"Bitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... First, on account of his inordinate affections, forasmuch as he gave other men divine honor, through either loving or revering them too much. This cause is assigned (Wis. 14:15): "A father being afflicted with bitter grief, made to himself the image of his son, who was quickly taken away: and him who then had died as a man he began to worship as a god." The same passage goes on to say (Wis. 14:21) that "men serving either their affection, or their kings, gave the incommunicable name [Vulg.: ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... is a virtue which is sure to meet with a reward. The point which Saunders failed to prove by argument, was pretty well proved to every one (though not admitted) by the agency of John Frost. That remarkably bitter individual nestled round the men as they sat sunning themselves, and soon compelled them to leap up and apply to other sources for heat. They danced about vigorously, and again took to leap-frog. Then they tried their powers at the old familiar games of home. ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... turned and, covering her face with her hands, burst into bitter, blinding tears, and disappeared ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... the whole bad business. The alliance between business and politics has been a burden to them,—an advantage, no doubt, upon occasion, but a very questionable and burdensome advantage. It has given them great power, but it has also subjected them to a sort of slavery and a bitter sort of subserviency to politicians. They are as anxious to be freed from bondage as the country is to be rid of the influences and methods which it represents. Leading business men are now becoming great factors in the emancipation of the country ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... conditions and the external are related to each other as the organism and its medium, and development can take place only by the gradual consentaneous development of both. As a necessary preliminary to a purely rational society, you must obtain purely rational men, free from the sweet and bitter prejudices of hereditary affection and antipathy; which is as easy as to get running streams without springs, or the leafy shade of the forest without the secular ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... too bitter a grudge against the leader in question. It is plain that he has cost us very dear; but a great part of his influence was due to the fact that he followed public opinion, which, in colonial matters, was far from being at the time what ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... ever grew bitter in discoursing on what once was and what might have been. He could be satirical and cutting, but his words were generally accompanied with a smile. His dominant mood and something of his style of expression are illustrated in his book, "Crotchets and Quavers, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... overturn our idol in our despair, and trample it rudely under foot. But as we must love, and will not give our hearts to God, for whom they were created, we seek another idol—and are again deceived! Through this bitter, bitter school we are purified and enlightened, until, abandoning all hope of finding perfection on earth, we are at last ready to offer God that pure, but now broken-hearted worship, which should never have been given ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... as we were making his position as easy as we could for him, his eye fell upon the body of the young girl, and once more his tears burst forth, mingled with prayers for her, and the most bitter curses upon ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... of his office into the fresh, sparkling, morning sunlight, life to me had a very bitter savour. I walked through the streets till I felt tired in every muscle. Then I sat thinking on a bench in a green corner of the Champs Elysees, watching absently the sun patches jump from leaf to neighbouring leaf as the wind elevated and depressed them, and ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... effeminacy of Lord Hervey formed a continual subject for the satire of his opponents. Pope's bitter lines on him- are well remembered. The old Duchess of Marlborough, too, in her "Opinions," describes him as having "certainly parts and wit; but he is the most wretched profligate man that ever was born, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... was able to avenge! The iron endurance which they had gained in many a bloodless contest, stood them in good stead there, when all their manhood was needed, if ever it was; and over those that nobly died there, methinks that I can see the Genius of England weep bitter tears, and thus speak with deep self-reproach:—"Ah! sons of mine! loved and early lost! ye whom I could not teach, whom no one in all my broad lands could teach, how to unite the virtuous, wise and holy soul, together with the soul ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop
... position of helplessness and humiliation I was rescued by Miss Halcombe. Her lips told me the bitter, the necessary, the unexpected truth; her hearty kindness sustained me under the shock of hearing it; her sense and courage turned to its right use an event which threatened the worst that could happen, to me and to ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Walderhurst had seen her produce effects such as a clever woman might have laboured for and only attained by a stroke of genius. As, for instance, when she had met for the first time after her engagement, a certain particularly detestable woman of rank, to whom her relation to Walderhurst was peculiarly bitter. The Duchess of Merwold had counted the Marquis as her own, considering him fitted by nature to be the spouse of her eldest girl, a fine young woman with projecting teeth, who had hung fire. She felt Emily Fox-Seton's ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... heard with bitter disappointment that nothing had been accomplished. The news might well have made even a younger man lose heart. But with undaunted courage he devoted himself to forming a more powerful combination for the great effort of the ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... his horse's gallop and reined in beside the woman. They talked together, argumentatively, for a single tense minute and then Aquila, with a bitter word, put spurs to his animal and dashed up beside Laodice's camel. In his one uplifted hand a knife gleamed. The other reached toward the casket bound to Momus' hip. Laodice, raised to an upright attitude in her fresh fright, saw that his face was black and ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... passed sentence on him, and Pere Lactance, a Franciscan monk. These two, making no secret of the side with which they sympathised, put up on their arrival at Nicolas Moussant's, one of Grandier's most bitter enemies; on the following day they went to the superior's apartments and began their exorcisms. The first time the superior opened her lips to reply, Pere Lactance perceived that she knew almost no Latin, and consequently would not shine during the exorcism, so he ordered ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Joachim, who was, and is, regarded as the oracle for violinists. Joachim gave some encouragement to the parent, although he does not seem to have given much to the boy, who in consequence felt somewhat bitter. Four years later he was again taken to the Berlin Hochschule, to pass his entrance examination. On this occasion he received the recognition of the jury, and was admitted to the school, where he began a rigorous course of technical study. At the end of four years' ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... tells the whole truth about himself. We seem to be born liars in that particular, all of us, and I am no different. I'm starting out now to tell the bitter, agonizing truth about myself, but before I am through I shall probably be lying at the rate of a mile a minute and cracking myself up something awful! A man can tell only so much truth; then he begins ...
— Goat-Feathers • Ellis Parker Butler
... evidently had great confidence in his own oratorical ability. He appeared to have conceived the idea that it was possible for him to make a speech on the floor of the Senate that would insure his reelection even by a Populist Legislature. In this,—as he soon found out, to his bitter disappointment,—he was mistaken. He no doubt came to the same conclusion that many of his friends and admirers had already come to, that in bidding for the support of the Populists of his State he had made the mistake of his life. The impression he made upon the public ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... to his side and kissed him tenderly. For a week his mind hovered in the twilight that lies between time and eternity. He seemed to forget the passions and fury of his fierce career and live over the memories of his youth, recalling pathetically its bitter poverty and its fair dreams. He would lie for hours and hold Elsie's ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... discovered the first Socialist in Jesus Christ, and wanted to disestablish the Church of England) by "taking the chair" for her when she announced these tenets to the rabble in Hyde Park one fine Sunday afternoon. A Heredith a socialist and nonconformist! These were bitter blows to Miss Heredith, a woman soaked in family and Church tradition, but she bore the shock with uncompromising front, and was able to make the shortcomings of Phil's mother a vicarious sacrifice for the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Buffalo, whence I pursued my journey to New York. I reached the latter city the day prior to the great fire, in December. I took lodgings at the Atlantic Hotel, which is near the foot of Broadway, and immediately west of the great scene of conflagration. The cold was so bitter while the fire raged that I could not long endure the open air, which seemed to be surcharged with oxygen. I reached Philadelphia the 19th, and Washington ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Bud's tone was bitter, and Stratton noticed it in spite of his preoccupation. Rustling! That would account for several of the things that had puzzled him. Rustling was possible, too, with the border-line comparatively near, and that stretch of rough, hilly country which touched the lower extremity ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... away, like a voice in a nightmare. "It's pretty strong, I'm afraid," she told him. "The leaves weren't very good, and I boiled them too long. I'm afraid you'll find it bitter." ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... extent of country as would wear him down by mere marching, by want of food, autumnal diseases, &c.? How would they be brought, and how reinforced, across an ocean of three thousand miles, in possession of a bitter enemy, whose peace, like the repose of a dog, is never more than momentary? And for what? For nothing but hard blows. If the Orleanese Creoles would but contemplate these truths, they would cling to the American Union, soul ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... There was no light in the house, and no sign of life about the street. But there were both light and life in the heart of this watcher. All the pulses of his blood were astir, keeping time with the commotion of his mind. He stood there in the shadow, gazing at the murky house, heedless of the bitter wind and pelting rain, and felt his life and spirit pass out of his control into an unknown dominion. The storm that raged around him was nothing to the convulsion of his inner self in that hour of madness, which was yet happiness. Yet ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... as thou wilt, still, Slavery! still thou art a bitter draught; and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the whole in the country's interest, but it had weak points. In attacking these the Opposition was led on to take up a position of hostility to the whole project, while the government was equally indiscriminate in defending every jot and tittle of the bargain. In any event, with the bitter rivalry of the Grand Trunk and the Canadian Pacific looming up, it is doubtful if it could have been possible to prevent this antagonism being reflected in the politics of a country where the issues are ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... boiled in the blood of the author of Pickwick. There are, indeed, passages, particularly in connection with Mr. Pickwick in the debtor's prison, which prove to us, looking back on a whole public career, that Dickens had been from the beginning bitter and inquisitive about the problem of our civilisation. No one could have imagined at the time that this bitterness ran in an unbroken river under all the surges of that superb gaiety and exuberance. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... few other remarks and giving Edwin the promise, "If I ever return to the farm again, I will let you know and will take you back again," Mr. Hahn said, "Good-by," and Edwin was left behind to begin again the kind of life that had been so hard and bitter. The kindnesses shown him during the summer and the greater keenness of his judgment and understanding made the renewal of past cruelties even harder to bear than they had ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... the country. The quantity of vegetable matter which is collected for food at that season of the year is very considerable, and the natives do not appear to be very particular in their choice, if the leaves are only green, juicy, and free from any bitter taste. When the inhabitants, in consequence of scarcity of food, removed in the beginning of February from Pitlekaj, they carried with them several sacks of frozen vegetables, and there were still some left in the cellars to be taken away as required. In ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... considerable time after he rang. Inside the house the warning summons of the bell was immediately followed by another sound, audible to Alice and her father as a crash preceding a series of muffled falls. Then came a distant voice, bitter in complaint. ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... is a record of the desperate struggles of the three chief bishops for supremacy. In this conflict Rome possessed many advantages; the two others were more immediately under the control of the imperial government, the clashing of interests between them more frequent, their rivalry more bitter. The control of ecclesiastical power was hence perpetually in Rome, though she was, both politically and intellectually, inferior to her competitors. As of old, there was a triumvirate in the world destined ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... fellow-sufferers at Mrs. Pipchin's were hardly less ludicrous in their way than that bitter old victim of the Peruvian mines in her perennial weeds of black bombazeen. Miss Pankey, for instance, the mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child who was instructed by the Ogress that "nobody who sniffed before visitors ever went to heaven!" ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... certain he loved the Queen again above all other ladies damosels of his life." Lancelot, as we have seen, is practically a French creation, adopted to illustrate the chivalrous theory of love, with its bitter fruit. Though not of the original Celtic stock of legend, Sir Lancelot makes the romance what it is, and draws down the tragedy that originally turned on the sin of Arthur himself, the sin that gave birth to the traitor Modred. But the mediaeval romancers disguised that form of the story, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... form of the story the West was typified as a flint stone, and the twin brother of Michabo. The feud between them was bitter, and the contest long and dreadful. The face of the land was seamed and torn by the wrestling of the mighty combatants, and the Indians pointed out the huge boulders on the prairies as the weapons hurled ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... this may be admitted lightly without carrying the physiological argument to extremes. A man may have a liberal hope for himself and for humanity, although his dinner be habitually a martyrdom. After all, we are only dictated to by our bodies: we have not perforce to obey them. A bitter wit once remarked that the soul, if it were ever discovered, would be found embodied in the gastric juice. He was not altogether a fool, this man who had learnt in suffering what he taught in epigram; yet was he ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... to the wall, Alfred answered his father in kind following one of his most bitter arraignments of show people: "Father, what are you talking about? Something you know nothing of. Eli was not a showman, not a minstrel man. He was only with an amateur minstrel show eight days. Nothing in his associations made him lower than he was ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... felt inclined to open her oppressed and suffering heart to this sweet, matronly friend, and tell her the whole, bitter truth, and seek her wise counsel; but again the want of moral courage, which had always been so fatal to her ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... into carriages in the search for seats. Piercing cries ordered unknown "Tommies" and "Ernies" to "keep by aunty, now." Just as Ukridge returned, the dreaded "Get in anywhere" began to be heard, and the next moment an avalanche of warm humanity poured into the carriage. A silent but bitter curse framed itself on Garnet's lips. His chance of pleasant conversation with the lady of the brown hair and the eyes that were either gray or ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... which even the gentler stamp of man is apt to conceive towards one who, herself the object of his strong affection, daily and hourly repels and repays it with scorn and infidelity. He did love her truly; she was the one living thing in all his bitter lonely life to whom his heart had gone out. True, he put pressure on her to marry him, or what comes to the same thing, allowed and encouraged her drunken old father to do so. But he had loved her and still loved her, and yet she mocked ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... was grateful For the love of her cherished ones, And her labor, bitter and hateful, She left at the word of her sons, Till she heard far off ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... had passed through all the anguish of a bitter disappointment. It is no light thing to have the hope of days snuffed out all in a moment, and he was ready to cry with vexation. However it couldn't be helped, and he had learned before now how to take a disappointment like a man. So when Tom ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... gave the Raven some of the whirlwind that so killed an' twisted the twenty young men. It was a powder, white; an' it had no smell. Sublette said its taste was bitter; but the Raven must not taste it or it would lock up his teeth an' twist an' kill him. For to swallow the white powder loosed the whirlwind on the man's heart an' it bent him an' twisted him like the storms ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... into the garden and chanced to look up at Alma's window. She stood there with the yellow cottage in her hand, and was dropping something down the chimney. "There goes my present, I daresay," he thought, and again the bitter mood was uppermost, in spite of his father's kind words and the charming ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... humming an air, that even in this dark den floats sweetly through the polluted atmosphere. "Well, I am what I am," she sighs, having paused in her tune. "That one fatal step-that plighted faith! How bitter to look back." Her bony fingers wander to her lips, which she commences biting and fretting, as her countenance becomes pale and corpse-like. Again her reason takes its flight. She staggers to the drenched counter, holds forth her bottle, lays her last sixpence tauntingly upon the board, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... time to time into a kind of precipitate brilliance; it is more personal in detail than Browning often allows himself to be; and its humour is blithe and friendly. In another poem, now known as Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, the humour is grotesque, bitter and pungent, the humour of hate. The snarling monk of the Spanish cloister pours out on poor, innocent, unsuspecting "Brother Lawrence" a wealth of really choice and masterly vituperation, not to be matched out of Shakespeare. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... difference between true flesh and false was no hindrance in the use of those fingers or their strength. Save that it had pushed him out of command of a cargo-cum-liner and hurled him down from the pinnacle of a star pilot. There were bitter brackets about his mouth, set there by that hand as deeply as ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... prospect, and only a very little sorrow. The sorrow was not for himself; he regretted neither life nor happiness. Life had become hateful to him since happiness had fled with it on the dark wings of dishonour; sorrow such as he felt was only for Jeanne! She was very young, and would weep bitter tears. She would be unhappy, because she truly loved him, and because this would be the first cup of bitterness which life was holding out to her. But she was very young, and sorrow would not be eternal. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... soon superseded the question; and even while the contest was fiercest and most bitter, the silent operation of general causes was sweeping away the whole ground of dispute. The growth of population in the Northern States was so unexampled, and so far exceeded that of the Southern States, that there could be no actual rivalry in the settlement of the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bitterness that I suppose I must excuse," said I; "yet which of us has the more reason to be bitter? This man, my uncle, M. de Keroual, fled. My parents, who were less wise perhaps, remained. In the beginning they were even republicans; to the end they could not be persuaded to despair of the people. It was a glorious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... foundering, and struck the water with its tail so forcibly as to cause a sound like a cannon shot. We also saw a great number of flying fish, although we caught none; and we noticed that they never flew out of the water except when followed by their bitter foe, the dolphin, from whom they thus endeavoured to escape. But of all the fish that we saw, none surprised us so much as those that we used to find in shallow pools after a shower of rain; and this not on account of their appearance, for they were ordinary-looking ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... a bitter experience for General Janssens, for it was not only the crowning misery of his defeat but marked the end of his military career, assuming that his Imperial master retained his ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... on my dressing-gown I heard a clock downstairs strike four. Not a breath or a step stirred in the house. The damp freshness of coming dawn crept in my windows, bringing scents of tansy and bitter-sweet from the fields to strive against the unknown fragrance in my room. The melancholy depression of the hour weighed upon me. Beneath the gentle strife of sweet odors, my nostrils seemed to detect a lurking foulness ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Grendel or the shadowy mass Of Balor, or the man with the face of clay, The grey, grey walker who used to pass Over the rock-arch nightly to his prey. But here at the dumb, slow stream where the willows hang, With never a wind to blow the mists apart, Bitter and bitter it is for thee. O my heart, Looking upon this land, where poets sang, Thus with the dreary shroud Unwholesome, over it spread, And knowing the fog and the cloud In her people's heart and head Even as it lies ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... the placing, the naming of all this noble sculpture has practically been done by two men - the late Karl Bitter of New York, a man of great executive and technical ability as well as of immense inspiration, and A. Stirling Calder, on whom the honor for the great bulk of the work rests. Besides acting as personal overseer for the execution of the sculpture of the Palaces and Courts ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... ace of being ended then and there, but Dyckman's belly was covered with sinew, and he digested the bitter medicine. He tried to turn his huge grunt into a laugh. He was at least not to be guilty of assaulting ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... returning with money for us, we were obliged to pay money that he had borrowed to get home with, besides his expenses for the ten months that he was gone. This was harder for me than any of the others, and was indeed a bitter pill. As it was my first heavy loss I could not help feeling ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... scientifically mixing the various other ingredients therewith, I unhesitatingly launched a spoonful into my mouth, when I was severely punished for my temerity, and almost overcome by the detestable compound of tastes and smells that at once assailed both nose and palate: it was a pungent, sour, bitter, and particularly greasy mouthful; but what chiefly astonished me, so much as to prevent my swallowing it for some time, was the perfume of Colonel Dhere Shum Shere, the fat brother, which I was immediately sensible of, ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... cry out with that little fool in the Latin comedy[10], "Now could I pardon any one that would kill me, so much afraid am I lest some accident may trouble the purity of my happiness, and mingle some ungrateful bitter with the exquisite sweets I now enjoy." And, indeed, it is amongst bottles and glasses that one may ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... harmless old Quaker lady was really in small her attitude to humanity at large. She drew away in disgust from a world that had treated her so badly. Into herself she drew, growing smaller every day, more sour, more suspicious, and more averse to her own kind. Within the restricted orbit of her own bitter thoughts she revolved towards the vanishing point of life which is the total loss of sympathy. She felt with no one but herself. She belonged to that, alas, numerous type which, with large expectations unrealised, cannot accept disillusionment with the ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... with his name marked on it, had been dumped down by some steward in the corridor, and he carried it into the stateroom himself, pushing it far under the lower berth with a rather vicious kick. As rain was falling in torrents, and a bitter wind blowing, he kept on his heavy overcoat, and went out of the cabin leaving no trace of his ownership there except the hidden suitcase. Perhaps on that kick which had sent it out of sight the shaping of Max ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... beats them fearfully, in such sort that they were not able to help themselves, or to turn them upon the floor. This done, he withdraws, and leaves them there to condole their misery, and to mourn under their distress: so all that day they spent their time in nothing but sighs and bitter lamentations. The next night, she, talking with her husband further about them, and understanding that they were yet alive, did advise him to counsel them to make away with themselves. So when morning was come, he goes to them in a surly manner, as before, and perceiving them to be very ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... according to their circumstances. Our own part of the work went on very joyfully, notwithstanding occasional trying and painful incidents. Individual cases of greed and selfishness and vice brought us many a bitter pang. But the Lord never lost patience with us, and we durst not therefore lose patience with them! We trained the Teachers, we translated and printed and expounded the Scriptures, we ministered to the sick and dying; ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... climbed up to the smoke hole and put out her arm. But Little Daughter put out her head also. She wanted to see the world. Little Daughter wanted to see the rivers and trees, and the white foam on the Bitter Waters. Wind caught Little Daughter by the hair. Wind pulled her out of the smoke hole and blew her down the mountain. Wind blew Little Daughter over the smooth ice and the great forests, down to the land of the Grizzlies. Wind tangled her hair and then left ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... a shour and bitter dish Of meat and herbs and shoup and fish; I tried at home my tongue to tickle With rice-cakes plain, ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... had noticed which gave him some hope of escaping, to wit that the horses of the Doones, although very handsome animals, were suffering still from the bitter effects of the late long frost, and the scarcity of fodder. "If they do not catch me up, or shoot me, in the course of the first two miles, I may see my home again"; this was what he said to himself as he turned to mark what they ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... revel in love's pleasures. Now, miserable, she saw him desert her, and destroying the beautiful haunt, she drove her swift chariot across the seas to the camp of the Egyptian king, who was hastening towards Jerusalem. Intent on the slaughter of Rinaldo, her love for whom had changed to bitter hate, she offered the warriors of the Egyptian king, all of whom had fallen victims to her charms, her hand as a reward to the slayer ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... last she rose, her lips and eyes had regained something of their wonted serenity. She knew now that her impulse to leave the house at once had been selfish and cowardly; that Evelyn must not be deserted in a moment of bitter need; that these ten days must be endured for her sake—and for his. On his return, she could find a reasonable excuse for spending a month elsewhere till John should come to claim her. Never in all her life had she been called upon to make so supreme an ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... of a Scottish trial for witchcraft—illustrating, in particular, how poor wretches, abandoned, as they conceived, by God and the world, deprived of all human sympathy, and exposed to personal tortures of an acute description, became disposed to throw away the lives that were rendered bitter to them by a voluntary confession of guilt, rather than struggle hopelessly against so many evils. Four persons here lost their lives, merely because the throwing some clay models into the sea, a fact told ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... interest, nor by solicitation, nor by bribes, could Quintus Catulus, and Caius Piso, prevail upon Cicero to have Caius Caesar falsely accused, either by means of the Allobroges, or any other evidence. Both of these men were at bitter enmity with Caesar; Piso, as having been attacked by him, when he was on[231] his trial for extortion, on a charge of having illegally put to death a Transpadane Gaul; Catulus, as having hated him ever since he stood for the pontificate, because, at an advanced ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... thought my precautions quite natural, now pretended to discover that they were inconsistent with my principles, and styled them more than ridiculous in his letters, in which he overwhelmed me with pleasantries sufficiently bitter and satirical to offend me had I been the least disposed to take offence. But at that time being full of tender and affectionate sentiments, and not susceptible of any other, I perceived in his biting sarcasms nothing more than a ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... carried to the different companies, and served steaming hot to the hungry men. A boon among boons these same cookers, less so perhaps now that the warmer weather is here, but a blessing beyond price in the bitter cold and constant wet of the past winter, when a hot meal served without waiting kept heart in many men and even life itself in some. Their fires were lit before the regiment broke camp this morning, and the dinners have been jolting over the long miles since sun-up, cooking as comfortably ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... the footlights without wanting to kill them." The actor remained looking at him over his folded arms, and Maxwell continued, with something like a personal rancor against love-making, while he gave a little, bitter laugh, "I might have it somehow that Haxard had killed a pair of stage-lovers, and this was what Greenshaw had seen him do. But that would ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... flashed upon him at once. The fellow had been listening, and had probably heard all. Giovanni instantly resolved to conceal the fact from the Duchessa, to whom the knowledge that the painful scene had been overheard would be a bitter mortification. Giovanni could undertake ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... possible formation of the syndicate, Craven denounced the award with more fierceness than ever, maintaining the redoubled importance of securing the men's terms before the syndicate was launched. Wharton promised him with glee that he should be supported to the bitter end. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was a trifle bitter. "A man can be lonely for exactly the same reason a girl can," he asserted. "I've lived here for three months, and this is the first time ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... flattish wooden barrels, which others, after mashing the berries with a long wooden pestle, bore off and emptied frothing and gurgling into big casks mounted on carts. These were then driven into the village, where the mess was poured into the presses, and the wine crushed out to the last bitter dregs. The vineyards were a scene of activity, but not hilarity, though a little way off they looked rather lively with the vintagers at work in them. We climbed to one of them far up the mountain-side one day, where a family were gathering the grapes on a slope almost as ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... mother and three children, whom I had instructed, and who were to receive baptism and embrace the Catholic religion. Unfortunately the woman was the victim of evil counsel at Milford, and was deterred from her good purpose. There were many people in Milford who were bitter enemies ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... interests, or that they could be won over by conciliation without sympathy. He was a thoroughly honourable man, with a heart more liberal than his ideas, of an enlightened and accomplished mind, naturally elegant, but volatile, inconsiderate, and absent; little suited for long and bitter contentions, formed to please rather than to control, and incapable of leading his party or himself in the course in which reason suggested that ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the Minister for Foreign Affairs on the 22d of September, I mentioned the present Jerome had sent me. Why Napoleon should have been offended at this I know not, but I received orders to return Jerome's present immediately, and these orders were accompanied with bitter reproaches for my having accepted it without the Emperor's authority. I sent back the diamonds, but kept the portrait. Knowing Bonaparte's distrustful disposition, I thought he must have suspected that Jerome had employed threats, or at any rate, that ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... an ancient name on a man, who, by his own showing, lived with a married woman for twenty-five years, and had an illegitimate daughter by her. These are painful things to speak of, but they were bound to come out. My own feeling is that Robert had a bitter awakening to these facts when it was too late—when he had made the disclosure. And he may ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... and drawn. The hands lying on her lap were red and calloused with housework and the child's whole appearance indicated neglect, from the broken-down shoes to the soiled and tattered dress. She seemed to be reflecting, for after a while she gave a short, bitter laugh at the recollection of her late ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... name of the Count of Monte-Cristo, and he will surely take bitter vengeance upon you all for ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... went back to his quarters in high displeasure. It seemed as if the affair had actually left a bad taste in his mouth. He could not compose his features into anything like a decently amiable expression, but went about with a bitter smile upon his lips. Every time some new aspect of his grotesque and humiliating mistake occurred to him he suffered a nervous twinge. That afternoon a card was brought to him bearing the ornate inscription in a beautiful ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... when He visited His people as a little one of themselves, to grow upon the earth till it should blossom as the rose in the light of His presence. "Ah! Lord," I said, in my heart, "draw near unto Thy people. It is spring-time with Thy world, but yet we have cold winds and bitter hail, and pinched voices forbidding them that follow Thee and follow not with us. Draw nearer, Sun of Righteousness, and make the trees bourgeon, and the flowers blossom, and the voices grow mellow and glad, so that all shall ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... golden spring-time hours, In the sweet garden of my youth, There fell a seed of bitter truth That sprang and shadowed all the flowers— Alone! The roses died apace And pale the mournful violet blew— Only the royal lily grew And glorified ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... exclamation rose to his lips, and died there. A spasm of bitter pain made his face for a moment hard and stern. Then he smiled, and said gently, "I should not like it at all, as you know very well. But I must go now, or I shall be late for my class. Good-by, dear child." And, parting her soft, curling hair, he pressed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... representing lizards and crocodiles. With long wands in their hands, they dance, singing wild incantations. They have already prepared the food for the feast—chickens roasted in their feathers; cakes of rice, spun like vermicelli and fried in cocoa-nut oil; curries, and salads of bitter and acid leaves; sticks of small bamboo filled with pulut rice and boiled, when it turns to a jelly and is agreeably flavoured with the young bamboo. It is the women also who serve out the tuak, a spirit prepared from ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... those that are under the like Trials[a]. Now this must surely intimate, that it is not in human Nature, even in its most perfect State, so tenderly to commiserate any Sorrows, as those which our own Hearts have felt: As we cannot form a perfect Idea of any bitter Kind of Draught, by the most exact Description, till we have ourselves tasted it. It is probably for this Reason, amongst others, that GOD frequently exercises such, as have the Honour to be inferior Shepherds in the Flock of Christ, with a long Train of various Afflictions, ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... tribute goes by a trusty hand, in the person of one Ki Nihy, who is shortly committing himself to the protection of his ancestors and the voracity of the unbounded Bitter Waters; and with brightness and gold it will doubtless reach you in the course of twelve or eighteen moons. The superstitious here, this person may describe, when they wish to send messages from one to another, inscribe upon the outer ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... lasted,' concludes the Wanderer, 'so had it lasted, as in bitter protracted Death-agony, through long years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dewdrop, was smouldering in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire. Almost since earliest memory I had shed no tear; or once only when ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... women, frozen by the fear of age - we come to rely on the voice as the single outlet of the soul. Only thus, in the curtailment of our means, can we relieve the straitened cry of the passion within us; only thus, in the bitter and sensitive shyness of advancing years, can we maintain relations with those vivacious figures of the young that still show before us and tend daily to become no more than the moving wall-paper of life. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but for this and other similar tokens of an affectionate heart, it might have been thought that he was wanting in feeling, so easily did his elastic, joyous spirit throw off trouble; so completely did he extract all the sweet, and throw aside all the bitter, offered to him by a lot in life which most of us would ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... 'Brick' Tower, the residence of the Master of the Ordnance. From her window she saw the headless body of her husband brought back from Tower Hill in a cart. She looked upon it without shrinking. 'Oh! Guilford,' she said, 'the antipast is not so bitter after thou hast tasted, and which I shall soon taste, as to make my flesh tremble: it is nothing compared to the feast of which we shall partake this day in Heaven.' So she went forth with her two gentlewomen, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... first born. As he if; blank, he can be dyed black or red. As he is at the cross-road, he can turn to the right or to the left. He is like fresh water, which has no flavour, and can be made sweet or bitter by circumstances. If we are not mistaken, this theory, too, has to encounter insurmountable difficulties. How could it be possible to make the unmoral being moral or immoral? We might as well try to get honey out of sand as to get good or evil ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... work of his mamma—a little white rosebud, he drew from his dressing-case, also the maternal present, a pair of scissors, with which he nipped carefully the stalk of the flower, and placing it in a glass of water opposite his bed, he sought refuge there from care and bitter remembrances. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... contributed to that invaluable stock of experience from which he would gradually learn to distinguish without hesitation between friends and foes, and be freed from the pain of needless anxiety which, to Nature's weaklings, is at times almost as bitter as death. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Fletcher the charge becomes yet more bitter. Thenot, contemplating the constancy of Clorin, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... converts of the Christian emperors, they became very bitter toward the Catholic bishops. We are not at all astonished, therefore, that one of the victims of this new persecution, St. Hilary, of Poitiers, expressly repudiated and condemned this regime of violence. He also proclaimed, in the name of ecclesiastical ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... difficulty which, for a time, proved insurmountable. Being conscientiously convinced that the prelatic system of church government is of human invention, and not of Divine institution, and having seen the bitter fruits it bore in Scotland, he would not submit to receive ordination from a bishop, and could not, at that juncture, obtain admission into the ministerial office without it. Though thus excluded from the object of his pursuit, he found congenial ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Episcopalians, or those inclined to become so; the Baptists, Presbyterians, the Quakers, and other sectaries who feared less the authority of a distant monarch than the present rule of their watchful and bitter spiritual rivals. In the intermediate was a third party, weak at first but daily growing stronger, and drawing to its ranks, one after another, some former zealous advocates of the exclusive system, convinced that a theocracy, in its stricter form, was no longer tenable, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... putting their noses through the yellow dead grass, which the snow had hardly left and was again beginning to whiten, for the rain, which had been coming down in torrents ever since I left the carriage and had wet me through, had now changed to snow. Still I went on, in spite of the bitter cold, hoping that I should come to some hyperborean region where the flowers would be all bright; but my guide at last undeceived me, and convinced me that we were far too early, so we went down again, wiser and sadder, and I advise my friends who wish to see the Val d'Esquierry in its beauty ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... lie idle when Christians wanted it to labor on and raise their bread." But that wasn't the only reason the Scotch-Irish had. There were other things in the back of their heads. A burnt child fears the fire. Their unhappy experience in Ulster had taught them a bitter lesson and one they should never forget, not even to the third and fourth generation. They would not be renters! Hadn't they been tricked out of land in Ulster? They would not rent! They would buy outright. And ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... coarseness of his language, the offensiveness of his imagery, have been greatly exaggerated. It is now a good many years since I heard him lecture in a northern town on the Bible to an audience almost wholly composed of artisans. He was bitter and aggressive, but the treatment he was then experiencing accounted for this. As an avowed atheist he received no quarter, and he might fairly say with Wilfred Osbaldistone, 'It's hard I should get raps over the costard, and only pay ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Hofer thought this homage decidedly irksome, and he was angry that the spectators had disturbed his prayer. He, therefore, made a bitter-sweet face in response to the enthusiastic demonstrations and affectionate greetings of the people, and elbowed his way ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... authorities, to be placed in the hands of the newly elected sheriff of the newly organized and sparsely settled country. Things looked desperate indeed. To add to the agony of the crisis, a sharp and bitter winter now wrapped the whole world in snow and ice. It was no longer possible for any one to subsist in the mountains, or survive at all without fire and fire-arms. These the hunted man did not dare use. ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... President could stand it no longer, but went and made a bitter complaint to the King. His Majesty at once asked the Spanish Ambassador to have ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... The conditions may be summed up in brief; we may extinguish emotion, and so live to old age, or we may choose to die young as martyrs to contending passions. And yet this decree is at variance with the temperaments with which we were endowed by the bitter jester who ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... successful, let thy generosity award the prize of the conqueror, do thou decide and allot the palm; but if my enterprise go little to my liking, what prize canst thou owe to the beaten, who will be wrapped either in cruel death or in bitter shame? These things commonly go with feebleness, these are the wages of the defeated, for whom naught remains but utter infamy. What guerdon must be paid, what thanks offered, to him who lacks the prize of courage? Who has ever garlanded with ivy the weakling in War, or decked him with a conqueror's ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... but I am sure she is most unhappy, most deeply to be pitied. I cannot imagine anything more dreadful than the state of mind of a woman who believes that a son of hers has murdered her husband. I think that if you quite realized what her feelings must be you would feel a little less bitter than you do. ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... Harry, and if she did not actually save his life, at least prevented Spike's attempt on it for that occasion. In the course of the next ten minutes the fugitives had again so far gained on their pursuers, that the latter began to see that their efforts were useless. Spike muttered a few bitter curses, and told his men to lay on ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... of stinted laurels, on the other by some old decayed wooden paling; at the end of it was a huge haystack. Here, without prospect, space, fields, flowers, or natural beauties of any description, was that most imaginative poem conceived, planned, and executed. It was at Mayfield, too, that those bitter stanzas were written on the death of Sheridan. There is a curious circumstance connected with them; they were sent to Perry, the well-known editor of the Morning Chronicle. Perry, though no stickler in a general way, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... into bitter weeping and his aunt wept with him for she had no comfort to offer, and when Franz and Paul came they, too, were deeply worried over the loss, for they blamed themselves that they did not see that ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... interested in the work of organization and then he terrified her by his bias towards acute economies, sometimes he was resentful at the burthen of the whole thing, sometimes he seemed to scent Brumley or at least some moral influence behind her mind and met her suggestions with a bitter resentment as though any suggestion must needs be a disloyalty to him. There was a remarkable outbreak upon her first tentative proposal that the hostel system might ultimately ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... had hoped for anything better, it must have been a shock to her to see the bitter disappointment in Micky's face. He stammered out that he had not expected to see her, that he was in a deuce of a hurry; he hoped ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... the sorceress displays Her own transgressions, to upbraid me mine! 820 That malice not repentance brought thee hither, By this appears: I gave, thou say'st, th' example, I led the way; bitter reproach, but true, I to my self was false e're thou to me, Such pardon therefore as I give my folly, Take to thy wicked deed: which when thou seest Impartial, self-severe, inexorable, Thou wilt renounce thy seeking, and much rather Confess it feign'd, weakness is thy ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... cooked in all the forms of salsify or scolymus. Before cooking, the outer, coarse rind should be scraped off, and the roots soaked for a few hours in cold water for the purpose of extracting their bitter flavor. ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... seemed, while Johnny's yells sank to long-drawn sobs and then ceased altogether as he snuggled forgivingly against her arm. And in her heart was a great shame and an aching feeling of inadequacy and failure. Elliott Cameron had never known so bitter a five minutes. All her pride and self-sufficiency were gone. What was she good for in a practical emergency? Just nothing at all. She didn't know even the ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... tears, love: to me 'twas denied; And when fate to my lips gave this life's mingled cup, She had filled to the brim, from the dark bitter tide, And forgotten to pour ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... side of a clay bluff by the corrosive action of the water, carving, through the centuries, the bed of the Little Missouri. He and his men brought the coal in the ranch-wagon over the frozen bed of the river. The wheels of the wagon creaked and sang in the bitter cold, as they ground through the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... and their blocks of the bottom of the great bogs, which we call Jews' tin: and then, a town among us, too, which we call Market Jew, but the old name was Marazion, that means the Bitterness of Zion, they tell me; and bitter work it was for them no doubt, poor souls! We used to break into the old shafts and adits which they had made, and find old stags-horn pickaxes, that crumbled to pieces when we brought them to grass. And they say that if a man will listen of a still night about those old shafts, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... regency, that had devolved on a prince of the blood by emigration, whilst the king maintained a struggle at Paris, greatly humiliated Louis XVI. and the queen. This usurpation of their rights, although clothed in the dress of devotion and tenderness, was even more bitter to them than the outrages of the Assembly and the people. We always dread most that which is nearest to us, and the triumph of the emigration only promised them a throne, disputed by the regent who had restored ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to the conduct of their rulers and to their decisions, as a standard for their guidance. To enumerate the multiplied breaches of faith towards the Indians would swell out this work to an extra volume. It was a bitter sarcasm of the Seminole chief, who, referring to the terms used in the treaties, told the Indian agents that the white man's "for ever" did not last long enough. Even in its payment of the trifling sums for the lands sold by the Indians and resold at an enormous profit, the American ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and have it out with him face to face. Suppose he should be driven from the parish, how could he ever come back again? How could he return as rector to be the contempt and laughing-stock of all? No, he would oppose Stubbles to the bitter end. The worst they could do would be to kill him, and he was not ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... without much thought as to what he was receiving. He was struggling to ward off the bitter regrets that were ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof |
