"Wretched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we covet Without thee would be but wretched, Without thy voice to banish sorrow, Or sweet help from thee ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... service to his fellow soldiers, and especially to those who were most sullen, most brutal or most miserable. He spoke sometimes of the next life with a cheerful certainty which made death seem less than an end of things, and he was upborne with a strange fervour which gave a kind of glory to the most wretched toil. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... perched in a mere heron's nest, formed of light wood arranged upon most fragile boughs; this wretched contrivance has swayed before the wind to an extent that would have rendered accurate aim impossible; fortunately upon such occasions I have never obtained ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... horses. They are bred, fed, trained, groomed, housed, cared for, in a way to remind one of the Houyhnhnms, and strikingly contrasting with the conditions of life among the wretched classes whose existence is hardly more tolerable than that of those quasi-human beings under whose name it pleased the fierce satirist to degrade humanity. The horses that are driven in the hansoms of London are the best I have seen in any public conveyance. I cannot say as much of those ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... me the circumstances minutely. I think that he had been at the trial, but I know that he was at the execution, and saw the wretched woman fixed to the stake, fire put to the faggots, and her body burnt. But I know two persons still alive who were present at her execution, and I endeavoured, in 1848, to ascertain from one of them the date of this event, and "made a ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... then and there I promised the Lord if he would spare me I would seek and serve Him, and I never fully broke that promise. My mother prayed for me a long time. At length we lay down, but there was little sleep for me. Next morning I rose, feeling wretched beyond expression. I tried to read in the Testament, and retired many times to secret prayer through the day, but found no relief. I gave up my race-horse to my father and requested him to sell him. I went and brought my pack of cards and gave them to mother, who threw ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Here I saw one wretch thrust through with a lance, doubling backward in his death-agony as he fell; there, another turned fiercely, and fired his pistol full at the dragoon who charged him, but missed, and was cleft next moment to the chin. In another place a wretched man had dropped on his knees, and, while in a supplicating attitude, was run through the neck by a lancer. But, to say truth, little quarter was asked by these Bashi-Bazouks, and none was granted. They fought ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... the remark that he had now found out who were his real friends; and Douglas followed him, absurdly smaller, and imitating his walk, like a curate following an archbishop.[7] You remember it the other way about; but just consider this. Douglas was in the wretched position of having ruined Wilde merely to annoy his father, and of having attempted it so idiotically that he had actually prepared a triumph for him. He was, besides, much the youngest man present, and looked younger than he was. You did not make him welcome: as far as I recollect ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... found the C.C. on the site of the now camp, surrounded by confusion and an angry crowd of experts. There had been words and more words; there had only just not been blows, and all with regard to this wretched and incessant subject of April 7th. The C.C., never broad-minded on the point, had become positively ridiculous and tiresome about that irrevocable date, April 7th. It was a dull subject in any case, said the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... horseshoes. "And to you I offer the best means of saving yourself—let me go—and of retrieving your great reputation. You boasted of making the Capataz de Cargadores famous from one end of America to the other about this wretched silver. But I bring you a better opportunity—let ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... back to Paris I left Madame d'Urfe, and walked to the Porte St. Denis to see my brother. He and his wife received me with cries of joy. I thought the wife very pretty but very wretched, for Providence had not allowed my brother to prove his manhood, and she was unhappily in love with him. I say unhappily, because her love kept her faithful to him, and if she had not been in love she ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... more do the tradespeople believe in it; or they wouldn't go home from sermon to sand the sugar, and put sloe-leaves in the tea, and send out lying puffs of their vamped-up goods, and grind the last farthing out of the poor creatures who rent their wretched stinking houses. And as for the workmen—they laugh at it all, I can tell you. Much good religion is doing for them! You may see it's fit only for women and children—for go where you will, church or chapel, you see hardly anything but bonnets and babies! I don't ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... will have got into the habit as the necessary enjoyments of life. Take away then from persons in such habits the power of these their ordinary gratifications, and you will make them languid, and even wretched. There will be a wide chasm, which they will not know how to fill up; a dull vacuum of time, which will make their existence insipid; a disappointment, which will carry with it a lacerating sting. In some of the higher circles of life, accustomed to such rounds of ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... for Gouroo's suggestion, you would have allowed him to die; and he refused to show you any mercy. Your fate seemed sealed—unless I could contrive a scheme to save you; but I could think of nothing; and the anticipation of your death made me feel so utterly wretched, that at last I entreated my father that, if he would not spare you, he would at least not compel me to witness your sufferings. He was still dreadfully angry with me for interceding in your behalf, but I persisted; and at length he told me that if I did not wish to witness the Customs ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... mockingly that he so soon received into favour the fallen and the repentant. But St. Martin answered him sorrowfully, saying, 'Oh most miserable that thou art! if thou also couldst cease to persecute and seduce wretched men, if thou also couldst repent, thou also shouldst find mercy and ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... spot it is scarcely possible to imagine any place more completely wretched. It was a swamp, containing a small space of firm ground at one end, and almost wholly unadorned with trees of any sort or description. There were, indeed, a few stinted [sic] firs upon the very edge of the water, but these were so diminutive in size as hardly ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... Mellasys left us. It was, he said, the day of the election for President. How wretched that America should not be governed by hereditary sovereigns and an order ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... had found the Man whom I had sought till then in vain. In expectation of hearing you again, every day I visited your Cathedral: You remained secluded within the Abbey walls, and I always withdrew, wretched and disappointed. The Night was more propitious to me, for then you stood before me in my dreams; You vowed to me eternal friendship; You led me through the paths of virtue, and assisted me to support the vexations of life. The Morning dispelled these pleasing visions; I woke, and ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... with them. In this wider sense, the spiritualistic theory is perfectly admissible; but what is not at all admissible is the narrow and pitiful interpretation which its proponents too often give it. They see the dead crowding around us like wretched puppets indissolubly attached to the insignificant scene of their death by the thousand little threads of insipid memories and infantile hobbies. They are supposed to be here, blocking up our homes, more abjectly human than if they were still alive, vague, inconsistent, garrulous, ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... mad,' said Cortes, scanning me; 'he says that this wretched creature is an Englishman. Come, be off both of you, or somebody else may make the same mistake,' and he waved his sword in token to us to go, deeming that I could not understand his words; then added angrily, as de Garcia, speechless with rage, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... Running Deer's peltries would be spread out, and after a half hour of silent consideration on his part and trader's talk on mine, furs to the value of so many beaver skins would be passed across for the coveted gun. I remember it was a wretched old squaw with a toothless, leathery, much-bewrinkled face and a reputation for knowledge of Indian medicines, who first opened my eyes to the sort of trade the Indians had been driving with Hamilton. The old creature was bent almost double ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... or thirty have really available voices, well trained and divided, it was infinitely more beautiful than any ordinary church service—like the Trinita di Monte Convent service more than anything else, and must be very good for them, quite different in its effect on their minds from our wretched ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... you had seen him, I think you would have said he was a hundred times too handsome. Well, from what I could see at vacation time she was never sufficiently in love with him to let him have her money; and I am sure the last years of his life were wretched and full of hard places because of his financial ill-success. Poor father." The girl's voice failed and she waited, looking down at the gloved hands in her lap. "I had been at home from school only a few months when he died," she went on. "My stepmother endured me and that was all. She is ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... Me." He takes our yoke and we take His and we find it a thousand times easier to carry one of His burdens than to carry our own. How much more delightful it is to spend an hour in supplication for another than five minutes in pleading for ourselves. Are we not weary of carrying our wretched loads? ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... either makes it impossible for the objects of his care to borrow at all, or places them at the mercy of the worst class of usurers. A lawgiver who, from tenderness for laboring men, fixes the hours of their work and the amount of their wages, is certain to make them far more wretched than he found them. And so a government which, not content with repressing scandalous excesses, demands from its subjects fervent and austere piety, will soon discover that, while attempting to render an impossible service to the cause of virtue, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is strikingly shown in the fact that in some cases, where the county relief funds are distributed through a Mormon clerk of paupers for out-door relief, the Mormon bishop even collects one-tenth of this money, from the wretched recipients, as their contribution ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... —"Bringing me into this wretched alley!" he silently thought. His foot slipped on a mossy brick. Oh, no doubt they thought they were punishing some negligent friend or friends by letting themselves down into this sort of thing. Never mind! He recalled the tender, confiding, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... example for the rest of the ships. She was an old Indiaman, bought into the service, and now fitted out as a man-of-war, but also deeply laden with stores and merchandise of all sorts. Her crew consisted of men pressed from long voyages, while her land forces were a wretched detachment of infirm and decrepit invalids from Chelsea Hospital, desponding under the prospect of a long voyage. Her commander, Captain Kidd, before his death, predicted that misfortunes would overtake her. The Centurion, however, under the judicious management of Commodore Anson, performed ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... foundation of their tenets. These theologians were now of great importance in the world; and no poet or philosopher, even in ancient Greece, where they were treated with most respect, had ever reached equal applause and admiration with those wretched composers of metaphysical polemics. The German princes told the king, that they could not spare their divines; and as Henry had no hopes of agreement with such zealous disputants, and knew that in Germany the followers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... of this revolting food had been consumed." "The scenes I have witnessed of misery are something dreadful; and I must say that your wish for me to return with the work incomplete would not be expressed if you saw the state of these poor people. The horrible furtive looks of the wretched inhabitants hovering about one's boats haunts me.... I hope to get the Shanghai people to assist, but they do not see these things: and to read that there are human beings eating human flesh produces less effect ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... without pain have acquired a complete impunity for all sorts of crimes; for with them reproach is a stronger check than conscience. From whence we have that scene in Afranius borrowed from common life; for when the abandoned son saith, "Wretched that I am!" the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... village we found the people on the eve of one of those terrible outbursts of superstitious passion which rarely if ever pass away without some wretched human creature perishing under ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... examined the whole crew, which consisted of about two hundred soldiers, for the most part, men who had never touched a musket, and who could have been killed as ducks or who would have run away. Moreover they were in a wretched condition, and of a low order. The weather was favourable to the French, as the tide was low, and the wind from the south-east was driving the vessels towards France, so that there was no assurance for either the ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... in its stead. Charles replied by telling her to remember whom she was speaking to; that he could not be treated in that manner; and then the queen, giving way to lamentations and tears, said she was wretched and miserable; every thing that she wanted was denied her, and whatever she recommended was refused on the very account of her recommendation. Charles tried to speak, but she would not hear; she went on with her lamentations ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... more than ever convinced that the sooner we got rid of the wretched station, miscalled a colony, the better. It still supplies hides from the tipper country, ivory, bees'-wax, and a little gold. The precious metal is found, they say, in the red clay hills near Macarthy's Island; but ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... which he tells his countrymen—"If ye have endured sorrow from your own baseness of soul, impute not the fault of this to the gods. Ye have yourselves put force and dominion into the hands of these men, and have thus drawn upon yourselves wretched slavery." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... leaves to the next chapter, thou art before all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul,—and openest all its powers to receive instruction and to relish virtue.—He that has thee, has little more to wish for;—and he that is so wretched as to want thee,—wants every ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... reasonable. Patricia's temper isn't a temper at all. It's—it's a possession—a wretched family inheritance. She can't help it, poor child, any more than she could help a squint or a crooked nose, and she doesn't inherit it from your mother but only from your step-father, so why on earth ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... of the lower classes in large towns. Along with prostitution, venereal disease and alcohol, the wretched dwellings in many places lead to infamous promiscuity. In factories and mines things are still worse. In these places there is a swarm of people continually engaged in most unhealthy occupations, and only leaving their work to indulge in the most repugnant sexual excesses. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... you" in secret, a grasp of the hands behind locked doors—a sum of money pressed on me slyly—that hurt most of all—to put it away with a smile, and keep my temper. Good God! Does a Renault serve his country for money! Why, why, can they not understand, and spare me that!—the wages of the wretched trade! ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... Nice, and in February, 1898, meant to go to Africa. He wanted to visit Algiers and Tunis, but Kovalevsky, with whom he meant to travel, fell ill, and he had to give up the project. He contemplated a visit to Corsica, but did not carry out that plan either, as he was taken seriously ill himself. A wretched dentist used contaminated forceps in extracting a tooth, and Chekhov was attacked by periostitis in a malignant form. In his own words, "he was in such pain that he climbed up ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... gaped before the cock to suck in every one of those shrunk forms, so indigent of vital impulse, so pauper of civism, lust, so draughty, so vague, so lean—but not before they have had time to dower with the ah and wo of their infirmity a whole wretched "army of grand-children." And yet this man of wisdom is on the point, in his old age, of marrying once again, of producing for the good of his race still more of this poor human stuff. You see the lurid significance, the point of resemblance,—you ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... High-priest is some Roche-Aymon, some Necklace-Cardinal Louis de Rohan. The voice of the poor, through long years, ascends inarticulate, in Jacqueries, meal-mobs; low-whimpering of infinite moan: unheeded of the Earth; not unheeded of Heaven. Always moreover where the Millions are wretched, there are the Thousands straitened, unhappy; only the Units can flourish; or say rather, be ruined the last. Industry, all noosed and haltered, as if it too were some beast of chase for the mighty ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was an asylum for dope fiends. I've got a bedroom, sitter and bath on the top floor. The house is a rabbit warren of bedrooms, sitters and baths, and in every one of them there's some poor devil trying to squeeze a little kindness out of fate. That wretched taxi driver! He may have a wife waiting for him. Do you think that red-haired feller's got to the hospital yet? He had a nice cut on his own silly face—and serve him right! I hope it'll teach him that ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... of burden beside their husbands, have to drudge and wear themselves out from early morn till late to earn a bit of bread for the current day,—of all of these the learned gentleman knows nothing. With all these wretched beings, hard, raw reality wipes off the poetic coloring more easily than does the hand the colored dust of the wings of a butterfly. One look, cast by the professor at those unnumbered female sufferers, would have ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... his language and manner heightened still more the passions of the hour. The marshal, of tall and imposing stature and aspect, accompanied by his constables, brought in the prisoners. Sarah Good, a poverty-stricken, wandering, and wretched victim of ill-fortune and ill-usage, was put to the bar. Every effort was made by the examining magistrate, aided by the officious interference of the marshal, or other deluded or evil-disposed persons,—who, like him, were permitted ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... different course, almost every man returned to them. I do not believe there is any observation upon human nature better founded than this; and, in many cases, it is a very painful truth; for where early habits have been mean and wretched, the joy and elevation resulting from better modes of life must be damped by the gloomy consciousness of being under an almost inevitable doom to sink back into a situation which we recollect with disgust. It surely may be prevented, by constant attention and unremitting exertion to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... than the foolish creature you took so easily with a marriage ring, because you could not have her in an easier way! But the old, silly country girl has gone and left me this——Why did it have to be?" she exclaimed more incoherently. "Why did you not let me read what you are? I had only a few wretched weeks to learn you—and I was ignorant and foolish and young. You had me helpless at Barrington! Was it such a clever thing to cheat a girl from a ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the first time I got out of work. One Saturday, without a minute's warning, a lot of us were told that we wouldn't be wanted for a week or two. Lizzie and I were both told. She could hardly keep herself from crying but I couldn't cry. I was too wretched. I thought of everything and there seemed nothing to do anywhere. At home they couldn't help me. I shrank from asking aunt, for she'd only offered to help me to come back and what could I do in Toowoomba if ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... the walls, huts were erected to shelter the fugitives, who were exposed to all the inclemency of the weather. Thus passed some wretched days and worse nights, sleep being constantly interrupted by alarms, due to the fact that the rebels were in possession of all the buildings in the place, except the fort, many ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... honour, and is about to lose the poor consolation of his stolen riches as much as I blame you, for, by Heaven! I can very well see how he was brought to it. I can understand, and pity him. It is such women as you that strew this degraded coast with wretched exiles, that make men forget their ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... miserable agony—I withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy strength, Hester; but let it be guided by the will which God hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old man is opposing it with all his might!—with all his own might, and the fiend's! Come, Hester, come! ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... after precious things, And leaps for joy when some poor worm he fingers! That such a human voice should dare intrude, Where all was full of ghostly tones and features! Yet ah! this once, my gratitude Is due to thee, most wretched of earth's creatures. Thou snatchedst me from the despairing state In which my senses, well nigh crazed, were sunken. The apparition was so giant-great, That to a very dwarf my soul had shrunken. I, godlike, who in fancy saw but ...
— Faust • Goethe
... cellars and alleys—while the cats are out spending the summer in the country. And all the old women that couldn't get away sit peeking through the blinds gossiping about their neighbors—"See, he has his winter suit on"—and sneer at the worn-down heels of the passers-by. And from the poor quarters wretched beings drag themselves out of their holes, cripples, creatures without noses or ears, the wicked and unfortunate—filling the parks and squares as if they had conquered the city—there where the well-dressed ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... girl told me not long ago that she was wretched at the thought she must soon leave school, for she dreaded the society life from which there seemed no escape. She wished to find some charitable work instantly which would be on the face of it so absorbing that it would be a complete excuse for her to ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... become both a widow and an orphan in the dread night of St. Bartholomew. She had made her own escape to Switzerland; and ten years afterwards she had united herself in marriage with the Prince of Orange. At the age of thirty-two, she now found herself desolate and wretched in a foreign land, where she had never felt thoroughly at home. The widow and children of William the Silent were almost without the necessaries of life. "I hardly know," wrote the Princess to her brother-in-law, Count John, "how the children and I are to maintain ourselves according to the honour ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Emperor, when the wretched Lesage had been conducted from the room. 'We have not done such a bad piece of work between the coffee and the breakfast. It was your idea, Josephine, and I give you credit for it. But now, de Laval, I feel that we owe ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... believe that we shall receive the due reward of our deeds, whether they be good or whether they be evil. {8} But how shall any receive in heaven the due reward of evil deeds done on earth? and how, in hell, shall any wretched soul receive in any truth the due rewards of good deeds done on earth? Yet in each, there was some good even in the worst, and some evil ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... hard by, with peasants in bright blue smocks, and grunting pigs.... And on Sunday, at church, the precentor, who sang out of tune, and the old priest, who went to sleep as he was saying Mass: the family walk along the station road, where all the time he had to take off his hat politely to other wretched beings, who were under the same impression of the necessity of going for a walk all together,—until at last they reached the sunny fields, above which larks soared invisible,—or along by the still mirror of the canal, on ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... much of his time with his friend the bishop; much with his daughter Mrs. Bold, now, alas, a widow; and had almost daily visited the wretched remnant of his former subjects, the few surviving bedesmen now left at Hiram's Hospital. Six of them were still living. The number, according to old Hiram's will, should always have been twelve. But ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... getting entangled in the thickets. All the details of the interview presented themselves before his mind with remorseless clearness. He seemed more lonely, more unfortunate, more disgusted with himself and with all else than he ever had been before. Ashamed of the wretched part he had just been enacting, he felt almost childish repugnance to returning to Vivey, and tried to pick out the paths that would take him there by the longest way. But he was not sufficiently accustomed to laying out a route for himself, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... what that means," she went on, working herself back into a sort of despairing anger again. "You do not know. To have built one's whole life on one thing, as I did! To have believed only one thing, as I did! To find that it is all gone, all untrue, all a wretched piece of acting—oh, you do not know! That woman's face haunts me in the dark—she is always there, with him, wherever I look, as they are together now at her house. Do you understand? Do you know what I feel? You pity me—but do you ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... after the physicians had gone about their business, Zerviah Hope wandered, a little forlornly, through the wretched town. Scip, the negro boatman, found him a corner to spend the night. It was a passable place, but Hope could not sleep; he had already seen too much. His soul was parched with the thirst of sympathy. He walked his hot attic till the dawn came. As it grew brighter ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... In this wretched mood they went in to tea, sitting at the table like two dark shadows falling across a room full of sunshine. Everybody was kind to them. Jessie did her utmost to restore them to good humor. Uncle Morris said funny things, hoping to make them smile. But it was no use. Smile they would ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... eldest girl screaming and screeching at the thoughts of going to bed, because Sally, in order to bring her under her authority, had told her a frightful 'raw-head-and-bloody-bones' story; the horse had broken into the garden, and made wretched work with the vegetables; and fifty pounds of butter had become fit for the grease-pot, because the hoops of the firkin had sprung, and Sally had so much to do, that she never thought of going to see whether the butter was covered ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... people would not accept this position. They sent a brother to bully me. It was an unwise move. My temper was wilder in those days, and I had strong provocation; yet I repent that I did not keep my hands off the throat of that wretched, blustering civilian. It was all arranged peacefully at last, and I have not seen her since, though I hear of her from time to time, as I did yesterday. This happened eleven long years ago, and she has never given me a chance of ridding myself of her since. She is always carefully ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Practical Effect of Illogical Reasons, and An Estimate of the Practical Influence of False Assertions. How the hive was buzzing when these titles were written down: but now I really hardly remember anything of what I meant to say, and what I remember appears wretched stuff. The effervescence has gone from the champagne; it is flat and dead. Still, it is possible that these subjects may recover their interest; and the author hereby gives notice that he reserves the right of producing an essay ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... us!' sighed my aunt. 'I know all about it, Trot! Barkis and myself had quite a gossip while you were out with Dick. I know all about it. I don't know where these wretched girls expect to go to, for my part. I wonder they don't knock out their brains against—against mantelpieces,' said my aunt; an idea which was probably suggested to her by her ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... proctor of the three estates, formally renounced their homage and fealty, and Sir Thomas Blount, steward of the household, broke his staff of office, and announced that the royal establishment was disbanded. Thus the calamitous reign of Edward of Carnarvon came to a wretched end. His utter inefficiency as a king makes it impossible to lament his fate. Yet few revolutions have ever been conducted with more manifest self-seeking than that which hurled Edward from power. The angry spite of the adulterous queen, the fierce vengeance and greed of Roger Mortimer, the craft ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Dir to escort him he swung round to the left. A screen of hillside and grey rock moved across the face of the country behind him. The last outpost was left behind. The Fort and the Signal Tower on the pinnacle opposite and the English flag flying over all were hidden from his sight. Wretched as any exile from his native land, Shere All went up into the lower passes of the Himalayas. Days were to pass and still the high snow-peaks which glittered in the sky, gold in the noonday, silver in the night ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... nowhere. When she was alive, wherever I might be without her, everything said to me, You are going to see her. Nothing says so now. I find no solace but in my tears. I cannot bear the weight of my wounded and bleeding heart, and yet I know not where to rest it. I am wretched; for so it is when the heart is set on the love of things that pass away.'" "The days of this affliction were soon shortened," says St. Simon; "from the first moment I saw him, I was scared at his fixed, haggard ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... did her best to comfort me, but I was in no frame of mind to talk it all over, which was, I knew, her main idea of solace,—that and frequent offers of tempting food. On the other hand, my father made no allusion to the wretched incident during the fortnight he remained at Tinker's Reach. He treated me exactly as if nothing had happened, except that every morning after breakfast he proposed a walk through the woods or up the mountain. Indifferent to everything as I was at the moment, I had a consciousness that ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Germans. Thus, at the close of this period, this unhappy country, desolated of its inhabitants, abandoned by its masters, stripped of its artisans, and deprived of all its spirit, was in a condition the most wretched and forlorn. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... crawled all over. They winked at me. The way grew so narrow that we had to walk one by one through lines of wall perforated with holes for dead bodies. Once in a while we would come to a small chapel, for miserable variety's sake, and be told to admire some very old, very wretched painting. Jonah and the whale were represented in a double-barreled miracle picture. Not only was the whale about to swallow Jonah, but he was only as large as a good-sized brook trout, while Jonah towered away above him like a Goliath. I found myself wondering ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... let doubt die. He overshadowed the ship. Invulnerable in his promise of speedy corruption he trampled on our self-respect, he demonstrated to us daily our want of moral courage; he tainted our lives. Had we been a miserable gang of wretched immortals, unhallowed alike by hope and fear, he could not have lorded it over us with a more pitiless assertion ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... errand that had made her sail on the vessel a week after the spectacular torpedoing of a sister-ship? Did she know this Van Blarcom or did she merely dread any notice? And above all, who was the man and had he been watching when I tossed that wretched extra across ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... respect. The Sultan[31] received me at once on the day of arrival, and made his return visit to me yesterday. I confess I was not much impressed with either his appearance or general ability. He is, to say the truth, a wretched creature, prematurely aged, and having nothing whatever to say for himself. A few commonplace civilities was all the conversation which passed between us. I said everything I could think of to make a conversation, among other things messages of civility from yourself; but though he appeared ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... The wretched George Deaves played with the objects on his desk. "All very well to say I'll send it," he muttered. "But where am I going to get it? Useless ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... always unwell. This was the reason why Asclepius and his sons practised no such art. They were acting in the interest of the public, and did not wish to preserve useless lives, or raise up a puny offspring to wretched sires. Honest diseases they honestly cured; and if a man was wounded, they applied the proper remedies, and then let him eat and drink what he liked. But they declined to treat intemperate and worthless subjects, even though they might have ...
— The Republic • Plato
... mad; you can only save him with a hair of the same dog," one of the prisoner's measuredly suggests, folding his arms, and looking mechanically upon the wretched man. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... you, with my own wretched affairs!" cried the young count reproachfully. "I must not trespass upon ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... laborers they may only find employment in the proportion of one "unprotected alien" to two "Roumanians" under any one employer. In short, by the cumulative effect of successive restrictions, the Jews of Roumania have become reduced to a state of wretched misery. Shut out from nearly every avenue of self-support which is open to the poor of other lands, and ground down by poverty as the natural result of their discriminatory treatment, they are rendered incapable of lifting themselves ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... pre-eminently so to Maurice on this occasion; but he was inflexible as adamant. The mother, the wife, and the son of Groeneveld, threw themselves at his feet, imploring pardon. Prayers, tears and sobs were alike ineffectual. It is even said that Maurice asked the wretched mother "why she begged mercy for her son, having refused to do as much for her husband?" To which cruel question she is reported to have made the sublime answer—"Because my son is guilty, and ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... earth is Syria, as thou knowest, my lord, where live the wretched Hittites, that is the hereditary land of the Hebrew, Canaan. The black earth is that of the ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... Englishmen, under a German adventurer, Count Mansfeld, through France into the Palatinate. The French insisted that he should maroh through Holland. It mattered little which way he took. Without provisions, and without money to buy them, the wretched troops sickened and died in the winter frosts. Buckingham's first military enterprise ended ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... pierce With sharp knives the rough air, In which a scrap of bird hangs all alone. A few street lights wade towards the city, Extinguished candles for a corpse. And a smear Of people shrinks together and is soon Drowned in the wretched white swamp. ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... why Fitz had started. The poor, gawky, long-legged, tearful, frightened, overgrown, wretched girl had not struck him as ugly; she had struck him as the most pathetic and to-be-pitied object that he had ever seen. I do not account for this. I state it. Had she been pretty and self-possessed he would have left the room presently on some excuse, but now he stayed—not attracted, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... odious. She employed her in the meanest work of the house: the young girl scoured the dishes, tables, etc., and scrubbed madam's chamber, and those of misses, her daughters; she lay up in a sorry garret, upon a wretched straw bed, while her sisters lay in fine rooms, with floors all inlaid, upon beds of the very newest fashion, and where they had looking glasses so large that they might see themselves at their full length from head ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... marks, but Fate, Providence, or whatever you choose to call it, favored them, or else the Germans were wretched shots, which last, in a measure, is ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... had read Ian Maclaren's story of the wretched beadle who, newly inflated, but not profited, by his lonely wedding journey to a Presbyterian synod, resolved to experiment in the exercise of authority upon his bride. But, alas! he had read to his destruction. He remembered with what ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... seagull shrieking soars, The lurid atmosphere portentous lours; Night's sullen spirit groans in every gale, And o'er the waters draws the darkling veil, Sighs in thy hair, and chills thy throbbing breast— Go wretched mourner!—weep thy griefs to rest! "Yet, though through life is lost each fond delight, Though set thy earthly sun in dreary night, Oh! raise thy thoughts to yonder starry plain, And own thy sorrow selfish, weak, and vain: Since, while Britannia, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... completely, if their lives were only spared; of one of the passengers hiding under the seat, and only being dislodged by pulling his coat-tails; of incredible sums promised, and even offers of menial service, for the preservation of their wretched carcases—are received with the greatest gusto; but we are in possession of facts which may lead to more serious accusations. Although one of the passengers is said to have lost a large sum of money intrusted to him, while attempting with barefaced effrontery ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... here, I would soon prove to you that it is impossible for me, with my wretched handwriting, to imitate the fine and regular hand of my father. What is your ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... you are all my good. And who am I that I should dare to speak to you? I am the poorest and least of your servants, a wretched little worm, far more miserable and contemptible than I know or dare to say, Yet remember me, Lord, because I am nothing, I have nothing, and am worth nothing. Do not turn your face from me; do not defer your coming; do not withdraw your consolation, lest my soul become like ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... From this wretched listlessness of mind, alternated now by vehement resentment against Louise, now by the reproach of my own sense of honour in leaving that honour in so questionable a point of view, I was aroused by a letter from ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... critical faculty. Even the tremendous shock of disappointment, discomfiture, and exile which resulted from the success of Napoleon the Third, though it started a new wave and gust of oceanic and cyclonic force, range, and volume in his soul, found little prose vent, except the wretched stuff of Napoleon le Petit, to chequer the fulgurant outburst of the Chatiments, the apocalyptic magnificence of the Contemplations, and the almost unmatched vigour, variety, and vividness of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... plate-glass is insured. His bunch of keys is insured. He's insured against employers' liability. He's insured against war. He's insured against loss of business profits. The interest on his mortgage securities is insured. His wretched little automobile is insured. I do believe he was once insured against the eventuality ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... whose number I profess myself to be one), in the obedience and death of my only Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ. In whom, by Thy mere grace, I doubt not myself to be elected to eternal salvation, whereof Thou hast given unto me (unto me, O Lord, most wretched and unthankful creature) most assured signs. For being drowned in ignorance Thou hast given to me knowledge above the common sort of my brethren; my tongue hast Thou used to set forth Thy glory, to oppugne idolatry, errors, and false doctrine. Thou hast compelled me to forespeak, ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... best to write to my poor dear Aunt, for whom this will be a sad blow; but I abstained from doing so to the dear Queen of the French just as yet. I have no letters, and only learnt the melancholy event by the papers. Poor wretched Alexander! What a loss, what a ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... time has any French aviator penetrated into Belgium, nor has any French aviator committed either in Bavaria or any other part of Germany any hostile act. The opinion of Europe has already done justice to these wretched ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... silent by law, and journalists either do not hear these things, or, believing that hate is a valuable asset, suppress all mention of them. If England could ever be disgraced by a mishap, she would be disgraced by having given birth to those Englishmen, few and wretched, who, when an enemy behaves generously, conceal or deny the fact. And consider the effect of this silence on the Germans. There are some German officers, as I said, who are better than the German military handbooks, and better than their monstrous chiefs. ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... make the accepted belief in his death a fact. What could she do but act, since the day she got a letter from the Far North, which took her out to Jansen, nominally to nurse those stricken with smallpox under Father Bourassa's care, actually to be where her wretched husband could come to her once a year, as he had asked with ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... he appeared satisfied and consented to come on board. Good God! Margaret, if you had seen the man who thus capitulated for his safety, your surprise would have been boundless. His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition. We attempted to carry him into the cabin, but as soon as he had quitted the fresh air he fainted. We accordingly brought him back to the deck and restored him to animation by rubbing him with brandy and forcing him to swallow a small quantity. As soon as he showed signs ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... he paused, The lady of his love re-entered there; She was serene and smiling then, and yet She knew she was by him beloved; she knew— For quickly comes such knowledge—that his heart Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw That he was wretched, but she saw not all. He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp He took her hand; a moment o'er his face A tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced, and then it faded, as it came; He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps Retired, but not as bidding her ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... croaking voice, which combined, in anything but an agreeable manner, a discordantly high tone with a drowsily languid utterance. "Pray sit down. And don't trouble yourself to move the chair, please. In the wretched state of my nerves, movement of any kind is exquisitely painful to me. Have you seen your studio? Will ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... in the trade, wrote in 1768: "Yet I never saw an instance of cruelty in ten or twelve years' experience in that branch equal to the cruelty exercised upon those poor Irish.... Self interest prompted the baptized heathen to take some care of their wretched slaves for a market, but no other care was taken of those poor Protestant Christians from Ireland but to deliver as many as possible alive on shoar upon the cheapest terms, no matter how they fared upon the voyage nor in what condition they ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... a third division, is the place to which Laki Tenangan consigns suicides; wretched and woe begone in appearance, their souls wander about in the jungle and in the clearings trying to pick up a living by eating what roots and fruits they can find. This joyless Hereafter is calculated to make those who contemplate suicide, rather perform some self-sacrificing ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... quarters were like in the mediaeval towns, one must visit the Ghetto of Rome or ancient Prague. The latter place especially has, in all respects, preserved its antique appearance. We must picture to ourselves a large enclosure of wretched houses, irregularly built, divided by small streets with no attempt at uniformity. The principal thoroughfare is lined with stalls, in which are sold not only old clothes, furniture, and utensils, but also new and glittering articles. The inhabitants of this ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... was about to leave the room, but Feodor held her back. No reserve, no concealment were any longer possible to him. He only felt that he was infinitely wretched, and that he had lost the hope of his life. "Elise," he said, in that soft, sad tone, which had formerly charmed her heart, "I came to you to save me; you have thrust me back into an abyss. Like a drowning man I stretched out my hand to you, that in your arms I might live ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... pour some strengthening mixture. He gave me no medicine, except some digestive pills four days ago, and a lotion for my ears. I certainly do feel better and stronger, but my ears are buzzing and ringing perpetually, day and night. I can with truth say that my life is very wretched; for nearly two years past I have avoided all society, because I find it impossible to say to people, I am deaf! In any other profession this might be more tolerable, but in mine such a condition is truly frightful. Besides, what would my ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls That stay his cure: their malady convinces The great assay of art; but at his touch— Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand— They ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... point the startled look of the poor girl alarmed the father. She bent her head, in a listening attitude, as if eager to catch every word that was spoken by some one in the distance. Ah, too well the wretched parent knew on what her thoughts were running. Too well he knew where and when the blow had fallen that smote his child to the dust—perhaps had opened to her the gate of death. A deep, stifled, half sigh, half groan escaped from her lips, and she ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... The Rat did. It must always be remembered of him that his wretched father, who had each year sunk lower and lower in the under-world, had been a gentleman once, a man who had been familiar with good manners and had been educated in the customs of good breeding. Sometimes when he was drunk, and sometimes when he was partly sober, he talked to The Rat of many things ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... leisure for reflection, the dire doubt returned in full strength, and I bitterly pondered upon it. Need I name the subject of my wretched ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... had taken the wretched murderer in hand. Robert Damiens was a lackey out of place, a native of Artois, of weak mind, and sometimes appearing to be deranged. In his vague and frequently incoherent depositions, he appeared animated by a ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... have been touched at the appearance this deserted spot presented. It was like the skeleton of something that had formerly lived. A few wretched trees bordered a plain where the ground was hidden under the black dust of the mineral fuel, but no cinders nor even fragments of coal were to be seen. All had been carried ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... majesty of AEnothea, the undulating priestess of the Abominable Shape. His nerves macerated by this sinful apparition, Baldur struggled to resist her mute command. What was it? He saw her wish streaming from her eyes. Despair! Despair! Despair! There is no hope for thee, wretched earthworm! No abode but the abysmal House of Satan! Despair, and you will be welcomed! By a violent act of volition, set in motion by his fingers fumbling a small gold cross he wore as a watch-guard, the heady fumes of the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Julia! That wretched girl said something to me about our life together. What—what's the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... discussion over the adoption of the Constitution had long since given way to newspaper and pamphlet writing on political issues. These writings, frequently scurrilous and abusive, were caused by the rise of parties and, in turn, aided in forming parties. None of the wretched stuff survived. Peter Porcupine, the Aurora, and the much loftier Columbiad are alike forgotten. Yet it is indicative of the extent to which politics ruled the day to note that in Knickerbocker's History of New York, Washington Irving turns aside from the ostensible ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... he suspected her of connection with the wretched criminal whose body had only just now been hidden from mocking eyes? How much did he suspect? how much did he know? Her pale face and frightened eyes seemed to ask these questions of him; but not a sound escaped her lips. The imploring look, so strange upon her ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... no social intercourse, and constantly maintaining an unnatural position. The convict's place is lower than the most degraded menial; he must ask for permission even to get a drink of water. No serf of earth, no slave, however wretched, has a sadder lot. These unhappy mortals have yielded to temptation, have fallen, and are paying the penalty of violated law. Who can think of these degraded beings, without, to some extent, its calling ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... was that Delville Wood was captured and lost several times and became "Devil's" Wood to men who lay there under the crash and fury of massed gun-fire until a wretched remnant of what had been a glorious brigade of youth crawled out stricken and bleeding when relieved by another brigade ordered to take their turn in that devil's caldron, or to recapture it when German bombing-parties and machine-gunners had followed in the wake of fire, and had crouched ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... persuade us that, according to your system, we not only should decline the succour of the wretched, but avoid the sympathies that poets and historians would awaken in us. Probably for the sake of introducing some idle verses, written by a friend of his, he says that, following the guidance of Epicurus, we should altogether shun the theatre; and not only when ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the steamer, where we remained quiet all the next day, attending to the wounded, and ascertaining the exact extent of our loss. On the 22d we again reached Patusen. We found everything in the same wretched state as when we left; and a pile of firewood, previously cut for the use of the steamer, had not been removed. After dark a storm of thunder, lightning, and heavy rain, came on as usual, and with it a few mishaps. A boat belonging to the old Tumangong was capsized ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... she herself looked so heroic, so radiant, so unattainably the woman I wanted, that a sneer may have escaped me:—was she so sure then that Briga was a hero? I remember her proud silence and our wretched parting. I went away feeling that at last I had really lost her; and the thought ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... generally remains in this condition until the next fall, and sometimes until the next spring. When a road is repaired in this way, it follows as a matter of course that it is in a bad condition all the year round. Just after repairs the road is wretched, for it is then in better condition to be planted than to be travelled over; when trodden down a little, the wash of the rains and the loose stones make it bad again; it then grows worse and worse until another ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... "Now that wretched boy will most certainly tell him you are here." And indeed, the boy was just about to run out again, when they caught hold of him and set him up behind the lamp. But hardly had they turned their backs on him for a moment, when he slipped out before any could move, and they heard the ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... nothing else to do," gloomily "Life is such a wretched bore that the only thing to do is to seize what little spice there is in it, and the spice, alas! ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... sky,—a scene, in short, which nature had too much good taste and calm simplicity to realize. My mind had struggled to adapt these false conceptions to the reality, and finding the effort vain, a wretched sense of disappointment weighed me down. I climbed the precipice, and threw myself on the earth, feeling that I was unworthy to look at the Great Falls, and careless ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the house. Since she had confessed her true position to him, moreover he treated her as one who knew well that the smallest slight would doubly hurt one who was not in a position to complain. He was kind and attentive to the woman, who, beneath the appearance of happiness, was wretched, though innocent. To the uninitiated, she was the lady of the house; to the better informed, she was the favorite of her master, and that was nought but a maiden in the disguise of wife, and Lorand was able to read ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... families are now to seek! Would that the parliaments of our country held such a proportion of noble-minded men as was once to be found in the clay huts on a hill-side, or grouped about a central farm, huts whose wretched look would move the pity of many a man as inferior to their occupants as a King Charles's lap-dog is to a shepherd's colley. The utensils of their life were mean enough: the life itself was often elixir vitae—a true family life, looking ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Wind. "Why do you come to me with such news as that? What difference can it make to me what such a wretched creature as the Ash Goblin is doing? Let him amuse himself with ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... one side," would appear from the fact that the town's defenders were pelted upon retiring to the castle by the inhabitants, treatment which they seem to have deserved in setting fire to the town, bombarding St. Leonard's, burning the adjoining buildings and driving the wretched population in search of such shelter as ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... formed a settlement on the east side of the Fontaine. A characteristically squalid and miserable place it was, with the dwellings—they scarce deserved the name of houses—built in the side of the bluffs very much as animals might burrow in the ground. Part dug-out and part adobe were those wretched habitations, and the shed-like parts which projected from the hill were composed of all conceivable and inconceivable kinds of rubbish. Sticks, stones, bits of old iron, worn-out mattings and gunny-sacks entered more or less into the construction ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... beautiful lady more nearly of his own age than his wife was. Her name was Rosamond. She is known in history as Fair Rosamond. A full account of her will be given in the next chapter. All that is necessary to state here is that Queen Eleanora was made very wretched by her husband's love for Rosamond, though she had scarcely any right to complain, for she had, as it would seem, done all in her power to alienate the affections of her husband from herself by the levity of her conduct, and by her bold and independent behavior in all respects. At last, ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... It was an ugly, wretched scene. It ended abruptly on the landing, where she let go her hold with a cry of pain and Robert Stonehouse rolled down the stairs, bumping his head and catching his arm cruelly in the banisters. He was on his ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... ambush came he, Striding terrible among them, And so awful was his aspect That the bravest quailed with terror. Without mercy he destroyed them Right and left, by tens and twenties, And their wretched, lifeless bodies Hung aloft on poles for scarecrows Round the consecrated cornfields, As a signal of his vengeance, ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... man, now so thoroughly angry that he let go Anne's hand, "I have a good mind to give you what you deserve. As for you, undutiful, wretched girl," he added, his voice rising to an emotional tremolo, "you shall be well punished ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... this concoction; and the conventional agreement with which, under the impression he was waxing eloquent concerning views and architecture, we had met his enthusiasm he had attributed to sympathetic interest in this wretched wash of his. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... of his cruel deed, One common sepulchre for both decreed; Intombed the wretched pair in royal state, And on their ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... I felt perfectly wretched for a whole week, and imagined myself cruelly abused. You see he was a foreigner, without money; he was heir to a title, but that would have brought him no advantages ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... as if his deep, fierce eyes had tears in them. "Perhaps it is because I am miserable that I have come to you," he said, quite glaring down at her. "I used to hate you; I have been jealous of you. This wretched, disgraceful business has changed that. After seeing that repulsive woman who calls herself the wife of my son Bevis, I actually felt it would be a relief to look at you. I have been an obstinate old fool, and I suppose I have treated you badly. You are like the boy, and the boy is ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rather in better humour;—but, after all, Southwell was a detestable residence. Thank St. Dominica, I have done with it: I have been twice within eight miles of it, but could not prevail on myself to suffocate in its heavy atmosphere. This place is wretched enough—a villanous chaos of din and drunkenness, nothing but hazard and burgundy, hunting, mathematics, and Newmarket, riot and racing. Yet it is a paradise compared with the eternal dulness of Southwell. Oh! the misery of doing nothing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... he lodged, and he never passed it without being conscious of its trodden and decaying leaves. They were enough to make his morning foul. The middle-aged woman, who had to handle carrots with her frozen fingers, was less wretched than he who saw her, and thought of her after he went by. A thousand such impressions came boring in upon his mind and made him squirm. He could not toss them aside like the callous and manly; he could not see them in their due relation, and think them unimportant, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... return of new dangers, or at least of fears, Abelard left the Paraclete to make trial of another refuge, accepting an invitation to preside over the abbey of St Gildas-de-Rhuys, on the far-off shore of Lower Brittany. It proved a wretched exchange. The region was inhospitable, the domain a prey to lawless exaction, the house itself savage and disorderly. Yet for nearly ten years he continued to struggle with fate before he fled from his charge, yielding in the end only under peru of violent death. The misery of those years ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... young wife sat in her carriage before this wretched little home and watched that slatternly sister of her husband approach, she rose on a wave of self-appreciation. Haney lost in dignity and power by this association. For the first time in her life the girl acknowledged a fixed difference between her blood and that of Mart Haney. She was disgusted ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... plot, which was to have been carried out in this August time. To her mind it was like reading a confirmation that Tito had won his safety by foul means; his pretence of wishing that the Frate should exert himself on behalf of the condemned only helped the wretched conviction. She crushed up the paper in her hand, and, turning to Savonarola, she said, with new passion, "Father, what safety can there be for Florence when the worst man can always escape? And," she went on, a sudden flash of remembrance coming from the thought about ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... daughters, which was all inlaid, had beds of the newest fashion, and looking-glasses so long and broad, that they saw themselves from head to foot in them; while the little creature herself was forced to sleep up in a sorry garret, upon a wretched straw bed, without curtains, or anything to make ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... and it was not difficult for each to read something of the other's thought. The King knew that behind all that aspect of deference and humility lay a sense of triumph, almost malignant in its intensity. He knew that circumstances had beaten him; and that the bomb of some wretched assassin had made his abdication impossible. The Prime Minister had said that he had no wish to press him; but what a pretense and hypocrisy that was, when that very night the Cabinet would have to meet and register its decision ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman |
