"Miserable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a distinct note of seriousness about the last letter. It was drawing near the end of the month and she was going to ask her aunt to let her stay on for another month if her father did not mind. She did not want him to be unhappy, and if he was miserable without her, why she would sail back to New York on the very first steamer. He wrote her a long affectionate letter, telling her that whatever made her happy would make HIM, too, and that she must not, on any account, think of returning to New York if she found that she was helping her future ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... must overcome difficulties. The chief trouble is that Gloria fancies she loves that miserable gardener's boy, Pon. Suppose we throw Pon into ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... savage race; Who, only skill'd to take the finny tribe, The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe, Wait on the shore, and, as the waves run high, On the tost vessel bend their eager eye, Which to their coast directs its vent'rous way; Theirs or the ocean's miserable prey. As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand, And wait for favouring winds to leave the land; While still for flight the ready wing is spread: So waited I the favouring hour, and fled; Fled from ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... knew he was feeling very miserable and very cold, notwithstanding the fact that he was wrapped in dry clothing and lay so close to a roaring spruce fire that ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... he won. What would have been Arthur's lot now had he been tied at nineteen to an illiterate woman older than himself, with no qualities in common between them to make one a companion for the other, no equality, no confidence, and no love speedily? What could he have been but most miserable? And when he spoke just now and threatened a similar union, be sure it was but a threat occasioned by anger, which you must give me leave to say, ma'am, was very natural on his part, for after a generous and manly conduct—let me say who know the circumstances well—most generous and manly ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... separate commander. I met at least a dozen soi-disant Prussian spies being conducted to prison. Each of them was surrounded by twelve men, with bayonets fixed. Coming home I saw nine French soldiers with placards bearing the inscription, "Miserable cowards." Of course, the usual crowd accompanied them. I heard that they were on their ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... means of alleviating his privation, which at length he came to forget; and his life was as prolonged and happy as is usual with most naturalists. He even went so far as to declare that he should be miserable were he to regain his eyesight. "I should not know," he said, "to what extent a person in my situation could be beloved; besides, to me my wife is always young, fresh, and pretty, which is no light matter." Huber's great work on 'Bees' ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... nature to be concerned only with herself. If she possessed a single womanly virtue, it was supreme unselfishness. There was some one beside herself to take into consideration—a poor, vacillating, weak, miserable woman who wished to do what was right and had agreed to do so, but who, in the privacy of her own apartments, had gone down on her knees and begged Annie to protect her from the consequences of her own folly. Her husband ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... so miserable as he had expected. Of this he was so much ashamed that he tried hard to make himself more miserable, by going over all the miseries in store for him. But his thoughts would not obey him. They would take their own way, fly where they pleased, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... to learn in the days to come, when it was too late, that George was a miserable impostor, who could evidently have known nothing whatever about the matter. If you had seen these clothes after - but, as the shilling ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... result of the primitive disposition of the body, and is accompanied by health, and a full use of the organic functions of the body. The second is caused by the fact that some of the organs are more defective than others, and give the individual an unhappy and miserable appearance. I once knew young woman of moderate stature who only ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... box, however, he took a quick, impatient turn or two up and down his miserable little room. Not once, since he had set forth to return to his own country, and to the civilization from which, for more than twenty years, he had been an outcast, had he felt (to use his favorite expression) that he was "his own man again," until now. A thrill of the old, breathless, fierce ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... heaven, he rued it! In a flash I swung my staff and saw the old man crash Back from his car in blood.... Then all of them I slew. Oh, if that man's unspoken name Had aught of Laius in him, in God's eye What man doth move more miserable than I, More dogged by the hate of heaven! No man, kin Nor stranger, any more may take me in; No man may greet me with a word, but all Cast me from out their houses. And withal 'Twas mine own self that laid upon my life These curses.—And I ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... looked at the faces before me. No tremor of nervousness touched me from the first word to the last. And a similar experience has been mine ever since. I am still always nervous before a lecture, and feel miserable and ill-assured, but, once on my feet, I am at my ease, and not once on the platform after the lecture has commenced have I experienced the painful feeling of hesitancy and "fear of the sound of my own voice" of which I have often heard ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... constitution and keen perceptions, and his capital of more than four hundred thousands of florins and income of ten thousand, convinced that a man is always endowed by Heaven with too much for his own happiness, and just enough to make him miserable. ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the Bolo station a little before noon two days later, he stared in open-mouthed wonder at the sight that greeted his eyes. In a wavering, straggling line stood ten stiff, red-faced, miserable men, dressed in what was, to Tim Nolan, the strangest assortment of garments he ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... passed, after Lord George's submission to his brother, the Dean was sure that he would be held in abhorrence by the whole Germain family. Mary would be secluded and trodden on, and reduced to pale submission by all the dragons till her life would be miserable. Lord George himself would be prone enough to domineer in such circumstances. And then that ill word which had been spoken, and which could only be effectually burned out of the thoughts of people by a front to the world at the same time innocent and bold, would stick to her for ever if she ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Spirited or Kidnapt (as they call it) into America, falling into the Hands of a Tyrannical Master, he ran away from him, but being taken and brought back, the hard-hearted Tyrant lashed him on his naked Back, until his Body ran in an entire stream of Blood; to make the Torment of this miserable Creature intolerable, he anointed his Wounds with Juice of Lemon mingled with Salt and Pepper, being ground small together, with which torture the miserable Wretch gave up the Ghost, with these dying Words, I beseech the ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... Jane, looking at her own reflection and clasping her hands across her forehead; "this miserable bang gives me enough trouble as ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... captain burst into a hearty laugh, and I wrenched myself round to look, and felt better. A minute before, I had seen Bob disappear into the house, and had mentally denounced him as a miserable little coward; but my eyes flashed now as I saw him hurry out with three rifles over his right shoulder, a bandolier belt across his left, and two more, well filled with cartridges, hanging to the barrels of ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... "Miserable? Yes, for if ever friend was like a brother poor old Harry was. He had only one fault in him, and that was his blind faith ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... they are equitable. We are all animated with the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself. If he travels through our rural districts he views not the hostile castle, and the haughty mansion, contrasted with the clay- built hut and miserable cabin, where cattle and men help to keep each other warm, and dwell in meanness, smoke, and indigence. A pleasing uniformity of decent competence appears throughout our habitations. The meanest of our log-houses is a dry and comfortable habitation. Lawyer or ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... elephant, I might save the life of the unhappy being who seemed to be courting his fate. I pulled the trigger. I could hear the ball strike, but what was my horror to see the animal rush forward, and the next moment trample Hans Scarff beneath his feet. A single shriek escaped the miserable man, and then all was silent. Excited as I was, I did not notice that Harry fired at the second elephant at the same moment. His bullet must have entered the animal's brain, for it sank a helpless mass on the ground. The rest of the herd, alarmed by the fate of their leaders, turned ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... I'm sorry for it. You used to say I favoured Albert at your expense—Well, he's as good as dead to me now, and I've got no good out of all the spoiling I gave him. I sit at home by myself, and I'm a pretty miserable woman. I read everything I can in the papers about what you're doing—you, who were my only child, seven years before Albert came. It doesn't matter to you what I think—at least, it oughtn't. I'm an old woman, and whatever I thought I'd never quarrel with you. But it would ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... himself off as the agent of a person whom he had never known, or who openly derided and despised him. But this precious body—each man of whom represented thirty men besides himself, in a voting population of 12,000—was not sensible to such considerations. By a miserable chicane, it had got into a position to do mischief, and it proceeded to do it, with as much alacrity and headlong zeal as rogues are apt to exhibit when the prize is great and the opportunity short. An election for the Legislature, held subsequently to that for the Convention, showing a public ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... the air itself, and impress their enormous size by means of this aerialness, in a far greater degree at these vast distances, than even when towering above the spectator's head. Now, I ask of the candid observer, if there be the smallest vestige of an effort to attain—if there be the most miserable, the most contemptible shadow of attainment of such an effect by Claude? Does that white thing on the horizon look seventy miles off? Is it faint, or fading, or to be looked for by the eye before it can be found out? Does it look high? does it look large? does it look impressive? You cannot ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... confess, I cried myself to sleep, like a great big baby. I am very comfortable and contented so long as I receive no letter from home; and yet I am such a fool as to wish for them; and when they come I am made miserable for a week afterwards. Somehow, they make me feel my loneliness more. I feel deserted, forgotten by all but ONE. She says she is constantly wishing for me in her rides. They seem to enjoy themselves more at home than they used to do, now that we are gone — always picknicking, boating, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... that they so endeared themselves to the children, can only be paralleled by a story General Baden-Powell once told at a Boy Scout meeting. There was a boy, he related, who went to bed one night without having done his "kind act." Just as he was beginning to feel rather miserable about it, he heard a mouse in a trap in ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... worse than when I had before seen him, though a short time since; and conversing with Bloomfield he said the same thing; but he was greatly collected, his eyes animated, and full of the subjects he discussed—unfortunately still harping on all the idle and miserable intrigues about the Princess Charlotte. What, however, most struck me, and what I am most anxious to observe to you, was his increased hostility and indignation against the Opposition, and more ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... formal peace was come, though the primary movers of war had taken hands or kissed each other, and were exchanging suspicious courtesies, yet the unquiet temper of war was still abroad everywhere, with an after-crop of miserable incidents. The captainless national and mercenary soldiers were become in large number thieves or beggars, and the peasant's hand sank back to the tame labour of the plough reluctantly. Relieved a little by the sentimental humour of the hour, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... towards the friendly Quakeress of the Minories, too, she shows a calculating reticence which is most unfeminine. The continuator of our story endowed the heroine with wholly characteristic selfishness when he made her, on hearing of Amy's death, feel less sorrow for the miserable fate of her friend, than for her own loss of ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... College, of Johnson's time, described the college servants as in 'the state of servitude the most miserable that can be conceived amongst so many masters.' He says that 'the kicks and cuffs and bruises they submit to entitle them, when those who were displeased relent,' to the compensation that is afforded by draughts of ale. 'There is not a college servant, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... baby out into the grove at the back of the house, and dumped him into the hammock, feeling cross and miserable enough. He sat there cooing and crowing and laughing in a way which would have put a better temper into any one but me. I sat on the ground beside him, fussing away at my embroidery, but I could not get it right, and I got crosser and crosser. At last Harry stretched over toward me, and took ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Doubledick turned the straw of the Black hole in his month, and made a miserable ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... extinguishes the soul, or is even to be desired, if it brings him where he is to exist forever. A third alternative, at any rate, cannot possibly be discovered. Why then should I be afraid if I am destined either not to be miserable after death or even to be happy? After all, who is such a fool as to feel certain—however young he may be—that he will be alive in the evening? Nay, that time of life has many more chances of ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... open shrine. Around this spot, which, in the heart of a Christian land, retained the vestige of the old idolatry (for just such were the chapels that in the pagan age were dedicated to the demon-saints of mythology), gathered six or seven miserable and squalid wretches, whom the curse of the leper had cut off from mankind. They set up a shrill cry as they turned their ghastly visages towards the horseman; and, without stirring from the spot, stretched out their gaunt arms, and implored charity in the name of the Merciful Mother! Glyndon hastily ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... about 500, are a poor, miserable, and debauched people, and spend most of their time among the white settlements, where they gain some supplies of food and clothing by menial services. They have no reservation and no treaty, are not in charge of any ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... to know? I didn't know, I told him, and I was damaged materially so far as wearing apparel went, I delicately intimated, by the indifferent quality of his eggs. That you cannot get reliable eggs for twenty-eight a shilling in the winter season, in Bermondsey, is a miserable fact, and discreditable to the reputation of ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... All the miserable cavillings against his Journey, in news-papers[903], magazines, and other fugitive publications, I can speak from certain knowledge, only furnished him with sport. At last there came out a scurrilous volume, larger than Johnson's own, filled with malignant abuse, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Ineffectual restrictions! Vile profanation of oaths! Miserable mockery of legislation! If a bare majority of the voters in any one State may, on a real or supposed knowledge of the intent with which a law has been passed, declare themselves free from its operation—say here ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... thrice miserable fool!" hissed a hoarse well known voice in her ear, as a heavy hand seized her by the shoulder, and twisted her ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... King was come up with a host to drive his son to bed. Richard must go, and she woo him out. Son of a king, heir of a king, he must go to the king his father; and he knew he must go. Two days' maddening delight, two nights' biting of nails, miserable entreaty from Jehane, grown newly pinched and grey in the face, and ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... transcends all forms and limitations, and belongs to the spiritual and timeless order, which is also the Real. But it is a disclosure which requires the thought and study, not of one generation only, but of all. It can never be exhausted. There is no view of it (including even that miserable caricature which we have just considered) that is altogether without some elements of truth. There is no view which embodies the whole of the truth. Each generation is meant to read that secret of God, which ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... been too much vagueness on the part of preachers on this most solemn theme. Lately I heard a preacher speaking of unsaved men as "miserable failures, going out into the darkness." Now what did he mean? Either he has no definite idea himself, or he judged it unwise to express it. Does not such a statement as I have quoted pander ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... my room for a breath of fresh air and a five minutes rest after a disagreeable task, I found a stout young woman sitting on my bed, wearing the miserable look which I had learned to know by that time. Seeing her, reminded me that I had heard of some one's dying in the night, and his sister's arriving in the morning. This must be she, I thought. I pitied her with all my heart. What could I say or ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... the importance of every day at this time of year, a miserable boat and five men were found, and with some difficulty I stowed away in it such baggage as it was absolutely necessary for me to take, leaving scarcely sitting or sleeping room. The sailing qualities of the boat were highly vaunted, and I was assured that at this season a small one was much more ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... didn't know what was the matter with him. He only knew he was miserable, and yet happy. Sometimes his heart seemed to ache with an actual physical ache. He realized that he wanted to do things for Emily. He wanted to buy things for Emily—useless, pretty, expensive things that he couldn't afford. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... she be miserable? Must a woman need be miserable because she lives with her husband? You hear me say that I will forgive everything. Even she will not doubt me when I say so, because I have never lied to her. Let her come back to me, and she shall live in peace ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Though very miserable, Hester was very brave. In the presence of her husband she would never allow herself to seem to doubt. She would speak of their marriage as a thing so holy that nothing within the power of man could disturb it. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... they discovered it was the Duke of York, and the company squeezed themselves into one another's pockets to make room for us. The house, which is borrowed, and to which the ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and miserable; when we opened the chamber, in which were fifty people with no light but one tallow candle at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murdering by inches in such insufferable ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... victim for some blood or some breath, whatever the circumstances or scene—rousing its priest, treacherously promising vaticination, perhaps filling its temple with a strange hum of oracles, but sure to give half the significance to fateful winds, and grudging to the desperate listener even a miserable remnant—yielding it sordidly, as though each word had been a drop of the deathless ichor of ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the garden at recreation hour—the father who was holding the retreat came up to me, and sternly asked me to withdraw at once. I looked at him. 'Will you give me one more day?' I said. He agreed. He seemed touched. I must have appeared to him a miserable creature. ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 1788. This dreadful disorder, which, there is no doubt, is a distemper natural to the country, together with the difficulty of procuring a subsistance, renders the situtation of these poor wretches truly miserable. ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... as this evidence of pony failure made us all the more anxious about ours, though really they were going very well. About eight miles on we came to one of Evans' camps and the solitary pony wall told its own tale of the death of the other two. He must have had a miserable return. At eleven miles there were two bales of fodder depoted, we were only 50 miles odd from our destination off Cape Armitage, and had one meal over three days' food. If, therefore, we could average 15 miles a day that would suffice. It was a silly risk in view of ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... to truth. He disbelieved in kings. And is it not a mere fact—regret it if you will—that in all European countries, except two, monarchs are a mere survival, the obsolete buttons on the coat-tails of rule, which serve no purpose but to be continually coming off? It is a miserable thing to note how every little Balkan State, having obtained liberty (save the mark!) by Act of Congress, straightway proceeds to secure the service of a professional king. These gentlemen are plentiful in Europe. They are the "noble Chairmen" who lend their names ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... mean?' she said, leaning down by Phinney. 'I would not take even "a good chance" to be miserable.' ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... out among the rest, Yet still a stranger and beloved as such; 280 Even by these passing spectacles my heart Was oftentimes uplifted, and they seemed Arguments sent from Heaven to prove the cause Good, pure, which no one could stand up against, Who was not lost, abandoned, selfish, proud, 285 Mean, miserable, wilfully depraved, Hater perverse of equity ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... coincidence. So come down to me and let us twain fare for thy father's palace, that I may beseech uncle Salih to release him and I may make thee my lawful wife." When Jauharah heard his words, she said in herself, " 'Twas on this miserable gallows bird's account, then, that all this hath befallen and that my father hath fallen prisoner and his chamberlains and suite have been slain and I have been departed from my palace, a miserable exile and have fled for refuge to this island. But, an I devise ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... and the pack-camel rose, moved a few paces on its noiseless feet, swaying from side to side as though to readjust its load, whisked its miserable tail, and stretching out its long neck began to nibble the ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... without, however, neglecting his profession. Indeed, he soon acquired a reputation for being skilful and attentive, while every one spoke in terms of commendation of the young Doctor Paul. Suddenly there was a change. He declined any longer to visit the sick, excepting only the most poor and miserable. He absented himself for days and weeks in the mountains, pursuing his favorite objects with an unnatural enthusiasm. Then he left Thun for foreign countries, and was gone two or three years, and returned with an accumulation of various specimens ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Princess did not suffer herself to be beaten in address. When the desire to see her return to the side of the young Queen of Spain was intimated to her, she spoke of the disgust with which the condition of that miserable country filled her, and which made it impossible to do any good there. To the King's impatience she opposed the impaired state of her health, and placed herself under medical treatment, having at that identical moment a real interest in being pronounced out of health. She delayed from day ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... invitation from the whole club, so had Miss Newman, and the other teachers, and many of the pupils who were outside the charmed circle were invited by their schoolmates who were free to give invitations, only Clara Adams was not considered for a moment by anyone, and she was very miserable over the fact. If ever she regretted her past disagreeable treatment of her school fellows, it was now, but she would not have admitted this even to herself, although in her heart of hearts she was conscious ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... and horribly in the blues too," said Pauline Reynolds. "It's always a wrench to leave home. I'm perfectly miserable for at least three days at the beginning of each term. I ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... from Hyde Park Corner to Mile-End Green. But his philosophy stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the rural life of England he knew nothing; and he took it for granted that everybody who lived in the country was either stupid or miserable. "Country gentlemen," said he, "must be unhappy; for they have not enough to keep their lives in motion;" as if all those peculiar habits and associations which made Fleet Street and Charing Cross the finest views in the world to himself ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... we all know that Lawson crowd have been showing themselves as mean as dirt lately. We thought we had got rid of our enemies some time ago, and here this new lot of rivals seems bent on making life miserable for all scouts. They are a tough crowd, and pretend to look down on us as weaklings. Hank Lawson is now playing the part of the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... what shall we do? The life that we now live is miserable. For my part, I know not whether it is best to live thus, or to die out of hand. My soul chooseth strangling rather than life, and the grave is more easy for me than this dungeon. Shall we ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... attention of Mr. Vane. That gentleman looked through the little circular window at the back of the vehicle, and saw a lady paying the coachman. There was no mistaking her figure. This lady, then, followed at a distance by her slave, walked on toward Hercules Buildings; and it was his miserable fate to see her look uneasily round, and at last glide in at a side door, ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... but break the bonds imposed by low birth and iron fortune. A young clergyman was attracted by the character of the boy, and voluntarily took upon himself the office of his tutor, and thus first opened before his mind visions of a broader world than that of the miserable village of his residence. But these serene days of power expanding under genial guidance soon passed away. His father died, his tutor was translated to another post, and the walls of his prison-house seemed again to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... way of letting things slide, and hoping that they would somehow come right in the end. But there seemed no present prospect of such a consummation; and for a while she gave herself up to a luxury of self-pity. Tides in her mind ebbed and flowed aimlessly as seaweed. Everything was hopeless and miserable. It was useless trying to be good; and she supposed Honor would never help ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the crime of that Good Friday wear a peculiar brand of infamy as they are portrayed on the pages of history; but among them all, the most despicable, the one whose name bears the deepest infamy, is Judas, an apostle turned traitor, for a few miserable coins betraying his best friend into ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... a courageous child, as the dismay at the thought of leaving home with its familiar life and surroundings, and the painful suspense for some days before the plunge into the new world of school is taken. It was, he says, this miserable feeling of suspense that made him share his sorrows with a desolate, but amiable cat in the Easter Road, which mingled its woes with his and as it purred against him ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... of the intemperate man owes its great misery to its cause. He who makes himself a beggar, by having made himself a brute, is miserable indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe. That he ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... If his father was trying to buy off the real heir to the estate with a pitiful pittance, in order to preserve the ill-gotten remainder for Lady Emily's son, why, Granville for his part would be no active party to such a miserable compromise. If some other man was the Colonel's lawful heir, let that other man take the property and enjoy it; but he, Granville Kelmscott, would go forth upon the world, an honest adventurer, to seek his fortune with his own right hand wherever he ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... gasped the other girl, turning a white, miserable face toward Miss Cloud as if to appeal to her leniency. But there was a severity in Julia Cloud's face now after her long hours of anxiety that boded no good for the cause of all ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... encamped near Brighton; and I do so want papa to take us all there for the summer! It would be such a delicious scheme; and I dare say would hardly cost anything at all. Mamma would like to go too of all things! Only think what a miserable summer ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... always reading commercial papers, the Money Market and On Change, and the Stockbrokers' Vade Mecum, and publications of that kind. When he is not reading he is thinking; and by his manner one would fancy his thoughts were always gloomy and unpleasant. What a miserable, hateful, unholy life to lead! I would not be that man for all the money in the Bank of England. But it is a kind of treachery to tell these things. Mr. Sheldon is very good to me. He lets me sit at his table and share the comforts of his ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... steel, the horizon stretched sharply clear and definite, like a line drawn under the finished chapter of vision. There was a gentle murmur of the inflowing tide among the loose stones and pebbles fringing the beach,—but to Helmsley's ears it sounded like the miserable moaning of a broken heart,—the wail of a sorrowful spirit in torture. He went on and on, with no very distinct idea of where he was going,—he simply continued to walk automatically like one in a dream. He did not know the time, but guessed it must be somewhere about midnight. The road ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... bear the absence of this quality in others; so that his patience was pretty well tried by his Irish allies. "At the same time, he expressed his contempt for religion in a way which the bishop saw reason for ascribing to vanity—"the miserable affectation of appearing worse than he really was." One officer there was, named Truc, whose brutality recalled the impression, so disadvantageous to French republicanism, which else had been partially effaced by the manners and conduct ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... too, was involved in (p. 374) the common ruin. Plots were hatched for kidnapping the Cardinal and bringing him home to stand his trial for treason. Sir Geoffrey was arrested in August, 1538, was induced, or forced, to turn King's evidence, and as a reward was granted his miserable, conscience-struck life.[1041] The Countess was spared for a while, but Montague mounted the scaffold ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... me that on Monday morning you will go down to the City Hall and revoke your power of attorney. And as much for Morty's sake as for your own. He will lose your money if he keeps it in his hands, and then he will suffer agonies of remorse. He will be infinitely more miserable than if he merely failed in business. That is honorable. It would only hurt his pride. Then he could get a position again, and you would ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... my daddykins desires! And you, Doctor Richard Travers, you are wanted by your lady mother. Here's a telegram. The girl in the office always tells what is in a telegram, to spare shock. And Cilla, my shining-headed chum, you and I are going to scamper about a bit before we go home. I'd be a miserable defaulter, indeed, if I did not give you your share of this experience. Oh! I know you've snatched bits that in no wise were included in the program, but we're all grafters. I want to play fair. Will you flit over the continent with me ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Fox and the Cat, but one could hardly recognize them, they looked so miserable. The Cat, after pretending to be blind for so many years had really lost the sight of both eyes. And the Fox, old, thin, and almost hairless, had even lost his tail. That sly thief had fallen into deepest poverty, ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... he seized on the miserable wretch in their presence, swinging him round by the waist like an infant, and bore him off, up the turret stairs, to the summit. Ere he disappeared he uttered this ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... not, its voice should be heard with reverence. Let those who cannot nicely, and with certainty, discern the difference between the tones of hypocrisy and those of sincerity, never presume to laugh at all, lest they should have the miserable misfortune to laugh in the wrong place, and commit impiety when they think ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... all her means on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... striking contrast with the courtly and Christian habits of the day. Her natural good sense and love for her friends struggled with her monastic education and reverence for the priests. The conflict rendered her miserable and she returned to her country seat to brood over it. In this state of mind she at length wrote to the Baron and laid open her situation requesting him to comfort, console, and enlighten her." [47:7] His letters accomplished the desired effect and he later published them in the hope that they would ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... suspicious, and people were no more in the habit of speaking well of him than they were of riding out of their way to stop at his place. He was the kind of man that makes his wife and children live in a miserable, two roomed shanty, while he builds a big, warm, expensive barn for his hay and horses. The only time he was ever credited with a human emotion was when his favourite dog died; he cried over it and then ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... is in the Shafi' school and the Hanafs do not allow it (Pilgrimage i. 198). Hence the Moslem when scrupulous uses na'al (shoe) for la'an (curse) as Ina'al abk (for Ila'an abu'-k) or, drat (instead of damn) your father. Men must hold Supreme Intelligence to be of feeble kind if put off by such miserable pretences. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... his study, dejected and miserable, and, as his only comfort, buried himself in his books. For an hour at least before the early call-over he might forget his ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... customers, who was sitting on the end of the seat close to the counter, a shabbily dressed, bleary-eyed, degraded, beer-sodden, trembling wretch, who spent the greater part of every day, and all his money, in this bar. He was a miserable-looking wreck of a man about thirty years of age, supposed to be a carpenter, although he never worked at that trade now. It was commonly said that some years previously he had married a woman considerably his ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... for I stole one of the loaves of bread and gave it to the poor women, who were glad enough to get it, I can tell you! But the steward found out my theft, and I was dismissed from the count's service. The poor women were turned out of their miserable hut. The mother froze to death,—for it was winter then,—and the daughter was left on my hands. We got a Franciscan monk, whom we met in the forest, to marry us—which was a bad move for the girl, for no one would employ her, because she was my wife. So the forest became our home, hollow trees ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... we were cold and stiff and miserable to the very verge of death, we came to a little place called Oeschersleben, and there the cruelty came to an unexpected end. We were ordered out of the trucks and met on the platform by a German, not in uniform, who showed distress at ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... miserable anarchy and decline for Brandenburg, its Kurfuersts, in deadly succession, making what they can out of it for their own pockets. The city itself and its territory utterly helpless. Read pp. 180, 181 (129, 130). "The towns suffered much, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... he had drunk, he earnestly prayed her, and persuaded her, that she would seek to save her life, if she could possible, without reproach and dishonour: and that chiefly she should trust Proculeius above any man else about Caesar. And as for himself, that she should not lament nor sorrow for the miserable change of his fortune at the end of his days: but rather that she should think him the more fortunate, for the former triumphs and honours he had received, considering that while he lived he was the noblest and greatest prince ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... is at once left behind, and we enter the broad valley of Natal, sloping steadily down to the sea and becoming richer and more tropical as it descends. All regular traffic had stopped three days before, but now and then a refugee train came up to the frontier and transhipped its miserable crowd. Fugitives of every nation have been hurrying to the railway in hopes of escape. The stations far down into Natal are constantly surrounded with patient groups, waiting, waiting for an empty truck. Hindoos from ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... Di, an Egyptian officer of the fifth dynasty, with less trouble than we must experience now; for now the palaces, the pictures of the gods, and almost all the pyramids are swallowed up in sand. Miserable Arab villages, such as Saqqara, have fixed themselves in the ruins of Memphis, and from a thick palm grove one can look with astonishment upon the torso of the powerful Ramses II. lying solitary there, the last witness to the glory of the temple of Phtah, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... waistcoat-pocket; now inquiring the name of any place he saw of any person he met. So he proceeded for five or six miles without much difficulty; the road, though not all turnpike, being mainly over good sound township ones, It was at the village of Swineley, with its chubby-towered church and miserable hut-like cottages, that his troubles were to begin. He had two sharp turns to make—to ride through a straw-yard, and leap over a broken-down wall at the corner of a cottage—to get into Swaithing ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... say so, but he feared just that. What miserable black luck! Almost I threw the rod and reel overboard. Some sense, however, prevented me from such an absurdity. And as I worked the tuna closer and closer I grew absolutely sick with disappointment. The only thing to do was to haul this little fish in and go hunt up the school. So I pumped ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... of a former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their like. Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of this: that it is an inference from ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... are thoroughfares in any Turkish city that carry on almost no other form of traffic. There is no quarter so miserable or so remote as to be without one or two. They are the clubs of the poorer classes. Men of a street, a trade, a province, or a nationality—for a Turkish coffee-house may also be Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Kurd, almost anything you please—meet regularly ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... serve no purpose to dwell further on the miserable details of mighty effort wasted, splendid lives sacrificed, and gallant hearts crushed by mischance. There are moments when, like the Oriental, one can but lift helpless hands to ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... be excused if he was put out and miserable. He was in the wrong, and he knew it. And yet the mariner in which the rebuke had been administered was such as no man of spirit could cheerfully endure. The one idea in his mind was, not how to punish the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... on fairly well. I have been making a long study of De Musset, with the result that the poems seem to me far finer than I had remembered, and the Confessions d' un Enfant du Siecle a miserable performance. How was it it impressed me so much when I read it first? His poems have reminded me of you at every step. Do you remember how you used to read them aloud to our mother and me after ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dwarfed court, a nest of dealers in theatrical finery, dancing-shoes, pasteboard rounds of beef and cutlets, stage armor, and second-hand play-books. Between Marquis Court on the one hand, Russell Court on the other, and a miserable alley called Cross Court which connects them, is what appears at first sight to be a solid block of tenements. The graveyard is in the very heart of this populous block. The door of one of the houses stood open, and through a barred staircase window at the back ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... present I will say only that, in bodily health, I am not to be called Ill, for a man who will be seventy-four next month; nor, on the spiritual side, has anything been laid upon me that is quite beyond my strength. More miserable I have often been; though as solitary, soft of heart, and sad, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that there was no one in the place he did not enter, but moved back several paces from the door and swept the sides of the mountains with an uneasy eye. He made out, a short distance from the door, a picketed horse which now reared up its head from the miserable scattering of grass on which it fed and stared at the stranger. The animal must have bulked at least twice as large as the mount which had brought Langley to the mountain-side. And it was muscled even out of proportion to its bulk. The head was ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... heretics; but may God grant us His grace and strengthen us in His word, for we must obey Him rather than men. It is better to lose life and goods than that God should cast us, body and soul, into hell-fire. Therefore, may He confirm us in that which is good, and enlighten our adversaries, poor, miserable, blind creatures, that they may not perish in ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... fellow with no prospects had asked her. An impudent rich man from fashionable New York had hung after her—and had presently abandoned whatever dark projects he may have been concealing and had married in his own set, "as they always do, the miserable snobs," raved Mrs. Gower, who had been building high upon those lavish outpourings of candy, flowers, and automobile rides. Mildred, however, had accepted the defection more philosophically. She had had enough vanity to like the attentions of the rich and fashionable New Yorker, enough good ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... swiftly for all: Jack Marche taught Barbara Lisle to fish for gudgeon; Betty Castlemaine tormented Cecil Page to his infinitely miserable delight; Ricky von Elster made tender eyes at Dorothy Marche and rowed her up and down the Lisse; and his sister Alixe read sentimental verses under the beech-trees and sighed for the sweet mysteries that young German ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... knew whither," far away from dear Ireland. It made one's heart ache to see them all huddled together, without any expectation of ever revisiting their native soil. We feared that the sorrow of leaving home for ever, the miserable accommodations on board the ship which had brought them away, and the tossing of the angry ocean in a long and dreary voyage would have rendered them callous to good behaviour. But it was quite otherwise. They conducted themselves with great propriety. Every American on board seemed ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... aunt? I will not make her miserable. Anything she thinks right she will do, at whatever cost to herself, and for that very reason I will not interfere. It is a great deal better for Fred that his amusement should be sacrificed to her peace, than ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pest you are, you miserable object," she sighed. "I remember years ago, when you were in your cradle, being left alone with you one day and you nearly swallowed your rubber comforter and started turning purple. And I, ass that I was, took it out and saved your life. Let me tell you, young Bertie, it will go very ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... about the room in order to recover command of his face and voice. "Truly the miserable fanatic has wrought well. He has promised himself that his spirit, freed from the body, will be able to possess and control his victim. The mother will understand and accept this. Will Viola?" The thought of her, dominated ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... passed, another, and another. The same: she shrank from him, was impatient, agitated, unhappy, went out alone. Annette saw, and mourned, entreated, prayed; Jacques was miserable. There was no joyous passion to redeem the situation for which Gaston had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... nothing serious. He—Perhaps you may have noticed how restless and miserable he has been lately. It is due, we have decided, to one of the nerves of the leg having been lacerated, and so I am going to remove it, to end the suffering, which ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... our fathers and mothers to retain these feelings throughout their future life, and to be assured that they will not please us by sorrowing and lamenting over us. But, if the dead have any knowledge of the living, they will displease us most by making themselves miserable and by taking their misfortunes too much to heart, and they will please us best if they bear their loss lightly and temperately. For our life will have the noblest end which is vouchsafed to man, and should be glorified rather than lamented. And if they will direct their minds to the care and ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... ma'am; thank you. God knows I would not hurt Bale, nor give him one uneasy hour. It is only this: that I'm—I'm so miserable; and I'm only casting in my mind where to turn to, and what to do. So little a thing would be enough, and then I shall leave Mardykes. I'll go; not in any anger, Mrs. Julaper—don't think that; but I can't ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... be careful," he said. "I don't trust this crazy little pier of yours one atom. Any one of these boards looks capable of crumbling and letting one through.—And, Damaris, please don't be cross with me or I shall be quite miserable. Forgive my having asked you stupid questions. I was a blundering idiot. Of course, what I heard last night was just some echo, some trick of wind or of the river and tide. I was half asleep and imagined the whole thing most likely, magnified sounds as one does, don't you ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... halos of the few lamps defining its triangular shape, with a cluster of three lights on one stand in the middle. The dark forms of the man and woman glided slowly arm in arm along the walls with a loverlike and homeless aspect in the miserable night. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... nothing else for us; I have made you suffer so much, and you deny me this little thing that can never balance any pain, but is all I can dot? Why are you so unwise? Why should we make ourselves more miserable than ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... to find a way out of all this miserable business!" she suddenly exclaimed. "Are we any nearer a solution because of what's just happened? Does that help us to finding out what's become ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... serious and moral; most usually, it was in praise of such men as had died in defence of their country, or in derision of those that had been cowards; the former they declared happy and glorified; the life of the latter they described as most miserable and abject. There were also vaunts of what they would do and boasts of what they had done, varying with the various ages; as, for example, they had three choirs in their solemn festivals, the first of the old men, the second of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... storm eddied and whirled above the miserable group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward as if in token of ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... "This miserable Italian—this poor creature—this sordid wretch—who has just refused the king of England a million, would not perhaps give me a thousand pistoles for the news I could carry him. Mordioux! I am falling into second childhood—I am becoming stupid indeed! The idea of Mazarin ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sackcloth; he mortified his body with fasts and laceration; he associated only with the pious and the learned; he frequented the cloisters and places of meditation; he received into his palace the needy and the miserable; he washed the feet of thirteen beggars every day; he conformed to the standard of piety in his age; he called forth the admiration of his attendants by his devotion to clerical duties. "He was," says James Stephen, "a second Moses entering the tabernacle at the accepted time for the contemplation ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... concerns, and thus to produce divisions fatal to our peace. Such attempts ought to be repelled with a decision which shall convince France and the world that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear, and sense of inferiority, fitted to be the miserable instruments of foreign influence, and regardless of national honor, character, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... earned a brief celebrity; and in the Waterloo year he was a Minister of State, in partibus, at Ghent. He became a peer of France, and when he died, in 1830, the name disappeared. Not many years ago a miserable man, whom nobody knew and who asked help from nobody, died of want in a London cellar. He was the son ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... from attachment—what do I say! from respect for the frightful misfortunes of my child, I should have, although decided to live afterward separated from you—I should have, by a marriage which would legitimatize my child, rendered her position as dazzling, as lofty as it had been miserable!" ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... that it had been owing to some ill impressions mademoiselle Charlotta had given the baron de Palfoy, that her father had been treated by him in the manner already recited. She complained of it to the baron de la Valiere, and told him, her whole family had been affronted, and her brother rendered miserable, for the sake of a young man, who, said she, can neither have birth or fortune to boast of, since he has been so long a prisoner without any ransom paid, or interposition offered to ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... down and pick you up there after the first match, you poor, miserable thing," said Mrs. Spicer, "and I hope you'll find that beast of a horse dead when you get there! You look half ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... despised by the woman, and lays her complaint before her husband. Abram delivers the concubine into the hands of the jealous and offended wife, who dealt hardly with her, so that she fled to the wilderness. Thirsty and miserable, she was found by an angel, near to a fountain of water, who encouraged her by the promise that her child should be the father of a numerous nation, but counseled her to return to Sarai, and submit herself to her rule. In due time the child was born, and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... induce me to build at Royal. Boglin owned the land and I used his money, so I gave up to him; but I'm through with the honer'ble ass now. Put it all in the paper; it'll make him feel good. You might add that I'm taking the evening train for New York, shaking the dust of your miserable village from my ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... overland. The rest were turned adrift in the woods. Of fifty prisoners, only twenty survived the winter of 1686-87. Some perished while trying to tramp northward to Nelson, and some died in the woods, after a vain endeavour to save their miserable ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... October 2nd, we left Somerset in the Bertha, for Murray Island, anchoring that night off Albany. On Wednesday night, we anchored off a sandbank, and on Thursday, off a miserable-looking island, called Village Island. On Friday, we came to York Island, where we went ashore and saw only four natives—one man and three boys. At eleven p.m. on Saturday, we anchored at Darnley Island. This is a fine island, and more suitable for vessels and landing goods than Murray, but supposed ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... screened from our dwelling the unsightly squalor of a negro village, which lay at a distance of a mile and a half on the other side of an abrupt hill to our rear. It consisted merely of some score of huts, of miserable aspect, formed of matting, stretched on stakes stuck in the ground; and in other cases, of interwoven bamboos, dabbed with mud, and roofed over with gigantic palm-leaves. Each had its garden in front, of yams, cocos, and sweet potatoes. The negroes of the village ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... few minutes two or three immense pewter dishes were heaped with a stew made up of mutton, bacon, hung beef, onions, and potatoes, forming indeed a most delicious mess for any man, much less the miserable men who were making it disappear ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... devotions, even to the sacrifice of myself, even to death, to the progress, the well-being, the preservation, the amelioration of this great human family, of which my family, and my country, are only parts; and of which I myself am only a miserable and vanishing fraction, a leaf of a summer, which vegetates and withers on a branch of the immense trunk of ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... have done with her fortune—and mine! But let her search ever so thoroughly, she would find—nothing! I had left no trace of my operations, nothing from which she could regain one penny. Then she would be compelled to come down from her height, return to Hungary, and live a lonely, miserable, poverty-stricken existence on my Slav kingdom, which I had mortgaged and ruined. She would have to struggle against poverty and want, and, by daily care and close economy, would have to pay from her scanty crops the heavy debts I had incurred. All day she would pine and toil, all night ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... for a time, but before long he came again and then kept on coming more and more frequently until there was scarcely an article of value in the palace that had not been sent to him, or sold to get money to keep him quiet. Princess Bethel was very miserable indeed, and taxed her subjects until they were all reduced to beggary in order to get ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... is but a little sum compared to what we could get by waiting, but I do so long to see the day when I can call you my own, that I have said to myself, better take this and enjoy life in a humble way than wear out our best days in this miserable separation. Besides, I can put this money into operations here that will increase it a hundred fold, yes, a thousand fold, in a few months. The air is full of such chances, and I know our family would consent in a moment that I should put in their shares with mine. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... disagree with me," said Madame Valtesi, in her croaky voice, "unless I eat them at the wrong time. Now, a hot bun before breakfast in the morning, or in bed at night, might suit me admirably; but if I ate one now, I should feel miserable. Your strawberries look most original, quite the real thing. Do not be angry with me for discarding the buns. If I ate one, I should really infallibly ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... came the rain on the glistening leaves, berberis and laurel, bay and holly, American oaks of richest red and bronze, copper beeches, tall rhododendrons, cypress of every kind, and behind them a dense black screen of yew. The late roses looked miserable. Vixen would have liked to have brought them in and put them by the hall fire—the good old hearth with its pile of blazing logs, before which Nip the pointer was stretched at ease, his muscular toes stiffening themselves occasionally, as if he was standing at a bird ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... taken Home and tried, they would have been hanged; some few among them, having been too lazy to finish the voyage they had begun, had deserted from their ships, and were then leading a mean and miserable life amongst the natives. ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... was bursting with grief and indignation—grief for the miserable dying wretches around me, and indignation at our utter inability to prevent such wholesale human suffering. But there was no time to lose; the schooner was already settling down beneath our feet, and I saw that it would very soon be "Every man for himself and God for us all;" so I passed ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... on Geraldine to the cow, who gave her an undivided attention mindful of the bunches of grass which the girl had often gathered for her. "I think the ogre has come out to the edge of his cave and is scarcely winking as he watches us down here. Oh, Bossy, I'm the most miserable girl in the whole world." Her breath caught in her throat, and winking back despairing tears she stooped to gather the expected thick handful of grass when a humming sound came faintly across the stillness of the field. She paused with listless curiosity and listened. The buzzing seemed ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... change that had passed upon Shargar. His departure had cast him upon his own resources, and allowed the individuality repressed by every event of his history, even by his worship of Robert, to begin to develop itself. Miserable for a few weeks, he had revived in the fancy that to work hard at school would give him some chance of rejoining Robert. Thence, too, he had watched to please Mrs. Falconer, and had indeed begun to buy golden opinions ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... residents and to any captains (not Germans) visiting Samoa. Sometimes we would meet, and whenever we did he would urge me to come away with him on a cruise to the north-west; but duty tied me down to my own miserable little craft, a wretched little ketch of sixty tons register, that leaked like a basket and swarmed with myriads of cockroaches and quite a respectable ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... "They are miserable-looking varlets," Dame De Courcy said, disdainfully. "Our two men-at-arms would be a match for a score ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... develop into a grief that will waste the best part of her lifetime. She will be shocked and made miserable. But do as you like. I am tired ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Grandissimes who had brought up the subject, and spoken in defence, of their cousin Honore. He had retired, however, not to rest, but to construct an engine of offensive warfare which would revenge him a hundred-fold upon the miserable school of imported thought which had sent its revolting influences to the very Grandissime hearthstone; he wrote a "Phillipique Generale contre la Conduite du Gouvernement de la Louisiane" and a short but ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... in the clouds, it seems. You are her oldest friend. The immediate question is how to make it easiest for her in face of this miserable rumour!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... state of affairs during the Sixteen States of the Five Dynasty-Period and the Ten States of the Five Successions as deplorably miserable and disastrous as the state of affairs now prevailing in Mexico, although there was no election of Presidents then? In quoting objective facts as illustrations the critic should not allow his choice to be dictated by his ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... read well and expressively, confused his own mind to such an extent as to understand very little of what passed his lips. As for Clara, she closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair, scarcely knowing what her mind was dwelling on, but conscious of an added horror in her miserable life, so great that all before seemed well-nigh insignificant. She tried to listen from time to time, but her husband's voice sounded as though it were far away, reaching her through some muffling medium that ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... partly to make something out of him. He is to write. In time she will get sick of this. He won't get famous. She will only see how thin he is and how lame. She will long for a jollier husband, and I don't blame her. And, having made him thoroughly miserable and degraded, she will bolt—if she can ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster |
