighs most heavily upon the Pandavas, who contemplate most bitter revenge. ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... rooted in a sick man's memory. For those gaunt and solemn forms there is no change of life or end of days. No fever touches them; no dampness of the wind and rain loosens their firm cement. They stare with senseless faces in bitter mockery of men who live and die and moulder away beneath. Their poor old guardian told us it was a weary life. He has had the fever three times, and does not hope to survive many more Septembers. The very water that he drinks is brought him ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... who had a remarkable enjoyment of the old man's mellow, quiet, and simple spirit. "I want you always to be within five minutes, saunter of my chair. You are the only philosopher I ever knew of whose wisdom has not a drop of bitter essence at ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Woodchuck lives too much in the ground and too constantly beside his own door to grow very wise. He can always be trapped. So can any one's enemy. You can always murder. But no gentleman strikes from behind. I hate the steel trap. I have set my last one. They would be bitter peaches on that tree if they cost the woodchuck what I have seen more than one woodchuck suffer in the horrible jaws ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... boy, not yet twenty years of age. But he was shrewd and ambitious, and soon succeeded in having himself elected consul and put at the head of a large army. Cicero aided him with a series of orations directed against Antony, which were so keen and bitter, and had such an effect upon the people, that Antony was declared a public enemy. Octavius marched to meet him and Lepidus, who were marching southward ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... The young man, I had remarked, was proud, firm, jealous of the point of honor, and, from my observation of him, quite likely to resent to the bitter end what he deemed a slight or an injustice. The girl, I knew, was quite as high-spirited as young Murchison. I feared she was not so just, and hoped she would prove more yielding. I knew that her affections were ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... my heart, like some enraptured lute, Tinkles a tune so tender and complete, God's blessing must be resting on the fruit— So bitter, ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... about it; but it was understood by them all, Jane and the cook included, that Lily was for the time paramount. She was a dear, gracious, loving, brave queen, and no one was anxious to rebel;—only that those praises of Crosbie were so very bitter in the ears of her subjects. The day was named soon enough, and the tidings came down to Allington. On the fourteenth of February, Crosbie was to be made a happy man. This was not known to the Dales till the twelfth, and they would ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Miss Burton," he continued, "that I have no chance of success? I ask the question because if I felt certain that this was so quite certain—I should be wrong to remain here. It has been my first and only parish, and I could not leave it without bitter sorrow. But if I were to remain here hopelessly, I should become unfit for my work. I am becoming so, and shall be ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... and his utter poverty, and was all the more determined to stand to his dignity as a man who had talked with all the crowned heads of Europe, and had fought a duel with the Polish general. And he had another reason for finding life bitter—he had lived beyond his time. Louis XV. was dead, and Louis XVI. had been guillotined; the Revolution had come; and Casanova, his dress, and his manners, appeared as odd and antique as some "blood of the Regency" would appear to us of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... she had always wished her neighbours nothing but good, and even in the time of bitter famine had taken the bread out of her own mouth ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... hearken Gods of the Goths! ye shall die, and we shall be Gods, And rule your men beloved with bitter-heavy rods, And make them beasts beneath us, save today ye do our will, And pay us the ransom of blood, and our hearts with the ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... with fingers burned We count one bitter maxim more, Our lesson all the world has learned, And men ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Edmund said as he approached him, "you have been a bitter enemy of the Saxons, and small mercy have you shown to those who have fallen into your hands, but learn now that we Christian Saxons take no vengeance on a defenceless foe. You are free to pursue your voyage with your daughter and your ship to Norway. Your stores we have made free with, seeing ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... our own imperfect Christianity as the response of our feelings to external circumstances. It is by no means an unnecessary reminder for us, who have heavy tasks set us, which often seem too heavy, and are surrounded, as we all are, with crowding temptations to be bitter and melancholy and sad, that Christ commands us to be, and therefore we ought ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... that it could be loosened by pulling. The black tried to twist his body till he could touch the green-hide with his teeth and gnaw it through, but he was bound too tightly to allow him to do this. Finally a he lay still with the fear of a captured animal in his heart, and bitter hatred against the man who had ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... fast coming on—a Russian winter, in all its bitter severity. The snow began to fall, the rivers to freeze, and crows and other birds died ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... modestly decried these same episodes. Otway's comic and satiric powers have been thoroughly underrated. Taine, however, boldly confessed that Otway 'like Shakespeare ... found at least once the grand bitter buffoonery, the harsh sentiment of human baseness', and he demonstrates that, however odious and painful the episodes of senator and whore may be, they are true to the uttermost. Even the great nineteenth-century realist Zola did not disdain ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... once more into the bitter-cold water, he succeeded in finding the slight ropes which formed the stays, and though it is almost incredible, he actually managed to cut and free them all, before Jim hauled him back, more dead than alive, on to the boat's bottom. At all ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... very bitter to the weasel, who had always thought he knew everything, to be insulted by a cricket; still he begged to be told what it was. 'The rat,' went on the cricket, 'has brought a little piece from a fungus, and has scratched a hole beside ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... crossed the Delaware that bitter night, the snow stinging and blinding, the river choked with blocks of ice, Hamilton for the first time thought on St. Croix with a pang of envy. But it was the night for their purpose, and all the world knows the result. The ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... of Dublin. They went out there yesterday in a jaunting-car, and John described it to us at dinner-time (with his eyebrows lifted up, and his legs well asunder), as "Johnny Brooks's Fair;" at which Arthur, who was drinking bitter ale, nearly laughed himself to death. Berry is always unfortunate, and when I asked what had happened to Berry on board the steamboat, it appeared that "an Irish gentleman which was drunk, and fancied himself the captain, wanted to knock ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... he had been stricken blind at the height of his career; that his friends and his enemies agreed in describing him as a man of extraordinary ability and of remarkable character; that he had been victorious in a bitter controversy with President Roosevelt; that one of the Rothschilds had remarked that if Joseph Pulitzer had not lost his eyesight and his health he, Pulitzer, would have collected into his hands all the money there was; ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... and endurance. She had led a hard life, however, harder than any one there suspected, and she could have borne even more than was thrust upon her, without flinching or bending under the burden. On foot she walked in the mournful procession through the snow and the bitter wind, leaning but lightly on Greif's arm, and sometimes feeling that she was helping him rather than accepting his assistance. It was nearly a quarter of a mile from the castle to the spot where the burial-place of ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... of the plant now used at Poona appears whitish, has a very stringent taste, is bitter, but not sour; it is a very nasty drink, and has some intoxicating effect. I tasted it several times, but it was impossible for me to drink more than ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... had the chance—all the advantages, and taking lovely trips, and the fun. You could go to one of these girls' schools and play tennis and golf and ride horseback! And always have pretty clothes!" The bitter edge to Beryl's voice betrayed how much she would like ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... and with their usual style of theatrical confidence, they had obtained at first a degree of success which was almost surprising to their own insolent vanity, and which, long afterwards, became a subject of bitter mortification to our own army. Had there been at this point any energy at all corresponding to that of the enemy, or commensurate to the intrinsic superiority of our own troops in steadiness, the French ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... thou aloft, though thou ascend alone, O Human Spirit! Thou canst not be lost. What though yon stars, the azure's nightly frost Melt dark, or mount round thee an arctic zone! Thou hast sun-warmth and star-source of thine own. If thou mount not, how bitter is the cost! What anguish, when whirled down, or tempest tossed, To know how high toward ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... at the middle of the tuning coil, and set the other—the one connected to the leading-in wire—about opposite. Then he adjusted the sharp pointed wire on the detector until the point was just touching the crystal. Still there was no sound in the ear phones, and the boys looked at one another in bitter disappointment. Bob moved the antenna slider slowly along the tuning coil, and suddenly, faint, but very clear, the boys heard the opening chords of an overture played by a famous orchestra nearly a hundred miles away! Sweet and resonant the distant ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... of boiling the coffee is unsparingly condemned by the association. The infusion thus made is very high in caffeine and tannic acid. It is muddy, too, and overrich in dissolved fibrous and bitter matters. As most of the deleterious effects of coffee are due to dissolved tannin, owing to excessive boiling or the use of grounds a second time, this method of making the beverage ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... at National Convention; Senator Morton's position on Woman Suffrage; Senator Wadleigh scored by Mary Clemmer; first favorable Senate Committee report; advance in public sentiment; extracts from Indiana papers; bitter attacks of Richmond (Ky.) Herald and Grand Rapids (Mich.) Times; interview in Chicago Tribune on Woman's need of ballot for Temperance legislation; convention in St. Louis and Miss Anthony's response to floral offering; death of Wm. Lloyd Garrison; desire for a woman's paper; ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... gentleman in writing a paper called the Prompter; all those mark'd with a B. were his.—This was meant greatly for the service of the stage; and many of them have been regarded in the highest manner.—But, as there was not only instruction, but reproof, the bitter, with the sweet, by ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... employment, and education had excluded millions of Negroes from the benefits of economic progress. This ghettoization, this failure to meet human needs, led to the alienation of many young Americans and a bitter resentment against society that was dramatized just five days after the signing of the 1965 voting rights act when the Watts section of Los Angeles exploded in flames and violence. There had been racial unrest before, especially during the two previous summers when flare-ups occurred in Cambridge ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... 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
... griefs that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... when I looked in a glass I would often wonder at the sight of my own face, which seemed younger than my years, and was strangely free from any recording lines of experiences which might have been esteemed bitter by any one who had not the pride of bearing them. When my black eyes, which had a bold daring in them, looked forth at me from the glass, and my lips smiled with a gay confidence at me, I could not but surmise that my whole ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... Christian Science is not to be overlooked, - that the same fountain cannot send forth 455:30 both sweet waters and bitter. The higher your attainment in the Science of mental healing and teaching, the more impossible it will be- 456:1 come for you intentionally to influence mankind adverse to its highest hope ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... are lumbrici and ascarides or cucubitini, though the terms long, round, short and broad are also employed, and probably include the tape worm or taenia lata. The treatment of these parasites consists generally in the use of aromatic, bitter or acid mixtures, among which gentian, serpentaria, tithymal and cucumis agrestis are especially commended for lumbrici, and enemata of wormwood, lupinus, scammony, salt, aloes, ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... another long while James said, "It is a bitter dose, I am thinking, father, but you must go and tell her that Peter has ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... and put in jail seemed a mere incident in comparison with such bitter and I lifelong suffering; and Samuel was ashamed of having made so much fuss. He had stated, with some trepidation, that he was just out of jail; but Mrs. Stedman had not seemed to mind that. Her husband had been in jail once, during the big glass strike, and ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... guard could come up with them. Lieutenant Pierson gave no explanation except that he had been attacked near Juliet's tomb on his way to General Schoneck's quarters. Fellows had stabbed his horse, and brought him to the ground, and torn the coat off his back. He complained in bitter mutterings of the loss of a letter therein, during the first candid moments of his anger: and, as he was known to be engaged to the Countess Lena von Lenkenstein, it was conjectured by his comrades that this lady might have had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... missionary there present as Tokeah, the miko or king of the Oconees, the principal tribe of the Creek Indians. This Tokeah is one of the most deadly and persevering enemies of the white men, whom he detests with a bitter hate, because they have driven his nation from its hunting grounds. He it was who, seven years previously, gave the little girl in charge to Copeland and his wife; since then he has regularly sent furs and beaver-skins as payment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... family have petted him, taken to the Klondike, and put to work drawing sledges. First he has to be broken in, to learn "the law of club and fang." His splendid blood comes out through the suffering and abuse, the starvation and the unremitting toil, the hardship and the fighting and the bitter cold. He wins his way to the mastership of his team. He becomes the best sledge dog in Alaska. And all the while there is coming out in him ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... am not unwell. I do not wish to have a scene. I will not, by useless words, embitter myself against you, or you against me. You know you do not love me. I know I do not love you. It is all a bitter, cursed mistake, and the sooner we say so ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... then smiling at their professional ignorance when they had swallowed his audacious fabrications. Moreover, the manner of his speech was sometimes as offensive as its substance was dishonest. Strafford spoke a bitter criticism not only with regard to Maynard and Glyn, but with regard to the prevailing tone of the bar, when, describing the conduct of the advocates who managed his prosecution, he said: "Glynne and Maynard ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... apt to attribute to our own strength of purpose the virtue, so called, in which we pride ourselves. Women in happy homes, by pleasant hearths, and surrounded with every means of social enjoyment, take credit to themselves for their upright demeanor, and indulge in bitter denunciation of those, who, less fortunately circumstanced, yield to the tempter's allurements. Little do they think of what they themselves might have been, but for the protection which some good angel has thrown ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... terror, as he looked upon the hostile host, the army of the Huns and Goths, that upon the river's bank at the boundary of the Roman realm was massing its 60 strength, an uncounted multitude. The king of the Romans suffered bitter grief of soul, and hoped not for his kingdom because of his small host; he had too few warriors, trusty thanes, to encounter the overmight of brave men in ...
— The Elene of Cynewulf • Cynewulf
... from the deep wound beneath his breast; his broad head droops heavily forward; the mists of death already cloud his eyes; his brows are knit with pain; and his lips are parted in a last sigh. There is, perhaps, no other statue in which the bitter necessity of death is expressed with such terrible truth—all the more terrible because the hardy body is so full ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... foregoing sentence, my father asked to see me, and we have had a talk—ah, a most bitter talk! ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... give you a pointer. Keep your eye peeled for the next edition of the Rock River Morning Call." And the bitter wind swept away the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... relationship to Ethel. His softer emotions were in abeyance, but he told himself no lies. He cared for her, he loved to be with her and to talk to her and please her, but that was not all his desire. He thought of the bitter words of an orator at Hammersmith, who had complained that in our present civilisation even the elemental need of marriage was denied. Virtue had become a vice. "We marry in fear and trembling, sex for a home is the woman's ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... answer to something he has put to you?" Nanda looked at him a while with a sort of solemnity of tenderness, and her voice, when she at last spoke, trembled with a feeling that clearly had grown in her as she listened to the string of whimsicalities, bitter and sweet, that he had just unrolled. "You're wild," ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... when it ceased, and the sound of low regular breathing, assured her that she had fallen asleep. She rose up gently, wrapped her wadded gown about her, lowered the blinds, and closed the shutters, that the light might not disturb Helen; then laid an additional blanket over her, for it was bitter cold, and placed the candle which she had lighted behind an old-timed Chinese screen, that formed a sort of a niche in a corner of the room, which she, in her pious thoughtfulness, had converted into an oratory. A small round table, covered with white drapery, supported a statue of the Immaculate ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... by the bitter attacks that were made upon him, left England, and after traveling down the Rhine through Switzerland, he took up his abode in Venice. His joy at leaving England and ridding himself of the annoyances which had clustered thick about him, he expressed ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... although he was the frankest and most social of men. In his impressive silence he has set one of the noblest examples of a man afflicted with domestic infelicities. He buries his conjugal troubles in eternal silence; although he is forced to give vent to sorrows, so plaintive and bitter that both friend and foe were constrained to pity. He expects no sympathy, even at Rome, for the sundering of conjugal relations, and he communicates no secrets. In his grief and sadness he does, however, a most foolish thing: he marries a young lady one-third his age. She accepted ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... another man's good manners. All his works treat but of two things, his own malice and another man's faults, both which he describes in very proper and pertinent language. He is not much concerned whether what he writes be true or false; that's nothing to his purpose, which aims only at filthy and bitter, and therefore his language is, like pictures of the devil, the fouler the better. He robs a man of his good name, not for any good it will do him (for he dares not own it), but merely, as a jackdaw steals money, for his pleasure. His malice ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... passion and her mother's pride! Sorrow and trouble before her, and she all alone; dark, dark, dark; the world against her! Sorrow and trouble—it's in the blood! And she'll never give it up! She'll fight her wrongs to the bitter end. Oh, my precious girl!" and she buried her head in her apron ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... left behind. Halldor took over the manor of Herdholt. Thorgerd, their mother, lived with Halldor; she was most hatefully-minded towards Bolli, and thought the reward he paid for his fostering a bitter one. ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... a rivalry sprang up between Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. They were very unlike in their characters and mode of life. Michael Angelo was bitter, ironical, and liked to be alone; Leonardo loved to be gay and to see the world; Michael Angelo lived so that when he was old he said, "Rich as I am, I have always lived like a poor man;" Leonardo enjoyed luxury, and kept a fine house, with ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... hardly knew. He was eager to see Robert Palmer again in the world to which he was hastening. Then he would confess all, and be forgiven. For Robert Palmer had loved him like a son. Yes, that was what made the cup so bitter! ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... botanical walk with my father! With what eager curiosity have I not lingered many a time before the entrance to a forbidden booth, and scanned the scenic advertisement of a travelling show! Alas! how the charms of study paled before those intervals of brief but bitter temptation! What, then, was pathology compared to the pig-faced lady, or the Materia Medica to Smith's Mexican Circus, patronized by all the sovereigns of Europe? But my father was inexorable. He held that such places were, to use his own words, "opened by swindlers for ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... and down!—to the shores of the salt sea, where the flowing life is dammed into a stagnant lake, a dead sea, growing more and more bitter with separation and lack of outlet. Mrs. Franks had come to feel the comforting of her husband a hopeless thing, and had all but ceased to attempt it. He grew more hopeless for the lack of what she thought moved him no more, and when she ceased to comfort him, the fountain of her own hope ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... great; but his punishment was cruel. It was indeed a punishment which must have been more bitter than the bitterness of death to a man whose vanity was exquisitely sensitive, and who had been spoiled by early and rapid success and by constant prosperity. Before the new Parliament had been a month sitting it was plain that his empire was at an end. He spoke with the old ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the occurrence. He had been sent by Colonel Santander, who could not come himself; too busy getting the Hussars into their saddles for the pursuit—for he it was who led it. And never did man follow fugitives with more eagerness to overtake them, or more bitter chagrin in their flight. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... prepared, with excellent coffee and good bread, while the scowling sentries became more agreeable, and took willingly to their duties, on finding that satisfactory snacks were handed to them, and hot cups of coffee on the bitter nights when they sat watching in their ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... my literary heart. By way of homage to her I eat the dust and recant all the hard and bitter things I said and thought in my youth concerning Ancient Greece; especially I apologise, on behalf of myself and my pedagogues, for after regarding its language as a dead one. A Child of the Orient (Lane) has taught me better, though the last object the author appears ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... tiny clefts that carried the water away from the bog, but the idiot went on straight and unconcerned as though he were on a high road, though often his pony floundered hock-deep. So on they went for a full hour with the mist whirling about them, the children being kept warm in spite of the bitter cold air, by their excitement, and by the constant scrambling of the ponies. At last they reached firmer soil, but after travelling over it for a little way the idiot stopped and held up his hand; and the children listening with all their ears thought they made out the faint sound of ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... still[10]. And yet this is no fault of hers, unless indeed it be a fault to be beautiful beyond compare. Nor has her maiden purity been sullied in the least degree by ever a suitor of them all. But all this has come about by reason of a fault of mine, itself, beyond a doubt, the bitter fruit of the tree of crimes committed in a former birth. For know, that long ago, when I was young, I conquered the entire earth, and brought it all, from sea to sea, under the shadow of one umbrella. So when I was reposing, after my exertions, one day ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... floating loosely, passed before my window. He ran rather than walked; but the anguish of his heart was too plainly revealed in the strangeness of his movements. He knew all. I felt that a mishap was inevitable. "Behold the outcome of all his happiness, behold the bitter poison enclosed in so fair a vessel!" All these thoughts shot through my mind like arrows. It was necessary above all to delay the explosion, were it only for a moment, a second, and, beside myself, without giving myself time to think of what I ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... swallowed a bitter pill when they asked us ladies to accompany them; but they knew their hostess would not let them go without her at least, so why not take the tame bores ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... she ran, notwithstanding he repeatedly charged her to stay. He followed them, however, to the coach, with bitter revilings that every body was to make more of his ward than himself, and with the most virulent complaints of his losses from the blanket, the breast of mutton, the ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... these horrible comments with a stoical calm. "Still she is our gracious patroness, and her son also will one day be our patron. We must drink the bitter cup to its dregs. Let ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... each other beside the new-made grave, and as they quitted the inclosure, their hands met for an instant coldly. Pocahontas tried not to harbor resentment, but she could not forget whose hand it had been that had struck her the first bitter blow. ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... with her brother the winter previous to her arrival at the Philadelphia station. Although she reached free land the severe struggle cost her the loss of all her toes. Four days and nights out in the bitter cold weather without the chance of a fire left them a prey to the frost, which made sad havoc with their feet especially—particularly Elizabeth's. She was obliged to stop on the way, and for seven months she was ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... it was to pay for the protection given to them by the Dutch. Then the Indians understood less than ever, for the Dutch had never done anything for them except to give them as little as they could for their valuable furs. The Indians hated Kieft, and this act of his made their hatred more bitter. A war-cloud was gathering. The Indians were well prepared for war, for they had been supplied with guns, with bullets, and with powder by those greedy Dutchmen, the smugglers, who thought more of their personal gains than of the ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... grief, he promised her it should be so. And anon she died, and all the household made a bitter lamentation ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... though none to learn thee lend an ear, I reck the less thereof, indeed, that none Could sing thee even as I; One only charge I give thee, ere I die, That thou find Love and unto him alone Show fully how undear This bitter life and drear Is to me, craving of his might he deign Some better harbourage ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of the wonderful early air: the wonderful light, keen air, a fabric woven of elfin filaments, the breathings of green lives: an aether distilled of secret essences, in the night, by the earth and the sea,—for there was the sea's tang, as well as the earth's balm, there was the bitter-sweet of the sea and ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland |
