"Bane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a sensitive man, who had been some thing of a pariah since his knickerbocker period, and was first the butt and later the bane of the narrow, convention-governed public of a small English village. A fierce defiance of the people amongst whom he had lived his life kept him in his native place till after his twenty-first birthday. He rebelled with all his soul against the animal unreason of these men, women, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... north the wall of the Catskills stands out clear and strong, while in the south the mountains of the Highlands bound the view. The day is warm and the bees are very busy there in that neglected corner of the field, rich in asters, flea-bane, and golden-rod. The corn has been cut, and upon a stout, but a few rods from the woods, which here drop quickly down from the precipitous heights, we set up our bee-box, touched again with the pungent oil. In a few moments a bee has found it; she comes up ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... which, by self-expenditure, seeks to remedy it. If the external world is merely an expression of a remorseless Power, whence comes the love which is the principle of the moral life in man? The same Power brings the antidote as well as the bane. And, further, the bane exists for the sake of the antidote, the wrong for the sake of the remedy. The evil in the world is means to a higher good, and the only means possible; for it calls into activity the divine element in man, and thereby contributes to its realization ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... who snare and stupify the mind, Sophists! of beauty, virtue, joy, the bane! Greedy and fell, though impotent and blind, Who spread your filthy nets in Truth's fair fane, And ever ply your venom'd fangs amain! Hence to dark Error's den, whose rankling slime First gave you form! Hence! lest the Muse should deign (Though ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the Dacyannes myttee powere; Wythe them a mynnute wurchethe bane for yeares; 320 Theie undoe reaulmes wythyn a syngle hower. Rouze all thie honnoure, Birtha; look attoure Thie bledeynge countrie, whych for hastie dede Calls, for the rodeynge of some doughtie power, To royn yttes royners, make yttes foemenne ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... kill the fever poison and make a man himself again. They say—put the cup away, Poole—that wherever a poisonous thing grows there's another plant grows close at hand which will cure the ill it does, bane and antidote, my lad, stinging-nettles and dock at home, you know. I don't know that it holds quite true, but I do know that there are fevers out here, and quinine acts as a cure. But there's one thing I want to know, and it's this, how ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... a certain extent been partial in this matter? Have you not, in the apprehension of being compelled to blame the conduct of one who has caused me unutterable anxiety, misery and persecution, and who has been the bane of the Bible cause in Spain, refused to receive the information which it was in YOUR power to command? I called on the Committee and yourself from the first to apply to Sir George Villiers; no one is so well versed as to what has lately been going as ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... is a beggar, a bastard, a foundling, a fellow in meaner circumstances than one of your lordship's footmen." "And is it possible," cried he, "that a young creature with such perfections should think of bestowing herself so unworthily?" "Alas! my lord," answered she, "consider the country—the bane of all young women is the country. There they learn a set of romantic notions of love, and I know not what folly, which this town and good company can scarce eradicate in a whole winter." "Indeed, madam," replied my lord, "your cousin is of too immense a value to be thrown away; such ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... this bane a queer picnic!" she said. "Which way are you going? Mr. McGill, is he coming ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... Being thus benetted round with villainies,/ Ere I could make a prologue to my brains] [W: mark the prologue ... bane] In my opinion no alteration is necessary. Hamlet is telling how luckily every thing fell out; he groped out their commission in the dark without waking them; he found himself doomed to immediate destruction. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... are contrary to those of Religion and Equity, they are the greatest Depravations of human Nature, by giving wrong Ambitions and false Ideas of what is good and laudable; and should therefore be exploded by all Governments, and driven out as the Bane ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the constable, admiral, and marshal of France [63] commanded an army which did not exceed the number of a thousand knights and squires. [631] These splendid names were the source of presumption and the bane of discipline. So many might aspire to command, that none were willing to obey; their national spirit despised both their enemies and their allies; and in the persuasion that Bajazet would fly, or must ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... of Prawle and half a crown. Before I was off the quay I heard him saying to a lady, "Bane in collision, marm! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the education of a thankless son! Was it for this I took the trouble to cure myself of drinking, to break with my friends, to become an example to the neighborhood? The jovial good fellow has made a goose of himself. Oh! if I had to begin again! No, no! you see women and children are our bane. They soften our hearts; they lead us a life of hope and affection; we pass a quarter of our lives in fostering the growth of a grain of corn which is to be everything to us in our old age, and when the harvest-time ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... he long to interrupt The reign of folly, usurpation ever, Though fenced by sanction of a thousand years! Well thirst to drag the wrongful ruler down; Well purpose to pen back Into the narrow path of right The ignorant, headlong multitude, Who blindly follow, ever, Blind leaders, to their bane! ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... with the doctors, who have long since become the ideals of our school girls.... Referring to the fear some native Christians have shown of sending their girls to a school having manual labour in its curriculum, Dr. Ida exclaimed hotly, 'This fear of work is the bane of China.' Here are two doctors of exalted privileges, educated abroad, honoured alike by native and foreigner, and yet putting their hand to cooking and housework of every kind, as the need may be, without a thought of being degraded thereby; ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... saved who now suffer an ignominious and an early death; and many might be so much purified in the furnace of punishment and adversity, as to become the ornaments of that society of which they had formerly been the bane. The vices of mankind must frequently require the severity of justice; but a wise State will direct that severity to the greatest moral ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... harbinger of catastrophe. He who preached wisdom and claimed to be taught by the flowers, who loved life and hated injustice, who mingled with his kind, ever searching for that one who needed him, he must become the woe and the bane and curse of those he would only serve! Insupportable and pitiful fate! The fiends of the past mocked him, like wicked ghouls, voiceless and dim. The faces of the men he had killed were around him in the gray gloom, pale, drifting visages ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... saying softly: "Ah, William, would that it had been so. Too late I begin to think on those things which might have been, had Sybilla de Thouars been born under a more fortunate star. As it is I can only go on—a terror to myself and a bane ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... considerable sum of money, and if his existence is extended to the common period he will die rich. It happens, however, that he is (and long has been) troubled with violent stomachic pains, for which he has hitherto obtained no relief, and which really are the bane and torment of his life. Now, if my excellent laborer were to send for a physician and to consult him respecting this malady, would it not be very singular language if our doctor were to say to him: "My good ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... fare * Abroad, no comrade in thee to gain: I fear when lain on my couch and long * My sickness, thou prove thee nor fond nor fain: I fear me that time groweth scant my good * And my hand be strait thou shalt work me bane: A helpmate I want shall do what do I * And bear patient the pasture ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... my bane, - A harder case you never heard, My wife (in other matters sane) Pretends that ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... it," she said in quiet despair; "that boy is the bane of my life. I'll speak to you shortly, Alexander. Go to your ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... stone is gone, anyhow,' said the baker. 'It was the bane of my life. I had no idea how easy it was to remove it. Give me your pickaxes young miner, and I will show you how a baker can ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... United States—the States of the Pacific excepted—we are obliged to confine our culture to glazed structures, erected for the purpose, where an atmosphere similar to the vine-growing regions of Europe can be maintained, and that bane of the ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... instance of the capriciousness of the human mind that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men who object to the new constitution for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old; and which is, in itself, evidently incompatible with the idea of a government; a principle, in short, which, if it is to be executed at all, must substitute the violent and sanguinary agency of the sword to the mild influence ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... many friends whom he never forgot, being of a very generous and loving disposition. I think that those years at Harrow were the happiest he ever knew, for he was under a strict discipline, and was too young to indulge in those dissipations which were the bane of his subsequent life. But he was not distinguished as a scholar, in the ordinary sense, although in his school-boy days he wrote some poetry remarkable for his years, and read a great many books. He read in bed, read when no ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... wrangling hands Shall grasp you not as prey, nor we ourselves Betray you thus embracing sacred shrines, Nor make the avenging all-destroying god, Who not in hell itself sets dead men free, A grievous inmate, an abiding bane.— Spake I not right, of saving ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... suff'rings." Heaps of dead Trojans were Scamander's bane, Dead dogs, dead cats, and dung-boats shame the Seine, Ten thousand shores and jakes the Thames defile, And gradual mud is working woe to Nile; Yet harder Duddon's fate, her hapless stream Of fifty strains ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... rights. It was the bane of my life to be supposed to have them. Nothing but this could have made ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thine ne'er may I hold a place Till I renounce all sense, all shame, all grace— That seat,—like seats, the bane of Freedom's realm, But dear to those presiding at the helm— Is basely purchased, not with gold alone; Add Conscience, too, this bargain is your own— 'T is thine to offer with corrupting art The rotten borough[62] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... was more essential than the mosquito net under which I slept every night for nearly four months. Insects are the bane of Africa. The mosquito carries malaria, and the tsetse fly is the harbinger of that most terrible of diseases, sleeping sickness. Judging from personal experience nearly every conceivable kind of biting bug infests the Congo. One of the most tenacious and troublesome of the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... and in deed; lovable, intelligent, vivacious, easily irritated, but still more easily pleased, sharp of tongue, tender of heart, and full to overflowing with humour. In appearance Marie was small and slight, with a sallow complexion which was the bane of her life, black hair and beautiful white teeth. No one could call her handsome, but she had certainly an attraction ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... one righteous man succeeds The seer Amphiaraus, good and brave. His post is at the Homoloian gate. Here he reproaches heaps on Tydeus' head, Calling him murderer and the public bane, Leader of Argos in all evil ways, The Furies' pursuivant, henchman of death, That has Adrastus to his ruin trained. Thy brother too, stained by his father's fate, Great Polynices, with accusing face ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... Constitution and surrender it unbroken to his successor. Accordingly he made to the Southern States all conceivable propositions for peace. Slavery should be left without federal interference. They madly rejected all. War came. He saw at the outset that slavery was our bane. It confronted each regiment, perplexed each commander. It was the Southern commisariat, dug Southern ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy
... have now nearly triumphed over the need for ink, or that our temperaments have become Russian; but that some of us have become infected with the wish to see and record the truth and obliterate that competitive moralising which from time immemorial has been the characteristic bane of English art. In other words, the Russian passion for understanding has tempered a little the English passion for winning. What we admire and look for in Russian literature is its truth and its profound and comprehending tolerance. I am credibly informed that what Russians admire and look for ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... paying a rent computed at so much a sheep. He had, indeed, purchased the ground on which his house stood, but this he had done simply to guard himself against other purchasers. These other purchasers were the bane of his existence, the one great sorrow which, as he ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... valerian, in masses of squashed strawberry, and the fig-wort, tall, square-stemmed, and set with small carmine knots of flower. In autumn these become brown seed crockets, and are most decorative. The fourth tall flower is the flea-bane, and the fifth the great willow-herb. The lesser plants are the small willow-herbs, whose late blossoms are almost carmine, the water-mints, with mauve-grey flowers, and the comfrey, both purple and white. The dewberry, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... shoon thou ne'er gavest nane, Every nighte and alle; The whinnes shall pricke thee to the bare bane, And Christe ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... reinforced by those who are ever and anon being born. Let no one of you think that I am ignorant of the many disagreeable and painful features that belong to marriage and child-rearing. But bear in mind that we possess nothing at all good with which some bane is not mingled, and that in our most abundant and greatest blessings there reside the most abundant and greatest woes. If you decline to accept the latter, do not strive to obtain the former. Practically all who possess any real excellence and pleasure are obliged to work ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... sister," squeaked back Lulu in the character of Victoria. "I wish they wouldn't come at all. Children are the bane ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... himself with the honor of a soldier and the purity of a Christian,—triumphantly sustaining himself throughout a Congressional investigation set on foot by political malice, and confronting with equal credit a military inquiry which had its origin in the jealousy that is often the bane of army service. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... people say, "He is charming, that man, but he is a girl, a regular girl." They are alluding to the effeminates, the bane ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... me so cruelly tormenteth So pleasing is in my extreamest paine, That, all the more my sorrow it augmenteth, The more I love and doe embrace my bane. Ne do I wish (for wishing were but vaine) To be acquit fro my continual smart, But ioy her thrall for ever to remayne, And yield for pledge my poor and captyved hart, The which, that it from her may never start, Let ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... these circumstances it is difficult to say what is to become, financially, of the people of Cuba. Sugar is their great staple, but all business has been equally depressed upon the island, under the bane of civil wars, extortionate ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... ain'd it? Yust you climb opp dat odder box, Mester Kent, and hol' you' hair on. Ve bane gone to maig dat time, als' ve preak somedings, ja!" and he sent the light engine spinning down the yards to a quickstep ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... this series contains different varieties, no Stamp being included in two Packets, and purchasers will by this novel method be saved the inconvenience of acquiring duplicates, which is as a rule the bane of most ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... children towards each other. Instead of opposition, they displayed mutual good-will, inculcated to the greatest degree, so as to destroy in the minds of the children that selfishness which was the bane of our nature. Such effects appeared almost to realize the golden age, for the children appeared always happy, and never so happy as when attending the schools."—W. Smith, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... [fly-bane]. Amanita muscaria, or Agaricus muscarius (fly-agaric). This is the Siberian ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... from nowhere! Don't I know that type?" said the magnate, who confounded all scientists with inventors, the capital-seeking inventor being the bane and torment ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... have fled away from us, Mr. Alwyn!" she said with a slight smile—"I do not wonder at it. These receptions are the bane of one's social existence." ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... faint sigh of assent. She was disappointed by her sister's tone; for in the time past she had more than once suspected that Geraldine Challoner loved George Fairfax with a passionate half-despairing love, which, if unrequited, might make the bane of her life. And, lo! here was the same Geraldine discussing her engagement as coolly as if the match had been the veriest marriage of convenience ever planned by a designing dowager. She did not understand how much pride had to do with this reticence, or what volcanic ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... requiring that all its sprawling runners shall be gathered up in one gentle, tactful pull; the tender shepherd's purse coming easily on a straight twitch; the tough ragweed that yields to almost any kind of jerk. Even witch-grass, the bane of the farmer, has its rewarding side, when one really does get out its handful ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... with neglect, the lover's bane, Poor maids rewarded be, For their love lost their only gain Is but a ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... with thy flocks to Cleitor's bounds thou'st hied, Take from this fount a draught, and grant a rest To all thy goats the water nymphs beside. But bathe not in't when full of drunken cheer, Lest the mere vapour may bring thee to bane; Shun my vine-hating spring—Melampus here From madness once washed Proetus' daughters sane, And all th' offscouring here did hide, when they From Argos came to ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... deeply the emptiness and futility of much of the religious talk. He was interested only in those emotions and professions which could get themselves translated into character and action. Words have always been the bane of religion as well as its vehicle. Religious emotion has enormous motive force, but it is the easiest thing in the world for it to sizzle away in high professions and wordy prayers. In that case it is a substitute ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... the soil of fallow land when he was smitten with the curse; and Heracles bade him give up the ploughing ox against his will. For he desired to find some pretext for war against the Dryopians for their bane, since they dwelt there reckless of right. But these tales would lead me far astray from my song. And quickly Hylas came to the spring which the people who dwell thereabouts call Pegae. And the dances of the nymphs were just now being held there; ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... the ranks, the Department of Defense could do little to insure a fair representation of Negroes in technical occupations or increase the number of black soldiers in higher grades. The problem tended to feed upon itself. Not only were the statistics the bane of civil rights organizations, but they also influenced talented young blacks to decide against a service career, in effect creating a variation of Gresham's law in the Army wherein men of low mentality were keeping out men of high intelligence. There seemed ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... hound, A hound both fleet and strong: He ate at my board, and he slept by my bed, And ran with me all the day long. But my wife took a priest, a shaveling priest, And 'such friendships are carnal,' quoth he. So my wife and her priest they drugged the poor beast, And the rat's bane is waiting ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... which had now become the curse of his existence. The despairing king at last implored the god to take back the fatal gift, and Dionysus, pitying his unhappy plight, desired him to bathe in the river Pactolus, a small stream in Lydia, in order to lose the power which had become the bane of his life. Midas joyfully obeying the injunction, was at once freed from the consequences of his avaricious demand, and from this time forth the sands of the river Pactolus have ever contained ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... not sufficiently thankful; and it never was more strongly manifested than in my own case, for both fear and apprehension vanished with habit, and I became fearless of those animated creatures which at first seemed to be the bane of my existence. When living in Cape Coast Castle, I used to see the rats come in troops past my door, walking over my black boys as they lay there, and who only turned themselves over to present the other sides of their ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... western sand, Spirits of earth, spirits of air; Spirits foul and spirits fair, My power obey! I break the rainbow's arched line; That herald of approaching calm. Thunder I send by cold moonshine,— Mine is the bane and mine the balm. My beck upwhirls the hurricane: The sun and moon and stars in vain Their wonted course would keep; Honey from out the rock doth weep When I command. My potent wand, Stretched on the mighty northern ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... made this man the bane of other lives, that were to be brought into contact with mine. I found that the happiness of two noble beings was being wrecked by this same man. One of these two had been my benefactor, had saved me from a fate ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... run on ahead, for thunderstorms are my bane. Yes, let us run with all possible speed, run ANYWHERE, for soon the rain will be pouring down, and these parts are full ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... an old practitioner ventures to offer (from the respect he bears you) the fruits of his long experience. Half-price is a very proper privilege for those whose time or pockets do not afford them an opportunity of visiting the theatre earlier; but it is often the bane of an author on the first night of a five-act play. The new-comers know nothing of the foregone part of the drama; and having no context with which to connect allusions in the fourth and fifth acts, are ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... man saved him by his wit. Yes, and at times he came to visit me, for he still loved me as of old; but now he has fled north, and I shall hear his voice no more. Nay, I do not know all the tale; there was a woman in it. Women were ever the bane of Umslopogaas, my fostering. I forget the story of that woman, for I remember only these things that happened long ago, before I ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... his business manager. "But you know better than anyone else how unscrupulous gangs have tried to steal your inventions. At first it was Happy Harry the tramp, and the last was Doctor Bane. No telling how many thugs were after you and your father in between. You'd be wise ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... rarely brought into the encampment, that did not contribute to support the family of Mahtoree. But the policy of the chief seldom permitted more to remain than sufficed for the wants of the day, perfectly assured that all must suffer before hunger, the bane of savage life, could lay its fell fangs on ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... chief difficulty with this curious "monk-bane" etymology is its absurdity. The real origin of the word has given etymologists ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... had once been allowed to order were changed, greatly to her annoyance; Mrs. MacGregor liked such honest stuff as mutton chops and potatoes, just as she insisted upon oatmeal for breakfast. Porridge, she called it. In the afternoon they motored; Mrs. MacGregor, who detested speed, became the bane of ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... thou wast bonnie, my Marion, And lovesome thy rising breast-bane; The dew sat in gems ower thy ringlets, By the thorn when we ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under wrinkled brows. A basilisk. E quando vede l'uomo l'attosca. Messer Brunetto, I ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... harmony.[5] In the laws, usages, and feelings of the people upon this subject we had the means of preventing that eternal subdivision of landed property, which ever has been, and ever will be, the bane of everything that is great and good in India; but, unhappily, our rulers have never had the wisdom to avail themselves of them. In a great part of India the property, or the lease of a village held in farm under Government, was considered ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... 30th, 1845, contains an article on the damage sustained by the potato crops here and in Ireland, full of matter calculated to enlighten our first rate reformers, who seem profoundly ignorant that superstition is the bane of intellect, and most formidable of all the obstacles which stand between the people and their rights: one paragraph is so peculiarly significant of the miserable condition to which Romanism and Protestantism have reduced a peasantry, said to be 'the finest ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... relative to Rome: but the diplomacy of the mission ill-suited him. Of the Royal ladies at court who befriended him, the marriage of one, the death of another, increased his insecurity. He had inherited, to his bane, another estate—Gonor—from his elder brother. It was encumbered, the cause litigious, and he had inherited with it the tutelage of a sickly child. He never shook off the burden. A tragic error marked his end. He died, certainly broken-hearted, just when ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... really guiltless in one respect—he had not desired his cousin's death; he would have gone back to the rescue had he not dreaded that he would share George's fate. Lack of courage had been his bane, and it was so now, for instead of speaking to Batley he temporized. The man had made no further attempt upon Crestwick, and Gladwyne decided that until he did so there was no need for him to interfere. Still, as the next few weeks passed, he was conscious of a growing ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... constructing the whole Irish Legislature and Ministry on this principle. But the objections appear to be considerable. Local bodies in the future should not be mixed up in national politics. That has been their bane in the past. Besides, the principle of indirect election is under a cloud everywhere, most of all in the United States. Australia rejected it in 1900, and the South Africans, while giving it partial recognition in the Senate, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... gratis, only metals and wood are charged for at cost price. Unfortunately workmen only go there at night when worn out by ten hours' labour in the workshop. Moreover, they carefully hide their inventions from each other, as they are hampered by patents and Capitalism—that bane of present society, that stumbling-block in the path ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... and said again: "Cousin, forsooth of this opinion Thou hast a vain imagination. This prison caused me not for to cry; But I was hurt right now thorough mine eye Into mine heart; that will my bane* be. *destruction The fairness of the lady that I see Yond in the garden roaming to and fro, Is cause of all my crying and my woe. I *n'ot wher* she be woman or goddess, *know not whether* But Venus is it, soothly* as I guess, *truly And therewithal on knees adown ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... I am determined to have my revenge. While we remain together on earth, I will pursue you—whatever your course in life may be, I will find you out; I will balk you in your dearest wishes—I will prove your bane in whatever you undertake—I will destroy your happiness—I will stand like a lion in your path, and bar your progress. I will not injure you in life or limb—I might kill you, but I will not do that—as you have injured me by legal means, so will I keep within ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Campania seems to have been equally infamous: and as much dreaded by mariners, as that of Rhegium, and Sicily. Here the Sirens inhabited, who are represented, as the bane of all, who navigated those seas. They like the Lamii were Cuthite, and Canaanitish priests, who had founded temples in these parts; and particularly near three small islands, to which they gave name. These temples were rendered more than ordinary famous on account of the women, who officiated. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... of manner, and as to that tenderness of character which was the bane of his existence,—as to his real and great goodness, which made him loved always and everywhere, and which caused such bitter tears to be shed at the news of his death,—these qualities are not to be sought in the strange, fanciful being who is styled Byron by M. Taine. These qualities ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... shuddering consciousness of its probability? Had she no reflection that each step she took, was taking her further and further from those who would aid her in all extremities? It would seem not, for she walked onward, unheeding, and apparently unthinking of the presence, possible or probable, of that bane ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... if we can't get in?" suggested Billie, waving her hand to Nellie Bane, another girl in her class, who passed on the opposite side ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... poor Allan Cunningham dead! A young man, only fifty-eight, strong and tall as a giant, might have lived to a hundred and one; but he bothered himself about the affairs of this world far too much. That statue shop [of Chantrey's] was his bane! Took to bookmaking likewise—in a word, was too fond of Mammon. Awful death—no preparation—came literally upon him like a thief in the dark. I'm thinking of writing a short life of him; old friend of twenty years' standing. I know a good deal about ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... departed; and they found but the now silent mourner, with folded arms, and a countenance that had in it volumes of unutterable wo, bending over the inanimate form of one whose life and misnamed love had been the bane of hers. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... fierce a king is here The stayer of falling folks, the bane of fear! Fair life he liveth, ruling passing well, Disdaining praise of Heaven and hate of Hell; And yet how goodly to us Great in Heaven Are such as he, the waning world that leaven! How well it were that such should never die! How well it were at least that memory Of such should ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... have made plenty of money in the winter, and spent it all in the Carnival—as is the common custom. Summer comes, the foreign visitors depart; no more work and no more money. Moral training, which might sustain them, is wholly wanting. The love of show, that peculiar disease of Rome, is their bane. The wife, if she be pretty, sells herself, or the husband does what he had better ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... death and destructioun? as thow may easilie perceave, suppoise thei cullour thair false intent and mynd, with the persute of heresye. For when thy baronis ar putt doun, what arte thow bot the King of Bane?[110] and then of necessitie man be guydit be thame: and thare, (no doubt,) whare ane blynd man is guyd, mon be ane fall in the myre. Thairfoir lett thy Grace tack hardiment and authoritie, quhilk thow ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... Emphasis is the bane of all story-telling, for it destroys the delicacy, and the whole performance suggests a struggle in conveying the message. The indecision of the victory leaves the ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... well-to-do parents, but homeless, living in hotels and boarding-houses, is awfully handicapped. Children are only little animals, and travel is their bane and scourge. They belong on the ground, among the leaves and flowers and tall grass—in the trees or digging in sand piles. Hotel hallways, table-d'hote dinners and the clash of travel, are all terrible perversions ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... inasmuch as natural selection meant the emergence of a "higher" type, and as there was no room for design within the process, might not the process itself be an expression of design? There might still be room for what Huxley, with one of those foolish concessions to established opinion which is the bane of English thought, called the "wider teleology." This was a teleology which placed a designing mind at the back of the evolutionary process, and arranging it with a view to a preconceived end. The process ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... thought: "she'll have rat-bane in his broth some day." He kissed her with no more fervour than if she had been a wooden figurehead, but she was not thus to be accepted: she put an arm quickly round his neck and pressed her passionate lips to his. Back he drew wincing. "Oh, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... born from friction of the deodars, A scudding fire should prove the mountain's bane, Singeing the tails of yaks with fiery stars, Quench thou the flame with countless streams of rain— The great have power that they may ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... passed the first range of pits; but a second and wider awaited him; and there, seeing his men sink into them by squadrons, he beheld the whole army of Wallace close in upon them. Terrific was now the havoc. The very numbers of the Southrons, and the mixed discipline of their army, proved its bane. In the tumult they hardly understood the orders which were given; and some mistaking them, acted so contrary to the intended movements, that Edward, galloping from one end of the field to the other, appeared like a frantic man, regardless of every personal danger, so that he could but fix others ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... debility and dyspepsia, as well as for a vermifuge. The lipad, owing to its heavy nauseous odour, is believed to keep off evil soirits. In some places, occupying the sides and hollows of ravines, are found the rose bay (Nerium Oleander), called in Persian khar-zarah, or ass-bane, the wild laburnum and various ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... able to perform with ease feats beyond the reach of any English Cabinets. He will dare to be strong because he knows he is popular: he will punish conspirators with a severity unknown to modern English governments; he will feel that anarchy is the bane of his country, and he will not tolerate disorder. Boycotters, Moonlighters, Dynamiters or Assassins will find that they are called upon to meet a force of which they have had before no experience. They will discover that they are engaged in a contest with ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... on his guard against showy virtues, which of their very nature encourage vainglory, the bane of all good works. ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... banks we loitered, observing at our leisure the products of these new fields. He who traverses the woodland paths, at this season, will have occasion to remember the small drooping bell-like flowers and slender red stem of the dogs-bane, and the coarser stem and berry of the poke, which are both common in remoter and wilder scenes; and if "the sun casts such a reflecting heat from the sweet fern," as makes him faint, when he is climbing the bare hills, as they complained who first penetrated into these ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... Nay, then I am familiar with thy haste. Bane to my fortunes! what meant I to marry? I, that before was rank'd in such content, My mind at rest too, in so soft a peace, Being free master of mine own free thoughts, And now become a slave? What! never sigh; ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... Argus. All would be in leaded type, and written in a style and manner that would attract attention, for he felt that he was first on the ground, and would not have the usual rush in preparing his copy which had been the bane of his life. It would give the Argus practically the lead in this case, which he was convinced would become one of ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... thou art eager to hear,—save, indeed, as to whence he came, for, many as the Argives be, not one can tell that clearly. Only we guess that some one of the Immortals, in wrath for sacrifice unoffered, sent this bane against the children of Phoroneus. For over all the men of Pisa the lion swept, like a flood, and still ravaged insatiate, and chiefly spoiled the Bembinaeans, that were his neighbours, and ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... often a symbol of malevolence and enmity. It appears among the emblems of Siva-Roudra, the power of desolation and death: it is the bane of Aëpytus, Idom, Archemorus, and Philoctetes: it gnaws the roots of the tree of life in the Eddas, and bites the heel of unfortunate Eurydice. In Hebrew writers it is generally a type of evil; and is particularly so in the Indian and Persian Mythologies. When ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... trying their efficiency. Agitation had procured this boon; and the Roman Catholics, thus successful, have sought to obtain other benefits by the same unhallowed means. Agitation is, in fact, still the bane ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... ken whether the bobbie meant rinnin' ower the grund, or coverin't efter he was turned into gooana or bane-dust; but I saw the lauch in his ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... said she) To hallow it, my body tombe my soule, And when I leaue the mid-day-sunne for thee, Blush Moone, the regent of the nether roule. What I hold deerest, that my life controule, And what I prize more precious then imagery, Heauens, grant the same my bane and ruine be, And where I liue, wish all ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald, for the murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's regiment of foot. June, ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... passed on to "him," who was addressed as Bane, or Dane, or something of that ilk; and I was sorry for poor Sir Samuel, whose face showed how little he enjoyed the prospect of being cooped up ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... for thy pleasure be it, That Phillis, wrathful Phillis that repines me All grace but death, may deign to come and see it, And seeing grieve at that which she assigns me. This only boon for all my mortal bane I crave and cry for at thy mercy seat: That when her wrath a faithful heart hath slain, And soul is fled, and body reft of heat, She might perceive how much she might command, That had my life and death ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... far down in the trachea, or only at its anterior opening? Are they voice tones or flute tones? These questions will be answered as we proceed to examine the bird's lyrical apparatus without going into wearisome detail, or making use of many difficult scientific terms, which are the bane ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... 'but a short while is hand fain of blow,' and so it will be here; but still Gunnar will set thee free from this matter. But if Hallgerda makes thee take another fly in thy mouth, then that will be thy bane." ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left and must stand it should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from one end of the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is the bane and mischief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house to house ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... space.'[388] In 1597 Issobell Richie, Margrat Og, Helene Rogie, Jonet Lucas, Jonet Dauidsone, Issobell Oige, and Beatrice Robbie were accused of a meeting at Craigleauche, near Aberdeen: 'Thow art indyttit for the being at the twa devylische dances betuixt Lumfannand and Cragleauche, with vmquhile Margerat Bane, vpon Alhalowewin last, quhair thow conferrit with the Dewill.'[389] In Ayrshire in 1604 Patrik Lowrie and his companion-witches were accused that they 'att Hallowevin in the yeir of God foirsaid, assemblit thame selffis vpon Lowdon-hill, ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... by the issue we discern God's blessing, and the bane. Count Louis' dust would fill an urn, His deeds are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... infant fortunate and strong. Then weep no more, and check thy sighs, Sweet lady of the lotus eyes." The queen, who loved her perished lord, For meet reply, the saint adored, And, of her husband long bereaved, She bore a son by him conceived. Because her rival mixed the bane To render her conception vain, And fruit unripened to destroy, Sagar(249) she called her darling boy. To Sagar Asamanj was heir: Bright Ansuman his consort bare. Ansuman's son, Dilipa famed, Begot a son Bhagirath named. From him the great Kakutstha rose: From him came Raghu, feared by foes, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... humiliation of going through the Insolvent Debtors' Court. It is not always easy to understand the justice of these things: and it has often appeared to me that something of the favouritism which is the bane of our governments on earth must needs obtain at a higher tribunal. One man enters life with an entailed estate worth seventy thousand a-year, while another finds himself in the hands of the Jews before he is twenty years of age. 'There's something in this world amiss shall be unriddled by-and-by,' ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... is as if language could not come by its full meaning save on the lips of those who regard it as an evil necessity. Every word is torn from them, as from a reluctant witness. They come to speech as to a last resort, when all other ways have failed. The bane of a literary education is that it induces talkativeness, and an overweening confidence in words. But those whose words are stark and terrible ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... advocates of his time the disgraceful art of hiring applauders by profession. This was the bane of all true oratory, and, for that reason, Maternus was right in renouncing the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... trouble with the average woman of the age in which we live, Beatrice, is that she is above her business. She tries to be superior to her husband, and in many instances she succeeds. That is the bane of wedded life. Do not strive to be superior to your husband, Beatrice. If you ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... said Media, "that, bane or blessing, Bello will yield his birthright? Will a tri-crowned king resign his triple diadem? And even did Bello what you propose he would only breed still greater perplexities. For if granted, full soon would Verdanna be glad to surrender many things she demands. And all she now asks, she has ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... spirit of contradiction. But the truth is, he had the good sense to see that he might "go farther and fare worse;" and that, at any rate, he would thus secure himself from the intrusions of that "good company," which had been his bane. By-the-by, his last "good thing" appertains to his residence here. Some one asked him how he could think of residing in "such a place as Calais?" "I suppose," said he, "it is possible for a gentleman to live between ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, By the cross are sanctified; Peace is there that knows no measure, Joys that ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton |
