"Misfortune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the terrible misfortune that had happened, though as yet they hardly realized its full significance. They purposely refrained from talking about it, though each knew in his own heart how wildly improbable was the hope that Nugget ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... reputation of having done more to promote the prosperity of North Carolina than all its other colonial governors combined. However, he was often arbitrary and unwise with his power, besides having the usual misfortune of colonial governors of being at variance with the legislature. He was very partial to the people of his native country, and sought to better their condition by inducing them to emigrate to North Carolina. Among the charges ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... said, with playful emphasis. "I fear I've not trained him up as fathers should be trained, for he coolly told me that if I had not had the misfortune to be a girl, I might perhaps have turned out as good a ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... misfortune to be a man of business; that, you will say, is a most grievous one; but what makes it the more so to me, is, that my wife has nothing to do: at least she had too good an education, and the prospect of too good a fortune in reversion when I married her, to think of employing herself either in my ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Marc shot a young caribou and gave him the blood to drink, and made a ragout to put the flesh back on his bones. Meanwhile the professor slept long hours on the moss and took a much-needed rest; and by degrees they learned from Nichicun the story of his misfortune—the story that forms a part of the chronicle of the expedition, which can be read ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... involved in my catastrophe, neither of us had foreseen the end. Miss Collingsby appeared to be the greatest sufferer; and the scream with which she announced my defeat was only the echo of my own feelings. As the battle was really her own, rather than mine, of course my misfortune was ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... The misfortune was that he could not find in himself any of the causes which resolve into insomnia; he had neither meningitis nor brain fever, nor anything that indicated a cerebral tumor; he was not anaemic; he ate well; he did not suffer with neuralgia, nor with any acute or chronic affection ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... terrible disclosure? why harrow my soul with going back over that dark path? Let me try to forget that such sins, such wrongs, such revenges, ever stained a human life. I was so young, so innocent, so ignorant. It was a strange misfortune that I should have had to know that which aged and changed me so. But he was right in saying that I had to know it. My life was bound involuntarily to his by my love, and what concerned him was my fate. Alas! He was in no other way bound to me than by my love: ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... 11 P.M.—A misfortune has occurred so unexpected and so horrible that my little escape of the morning dwindles into insignificance. Mrs. Tibbs and her child have disappeared—utterly and entirely disappeared. I can hardly compose myself to ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... always been dangerous. Thirty years ago I met with a misfortune at this same place; oh, when I think ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... happy in their place at Hoxne, and on them at least has fallen no shadow of misfortune from that which came of their passing over the Bridge of the Golden Spurs—the Golden Bridge as our ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... pattern, just as the law is faithfully fulfilled or neglected. Of course their prophecies always come exactly true, and in this way is seen an astonishing harmony between inward worth and outward circumstance. Never does sin miss its punishment, and never where misfortune occurs is guilt wanting. ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... nobody could discern; but the people about were aggrieved for her, and Miss Buff confided to a friend, in a semi-audible whisper of intense exasperation, that the rector was the biggest muff and toady that ever it had been her misfortune to know. Miss Buff, it will be perceived, liked strong terms; but, as she justly pleaded in extenuation of a taste for which she was reproached, what was the use of there being strong terms in the language if they were not to be applied ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... place so loathsome. Mr. Jackson's log-house was a palace in comparison. The prison was crowded with colored people of all complexions, and almost every form of human vice and misery was huddled together there with the poor victims of misfortune. Thieves, murderers, and shameless girls, decked out with tawdry bits of finery, were mixed up with modest-looking, heart-broken wives, and mothers mourning for the children that had been torn from their arms in the recent sale. Some were laughing, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... enjoying you and themselves and each other. Strangers have been known to speak to one another under the mellow atmosphere which you have created by singing to them of the universal things: love, food, drink, marriage, birth, death, misfortune, festival, cunning, frivolity and—oh, the thousand things that ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... misfortune in a part of the world where food is so difficult to be got; however, they still persisted in their design, putting on shore as often as they could to seek subsistence. But, about a fortnight after, another dreadful accident befell them, for the yawl sank at an ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... it was he whistled!" To which Dave answered with reserve:—"A long tune." Probably the whistler's stock was limited, and he repeated the piece, whatever it was, da capo ad libitum. This legend—the thin plot of Dave's story—will not strike some who have the misfortune to own bulls as strange. In some parts of the country boys are always requisitioned to attend on bulls, who especially hate men, perhaps resenting their monopoly of the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... There are many striving people among the factory operatives, who help up the family earnings by keeping a little shop in this way. But this family was another of those instances in which working people have been pulled down by misfortune before the present crisis came on. Just previous to the mills beginning to work short time, four of their five children had been lying ill, all at once, for five months; and, before that trouble befell them, one of the lads had two of his fingers taken ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... misfortune, as I have ever said, and there will be just shifting hither and yon, until thou art eighteen, a long way off. It makes thee neither fish nor fowl, for what is gained in one six months is upset in the next. But thy mother would have ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... difficulties in getting his prize-papers or in drawing his pay; but there was no reason why he might not have written. The days were beginning to grow long to Margaret, and vague forebodings of misfortune possessed her. ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... went away, but had the misfortune to mistake the police barracks for the rival whisky store, and was promptly arrested for threatening with ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... public. But one of Dr. Haygarth's stories may lead us to conjecture that there was a class of female practitioners who went about doing good with the Tractors in England as well as in Denmark. A certain lady had the misfortune to have a spot as big as a silver penny at the corner of her eye, caused by a bruise, or some such injury. Another lady, who was a friend of hers, and a strong believer in Perkinism, was very anxious to try the effects of tractoration ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was surprised at that, for both Will and Gethin, ever since their mother's death, had been accustomed to run to Sara for sympathy with every pleasure or misfortune, and after being two months away it was quite natural that he should want to see her; so Morva had scarcely rounded the bend of the Cribserth before Will had caught her up. A little shiver ran through her as she recognised the step and the whistle which called ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... impassively. One youth only, Gilbert Potter, whose name for those few days passed into fame's trumpet, ventured to exclaim, "The Lady Mary has the better title." Gilbert's master, one "Ninian Sanders," denounced the boy to the guard, and he was seized. Yet a misfortune, thought to be providential, in a few hours befell Ninian Sanders. Going home to his house down the river, in the July evening, he was overturned and drowned as he was shooting London Bridge in his wherry; the boatmen, who were the instruments ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... Brown would look on that as less a punishment than a misfortune." Enoch smiled, as ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... flood caused immense loss; it overthrew houses, swept away the cattle, and utterly ruined the crops of the season. The buffaloes, however, proved abundant, and afforded a supply of provisions enough to prevent starvation, and the settlers soon recovered from the effects of this misfortune. Another calamity followed—the caterpillar appeared—at first in small numbers, afterwards in myriads, covering the whole land, and eating up "every green thing," and thus the crops were destroyed a second time; but the consequences were not ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... hoarding little by little...But reflection leads me to higher thoughts. I choke back the tears in my heart, and I congratulate him that Heaven has mercifully spared him this life of trials...My poor child...you will never, like your father, have to struggle against poverty and misfortune; you will never know the bitterness of life, and the difficulties of creating a position at a time when there are so many paths that lead to failure...I weep for you because we have lost you, but I rejoice because you are happy...You are ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... the cause of the misfortune which followed, and bade fair to place me in a position of as great difficulty as I have ever known; for, having in my good humour dismissed the servants, I continued to talk for an hour or more with Vilain and some of my gentlemen; the result being that I so far forgot myself, when I rose, as ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... according to his own ideas, it gave him the utmost pain, when he felt his infirmities increase so fast upon him, that he was obliged to commit the conduct of all his affairs to his ministers. He imputed every misfortune which befell him, and every miscarriage that happened, even when the former was unavoidable or the latter accidental, to his inability to take the inspection of business himself. He complained of his hard fortune in being opposed, in his declining years, to a rival who was in the full vigor of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... to go into town except under pressure of dire necessity, because we thought that the population was greatly perturbed and that it might take revenge on any foreigners which they might consider spiteful onlookers of their misfortune, ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... which caused so much unmerited misfortune to English artists and their like, and which at one moment had threatened to wreck his own successful opening career, had brought to Shirley Sherston a piece of marvelous ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... her head, with a gravity and condescension intended to keep him at his proper distance. Far from being discouraged, he permitted his curiosity to take additional liberties. "Are you to have the misfortune of being one of my pupils?" ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... creatures pityingly because they are dumb. If one of his own children is born dumb, he counts it a tragedy. Even that mere hesitation in speech, known as stammering, he deems a misfortune. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... so long to Owen. Eagerly he and his companions in misfortune looked out for the first streaks of dawn in the eastern horizon. They appeared at last, and a faint cheer burst ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... but such was the man's character that his failure was regarded by many as a public misfortune. Some men differed with him as to the wisdom of promoting a coffee corner, and protested that it was against public policy; but Arnold's personal integrity was never questioned, and his mercantile ability and honorable business dealings won for him an affectionate regard ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... predestination. I have ignored Sabbath-day doctrines and faith-binding dogmas to this end. I could even have held out indefinitely against your "foreknowledge," but when you come, heralded by an unexpected misfortune, asking "peace" of me that you may meet your own difficulties with a steadier courage, I find you invincible. It is as if you had suddenly slipped through the door of my heart and left will, betrayed, on guard outside. I have no defence in ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... should direct, for his stage. This translation, tedious and vapid as most literal translations are, had the peculiar disadvantage of having been put into our language by a German—of course it came to me in broken English. It was no slight misfortune to have an example of bad grammar, false metaphors and similes, with all the usual errors of feminine diction, placed before a female writer. But if, disdaining the construction of sentences,—the precise decorum of the cold grammarian,—she ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... so, disaster still threatened. Patty had the misfortune to collide with Evalina Smith in the upper hall, and she dropped her pin-tray, honey-side down, in the middle of the rug. At the same instant, Miss Lord bore down upon her from the end of the corridor. Patty was a young person of resource; the emergency of the moment rarely found ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... disappointed, of course—for the reason that the size of a misfortune is not determinate by an outsider's measurement of it, but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it. The king's lost crown is a vast matter to the king, but of no consequence ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... various forms. In the first place, it appears as that natural enmity between man and man which is often emphasized by skeptical moralists. The argument is: Since there is something not wholly displeasing to us in the misfortune of our best friends, and, since the presupposition excludes, in this instance, conflict of material interests, the phenomenon must be traced back to an a priori hostility, to that homo homini lupus, as the frequently veiled, but perhaps ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... place seems to me to be altogether untenable and of no practicable importance, since the enemy may attack both in front and rear. It would seem that some of the jealous functionaries would submit to any misfortune which would destroy Beauregard's popularity. But these are exceptions: they are few and far between, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... it was a dreadful misfortune when some member of a family became insane, but this terrible calamity, which nothing could make one anticipate or avoid, was happily exceptional, like thunderbolts. The other men and even the members of the family presented nothing similar and regarded themselves ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... to buy Silks of one, whom he would not venture to feel his Pulse. Vagellius is careful, studious and obliging, but withal a little thick-skull'd; he has not a single Client, but might have had abundance of Customers. The Misfortune is, that Parents take a Liking to a particular Profession, and therefore desire their Sons may be of it. Whereas, in so great an Affair of Life, they should consider the Genius and Abilities of their Children, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... against the English, you bring news which is painful to us, as we know that our papa will grieve for the misfortune which has happened to him," said the elder of the young ladies. "We are, however, obliged to you for informing us of his safety, and should be glad to do our best to supply ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... passing in her carriage by jocosely calling out at him some abusive epithets. Afterwards, we are told that she often visited Wycherley at the Temple, disguised as a country girl in a straw hat, with pattens on her feet, and a basket on her arm. Later, he had the misfortune to make the acquaintance of the Countess of Drogheda on the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells, and by secretly marrying her incurred the King's displeasure. He was finally reduced to great distress, but James II., recognising ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... It was useless to discuss the matter. The upright, courageous old merchant, whose pride was that he had never committed one mean action in the accumulation of his fortune, could never understand this common misfortune. He belonged to a different world from that in which his son was to take his part. They turned to other topics,—the business depression, the strike, the threatened interference of the American ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... prudent and so bounteous. For which the fame out sprang on every side Both of her beauty and her bounte* wide: *goodness That through the land they praised her each one That loved virtue, save envy alone, That sorry is of other manne's weal, And glad is of his sorrow and unheal* — *misfortune The Doctor maketh this descriptioun. — This maiden on a day went in the town Toward a temple, with her mother dear, As is of younge maidens the mannere. Now was there then a justice in that town, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the sheik said. "I thought it as well not to bring all, for had misfortune happened, the women and children would have been left without protectors; but there is surely no occasion for Hassan to go yet. In three days he might be there, and be back in another three, and though I hope to mend quickly, surely I could not ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... Man, "I hope that if it should be in your power when we get through those Gates, that you will be merciful to Tom. I can't think of much to say for him in this hurry, but there, he is my only son and the truth is that I love him. You know he may live—to be different—if you don't bring some misfortune ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... his way in the midst of wars and burning towns, and provinces ravaged by the plague, with his country invaded, trampled underfoot by the hordes of all Europe, and—worst of all—broken, worn out, degraded by misfortune, making no fight, indifferent to everything, longing only for rest. He thought: "With such as example, what right has any man to complain? They had no audience, they had no future; they wrote for themselves and God. What they wrote one day would perhaps be destroyed by the next. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... when a weir-hatch is drawn, Her tears, penned by terror afore, With a rushing of sobs in a shower were strawn, Till her power to pour 'em seemed wasted and gone From the heft o' misfortune she bore. ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... go like a fish's gills. It is a funny way for a gentleman, and he's a gentleman. Every fool knows the Wylders are gentlemen—all gentlemen in misfortune. He has a brother that is walking about in his coffin. Mark has no coffin; it is all marble steps; and a wicked seraph received him, and blessed him till his hair stood up. Let me ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Gloire-de-Dijon rose. There was a hum of bees close by that seemed like the voice of the hot sunshine. It should have been a pleasant awakening, but Milly awoke from that long sleep of hers with a brooding sense of misfortune. The remembrance of the afternoon when she had so suddenly been snatched away returned to her, but it was not the revelation of Ian's passionate love for her supplanter that came back to her as the thing of most importance. Surely ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... the universal Christian! What but truth could so change our poor human nature into somewhat quite divine and godlike! Think not I shrink myself at the prospect of obstruction and assault. I am a man loose upon the world, weaned by suffering and misfortune from earth, and ready at any hour to depart from it. You know my early story. But I in vain seek to steel myself to the pains of others. From what I have said, I fear lest you should think me over-apprehensive. I wish it were so. But ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... question of Abolition in the years 1795-6 was a public misfortune; for the slaves, despairing of justice from England, turned to France. For the good of the cause they murdered men, women, or children, with equal indifference; and, when hunted down, died with the cry Vive la Republique. Here was our ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training. From the age of 17 I had never even witnessed the excitement attending a Presidential campaign but twice antecedent to my own candidacy, and at but one of them ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... frequent colds will do wisely to fortify their systems by taking a few bottles of the "Golden Medical Discovery" to improve nutrition, purify the blood, and thus aid nature in overcoming such inherited tendency or required weakness as may be their misfortune to possess. Remember frequent attacks of Acute Catarrh prepare fertile soil for the chronic form which oftentimes is so loathsome ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... out of it. His percussion caps, however, were completely destroyed, and even though they had not been, it would have mattered little, for he did not possess more than half a dozen. But this was not so great a misfortune as at first it might seem, for he had the spare flint locks and the little screw-driver necessary for fixing and unfixing them stowed ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... taking us to Paris is to leave us stranded there, disembodied spirits, vagrant souls with no familiar haunts to haunt, no place to rest, and nothing before us save perpetual exile in a world that would have no sympathy for us in our misfortune, and no belief in our ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... extent, was due to their eating nothing but salt or smoked provisions—forms of meat or fish. They lived, of course, shut up in the fort, and Cartier's fixed idea was to keep the Hurons from the knowledge of his misfortune, fearing lest, if they realized how the garrison was reduced, they might treacherously attack and massacre the rest; for in spite of the extravagant joy with which their arrival had been greeted, the Amerindians—notably the two interpreters who had been ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... others" consisted of people of all shades of opinion and conviction: the anti-British, anti-French, the pro-German, the anti-war and the merely neutral, some of whom set feverishly to work to make a tradesman's advantage out of Europe's misfortune. A great traffic sprang up in the manufacture of war materials. Almost all of these went to the Allies, owing to the fact that Britain controlled the seas. Whether they would not have been sold just as readily to Germany, had that been possible, is a matter open to question. In any case, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... causing the blood to flow freely, so that he fell and fainted away. At this, one of the men seized a pig and ran after the stranger, who, hearing the pig squealing, looked behind him and saw the man running with it; and as he neared him he dropped it before him, and told him of Lono's misfortune, Kamakanuiahailono then returned, gathering on the way the young popolo seeds and its tender leaves in his garment (kihei). When he arrived at the place where the wounded man was lying he asked ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... very slow in becoming steady. Again you say, you much fear that that Elysium of which you have dreamed so much is never to be realized. Well, if it shall not, I dare swear it will not be the fault of her who is now your wife. I now have no doubt that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize. Far short of your dreams as you may be, no woman could do more to realize them than that same black-eyed Fanny. If you could ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... English learned, save by children at a boarding-school, where nothing but English is spoken, is fragmentary and of doubtful import in all except the commonest matters of speech. And at such boarding-schools there is danger of the real misfortune and drawback of natives growing up to live their lives amongst natives, ignorant of the native tongue. There is no quick and easy way of stamping out a language, thank God; there is no quick and easy way of imparting instruction in a foreign language. By and by all the Alaskan ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... of Urbino by Piero della Francesca, and also the two Titian "Venuses" in the Tribuna. Ferdinand II and his Grand Duchess were on bad terms for most of their lives, and she behaved foolishly, and brought up her son Cosimo III foolishly, and altogether was a misfortune to Florence. Sustermans the painter she held in the highest esteem, and in return he painted her not only as herself but in various unlikely characters, among them a Vestal Virgin ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... For his misfortune he had chosen a French translation of what he called "un drame de Williams Shackspire; le faux dieu," he further announced, "de ces sots paiens, les Anglais." How far otherwise he would have characterized him had his temper not been ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... misfortune I have alluded to, I kept up my house in the same style as before. My connection, and the different posts I occupied, permitted me to lead the life of a grandee belonging to the Spanish colonies; and probably I should have made ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... mistaken? She had received him with kindness. And how should she receive one who was the friend and preserver of her only brother, and apparently the intimate and cherished acquaintance of her future husband? Coningsby felt that sickness of the heart that accompanies one's first misfortune. The illusions of life seemed to dissipate and disappear. He was miserable; he had no confidence in himself, in his future. After all, what was he? A dependent on a man of very resolute will and passions. Could he forget the glance with which Lord Monmouth caught ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... the hero who has thrown it, Full misfortune on warriors; A delay of princes, wrathful is the matter, One man has ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... occasion. But, after all, Diggle's quarrels were his own concern. That his past life included secrets Desmond had long suspected, but he was not the first man of birth and education who had fallen into misfortune, and at all events he had always treated Desmond with kindness. So the boy put the matter ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... sorrows which are rendered greater by keeping them to ourselves; let us speak freely of our joint distress, and give vent in our conversations to the poignant grief which fills our hearts. We are sisters in misfortune, and your heart and mine have so much in common that we can unite them, and in our just complaints murmur, with a common lament, against the cruelty of our fate. My sister, what secret fatality makes the whole world bow ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... Mr. Parkes, and of how Sankolinsin had laughed to scorn their claim to protection, the soldiers could no longer be restrained. The Englishmen and the natives were dragged from their horses, cruelly bound, and hurried to the rear, whence they followed at no great distance their companions in misfortune. While the greater portion of these events had been in progress, Colonel Walker, Mr. Thompson, and the men of the King's Dragoon Guards, had been steadily pacing up and down on the embankment as ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... reason: Why did God thus punish and reject the Jews while He permitted the condemned heathen to come to the Gospel? Again, Why does He govern on this wise, that wicked and evil men are exalted while the pious are allowed to undergo misfortune and be suppressed? Why does He call Judas to be an apostle and later on reject him while He accepts the murderer and malefactor? By them [his words, Rom. 11] Paul would order such to cease climbing up to the secret Majesty, and to adhere to the revelation which God has given us. For ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Constantine, benignly. "I am very busy. A courier arrived this morning from Adrianople with report that my august friend, the Sultan Amurath, is sick, and his physicians think him sick unto death. I was not prepared for the responsibilities which are rising; but I have heard of thy great misfortune, and out of sympathy bade my officer bring thee hither. By accounts the child was rarely intelligent and lovely, and I did not believe there was in my capital a man to do her such inhuman wrong. The progress of the search thou didst institute so wisely I have watched with solicitude little less ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... we were on the road twenty hours, reaching Fan Cheng at midnight. Here we found the engineers' party waiting for us with boats hired, but we were obliged to remain twenty-four hours in the most loathsome inn we ever had the misfortune to be in in China. It was an unspeakable relief to get into the houseboats, even though we only had bare boards to lie on, and the ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... heart. It has been many years since then, for all this happened along in the fifties, but Birt has never forgotten how staunchly she upheld him in every thought when all the circumstances belied him. Now that misfortune had touched him, every trace of her caustic moods had disappeared; she was all gentleness and tenderness toward him. And day by day as he went to his work, meeting everywhere a short word, or a slighting look, he felt that he ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... misfortune had befallen him. Who could have guessed that one of the few people who knew his real history, Tania, the little street child, would be picked up by the houseboat girls and brought to Cape May for the summer? Tania must not be allowed ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... for normal people. Probably this second type of a deficient home is more dangerous than the first, for children without sufficient home care often discover a substitute for their loss, but the over-protected children can obtain no antidote for their misfortune. ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... much less heavily visited than England. The disease seems to have scarcely reached the mountainous districts of that kingdom; and Scotland, too, would, perhaps, have remained free had not the Scots availed themselves of the misfortune of the English, to make an irruption into their territory, which terminated in the destruction of their army, by the plague and by the sword, and the extension of the pestilence, through those who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... must be counted an unfortunate woman enceinte, who was killed as she was passing the palace gates under the belief that a parley having come from his camp, the firing would be suspended, as in fact it was on our side. This government, informed of the misfortune, sent for the husband of the deceased, and ordered twenty-five dollars to be given him; but the unfortunate man, though plunged in grief, declared that twelve were sufficient to supply his wants. Such was the horror inspired by the atrocious ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... its unfolding from day to day, for it was to them a veritable tale of the Arabian Nights. From the Italian, in which the traveller dictated his story, it was translated into Latin and French, and scattered over Europe for others to enjoy. Thus Marco Polo acquired fame through the misfortune which befell him when fighting for Venice, and long before printing was invented his name became almost a household word in Europe. As one who, though indirectly, stimulated by his Oriental researches the first great ventures into the ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... the misfortune of Birmingham to be sacrificed to the disagreements of two rival factions, one calling itself Conservative, and the other Radical, both filling the pockets and doing the work of lawyers at the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... so enraged at his wife and daughter because he could not restore their lost comforts. But this is really a better disposition than a mean subservience to misfortune. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... ex, out, and clamare, to cry), is a figure by which the speaker instead of stating a fact, simply utters an expression of surprise or emotion. For instance when he hears some harrowing tale of woe or misfortune instead of saying,—"It is a sad story" he exclaims "What ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... second misfortune of the French, the English barons hastened every where to make peace with the protector, and, by an early submission, to prevent those attainders to which they were exposed on account of their rebellion. Lewis, whose cause was now totally ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... and though in such cases strictness may be necessary, yet actual punishment is out of place. As a rule, reward answers much better. A penny, or a threepenny-piece every night that the accident does not happen, and a forfeit of a halfpenny or two pence for every night of misfortune, is a very efficacious ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... dangerous, being carried along the steep slope, at an angle, in some places, of 35 degrees; and it was constantly shifting, from the continued downward sliding, and from the action of streams, some of which are large, and cut deep channels. In one I had the misfortune to lose my only sheep, which was carried away by the torrent. These streams were crossed by means of sticks and ricketty bamboos, and the steep sides (sometimes twenty or thirty feet high), were ascended ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... practitioners, for whom barges 'drifted away of their own selves' - they having no hand in it, except first cutting them loose, and afterwards plundering them - innocents, meaning no harm, who had the misfortune to observe those foundlings ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Elias Lonnrot. Both were practising physicians, and in this capacity came into frequent contact with the people of Finland. Topelius, who collected eighty epical fragments of the Kalevala, spent the last eleven years of his life in bed, afflicted with a fatal disease. This misfortune, however, did not damp his enthusiasm. Mr. Crawford tells us that he used to invite the wandering Finnish merchants to his bedside and induce them to sing their heroic poems which he copied down as soon as they were uttered, and that whenever he heard of a renowned Finnish minstrel he ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... on a desert island. This was the mysterious Justice, loftier than that of man; this was the command of the gods. And similarly do we, when some iniquity seems expedient to us, cry loudly that we do it for the sake of posterity, of humanity, of the fatherland. On the other hand, should a great misfortune befall us, we protest that there is no justice, and that there are no gods; but let the misfortune befall our enemy, and the universe is at once repeopled with invisible judges. If, however, some unexpected, disproportionate stroke ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... things, instances of this kind of noble life remain more or less concealed, (while imprudence and error proclaim themselves by misfortune,) but they are assuredly not unfrequent in our English homes. Let us next observe the political and national result of these arrangements. You leave your marriages to be settled by "supply and demand," instead of ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... sleep, (how we wished it was!) like that of Rip Van Winkle, yet it was a very long sleep; and, indeed, neither of us cared how long it lasted, we were so heartbroken about what seemed to be the greatest misfortune that had yet happened to us. If we woke up at any time, we went to sleep again as quickly as possible, not caring at all to come back any sooner than was necessary to the contemplation of our miserable situation,—never reflecting for a moment that the ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... who saw her depart, and turned Old Hickory and Old Henry on a southward track. Zene followed with the wagon; he was on no account to loiter out of speaking distance. The usual order of the march being thus reversed, both vehicles moved along lonesomely. Even Boswell and Johnson scented misfortune in the air. Johnson ran in an undeviating line under the carriage, as if he wished his mistress to know he was right there where she could depend on him. His countenance expressed not only gravity, but real concern. Boswell, ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... thy sad, sad misfortune May well make thy sons to remember this day; And all may well sigh and feel strongest emotion, For troubles ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... round upon his new antagonist, "Mr. Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I have had the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away all my appetite for the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... speaking definitely of the afternoon of the day after to-morrow. The fact was, he was moved; she too. She had been right not to tell the story earlier, and equally right to tell it before he departed. Some men, most men, hated to hear any tale of real misfortune, at any moment, from a woman, because, of course, it ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... to live on into weekly instalments—she resolved not to go beyond these. But, alas! Primrose had never reckoned on a certain grave difficulty which here confronted her. Hitherto her dealings had been with honest tradespeople; now it was her misfortune, and her sisters', to get into a house where honesty was far from practised. In a thousand little ways Mrs. Dove could pilfer from the girls—she would not for the world have acknowledged to herself that she would really steal; oh, no—but she did ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... as he spoke, and the smile on it was no longer forced, but clear and brave. Hyacinth knew that he was once again in the presence of that mysterious power which enables men and women to meet and conquer loss and pain, against which every kind of misfortune beats in vain. His eyes filled with tears as he took Mr. Quinn's hand and ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... sobbed aloud. My heart was wrung, but I was in no condition to assist him; so I bade him be of good cheer, and look on his misfortune as a gloomy avenue to happier and ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... moment; but I'm sorry that I took even a moment's notice of it. Why should one be ruffled because others are unfeeling and impertinent; it is their misfortune, not ours." ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... he had hurried back to the bench, only to find his fears realized. The book had disappeared! His frenzied search yielded no hint of its probable mode of removal. Overcome by a sickening sense of misfortune, he had sunk upon the bench in despair. But fear again roused him and drove him, slinking like a hunted beast, from the park—fear that the possessor of the book, appreciating its contents, but with no thought of returning it, might be ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... sair misfortune cursed your life That you should weep sae free? Is harm upon your bonny wife, The children at your knee? Is scaith upon your house and hame?' McThirst upraised his head: 'My bairns hae done the deed of shame — 'Twere better ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... cannot last long; human nature is incapable of supporting it. Sadness, whether from bereavement, or disappointment, or misfortune of any kind, may linger on through life. In my case, however, the milder and more enduring feeling of sadness had no sufficient cause for existence. The sights which I had seen inspired horror, and horror only. But when the first rush of this ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... he now learned by experience that he could not stoop to fall. Something that was scarcely pride or strength, that was perhaps only refinement, withheld him from capitulation; but he looked on upon his own misfortune with a growing rage, and sometimes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wide-mouthed bottle with some spirits, and gave it in charge of the seaman who was to carry a portion of the animal for the dinner of that day. It was placed in a canvas bag, but on crossing a Deep watercourse he had the misfortune to break the bottle, which he never mentioned until the following day. The contents soon dried up and became an uniform mass. The intense heat had rendered it so firm that nothing could be made of it; all the gelatinous ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... with plate, and his shelves with learning; power to adorn his church with chandeliers and painted windows; to make glad the cottages of his poor; to grant a loan, to a tottering farmer; to rescue from want a forlorn patriot, or a thriftless scholar. Whether misfortune, or mismanagement, or folly, or vice, had brought its victim low, his want was a passport to Parr's pity, and the dew of his bounty fell alike upon the evil and the good, upon the just and the unjust. It is told of Boerhaave, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... better would it be to restrain popular anger and fury, instead of passing useless laws, which can only be broken by those who love virtue and the liberal arts, thus paring down the state till it is too small to harbor men of talent. What greater misfortune for a state can be conceived than that honorable men should be sent like criminals into exile, because they hold diverse opinions which they cannot disguise? What, I say, can be more hurtful than that men who have committed no crime or wickedness should, simply because they are ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... Mr. Caudle: you've taken advantage of my tenderness, my trust in you as a wife—the more fool I for my pains!—and you've separated a happy couple for ever. No; I'm not talking in the clouds; I'm talking in your bed, the more my misfortune. ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... means, my dear sir; a damned bad author generally makes a very good reviewer. Indeed, sir, to be candid with you, I never allow any gentleman to review for me, unless he has met with a misfortune similar to yours. It is one of the necessary qualifications of a good reviewer that he should have failed as an author; for without the exacerbated feelings arising from disappointment, he would not possess gall ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of Serbia's defeat caused no undue grief. One man's misfortune is another's luck. ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... fanciful to say that the greatest misfortune which in a large way man has had to meet in his agriculture arises from this peculiar stress which grain crops put upon the soil. If these grains grew upon perennial plants, in the manner of our larger ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... and, by thinking no longer of dead souls, but only of your only living one, regain, with God's help, the better road? I too am leaving the town to-morrow. Hasten, therefore, lest, bereft of my assistance, you meet with some dire misfortune." ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... further, but for the particular esteem I have for Madame DE CHOISEUL, in whose health I take no small interest." This uncommonly-respectable woman will long be quoted and deservedly regretted, because she was modest in greatness, beneficent in prosperity, courageous in misfortune, pure in the vortex of corruption, solid in the midst of frivolity, as simple in her language as she was brilliant in her understanding, and as indulgent to others as she was superior to ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... shake the hand of his father, between whom and himself there had been a coolness—glad to see his little sister, whom he remembered so pretty and smiling, and pained at the alteration which time, grief, and misfortune had made in the shattered old man. Emmy had come out to the door in her black clothes and whispered to him of her mother's death, and not to speak of it to their father. There was no need of this caution, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... before the sun his head had reared; The door was opened, and a torch appeared. Misfortune then he fancied full in sight; More pleased he'd been to rise without a light, And clearly thought 'twas over with him now; The flame approached;—the drops ran o'er his brow; With terror he for pardon ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... for that unhappy young man, but it did seem as if the misfortune had happened then, rather than at any other time, in order that cousin Tom might all the sooner have the fit reward of his exemplary conduct,—papa thought so very highly of him. Aunt Tulliver must certainly go to the Mill now, and keep house for Tom; ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the friends we dearest love Who were near when sorrow bound us. When no clouds o'ercast our sky, When no evil doth attend us, Then will many gather nigh, Ever ready to befriend us. But when darkness shades our path, When misfortune hath its hour, When we lie beneath its wrath, Some will leave us to its power. Often have we seen at night, When the clouds have gathered o'er us, One lone star send forth its light, Marking out the path before us. Like that star some friendly ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... need waxed sorer and sorer, and how I sent old Ilse with another letter to Pudgla, and how heavy a misfortune this brought upon me. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... his life Saadi took part in the wars of the Saracens against the Crusaders in Palestine, and also in the wars for the faith in India. In the course of his wanderings he had the misfortune to be taken prisoner by the Franks, in Syria, and was ransomed by a friend, but only to fall into worse thraldom by marrying a shrewish wife. He has thus related ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... innocence, however, was formally recognized by the king, Louis X, before the end of his short reign of eighteen months, a sum of ten thousand livres was granted to his children, "in consideration of the great misfortune which has befallen them," and his principal accuser, the Comte de Valois, stricken with paralysis ten years later, made amends by a general distribution of alms to the poor of Paris, with the request that they would ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... graciously consent to see me. I found him in his office in the top story of the building, an appropriate place to avoid being run to covert by the public, but inconvenient because of the embarrassment which might result from dropping out of the window if he should have the misfortune to be cornered. To say that I was received might be throwing too much of a glamour over the situation. At least, I was not summarily ejected, nor treated to a dissolving view of Uncle Remus disappearing ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... them? When people's lives are all spoiled by something they have had nothing to do with—by death, or sickness, or accident, or misfortune." ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... professing to depict Snobs, it is only your own ugly mug which you are copying with a Narcissus-like conceit and fatuity.' But I shall pardon this explosion of ill-temper on the part of my constant reader, reflecting upon the misfortune of his birth and country. It is impossible for ANY Briton, perhaps, not to be a Snob in some degree. If people can be convinced of this fact, an immense point is gained, surely. If I have pointed out the disease, let us hope that other scientific ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... does either of these things thereby proves that he ought not to succeed—and he will not succeed. Indeed, how do you know that these fires of misfortune through which you are passing are not heat designed by Fate to temper the steel of your real character. Certainly that ought to be true if you have the stuff in you. And if you have not the stuff in you, Yale, Harvard, ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Nonsuch was loaded down with so fabulously rich a freight, the first consideration of its new owners was to temporarily deposit it in some place of safety while they pursued their quest of the missing Hubert Saint Leger, lest haply misfortune should befall them and, losing their ship, they should lose their treasure also. And now it was that George had his eyes opened, for the first time, to one at least of the disadvantages of so stupendous a stroke of ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... conversation they had exchanged no words, and Eleanor therefore entered school that morning still believing the Phi Sigma Tau to be at the bottom of her misfortune. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... from her country by the rude hands of her rebellious subjects, and driven to implore their aid? No surely,—ten thousand swords would spring from their scabbards to avenge her injuries;—so she hoped, so she reasoned; for merited misfortune had not yet impaired her courage or abated her confidence, nor had the sense of guilt impressed upon her mind one lesson of humility. Her situation, also, admitted of no other alternative than to confide herself to Elizabeth or surrender ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... measures Mr. John Hayes had concerted with his bride, to keep their wedding secret; for finding no redemption from their hands, without the expense of a larger sum of money than he was master of, he was necessitated to let his father know of his misfortune. Mr. Hayes hearing of his son's adventures, as well of his marriage and his being pressed at the same time, his resentment for the one did not extinguish his affection for him as a father, but that ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward |
