"Bitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fires of Moloch, the dreadful suttee, were sacrifices which long religious education sanctioned, and in which the devotees perished amidst the plaudits of admiring multitudes. This woman had chosen a death of solitude, of hunger, of bitter cold, of pain-racked exhaustion, and was actuated by only the pure principles of wifely love. Already the death-damp was gathering on George Donner's brow. At the utmost, she could hope to do no more than smooth the pillow of the dying, tenderly clasp the fast-chilling hand, press farewell kisses ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... turned pale. Well he knew the ringing voice of Frithiof. Fiercely as autumn winds fell the hero's bitter words:— ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... repulses which he was ever encountering, journeyed along to Poland, where he was crowned king, notwithstanding energetic remonstrances on the part of those who execrated him for his deeds. The two brothers, Charles IX. and Henry, were bitter enemies, and Charles had declared, with many oaths, that one of the two should leave the realm. Henry was the favorite of Catharine, and hence she made such efforts to secure his safety by placing him upon the ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... have described it above, the teaching of Confucius was a further development of the old cult of Heaven. Through bitter experience, however, Confucius had come to realize that nothing could be done with the ruling house as it existed in his day. So shadowy a figure as the Chou ruler of that time could not fulfil what Confucius required of the "Son of Heaven". But the opinions of students of Confucius's ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... Christianity. They firmly assert the priesthood of the whole congregation. That the laity had as great a share as the leaders of the Churches in the transformation of the latter into Priests is moreover shown by the bitter saying of Tertullian (de monog. 12): "Sed cum extollimur et inflamur adversus clerum, tunc unum omnes sumus, tunc omnes sacerdotes, quia 'sacerdotes nos deo et patri fecit'. Cum ad peraequationem ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... was as far off from him as ever. First the bitter thought came to him that 'in all this Satan tells me I am doing it to be thought mortified and holy'; and then he was obsessed by the still bitterer feelings of ineradicable disappointment and regret. He had lost a great ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... "box" in the very centre of the first page was an editorial denouncing Doctor West and demanding for him such severe punishment as would make future traitors forever fear to sell their city. Article and editorial were rousing and vivid, brilliant and bitter—as mercilessly stinging as a salted whip-lash ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... lesson that when a sin is committed we may have done with it, but it has by no means done with us. It is always so, Eric when we drink the wine it is red and sparkling, but we come afterwards to the ragged and bitter dregs." ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... often worked out very carefully. Moreover, let it not be forgotten that it was Wagner's yielding to Christian sentimentality in "Parsifal" that transformed Nietzsche from the first among his literary advocates into the most bitter of his opponents. He could forgive every other sort of mountebankery, but not that. "In me," he once said, "the Christianity of my forbears reaches its logical conclusion. In me the stern intellectual conscience that Christianity fosters and makes paramount ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... slayer. I hastened on the death of Feodor; I gave my sister, the Tzaritza, poison; I poisoned her, the lovely nun,—still I! Ah, yes, I know it: naught can give us calm, Amid the sorrows of this present world; Conscience alone, mayhap: Thus, when 'tis pure, it triumphs O'er bitter malice, o'er dark calumny; But if there be in it a single stain, One, only one, by accident contracted, Why then, all's done; as with foul plague The soul consumes, the heart is filled with gall, Reproaches beat, like hammers, in the ears, The ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... out of the kitchen, this was Drysdale's forte. Ordinary men left the matter in the hands of scouts, and were content with the ever-recurring buttered toasts and eggs, with a dish of broiled ham, or something of the sort, with a marmalade and bitter ale to finish with; but Drysdale was not an ordinary man, as you felt in a moment when you went to breakfast with ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... travelled a good deal, besides living in New York," he said, in the bitter tone that was fast becoming his ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... second, to read sermons; and the third, to play Patience, and more especially Postillion. A fourth had of late began to discover itself, and that was for medicine—for the discovering and administering of useful family medicines; nay, she had herself decocted a certain elixir from nine bitter herbs, which Henrik declared would be very serviceable in sending people to the other world. Louise was no way disturbed by all this, for she did not allow herself to be ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... the Brimley Bomefields was a veritable retreat from Moscow, and what made it the more bitter was the fact that the Moscow, in this case, was not overwhelmed with fire and ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... 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 returned ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... the paper into his hand, where his father's disgrace was registered in the most bitter terms, transferred probably from some London journal. At the end of the paragraph was this ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... other stories of the bitter things he said, and how his displeasure could brood like a cloud over a whole company. He was a gallant old figure, it is true, very energetic, very able, determined to do what he thought right, and infinitely courageous. I mused over the portrait, thought how ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... on board, his better feelings prevailed—he thought of his mother, his sisters, his home, and the bright prospects he had forever darkened by his own folly and vice, and he leaned against the bulk-head in bitter agony. He neither heard nor heeded the repeated calls of one of his comrades, announcing the rapid approach of the Hyperion, his thoughts were in a complete whirl, nor was he roused from his gloomy reflections but by the voices of Allerton and his boat's crew, as they came alongside. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... sin-stained Irlanda! Woe to thee, unhappy people! If with tears thou dost not water The hard earth, and night and day Weeping in thy bitter anguish, Ope the golden gates of heaven Which thy disobedience fastened. Woe to thee, unhappy people! Woe to thee, ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... steel. His cheek did not blanch, nor did his heart quail, as he heard the dreadful sentence. His lips uttered no unmanly entreaty for forgiveness; but, folding his arms, and drawing up his elegant figure to its full height, he fixed his eagle eye upon the count, with a glance full of bitter hatred and mortal defiance. And afterwards, when submitting to the ignominious punishment, with his flesh lacerated by the scourge, no groan escaped his lips that might reach the listening ear of Alvina. He bore it all ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... at its height was measurably the result of the proposed disposition of territory acquired by the then recent treaty with Mexico. The advocates and opponents of slavery extension were at once in bitter antagonism, and the intensity of feeling such as the country ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... matter which is collected for food at that season of the year is very considerable, and the natives do not appear to be very particular in their choice, if the leaves are only green, juicy, and free from any bitter taste. When the inhabitants, in consequence of scarcity of food, removed in the beginning of February from Pitlekaj, they carried with them several sacks of frozen vegetables, and there were still some left in the cellars ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... riding break-neck and bloody-eyed to pull guns and fight after the code of the roughest. Both of them were primed by the accumulated hatred of their young lives to deeds of violence with no thought of consequences. It was a hard and bitter land that could foster and feed such passions in bosoms of so much native excellence; a rough and boisterous land, unworthy the labor that men lavished on it to make therein ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... blast, load, pressure. pressure of the times, iron age, evil day, time out of joint; hard times, bad times, sad times; rainy day, cloud, dark cloud, gathering clouds, ill wind; visitation, infliction; affliction &c. (painfulness) 830; bitter pill; care, trial; the sport of fortune. mishap, mischance, misadventure, misfortune; disaster, calamity, catastrophe; accident, casualty, cross, reverse, check, contretemps, rub; backset[obs3], comedown, setback [U.S.]. losing ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... declared, laughing. "If you'd ever gone through what I did once, when lost in the Maine woods one bitter cold night, you'd never think you could have too big a pile of the stuff. Perhaps some time I'll tell you about that experience; for I'll never forget it, never. But, Jerry, suppose we get ready to run back to the lumber shack, and wait there for the wagon? I won't be easy until we ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... visit to London that I heard of the fall of Von Landstein's (Dr. Mulhaus') Ministry, which had happened a year or two before. And now, also, I read the speech he made on his resignation, which, for biting sarcasm and bitter truth rudely told, is unequalled by any speech I ever read. A more witty, more insolent, more audacious tirade, was never hurled at a successful opposition by a fallen minister. The K—— party sat furious, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to be executed by his own enemies, though the only crime of Strafford was, that he had barked furiously at those enemies, and had worried two or three of them, when Charles shouted, "Fetch 'em." He was a bitter, but yet a despicable enemy, and the coldest and most worthless of friends; for though he always hoped to be able some time or other to hang his enemies, he was always ready to curry favour with them, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... inhospitable, I'm sure. If you'll put "bitter beer" in the corner of your notes of invitation, just as the smart people put "quadrilles" as a sign of entertainment offered, we'll have Osborne and Roger to dinner any day you like. And what did you think ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was, he succeeded in grasping the root of the problem—Education. They were living a lie. The very environment conspired to perpetuate that lie. When one among them stood up and averred that Life meant something more than this, that Man was not made to eke out his life in bitter misery, that the result of the toil of the worker was filched by some inexplicable process, he was immediately voted "balmy." They were not ripe for fighting. There was as yet no clearly seen Cause that would rouse them from their torpor. But one day the flood would burst the dam of besotted ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... saints and sinners," according to No. 1 (June 14, 1879), and if bitter biting personalities can be called fun, the publication was certainty an amusing one, so ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... physical thing, Ireland is the most remarkable example. Rome conquered nations, but Ireland has conquered races. The Norman has gone there and become Irish, the Scotchman has gone there and become Irish, the Spaniard has gone there and become Irish, even the bitter soldier of Cromwell has gone there and become Irish. Ireland, which did not exist even politically, has been stronger than all the races that existed scientifically. The purest Germanic blood, the purest Norman blood, the purest blood of the passionate Scotch patriot, has not been so attractive ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... loved you by the regret which you cost me. Why are we separated? Why have I been forced to fly from you? For we were so happy! When I think of our little evenings so free from constraint, of our gay country chats with your sisters, I feel myself seized with a bitter regret. Did we not love each other clearly, my darling? We had no secret from each other because we had no need to have one, and our lips uttered the thoughts of our hearts without our ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... him after every one of his most decisive victories. And here again we note in him the peculiarly German military temper. German war-songs do not glorify foreign conquest and brilliant adventure; they glorify dogged resistance and bitter fight for house and home, for kith and kin. The German army, composed as it is of millions of peaceful citizens, is essentially a weapon of defense. And it can truly be said that Bismarck, with all his natural aggressiveness and ferocity, was in the main a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... those of Galilee, and such passages are therefore indecisive. But in other passages the phrase "the Jews" does not admit this interpretation, and is used with a decided suggestion of dislike. But when we remember the bitter hostility which the Jews soon manifested towards the Christians, and remember that in Asia Minor this hostility was active, the phrase presents no real difficulty. St. Paul was proud to reckon himself a Jew, but long before the Jews had shown their full antagonism to Christianity, St. Paul ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... wrist her pillow and I lay with her in litter; * And I said to Night 'Be long!' while the full moon showed glitter: Ah me, it was a night, Allah never made its like; * Whose first was sweetest sweet and whose last bitt'rest bitter!'[FN287] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... of co'se not—not less'n I'd taste it, an' you can do that ez well ez I can. If it's quinine, it'll be bitter; an' ef ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... terror holds, Yet one fear presses on my mind, That death should on me helpless play A satire of the bitter kind. For much I fear that o'er my corpse The scalding tears of friends shall flow, And that, too late, they should with zeal Fresh flowers upon my body throw. That fate sardonic should recall The ones I loved to my cold side, And make me lying in the ground, The object ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... did never eat his bread, He that hath never lain through night's long hours, Weeping in bitter anguish on his bed— He knows ye not, ye dread celestial powers. Ye lead us onwards into life. Ye leave The wretch to fall, then yield him up, in woe, Remorse, and pain, unceasingly to grieve; For every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... not read his own speech: he had a sore throat for the occasion, and only with his ears did he swallow the bitter pill of that foreshadowed scheme which he had so long and vainly resisted; for now he was bound by his own promise, and could no longer "stand in ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... opera; but here for the first time the drama grows out of an idea and the music out of the drama. The thing suggested itself to him during that stormy trip to London: the roaring waves, the whistling of the salt winds, the loneliness of the bitter North Sea—these set his imagination aworking on the old legend of the mariner doomed to sail the ocean until the Day of Judgment. In this there was colour and atmosphere enough, but no drama. The dramatic idea he took ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... bitter feeling, but rather like a woman who begins to understand a foible, and to accustom herself ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens." If in the hour of bitter anguish they sought for scenes or thoughts that might relieve their souls and inspire them with fresh strength for the future, they could have found no other objects to look upon so strong to encourage, so mighty ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... stay a moment longer and walked to the door, but she had lost her head and said in a hard, bitter voice: ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... hees too dogged, and bitter for you in truth; we shall bring you a foole to make you laugh, and he shall make all the World ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... hope, he was driving down equally full of despair. He was not content to trust wholly to Mrs Macintyre. He himself would telephone immediately to the best doctors in the land. On his way down the avenue he was startled by hearing the bitter sobbing of a girl. The sobbing was so terrible in its intensity that he could not forbear from drawing the check-string, pushing his snowy head through the open window of the great carriage, and calling out, 'Who 's there? ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... says," she continued in a calmer voice, "that I'm not doing as well as I ought to. I don't think," she faltered, with something of her old bitter laugh, "that I'm ever doing as well as I ought to, and perhaps it's not strange now that I don't. And he says that, in case anything happens to me, I ought to look ahead. I have looked ahead. It's a dark look ahead, Rand—a horror of blackness, without kind faces, without ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Had fastened on him, straight another pair 90 Hung on his wounded haunch, and held him there, Till all the pack came up, and every hound Tore the sad huntsman, grovelling on the ground, Who now appeared but one continued wound. With dropping tears his bitter fate he moans, And fills the mountain with his dying groans. His servants with a piteous look he spies, And turns about his supplicating eyes. His servants, ignorant of what had chanced, With eager haste and joyful shouts advanced, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... friends, who forsook us gradually, being tired of maintaining any friendly communication with such a disagreeable composition of ignorance and arrogance. For my own part, I look upon him as utterly incorrigible; and, as fate has subjected me to his power, endeavour to make the bitter draught go down, by detaching myself as much as possible from the supposition that there is any such existence upon earth. Indeed, if I had not fatal experience to the contrary, I should be apt to believe that such a character is not to be found among the sons of men; ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... next decade—a decade full of bitter distress to the working population of the United States, and marked by widespread suffering—the price shot up to $900,000. By 1894—a panic year, in which millions of men were out of work and in a state of appalling destitution—a quarter ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... whizzing about on the regal head of its owner down the middle of tremendous country dances, hands across, set to partners, and then down again as though it had never tasted the anxieties of a throne, or learnt by bitter experience the sorrows of exile. Even the academical gentleman relaxed to the fair organist, though he stuck up his hair stiffer than ever, and stamped his felt boots again as he passed the unoffending double-bass with curses both loud and deep on the subject of square dances. At ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... when convinced that their uncle loved Ursula too well not to secure her happiness at their expense, became as underhand as it was bitter. Meeting in Dionis's salon (as they had done every evening since the revolution of 1830) they inveighed against the lovers, and seldom separated without discussing some way of circumventing the old man. ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... very ready for a rest and a picnic. It was a long time since their lunch at the inn, and the frosty air had given them keen appetites. It was too cold to sit still, however, for more than five or ten minutes; a bitter wind had sprung up, and the snow, which had only fallen very lightly before, began to come down in ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... (founded on the utterly mistaken but popular notion that the financial prosperity of the country you trade with is inimical to your own prosperity) began to increase. On the German side it was somewhat bitter. On the English side, though not so bitter, it was aggravated by the really shameful ignorance prevailing in this country with regard to things German, and the almost entire neglect of the German tongue in our schools and universities and among our literary folk. As an expression (though ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... "Complete View of the Controversy," which is manifestly meant for a complete extinction of Mr. Collier. Dr. Ingleby's book is quite a good one of its kind, and those who seek to know the history and see the grounds of this famous and bitter controversy will find it very serviceable. It gives, what it professes to give, a complete view of the whole subject from the beginning, and treats most of the prominent points of it with care, and generally ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Loud and bitter were the curses which the peasants uttered at finding themselves taken from their homes and compelled to perform service for which the pay, if received at all, would be scanty in the extreme. There was, however, no help for it; and when all were collected they started ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... Hollis? Well, I must be still. It is indeed too bitter that one man, Any one man's mere presence, should suspend England's combined endeavor: little ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... generosity award the prize of the conqueror, do thou decide and allot the palm; but if my enterprise go little to my liking, what prize canst thou owe to the beaten, who will be wrapped either in cruel death or in bitter shame? These things commonly go with feebleness, these are the wages of the defeated, for whom naught remains but utter infamy. What guerdon must be paid, what thanks offered, to him who lacks the prize of courage? Who has ever garlanded with ivy the weakling in War, or decked him with a conqueror's ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... slowly, Cavendish holding the revolver at the Mexican's head, the latter grinning savagely, his dark eyes never still. Bitter hate, desperate resolve, marked his every action, although he sought to appear indifferent. The girl's lips were compressed, and her eyes met ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... Moulton, he kept a school by day, made or cobbled shoes by night, and preached on Sunday. So Paul had made tents of his native Cilician goatskin in the days when infant Christianity was chased from city to city, and the cross was a reproach only less bitter, however, than evangelical dissent in Christian England in the eighteenth century. The providence which made and kept young Carey so long a shoemaker, put him in the very position in which he could most fruitfully receive and nurse the sacred fire that made him the most ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... Something dainty. A candied rose leaf after all the bitter war lozenges. A miss. A kiss. A golf stick. A motor car. Or, if need be, a bit of khaki, but without one single spot of blood or mud, and nicely pressed as to those fetching peg-top trouser effects where they wing out just below the skirt-coat. The oldest story in the world ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... into the yard in advance of the team, rushed up to her mother with outstretched hand. But Katrina shut her eyes and stood still. So many bitter thoughts arose in her at that moment! She felt that she could never forgive the daughter for being alive and coming back so sound of wind and limb, after letting her parents wait in vain for her all these years. She almost wished the daughter had ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... a grain-field." This is probably the clue, and the foolish dream was for a woman to whom his brother refers as having repelled Alfred's homage with harshness, and having called forth from him some short and extremely bitter verses beginning "Oui, femme," and another called "Adieu!" in which there prevails a tone of quiet but deep feeling. This is a sad story: he apparently united the volatility and vagrancy of fancy, the inconstancy of light shallow natures, with the ardor and intensity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Nevertheless, in the six galleys some seventy Christians were found, and at once freed. It was terrible to think that in the galleys that had been destroyed a large number of Christians must have perished in the flames, and Gervaise expressed bitter regret that he had not considered that his attack by fire ships must necessarily involve the loss of so many ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... circumstance throwing a narrower gulf between this person and himself than what existed between him and most other men—or to some perception of an extraordinary mental character in this limping youth, which was then hid from other eyes. After grinning upon him for a moment with a smile less bitter than his wont, the dwarf passed to the door, double-locked it, and then coming up to the stranger, seized him by the wrist with one of his iron hands, and said, 'Man, hae ye ony poo'er?' By this he meant magical power, to which he had himself ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the door was forced open, and in we rushed, seizing the husband from the arms of his wife, and very often allowing him scarcely time to put on his clothes, while we were compelled to endure the bitter invectives, the tears, the screams, and abuse of his wife, whom we were thus cruelly robbing. Sometimes the men, aided by their better halves, made an attempt at resistance, but were speedily overpowered, bound hand and foot, and carried off. Often, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... he should not be disturbed excepting for important business, he sat down in his arm-chair and began to ponder over the events, the remembrance of which had during the last eight days filled his mind with so many gloomy thoughts and bitter recollections. Then, instead of plunging into the mass of documents piled before him, he opened the drawer of his desk, touched a spring, and drew out a parcel of cherished memoranda, amongst which he had carefully arranged, in characters only known to himself, the names of all those who, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... first the voyage was going wrong. Routed out of my hotel on a bitter March morning, I had crossed Baltimore and reached the pier-end precisely on time. At nine o'clock the tug was to have taken me down the bay and put me on board the Elsinore, and with growing irritation I sat frozen inside my taxicab and waited. On the seat, outside, the driver and ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Lawler. There was a cold, bitter grin on his lips as he stepped around the table and stood ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... until the twinkling lights in the curve of the bay showed where the weary Pilgrims had set foot on shore, in that black, bitter December weather, and planted the seed that has borne blossoms and fruits unnumbered, and shall yet bear more and more for centuries ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, ... but the water is naught"—worthless, not fit to drink. And Elisha "went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast salt in there, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters." To my mind these bitter waters of Jericho symbolize the truths of God's Word, as these truths appear to the mind and affect the taste of the unconverted man. Read the Bible to the man who has no relish, no love for its truth. Is it not to his soul like the waters of Jericho—"naught," or nothing? These ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... Gladstone had made bitter political enemies already, who were not at all reconciled to his election, nor pleased with him. That they were not at all slow to express unbecomingly their bitterness against him, because of their unexpected defeat, the following shows from the Reflector: ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... is not left without the means of defense; for on its inside there are numerous fine bristles, which, interlacing each other, interpose a barrier to the entrance of every thing but sound. Moreover, between the roots of these hairs there are numerous little glands, that secrete a nauseous, bitter wax, which, by its offensiveness, either deters insects from entering, or entangles them and prevents their advance in case they do enter. This wax, then, is very serviceable. But its usefulness does not stop here. When the ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... do well. The phlegmatic and stony Englishman neither felt nor cared whether Hawthorne spoke well or ill; and, although pleased that he did speak well, invested no particular sympathy in the matter, either for or against, and so spared Hawthorne's shyness the last bitter drop in the cup, which would have been a recognition of his own moral dread. Hawthorne bitterly records his own sufferings. He says, in one of his books, "At this time I acquired this accursed habit of solitude." It has been said that ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... vividly as though they were but memories of yesterday the fears and wild tales of that one terrible winter when the "Red Terror"—the smallpox—swept in a pitiless plague of death throughout the northern wilderness. It was then that there came down from the north, one bitter cold day, a ragged and half-starved boy, whose mother and father had died of the plague in a little cabin fifty miles away, and who from the day he staggered into the home of Henry Janesse, became Meleese's playmate and chum. This boy was ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... made presiding officer of the Senate and by 1852 his leadership within the State was so firmly established that it was said of him "he is the Democratic Party of California." January 10, 1857, after years of bitter struggle, Broderick was elected United States Senator, and the following March was duly received as a member of that august body. From the first his had been a strenuous career, he had been the storm center of heated contests, personal and political, in ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... this time that's gone by,' he says to me, bitter-like, 'to think a man can't come back to 'is native 'ome without being spied on for what ought long ago to be dead and forgot!' But you're not trying to lay hands on 'im, to put 'im in the ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... the chemist's wife, looking angrily at her husband, who was undressing quickly to get into bed again. "Oh, how unhappy I am!" she repeated, suddenly melting into bitter tears. "And nobody knows, nobody ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... With bitter weeping and dread presentiments of evil she parted from him, saying: "Farewell, mine own sweet son! God send you good keeping! Let me kiss you once ere you go, for God knoweth when we shall kiss together again." That was the last time she saw the lad. He and ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Evidently he was looking for trouble, or could not hold his liquor, or both. The frenzy of planetarization, Ramsey knew from bitter experience on other worlds, made irrational behavior like this typical. He studied the drunken Irwadian carefully. In all the time he'd spent on Irwadi, he'd never been able to tell a native's age by his green, scale-skinned, ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... have had to grin; and Pilar had persuaded me not to be heartbroken yet. If I laughed, I sympathized too, and liked Dick better than ever because we were eating the same bitter-sweet orange of which the voice had sung. It seemed that Pilar had neither accepted nor refused him, but had asked for time to think; and he would have been a little encouraged if she had not suddenly said, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a bitter sort of laugh. 'What does it matter if a Marston girl does break her neck, ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... his heart he still felt a sort of bitter discontent with himself and with the Countess. Would not their daily intercourse be made disagreeable by the suspicion that he would be aware of in her? Should he not be compelled to watch with tiresome and scrupulous attention all that he said and did, his very looks, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... weapon—I did not even notice what it was, I was so glad when it came swiftly—when I felt I could not save myself. The blow was like a kiss—the kiss of death, welcoming me out of this life of sad and bitter prospects." ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... I assure ye, Miss Grace, and on such an afternoon, too. I've been askin' at old Adam the gardener, and he says there isna one o' the kind left worth mindin' in all the valley o' Kirklands. So do not go wanderin' on such an errand in this bitter wind, missy." ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... a bitter memory of failure. For if you disbelieved what science said was true, where were you? And if it might not be true, why was it said? Even now he shuddered at the chaos he would have to face, live with. No ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... in a bitter, repellent tone, and yet Melissa felt that it pained the old man to refuse her. So she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue, And where ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... next after the tilting, she had sent him; whereat my Lord of Essex, in a kind of emulation, and as though he would have limited her favour, said "Now I perceive every fool must have a favour." This bitter and public affront came to Sir Charles Blount's ear, at which he sent him a challenge; which was accepted by my lord, and they met near Marybone Park, where my lord was hurt in the thigh, and disarmed. The Queen, missing of the men, was very curious to learn the truth, but at last it was whispered ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... Deccan or Bengal. One of the most mischievous results of the Aryan propaganda, and one which may well cause the most immediate anxiety, is the growing antagonism which it has bred between Hindus and Mahomedans, for the Mahomedans are convinced that the Arya Samaj is animated with no less bitter hostility towards ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... clean complexion, and an open brow. And if there's a suggestion of superciliousness in the tilt of his nose, of scepticism in the twirl of his moustaches, and of obstinacy in the squareness of his chin—ma foi, you must take the bitter with the sweet. Besides, he has decent hair, and plenty of it—he'll not go bald. And he dresses well, and wears his clothes with an air. In short, you'll make a very handsome couple. Anyhow, when your family are gathered round the evening lamp to-night, I 'll stake ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... arrived, and the mysterious little packet was placed in my hands. It contained a few valuable keepsakes and my father's letter, written out of the bitter anguish of a broken heart. He told the story of his disinheritance, with which you are familiar; but the loss of the property he cared little for in comparison with the loss of his father's love; but even that was as nothing to the sorrow which ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... that; and here, lest I should draw my loyal Richard as he was not, let me say, once for all, that his oaths were but the outgushings of a warm and impulsive heart, rarely bitter, and never, as I believe, backed by surly rancor or ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the bay, which were tossed wildly to and fro as if by a coming storm; yet the wind had fallen perceptibly, and the only alarming sign was the peculiar look of the sky. After having made these observations, and sucked up as much bitter dirty water as I could contrive to do, I returned with the others to ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... a mile." Some proverbs are simply imbecile, others are immoral. That one evolved out of the naive heart of the great Russian people, "Man discharges the piece, but God carries the bullet," is piously atrocious, and at bitter variance with the accepted conception of a compassionate God. It would indeed be an inconsistent occupation for the Guardian of the poor, the innocent, and the helpless, to carry the bullet, for instance, into the heart ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... might be called a faith in the divine right of Imperial Railroads to rule, but it was left out of the verbal creed. This is far from implying hypocrisy to Mr. Vane. It was his foundation-rock and too sacred for light conversation. When he allowed himself to be bitter against various "young men with missions" who had sprung up in various States of the Union, so-called purifiers of politics, he would call them the unsuccessful with a grievance, and recommend to them the practice of charity, forbearance, and other Christian virtues. Thank God, his State was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... grog-shops, the gambling-houses, and the brothels, beg at the feet of each individual fisticuff of his constituency to give the noble, educated, native-born, tax-paying women of the State of New York as much right as he has, that would be too bitter a pill for a native-born ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... the increasing clangor. Milton was amused, but Ben grew bitter. Something strong came out in him, too. His ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... heard Black Harry then say aloud; 'now, we'll pay out that devil below! I wonder how he'll like his mutinous dogs at close quarters?' and he laughed a horrible bitter laugh. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... a few days before, to the Editor, and her hints had been partially carried out. It gave a scathing account of Sir Wilfrid's course on the suffrage question—of his earlier coquettings with the woman's cause, his defection and "treachery," the bitter and ingenious hostility with which he was now pursuing the Bill before the House of Commons. "An amiable, white-haired nonentity for the rest of the world—who only mention him to marvel that such a man was ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... countenance of Sperver was an expression of suppressed wrath, on that of his companion bitter irony. This worthy sportsman, whose woeful physiognomy had struck me on my first arrival at Nideck, was as thin and dry as a lath. His hunting-jacket was girded tightly about him by his belt, from which hung a hunting-knife with a horn handle; long leathern ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... the snow fell nearly all day. The rations were all gone, and progress against the wind and through the drifts was impossible. Another night of such bitter cold and exposure would in all ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Penthea had starved herself to death from hatred to Bassanes, and a third follows to tell her that Ithocles, her betrothed husband, has been murdered. Calantha bates no jot of the ceremony, but continues the dance even to the bitter end. The coronation ensues, but scarcely is the ceremony over than she can support the strain no longer, and, broken-hearted, she falls dead.—John ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... beneficent God, and their intense consciousness of evil influences, result from the terrible hardships of their lives. Having no special blessings for which to be grateful to a kind Creator, they have not evolved a conception of Him, while the constantly recurring menaces of the dark, the bitter cold, the savage wind and gnawing hunger, have led them to people the air with invisible enemies. The beneficent spirits are those of their ancestors (another Oriental touch), while they have a ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... "setting copies" for your writing— book; of guiding your mind and pen. I remember your commencement in business, and the outrage and indignity offered you in Rochester, by white competitors on no other ground than that of color.[1] I saw your bitter tears, and recollect assuring you—what afterwards proved true—that justice would overtake the offenders, and that you would live to see these enemies bite the dust! I remember your unsullied character, and your prosperity, and when your word ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... would have been 'to see your Highness,' uttered with bows so low that his beard swept the floor. Now it is 'to see you' and not so much as an inclination of the head in common courtesy. This, moreover, from one who has robbed me year by year and grown fat on bribes. It is the first of many bitter lessons, or rather the second—that of her Highness was the first; I pray that I may learn ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... put his hand to his knife, Dravot breaks his neck over his knee, and the other party runs away. So Carnehan loaded the mules with the rifles that was taken off the camels, and together we starts forward into those bitter cold mountainous parts, and never a road broader than the back of ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling |
