"Bitterness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what is more, your death will not have been unmerited. To whomsoever of you, therefore, death comes in this battle, it is plain that it will be a glorious death; and life, if you conquer the enemy, will be independent and in all other respects happy; but if you are defeated,—I need mention no other bitterness than this, that all your hope will depend upon the mercy of those men yonder. And the conflict will not be evenly matched in regard to strength. For not only are the enemy greatly surpassed by us in numbers, but they will come against us ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... every community in which the black people are ignorant and vicious and without trained leaders among themselves they are likely at any time to come into conflict with the dominant race, and every such conflict engenders bitterness on both sides and makes just so much more difficult the final solution of the race problem. This is why Booker Washington labored so incessantly to increase the quantity of Tuskegee's output as well as to maintain the quality. He brought Tuskegee to the point where it reached through all its courses ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... an old-fashioned safe in the paneling and locked it upon the despoiling documents. Yet his heart, in spite of its dread and bitterness, was warmed by the trustfulness of ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... trust was still hers, implicit and unwavering, and she knew that he would not so much as notice a single hint from Aunt Philippa, however adroitly offered. That was her one and only safeguard, and as she realized it the bitterness of her heart gave place to a sudden burst of anguished shame. What had she ever done to deserve the generous, unquestioning trust he thus reposed in her? Nothing—less ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... out, He dragg'd all fools, the lean and stout, The great and little, the empty and full, All too witty, and all too dull, A lash he flourish'd overhead, As though a dance of apes he led, Abusing them with bitterness, As though his wrath ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... to have employed him and received him; for a promise leaves no room for any further consideration." Accordingly Cinna sent for Marius, and the forces being distributed among them, the three had the command. The war being finished, Cinna and Marius were filled with violence and bitterness, so that they made the evils of war as precious gold to the Romans, compared with the new state of affairs. Sertorius alone is said to have put no person to death to gratify his vengeance, nor to have abused his power; ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... again, and his eyes were filled with bitterness, with angry passion at the injustice of fate. Did she think that he had not suffered? Because he did not whine his misery to all and sundry, did she think he did not care? He sprang up and walked to the ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... him; last night's events were still clear in Arethusa's mind, and Miss Eliza had been most unfair in her viewpoint on that occasion. There still rankled, with both aunt and niece, a little of the bitterness then aroused. ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... ground, and preferring the shady rocks along the sandy bed of the river. I tried several methods to render the potatoes, which we had found in the camps of the natives, eatable; but neither roasting nor boiling destroyed their sickening bitterness. At last, I pounded and washed them, and procured their starch, which was entirely tasteless, but thickened rapidly in hot water, like arrow-root; and was very agreeable to eat, wanting only the addition of sugar to make it delicious; at ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... but collects herself, and says gently:) Don't say that, Mr. Sannaes! It is not hard-heartedness or bitterness that makes me think of your future now—and makes me wish to ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... works with us, success is sure. Then comes the old question that Gideon asked with bitterness of heart, when he was threshing out his handful of wheat in a corner to avoid the oppressors, 'If the Lord be with us, wherefore is all this come upon us? Will any one say that the progress of the Gospel in the world has been at ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... merits or the reverse. He first, and as it has been proved permanently, brought the priest into politics, with the unavoidable result of accentuating the religious side of the contest and bringing it into a focus. The bitterness which three generations of the penal code had engendered only, in fact, broke out then. The hour of comparative freedom is often—certainly not alone in Ireland—the hour when the sense of past oppression first reveals itself in all its intensity, and that biting consciousness of being ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... the joy and how fascinating the pursuit of such an ethereal affection! It enlarges the heart without embarrassing the conscience. It is a cup of pure gladness with no bitterness in its dregs. It spends the present moment with a free hand, and yet leaves no undesirable mortgage upon the future. King Arthur, the founder of the Round Table, expressed a conviction, according to Tennyson, that the most important element in a young knight's education is "the maiden passion ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... often repeated that he would consent to pass the whole of his life in a dungeon, without seeing the sun, if, by such sacrifice, the conversion of the King of Tunis and his nation could be brought about; an expression of ardent proselytism that has been blamed with much bitterness, but which only showed an extreme desire to see Africa delivered from barbarism and marching with Europe in the progress of intelligence and civilization, which are ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... between your social position and mine. You have been among people of leisure and refinement and culture. Each evening you have talked with men whom it cost no effort to make themselves liked and respected. I think of that with bitterness.' ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... domestic happiness which I had ever received. I had certainly seen but little of it at home. There all was either crowds, or solitude; the effort to seem delighted, or palpable discontent; extravagant festivity, or bitterness and frowns. My haughty father was scarcely approachable, unless when some lucky job shed a few drops of honey into his natural gall; and my gentle mother habitually took refuge in her chamber, with a feebleness of mind which only embittered her vexations. In short, the "family fireside" had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... believe all the tales which they themselves had both listened to and spread. Ditte's sandwiches and coffee quickly disappeared, and she was sent for by the auctioneer, who praised her and patted her cheeks. This friendly act took away much of her bitterness of mind, and was a gratifying reward ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... revelation of forgiveness for sinners through Jesus, the Lamb of God. Not always will cold philosophy, and erratic enthusiasm, and fanaticism fierce and malignant, conspire to corrupt and pervert the gospel itself, turning even the streams from the fountain of life into waters of bitterness and poison. No, no; the time will come when the sun, in his daily journey round the renovated world, shall waken with his morning beam in every human dwelling the voice of joyful, thankful, spiritual worship. Then shall the boundless soul of Immanuel, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Mr. Decies, again and again. He was faithful—I see it now. He cared not if I had neither name nor fortune; he held fast to his proposals. And I? Oh, I was absorbed—I was universally defiant—I did not do him justice in the bitterness I did not realise. I thought he was constant only out of honour and pity, and I did not choose to open my heart to understand his pleadings or accept them as earnest—I was harsh. Oh, how little one knows what one is doing! Too proud to be grateful—that ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sick of Scotland, for Bothwell could not be there. She had tasted all the bitterness of life, and for a few months all the sweetness; but she would have no more of this rough and barbarous country. Of her own free will she crossed the Solway into England, to find herself at ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... fatal catastrophe of Duke Hamilton's death. She once more took her place, then, in her Majesty's suite and at the Maids' table, being always a favorite with Mrs. Masham, the Queen's chief woman, partly perhaps on account of their bitterness against the Duchess of Marlborough, whom Miss Beatrix loved no better than her rival did. The gentlemen about the Court, my Lord Bolingbroke amongst others, owned that the young lady had come back handsomer than ever, and that the serious and tragic air which her face now involuntarily wore became ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... tremblingly under a tall building while a fire-engine thundered by, threatening to bring down upon them the shattered walls. As they resumed their slow and painful march Bodine met them, his glad, outspoken greeting to Mara filling her heart with new grief and dismay, while it allayed the jealousy and bitterness of Miss ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... of the next day that Mott found time to join him and run over with him the details of such unfinished business as the office had taken up. The retiring manager was courtesy itself, nor did he feel any bitterness against his successor. Nevertheless, he came to the end of office hours with great relief. The day had been a very hard one, and it left him with a longing for solitude and the wide silent spaces of the open hills. He struck out in the direction which promised him the quickest ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... hungry red devil," said Slone, jealously. Wildfire would take a bunch of grass from Lucy Bostil's hand. Slone's feelings had undergone some reaction, though he still loved the horse. But it was love mixed with bitterness. More than ever he made up his mind that Lucy should have Wildfire. Then he walked around his place, planning the work he meant ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... scratch 'is hi's out a'most. What I ses, I ses; and what I ses, I sticks to." The campaign was conducted with considerable spirit by Gilbert a Beckett and Percival Leigh, with slight assistance from Horace Mayhew; and was continued with remorseless gaiety and bitterness for some years. In the pages here devoted to Thackeray reference is made to the personal feeling which existed between him and the "Morning Post" and to the effective retaliation on ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... freedom, who broke down the barrier of an inveterate jealousy, who brought Thebans to fight beside Athenians, and who thus won at the eleventh hour a victory for the spirit of loyal union which took away at least one bitterness from the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... put on white [Austrian] Uniforms, not to bring back on us that blue which we had so often seen in war. He looked as though he belonged to our Army and to the Kaiser's suite. There was, in this Visit, I believe, on both sides, a little personality, some distrust, and perhaps a beginning of bitterness;—as always happens, says Philippe de Comines, when Sovereigns meet. The King took Spanish snuff, and brushing it off with his hand from his coat as well as he could, he said, 'I am not clean enough for you, Messieurs; I am not worthy to wear your colors.' The air with which he said ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... mine—to win your pity, if I may, by telling the tale of my sorrows. Nor is it at all my intent that these my words should come to the ears of men. Nay, rather would I, so far as lies in my power, withhold my complaints from them; for, such bitterness has the discovery of the unkindness of one man stirred in me, that, imagining all other men to be like him, methinks I should be a witness of their mocking laughter rather than of their pitying tears. You alone do I entreat to peruse ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... insane in New York. He left here entirely cured and is now holding an important position in New York City. Another case was that of a young man who became insane suddenly. His first act was to try and murder his father and mother, his greatest bitterness being directed towards his mother. He attempted to kill me when I approached him, and it was necessary to open a bottle of chloroform and stand at a safe distance and throw the anesthetic in his face and eyes. Less than ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... true my dear companions kept in the shelter of the largest trees, but the incautious ones,—there was an arm barked here and a leg scratched there, and pain stalked abroad in our midst. Then, when the battle was over, judge of the bitterness of mind of my noble comrades when they searched the canoes not overturned and found less than seven hundred dollars' worth of plumes, barely enough for one good right's drunk and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... opportunitate mortis; non enim vidit——; and the just and honest of all parties will heartily admit over his grave, that as his principles and opinions were untainted by any sordid interest, so he maintained them in the purest spirit of a reflective patriotism, without spleen, or bitterness, or breach of ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... they had forfeited, or to induce the legislature further to stay their hand. Instead of reforming their own faults, they spent the time in making use of their yet uncurtailed powers of persecution; and they wreaked the bitterness of their resentment upon the unfortunate heretics, who paid with their blood at the stake for the diminished revenues and blighted dignities of their spiritual lords and superiors. During the later years of Wolsey's administration, the Protestants, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... if I forgive them on your account—that is to say, if I let them off in consideration of the good conduct of the ship's company, and in confidence of your all behaving well in future—they will be quite as much disposed to exert themselves to recover their characters, as if they had tasted the bitterness of the gangway: at all events, I'll try them and ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... he was, the Dane was not exactly a foreigner in England. The languages of the two nations were almost the same, and a race affinity took away much of the bitterness of the subjugation, while Canute ruled more as a wise native King than as ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... of Vergil for the poor exiles rings also through the Dirae, a very surprising poem which he wrote at this same time, but on second thought suppressed. It has the bitterness of the first Eclogue without its grace and tactful beginning. The triumvirs were in no mood to read a book of lamentations. "Honey on the rim" was Lucretius' wise precept, and it was doubtless a prudent ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... dreamed of the sensation the departure en automobile of a party so distinguished would create at the hotel. She had confidingly judged the charms of the advertised car from those of the advertisers, and this was her reward. Could we blame her if, in the bitterness of mortification, she yielded to the allurement of that glittering car which was our detractor's best argument? But she was loyal on ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... all the weight of my crippled strength; and this weight, instead of crushing her to the earth, appeared to add vigour and buoyancy to her slender figure. Long afterwards, when my knowledge of her had come at last, not through love, but through bitterness, I wondered why I had not understood on that night, while I lay there watching her pale outline framed by the window. Love, not meat and drink, was her nourishment, and without love, though I were to surround her with all ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... course of years had been unfavorable to his memory in her recollection, and that the blame with which his friends visited her second marriage, which was in all respects an affair of the heart, produced in her a certain bitterness of feeling toward Mr. Thrale, as if he had been the author of these reproaches. It is impossible to believe that he was as indifferent to her as she represents, and that her marriage with him was not moderately happy. Had it been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Yet that was severe enough; for maiden aunts, whether abbesses or no, are not tolerant of the species of errors of which Eveline was accused; and the innocent damosel was brought in many ways to eat her bread in shame of countenance and bitterness of heart. Every day of her confinement was rendered less and less endurable by taunts, in the various forms of sympathy, consolation, and exhortation; but which, stript of their assumed forms, were undisguised anger and insult. The company of Rose was all which Eveline ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... The two prisoners were there also, their arms bound, but not in a manner to hurt. Motives of policy had compelled Timmendiquas and Wyatt to be seeming friends, but the heart of the great chief was full of bitterness. He had not wanted to bring Wyatt with him and yet it had been necessary to do so. Wyatt had taken the two prisoners who were intended as offerings to the Northwestern tribes, and, under tribal law, they belonged to him, ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sparkling imagination, were even more remarkable characteristics of her mind, than loveliness of her person, I could not but feel my ambition, as well as my tenderness, excited; I dwelt with a double intensity on my choice, and with a tenfold bitterness on the obstacles which forbade ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with a steaming cup which she set before him. Truly, this coffee was a man's drink. She had tried it once but the hot bitterness scalded her mouth and flooded her body with its heat. And she had felt so lightheaded. Not like herself at all. It wasn't a drink for Lani. Of that she ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... is changed into an Aperitive Bitterness; whence, under the Skin of the Arms and Legs, arise red Spots, pricking like the bitings of Fleas; but in a Pestilential ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... him the mortal hatred of one man, and the deference shown to him in barracks added bitterness to the jealous antipathy already inspired by him in the hard old heart of Sourdough. Sergeant Moore said nothing, but hate glowed in his somber eyes whenever they lighted ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... with a good library at his command will find texts here not otherwise easily accessible; while the humbler student of slender resources, who knows the bitterness of not being able to possess himself of the treasure stored in expensive folios or quartos long out of print, will assuredly rise up and thank Mr. Unwin."—St. ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... kept him from the avowal, only a very natural and reasonable shyness of talking about himself. He stopped rocking, and sat with his gaze fixed on the trees in the distance, without really seeing them a bit. A new feeling of half-dismayed contrition was springing up in his heart, but the bitterness of resentment and the sense ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... had married Bartley, aged thirty-seven. Each had got fixed habits, and they soon disagreed. In two years they parted, with plenty of bitterness, but no scandal. Bartley stood on his rights, and kept their one child, little Mary. He was very fond of her, and as the mother saw her whenever she liked, his love for his child rather tended to propitiate Mrs. Bartley, though nothing on earth would have induced her to live ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... fear I can never be more than a step-brother to you." He pulled off a dead twig from the bush beside him, snapped it in two and flipped the pieces down the slope. "I'd look nice, making love to a girl, the fix I'm in!" he added with a savage bitterness that gave the lie to his smiling indifference. "A fellow ought to make sure his canoe is going to stay right side up before he asks a girl ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... equality, I shall speak without bitterness and without anger; with the independence becoming a philosopher, with the courage and firmness of a free man. May I, in this momentous struggle, carry into all hearts the light with which I am filled; and show, by the success of my argument, that ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... one he had seen carried by Clement Lindsay. But he was used to concealing his emotions, and he greeted the two older ladies, who presently came into the library, so pleasantly, that no one who had not studied his face long and carefully would have suspected the bitterness of heart that lay hidden far down beneath his deceptive smile. He told Miss Silence, with much apparent interest, the story of his journey. He gave her an account of the progress of the case in which the estate of which she inherited the principal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... only did this increasing toil and worry to make both ends meet, injure the bodily health of the poet, but it did harm to him in other ways. It affected, to a certain extent, his moral nature. Those bursts of bitterness which we find now and again in his poems, and more frequently in his letters, are assuredly the natural outcome of these unsocial and laborious years. Burns was a man of sturdy independence; too often this independence became ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... opportunities to indulge in conversation which all could not share. Once they went to the North Gore together, and oh, how vividly came back to David the many times which during the last year of his father's life he had gone there with him! The memories awakened were sad, but they were sweet, for all the bitterness had gone out of his grief for his father, and he told his mother many things about those drives, and of all his father had said, and of the thoughts and feelings his words had stirred in his heart. And she had some things to tell ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... possessing the elements of beauty. Even if it remain but for the moment, yet that moment is hers by right of her sex, which is denied the wider rights of those they love and serve. She had tasted the cup of bitterness and drunk of the waters of sacrifice. Married life had no lure for her. She wanted none of it. The seed of service had, however, taken root in a nature full of fire and light and power, undisciplined and undeveloped as it was. She wished to do something—the spirit ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the lapse of fifteen years, Mrs. Tiralla's heart swelled with bitterness when she lay awake at night and thought of the way she had been treated. Her mother had begged and implored her with tears in her eyes. "We shall then be out of all our misery." And when the girl continued to shake her head she had boxed her ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... silence[422]. Equally anxious was Cowley at Paris, who feared the realization of Seward's former "foreign war panacea." "I wish I could divest myself of the idea that the North and South will not shake hands over a war with us[423]." Considering the bitterness of the quarrel in America this was a far-fetched notion. The efforts promptly made by the Confederate agents in London to make use of the Trent affair showed how little Cowley understood the American temper. Having remained very quiet since August when Russell ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Once let the Duc be made Regent, and my old-time sweetheart of those innocent days in Anjou will be the most powerful woman in France. But with all that, Placide," and the man's quivering voice went straight to the very tenderest core of my heart for the depths of bitterness it contained, "in spite of it all she'd rather be back in the country breathing the pure and peaceful air, a guiltless and happy girl, than to live as she does, and rule the land. God knows I wish we had ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... His bitterness had been but momentary, and he had soon pulled himself together, but his every resource seemed exhausted now. He had counted so on the situation—that of a shipping-clerk in a dry- goods store—promised him because of a letter that he carried ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... not that which portrays soul-hunger, the bitterness of the weary search for God; it is that which reveals an intense consciousness of the all-enveloping Divine Presence. Children do not seek the love of their parents; they can not escape its searching, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... experienced all the vicissitudes of fortune. From an humble station she had been raised to greatness, only to taste the superior bitterness of an exalted rank. She was doomed to weep over the death of one of her sons, and over the life of the other. The cruel fate of Caracalla, though her good sense must have long taught' er to expect it, awakened the feelings of a mother and of an empress. Notwithstanding ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... The bitterness of feeling in the House at this time, was shown, in part, by the fact that not until the 1st of February, 1860, was it able, upon a forty-fourth ballot, to organize by the election of a Speaker, and that from the day of its ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... rejoin the three, in whose sympathy and watchfulness He had trusted—and they all were asleep! Surely that was one ingredient of bitterness in His cup. We wonder at their insensibility; and how they must have wondered at it too, when after years taught them what they had lost, and how faithless they had been! Think of men who could have seen and heard that scene, which has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... 'tolerant' Richard Watson, Lord Bishop of Llandaff, wrote with contemptuous bitterness of 'Atheistical madmen,' and in his Apology for the Bible, assured Deistical Thomas Paine, Deism was so much better than Atheism, he (Bishop Watson) meant 'not to say ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... the midway of this our mortal life, I found one in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct; and e'en to tell It were no easy task, how savage wild That forest, how robust and rough its growth, Which to remember only, my dismay Renews, in bitterness ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... are the ramifications of evil! How was what might have been very pure pleasure utterly poisoned and turned into bitterness. It went through Fleda's heart with a keen pang when she heard that name and looked on the very fair brow that owned it, and thought of the ineffaceable stain that had come upon both. She dared look at nobody but the child. He already understood the melting eyes ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... townships," he said in after years. His control over his own party was gone. Northern Republicans combined with Federalists to force the repeal of the embargo through Congress; and on March 1, 1809, with much bitterness of spirit, Jefferson signed the bill that terminated his great experiment. Instead of interdicting commerce altogether, Congress suspended intercourse with France and Great Britain after March 15 and until ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... glanced round the familiar room, her sigh—half anger, half bitterness of heart—was genuine. She did care intensely, in her own way, for the brother whom she hectored without mercy. And he too cared—in his own way—more than he chose to reveal. But their love was a dumb thing, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... against him that one Bobadilla had been sent to Hispaniola with power to depose Colon and treat him as a criminal,—so cunningly were his instructions framed. When the great discoverer was actually thrown into prison and sent to Spain manacled like a felon, it might have added a few drops of bitterness to his reflections if he had known what Ojeda was doing. This youth, whom he had trusted and liked, was now looking forward to the conquest of the very region which the Admiral had discovered, and using what was supposed to be the Admiral's private chart ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... her daughter, who could not move a limb, although she knew her mother was dying beneath her. A beam had fallen transversely across the daughter, and in this position she crouched, listening in agony to the death-struggles of her parent. More, almost, than the bitterness of death itself must have been the horror of such a situation and the terrible contact during long hours of silent darkness with a cold, rigid corpse. This lady belonged to the family of Fonseca-Acosta, one of the most distinguished in Cua, its head ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Virginian. Mr. Adams said that had been a ground of objection, but it would not avail. He afterwards remarks: "Mr. Canning, whose celebrity is great, and whose talents are probably greater than those of any other member of the cabinet, and who has been invariably noted for his bitterness against the United States, seemed desirous to make up by an excess of civility for the feelings he has so ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... what a good shot Colonel George is, Harry. I, myself, am pretty fair at a mark, and 'tis probable that one or both of us will drop.—'I scarcely suppose you will carry out the intentions you have at present in view.'" This was uttered in a tone of still greater bitterness than George had used even in the previous phrase. Harry wept ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and you'll quickly make her so. Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It gives bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... hurt that he would not come home; but after past mistakes I could not urge him, and it seemed possible that he might change his mind later. Then the dreadful blow fell—crushing and filling me with all the bitterness of useless regret. I had spoken too late; the opportunity I would not use in ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... entirely unconscious of any arrogance in his attitude, and when, in connection with the later controversies, it came to his knowledge that some villagers accused him of posing as an aristocrat in Cooperstown, he resented the imputation with some bitterness. "In this part of the world," he said, "it is thought aristocratic not to frequent taverns, and lounge at corners, squirting tobacco juice."[109] Cooper was strongly democratic in his convictions, and was so far from having been a toady during his residence in Europe that he had made enemies in ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... The bitterness came when he had returned to his home in the back street of Twybridge, and was endeavouring to spend the holidays in a hard 'grind'. He loathed the penurious simplicity to which his life was condemned; all familiar circumstances were become petty, coarse, vulgar, in his ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the choice she had made, that she had married him from motives of interest and vanity (he was a gay young man with great friends about him when she chose him for her husband), and venting in short upon her, by every unjust and unkind means, the bitterness of that ruin and disappointment which had been brought about by his profligacy alone. In those times this young lady was a mere child. I never saw her again until that morning when you saw her ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... "Revizor" I tried to gather in one heap all that was bad in Russia, as I then understood it; I wished to turn it all into ridicule. The real impression produced was that of fear. Through the laughter that I have never laughed more loudly, the spectator feels my bitterness and sorrow." The drama was finished on the 4 December 1835, and of course the immediate difficulty was the censorship. How would it be possible for such a satire either to be printed or acted in Russia? Gogol's friend, Madame Smirnova, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... on that of capital, and disturbances of the natural system are greatest. The struggle that here goes on is, in a way, triangular. Organized labor contends against its own employers, on the one hand, and against unorganized labor, on the other; and the part which develops the greatest bitterness of feeling and the most violence is the strife between labor and labor—between the trade unionists who strike and the men who attempt to occupy their positions. The union is more tolerant of the employer's action in driving ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... artfully prepared. Every one must stand upon them who is governed by the literal rule of interpretation; for they are read in so many words out of the sacred volume itself. But the churches generally reject them, often with bitterness, scorn, and contempt, and some even with persecution. And this ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... Somehow or other, his old dreams, his old faith in himself had returned for a moment. And then the bitterness all swept ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... temptations above that thou wert able to bear? Ah! rather canst thou not testify, "The word of the Lord is tried;" I cast my burden upon Him, and He "sustained me?" How have seeming difficulties melted away! How has the yoke lost its heaviness, and the cross its bitterness, in the thought of whom thou wert bearing it for! There is a promised rest in the very carrying of the yoke; and a better rest remains for the weary and toil-worn when the appointed work is finished; for thus ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... feed the flock of the Great Shepherd, and to help those who, without this Wisdom, are helpless. And all need it; not the poor alone, nor the rich alone, but every child of man. For the one thing that presses upon all alike, the bitterness of life, is the sense of wrong, the want of intelligibility in life, and therefore a feeling of the lack of justice upon earth; that is the sting which pierces every heart; whether the heart belong to the rich or the poor, it matters not. When you understand ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... four years commencing with 1818. It is not too much to say that these four years embraced one of the most eventful and exciting periods of England's history. The Reform agitation was being carried on with a bitterness that almost eclipsed all subsequent attempts to establish the five points of the Charter as the law of the land. In these years, too, the memorable trial of Queen Caroline took place, and it is one of Principal Barclay's most interesting reminiscences ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... not a happy one,' they will probably say after my death, and I forestall them by saying that it was in many ways very happy indeed. What bitterness there was effaced itself in a very remarkable way." (The Story of My ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... correction of a sinner is to be foregone, as stated above (Q. 33, A. 6). Hence Augustine says in a letter (Ad Aurel. Episc. Ep. xxii), "Meseems, such things are cured not by bitterness, severity, harshness, but by teaching rather than commanding, by advice rather than threats. Such is the course to be followed with the majority of sinners: few are they whose sins should ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the highest social circles, and live happily ever after. Luckily it was for Katie, however, that they had no power to fill her head with their foolish notions. It was well for her to have never doubted she loved in vain. She had soon grown used to her lot. Not until yesterday had there been any bitterness. Jealousy surged in Katie at the very moment when she beheld Zuleika on the threshold. A glance at the Duke's face when she showed the visitor up was enough to acquaint her with the state of his heart. And she did not, for ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... debility of constitution, consequent on the mismanagement of early life. And so frequent and so mournful are these, and the other distresses that result from the delicacy of the female constitution, that the writer has repeatedly heard mothers say, that they had wept tears of bitterness over their infant daughters, at the thought of the sufferings which they were destined to undergo; while they cherished the decided wish, that these daughters should never marry. At the same time, many a reflecting young woman is looking to her future ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... been for you, these things had never been. I am sorry, indeed I am sorry—that I did not kill you. For the rest, may your name be shameful for ever in the ears of honest men and your soul be everlastingly accursed, and may you yourself, even before you die, know the bitterness of dishonour and betrayal! Your words were fulfilled, and ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... consequence of which they refused their co-operation for this purpose. The matrimonial crown was indeed even afterwards granted to the Dauphin, when he married Mary Stuart;[196] but thereupon misunderstandings arose with all the more bitterness. Meetings were everywhere held in a ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... a very different state of mind, and Mephistopheles is also in a different shape. He is decked out with silken mantle and with cock-feathers in his hat, ready for any devilry. Faust is in the depths of morbid despair and bitterness ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... help which could never reach other ear than their own—his safety intrusted to the precarious compassion of a being associated with these felons, and whose trade of rapine and imposture must have hardened her against every human feeling—the bitterness of his emotions almost choked him. He endeavoured to read in her withered and dark countenance, as the lamp threw its light upon her features, something that promised those feelings of compassion which females, even in their most ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... under this same roof now for five years, and I have never heard you speak kindly of people, or without bitterness and derision. What harm has the world done to you? Is it possible that you consider yourself better ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... thought, but she did not say a word to add to the bitterness of his feelings. Knowing the temper of the people around her as well as she did, she could not see that Marcy could have done anything else. Marcy Gray ate little supper that night, and as soon as it ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... Mrs. Reed's face, and I eagerly sought the familiar image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries—to be reconciled and clasp ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... That bitterness I, too, feel in myself. I also am a child, just as old as that other was; I have never yet been beaten. Once my parents were compelled to rebuke me for wanton petulance; and from head to foot I was pervaded through and through by one raving idea: "If ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... human nature is, apart from the grace of God, we may not greatly wonder, in view of the heritage of the past and the real difficulties and perils of the present, that there is an intensity of race prejudice, and a bitterness of caste spirit, and an increasing hostility to the rising colored population which registers itself in outbreaks of violence and bloodshed, in the defiance of law, and in crimes against the ballot-box. We may not be greatly surprised that ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... hundred dollars' increase in his salary the second year, he was nearly a thousand dollars in debt, and losing steadily each quarter. Something must be done—and by him!—for in marriage, he perceived with a certain bitterness, Man was the Forager, the Provider. And in America if he didn't bring in enough from the day's hunt to satisfy the charming squaw that he had made his consort, why,—he must trudge forth again and get it! A poor hunter does not ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Stafford would not have credited to Chapman's General Drapery and Grocery Stores. Isabel was innocently surprised when the Bendishes found they had met Captain Hyde in town. Laura's smile was very faintly tinged with bitterness: she knew of that small world where every one meets every one, though she had been barred out of it most of her life, first by her disreputable father and then by the tragedy of her marriage: Rowsley pulled ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... and old, and bending to the tomb The laurel-wreathed brow. But chiefly One doth win me 'Mid the stern throng. With new thoughts swelling in me Before that One I stand, and cannot lightly brook To take mine eye from him. And still, the more I look, The more within my breast is bitterness awaked. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... all, what was the grand result? As if the whole proceeding had been a parody upon the more destructive, but scarcely more sensible wars recorded in history, it was commenced in injustice, carried on in bitterness of spirit, and ended, like the labour of the mountain, in a mouse. The abatement of sixpence in the price of admission to the pit, and the dismissal of an unfortunate servant, whose only fault was too much zeal in the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... prepared, was not to be carried by some thirty or forty men, however gallant and determined they might be. There was, too, but little hope that the old man had spoken falsely, for they had themselves heard guns, shortly before their arrival there. With much bitterness, it was determined to abandon the plan of attack; and thus Carthagena, as well as Nombre de Dios, escaped from ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... had met Queed coming down, pad in hand. The impertinence of the old professor's invitation fitted superbly with the bitterness of the little Doctor's humor. It pressed the martyr's crown upon his brow till the perfectness of his grudge against a hateful world lacked nor jot ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Besides, whatever gulf birth and wealth have fixed between the English classes, it is mystically bridged by that sentiment of family which I have imagined the ruling influence in England. In a country where equality has been glorified as it has been in ours, the contrast of conditions must breed a bitterness in those of a lower condition which is not in their hearts there; or if it is, the alien does not ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... be served to this reduced number. A few polite phrases that reached Thuillier's ears about the "immense" interest of his publication, failed to blind him to the bitterness of his discomfiture; and without the gaiety of the publisher, who had taken in hand the reins his patron, gloomy as Hippolytus on the road to Mycenae, let fall, nothing could have surpassed the glum and glacial coldness ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... that they could possibly annoy any one, and that I sincerely regret any annoyance I may have thus inadvertently given. May I hope that in future they will recognise the distinction between severe language used in sober earnest, and the "words of unmeant bitterness," which Coleridge has alluded to in that lovely passage beginning "A little child, a limber elf"? If the writer will refer to that passage, or to the preface to "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter," he will find the distinction, for which I plead, ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... the disappointments and sorrow that preyed upon him, undoubtedly aggravated the bitterness ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau |
