"Misfortune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... information beyond what can be gathered from the MS. itself. There can be no doubt, however, that he was a Mussulman gentleman of rank and consideration, and of information far superior to that of his countrymen in general; nor does it appear that he was driven, like Mirza Abu-Talib, by political misfortune, to seek in strange climes the security which his native land denied him. His narrative commences abruptly:—"On the 21st of Ramazan, in the year of the Hejra 1255," (Dec. 1, A.D. 1839,) "between four and five in the afternoon, I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... place which is hard to believe, but it is all too true. The Marionette and his friend, Lamp-Wick, when they saw each other both stricken by the same misfortune, instead of feeling sorrowful and ashamed, began to poke fun at each other, and after much nonsense, they ended by ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt. Thou go'st to Coventry, there to behold Our cousin Hereford and fell Mowbray fight: O! sit my husband's wrongs on Hereford's spear, That it may enter butcher Mowbray's breast. Or, if misfortune miss the first career, Be Mowbray's sins so heavy in his bosom That they may break his foaming courser's back, And throw the rider headlong in the lists, A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford! Farewell, old Gaunt: thy sometimes brother's wife With ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... power which their employers need not despise. The old craft guilds furnished them an example of effective combination among those engaged in the same trade; and as men everywhere in every age, when a common danger or misfortune has confronted them, have come together for mutual help and defence, these ignorant laborers, in violation of stringent statutes, but following blindly their human instincts of self-defence, came together and ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... its passage to his lordship's place of abode than it otherwise would have been. Had it not been for that fatal delay, in all human probability this noble family would not have had to deplore the double misfortune by which its name and honours have become extinguished; for the letter arrived at his lordship's lodging on the morning of his death, about an hour after he had left them, and, as nearly as can be computed ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... Florent hasn't an idea about politics, and would have done far better to seek a berth as writing master in a ladies' school! It would be nothing short of a misfortune if he were to succeed, for, with his visionary social sentimentalities, he would crush us down beneath his confounded working men! It's all that, you know, which ruins the party. We don't need any more tearful sentimentalists, humanitarian poets, people who kiss and slobber over ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... attempt made to emigrate Mick, but it was futile, Mick declaring that 'he'd deserve any misfortune, so he would, if he was ever to turn his back on the old woman again.' Mrs. Sheehy has forgiven us our innocent share in keeping Mick at home with her. The mother and son still live together, with varying times, just as the working mood is on or off Mick. I believe his favourite ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... Mr. Galbraith, Robert Morton had had all he could do to keep from Willie the assurance that Janoah's accusations were false and that instead of misfortune good luck was winging its way toward the low gray house on the bay. Bob was a generous fellow and it added tenfold to his present happiness to know that joy was also coming to one toward whom he cherished ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... gathered, and the waters are out, and the great deeps are broken up. God's sceptre does not fall from His grasp, nor is snatched by alien hands. The throne abideth. Joy will rise from the apparent chaos as springs are unsealed by the earthquake. He will bring fortune out of misfortune; the darkness shall be ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... opinion the sooner the funeral ceremonies are finished the better. The body of the unfortunate Marcia ought not to be deposited in these silent retreats of death without some living token of our respect. She was amiable while living, and notwithstanding the misfortune of a disordered brain, and an innocent, unsuspecting confidence in another's honour, is, in my way of thinking, no less amiable when dead.—Our friend, the Indian will, I know, be complaisant enough on this occasion to give us a few sentences, and then the venerable ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... certain Lord Was of her family, tho' dispossessed Of all he had: of course you know the rest, He had been acting very ill, you see. But they should make acquaintance with the best, For think what claims they had of pedigree! (Misfortune always lends a grace ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... itself underwent many changes of owners. It was originally founded in 1183, by Henry II. King of England and Duke of Normandy, as a priory, under the invocation of St. Julien, for the reception of unmarried females of rank, who, having the misfortune to be affected with leprosy, devoted themselves to a religious life. That terrible disease, happily almost unknown except by tradition, in our days, was in those times of so frequent occurrence, that legislative enactments were repeatedly necessary to restrain its ravages. In the history ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... what not, as my conductor observed. A glance was all I bestowed on this caricature upon English gardens; I then went off in a huff at being chased from my bower, and grumbled all the road to Entsweigen; where, to our misfortune, we lay amidst hogs and vermin, who amply revenged my quarrels with ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... world is but the antechamber of the next," said the prelate. "By suffering and tribulation the soul is cleansed, and the true victor may be he who by the patient endurance of misfortune ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "I'm up to most dodges. But look here, my girl: it wouldn't be prudent in me, lest there should be such a personage as you have just mentioned, to be hard upon any of my fellow-creatures: I am one day pretty sure to be in misfortune myself. You mightn't think it of me, but I am not quite a heathen, and do reflect a little at times. You may be as wicked as myself, or as good as Joseph, for anything I know or care, for, as I say, it ain't my business to judge ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... facts before the mind, it is not difficult to perceive that the colored population of Jamaica can not but still labor under the disadvantages of hereditary barbarism and involuntary servitude, with the superadded misfortune of being inadequately supplied with Christian instruction, along with their recent acquisition of freedom. But while all this must be admitted, of the colored people of Jamaica, it is not true of those of our own country; for, long since, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... She came to complain to the cardinal that his nephew, the cadet, had entertained her for two days without giving her a farthing. His Eminence smiled modestly: 'Lady, the Church is poor, but I do not wish that for this misfortune the good name of the family should suffer. Take this and it will be remedied,' and he handed her two duros. The Portuguese, encouraged by her good reception, began to bawl and complain, thinking she would terrify ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... expressed in many parts of the world by merely shrugging the shoulders, without turning inwards the elbows and opening the hands. The man or child who is obstinate, or one who is resigned to some great misfortune, has in neither case any idea of resistance by active means; and he expresses this state of mind, by simply keeping his shoulders raised; or he may possibly fold his arms ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... for a resort by the legal owners of property to legal means of recovering the possession of it from persons who fail to comply with the terms on which it was put into their keeping. Whether this failure results from dishonesty or from misfortune is a consideration not often allowed, I think, to affect the right of the legal owner of the property concerned to his legal remedy in any other country but Ireland, nor even in Ireland in the case of any property other than property ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... this mischief had not then befall'n, And more that shall befall, innumerable Disturbances on Earth through Femal snares, And straight conjunction with this Sex: for either He never shall find out fit Mate, but such As some misfortune brings him, or mistake, 900 Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain Through her perverseness, but shall see her gaind By a farr worse, or if she love, withheld By Parents, or his happiest choice too late Shall meet, alreadie linkt and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... 1 When dread misfortune's tempests rise, And roar through all the darkened skies, Where shall the anxious pilgrim gain A shelter from the wind and rain? Within the covert of thy grace, O Lord, there is a hiding-place, Where, unconcerned, we hear the sound, Though storm and ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... your Excellency, and believing it," Mrs. Clephane answered,—"and at the end not being too severe on me for my misfortune ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... into the forbidden precinct of Zeus, not knowing the law, and being pursued by her own son and the Arcadians, was about to be killed because of the said law; but Zeus delivered her because of her connection with him and put her among the stars, giving her the name Bear because of the misfortune which had ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... of reckoning was at hand; the retribution fell on but part of the real criminals, and bore most heavily on those who were innocent of any actual complicity in the deed of evil. Nevertheless it is impossible to grieve overmuch for the misfortune that befell men who freely forgave and condoned such ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Riccabocca's, an incident occurred to Leonard that served to carry his mind into new directions. One evening, when his mother was out, he was at work on a new mechanical contrivance, and had the misfortune to break one of the instruments which he employed. Now it will be remembered that his father had been the squire's head carpenter: the widow had carefully hoarded the tools of his craft, which had belonged ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instrument I was holding, for death instead of life. I remember now that a sudden impulse seemed given to my arm as if some one had struck it a blow. Then a sound which it had never before been my misfortune to hear—and I pray God I may never hear it again—startled me to an agonized sense of the disaster I had wrought. Too well I knew the meaning of the lapping, hissing, sucking noise that instantly smote our ears. I had made a deep cut across the jugular vein, the wound ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... period had passed away, during which a small army, the last gleanings, as it seemed, of the English sword, had been assembled at Blois, under Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles, and other chiefs, who to their natural valour were now beginning to unite the wisdom that is taught by misfortune. It was resolved to send Joan with this force and a convoy of provisions to Orleans. The distress of that city had now become urgent. But the communication with the open country was not entirely cut ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... class must necessarily affect the whole course of my life. A certain kind of man declares himself proud of such an origin—and most often lies. Or one may be driven by it into rebellion against social privilege. To me, my origin is simply a grave misfortune, to be accepted and, if possible, overcome. Does that sound mean-spirited? I can't help it; I want ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... them. He says there are several of his old parishioners who remember when the village had its bar-guest, or bar-ghost—a spirit supposed to belong to a town or village, and to predict any impending misfortune by midnight shrieks and wailings. The last time it was heard was just before the death of Mr. Bracebridge's father, who was much beloved throughout the neighbourhood; though there are not wanting some obstinate unbelievers, who insisted that it was nothing but the howling ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... separate the combatants; and when they had separated them in one place, they began again in another. This lasted the better part of the night. Nevertheless with great labour and endurance at last they were separated. And be it known to you that this was the greatest misfortune that ever befell a host, and little did it lack that the host was not lost utterly. But ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... by this sad calamity, no one was more to be pitied than Louis Perron: deeply did the poor boy lament the thoughtless folly which had involved his cousin Catharine in so terrible a misfortune. "If Kate had not been with me," he would say, "we should not have been lost; for Hector is so cautious and so careful, he would not have left the cattle-path; but we were so heedless, we thought only of flowers and insects, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... although the orders were repeated almost every day for a month. He lingered, and loitered, and excused himself, and at last was taken prisoner. This disposed of him for a time very satisfactorily, but meanwhile he had succeeded in keeping his troops from Washington, which was a most serious misfortune. ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... you have read, and have no doubt been able to trace through history the source of prosperity and misfortune among the nations. The curse of India is her overpopulation and the inability of her people to extract from the earth sufficient means for existence. If I may say so, the ordinary native is a dreamer who prefers to starve on a ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... till to-morrow: that which belongs to the moment we drink up in all its bitterness, before the spirit evaporates. We probe minute mischiefs to the quick; we lacerate, tear, and mangle our bosoms with misfortune's finest, brittlest point, and wreak our vengeance on ourselves and it for good and all. Small pains are more manageable, ore within our reach; we can fret and worry ourselves about them, can turn them into any shape, can twist and torture them how we please:—a grain of ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... tired to remain on guard, Eloise," I said, forgetting I should not use that name, "or I might bid you watch here, and, if any misfortune befall me, call the others. Besides, if there are enemies at hand there is no knowing from what direction they may chance upon us. However, all we have observed were probably old marks, or made by roving beasts, and I shall soon return ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... and dismay, and said to his fellow-passengers, "This priest, whom we have just lost, was my cousin; he was going to Kiyoto, to visit the shrine of his patron; and as I happened to have business there as well, we settled to travel together. Now, alas! by this misfortune, my cousin is dead, and I am ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... scattering desolation where they go. To thee I owe that fatal bent of mind, Still to unhappy restless thoughts inclined; To thee, what oft I vainly strive to hide, That scorn of fools, by fools mistook for pride; From thee whatever virtue takes its rise, Grows a misfortune, or becomes a vice; Such were thy rules to be poetically great: "Stoop not to interest, flattery, or deceit; Nor with hired thoughts be thy devotion paid; Learn to disdain their mercenary aid; Be this thy sure defence, thy brazen wall, Know no base action, at no guilt ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... am I to do?" thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly indicated that Natasha had some terrible intention. "The count is away. What am I to do? Write to Kuragin demanding an explanation? But what is there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince Andrew asked me to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she really has already refused Bolkonski—she sent a letter to Princess Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away...." To tell Marya Dmitrievna who had such faith in Natasha seemed to Sonya terrible. "Well, anyway," thought Sonya as she stood in the dark passage, "now ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... had been the misfortune of the M. N. 1 that she poked her tail into a mass of this long, tough grass, which was now wound about ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... friend," said Isabelle, pressing her horse to the gallop, "and thou, good fellow," she added, addressing Hans Glover, "get thee off to another road, and do not stay to partake our misfortune and danger." ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... It is a decided misfortune to a community to be divided in its national leanings, and to have no great fusing interests within or without itself, such as those which knit vigorous Victoria to the mother country, or distant Oregon to the heart of the Republic at Washington. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... is committed by those who assert, that Scripture, by this general calculation of years, only intended to mark the period of the regular administration of the Hebrew state, leaving out the years of anarchy and subjection as periods of misfortune and interregnum. (7) Scripture certainly passes over in silence periods of anarchy, but does not, as they dream, refuse to reckon them or wipe them out of the country's annals. (8) It is clear that Ezra, in 1 Kings vi., ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... days before, I had never heard of. The worthiness of the cause for which this great army had been created to fight, was not entirely clear to me; it is true that I appreciated the fact that in former days, before my misfortune had deprived me of data upon which to reason, I had decided my duty as to that cause; yet it now appealed to me so little, that I was conscious of struggling to rise above indifference. I reproached myself for lack of patriotism. I had read the morning's Dispatch ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... wore the ashen hue of long confinement. Some were shamefaced, some reckless, some sullen. A few white convicts among them seemed doubly ashamed—both of their condition and of their company; they kept together as much as they were permitted, and looked with contempt at their black companions in misfortune. Fetters's man and Haines, armed with whips, and with pistols in their belts, were present to oversee the unloading, and the colonel could see them point him out to the State officers who had come in charge ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... until we turned an angle of the river, and found ourselves too near to retreat. In such a moment, without knowing what was before them, the coolness of the men was strikingly exemplified. No one even spoke after they became aware that silence was necessary. The natives (probably anticipating misfortune) stood leaning upon their spears upon the lofty bank above us. Desiring the men not to move from their seats, I stood up to survey the channel, and to steer the boat to that part of it which was least impeded by rocks. I was obliged to decide upon a hasty survey, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... might have been expected, decided in favor of Aphrodite, who had promised him that the fairest woman living in the whole world should be his wife. This promise had to be kept, being given by a goddess, but it was the source of endless misfortune, for Paris had a young and lovely wife who was tenderly attached to him, while the fairest of living women—acknowledged as such by fame in all known countries—was Queen Helen of Sparta, herself the wife of ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... to keep calm, and assured them that it was no joke, but that San Francisco was really in the hands of the Japanese. It was the duty of the employees and the citizens, he said, to refrain from all resistance, so that a worse misfortune—a bombardment, he added in a ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... in the same method, but actuated by the like spirit, we abridge of their liberty, and torment by scorn, all who either fall short, or exceed the usual standard, if they happen to have the additional misfortune of poverty. Perhaps we are in no part more susceptible than in our vanity, how much then must those poor wretches suffer, whose deformity would lead them to wish to be secluded from human view, in being exposed to the public, whose observations are no better than expressions of scorn, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... actually a section in the penal code taking cognisance of the crime. The Hindoo will not touch a dead carcase, so that when a bullock mysteriously sickens and dies, the Chumars haul away the body, and appropriate the skin. Some luckless witch is blamed for the misfortune, when the rascally Chumars themselves are all the while the real culprits. The police, however, are pretty successful in detecting this crime, and it is not now of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... me a source of unavailing grief, that after the expenditure of so much time, and labour, and suffering, and means, one of the most important measures of my life may prove a misfortune to the Church of my affections and the country of my birth. I have only to say, that as long as there is any prospect of my being useful to either, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... as a prisoner, though melancholy, was not undignified; he paid no allegiance, he met the men of his own rank, nor was he of a kind to whom poverty, the chief thorn of his misfortune, ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... AND MOTION STUDY IS UNLIMITED.—It is a great misfortune that the worker does not understand, as he should, that motion study and time study apply not only to his work, but also to the work of the managers. In order to get results from the start, and paying results, it often happens that the work of the worker is the first to be so studied, ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... about you which makes people stare. Dear Kathie could pass along quietly, or sit in a corner of a room and be conveniently overlooked, but you—I am not paying you a compliment, my dear, I consider it is a misfortune!—you take the eye! Wherever you go, people will notice you and gossip about your movements. At twenty-six, and with your appearance, I ask you candidly, as aunt to niece—do you consider yourself a suitable person to live alone, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... arrived one after the other,—his outlook continued to darken and darken, till it had become very dark indeed. There is perennially the great comfort, immense if you can manage it, of making front against misfortune; of looking it frankly in the face, and doing with a resolution, hour by hour, your own utmost against it. Friedrich never lacked that comfort; and was not heard complaining. But from December 13th, 1744, when he hastened home to Berlin, under such aspects, till June 4th, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... him with mild interest. In front of the two-story frame building that seemed to stagger, or at least to shrink, under the weight of its own importance, the stranger—a man—paused to glance at one of the placards heralding the misfortune and at the same time the far from parsimonious regard of the lady who had been despoiled of a fashionable bulldog. Having perused the singularly comprehensive notice, he deliberately tore it down, folded it with some care, and stuck it ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... section, I must say one word as to PUNNABLE names, names that stand alone, that have a significance and life apart from him that bears them. These are the bitterest of all. One friend of mine goes bowed and humbled through life under the weight of this misfortune; for it is an awful thing when a man's name is a joke, when he cannot be mentioned without exciting merriment, and when even the intimation of his death bids fair to carry ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has wise saws and modern instances quoted to him in his distress. For instance, whilst hesitating about utterly annihilating the Wu reigning family, he was advised: "If one will not take gifts from Heaven, Heaven may send one misfortune." This is a very hackneyed saying in ancient Chinese history, and is as much used to-day as it was 2500 years ago: it comes from the Book of Chou (now partly lost). It will be remembered that the distinguished Japanese statesman, Count ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... went on Sir Henry, "my only and younger brother, and till five years ago I do not suppose that we were ever a month away from each other. But just about five years ago a misfortune befell us, as sometimes does happen in families. We quarrelled bitterly, and I behaved unjustly to ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... that the first time he sat on the royal throne of Persia, under the canopy of gold, Demaratus, the Corinthian, who was much attached to him and had been one of his father's friends, wept, in an old man's manner, and deplored the misfortune of those Creeks whom death had deprived of the satisfaction of seeing Alexander seated on the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Jehovah and said, "Jehovah, why hast thou brought misfortune upon this people? Why is it that thou has sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name he has wronged this people, and thou hast done nothing at all ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... influences in which they delight are to be found, and where they encounter men and women still in the flesh who are like-minded with themselves. For such an entity as one of these to meet with a medium with whom he is in affinity is indeed a terrible misfortune; not only does it enable him to prolong enormously his dreadful life in Kamaloka but it renews for perhaps an indefinite period his power to generate evil Karma, and so prepare for himself a future incarnation of the most degraded character, besides running the risk of losing ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... to richly deserved misfortune, our commiseration, and be not over-hasty meanwhile in our censure of the French people, left for the first time to govern themselves, remembering ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... will cease to be miserable if it be duly faced; and something is done towards conquering our miseries, when we face them in any degree, even if not with due courage. Herbert had taken his plunge into the deep, dark, cold, comfortless pool of misfortune; and he felt that the waters around him were very cold. But the plunge had been taken, and the worst, perhaps, was ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... of constituencies by a comparatively small number of busybodies interested in some particular fad. A large number of members of Parliament really had to bend to some two or three hundred electors, although there might be 20,000 in the whole constituency. He had the misfortune to be elected by only a gross. It was strictly true that in many cases a candidate was compelled to consent to support something that he felt strongly against, merely because a certain percentage ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... ghosts. Fourth, a deification of certain abstract ideas, such as War, Fate, Victory, and Death. But the average heathen Anglo-Saxon religion was merely a vast mass of superstition, a dark and gloomy terrorism, begotten of the vague dread of misfortune which barbarians naturally feel in a half-peopled land, where war and massacre are the highest business of every man's lifetime, and a violent death the ordinary way in which he meets ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... second thoughts, if I could find out that the dear creature carried any of her letters in her pockets, I can get her to a play or to a concert, and she may have the misfortune ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... writes, "This morning I leave 39 Castle Street for the last time." It was something to have written a book sought for by him at such a moment. Even at Malta, in December, 1831, when the pressure of disease, as well as of misfortune, was upon him, Sir Walter was often found with a volume of Miss Austen in his hand, and said to a friend, "There is a finishing-off in some of her scenes that is really quite above ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... privations, and making perforce the most faithful study ever made of their life. It must be confessed that the picture has few features attractive to people at peace with society. Most of the brigands are men who have placed themselves beyond the law by some hideous crime,—or misfortune, as they would call it in Naples,—and in other cases they are idle ruffians, who have taken to robbery because they like it. They generally look forward to a time when, having placed a sufficient amount of money at interest, they can surrender themselves to the authorities, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... envied families in control of the government. His mother's family, the Glinskis, were especially unpopular; and when a terrific fire destroyed nearly the whole of Moscow it was whispered by jealous boyars that the Princess Anna Glinski had brought this misfortune upon them by enchantments. She had taken human hearts, boiled them in water, and then sprinkled the houses where the fire started! An enraged populace burst into the palace of the Glinskis, murdering all they ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... life is urged as being only secondary in importance to possessing a big family; that there is an intimate association between the two there can be no doubt, since the latter beyond peradventure would entail the former. It has ever been the habit and misfortune of sages now and then to desert the field of their own peculiar activities and to make incursions into unknown regions—generally giving advice with a dogmatism and finality proportionate to their ignorance ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... effectually destroyed all pleasure on her part, and had made the change appear an unmitigated misfortune, even though she did not know what she would have thought the worst. Congratulations were dreadful to her, and it was all that Isabel could do to persuade her to repress her dislike so as not to ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... misfortune, but his fault; and any view that falls short of this fact is radically defective. Sin not only brings a corruption and bondage, but also a condemnation and penalty, upon the self-will that originates it. Sin not only renders man unfit for rewards, font also ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... that France may be animated by a spirit of rational liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest policy, to provide a permanent body in which that spirit may reside, and an effectual organ by which it may act, it is my misfortune to entertain great doubts concerning several material points in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... keep each other in countenance. I had been but a few weeks in our present miserable abode, and had fully recovered my health, though I think that I was a little crazed with the prints, and the subjects of them, over which I daily pored in the large Bible, when the greatest misfortune of all came upon the poor Brandons—and that was, to add to their other losses, the loss of my ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... vote, Camillus appeared openly against it, shrinking from no unpopularity, and inveighing boldly against the promoters of it, and so urging and constraining the multitude, that, contrary to their inclinations, they rejected the proposal; but yet hated Camillus. Insomuch that, though a great misfortune befell him in his family (one of his two sons dying of a disease), commiseration for this could not in the least make them abate of their malice. And, indeed, he took this loss with immoderate sorrow, being a man naturally ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... day.... The new saw-mill has just been raised; we had 20 men to supper on 6th day, and 12 on 7th day." But there were quilting-bees and apple-parings and sleighing parties and many good times, for the elastic temperament of youth rallies quickly from grief and misfortune. Susan went to Presbyterian church one Sunday, and the gray-robed Quaker ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Robert Lansing's real misfortune was not knowing how to play his luck. It is curious the fear men have of death. The former Secretary of State's only hope of immortality was to commit political suicide, and he lacked the courage or the vision to ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... sincerely for writing to me so soon after your most heavy misfortune. Your letter affected me so much. We both most truly sympathise with you and Mrs. Fox. We too lost, as you may remember, not so very long ago, a most dear child, of whom I can hardly yet bear to think tranquilly; yet, as you must know from your own most painful experience, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... than a message came to him to desist from the assault; because "it was more reasonable that the Roman soldiers, who had fought the Aetolians in the field, should reap the fruits of the victory." Thus was Lamia relieved, and the misfortune of a neighbouring city proved the means of its escaping ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... poor honest people, to indulge themselves in their debaucheries; that they would do well to think of amending before the Justice of their country fell upon them; and that after such warning they must not expect any assistance from him, in case they should fall under any misfortune. The next thing that followed after this fine harangue was that they were put into the information of some of Jonathan's creatures; or the first fresh fact they committed and Jonathan was applied to for the recovery of the goods, he immediately ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... after a second marriage, a victim to phthisis. Thus Gorki was left an orphan. His stern grandfather now took charge of him. According to the Russian custom he was early apprenticed to a cobbler. But here misfortune befell him. He scalded himself with boiling water, and the foreman sent him home to his grandfather. Before this he had been to school for a short time; but as he contracted small-pox he had to give up his schooling. And that, to his own satisfaction, was the end of his education. ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... bear. They fired their machine guns, and the Germans replied in kind, but with more terrible effect, for two of the Allied planes were shot down. It was a sad loss, but it was the fortune of war, or, rather, misfortune, for the Zeppelin was not engaged in a fair fight, but seeking to bomb ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... enter the apothecary's shop which stood at the corner of Chiavica, and there he stayed a while transacting it. I had just been told that he had boasted of the insult which he fancied he had put upon me; but be that as it may, it was to his misfortune; for precisely when I came up to the corner, he was leaving the shop and his bravi had opened their ranks and received him in their midst. I drew a little dagger with a sharpened edge, and breaking the line of his defenders, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... safety against Bulgaria, while there was yet time, the Allies, said M. Delcasse, acted on the advice of M. Venizelos, who told them that the Graeco-Servian Treaty was purely defensive: that it did not provide for action unless Bulgaria attacked; and what a misfortune if Servia, by such measures, should appear to take an initiative which would give Bulgaria an excuse for the aggression she meditated. Therefore, they bade Servia devote her whole attention to the security of her ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... moment for clever manoeuvring. What a disaster if this big industry should fall into the hands of one so incapable as Theodore! What a misfortune if Casimir took charge! Neither side thought that a partnership could be possible, and the two cousins share alike. Each wanted ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... with these personages, Robespierre being the only name of consequence mentioned in his letters; and then it appeared in much the same fashion practised by her father in alluding to the Governor of the State, who had the misfortune to be unpopular with Mr. Carewe. But this did not dim her great-uncle's lustre in Miss Betty's eyes, nor lessen for her the pathetic romance of the ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... yet they were trying to make talk among themselves as usual; they seemed as though they dared not let themselves be silent, when Sylvia, sitting opposite to the window, saw Philip at the top of the brow, running rapidly towards the farm. She had been so full of the anticipation of some kind of misfortune all the morning that she felt now as if this was the very precursive circumstance she had been expecting; she stood up, turning quite white, and, pointing ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... gone from the undissembled sternness of his old resolutions. If he could but be rid of that altogether! He thought he had obtained a mystic recognition of the terrorless but uncommunicating Joy of life which while men live they pursue, desiring it with the one human craving which survives every misfortune, every thwarted hope, all enslavement of the heart's small freedom—the thirst for happiness. Was man, whom God had made in His own Image, but a shadow on the unstable wind? Could it be true that he came in with vanity ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... mother's counsel finally deterred him), and above all his creation of the curse of Rome, a hungry and brutal proletariate, by largesses of corn, present his character as a public man in darker colours. As Mommsen says, "Right and wrong, fortune and misfortune, were so inextricably blended in him that it may well beseem history in this case to reserve her judgment." [25] The discord of his character is increased by the story that an inward impulse dissuaded him at first from ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the mother of cows was once weeping in the celestial regions. O child, Indra took compassion upon her, and asked her, saying, "O auspicious one! why dost thou weep? Is everything well with the celestials? Hath any misfortune, ever so little, befallen the world of men or serpents?" Suravi replied, "No evil hath befallen thee that I perceive. But I am aggrieved on account of my son, and it is therefore, O Kausika, that I weep! See, O chief of the ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... state-room; and Sumner and Mrs. Hasty, meeting in the cabin, clasped hands, with these few but touching words: "We must die." "Let us die calmly, then." "I hope so, Mrs. Hasty." It was in the gray dusk, and amid the awful tumult, that the companions in misfortune met. The side of the cabin to the leeward had already settled under water; and furniture, trunks, and fragments of the skylight were floating to and fro; while the inclined position of the floor made it difficult to stand; and every sea, as ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in falling from a slippery ledge. When Jan, from his wood-chopping in the edge of the forest, saw the team race up to the little cabin and a strange Cree half carry the wounded man through the door, he sped swiftly across the open with visions of new misfortune ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... against the moral darkness of the land. The gloom of Los Hatos woods was preferable; a life of hardships in the train of a robber band less debasing. Antonia embraced with all her soul her uncle's obstinate defiance of misfortune. It was grounded in the belief in the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... seemed pleased to see me near her, and extended her hand to me with a little smile. The doctor had told her she must not attempt to speak. I held her hand for awhile, and told how grieved I was over her misfortune. And then I told her I would bring her a tablet and pencil, so that she might communicate her wants to us; and then I said to her that I was out of a job at my trade (I know that the angels in heaven do not record such lies), and that I had nothing ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Even her most affectionate looks, and smiles, and pressures of the hand, while they agitated me, produced a feeling of salutary respect mingled with compassion. One evening, I remember, when suffering under a sad misfortune, the poor girl threw her arms round my neck, and wept as if her heart would break. She had not the least idea of impropriety; no daughter could embrace a father with more perfect innocence and unsuspecting ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... uncle that would gladden any boy's heart; he delighted to have us staying in the house; he said it made the old place cheery and pleasant, for he had the misfortune to be a bachelor; and with the exception of his old housekeeper—whom we boys half worried to death—and his female servants, he saw no 'women folk,' all the year round, but our mother. He was one of the right sort, always planning pic-nics, fishing and rowing excursions; and kept ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... her Spirits; but after, consulting what they should do in this Affair, Villenoys ask'd her, Who of the House saw him? She said, Only Maria, who knew not who he was; so that, resolving to save Isabella's Honour, which was the only Misfortune to come, Villenoys himself propos'd the carrying him out to the Bridge, and throwing him into the River, where the Stream would carry him down to the Sea, and lose him; or, if he were found, none could know him. So Villenoys took ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... recognizable by their names rather than by their features.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} He, however, it was who most of all persuaded us men, as being men, not to despise men nor to dishonor Christ, the head of all, by inhuman treatment of them; but in the misfortune of others to establish well our own lot and to lend to God that mercy, since we ourselves need mercy. He did not therefore disdain to honor disease with his lips; he was noble and of noble ancestry and of brilliant reputation, but he saluted them as brethren, not out ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... fast as possible. Charley and Gus said they had engagements and left the table as soon as they finished their apple pie. Anna sat primly and ate with great elegance. When she spoke at all she spoke to her father, about church matters, and always in a commiserating tone, as if he had met with some misfortune. Mr. Kronborg, quite innocent of her intentions, replied kindly and absent-mindedly. After the dessert he went to take his usual Sunday afternoon nap, and Mrs. Kronborg carried some dinner to a sick neighbor. Thea and Anna began to clear ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... black list of dunces. At the same time it roused a number of authors to fury, as it well might. His satire is often unjust, and he includes among the dunces men wholly undeserving of the name, who had had the misfortune to offend him. To place a great scholar like Bentley, an eloquent and earnest preacher like Whitefield, and a man of genius like Defoe among the dunces was to stultify himself, and if Pope in his spite against Theobald found some justification for giving ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... sure that of the few prisoners selected for invitation to the ball, none was within earshot. The Vicomte de Tocqueville, a stoical young patrician, had chosen a partner for the next dance, and was leading her out with that air of vacuity with which he revenged himself upon the passing hour of misfortune. "Go on," it seemed to say, "but permit me to remind you that, so far as I am concerned, you do not exist." Old General Rochambeau and old Rear-Admiral de Wailly-Duchemin, in worn but carefully-brushed regimentals, patrolled the far end of the room arm-in-arm. The Admiral seemed ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... orchestra had played "God Save the King," and a buzz of sympathetic interest spread through the audience. He had risen and bowed. For the next few days the Old Province House was beset with callers. The fashion and intelligence of the city paid their respects to royalty in misfortune. The Princess Henrietta, the King's only child, a stout, hearty-looking girl of eighteen, without beauty, made her debut into society under these auspices. The first year, despite the change in their circumstances, had been passed happily and with ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... our work that night was intended to be preparatory to a big bombardment, and I had the misfortune to learn from the German trenches what ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... the enemy. Thereupon, according to what I have heard related by several officers who were in this terrible tumult, the streets of Leipzig presented a most horrible sight; and our soldiers, now compelled to retire, could do so only by disputing every step of the ground. An irreparable misfortune soon filled the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and though they may not speak of it often, yet its existence is the narrow ledge on which they have reared their stronghold in the perilous pass. And the English boy and girl had really lived a joint life, in their sympathies and surroundings, for years before a joint misfortune had overtaken them. In their meeting after a long separation they felt at the same time the rare delight of friendship renewed, and the still rarer charm of finding new acquaintances in old friends; but besides the well-remembered bond of habit, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... that "it belongs to a great soul so to bear what seems troublesome, as nowise to depart from his natural estate, or from the dignity of a wise man." And Aristotle says (Ethic. iv, 3) that "a magnanimous man does not grieve at misfortune." Now troubles and misfortunes are opposed to goods of fortune, for every one grieves at the loss of what is helpful to him. Therefore external goods of fortune do ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... said Milady to herself, at the height of joy at having obtained so quickly such a great result. "Oh, know him? Yes, yes! to my misfortune, to my eternal misfortune!" and Milady twisted her arms as if in a ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... forever. But there was fifty-two dollars between the leaves of the diary. He had come from home with a good stock of clothing, and had saved nearly all he had earned, including his advance for the West India voyage. At Havana Mr. Carboy had the misfortune to lose his watch overboard, and, as he needed one, Harvey had sold him his—a very ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... of the Bolsheviks is a misfortune for the Russian Revolution, the Russian Republic and all the oppressed nations of Europe. So long as the German Social Democracy permits the working masses to be brought to the battlefield in the ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... good I drew from it, that whomsoever many years had used and worn, they had not yet broken any fibre of your force:—a pure joy to me, who abhor the inroads which time makes on me and on my friends. To live too long is the capital misfortune, and I sometimes think, if we shall not parry it by better art of living, we shall learn to include in our morals some bolder control of the facts. I read once, that Jacobi declared that he had some thoughts which—if he should entertain ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the force at Ti. In the middle and late days of July, they reported to runners the southward progress of the British. They were ahead of Herkimer's regiment of New York militia on August third when they discovered the ambush—a misfortune for which they were in no way responsible. Herkimer and his force had gone on without them to relieve Fort Schuyler. The two scouts had ridden post to join him. They were afoot half a mile or so ahead of the commander when Jack heard the call of the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller |
