"Wretchedly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shewed to Denise the tyran, that a couetous man of the cite had hyd a great some of money in the grounde, and lyued moste wretchedly: wherfore he sente for the man, and commaunded him to go dyg vp the money, and so to deliuer it vnto him. The man obeyed, and delyuered vnto the tyran all the golde and treasure that he hadde, saue a small some, that he priuelye kept a ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... O, I'm wretchedly perplex'd that I'm forc'd to go out a doors now; and troth, it goes sore against my mind; however, 'tis upon sure grounds. For now's the time for our Officer to distribute the Money to the Poor: Now if I shou'd be negligent, and not be ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... appearance. The spot is still shown in the stones where the blood ran from the swords of the human butchers. If the history of this prison were written, it would make a dozen books, and some of the most heart-rending tragedies would be unfolded to the world. The great and good, and the wretchedly vile, have together lived within its walls and lost their hopes of life, or their desire for it. I could never pass it without a shudder, for though it was not so much a place of execution as a prison, yet so terrible a place was it that many a prisoner has joyfully emerged from ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... wretchedly, you know. One could see he had been told what not to say. You can trust me, Phil," she said, earnestly. And he told her all, from beginning to end. Not once did she interrupt, and but seldom did she allow horror to show itself ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... was easy. Jermak and his small band of picked fighters were more than a match for the wretchedly armed and craven-spirited Tartars, who fled at the sound of firearms. In 1581 the settlement, called Sibir, fell to the invaders; and, though they soon abandoned this rude encampment for a new foundation, the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... agreed to start in the morning, leaving the head of affairs with the rearguard to follow at his leisure. Got away at last in two "palkees," with four "banghy wallahs," or baggage-bearers, carrying our immediate possessions, guns, &c. Spent the night wretchedly enough, the roads being of the worst, and covered nearly a foot deep everywhere with fine dust, which our bearers very soon stirred up into an impenetrable cloud, enveloping us in its folds ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... was ashamed to find herself shaking of a sudden, and grown wretchedly afraid—afraid of the separation, afraid of the "hardening" process, afraid ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... have a particularly pleasant home at Auxonne. They lived in a bare room in the regimental barracks, "Number 16," up one flight of stairs. It was wretchedly furnished. It contained an uncurtained bed, a table, two chairs, and an old wooden box, which the boys used, both as bureau and bookcase. Louis slept on a little cot-bed near his brother; and how they lived on ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... you how it was, dear, when you first asked me to marry you," she said, with infinite patience. "I told you that it wasn't fair to ask you to take mother, but that I couldn't possibly leave her alone in her old age. Jane's home is wretchedly unhappy—she can never tell when Charley is to be counted on—and it would kill mother to be dependent on Charley even if he were willing. I see your side, George, indeed, indeed, I do, but I can't—I simply can't act differently. I have always known ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... long-buried criminal was about to be released. Another nephew had become the heir, and was now a judge in an inferior court. The only members of the family known to be extant, besides the judge and the thirty years' prisoner, were a sister of the latter, wretchedly poor, who lived in the House of the Seven Gables by the will of the old bachelor, and the judge's single surviving son, now travelling in Europe. The last and youngest Pyncheon was a little country girl of seventeen, whose ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... some Body else should have given her malicious Acquaintance that Satisfaction before her. The Unwillingness to receive good Tidings is a Quality as inseparable from a Scandal-Bearer, as the Readiness to divulge bad. But, alas, how wretchedly low and contemptible is that State of Mind, that cannot be pleased but by what is the Subject of Lamentation. This Temper has ever been in the highest Degree odious to gallant Spirits. The Persian Soldier, who was heard reviling Alexander the Great, was well admonished by his Officer; ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... "The whole apparatus for supplying pleasure is wretchedly inadequate and full of danger to ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... other station of renown, Who would not be the greatest trapes in town? Women were made to give our eyes delight; A female sloven is an odious sight. Fair Isabella is so fond of fame, That her dear self is her eternal theme; Through hopes of contradiction, oft she'll say, "Methinks I look so wretchedly to-day!" When most the world applauds you, most beware; 'Tis often less a blessing than a snare. Distrust mankind; with your own heart confer; And dread even there to find a flatterer. The breath of others raises our renown; Our own as surely blows the pageant down. Take up no more than you by ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... laughed again as she drew him on the sofa beside her. She seemed in wonderfully good humor. "Rather a comprehensive question," she said. "Sit down and we will have a comfortable talk before the others get home. Your father looks wretchedly but he says there is nothing the matter. I suppose it is just overwork and the usual money strain. Isabelle too is not as well as I should like her to be. Suffers from nervousness a great deal, and depression. There is a new physician here now, ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... her that night at the restaurant, he remembered—wondered and forgotten. He had been unhappy that night, with the peculiar unhappiness of a naturally decisive man wretchedly in two minds, and she had given him a ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... these farmers are rough task-masters, and if a boy fails to perform the work of an adult, he is almost certain to be cruelly treated, half starved, and in the coldest weather wretchedly clad. If he does the work, his life is not likely to be much happier, for as a rule he will receive more kicks than candy. The result in either case is almost certain to be wrecked constitutions, dwarfed bodies, rounded shoulders, and limbs crippled or rendered ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... ruminating on the surplus population around them, and on the densely crowded state of all the avenues to cat's meat; not only is there a moral and politico- economical haggardness in them, traceable to these reflections; but they evince a physical deterioration. Their linen is not clean, and is wretchedly got up; their black turns rusty, like old mourning; they wear very indifferent fur; and take to the shabbiest cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms of recognition with several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk in Saint George's Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell- ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... which stirred the city of Bombay to its centre at this time was indeed a memorable one. The connecting of India with England direct by a deep-sea cable was a matter of the greatest importance, because the land telegraph which existed at the time was wretchedly worked, passing, as it did, through several countries, which involved translation and re-translation, besides subjecting messages to needless delay on the part of unbusiness-like peoples. In addition to the brighter prospects which the proposed cable ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... a deficiency which now he could scarcely comprehend to have been possible. Wretchedly did he feel, that with all the cost and care of an anxious and expensive education, he had brought up his daughters without their understanding their first duties, or his being acquainted with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... August afternoon was hot and the London air heavy; the room moreover, though agreeably bedimmed, gave out the staleness of the season's end. "If you hadn't come to-day," she went on, "you'd have missed me till I don't know when, for we've let the Hovel again—wretchedly, but still we've let it—and I go down on Friday to see that it isn't too filthy. Edward, who's furious at what I've taken for it, had his idea that we should go there this ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... our churches and school-rooms, our railroad cars, and all our places of public assemblage, are, to a most lamentable degree, either unprovided with any means of ventilation, or, to a great extent, supplied with those which are so wretchedly ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... last chapter that Mr. Amidon ran from Miss Waldron's presence in such a state of agitation that he hardly knew whither he went. To the reader who wonders why he was agitated, I have only to hint that he was wretchedly inexperienced. And as it was, he soon got his bearings and walked briskly toward his hotel; still, however, in a state of ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... cowed, dejected, squalid, like poor, stupid, top-heavy things that had felt the wrath of the summer tempest, stood the drenched structures on either side of the narrow and crooked way, ghastly and picturesque, under the giant canopy. Rain dripped wretchedly in slow drops of melancholy sound from their projecting eaves upon the broken flagging, lay there in pools or trickled into the swollen drains, where the fallen torrent sullenly gurgled on its way to the river. "The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... credit of the Staff Jane Brown's part in that painful half hour was never known. The Staff was careful, too, of Doctor Willie. They knew they were being irregular, and were most wretchedly uncomfortable. Also, there being six of them against one, it looked rather like force, particularly since, after the first two minutes, every one ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... on slowly, wretchedly, shot for shot, Danton himself dragging up a bale of ammunition and serving it to the men. The maid, unaided, had overturned the canoe where it lay, and with quickened breath was pressing her needle through the tough bark. Danton lost the flint from his musket, ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... you," replied the Mastiff, "to get as fat as I am if you liked. Quit this forest, where you and your fellows live so wretchedly, and often die with hunger. Follow me, and you will ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... pleasure of again calling upon you. I must seek to divert my mind by new travels, I hardly know where. I have exhausted Europe, having been there three times. I have often thought I should like to look on the Oriental gardens and bright waters of Damascus. Everything is so wretchedly new, and so disagreeably fast, in this country! It must be refreshing to see a place that has known no changes for ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... stirred, but remained crouching on his low chair, at a distance from the bed. At last she risked the ordeal, and uncovered her tranquillised face. What else could she do? She was at his mercy, and he looked so wretchedly unhappy. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... imperial swineherd, and as such he lived in a wretchedly small room near the pigsty; there he worked all day long, and when it was night he had made a pretty little pot. There were little bells round the rim, and when the water began to boil in it, the bells began to play ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... disinclination, and final reluctant yielding form the fashionable order of proceeding. The charm of it all is, that the original intention is the same as the ultimate action. Whence, then, this folly? Having been many times wretchedly bored by this sort of thing, I was now correspondingly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... chapter," to the end of the volume, and the more so, that hers after all was a hard fate. It is the part of the tale which leaves a melancholy impression; Goldsmith has so determined it—and to his judgment we bow implicitly. Had any other author so wretchedly disposed of his heroine, in a work not professedly tragic, we should have been pert as critics usually are. Mrs Primrose is certainly here too young. We cannot keep our eyes off Olivia; and see, the scoundrel has slyly taken her innocent hand, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... exact and truthful in themselves seem always too thrilling, too great for the subject; seem to embellish it unduly. I feel as if I were acting, for my own benefit, some wretchedly trivial and third-rate comedy; and whenever I try to consider my home in a serious spirit, the scoffing figure of M. Kangourou rises up before me, the matrimonial agent, to whom I ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... There were only three foundries of note in London during that time, and none of them is considered to have produced anything particularly good. Indeed, one has only to glance at even the best work of that time to see how wretchedly the majority of the type was cast. The first of the three was the celebrated Joseph Moxon, who, in 1659, added type-founding to his other callings of mathematician and hydrographer. Having spent some years in Holland, he was very much enamoured of the Dutch types, and in 1676 he wrote a book entitled ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... with such a trifling loss to the victors. The Spanish gunnery had been wretchedly bad. The only ships hit were the "Brooklyn" and the "Iowa," and neither received any serious damage. The only losses by the enemy's fire were on board the "Brooklyn," where a signalman was killed and two seamen wounded. Nine men were more or less seriously injured by the concussion ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... its former speed. On and on it went. Sometimes the road would be smooth, the driver having found wagon ruts and stayed in them. Again, it would be full of bumps and jars. It was very uncomfortable, her position being wretchedly cramped. Once she was startled to hear the driver break into song. It sounded like a Spanish love song and his voice was a lyric tenor and very musical. It was Pachuca! She determined to ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... Then after stumbling wretchedly through two lines of it, he suddenly forgot himself and Falbe, and the squealing unresponsive notes. He heard them no more, absorbed in the knowledge of what he meant by them, of the mood which they produced in him. His ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the cat. Falto overruled the proposition. "It was late, and Mamercus was the man to extort confession." So Agias found himself thrust into a filthy cell, lighted only by a small chink, near the top of the low stone wall, into which strayed a bit of moonlight. The night he passed wretchedly enough, on a truss of fetid straw; while the tight irons that confined him chafed his wrists and ankles. Needless to add, he cursed roundly all things human and heavenly, before he fell into a brief, troubled sleep. In the morning Mago, who acted as jailer, brought him a pot of water and a saucer ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... remember his attempt to provide amusement for us for some time yet, I fear," she continued coquettishly. As her previous efforts had led to nothing, she had started afresh in another vein, mentally resolving that her companion was wretchedly slow in ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... not to have gone. Your brother managed the case wretchedly. I wasn't allowed to say the ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... understand,' the lady of the house began, 'how wretchedly sorry I am to see you.' Paul bowed an assent to this, and could but acknowledge that the unpromising exordium was natural. 'My daughter has never had a secret from me in her life until within the last few months. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Harlan, "except that we can't afford it." The whole bitter truth was out, now, and he turned away wretchedly, ashamed to ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... than half a century after this that I was in Rome and sitting on the steps of one of the public buildings in the Forum. I was waiting to meet some one with whom I had business, and while I sat there an old woman stopped in front of me. She was evidently poor, and wretchedly dressed; her scanty hair was gray, and her face was wrinkled and shrunken. I thought, of course, she was a beggar, and was about to give her something, when she clasped her hands in front of her and exclaimed, 'How like! How like! How like!' 'Like whom?' said I. 'What ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... looking wretchedly ill, too. I know all this is wearing you. Take my advice, Caroline, and ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... been a good day for the police, for four of them have helped to convey six shillings from the wretchedly poor to the coffers of the police-court receiver. But when the school holidays come round, that is the time for the dirty canal to tell its tale, and to give up its ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... civilized world, and to rid the "land of the free" of the paradox of slavery. Representing such motives, the laws varied all the way from mere regulating acts to absolute prohibitions. On the whole, these acts were poorly conceived, loosely drawn, and wretchedly enforced. The systematic violation of the provisions of many of them led to a widespread belief that enforcement was, in the nature of the case, impossible; and thus, instead of marking ground already won, they were too often sources of distinct moral deterioration. ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... as keen at that as I. Avice is not only amazingly self-willed, as you intimated a moment since, but she is intensely secretive. When she left me I could get nothing from her whatever. She was wretchedly sullen ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... did, wretchedly, on the most unhappy bed that old age ever lay in. There is little more of importance to chronicle of his latter days. The retribution came on slowly but terribly. The career of a ruined man is not a pleasant topic to dwell upon, and I leave Sheridan's misery for Mr. J. B. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... no specific target. Gasping, beaten, more than half-drowned, Shann was pummeled by waves, literally driven up on a rocky surface which skinned his body cruelly. He lay there, his arms moving feebly until he contrived to raise himself in time to be wretchedly sick. Somehow he crawled on a few feet farther before he subsided again, blinded by the light, flinching from the heat of the rocks on which he lay, but unable to do more ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... curtailed, in order to circumscribe its substance within the limits of a practical drama. Jefferson was blamed for condensing and slightly changing the comedy of The Rivals. Yet the author, who probably knew something about his work, deemed it a wretchedly defective piece, and expressed the liveliest regret for having written it. Wills did not reproduce Goldsmith's Vicar upon the stage: in some particulars he widely diverged from it—and his work, accordingly, may be censured. Yet The Vicar of Wakefield is far from ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... growing nervous—it is really true—really, wretchedly, ridiculously, fine-ladically, nervous. I can neither read, write, nor amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... to go home for the holidays, and how fortunate it seems now that he did so! We sailed for America on the 18th of December, arriving the 21st. Jean was at the wharf to meet us, blue and shivering with the cold, for it was wretchedly bleak there, and I had the feeling that she ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... there in the northern icy drizzle, with his eyes on the muddy river hurrying toward its freedom between jagged banks, he came very wretchedly to realise that there was only one way in which he could save himself, a way, albeit, which both his loyalty and honour forbade, by becoming ardent in the pursuit and effecting the capture of Spurling, that so he might prove his innocence. An emotion of shame and self-disgust throbbed ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... three brothers not only lost credit, but, being pressed for payment by their creditors, were suddenly arrested, and, their property proving deficient, were kept in prison for the balance, while their wives and little children went into the country parts, or elsewhere, wretchedly equipped, and with no other prospect than to pass the rest of their days in destitution. Alessandro, meanwhile, seeing that the peace, which he had for several years awaited in England, did not come, and deeming that he would hazard his life to no purpose by tarrying longer in the country, made ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... when you have grown pretty sick of your liberty, and yet unfit to return to restraint, curse the world, and scorn it, and be miserable, like my Lord Byron and other philosophers of his kidney; or else mount a step higher, and, with conceit still more monstrous, and mental vision still more wretchedly debauched and weak, begin suddenly to find yourself afflicted with a maudlin compassion for the human race, and a desire to set them right after your own fashion. There is the quarrelsome stage of drunkenness, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wretchedly different. They were crowded into sugar houses and Jails without blankets or covering; had Very little given to them to eat, and that little of the Very worst quality. So that in two months and four days about 1900 of the Fort Washington ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... you," retorted Letitia defiantly. "You talk like some of the wretchedly frivolous criticisms, so called, that men like Acton Davies and Alan Dale inflict upon the long-suffering public. They never amuse me. Ibsen may make his heroines the recipients of ugly legacies, but he has never yet cursed them with the odious incubus known as 'a sense of humor.' The people ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... played golf. It was at the fifth tee that they abandoned the last pretense of formality. She topped her drive wretchedly; the ball rolled a ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... to be in consequence of his departure from the country, the gossips would have been unable to discover the genuine motive if the news had not come from Antwerp that De Vlierbeck had resolved to pay his debts and was wretchedly poor. The cause of his misfortune—that is to say, his liability for his brother—was known, though all the circumstances were ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... of it did not rob it of real dignity. Isabelle, wretchedly mounting the steps beside him, felt her heart contract with real pain. He would go away—it would all be over and forgotten in a few weeks—and yet, how she longed to comfort him, to make him ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... against her companion. She was furious with herself and ashamed. She set her teeth to walk easily and straightly, but constantly the jog of his elbow on her shoulder or the swing of his hand against her blouse sent her ambling wretchedly arms-length from him. When this had occurred half a dozen times she could have plumped down on the grass and wept loudly and without restraint. At the Park gate she stopped suddenly and with the courage of despair bade him good-by. ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... vain. It is rapidly untwisting at the very feet of your companion, who looks at it in despair. Again you make an attempt with no success at all, the refractory twine eluding your utmost endeavors to hold it. Once more! Your fellow-twister walks off at last, with a wretchedly rough affair, which he good humoredly says ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... to see me the next morning but that the sudden news of my appearance had prostrated him with palpitations for the rest of the evening. The wind howled dismally all night, and strange cracking and groaning noises sounded here, there, and everywhere in the empty house. I slept as wretchedly as possible, and got up in a mighty bad humour to breakfast by ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... own gown. No, ma'am, please to ring the bell when you require anything; otherwise you will ruin my servants.' Much ashamed of my ignorance on this higher plane of English custom," continues the Idealist, "I crept back to my parlour and laughed heartily as I looked round the dirty, wretchedly furnished room, and reflected on the abyss set by prejudice between ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... is this," he replied. "I know it is wretchedly inadequate, it doesn't touch the root of the matter. Oh! it's miserably inadequate—I should think I did know that! Only it might smooth the surface a bit, perhaps, and put a stop to one source of annoyance. Forgive me if I say what seems coarse or clumsy—but would not ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... have now officers in whom I can confide: when the war commenced, I was really obliged to seek assistance among the militia. The 41st is an uncommonly fine regiment, but wretchedly officered. Six companies of the 49th are with me here, and the remaining four at Kingston, under Vincent. Although the regiment has been ten years in this country, drinking rum without bounds, it is still ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... hundred pathetic incidents,—the sword hot with slaughter, the stifling blood in the throat, the spoiling of the body in every member severally. He thinks of, and records, at his early ending, the distant home from which the boy came, who goes stumbling now, just stricken so wretchedly, his bowels in his hands. He pushes the expression of this contrast to the macabre even, suggesting the approach of those lower forms of life which await to- morrow the fair bodies of the heroes, who strive and fall to-day like these in the Aeginetan ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... you don't; and it's by no means remarkable. You live so entirely alone, and are so wretchedly neglected, that it is a wonder you ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... quickened, how the fiend will start up in his own shape, and how poor and small the motives which tempted so strongly to do wrong will come to look, when we think of adducing them to Jesus. What did a maid-servant's flippant tongue matter to Peter then? And how wretchedly inadequate the reason for his denial looked when Christ's eye fell upon him. The most recent surgical method of treating skin diseases is to bring an electric light, ten times as strong as the brightest street lights, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the surprised Tinkletownians, as with their eyes they proceeded to search the figure before them for blood stains. But no sooner had the chorused words escaped their lips than they realised how wretchedly commonplace was their blundering expression in comparison with the faultlessly professional phraseology of their leader; and, overwhelmed with mortification, the posse ached to recall them; for that the correct technical term had been applied by one for years trained to the vernacular ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... that she was to-day without a servant; she must needs descend into the kitchen herself and answer the summons. When the nether regions were illumined and the door thrown open, Lilian beheld a familiar figure, that of a scraggy and wretchedly clad woman with a moaning infant ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... newscasts were full of the age-old "human interest stories" which, in spite of their predictability—the abandoned baby, the dying child, the wretchedly ill oldster—still brought a tear to the eye during ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... there, and she flung herself into the nearest arm-chair, sobbing wretchedly, although on that night she had cause to cry out to Heaven and rejoice for God's mercy to her for so unexpectedly restoring her sight. But, ah, me! how strange it is that all the blessings Heaven can shower upon us seem as dross when the one love ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... adventures of the man who had so long been forgotten. Everybody wanted to see the man from Turkey, and they were almost surprised that he should still look like other people. The young folks, to be sure, did not remember him, but the old could still recognize his features perfectly, wretchedly disfigured though he was. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... de Charonne. It is a narrow house at the extreme end of that long street which abuts on the fortifications. The lower part of the house is occupied by a dealer in rags and old clothes. He and his wife and family are wretchedly poor, but they are kind, good souls, and for a consideration and a minimum of risk to themselves they will always render service to the English milors, whom they believe to be a band of inveterate smugglers. Ffoulkes and all the others know these people and know ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... thundercloud—I should say he'd make about four of me round the equator; and mind you, a chap stopped me in the street the other day and offered me a job as Beefeater outside a moving-picture show: yes, fact, I was wretchedly annoyed about it—and the man Twyning with a lean and hungry look like Cassius, or was it Judas Iscariot? Well, like Cassius out of a job or Judas Iscariot in the middle of one, anyway. That's Twyning's sort. Chap ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... and still no pack train in sight. No criminal on trial for his life could have felt more wretchedly apprehensive than I. At last we came to a stream. Nimrod, who had dismounted to ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... Highness is wretchedly poor, like most royal women not actually seated on the throne. I can't offer my paramour financial independence, not even luxury, but, thank heaven, I saved up enough to provide for his present needs, even if my treasury be drained to the last twenty-mark piece, and I will have to ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... your house. More than this I am not authorized to tell you.' My father knows the landlord of Browndown; and that is what the reference said to him, word for word. Isn't it provoking? The house was let for six months certain, the next day. It is wretchedly furnished. Mr. Dubourg has had several things that he wanted sent from Brighton. Besides the furniture, a packing-case from London arrived at the house to-day. It was so strongly nailed up that the carpenter had ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... without a single ship of war, were to annihilate a fleet of sixteen first-class and twenty-three small vessels of war. It was not without some amount of bitter sarcasm that the ambassadors replied that, instead of making such grandiose proposals, it would be more practical to take measures that the wretchedly battered vessels now lying in the harbour at Ungama might be repaired and sent to sea again as quickly at possible. Even the possibility of saving them from the immensely superior force of the enemy rested upon the very uncertain hope that the foe would not at once look for ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... excavated a resting-place for the two bodies. While they were working the Boers gathered round us to the number of a couple of hundred. They were very silent, eyeing us with an absorbed interest that embraced every article of our equipment. Men of the humblest peasant class, poorly—in many respects wretchedly—clad, they presented, in their ragged and shabby apparel, a sharp contrast to our Yeomanry soldiers, who seemed, by comparison, trim and well cared for. The Boers wore their ordinary clothes, which were relieved by only one military touch—the ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... morning was very fine, and the view indescribably beautiful; the mountains so high, and so wooded close to Killin. It is impossible to say how kind and attentive Lord Breadalbane and poor Lady Breadalbane (who is so wretchedly delicate) were to us. We were so sorry to go away, and might perhaps have managed to stay two days longer at Taymouth, were we not fearful of delaying our sea voyage back too much. However, we mean to visit him for longer another time; the Highlands are so ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... of Persia named Moah, who followed the rules of justice, men were happy. But after these kings, Izdegherd-ibn-Chahryar reigned over Persia. By his harsh tyranny he destroyed the high reputation of the kings of Persia and wretchedly closed a series of reigns lasting 4,000 years and noted all over the world for justice and equity. Under the rule of this miserable tyrant countless numbers of men perished and a great many prosperous and famous cities were devastated. All the better classes of citizens were plunged ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... found that their numbers did not appear to diminish, it was then determined to use every exertion to change their joy into grief and their songs into tears and groans of misery. To effect this they were tied to stakes and burned alive; were broiled on wooden gridirons, and thousands were thus wretchedly destroyed. But as the number of Christians was not perceptibly lessened by these cruel punishments, they became tired of putting them to death, and attempts were then made to make the Christians abandon their faith by the infliction ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the crew; when matters again returned to their usual lethargic state. It was no unfrequent event, however, for vessels to be lost. They were too often laden with a total disregard to seaworthiness, and wretchedly handled. It was favor, not capacity, that determined the patronage of these lucrative appointments. [39] Many galleons fell into the hands of English and Dutch cruisers. [40] ["Philippine Company" and ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... in this attitude toward Europe,—in this standing forth as the representative man of Absolutism, and breasting the nineteenth century,—something of greatness; but in his attitude toward Russia this greatness was wretchedly diminished. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... little fit to meet such a storm as sweeps over those waters. All night it blew in short fitful puffs, heeling the great cog over until the water curled over her lee bulwarks. As the wind still freshened the yard was lowered half way down the mast in the morning. Alleyne, wretchedly ill and weak, with his head still ringing from the blow which he had received, crawled up upon deck. Water-swept and aslant, it was preferable to the noisome, rat-haunted dungeons which served as cabins. There, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that I met people so wretchedly and poorly clad as we find them but too often in the large continental towns. I never saw any one without good warm ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... Wortley Montagu was his cousin. On the other hand, his poverty and improvidence constantly kept him, as Lady Mary put it, "raking in the lowest rinks of vice and misery." Richardson, who always denounced Fielding's works as "wretchedly low and dirty," said sneeringly: "his brawls, his jars, his jails, his spunging-houses are all drawn from what he has seen and known." But in this ungenerous sneer lay a substantial compliment. Fielding did describe what he had seen and known, and the variety of his experience ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Bibby, had said the piece was perfect. But Pauline herself had a lurking, miserable doubt in her mind; she seemed to recollect just one mistake, just one tiresome finger jumping up to a black note, when it should have played a white one with a slur. She stared wretchedly at the written statement before her. Suppose it were not true—think of writing a lie, an actual lie to mother! But, indeed, if she really knew for certain that she had played D flat she would not dream of writing so. It was the doubt that tormented. ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... after a long life of adulation, in which every whim has been gratified. Believe me, Miss Marsden, it is a very sad thing to come to the end of one's life with no other possession than a burdened conscience and a heavy, guilty heart. I long to save you from such a fate. That would be a wretchedly poor result of a lifetime for one endowed as ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... the war of the American Revolution, must have been most wretchedly ignorant of these leading maxims for conducting offensive war. Instead of concentrating their forces on some decisive point, and then destroying the main body of our army by repeated and well-directed blows, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... they plied to the northward, the old ship making but slow progress, till at last they sighted "Sanderson his Hope," the farthest point of Master Davis. Once more English voices broke the silence of thirty years. The people who appeared on the shore were wretchedly poor. They lived on seals' flesh, which they ate raw, and clothed themselves in the skins. Still northwards they sailed, cruising along the western coast. Though the ice was beginning to disappear ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... qualities. Many of his works are in his native Pardetowns near. All have suffered and some are now hidden by whitewash. His chief strength lay in fresco. His scenes from the Passion in the cathedral, Cremona, are greatly damaged and wretchedly restored, but they still reveal the painter as a great master. They have 'fine drawing, action, excellent colouring, grand management of light and shade, with freedom of hand and dignity of conception.' In the prophets and sibyls around the cupola of the Madonna di Campagna, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... is a wretchedly poor place. All are needy, from the Sarkee downwards, and when they get any property it all comes from the razzias. The system of living on rapine and man-stealing seems to bring its own punishment ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... natural, and was failing wretchedly. His voice was actually sad, and she had never heard it sad in all their intercourse before. She had never thought it could be sad, and the sound was something like a revelation of the man. It made ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... left absolutely void of the means of instruction, nor any worthy human achievement be absolutely lost or forgotten. The experience of these later years has demonstrated the value of such legacies even when unintentional, unselected, and wretchedly fragmentary. It has made clear also how a legacy deliberately ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... delivered at Metropolitan Hall before the most cultivated audience the city could boast. With a singular ineptitude, not generally appreciated at the time, Daniel Webster was selected to preside. He had nothing to say, and he said it wretchedly. It was doubtful if he had ever read a single work of the novelist. That, at least, is a natural inference from his speech, which, furthermore, is little else than a collection of dreary platitudes. It was after this fashion that he paid his respects to the man whose memory they had come ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... Shelton, who, confronted by her optimism, had never, since his time of trial began, felt so wretchedly dejected, "I can't go ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... L. (Growing eloquent.) We have only advanced from the simple to the more complex form of matrimony. Why should not the faithfulness which constitutes the wretchedly exclusive dual Marriage of the Wor-r-r-ld exist as well between Two Hundred ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... approached. As it happened, the gig arrived first, and Hester had to give the relation. She spoke even cheerfully, declaring Mr Enderby's opinion, that the case was going on favourably, and that recovery was very possible. Mrs Grey, who had had a wretchedly anxious day by herself, not having enjoyed even the satisfaction of being useful, nothing having been sent for from the farmhouse, was truly cheered by seeing her family about ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... This was wretchedly disgusting but—fascinating. It reminded the young Baltimorean of feeding-time at the Zoo. She also dropped upon the sward to watch, and to recover her basket when he should have done ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... pretentions of a singularly unromantic nature, he found her so much lovelier than before that where once he had shyly coveted he now desired with a fervour that swept him headlong into a panic of dread lest he had waited too long and that he had irretrievably lost her while engaged in the wretchedly mundane and commonplace pursuit of trifles. He was intensely amazed, therefore, to discover that she had loved him ever since she was a child in short frocks. He expected her to believe him when he said to her that she was the loveliest of all God's creatures, but it was more than he could ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... interest in the subject of lifeboats, and expended money liberally in constructing and supporting them. Before the close of 1863, Greathead had built 31 boats, 18 for England, 5 for Scotland, and 8 for foreign countries. This was so far well; but it was a wretchedly inadequate provision for the necessities of the case. Interest had indeed been awakened in the public, but the public cannot act as a united body; and the Trinity House seemed to fall back into the sleep from which it had ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... Wearily and wretchedly he plodded on. A man may be very weary in such a walk as that, and yet be by no means wretched. Tired, hungry, cold, wet, and nearly penniless, I have sat me down and slept among those mountain tracks,—have slept because nature refused to allow longer wakefulness. But my heart has been as light ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... from Ostend," he wrote, "and Don Juan de Manrique has fortunately arrived in Stabroek with a thousand good German folk. The commissary-general of the cavalry has come in, too, with a good lot of the troops that had been encamped in the open country. Nevertheless, we remain wretchedly weak—quite insufficient to attempt what ought to be done. If the enemy were more in force, or if the French wished to make trouble, your Majesty would see how important it had been to provide in time against such contingencies. And although our neighbours, crestfallen, and rushing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... able to keep soul and body together, still, as no person in decent circumstances would put on his table confessedly bad wine, or bad meat, without being ashamed, so he need not have on his shelves ill-printed or loosely and wretchedly-stitched books; for though few can be rich, yet every man who honestly exerts himself may, I think, still provide, for himself and his family, good shoes, good gloves, strong harness for his cart or carriage horses, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... very great man, but you are a wretchedly poor liar. As Mr. Washington would say, your sincerity is one of the most valuable of your gifts, and without it you could not convince a child. As if this were not enough, only yesterday, on the boat, I overheard two of your intimate friends discussing ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... "nothing," but it seem'd to bother him immensely. He brought four pieces to stop that poor little Pawn when one would have done, utterly ignoring the policy of economy of force, his game consequently got disarranged and he lost, after about an hour's fighting, No. 1. He proposed another, played wretchedly, and lost No. 2; worse and worse he played always wanting to increase his stake, but I remained true to the classics and would not deviate from the time-honoured stake. As it was I had to draw seven dollars which my opponent parted with most pleasantly, asked me to have a cigar ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... of her attitude flashed over him, all doubt vanished, all the comedy of their encounter was gone in an instant. Over him swept a startled sequence of emotions—bitter contempt for Dysart, scorn of the wretchedly equivocal situation and of the society that bred it, a miserable desire to spare her, vexation at himself for what he had unwittingly stumbled upon. The last thought persisted, dominated; succeeded by a disgusted determination that she must be spared the shame and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... first time, that she had been horribly brazen—or, at least, she told herself that she had been—and as a consequence, she was wretchedly ill at ease. Her distress was in marked contrast with the man's self-possession, which amounted almost to indifference. There was no spark visible of the fire which had flashed earlier in the day. It was as though he had steeled himself to remain ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... eke a foul record Of any man, and namely* of a lord. *especially There is full many an eye and many an ear *Awaiting on* a lord, he knows not where. *watching For Godde's love, drink more attemperly:* *temperately Wine maketh man to lose wretchedly His mind, and eke his limbes every one.' 'The reverse shalt thou see,' quoth he, 'anon, And prove it by thine own experience, That wine doth to folk no such offence. There is no wine bereaveth me my might Of hand, nor foot, nor ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Days"—went to press, over nineteen hundred poems had accumulated on my hands! And since that time the number has greatly increased. There were battle odes, hymns, calls to arms, paeans and dirges and prayers for peace—many of them good, few of them great; and the vast majority, alas! wretchedly poor. Any attempted notice of their authors in limits like this would be sheer failure; and where many did so well, it were invidious to discriminate. The names of John R. Thompson, James Randall, Henry ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... to the lesson his fate teaches. It is established now that in California no man is above the law; that no man can affect the even poise of justice by fear. Confiding in his own strength as superior to the law, David S. Terry fell wretchedly. ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... was wretchedly uncomfortable. Marie's tragedy was his predicament. He disliked himself very cordially, loathing himself and his situation with the new-born humility of the lover. For Stewart was in love for the first time in his life. Marie knew it. She had not lived with him for months without knowing his every ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from their chairs to the floor, where they sprawled unconscious. When they awoke they left quietly and without trouble of any kind. They seemed a strangely subdued and chastened band; probably they were wretchedly ill after their debauch on the adulterated whisky the traders had ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... a character in which several great actresses have distinguished themselves,—chief among them Siddons. On the memorable night at Arden, however, it was but wretchedly rendered by a tall, small-voiced, flaxen-haired young woman, who stalked about the stage in high-heeled shoes and prodigious hoops, and declaimed the most fiery passages with an execrable drawl. The remainder of the company were barely passable as strolling players, with the exception ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... possession of people, and tortured them in so surprizing a manner, as if they were agitated by furies. For in the whole catalogue of diseases, which afflict mankind, there is no other, that seems so much to surpass the force of nature, as this, in wretchedly tormenting the patient by fierce distractions of the mind, and excessively strong, tho' involuntary, motions of the body. But most certainly we find nothing sacred in all this, nothing but what may arise from a natural indisposition of body. And in order to ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... We'll prorogue his expectation, then, a little: Brainworm, thou shalt go with us.—Come on, gentlemen.-Nay, I pray thee, sweet Ned, droop not; 'heart, an our wits be so wretchedly dull, that one old plodding brain can outstrip us all, would we were e'en prest to make porters of, and serve out the remnant of our days in Thames-street, or at Custom-house key, in a civil war ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... minister to our bodily welfare as best we can for the benefit of posterity. We Christians, however, are expectantly to await the coming of the Saviour. His coming will not be to our injury or shame as it may be in the case of others. He comes for the salvation of our unprofitable, impotent bodies. Wretchedly worthless as they are in this life, they are much more unprofitable when lifeless and perishing in ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... bestowed them on others. A poor soldier, badly frozen, hastened to tell her his misery; the mattress was instantly given to him. A comrade hearing of his good fortune, presented himself for relief; the palliasse became his property, the comforters being bestowed on a third, who was as wretchedly lodged as the others. There was as yet no applicant for the pillow, which was a useless article of furniture to her, as she slept on the bare ground, or a plank, resting her head upon straw, notwithstanding the inclemency of Canadian winters. Yet ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... me, as I remarked to my companion, without another arrow for my bow. "Why not another?" she inquired as I sat there hesitating and thinking it over; and she wished to know why even now and before taking the trouble of becoming an inmate (which might be wretchedly uncomfortable after all, even if it succeeded), I had not the resource of simply offering them a sum of money down. In that way I might obtain ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... Wooden pegs were invented in 1811 and came into common use about 1815 for the cheaper grades of shoes: Soon the practice of sending out the uppers to be done by women in their own homes became common. These women were wretchedly paid, and when the sewing machine came to do the work better than it could be done by hand, the practice of "putting ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... on to the lawn, very slowly, and kicking wretchedly at the turf. Presently his father came along with the whirring machine, while the sweet, new grass blades spun from the knives. In a low voice, ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... Returning wretchedly to the house, I met Suan Isco and two men bringing the body of poor Firm. His head and both his arms hung down, and they wanted somebody to lift them; and this I ran to do, although they called out to me not ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... red school-house at Popham. Moved, we confess, more by curiosity than by any thirst for religious consolation, we joined the procession. Gathered within the cheerless room, unadorned, save here and there by wretchedly-executed prints of early patriots who would scarcely be recognized by their own friends, old and young alike presented a distressed and ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... least wise mollifie and appease the vengeaunce which shee prepareth for thee: and if euer sparke of pitie did warme thy frosen hart, arme thy selfe with greater crueltie then euer thou was wont to doe, and come hither to make her sobbe her laste and extreme sighes, whom thou haste wretchedly deceiued: for in doing otherwise thou maiest peraduenture to late, bewaile my death and thy beastlye crueltie." And thinking to make a conclusion of her letter, the teares made her woords to die ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... vaccination, it is still greater to procure the examinations in its progress and maturation; the mere appearance of disease in the arm, is supposed to carry along with it immunity from small-pox; and, on the occurrence of the epidemic at an after period, it may be easily foreseen how wretchedly and how fatally this confidence in the spurious disease may be misplaced; I, therefore, do not consider, that, in all the cases spoken of among the inhabitants, as cases of small-pox occurring after ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... his sister and the woman to whom his eyes so often turned. That which concerned him most in life was passing behind the veil of trees and bushes, and its sound filled his ears. He had no thought of anything else. It was widening its sweep, coming nearer to the house where he was tied so wretchedly by wounds; and he would see it—see who was winning—his own South ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... in the night, halting an hour or two after daybreak, and lying by until the twilight fell. The escort were so wretchedly clothed, that they twisted straw round their bare legs, and thatched their ragged shoulders to keep the wet off. Apart from the personal discomfort of being so attended, and apart from such considerations ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... reality is yet to come. Life is all of a piece then and there's no shame in being miserably human. As for my loneliness, it doesn't greatly matter; it is the fault in part of my obstinacy. There have been times when I've been frantically distressed and, to tell you the truth, wretchedly homesick, because my maid—a jewel of a maid—lied to me with every second breath. There have been moments when I've wished I was the daughter of a poor New England minister—living in a little white house under a couple of elms ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... way made known the thoughts which were oppressing her; but she did so in no other way. All this Madeline understood, and thanked her mother with the sweetest smiles and the most constant companionship. Nor was she, even now, absolutely unhappy, or wretchedly miserable; as under such circumstances would be the case with many girls. She knew all that she was prepared to abandon, but she understood also how much remained to her. Her life was her own, and with her life the energy to use it. Her soul was ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... preserve health, than gain a fortune and be a moping dyspeptic for life. But unless one toils and moils like a beast of burden, one cannot even live simply, some will say! I don't believe that assertion. The peasants of France live simply, and save,—the peasants of England live wretchedly, and waste! Voila la difference! As with nations, so with individuals, —it is all a question of Will. 'Where there's a will there's a way,' is a dreadfully trite copybook maxim, but it's amazingly true ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... drawn to one other characteristic of these plays, though it is touched upon both by Professor Dowden and Dr. Brandes—the singular carelessness with which great parts of them were obviously written. Could anything drag more wretchedly than the denouement of Cymbeline? And with what perversity is the great pastoral scene in The Winter's Tale interspersed with long-winded intrigues, and disguises, and homilies! For these blemishes are unlike the blemishes which enrich rather than lessen the beauty of the earlier ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... 10 P. M. TED is sitting in a corner with a book, but unable to concentrate. He is wretchedly unhappy and jumpy. ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... most forcibly with regard to that of Madrid, which I visited some years ago. The vertebrate specimens were old and wretchedly mounted, the lepidoptera nowhere; but the recently acquired animals were splendidly rendered. The youthful and painstaking amateur will, no doubt, however, do as I did when a boy—viz, pitch upon some professional ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... room lit up by flaring gas-jets against the gloom of a late afternoon of rain; and the lights in Scipione's little cellar restaurant flared away in the most outrageous manner. Harding, across the table from me, wretchedly fluttered the pages of a popular magazine and looked ill-natured and horribly unkempt. The new table-cloths had not yet been laid for dinner. The sawdust on the floor was mostly mire. Angelina, the cook, was screaming at Paolo and Francesca, who were trying ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... picked up some knowledge of Portuguese, and spent all his pocket- money. He did not arrive in India till more than a year after he had left England. His situation at Madras was most painful. His funds were exhausted. His pay was small. He had contracted debts. He was wretchedly lodged, no small calamity in a climate which can be made tolerable to an European only by spacious and well placed apartments. He had been furnished with letters of recommendation to a gentleman who might have assisted him; but when he landed at Fort St. George he found ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sixteen, and so pretty, so sweet; they are twins so very much alike, as to be mistaken for one another. Their mother died in exile; and the little she possessed having been confiscated, they have come hither with my father, from the depths of Siberia, travelling very wretchedly; but he tried to make them forget so many privations by the fervency of his devotion and his tenderness. My excellent father! you will not believe, madame, that, with the courage of a lion, he has all the love and tenderness ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... wretchedly uncertain in my dates, but it must have been some time late in the reign of Queen Anne, that a fishing yawl, after vainly labouring for hours to enter the bay of Cromarty, during a strong gale from ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... those of the opposite party who remained influential, and whom they had hitherto despised; and especially to see with what embarrassment, what fear, what terror, they began to crawl before the young Princess, and wretchedly court the Duc de Bourgogne and his friends, and bend to them in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... poor wretchedly and lazily depended upon the alms of the rich, which were especially bestowed at a funeral, to buy their prayers for the repose of the soul; and at wedding, for a blessing on the newly-married couple. Happily for them they are ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... far better than you do how wretchedly inadequate all these poor words of mine have been to the great theme that I have been trying to speak of, but they may at least—like a little water poured into a pump—have set your minds working upon the theme, and, I hope, to better purpose. 'The Son ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... be most beneficial to him, in every sense, to have a person managing his estates, in the best possible condition to serve him. His property, in fact, is not represented in the grand jury panel of the county. This is a great loss to him—a serious loss. In the first place, it is wretchedly, shamefully deficient in roads—both public and private. In the next place, there are many rents left unpaid, through the inability of the people, which we could get paid by the making of these roads, and ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton |
