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More "Unlucky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to Catiline, he had already sent the poniard to the house of Cicero, and a brief letter indicating all that he had learned from Volero. This he had done in the interval between the Campus and his unlucky visit to the house of Catiline, whom he then little deemed to be the man of whom he was ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... nine-tenths of such men do make, a grand crash, and his name comes out in the third or fourth class, or he get "gulfed" altogether—it is two to one but his friends and his tutor look upon him, and talk of him, as rather an ill-used individual. He was "unlucky in his examination"—"the essay did not suit him"—they were "quite surprised at his failure"—"his health was not good the last term or two"—"he was too nervous." These are cases which have occurred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... unhappy Flybekins could not retrieve the blunder they had committed, and prudently resigned all their ambitious schemes. So they returned to Devonshire with the unlucky fire-escapes, sincerely regretting they had ever been tempted to purchase them. But, although the disaster had got wind, and with various versions had reached even into Devonshire, they were much consoled by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... got the money and redeemed his girl, then he said to me, "I have got about $700, so let us go up and play single- handed." We went up, and I soon got that money. He said, "In all my poker playing, I never played so unlucky in my life." He went to my partner and borrowed $1,000 more on the girl, and I took that in. He then went to Captain Keys, and tried to borrow the money to redeem his girl again, but the Captain would not loan it to him. He found a man ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... of his ill success never for a moment occurred to the mind of Jacob. He considered himself an "unlucky dog." ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... forbidden liquors, which you make out of durra and dates;" and turning to me, he demanded "whether he was not right?" The poor chief appeared to be much vexed that he was unable to reply to this accusation, and remained silent. The soldier, not content with humbling the unlucky Malek, pursued his advantage without mercy. "Come," said he to the chief, "I do not believe that you know any thing about your religion, and I will soon make you sensible of it" He then asked the chief how many ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... in consequence whenever he became puzzled about facts that were being read to him or that he heard he would instantly appeal to Van, whom he was sure could right every sort of dilemma that might arise. But too often the unlucky Van was forced to blush and falter that he would have to look it up; and when he did so he frequently learned something himself. For Tim never forgot. No sooner would Van be inside the gate than the shrill little voice would pipe: "And did ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... her with foot and hand, In every thing that she could dee, Till once, in an unlucky time, She threw her ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... get their rents in somehow, of course,' Lord Exmoor assented, sympathetically; 'and I know all you men who are unlucky enough to own property in Ireland have a lot of trouble about it nowadays. Upon my word, what with Fenians, and what with Nihilists, and what with Communards, I really don't know what the world ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... before had he heard the Virginian tell a humorous anecdote, and he was not a little surprised as well as pleased, for it showed that Jack, who had grumbled a great deal during the unlucky and unpleasant cruise down the coast, was in better spirits now they were at last in the waters ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... was weak and naturally unlucky, and so he got married three times inside of a year. He was convicted and sentenced for four years. He seemed greatly relieved. As the expiration of his term grew near, he wrote from the penitentiary to his lawyer, with ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... only for a few moments, little opportunity is afforded of seeing the interior of the towns, or of visiting most of the places at which we touch. At such times all is hurry and confusion; suddenly the bell rings, the planks are withdrawn, and the unlucky stranger who has loitered on board for a few moments is obliged to proceed with us to ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... took a human shape; at others its form took that of some animal fancied to foreshadow the character of the man to whom it belonged. Thus it becomes a bear, a wolf, an ox, and even a fox, in men. The fylgjur of women were fond of taking the shape of swans. To see one's own fylgja was unlucky, and often a sign that a man was "fey," or death-doomed. So, when Thord Freedmanson tells Njal that he sees the goat wallowing in its gore in the "town" of Bergthorsknoll, the foresighted man tells him that he has seen his own fylgja, and ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... possessing the Evil Eye. As long ago as the ninth century, in the year 842, Erchempert, a frate of the celebrated convent of Monte Cassino, writes,—"I knew formerly Messer Landulf, Bishop of Capua, a man of singular prudence, who was wont to say, 'Whenever I meet a monk, something unlucky always happens to me during the day.'" And to this day, there are many persons, who, if they meet a monk or priest, on first going out in the morning, will not proceed upon their errand or business until they have returned to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... am a little out of sorts," he said. "I was thinking, perhaps, how different it might have been, if it hadn't been for that unlucky shell." ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... shift to shoot a moorfowl i' the drift." He was uncommonly well made. I never saw a limb, loins, and shoulders so framed for immoderate strength. And, as Tom Purdie observed, "Faith, an he hadna' been crippled he wud ha'e been an unlucky chap." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... without comment, and it was regarded as a 91 fatal omen that Vitellius took office as high priest, and issued his encyclical on public worship on the 18th of July, which, as the anniversary of the disasters on the Cremera and the Allia,[432] had long been considered an unlucky day. But his ignorance of all civil and religious precedent was only equalled by the incapacity of his freedmen and friends. He seemed to live in a society of drunkards. However, at the consular elections he canvassed for his candidates like a common citizen.[433] ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... his better half was in a bad temper. "How is it," she snapped, "that you're so unlucky at the races, and yet you ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... groaning about the war, goes on to speak with delight of the martial ardour displayed by the only son left to him, a boy of five. Marthereau shakes his weary head, his fine eyes shining like those of a puzzled and thoughtful hound. He sighs, saying: "Oh, we're none of us so bad, but we're unlucky, poor devils all of us. But we're too stupid, we're ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... were many who were ready to side with him, but his unlucky conclusion turned these possible friends into enemies. Even Mistress Fitzwalter ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... head-gear and with many-coloured trappings, whilst on the harness itself appears in more than one place the little brazen hand, which is supposed to ensure the steed's safety from the dangers of any chance jettatore, the unlucky wight endowed with the Evil Eye. Nor is the swarthy picturesque ruffian who acts as our driver unprovided with a talisman in case of emergency, for we observe hanging from his heavy silver watch-chain the long twisted horn ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... decidedly uncertain—the little happenings of each day gradually grow to have a peculiar significance of their own, and finally a brand-new set of superstitions is formed and half jokingly believed in by every one concerned. In this way an expedition comes to be regarded as lucky or unlucky, or lucky on certain days, or at certain hours of the day, or at certain periods of the moon. The wide reaches of the African veldt have something ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) was as auspicious to the Hohenzollerns as it was unlucky for the Habsburgs. On the eve of the contest, propitious marriage alliances bestowed two important legacies upon the family—the duchy of Cleves [Footnote: Though the alliance between Brandenburg and Cleves dated from 1614, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... "a very unlucky accident must have occurred here. Some one of us must have slipped the box into his pocket unconsciously, mistaking it for his own. I will take the lead in searching mine, if the rest of ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... an unlucky accident had received his death's wound, heu me miserum exclamat, miserable man that I am, (instead of other devotions) he cries out, shall I die before I see my sweetheart Rhodanthe? Sic amor mortem, (saith mine author) aut quicquid humanitus accidit, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the followers of Monet, Manet, Degas, and Whistler, talked as if the end of the world had arrived. Art is a serious affair in Paris. However, after Cezanne appeared the paintings of that half-crazy, unlucky genius, Vincent van Gogh, and of the gifted, brutal Gauguin. And in the face of such offerings Cezanne may yet, by reason of his moderation, achieve the unhappy fate of becoming a classic. He is certainly as ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... "That is unlucky, because you will be expected to shine without any obstructing fog to-day in the Rucellai Gardens. I take it for granted ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... flared. Suddenly his troubled mind was clarified, as though Oldham's menace had acted as a chemical reagent to precipitate all his doubts. Whatever the incidental hardships, right must prevail. And, as always, in the uprooting of evil, some unlucky innocent must suffer. It is the hardship of life, inevitable, not to be blinked at if a man is to be a man, and do a man's part. He leaned forward with so swift a movement that Oldham involuntarily ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... what he said about you havin' 'em all bluffed in San Berdoo! Grabbed you with a bunch uh moonshiners, and you fightin' the saps harder'n any of 'em—and then, by heck, you slips the noose an' leaves 'em thinkin' you're honest but unlucky. ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... merrily with Mary and Morton,—who, by good luck, had brought round his presents late, and was staying to tie on glass balls and apples,—had given himself a deep and dangerous wound with the point of the unlucky knife, and had lost a great deal of blood before the hemorrhage could be controlled. Just before I entered, the stick tourniquet which Morton had improvised had slipped in poor Mary's unpractised hand, at the moment he was about to secure the bleeding ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... with the screech owl referring to death, it is interesting to note that among the Nahuas the owl is considered of unlucky augury and is usually found in the "House of Death" and "of Drought", as contrasted with the turkey, considered as a bird of good fortune, and found ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... council advised him by all means to make himself master of some good walled town; as well to make his men find the sweetness of rich spoils, and to allure to him all loose and lost people, by like hopes of booty as to be a sure retreat to his forces in case they should have any ill day or unlucky chance of the field. Wherefore they took heart to them and went on, and besieged the city of Exeter, the principal town for strength and wealth in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... had been denominated "shiftless and slack-twisted" by all who ever had any dealings with him in his unlucky, aimless life—one of those improvident, easygoing souls who sit contentedly down to breakfast with a very faint idea where their dinner ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is a breach of etiquette. It is impossible to be polite without cultivating a good memory. The absent or self- absorbed person who forgets the names of his next-door neighbors, recalls unlucky topics, confuses the personal relationships of his personal friends, speaks of the dead as if they were still living, talks of peole in their hearing, and commits a hundred such blunders without any malevolent intention, is sure to make enemies for himself, and to wound the feelings ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... 'How unlucky you are,' said Gudu, snatching the leaves; 'no sooner had you gone than ever so many people arrived, and washed their hands, as you see, and ate your portion.' But, though Isuro knew better than to believe him, he said nothing, ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... declared itself in his speech. He could win the liking and confidence of any ordinary man of business in ten minutes. It happened, fortunately, that the firm of Quodling needed just such a representative. As Gammon knew, they had been unlucky in their town traveller of late, and they looked just now more to the "address," the personal qualities, of an applicant for the position, than to his actual acquaintance with their business, which was greatly ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... his brother, Dr. Kinsolving nearly trod on a rattlesnake, "the same snake in every particular with the one I had had in my mind's eye". This would be very well, but Dr. Kinsolving's brother, who helped to kill the unlucky serpent, says "he had a single rattle". The letters of these gentlemen were written without communication to each other. If Mr. Kinsolving is right, the real snake with one rattle was not the dream snake with ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... might be the general turn of political sentiment, both sides felt a patriotic pride in the success of the American arms. Hence, it is probable, the temper of the crowd assembled to do dishonor to the unlucky general. While the Republicans were indignant at a supposed needless national disaster, the Federalists could scarcely rejoice at it; and thus the moderation of the latter tended to restrain the former from the display of any actually violent demonstration. ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... (Who did with weeping eyes these discords see, And fears the omen may unlucky be,) Prepares a zambra to be danced this night. In hope soft pleasures may ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... had lately married. On the 30th October, 1844, he was wedded to a young girl of Carpentras, Marie Villard, and already a child was born. His parents, always unlucky, met nowhere with any success. By dint of many wanderings they had finally become stranded at Pierrelatte, the chief town of the canton of La Drme, sheltered by the great rock which has given the place ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... suspicious of anyone living abroad. If you had been able to advertise from a rectory in Lincolnshire, or even an obscure street at the west end of London, they'd have thought better of you. But Boulogne, Calais, Dieppe, they all hint at impecuniosity and enforced exile. It's very unlucky.' ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... it was for this reason, more than for any other, that Mr. The Englishman took it extremely ill that Corporal Theophile should be so devoted to little Bebelle, the child at the Barber's shop. In an unlucky moment he had chanced to say to himself, "Why, confound the fellow, he is not her father!" There was a sharp sting in the speech which ran into him suddenly, and put him in a worse mood. So he had National Participled the unconscious Corporal with most ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... when he went out and bought a red pot for the unlucky pansy, which, after its travels and its night in brown paper, looked as disconsolate as Mary herself. "I know it'll die right away," she muttered as she set it on the window-sill. "Oh, dear, there's mother calling. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... easy to tell the whole story, from its beginning to its unlucky end. During its progress the cobbler listened with the deepest attention, gave now a nod, and now a shake of the head or a muttered "Humph!" and when it was finished he fingered his cheek thoughtfully, ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... you will see that Jane Hatfield had but little to do with Lester's conversion. The next morning after the occurrence of the wonderful phantom in the clouds, Murray left his home, and soon after enlisted in the army under General Montgomery. He was in the unlucky expedition ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... Langton's extremity faded out of his mind as he hurried back to his class-room, leaving that unlucky small boy still in ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... saw were of the florid periwig architecture—I mean of that pompous cauliflower kind of ornament which was the fashion in Louis the Fifteenth's time, at which unlucky period a building mania seems to have seized upon many of the monarchs of Europe, and innumerable public edifices were erected. It seems to me to have been the period in all history when society ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... diversified by long and short syllables, a circumstance that qualifies them for the melody of Hexameter verse: ours are extremely ill qualified for that service, because they super-abound in short syllables. Secondly, the bulk of our monosyllables are arbitrary with regard to length, which is an unlucky circumstance in Hexameter. * * * In Latin and Greek Hexameter invariable sounds direct and ascertain the melody. English Hexameter would be destitute of melody, unless by artful pronunciation; because of necessity the bulk of its sounds must ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... voyage. He mentions goats also on the island in abundance, but says the Dutch were unable to catch them, and at a loss how to get at their bodies when shot; but they were frightened from this sport by an unlucky accident which happened to the steward of one of the ships, soon after their arrival, who, rambling one evening in the mountains, fell suddenly from the top of a rock and was dashed to pieces. They found here the remains of a wreck, supposed by them to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... come into Pharsalia, and both encamped there, Pompey's thoughts ran the same way as they had done before, against fighting, and the more because of some unlucky presages, and a vision he had in a dream. But those who were about him were so confident of success, that Domitius, and Spinther, and Scipio, as if they had already conquered, quarreled which should succeed ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... word or two, before you go. I have done the State some service, and they know it; No more of that.—I pray you in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice; then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely, but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... "That 'unlucky' poem to my poor Mary has been the cause of some animadversion from 'ladies in years'. I have not printed it in this collection in consequence of my being pronounced a most 'profligate sinner', in ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... had come from Louisbourg with supplies and that other ships were on their way with the design of re-establishing the fort at the mouth of the river and so frustrating a similar design on the part of the English. The story seemed so plausible that an unlucky Acadian went on board the ship to pilot her to her anchorage, but no sooner was he on board than the captain hoisted his own proper flag and discharged his artillery upon the people collected on shore. Belliveau and the people who ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... two unlucky words get much more hold in the language, we shall soon have our philosophers refusing to call their dinner "dinner," but speaking of it always as their ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... impute rather to the carelessness of his temper than to any want of generosity; but perhaps she derived it from the latter motive. Certain it is that she hated him very bitterly on that account, and resolved to take every opportunity of injuring him with her mistress. It was therefore highly unlucky for her, that she had gone to the very same town and inn whence Jones had started, and still more unlucky was she in having stumbled on the same guide, and on this accidental discovery which ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... aided Cassius. But Cleopatra protested loudly to me and others that Serapion had acted against her will. Yet Charmion told me that, as with Allienus, it was because of a prophecy of Dioscorides the unlucky that the Queen herself had secretly ordered Serapion so to do. Still, this did not save Serapion, for to prove to Antony that she was innocent she dragged the General from the sanctuary and slew him. Woe be to those ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... (whose tremendous travels are forthcoming with due decorations, graphical, topographical, typographical) deposed, on Sir John Carr's unlucky suit, that Mr. Dubois's satire prevented his purchase of 'The Stranger' in Ireland.—Oh, fie, my lord! has your lordship no more feeling for a fellow-tourist?—but "two of a trade," they say, etc. [George Annesley, Viscount Valentia ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... at home, and had promised to send it to the patient immediately. In the absorbing interest of making his preparations for leaving England, it had remained forgotten in his pocket for nearly two days. The one means of setting this unlucky error right, without further delay, was to deliver his prescription himself, and to break through his own rules for the second time by attending to a case of illness—purely as an ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... this disappointment, and thought myself the most unfortunate creature in the world because my son missed of such a good post as he was to have had in this ship; I was continually fretting about it and fancied that so bad a setting out was a sign the poor boy would be unlucky all his life. How different things turn out from what we expect! Had not this misfortune, as I thought it, happened, he would now have been at the bottom of the sea, and my poor heart would have been broken. Well, to be sure God is very kind! I hope my boy will always be thankful ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... should like to take. I should like to sit up in the branches, and shake down fruit into the laps of some people who never would know where it came from, and wouldn't take it if they did; though they couldn't reach a single bough to pick for themselves. I mean nice, unlucky people; people who always have a hard time, and need to have a good one; and are obliged in many things to pretend they do. There are a good many who are willing and anxious to help the very poor, but I think there's a ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... a general use of the wooden swords and stuffed clubs, and in a moment the two unlucky students were surrounded, and blows fell thick and fast. Poole yelled like a wild Indian, but Merwell set his teeth and said nothing, only striking back with his fists when he got the chance. Dave took no part in the onslaught, nor did Ben and Phil. As soon as he saw a chance Nat Poole ran ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... He carried it loose in his mackinaw pocket—a camper, mind you. He had a wad big enough to pay off the national debt, and I knew it would tumble out and it did. Skinny's one of those poor little codgers that's always unlucky. He happened to be there. He happened to have a key. He happened to go to the house-boat. I got hold of his tracks just because I didn't want him to come to any harm while he was all worked up. The reason I didn't say anything about where he went was, because there are a whole lot of ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... get my twenty-four pound howitzer in a good position I will make the place so hot in a dozen hours that the blackguards will curse their unlucky stars that caused them to unlimber for action in such an owl's nest as that," put in another of the party, an artillery officer, ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... Lambton, and Sefton were shut out, and afterwards received the inquiries of their friends whether it was not from scruples of conscience, and being unable to make up their minds, that they had abstained from voting. The party is certainly unlucky; for on a preceding night, Lord Carhampton and Luke White paired off and went comfortably to bed, without finding out that they were on the same side. We now, I trust, are rid of the Queen's business, though I still fear we must have one night on the Milan Commission; but ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... professed to predict from the stars such things as the changes of the weather, high winds and storms, great heats, the appearance of comets, eclipses, earthquakes, and the like. They published lists of luck and unlucky days, and tables showing what aspect of the heavens portended good or evil to particular countries. Curiously enough, it appears that they regarded their art as locally limited to the regions inhabited ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... prowling dogs and coyotes could not reach them. The hunters each had a post on which to hang his bow and flint head arrows. (Good hunters never laid their arrows on the ground, as it was considered unlucky to the hunter who let his arrows touch the earth after they had been out of the quiver). They were all perfectly happy, until one day the older brother surprised them all by saying: "We have a plentiful supply of meat on hand at present to last us for a week or so. I am going ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... up that stump?" demanded Step-hen; while Thad and Allan were examining the remains of the once proud tree, as if to decide what ought to be done, in order to rescue the unlucky scout. ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... quiet and keep still, I will," said Preston. "Let only your eye wink or your mouth move to smile—and you are an unlucky prince! I ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... One unlucky day, fording a narrow creek with steep banks, they had safely got across, when they encountered a slippery incline up which the oxen could not climb; it was "as slippery as a glare of ice," Charlie said, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... "A most unlucky man art thou," said he, "that now the trial should not be, as ready as all things were thereto, nor will it be easy to deal ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... often is the case at Court) of much envy, and, after the envy, of endless persecution, since Bramante, the architect, who was much loved by the Pope, made him change his mind as to the monument by telling him, as is said by the vulgar, that it is unlucky to build one's tomb in one's lifetime. Fear as well as envy stimulated Bramante, for the judgment of Michael Angelo had exposed many of his errors. Bramante, as every one knows, was given to all kinds of pleasures ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... of editors, and adhere to the old copies, is unable to restrain the rage of emendation, though his ardour is ill seconded by his skill. Every cold empirick, when his heart is expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist, and the laborious collator at some unlucky moment ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Marquis of Argyle changed colour, and stepped back two paces, laying, however, his hand on his sword, while several of his clan, with ready devotion, threw themselves betwixt him and the apprehended vengeance of the prisoner. But the Highland guards were too strong to be shaken off, and the unlucky Captain, after having had his offensive weapons taken from him, was dragged off and conducted through several gloomy passages to a small side-door grated with iron, within which was another of wood. These were opened by a grim old Highlander ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... In fact, Gerald's rather under a cloud just now. I may as well tell you this, because you are sure to hear of it sooner or later. He has been extravagant and, so he assures us, extraordinarily unlucky." ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... of such an accident to provide a spare one it was by no means irremediable; the other boat was all ready for launching within half an hour, for by not allowing the men to remain in a state of inactivity, and by treating the matter lightly, I hoped to prevent their being dispirited by this unlucky circumstance. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... removing much of this discrepancy in fortune. Again, a disaster which destroys a single individual may alter the whole course of a survivor's career. But the devotees of the Goddess of Luck do not mean this at all. They hold that some men are born lucky and others unlucky, as though some Fortune presided at their birth; and that, irrespective of all merits, success goes to those on whom Fortune smiles and defeat to those on whom she frowns. Or at least luck is regarded as a kind of attribute ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... the establishment, is well posted up. Every herdsman as he comes in at night tells what animals he has seen through the day, and thus at the batan you hear where tiger, and pig, and deer are to be met with; where an unlucky cow has been killed; in what ravine is the thickest jungle; where the path is free from clay, or quicksand; what fords are safest; and, in short, you get complete information on every point connected with the jungle and ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... was busy drawing his pen through the entries relating to that unlucky second mate and making a note ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Landor.—(Aside. Unlucky! some good-natured friend has sent him that suppressed pamphlet.) Yes, Mr. North; a poetical manifesto of mine with that title ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... wife, therefore I took him in: my wife gave us a dish of fish, and I presented humpback with some, which he ate, without taking notice of a bone. He fell down dead before us, and after having in vain essayed to help him, in the trouble and fear occasioned by such an unlucky accident, we carried the corpse out, and dexterously lodged him with the Jewish doctor. The Jewish doctor put him into the chamber of the purveyor, and the purveyor carried him out into the street, where it was believed the merchant had killed him. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... feathery frost-work grew more and more exquisitely delicate and beautiful, and yet it was proving to be as evanescent as a dream, for in all sunny place it was already vanishing. They had scarcely passed beyond the second summit when Burt uttered an exclamation of regretful disgust. "By all that's unlucky," he cried, "if there isn't an eagle sitting on yonder ledge! I could kill him with bird-shot, and I haven't even ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... had possessed one common peculiarity which betrayed them as belonging to that large and unhappy class we term lunatics, and their mental disorder was revealed in a clear, glittering glance, cold and keen as a steel blade. The moment that unlucky assertion had escaped me, I saw my companions stare at each other and then at me, and in the eyes of all four of them I clearly discerned and recognised the same cold, keen, and gloomy expression. I felt a shock of ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... ever been the queerest mixture of weakness and strength, and have paid heavily for the weakness. As a child I used to suffer tortures of shyness, and if my shoe-lace was untied would feel shamefacedly that every eye was fixed on the unlucky string; as a girl I would shrink away from strangers and think myself unwanted and unliked, so that I was full of eager gratitude to any one who noticed me kindly, as the young mistress of a house I was afraid of my ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... are much given to soothsaying, and have lucky and unlucky days. They worship the sun moon and stars, the fire, cows, and the first thing they meet on going out of a morning, believing every manner of vanity. The devil is often in them, but they say it is one of their gods or pagods, as they call him. But whosoever or whatsoever it may be, it constrains ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... not familiar with the place as John was; and he had the shyness of a plain man at the sight of the inside of a great house. Besides, he was under fear of being recognized as a follower of Christ and apprehended. Now also the unlucky blow he had made at Malchus at the gate of Gethsemane had to be paid for, because it greatly increased his ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... speeding along through the clear cold moonlight to Dover, realising for the first time, as he leant back alone in his compartment, the full meaning of the news which had hurried him off. All his tender affection for his sister, and all his stifling sense of something unlucky and untoward in his own life, which had been so strong in him during the past two months, combined to rouse in him the blackest fears, the most hopeless despondency. Marie dead,—what would the world hold for him! Books, thought, ideas—were they enough? Could a man live by them ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... other hand with a gesture of half-ironical protest. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "I am afraid that any poor efforts of mine in that direction were due to the most flagrant compulsion." He paused. "Whatever else you are unlucky in, Mr. Lyndon," he added smilingly, "you can at least be ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... of, we had been teased by a visit from Mrs. Bonithorne, who, professing great sorrow for our loss, and her own loss of one whom she called her oldest friend, soon fell to talking of Andrew, and how his unlucky doings were all owing to our good aunt's foolishness in entertaining so pestilent a heretic as James Westrop under ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... imperceptibly, muttering to himself, "Alack, his wits are flown again!—it was ill wisdom to lead him on to strain them" —then he deftly turned the talk to other matters, with the purpose of sweeping the unlucky seal out of Tom's thoughts—a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rounds of the house with one of the Madam's pistols in his belt, taking some comfort in the dramatization of his unlucky role, when breathless yells were heard approaching, and a small Ethiopian made his appearance over the back fence, yelling for help and the ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... wonderfully revived powers, they proved, as might have been expected, lamentably deficient, and the tones she produced were compared to those of a penny trumpet. Curiosity was so little excited that the concert was ill attended ... and Madame Mara was heard no more. I was not so lucky (or so unlucky) as to hear these her last notes, as it was early in the winter, and I was not in town. She returned to Russia, and was a great sufferer by the burning of Moscow. After that she lived at Mitlau, or some other town near the Baltic, where she died at a great ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... way in the usual No Thoroughfares of speech, and Podsnap and Twemlow say Hear hear! and sometimes, when he can't by any means back himself out of some very unlucky No Thoroughfare, 'He-a-a-r He-a-a-r!' with an air of facetious conviction, as if the ingenuity of the thing gave them a sensation of exquisite pleasure. But Veneering makes two remarkably good points; so good, that they are supposed to have been suggested to him by the legal gentleman in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Hebrides, it is stated that, according to tradition, no one was ever born there who was not from birth insane, or who did not become so before death. "In the last generation, three persons had the misfortune for the first time to see the light of day on this unlucky spot, and all three were mad. Of one of them, who is remembered by the name of Wild Murdoch, many strange stories are told. It is said that his friends used to tie a rope round his body, make it fast to the stern of the ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... mate is worse," Frank said, "you have no right to refuse my offer. I cannot help feeling that you are doing badly; in that case, why should you not let me lend you a hand? There's no disgrace in being unlucky. Here men are unlucky one week, and make a rich strike on the week following, and then they can lend a hand to others, just as a hand may have been lent to them when they wanted it. I think by your accent that ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... compelled, reluctantly of course, to alter the books. At last a day comes when we find that millions are gone, and the bomb-shell bursts. Does it follow from this that a man is dishonest? Not the least in the world: he is simply unlucky." ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... have been a delicate genius in poetry. The airs demanded so many stanzas; but they gave his imagination leave to be away, and they depressed and even confused his metrical play, hurting thus the two vital spots of poetry. Many of the stanzas for music make an unlucky repeating pattern with the poor variety that a repeating wall-paper does not attempt. And yet Campion began again and again with the onset of a true poet. Take, for example, the poem beginning with the vitality of this line, "touching ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... present carries with him more vital energy than his predecessors, is more athletic in his struggles with the unlucky wights he visits, and can coerce mortals to do his will by the laying on of hands as well as by the look or word. He speaks with more emphasis and authority, as well as with more human naturalness, than the earlier ghosts. He has not only all the force he possessed in life, ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... other traders. But the individual trader, who fights for existence against unfair odds, is to be pitied whether his shop has plate glass or a barn door to it; and he is the more to be pitied when he is sober, intelligent, proud, sensitive, and unlucky. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... effect of some agitation. She has been overwrought lately. The truth is, Ladislaw, I am an unlucky devil. We have gone through several rounds of purgatory since you left, and I have lately got on to a worse ledge of it than ever. I suppose you are only just come down—you look rather battered—you have not been long enough in ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... aid of a treatise or two," he will make "a consummate naval commander," although he has "never been at sea in the whole course of his life," and at length thrust into a canoe, with some fresh water, bread, fruit, dried fish, and a basket of alligator pears. "Unhappy Popanilla! and all from that unlucky lock of hair!" His fright is ludicrously sketched. "Poor fellow! how could he know better? He certainly had enjoyed a seat at the Admiralty Board of Fantaisie, but then he was a lay-lord." Among his discoveries, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... Cabineau Camp, of unlucky reputation, there was a young ox of splendid build, but of a ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Miss Lou knows him a little bit, for I saw him take off his hat to her the other day; and she can introduce him. He makes twelve. I don't believe we'd better have any more. I'd like to ask Mr. Saunders, that keeps the fruit store down on the corner; but they say thirteen is unlucky, so perhaps twelve ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... by some unlucky turn of Fortune's wheel all the native hunters of Asia will obtain rifles; and when they do, we soon will see the end ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... and looking at Orion with unmistakable displeasure, "Orion will give up his berth to you, Zebedee. He seems so very sure that the schooner is unlucky. I came down from Boston in her, and I saw nothing ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... standing on tables and on brackets, for Wallenstein, although in most respects of a clear and commanding intellect, was a slave to superstition. He was always accompanied by an astrologer, who read for him the course of events from the movements of the stars, who indicated the lucky and unlucky days, and the hours at which it was not propitious to transact important business. Hence it was that he placed so great an importance on the exact observance of the hour by ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... had before experienced. What could it proceed from?—not from the burned cottage—he had smelt that smell before—indeed this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burned ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... know the rules," said the cat. "I've got to go round and round the circle, in the direction that you are looking, and eat every thirteenth mouse, but I must keep the white mouse for a tit-bit at the finish. Thirteen is an unlucky number, but I will do my best to ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... It would be senseless folly on their part to begrudge him his adventitious eminence and refuse to esteem him of more consequence than their uninitiated selves. Yet when people, ignoring the natural causes of all that is called artificial, think that but for an unlucky chance they, too, might have enjoyed the advantages which raise other men above them, they sometimes affect not to recognise actual distinctions and abilities, or study enviously the means of annulling them. So long, however, as by the operation of any causes whatever some real competence accrues ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... lest you should run into a mistake and think we have quarrelled, I assure you we are perfect friends; we think, wish and judge alike, but what avails it? We are both miserable. He has not differed with my mother, but she loves him not, because she esteems him the unlucky cause of a deep melancholy in a beloved child. For his own sake it is that I cease writing, because it is now his ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... know whether he had any words with his wife about her masquerade of that unlucky evening. On the whole I decidedly think not. Oke was with every one a diffident and reserved man, and most of all so with his wife; besides, I can fancy that he would experience a positive impossibility of putting into words any ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... be advisable for any man, who from an unlucky choice of a profession, which it is too late to change for another, should find his temper souring, to endeavour to counteract that misfortune, by filling his private chamber with amiable, pleasurable sights and sounds. In summer time, an Aeolian ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... pretty bluff, where it might have seen the boats pass; or, better still, upon the mall in some garrison village, where it could have had the pleasure of listening twice a week to military music. But, no! it was written in the book of fate that this unlucky sycamore should lose its bark every summer, as a serpent changes its skin, and should scatter the ground with its dead leaves at the first frost, in the playground of the Batifol institution, which was a place without ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... dined with her, and told her the news (which Sir W. Pen told me to-day) that express is come from my Lord with letters, that by a great storm and tempest the mole of Argier is broken down, and many of their ships sunk into the mole. So that God Almighty hath now ended that unlucky business for us; which is very good news. After dinner to the office, where we staid late, and so I home, and late writing letters to my father and Dr. Fairebrother, and an angry letter to my brother John for not writing to me, and so ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... The unlucky stone had come from Conrad. Forgetful of his assumed character, he had joined in the hue and cry against a dog whose character and service should have been sufficiently known to him, at least, to prove his protection, and had given; the crudest blow of all. It has been already seen that ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... not so unlucky," said he, "for I have stout Douglas shoes to tramp in, and my faithful dog, Benjamin, to ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... are occasions, dear B-, there are occasions when even Wordsworth is reasonable. Even Stamboul, it is said, shall have an end, and the most unlucky blunders must come to a conclusion. Here is ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... before delivery, and completed them during his first two years of office. His theories, as well as his words, were often, according to the same authority, extemporised. Brown found that he could not improve what he had written under 'very powerful excitement.' Moreover, he had an unlucky belief that he was a poet. From 1814 till 1819 he brought out yearly what he supposed to be a poem. These productions, the Paradise of Coquets and the rest, are in the old-fashioned taste, and ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... unlucky fourteenth century a marked religious revival extended over Europe. Perhaps men's sufferings had caused it. Many sects of reformers appeared, protesting sometimes against the discipline, sometimes the doctrines, of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... at my panting steed. "It is cursed unlucky you should be so badly mounted, and we shall have a pelting ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the festivals, is that which is held in the end of December. It is called the feast of Pongul, and is a season of rejoicing for two reasons: the first is, because the month of December, every day of which is unlucky, is about to end; and the other is, because it is to be followed by a month, every day of which is fortunate. For the purpose of preventing the evil effects of this month, the women every morning scour a place about two feet square before the door of ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... of the paper as it was taken from the floor. It was well she did not also see the quick look the lady gave her as she turned the letter and found a red stamp sticking to the under side, for this unlucky little witness ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... her of it," Maude had striven to keep its possession a secret from every one, first from the nuns, and then from Ursula Drew. Strange to say, she had succeeded until that morning. It was to her a priceless treasure—all the more inestimable because she could not read a word of it. But on that unlucky morning, Parnel had caught a glimpse of the precious parcel, always hidden in Maude's bosom, and had immediately endeavoured to snatch it from her. Contriving to elude her grasp, yet fearful of its repetition, Maude rushed out of the kitchen door, and finding that her tormentor followed, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... child, I don't ask your cousin to write for me to-day, as she is in great trouble. Her father died suddenly two days ago. It appears that his whole fortune has been lost through unlucky gambling last winter in Paris. So his house and furniture will have to be sold. Nobody in the place was expecting this. I think, dear child, that this will pain you as much as ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... felt more reverence for the meanest woman we met in the street than he did for his grandest friend in society; but, nevertheless, his splendid courtesy illuminated the slightest social duty, whereas I stood rayless beside him. He had been unlucky where his mother was concerned: she was a weak woman to begin with, had never loved her husband, and had left him for another man, whom she married after the disgrace and sorrow she caused had killed her boy's father. Harry never spoke of this, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... "Alas!" cried the queen, "this bodes no good. Yet I do entreat you to tell me the worst." The more unwilling the fairies seemed to speak, the greater desire the queen felt to know what was the matter; so at length the principal fairy said: "We are afraid, Madam, that Rosetta will prove unlucky to her brothers, and that they will die in some adventure on her account. That is all that we are able to foresee about your pretty little girl." They then departed, and left the ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... ignorant of the fate which may await us, we are occasionally oppressed by a thousand melancholy apprehensions. I might, indeed, have boasted of my fortitude, and have made myself an heroine on paper at as small an expence of words as it has cost me to record my cowardice: but I am of an unlucky conformation, and think either too much or too little (I know not which) for a female philosopher; besides, philosophy is getting into such ill repute, that not possessing the reality, the name of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... endowments; in him they place the greatest confidence, and follow him to war without envy or murmur. As this warrior arrives at honour and distinction by the general consent; so, when chosen, he must be very circumspect in his conduct, and gentle in the exercise of his power. By the first unlucky or unpopular step he forfeits the goodwill and confidence of his countrymen, upon which all his power is founded. Besides the head warrior, they have judges and conjurers, whom they call Beloved Men, who have great weight among them; ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... him. He had neatly mounted it on wheels, that its completeness might do him the greater credit with the consul when he should show it him, but the carriage had been broken in his pocket, on the way home, by an unlucky thrust from the burden of a porter, and the poor toy lay there disabled, as if to dramatize that premature ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... had one great superstition—to wit, Cracks! For some now inexplicable reason they thought it unlucky to step on cracks; and they made daily and hourly spectacles of themselves in the streets by the eccentric irregularity of their gait. Now they would take long strides, like a pair of ostriches, and now short, quick steps, like a couple of robins; now they would hop on both feet, ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... at which they would be back, proceeded through the woods in different directions. At the appointed time, Josiah went to the camp, and after waiting there in vain for the arrival of his brother, and becoming uneasy lest [206] some unlucky accident had befallen him, he set out in search of him. Unable to see or hear anything of him he returned home, and prevailed on several of his neighbors to aid in endeavouring to ascertain his fate. Their search was likewise unavailing; but in the following March, he was found by ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... had got round again to the unlucky baker's, the mob had been swollen to a size which even the area of the Forum would not contain, and it filled the adjacent streets. And by the same time it had come home to its leaders, and, indeed, to ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... rejoined Mr. Talbot. "But he was brought down by successive failures, and some unlucky investments, as we merchants often are, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... The old Fairy fancied she was slighted, and muttered some threats between her teeth. One of the young fairies who sat by her overheard how she grumbled; and, judging that she might give the little Princess some unlucky gift, went, as soon as they rose from table, and hid herself behind the hangings, that she might speak last, and repair, as much as she could, the evil which the ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... going to get all right again and see the war through, if I didn't get an unlucky ball; but it's all over now. I've seen 'em, ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... "O Heavens! How unlucky I am to be so clumsy and to express so ill what I think!" cried Germain. "Marie, you don't love me. That is the long and short of it. You find me too simple and too dull. If you loved me at all, you would not see my faults so clearly. But you ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... her sallow skin. "It is not well bred of you to refer to the misfortunes of my family," she said; "my mother and brother were unlucky. They were innocent of this charge of coining, brought ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... the extra six months' delay,' she went on, 'but I don't like the idea of postponing the wedding. There is something unlucky about it.' ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... so very unlucky?" I asked with frank incredulity. Mr. Burns turned his eyes away from me. No, the late captain was not an unlucky man. One couldn't say that. But he had not seemed to want to make ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... acknowledging in Congress the honour which had been done him in selecting him to so important a trust, on the execution of which the future of his country in a great measure depended, Washington said: "I beg it may be remembered, lest some unlucky event should happen unfavourable to my reputation, that I this day declare, with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... two severed heads, and a dead body, the rule of Brandeis came to a sudden end. We shall see him a while longer fighting for existence in a losing battle; but his government—take it for all in all, the most promising that has ever been in these unlucky islands—was from that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a press-gossip. For example the appearance of a policeman while a burglar is drilling a safe is considered distinctly unlucky. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... befell, she was, if not quite right, at least not quite wrong. For when we went into the cabin, we and our unlucky yellow flower were flown at by another brown lady, in another gorgeous turban, who had become on the voyage a friend and an intimate; for she was the nurse of the baby who had been the light of the eyes of the whole quarter-deck ever since we left Southampton—God bless it, and ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... plainly perceived in the events of real life; when any thing takes place of such a nature as we should call, in a fiction, merely improbable, because there are many chances against it, we call it a lucky or unlucky accident, a singular coincidence, something very extraordinary, odd, curious, etc.; whereas any thing which, in a fiction, would be called unnatural, when it actually occurs (and such things do occur), is still called unnatural, inexplicable, unaccountable, inconceivable, etc., ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... and said: "Few words are best; and whereas I wot not if my words will avail thee aught, and since they will save our lives, I will tell thee truly. We are men of the Burg whom these green-coated thieves drave out of the Burg on an unlucky day. Well, some of us, of whom I was one, fetched a compass and crossed the water that runneth through Upmeads by the Red Bridge, and so gat us into the Wood Debateable through the Uplands. There we struck a bargain with the main band of strong-thieves of the wood, that we and they together ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... SHADOWS: misfortunes due to being born under an unlucky star; house of life is also ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... cannibals, their superstition prompts them to many acts of cruelty; for instance, one half of the infant population is murdered by the misfortune of being born on an unlucky day; and, to prove the truth of the dogma, they are deliberately killed. One mode of perpetrating this unnatural deed, is by taking the infant to a retired spot in the neighborhood of the village, digging a grave ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... you should have seen that kid when he drew number three! All the fellows began kidding him and saying he was unlucky. Then came Connie, and he drew three, and then Wig and, oh, boy, I just can't tell you about it. Each fellow stood there staring at his little slip and I drew ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... ever would have been, considering the embarrassments thrown in the way by the guardians of the temples, who seemed disposed to secrete the treasures, rather than despoil these sacred depositories to satisfy the cupidity of the strangers. It was unlucky, too, for the Indian monarch, that much of the gold, and that of the best quality, consisted of flat plates or tiles, which, however valuable, lay in a compact form that did little towards swelling the heap. But an immense amount had been already realized, and it would have been a ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... is due to Comte to say that he did not expect to see his dictatorial republic transformed into a dynastic empire, and, next, that he did expect from the Man of December freedom of the press and of public meeting. His later hero was the Emperor Nicholas, 'the only statesman in Christendom,'—as unlucky a judgment as that which placed Dr. Francia in ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... length we got; when (as Fate wou'd have it) an unlucky Shot struck both the Captain and Lieutenant dead. Then we began to fear, and all our noble ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... came to terms with Godefroid who would not take the rooms unless he could have them by the single month and furnished. These miserable rooms of students and unlucky authors were rented furnished or unfurnished as the case might be. The vast garret which extended over the whole building was filled with such furniture. But Monsieur Bernard, she said, had furnished his ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... the third Terentia withdrew at the end of her term and did not marry, nor did the only Licinia who ever completed her service. But Appellasia married and so did Quetonia and Seppia. Others have married after their service, though it is thought unlucky. The right to leave the order implies the right to marry after leaving. The right to leave implies the right to mean to leave, to plan to leave, to look forward to leaving and marrying. You have that right, like any other Vestal. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... darling!" began Mrs Staunton. But her warning came too late; the unlucky words had been spoken; and Ralli, smarting under a sense of humiliation from the scorn and loathing of him so freely displayed by this pretty child—scarcely more than a baby yet—sprang to his feet, and, seizing May roughly by the arm, dragged her with brutal ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... who then kept a bookseller's shop in Russel-street, Covent Garden, told me that Johnson was very much his friend, and came frequently to his house, where he more than once invited me to meet him; but by some unlucky accident or other he was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... and, after some 400 yards of good path, we entered a neat little village, and found our crew snoring snugly asleep. We "exhorted them," refreshed the fire, and generously recruited exhausted nature with quinine, julienne and tea, potatoes and potted meats, pipes and cigars. So sped my annual unlucky day, and thus was spent my first jungle-night almost ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... his own country, and found to his grief that he had been imposed upon; but it was too late to think of marriage, so he dropped all farther pretensions to his mistress; nor would she after this unlucky adventure be induced ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... love-juice, and he instantly awoke; and the first thing he saw being Helena, he, as Lysander had done before, began to address love-speeches to her: and just at that moment Lysander, followed by Hermia (for through Puck's unlucky mistake it was now become Hermia's turn to run after her lover), made his appearance; and then Lysander and Demetrius, both speaking together, made love to Helena, they being each one under the influence ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... take his place. Paulus was somewhat diffident, but finally consented, and began his poem with the words, "You bid me, Priscus...," on which Javolenus, who was sitting near, called out, "You mistake! I do not bid you!" The audience greeted this sally with a laugh, and so put an end to the unlucky Paulus's recitation. Pliny contemptuously remarks that it is doubtful whether Javolenus was quite sane, but admits that there are people imprudent enough to trust their business to him. [12] We may think a single jest is somewhat scanty ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... with the earliest gleam of dawn. Isoult summoned Jennifer, Barbara, and Ursula the cook, and asked whether they would cast in their lot with hers or remain in Cornwall. Jennifer answered that she feared the journey more than the commons, and the fourth of July was a very unlucky day on which to commence any undertaking: she would stay where she was. Ursula and Barbara, both of whom had been with their mistress ever since her marriage, replied that they would ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the crash of my unlucky fall seemed to release all the prisoned noises of the house. A faint scream within the room was but a prelude, lost the next moment in the roar of dismay, the clatter of weapons, and volley of oaths and cries and curses which, rolling up from ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... the park, yet parading the streets, he would take his hat off to her, with an air of profound respect, and ask permission to take her portrait. Generally he met a prompt rebuff; but if the fair was so unlucky as to hesitate a single moment, he told her a melting tale; he had once driven his four-in-hand; but by indorsing his friends' bills, was reduced to painting likeness, admirable likenesses in oil, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... of these unlucky boys got a dark lanthorn, which was a thing, at that time, the country-people did not understand; and with this he walked about the orchard, and two or three closes near the house, shewing the light in different directions. His comrades would then call all the old women about ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... It is thought unlucky to postpone a wedding. Better withdraw the invitations in case of severe illness or death, and have a quiet home ceremony with ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... "Well, that's real unlucky now. He went to Pine Creek down the line only yesterday, and won't be back till to-morrow. Are you ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... glee that our landlord was an Englishman. I rallied the Doctor upon this, and he grew quiet[219]. Both Sir John Hawkins's and Dr. Burney's History of Musick had then been advertised. I asked if this was not unlucky: would not they hurt one another? JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. They will do good to one another. Some will buy the one, some the other, and compare them; and so a talk is made about a thing, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... placed over the glass in the skylights. Life lines had been stretched along the decks, and the swinging ports, through which the water that came over the rail escaped, were crossed with whale line by Peaks, to prevent any unlucky boy from being washed through, if he happened to be thrown off his feet by a rush of water to ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... serpents, the clustering of bees, had their mystic and boding interpretations. Even hasty words, an accident, a fall on the earth, a sneeze (for which we still invoke the ancient blessing), every singular or unwonted event, might become portentous, and were often rendered lucky or unlucky according to the dexterity or disposition of the person to ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... laughter, out there in the bog, was a new element of terror to Patsy. He had better be getting away from this queer unlucky place before the riders were out of hearing. The little old grandfather, with his blazing eyes of wrath and the stick concealed somewhere behind his coat-tails, his most familiar aspect to Patsy, ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... according to tradition, no one was ever born there who was not from birth insane, or who did not become so before death. "In the last generation, three persons had the misfortune for the first time to see the light of day on this unlucky spot, and all three were mad. Of one of them, who is remembered by the name of Wild Murdoch, many strange stories are told. It is said that his friends used to tie a rope round his body, make it fast to the stern of the boat, and then pull out to sea, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... scarcely paid any attention to the discussion of affairs at the council-table for the rest of the sitting. He rose hastily at last, despairing to find any outlet of escape from the difficulties which surrounded him in this unlucky affair. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... I do not doubt I could find something nice about Lyons or Selfridge if I searched for it. But I shall not. The nearest postman or cab-man will provide me with just the same brain of steel and heart of gold as these unlucky lucky men. But I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath, nor led ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... Mary Reynolds is not unlucky thirty-three. The sooner you go to see Miss Wilder the sooner you'll know her fate. Now I'm going on a tour of exploration and noisy admiration. I'm sure I haven't ohs and ahs enough to fully express my feeling of elevated pleasure at so much magnificence. And to thing that I, ordinary, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... said Mike despondently, "we should perhaps be swept in here again, or be upset and drowned. I say, Cinder, did you ever see such an unlucky pair as ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... breed, which happened to be with the party, seized the hog by the ear. At the same time a soldier ran up to despatch the animal with a large stick, and not observing the dog in the dusk, he accidentally struck him an unlucky blow on the head, and killed him. Poor Billy's fate was universally regretted in the camp, where he was a general favourite. The hog weighed 80 lbs., had large tusks, and his hide was half-an-inch thick. ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... we were aboard our own ship again," said Kiddle to me one day, "for I don't know how it is, but the crew of this ship declare that she is doomed to be unlucky. I don't know how many men they have not lost. They have scarcely taken a prize, and they are always getting into misfortune. It's not the fault of the Captain, for he is as good a seaman as ever stepped, and the officers are all very well in their way, and so there's no doubt it's the ship's ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... tales. Hesiod was the founder of a more didactic sort of poetry. He is about a century later than the Iliad. Besides the Theogony, which treats of the origin of the gods and of nature, his Works and Days relates to the works which a farmer has to do, and the lucky or unlucky days for doing them. It contains doctrines and precepts relative to agriculture, navigation, civil and family life. Hesiod was the first of a Boeotian school of poets. He lacks the poetic genius of Homer, and the vivacity and cheerfulness which pervade ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... looked closely at it, you would never guess it to be soap; it was black and coarse, and more like wood than anything else. If any unlucky pilgrim used it on his face or hands, it would make his skin burn like fire. But this did not often happen, for the people in Persia do not use much soap on themselves, or their clothes, and sand does very well for cleaning cooking pots and pans. So it ...
— The Cat and the Mouse - A Book of Persian Fairy Tales • Hartwell James
... no longer there; he had taken to his heels. But M. d'Anquetil was still there with Catherine, and he it was who received the burning torch on his forehead, an outrage he could not stand. He drew his sword, and drove it to the hilt in the unlucky knave's stomach, teaching him, at his own expense, how fatal it may be to attack a gentleman. Now M. Coignard had not got twenty yards away from the house when the other lackey, a tall fellow, with the limbs of ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... Bull Bun was followed, as the reader knows, by a long period of masterly inactivity, so far as the Army of the Potomac was concerned. McDowell, a good soldier, but unlucky, retired to Arlington Heights, and McClellan, who had distinguished himself in Western Virginia, took command of the forces in front of Washington, and bent his energies to reorganizing the demoralized troops. It was a dreary time to the people of the North, who looked fatuously from week to ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the side galleries were filled in with bales of cotton, the windows blocked up, at last the very doorways, all but one: lights were burned in the cabin day and night: the Carolina became, in fact, a floating mass of cotton, which, had the season been dry, one unlucky spark might have set in a blaze—an accident by no means unknown; luckily, the rain continued to fall more or less daily, as is ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... it was years ago; you were on your first tour in America, I must have been about twelve, and Tom fourteen. We had only just settled in here, you know; and one unlucky Saturday we were playing in the garden at 'King ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a more loyal but as unlucky a Frenchman, David de Novion, came to meet Ralegh at the inn. He brought a message from le Clerc, the French Resident, that he wished to see Ralegh. The Government knew of this, and thought that, by affecting ignorance, it might learn more. On July 30 had arrived a Council warrant for ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... father when he went out and bought a red pot for the unlucky pansy, which, after its travels and its night in brown paper, looked as disconsolate as Mary herself. "I know it'll die right away," she muttered as she set it on the window-sill. "Oh, dear, there's mother ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... guilty, and was sentenced to die. He made no complaint, or none of which a record is preserved. He asked for the Sacrament, which was of course allowed, and Drake himself communicated with him. They then kissed each other, and the unlucky wretch took leave of his comrades, laid his head on the block, and so ended. His offence can be only guessed; but the suspicious curiosity about his fate which was shown afterwards by Mendoza makes it likely that he was in Spanish pay. The ambassador cross-questioned Captain Winter very particularly ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... sewing and raised her head. She was a servant girl by calling, one of those unlucky creatures who are overtaken by trouble when they have scarce arrived in the great city from their native village. "Well," said she, "it's quite certain that one won't be able to dawdle in bed, and that one won't have warm milk given one to drink before getting up. But, all the same, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... what's to prevent you," and he gave him such another hard jab that Jack grabbed the elbow. "But I wouldn't start tomorrow—it's unlucky to clam on Wednesday," ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... cannibal confesses that he has not quite got over his gloating recollections of the delicacies of his diabolical cuisine; or that fashionable converts turn with a yearning heart, not to theatres and balls, but to the "dear remembrance" of the splendors 'of tattoo and amocos; or that some unlucky wretch who has not mastered the hideous passions of his old paganism has almost battered out the brains of a fellow disciple in a sudden paroxysm of anger; or that some timid soul is haunted with half-subdued ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... powerful "trektow" stood the enormous strain, and the equally powerful waggon groaned and jolted up the stony steep until it had nearly gained the top, when an unfortunate drop of the right front wheel into a deep hollow, combined with an unlucky and simultaneous elevation of the left back wheel by a stone, turned the vehicle completely over on its side. The hoops of the tilt were broken, and much of the lading was deposited in a hollow beside the waggon, but a few of the lighter and smaller articles went hopping, ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... behaviour. We have had a good deal of serious discourse together. The man has really just and good notions. He confesses how much he is pleased with this day, and hopes for many such. Nevertheless, he ingenuously warned me, that his unlucky vivacity might return: but, he doubted not, that he should be fixed at last by my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... near New Rochelle, three hundred acres of good land, with the necessary fences and buildings upon it. Pennsylvania voted him five hundred pounds, currency. And the Virginians were talking about making a similar donation, when an unlucky pamphlet from Paine appeared, demolishing the claim of Virginia to the Western country. This publication changed the views of the chivalry, and Paine lost his grant. He owned, besides, a small place in Bordentown,—a gift, we believe, of the State of New ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... able to go back to school was an unlucky one for me. It was so dolefully quiet everywhere. After he had gone, I slipped down-stairs on the banister, but the blinds were drawn in the parlour and dining-room, and it was so still that the only sound to be heard was the slow ticking of the great clock in the hall. When it gave a loud ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... Click, the Bricklayers make with their Trowels, thus bringing me down from my Altitudes! Sure, we hardly knew how well off we were at Chalfont, till we came back to this unlucky Capital, looking as desolate as Jerusalem, when the City was ruinated and the People captivated. Weeds in the Streets—smouldering Piles—blackened, tottering Walls—and inexhaustible Heaps of vile ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... did not actually lure vessels to destruction on their cruel coasts, which it may be feared they did sometimes, they at least did nothing to avert the disasters which, to their mind, were sent by a merciful providence. There was even a proverb that it was unlucky to rescue a drowning man—widespread, for Scott mentions it in the "Pirate"; the bad luck which these coast-folk had in view being the fact that a rescued personage could claim his property that the sea had ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... air. All the long house behind him seemed asleep, deserted. No noise came forth, no laughter, the echo of no music, the ringing of no bell; the heat had wrapped it round with drowsiness. And the silence added to the solitude within him. What an unlucky chance, that woman's accident! Designed by Providence to put Antonia further from him than before! Why was not the world composed of the immaculate alone? He started pacing up and down, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the first it was an unlucky move—for me. The house was too big, and required a lot of extra furnishing. The studio wasn't as good as my other one had been, and there was only an apology for a garden. But Eva had her wish. People called on her, and finding her pretty, vivacious, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... threw me into such a ferment that I quite forgot how tired I was and fairly ran across the last half dozen vessels that I had to traverse before I came under her tall side. However, when I got close to her I saw that she was not the Hurst Castle after all, but only another unlucky vessel that had broken her nose in collision and so had filled forward and gone sagging ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... temper; he was always a very passionate man. He told his daughter that if she did not kill her child, he himself would kill the pair of them. He would have married her to someone else, to a rich man of high rank. This unlucky accident must be kept secret. The girl was very miserable. Her brother stood forth in her defence, and took her part against his own father, and his father cursed him in consequence, expelled him from the house, and forbade him ever to show his face there ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... another word, an unlucky touch of Foster's heel laid the easel, with an amazing clatter, flat on the marble floor! Hester bounded through the doorway more swiftly than her own gazelle, slammed the door behind her, ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... the last fact, which resulted in exciting once more the torrent of public opinion. From this moment all unlucky casualties which could not be otherwise accounted for were put down ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... arm—"shows that you were much worse hurt than I was. But I was pretty well done for, and a most gruesome object, when we came up with Sher Singh. His manners ain't exactly ingratiating at the best of times, as you have more than once remarked to me, but when he saw my unlucky hair, his language was positively improper. You see, it was my misfortune—and your very good fortune, I'm inclined to think—that I wasn't you. He even sent for water and had some of the blood washed off my face, to make ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... exhibitions of this unlucky pair, and their passing round the hat without catching even the greasy pence they courted, have very little to do with the great question to be decided at the next elections, except in so far as we may be justified in suspecting their purity of motive ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... discovering the will of the gods, according to the common practice of Pagan antiquity, Haman ordered the lot to be cast, which was supposed to discriminate between lucky and unlucky days, little aware that "the whole disposing thereof is of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... to my aid and was unlucky in not getting the cool-headed Kendall, for my own wits were gone. The next moment all had left us and I was down on the ground toiling frantically, with no help but one hand of my mounted companion, to heave the stalwart frame of ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... it, drew out my magnifier, looked at it in one light and another. What was wrong with it? I could not say. Nine experts out of ten would undoubtedly have pronounced the stone genuine. I, by virtue of some mysterious instinct that has hitherto always guided me aright, was the unlucky tenth. I looked at the bishop. His eyes met mine. There was no need of spoken word ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... was unwilling to relinquish his horses and attendant charioteer, but with them advanced to the swift ships,—foolish! Nor was he destined to return again, borne on his steeds and chariot from the ships to wind-swept Ilium, having avoided evil destiny. For him unlucky fate first encircled from the spear of Idomeneus, the illustrious son of Deucalion. For he rushed towards the left of the ships, by the way in which the Greeks were returning from the plain with their horses and chariots. Thither ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... and unlucky days was prevalent. The fragment of a calendar shows each day marked good or evil, or triply ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... one sentence always in her mouth, a sentence that was the refrain of her thought: "What can you expect? I am unlucky. I have had no chance. From the beginning nothing ever succeeded with me!" She said it in the tone of a woman who has abandoned hope. With the persuasion, every day more firm, that she was born under an unlucky star, that she was in the power of hatred and vengeance that were more powerful ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... till one day the brilliant idea struck Grandmamma of decorating little Pamela with a coral necklace. She little knew what she was about; both babies burst into howling distress, and were not to be quieted even when the unlucky beads were taken away; no, indeed, they only cried the more. Grandmamma and Nurse were at their wits' end, and Grandpapa's superior intelligence had at last to be appealed to. And ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... sore and nervous, but talked of his letter to the Queen, and Lord Palmerston's to Persigny, as "unlucky." Lord Palmerston seems convinced that he is perfectly in the right, and everybody else in the wrong, and would, I am sure, take advantage of any step, taken without sufficient consideration by the Queen, to make a ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... well, indeed, that it has given to the name of the unlucky "capitan de la guerra" of the ancient Mexicans the honorific title of an aboriginal "cultus-hero,"—is ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... who were entrenched in a small earthwork on the southern side of the isle, and not more than cannon-shot distance from the Mexican encampment. Two field pieces, set in battery, defended the work; and the schooner, whose unlucky shot had swamped the canoe, lay at a cable's length from the land, in a little bay that ran ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... Rabirius was involved in the same prosecution as having received part of the money; Cicero defended him, and as it seems with success, on the plea that equites were not liable to prosecution under the lex Julia. Towards the end of his speech he drew a clever picture of his unlucky client's misfortunes, and declared that he would have had to quit the Forum, i.e. to leave the Stock Exchange in disgrace, if Caesar had not come to his rescue by placing large sums at ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... of this unlucky fourteenth century a marked religious revival extended over Europe. Perhaps men's sufferings had caused it. Many sects of reformers appeared, protesting sometimes against the discipline, sometimes the doctrines, of the Church. In Germany Nicholas ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... were of the florid periwig architecture—I mean of that pompous cauliflower kind of ornament which was the fashion in Louis the Fifteenth's time, at which unlucky period a building mania seems to have seized upon many of the monarchs of Europe, and innumerable public edifices were erected. It seems to me to have been the period in all history when society was the least natural, and perhaps the most dissolute; and I have always fancied ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... completed and published at Oxford, with a numerous list of subscribers. Experience had not yet taught him wariness in his approaches to his patron. At the suggestion of his relative, Commodore Johnstone, in an unlucky moment he inscribed his book to the Duke of Buccleugh. This nobleman had declared his acceptance of the dedication in a manner so gracious, that Mickle was once more decoyed with the hope of having found a powerful protector. After ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... clerk for awhile, but the customers bothered me so much I could not read with any comfort, and so the proprietor gave me a furlough and forgot to put a limit to it. I had clerked in a drug store part of a summer, but my prescriptions were unlucky, and we appeared to sell more stomach pumps than soda water. So I had to go. I had made of myself a tolerable printer, under the impression that I would be another Franklin some day, but somehow had missed the connection thus far. There was no berth open in the Esmeralda Union, and besides ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... give unlucky Oleander his coup de grce. Poor devil! I pity him, too. If you intend to make your entree like the ghost of Banquo at the feast, you can't appear, of course, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... parting from it for a moment. This man's talk was all of well-dressed highwaymen, whose conversation and manners induced the unwary to join company with them. Then in some shady dell whistling up their men, the unlucky traveller found himself despoiled—of his goods certainly, perhaps also of ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... irregularity in the one, was always corrected by the other. Our success would probably have been more complete but for the rain which unfortunately set in soon after we commenced our march, which rendered the fire of many of our muskets useless, and by obscuring the sun, led to several unlucky mistakes. As an instance of this, a body of 50 prisoners who had surrendered, were ordered to the fort in charge of a subaltern and 14 volunteers; the officer mistaking the direction, conducted them towards the British camp in the route by which we had ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... having left behind, in his wine cellars, twenty thousand bottles of rare vintages. Wine, I believe, is contraband of war. Certainly in this instance it was. As we speedily discovered, it was a very unlucky common soldier who did not have a swig of rare Burgundy or ancient claret to wash down his black bread and sausage that night ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... was solemnly reminded, that it was not for me to interrupt the course of justice, but to await its decision with patience. I saw they were determined to prevent our departure as long as possible; and, judging that the only way to assist in the completion of the unlucky business, was to interpose no obstacle to its natural course, I henceforth held my peace, conjuring my companion on no account to give directions for dinner. After a sitting of nearly seven hours on the second day, when everything that could be lugged ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... should visit a certain Temple of which it seems she had heard a great deal from a native servant. Had I known then, as I know now, the reputation of the place, and the intense hatred which the priests felt for any of the white races since that unlucky American affair"—he realized suddenly that he appeared to be excusing himself, and his manner hardened—"well, I can only regret that I allowed Miss Ryder to set foot in ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... fingers, lock the barn door after the horse is stolen. Adj. ill-timed, mistimed; ill-fated, ill-omened, ill-starred; untimely, unseasonable; out of date, out of season; inopportune, timeless, intrusive, untoward, mal a propos[Fr], unlucky, inauspicious, infelicitous, unbefitting, unpropitious, unfortunate, unfavorable; unsuited &c. 24; inexpedient &c. 647. unpunctual &c. (late) 133; too late for; premature &c. (early) 132; too soon for; wise after the event, monday morning quarterbacking, twenty- ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... why Gower stubbornly refused to pay more, when his collecting boats came back to the cannery so often with a few scattered salmon in their holds. They were primitive folk, these salmon trollers. They jeered the unlucky collectors. Gower was losing his fishermen as well as his fish. For the time, at least, the back of his long-held ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was well educated and a great reader, quiet and somewhat reserved, and though his humour did not lie on the surface, he could appreciate a joke. My recollections of him, after his steadiness and reliability, are chiefly of his personal mishaps, for he was an unlucky ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... startled look, he turned, and went in the direction of San Juan. We knew him at once for a deserter, but had no zeal to arrest him; and he had already got past us, when some one ejaculated,—"D—- him, why don't he go right? That's not the road to Costa Rica!" Upon this unlucky speech, the officer in command of the detail, who, either through inattention or design, was suffering the man to pass unquestioned, ordered him to be followed and seized. He was a German, and either a dull, heavy fellow, or else stupefied ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... of Indigo Seed upon the ground and since informed you the frost took it before it was dry. I picked out the best of it and had it planted but there is not more than a hundred bushes of it come up, which proves the more unlucky as you have sent a ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... cloak was singeing at a little iron stove that stood behind the door. Poor Madame Thekla! Out we rushed, and she revenged herself by vociferating to the crowd outside, as the Tyrolian had done just before, and by exhibiting her unlucky cloak in a sort of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... in Rome in her time a nobleman, Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi, ex-praetor, ex-consul (A. D. 27) ex-governor of Mauritania, the husband of Scribonia, by whom he had three sons. There was never a more unlucky family than this. The origin of their misfortunes is curious enough. Licinius Crassus, whom Seneca calls "stupid enough to be made emperor," committed, among other fatuities, that of naming his eldest son Pompeius Magnus, after ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... the state some service, and they know it. No more of that; I pray you in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am, nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice. 96 SHAKS.: Othello, Act v., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... been lacking in such of Mr. Le Queux's books as I have chanced to read. I may have been unlucky in my selection, and there may be admirable qualities in those of his novels which I have not read. But in the three or four volumes known to me I found that the persons were puppets, moving in unnatural situations, meeting sensational adventures which constituted all that ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... his way in the usual No Thoroughfares of speech, and Podsnap and Twemlow say Hear hear! and sometimes, when he can't by any means back himself out of some very unlucky No Thoroughfare, 'He-a-a-r He-a-a-r!' with an air of facetious conviction, as if the ingenuity of the thing gave them a sensation of exquisite pleasure. But Veneering makes two remarkably good points; so good, that they are supposed to have been suggested to him by the legal gentleman ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... me a bad turn. Unlucky day!' he sighed as he received it. 'My little fortune was more safe with him than in a bank, and every year it brought me in a pretty income. Where can I find another ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... waiting, and another dull colonel came into waiting. An impertinent servant made a blunder about tea, and caused a misunderstanding between the gentlemen and the ladies. A half-witted French Protestant minister talked oddly about conjugal fidelity. An unlucky member of the household mentioned a passage in the " Morning Herald " reflecting on the queen ; and forthwith Madame Schwellenberg, began to storm in bad English, and told him that he had made ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... lasted long. He not only knew very little, but read hardly anything and confined himself to picking up stories and anecdotes of a certain kind. He believed in presentiments, predictions, omens, meetings, lucky and unlucky days, in the persecution and benevolence of destiny, in the mysterious significance of life, in fact. He even believed in certain "climacteric" years which someone had mentioned in his presence and the meaning of which he did not himself very well understand. "Fatal" ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of the clouds were often watched through the whole night. In the same country, the inhabitants regard certain days as unlucky, or ominous of bad fortune. The day of the week on which the third of May falls is deemed unlucky ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... bird does not strictly belong to any of the present established genera. The make indeed is altogether that of an hornbill, and the edges of the mandible are smooth, but the toes being placed two forwards and two backwards, seem to rank it with the Parrots or Toucans; and it has been unlucky that in the specimen from which the description was taken, the tongue was wanting, which might in a great measure have determined the point: but the inducement for placing it with the hornbills has had the greater weight, as not a single species ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... When he arose on the morrow, he asked for them and was acquainted with their affair, whereupon he built over them a building and appointed to himself a day of ill-luck and a day of good fortune. If any met him on his unlucky day, he slew him and with his blood he washed that monument, which is a place well known in Kufah; and if any met him on this day of good fortune he enriched him. Now there accosted him once, on his day of ill- omen, an Arab of the Ban Tay[FN289] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... in private that objections were raised or candidatures recommended on theological grounds. But rumours were abroad that the authorities of Brasenose were canvassing their college on these grounds: and in an unlucky moment for Mr. Williams, Dr. Pusey, not without the knowledge, but without the assenting judgment of Mr. Newman, thought it well to send forth a circular in Christ Church first, but soon with wider publicity, asking support for Mr. Williams as a person ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... professions, especially for the Church, used to be ever recurring in conversation to the staple metaphysical questions,—occasionally, no doubt, much in the style of Jack Lizard in the Guardian, who comforted his mother, when the worthy lady was so unlucky as to scald her hand with the boiling tea-kettle, by assuring her there was no such thing as heat, but which at least served to show that this branch of liberal education fully occupied the mind of the individuals ostensibly ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... unfavourable opinion of the moral character of the people amongst whom they were then residing, but on this evening of the Sabbath, a Fantee was robbed of his effects, and stabbed by an assassin below the ribs, so that his life was despaired of. The most unlucky part, however, of this tragical affair to Richard Lander, was, that the natives, from some cause, which he could not divine, had imbibed the conceit that he was skilled in surgery. In vain, he protested that he knew nothing of the anatomy of the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... say that, child. I snatched about two hours' sleep this morning, and when I woke I felt very much like Coleridge's unlucky sailor: ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... answered Raymond, whose estimate of the word was not so comprehensive. "You'd think it would have been rather a case for generosity, but Dan didn't seem to see that. It's unlucky for me in a way he's not larger-minded. He's content with justice—what he calls justice. But justice depends on the mind that's got to do it. There's no finality about it, and what Daniel calls justice, I call beastly ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... salary of five hundred pounds a year, his rooms in the Quai d'Orsay (with coals and gas) and, besides, that wonderful treasure of historic documents, which had supplied the sap of his books, all this had been carried away from him by this unlucky 'flood,' all by his own flood! The poor man could not get over it. Even after the lapse of two years, regret for the ease and the honours of his office gnawed at his heart, and gnawed with a sharper tooth on certain dates, certain days of the month or the week, and above all on ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the witch of Eye, who were hurried before the Council of Henry VI, that unfortunate Duchess of Gloucester who had to walk the streets of London, the Duchess of Bedford, the conspirators against Edward IV who were supposed to use magic, the unlucky mistress of Edward IV—none of these who through the course of two centuries were charged with magical misdeeds were, so far as we know, accused of those dreadful relations with the Devil, the nauseating ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... season of the year when a dream occurred, the day of the cycle, and the then predominant influence of the two powers of nature. By the positions of the sun, moon, and planets in the zodiacal spaces he could determine whether any one of the six classes of dreams was lucky or unlucky. Those six classes were ordinary and regular dreams, terrible dreams, dreams of thought, dreams in waking, dreams of ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... Glumdalclitch never to trust me abroad for the future out of her sight. I had been long afraid of this resolution, and therefore concealed from her some little unlucky adventures that happened in those times when I was left by myself. Once a kite, hovering over the garden, made a stoop at me, and if I had not resolutely drawn my hanger, and run under a thick espalier, he would have certainly carried me away in his talons. Another time, walking to the ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... In this way he stimulates the invaded to a combined attack upon the common enemy, and we need not tell our readers how successfully, nor how desperate the struggle, the very next year; which ended in the complete ascendancy of the Hanover rat, or reigning family, over the unlucky Jacobite native. Under his figure of a rat, this Jacobite is very scurrilous indeed upon the Hanoverian succession; and, continuing his polypian imitations, relates a few coarse experiments upon his subject illustrative of its destructive properties, voracity, and sagacity, which set ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... documents in which the grounds of the administrative policy were explained, can we do otherwise than smile at the pretensions of the pseudo-judges? Is not the frequency of this unfounded judging much more apt to harden an unlucky statesman than to make him amenable to counsel? On the other hand, when a public man finds himself and his actions criticised by men who have knowledge, he must be a hardy one indeed who can ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... be born on the thirteenth. Cousin May says thirteen is awfully unlucky," said Katy impressively, when Chicken Little told her the ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... got that message through before Graves did his work!" he said. "He'd have had to believe you then, of course. How unlucky!" ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... travelled part of the way in a litter, and part on a pillion behind her bridegroom, who rode on horseback the whole way. He had with him a regular army of retainers, besides sundry maidens for the Lady Marnell, at the head of whom was Alice Jordan, the unlucky girl who, at our first visit to Lovell Tower, was reprimanded for leaving out the onions in the blanch-porre. Margery had persuaded her mother to resign to her for a personal attendant this often clumsy and forgetful ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... wondering why he had seen but one side of the question the night before, for in the broad light of day there seemed a dozen, and all leading to trouble! That emerald-eyed daughter of a renegade priest had proven a host in herself when it came to breeding trouble. She certainly had been unlucky. ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... have been contented at home, when he was well off. It's very unlucky he ever brought us here. I don't see what is to become ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... water that came in his way. When he got pretty near, he'd stop to listen, and then the caller had to be very careful and put his trumpet down close to the ground, so as to make a lower sound. If the moose felt doubtful he'd turn; if not, he'd come on, and unlucky for him if he did, for he got a warm reception, either from the rifles in our hands as we lay hid near the caller, or from some of the ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... keep the mule from running away, when a violent kick released his hold and knocked him out. We immediately set up our little "Mummery" tent on the hot, sandy floor of the desert and rendered first-aid to the unlucky astronomer. We found that the sharp point of one of the vicious mule's new shoes had opened a large vein in Mr. Hinckley's leg. The cut was not dangerous, but too deep for successful mountain climbing. With Gamarra's aid, ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... not be found a very difficult member of the poultry family to carve, unless, as may happen, a very old farmyard occupant, useless for egg-laying purposes, has, by some unlucky mischance, been introduced info the kitchen as a "fine young chicken." Skill, however, and the application of a small amount of strength, combined with a fine keeping of the temper, will even get over that difficulty. Fixing the fork firmly in the breast, let the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... at once, for Mr. Horner, honest and true himself, and much smitten with the fair Ellen, was too happy to be circumspect. The answer was duly placed, and as duly carried to Miss Bangle by her accomplice, Joe Englehart, an unlucky pickle who "was always for ill, never for good," and who found no difficulty in obtaining the letter unwatched, since the master was obliged to be in school at nine, and Joe could always linger a few minutes later. This answer being opened ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... said of the spirit protecting the treasure," I remarked, "Don't you think he's right about the curse hanging over it? I believe it would be unlucky ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Scotland there is a superstition that it is unlucky to tell the name of infants before they are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... the Square, after as painful a five minutes as I care to remember, Willoughby kept repeating, "Very unlucky—very unlucky," till we arrived at our own door. Then he began ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... well be called the tiger of the insect world. The devotional attitude is the position in which it can best seize its insect prey; for when an unsuspecting insect lights on what seems to be a green twig, snap!—those blade-like forelegs armed with sharp spikes come together like scissors, and the unlucky victim is cut to pieces ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... I assure you, sir. A matter of years' standing. In unlacing the senor's helmet, the evening that he was taken prisoner, I was unlucky enough to twitch his mustachios. You recollect the fact, of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... said Lena sharply. "I've been at her house. She has rafts of nurses to do all the waiting on her children. I guess she doesn't let them trouble her any more than she can help. If she's unlucky enough to have the squally little things, she keeps away ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... very superstitious; and there are all sorts of omens, among which there is a particular bird which has obtained the name of the omen bird. His cry on the right of, or behind, a person engaged in any enterprise is an unlucky sign, and he abandons his object; while the cry heard on the left is a favorable omen, and the individual is ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... roof you are all in a certain sense made known to one another, and should, therefore, converse freely, as equals. To shrink away to a side-table and affect to be absorbed in some album or illustrated work; or, if you find one unlucky acquaintance in the room, to fasten upon her like a drowning man clinging to a spar, are gaucheries ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... Some unlucky mistakes which happened that day, must here take place; first, an order to the whole horse on the left to march to the right, which so discouraged the foot of that wing to see themselves abandoned, that to it may be attributed their shameful behaviour that day; nor were these horse of ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... his thrilling adventure, then explained: "The ships, still fighting, disappeared behind the horizon. I thought that an unlucky outcome for the Emden was possible, also a landing by the enemy on the Keeling Island, at least for the purpose of landing the wounded and taking on provisions. As there were other ships in the neighborhood, according to the statements of the Englishmen, I saw myself faced with the certainty ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... told him, 'Yes.' He said he knew it as soon as I spoke to him on the platform. He asked me who she was, and I told him her name. He said to me, 'Ah! you lucky dog.' I told him I did not know that I was not most unlucky, for I had no reason to think she was going to marry me. He said, 'You tell her I say you'll be all right.' I felt better, especially when the old chap said, 'I'll tell her so myself.' He knew her. She always travelled with him when ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... drawing his sword. Orm the King-brother was also severely wounded; and with great difficulty they escaped to their ships, and instantly pushed off from land. It was generally considered as a most unlucky meeting for Olaf's people, as Earl Erling was in a manner sold into their hands, if they had proceeded with common prudence. He was afterwards called Olaf the Unlucky; but others called his people Hat-lads. They went ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... made an offering daily at the shrine of the Goddess of the Earth. Fortune was displeased at this, and came to him and said, "My man, why do you give Earth the credit for the gift which I bestowed upon you? You never thought of thanking me for your good luck; but should you be unlucky enough to lose what you have gained I know very well that I, Fortune, should then come in for all ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... pretty children the mother has," said the old Duck with the rag round her leg. "They're all pretty but that one; that is rather unlucky. I wish she could have that one ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... awake that night, tossing and turning in her bed in that delightful apartment in "Midsummer Night's Dream," and reviewing the fell array of these unlucky affairs. As she eyed them, black shapes against the glow of her firelight, it struck her that the same malevolent influence inspired them all. For what had caused the failure and flatness of her tableaux (omitting the unfortunate incident about the lamp) ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
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