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verb
Bane  v. t.  To be the bane of; to ruin. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bane" Quotes from Famous Books



... wise, but feeble-hearted. Yet the Norns have spoken; and it must be that another hero shall arise of the Volsung blood, and he shall restore the name and the fame of his kin of the early days. And he shall be my bane; and in him shall the race ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... Ambition is like to be Smellie's bane. He is jealous of sharing any credit with the Preventive crews, and is keeping them without information. On the other hand he delights in ordering about a military force; which, in ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... I am familiar with thy haste. Bane to my fortunes! what meant I to marry? I, that before was rank'd in such content, My mind at rest too, in so soft a peace, Being free master of mine own free thoughts, And now become a slave? What! never sigh; Be of good cheer, man; for thou art a ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... truth was, that knowing his man thoroughly, he was aware that, with the bane, he bore about with him, in some degree, its antidote. For so vast and absurd were his vain boastings, and so needless his exaggerations of his own recklessness, blood-thirstiness, and crime, that hitherto his vaporings had ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... criticism as Scott. Miss Edgeworth, in one of her letters, reminds him how they had both agreed that writers who cared for the dignity and serenity of their characters should abstain from "that authors' bane-stuff." "As to the herd of critics," Scott wrote to Miss Seward, after publishing "The Lay," "many of those gentlemen appear to me to be a set of tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them." It is probable, therefore, that he was quite unconcerned ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... these circumstances it is difficult to say what is to become, financially, of the people of Cuba. Sugar is their great staple, but all business has been equally depressed upon the island, under the bane of civil wars, extortionate taxation, and ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... marsh for "bog-bane," others searched among the knotted roots for the little nut-like tuber that clings to the root of the flag, while a few brought to the pot wild parsnips, and the dried stalks of the prairie parsley. A coy little maiden whom many a hunter wooed, but failed to win, had in ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... land in which I lived, by a fell bane Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side, 695 And stabled in our homes,—until the chain Stifled the captive's cry, and to abide That blasting curse men had no shame—all vied In evil, slave and despot; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... she took a fish bane and wipit it, and gae it to the king; and after he had cleaned his teeth wi' it, he said, 'They're ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... days, this of blessing that of bane * And holdeth Life a twain of halves, this of pleasure that of pain. See'st not when blows the hurricane, sweeping stark and striking strong * None save the forest giant feels the suffering of the strain? How many trees earth nourisheth of the dry and of the green * Yet none ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... I must say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left and must stand it should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from one end of the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is the bane and mischief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house to house in ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... evasive clover requiring that all its sprawling runners shall be gathered up in one gentle, tactful pull; the tender shepherd's purse coming easily on a straight twitch; the tough ragweed that yields to almost any kind of jerk. Even witch-grass, the bane of the farmer, has its rewarding side, when one really does get out its handful of wicked-looking, crawly, ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... enough for his weal and his bane, that he is stronger than Nature; and right tyrannously and irreverently he lords it over her, clearing, delving, diking, building, without fear or shame. He knows of no natural force greater than himself, save an ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... kind of discontent, is their sole misery and cause of perdition. As Hermione lamented in Euripides, malae mulieres me fecerunt malam. Evil company marred her, may they justly complain, bad companions have been their bane. For, [3550]malus malum vult ut sit sui similis; one drunkard in a company, one thief, one whoremaster, will by his goodwill make all the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... the birks and meikle stane Where drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; And through the whins, and by the cairn Where hunters fand the murdered bairn And near the thorn, aboon the well ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... bane of this type. He just naturally doesn't believe in them. Scientific discoveries, unless they have to do with some new means of adding to his personal comforts, are taboo. The next time this one about "fat men dying young" is mentioned in his presence listen to his jolly ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... reeling, W—— lays The expectations of his early days; And talents which, improv'd by GRANVILLE'S care, Promis'd a ripe and plenteous crop to bear Of golden Virtues. But his care was vain: With these were mingled the accursed bane Of noble deeds, fell instruments of Vice, The treacherous Cards and desolating Dice, Which forc'd the noble Gamester, for support, To claim the ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe

... should always be seen, but never felt, seems an excellent general rule. A wife should outshine her husband in nothing, not even in her dress. The bane of married happiness among the city men in general has been, that finding themselves unfit for polite life, they transferred their vanity to their ladies, dressed them up gaily, and sent them out a gallanting, while the good man was ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... bore himself with the honor of a soldier and the purity of a Christian,—triumphantly sustaining himself throughout a Congressional investigation set on foot by political malice, and confronting with equal credit a military inquiry which had its origin in the jealousy that is often the bane of army service. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... One of the precepts strongly inculcated on these youths, was, "Never be idle, boys. Let energy be apparent in all you do. If you play, play heartily, and at your book, be determined to excel. Languor is the bane ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... me than what sign thou deign: I fear when I fall into strait and fare * Abroad, no comrade in thee to gain: I fear when lain on my couch and long * My sickness, thou prove thee nor fond nor fain: I fear me that time groweth scant my good * And my hand be strait thou shalt work me bane: A helpmate I want shall do what do I * And bear patient the pasture of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... months, a prudent man will not expose himself to the air until after the sun has risen and dispelled the mists of morning. The same caution should be observed all through the low regions of the south, both as to morning and evening exercise. Chills and fever are the bane of the southern and middle states, as this disease affects the health and elastic vigor of the constitution, and also produces great mental depression. Yet those who suffer, even on every alternate day, from chills, seem to accept the malaria as nothing of much importance; though it ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... it delights him to recall the beauty and the mien of her as to whom he dare not hope that ever joy of her may fall to his lot. "I may hold myself a fool," quoth he. "A fool? Truly am I a fool, since I do not dare to say what I think; for quickly would it turn to my bane. I have set my thought on folly. Then is it not better for me to meditate in silence than to get myself dubbed a fool? Never shall my desire be known. And shall I hide the cause of my grief, and not dare to seek help or succour for my sorrows? ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... of the master a little board and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER came out quite handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of one of "our oldest Pioneers," alluding gracefully to that "bane of noble intellects," and otherwise genteelly shelving our dear brother with the past. "He leaves an only child to mourn his loss," says the BANNER, "who is now an exemplary scholar, thanks to the efforts of ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... stated, the great majority of them are full-fledged habitual criminals and can be easily recognized by their "degenerative habitus." They are that indolent, obstinate, querulent, unapproachable, and irritable class of prisoners who form the bane of prison officials. Constantly in trouble of some sort, they are subject to frequent disciplinary measures, which, however, serve not in the least to improve their conduct. Their extremely fluctuating mood and emotional instability ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... Further, the more a sin is opposed to charity, the more grievous it is. Now covetousness is most opposed to charity: for Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 36) that "greed is the bane of charity." Therefore covetousness ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... spread. On the wall his golden shield, Dinted deep in battle field, When the host o' the Khalif fled. Gold to gold. Long sunbeams flit Upward, tremble and break on it. 'Ay, 't is over, all things writ Of my sleep shall end awake, Now is joy, and all its bane The dark shadow of after pain.' Then the queen saith, 'Nay, but break Unto me for dear love's sake This thy matter. Thou hast been In great bitterness I ween All the night-time.' But 'My queen, Life, love, lady, rest content, Ill dreams fly, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... old man," said Media, "that, bane or blessing, Bello will yield his birthright? Will a tri-crowned king resign his triple diadem? And even did Bello what you propose he would only breed still greater perplexities. For if granted, full soon would Verdanna be glad to surrender ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... nation's visitors, it constantly offers bread and salt—yes, and speeches—to authors, as to other guests, from older lands, and many of us often have joined in this function. But we do not remember that it has been a habit for New York to tender either the oratorical bane or the gustatory antidote to her own writers. Except within the shade of their own coverts they have escaped these offerings, unless there has been something other than literary service to bring them public recognition. In the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... up! I warned the beggar against these seaside villas; they're all outfitted with fancy burglar alarms that make a deuce of a row when you step on the wire. Electricity is the bane of the craft; you light a wire that rings a gong loud enough to wake the dead and then some chap jumps out of bed and turns on all the lights in the house and very likely opens up with a gun before you can say Jerusalem. But Hoky thought he ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... "have been the bane of the Malay race; no one knows the amount of villainy, the bloody cruelty of their system towards us. They drive us into our prahus to escape their taxes and laws, and then declare us pirates and put us to death. There are natives in our crew, Touhan, of Sumatra and Java, of Bianca [Banka] ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... lover; but he feels his security, and stands aloof. In this he is doubtless encouraged by his mother, who is continually reminding him of what he owes to his family; for this same family pride seems doomed to be the eternal bane ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... one ring, for it was the source of all his wealth, as ring after ring dropped from it. Loki was inexorable; not a penny-worth would he leave with the dwarf. Seeing he could not retain the ring, the dwarf laid a curse on it, and said it would prove a bane to every one into whose possession it might pass. Reidmar having all the gold except the ring laid at his feet, filled the skin with the yellow ore, and set it up on end. Odin poured gold over it until it was covered up. Reidmar carefully looked at ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... hence the stubborn tenacity with which Nihilism maintains its grip upon the middle and lower classes. If the 'Little Father' wishes to stamp out that terrible scourge of secret and deadly conspiracy which is the bane and menace of his existence, he must purge the Russian nobles of their present lust of cruelty and oppression, and must render it possible for every one of his subjects, from the highest to the lowest, to obtain absolute justice. When ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... the bane of one's existence. They hamper all one's most cherished desires until one is of an age when the desires become non-existent. My aunt Lilla is always saying to me, 'When you're a much older woman, dearest.' And I reply, 'But, Aunt ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore

... title of Crabbe's poem stands for the bane and not the antidote, he could not adopt the same method, but he could not resist some other precedents of the epic sort, and begins thus, in ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... delighted with it. But with a certain lack of practical sense which has always been my bane, I had made it a mile or more from the sea; and before I had dragged it down to the beach the thing had fallen to pieces. Perhaps it is as well that I was saved from launching it; but at the time my misery at my failure was so acute that for some days I simply moped on the beach, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... skin-deep beauty Granted that woman is the superior being Held to strict responsibility for her attractiveness History is strewn with the wreck of popular delusions Hot arguments are usually the bane of conversation Idleness seems to be the last accomplishment of civilization Insists upon applying everywhere the yardstick of his own local It is not enough to tell the truth (that has been told before) Knows more than he will ever know again Land where things are so much estimated by what they ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner

... her; and beg her to have mercy on the Trojans, and on their wives and little children! So, perhaps, she will hold back the terrible warrior, Tydides, from sacred Ilium. And I will go and seek out Paris; would that the earth would swallow him up! for Zeus hath cherished him to be the bane of his country, and of his ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... and Celt and Norman and Dane, With the Northman's sinew and heart and brain, And the Northman's courage for blessing or bane, Are ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... for knowledge. Most young people will "take intellectually if sufficiently exposed." A scholarly attitude implies first of all a growing mastery of subject matter. To quote an eminent writer on religious education, "A common bane of Sunday school teaching has been the haziness of the teacher's own ideas concerning the ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... not contemplate such a change with any very lively feelings of pleasure. Come! do not be alarmed at the snakes, and scorpions, and centipedes! We shall find a cure for every bite—an antidote for every bane. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... his wife, children, farm, his health and his difficulties. It appeared that he was making a bare living at times, at others doing very well. His great bane was the popular magazine, the difficulty of selling a good thing. It was true, I said, and at midnight he left, promising to come again, inviting me to come to his place in the country at my convenience. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... had always been the bane of Corsican independence, and even Paoli's just and popular administration could not escape the rivalry of Emanuel Matra, a man of ancient family and great power, who became jealous of Paoli's pre-eminence. All attempts at conciliation on the part of Paoli proving useless, Matra ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... enough for a fitting climax to the story. Basil Valentine called the new substance which he had discovered antimony, that is, opposed to monks. It might be good for hogs, but it was a form of monks' bane, as it were.[30] ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... by the unthinking to the statement that all affairs are directed has been the bane of the world since the days of the Egyptian papyri and the origin of superstition. So long as men firmly believe that everything is fixed for them, so long is progress impossible. If you argue yourself into the belief that you cannot walk ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... a fair free lady, is she not? But that was to be looked for in a high one Who counts among her fathers the bright Sigurd, The bane of Fafnir the Worm, the end of the god-kings; Among her mothers Brynhild, the lass of Odin, The maddener of swords, the night-clouds' rider. She has kept sweet that father's lore of bird-speech, She wears that mother's power to cheat a god. Sisters, she does ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... Odd, if they burn the Custom-house, it will catch here, and we'll lunt [*Burn] like a tar-barrel a' thegither.—Eh! it wad be fearsome to be burnt alive for naething, like as if ane had been a warlock! [*witch]—Mac-Guffog, hear ye!"—roaring at the top of his voice; "an ye wad ever hae a haill bane in your skin, let's out, man! ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... will be forced to buy at market rates its bonds not then redeemable, and which under such circumstances cannot fail to command an enormous premium, or the swollen revenues will be devoted to extravagant expenditures, which, as experience has taught, is ever the bane of ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... varieties are not known in the cities should not preclude their popularity in suburban and town gardens and in the country, where every householder is monarch of his own soil and can satisfy very many aesthetic and gustatory desires without reference to market dictum, that bane alike of the ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... in Champagne? Would he have dared the uttermost at all points at Waterloo? In truth, after his fortieth year was past, the fervid energies of youth hardened in the mould of triumph; and thence came that fatal obstinacy which was his bane at all those crises of his career. For in the meantime the cause of European independence had found worthy champions—smaller men than Napoleon, it is true, but men who knew that his determination to hold out everywhere and yield nothing must work his ruin. Finally, the same clinging ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... hail, and as healthful be your flocks as you happy in content. Love is restless, and my bed is but the cell of my bane, in that there I find busy thoughts and broken slumbers: here (although everywhere passionate) yet I brook love with more patience, in that every object feeds mine eye with variety of fancies. When I look on Flora's beauteous tapestry, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... perfect good humor constitute the ingredients which make up "a love of a man." Added to this, he really did possess a good share of common sense, and with the right kind of influence would have made a far different man from what he was. Self-love was the bane of his life, and as he liked dearly to be flattered, so he in turn became a most consummate flatterer; always, however, adapting his remarks to the nature of the person with whom he was conversing. Thus to Nellie Kennedy he said a thousand foolish things, just because he knew he gratified ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... Ward had both conceived a bad opinion of Robson, and had wondered at the amount of confidence reposed in him; whereas Madison had been remarked as a young man of more than average intelligence and steadiness, entirely free from that vice of gambling which was the bane of all classes in Spanish South America. Mary sighed as she heard Louis speak so innocently of 'all classes'—it was too true, as he would find to his cost, when he came to look into their affairs, and learn what Rosita had squandered. Next, he asked about the other clerk, Ford, of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... softness of manner, and as to that tenderness of character which was the bane of his existence,—as to his real and great goodness, which made him loved always and everywhere, and which caused such bitter tears to be shed at the news of his death,—these qualities are not to be sought in the strange, fanciful being who is styled ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... my bane and admiration. He was presumed by the verdant patrons of the paper to be its owner and principal editor, its type-setter, pressman, and carrier. His hair was elaborately curled, and his ears were perfect racks of long and ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... great extent here, two out of the three chapar men putting in a good portion of their time "hitting" the seductive pipe, and tinkering with their opium-smoking apparatus. They only have one outfit between them; both of them are half blind with ophthalmia, and the bane of their wretched existence seems to be a Russian candle-lamp, with a broken globe, that persists in falling apart whenever they attempt to use it—which, by the by, is well-nigh all the time—in manipulating the opium needle and pipe. Observing them from my rude shake-down, after supper, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... Sicily, and other distinguished men, testifying to his qualities as a soldier, 'as valiant as he was unlucky,' and recommending Philip II. to give him the command of a Spanish company then being formed for Italian service. But all these honours proved his bane. The Spanish squadron had not sailed many days from Naples when it encountered a Corsair fleet, and after a sharp fight Cervantes and his friends were carried captive ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... to success especially if the air is both warm and wet. Moist weather during the time of maturity is particularly disastrous to the grape, as are frequent fogs. Cold wet weather in blooming time is the grape-grower's vernal bane, since it most effectually prevents the setting of fruit. It may be laid down as a rule that the grape lives by sunlight, warmth and air—it often thrives on the desert's edge. These considerations make it manifest that the monthly and seasonal ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... good, and his word was as good as his note. He always seemed to have money enough for what he wanted to do. In prosperous times he spent generously, although habitually practising a kind of stoical severity in regard to his private affairs. He considered luxury the bane of wealth, and continually admonished his children to avoid it. He was an old-fashioned Puritan ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... that frightful turban? A fourth's so pale she fears she's going to faint, A fifth's look's vulgar, dowdyish, and suburban, A sixth's white silk has got a yellow taint, A seventh's thin muslin surely will be her bane, And lo! an eighth appears,—"I'll see no more!" For fear, like Banquo's kings, they ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... tourists and their like, bane of the past, had disappeared; but all nationalities that the world holds seemed to be about. At the next table two Russian officers, with high cheek-bones and wide-set eyes, were drinking, chatting together in their purring, unintelligible tongue. Beyond them a party of Englishmen ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... as towards his own children. All the members of such a family commonly live in the greatest harmony.[5] In the laws, usages, and feelings of the people upon this subject we had the means of preventing that eternal subdivision of landed property, which ever has been, and ever will be, the bane of everything that is great and good in India; but, unhappily, our rulers have never had the wisdom to avail themselves of them. In a great part of India the property, or the lease of a village held in farm under Government, was considered as a principality, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... Henry the VIIth's Chapel lies in royal pomp she who so long was Britain's bane—'the daughter of debate, who discord still did sow'—poor Mary Queen of Scots. But English and Scots alike have forgotten the streams of noble blood she cost their nations; and look sadly and ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... teacher—the bane of all careless and ill-prepared boys and girls of the Latin class—was a slightly built, stoop-shouldered man who never seemed to own a new coat, and was as forgetful as a person really could be, and be allowed to go ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison

... have easily captured the city. No doubt his orders were different—that only a demonstration was intended—and had he attempted to exceed his orders and failed, he would have received and deserved the censure of the authorities. The bane of the South's civic government was that the Executive and his military advisors kept the commanders of armies too much under their own leading strings, and not allowing them enough latitude to be governed by circumstances—to ride in on the flow tide of success when an opportunity ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... of every measure, but this is not sufficient for the musician: he must decipher his measures with great readiness, precision and rapidity, or he never rises above the mediocre. The ambition to excel without hard labor is the bane of students of the piano especially. It leads them to muddle over music too difficult for them; finally, to learn it after a fashion, so that they may be able to "rattle and bang" through it to the delight of fond relatives and the amazement and pity of severe culture. Not that we should have consideration ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... be helped," she said, with a smile. "But I really counted upon seeing it on the string. I'm not lucky at amber. You know little Asian said it would bring bane ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... been set by Gladstone in the Land Act, and that was the path which further legislation ought to follow. So far there would not be much disagreement between Froude and most Irish Americans. Rack-renting upon the tenants' improvements was the bane of Irish agriculture, and the Act of 1870 was precisely what Froude described it, a partial antidote. Then the lecturer reverted to ancient history, to the Annals of the Four Masters, and the Danish ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... joint efforts, and common dangers; reverence religion; diffuse knowledge throughout your lands; patronize the arts and sciences; let liberty and order be inseparable companions. Control party spirit, the bane of free government; observe good faith to, and cultivate peace with, all nations; shut up every avenue to foreign influence; contract rather than extend national connections; rely on yourselves only; ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... two and fifty, with six men-servants, from Same twenty-four, from Zacynthus twenty, and from Ithaca itself twelve, all proper men and tall. If we twain fall upon such a host, we may find the work of vengeance a bitter morsel, and our bane. It were better, then, to look for ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... Santo Domingo will bring that country one boon of inestimable value, namely, peace. It is obvious that all the troubles which have befallen the Dominican Republic are due directly or indirectly to the state of civil disorder which has so long been the bane of the country. Another advantage which these relations will bring is a proper administration of the country's finances. Peace and efficient administration will mean the multiplication of roads, railroads and other public improvements, the extension of ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... have been plucking, plants among, Hemlock, henbane, adders-tongue Night-shade, moon-wort, libbard's bane And twice, by the dogs, ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... a great portion of the literary work. "It is the one drawback at every turn," she writes, "that I have not the faculty to frame easy, polished sentences. If I could but do this, I would finish up the History without asking aid of anyone." And again: "It has been the bane of my life that I am powerless to put on paper the glimpses of thoughts which come and go like flashes of lightning." As has been said before in these pages, she is a perfect critic and delightful letter-writer, but finds difficulty in doing what is called "literary work." Practice ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... sensitive man, who had been some thing of a pariah since his knickerbocker period, and was first the butt and later the bane of the narrow, convention-governed public of a small English village. A fierce defiance of the people amongst whom he had lived his life kept him in his native place till after his twenty-first birthday. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... perfectly that the luxury, the love of enjoyments, and the inequality of fortunes, which property engenders, are the bane of society; unfortunately the means which he employed to preserve his republic were suggested to him by false notions of political economy, and by a superficial knowledge of the human heart. Accordingly, property, which this legislator wrongly confounded with wealth, reentered ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... of these Heaven-sent inspirers, Tolstoy is the latest. But do not believe that in saying that he is Heaven-sent I attempt to explain aught. The highest is ever inexplicable, and it is the bane of modern science that it is ever ready to explain what cannot be explained. Before the highest we can only stand dumb; and this has been the feeling of the greatest, because of the humblest, of spirits. The Greek painter, therefore, when about to depict the highest grief of a father, gives up ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... Artists, as a rule, are the last to organise themselves into official castes, and such castes, when organised, rarely impose on the choicer spirits. Rebellious painters are a good deal commoner than rebellious clergymen. On compromise which is the bane of all religion—since men cannot serve two masters—almost all the sects of Europe live and grow fat. Artists have been more willing to go lean. By compromise the priests have succeeded marvellously ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... the young Prince, with almost a frantic air. "Tell me all, tell me all! This suspense fires my brain. Iskander, you know not what this woman is to me; the sole object of my being, the bane, the blessing of my life! Speak, dear friend, speak! I beseech you! ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli

... of many terrible wars and revolutions; for, as Curtius well says (lib. iv. chap. 10): "The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them as humanity's common bane. Immense pains have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony, that it may rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... the spirit of fair play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is "rank bosh." She declares that the Dirzee is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... That has been the bane of our family in times past. Being too proud to mate elsewhere, we have kept to ourselves till idiots and lunatics began to appear. My father was the first who broke the law among us, and I followed his example: choosing ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott

... October 30th, 1845, contains an article on the damage sustained by the potato crops here and in Ireland, full of matter calculated to enlighten our first rate reformers, who seem profoundly ignorant that superstition is the bane of intellect, and most formidable of all the obstacles which stand between the people and their rights: one paragraph is so peculiarly significant of the miserable condition to which Romanism and Protestantism have reduced a ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... concern. This was in connection with the fact that the easterly breeze seemed to have bobbed around to the southwest. Now, from all that he had heard this was a quarter that nearly always brings one of those howling "northers" that prove such a bane to ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... But, whatever his faults, he did his best with the one golden talent that Fate bestowed upon him. Each book that he encountered was made to stand and deliver the message that it carried for him. Sweethearting and good-fellowship were his bane, yet he won much good from his practice of the art of correspondence with sweethearts and boon companions. And although Socrates was perhaps scarcely a name to him, he studied always to follow the Athenian's favourite maxim, Know thyself; realizing, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... thou slave! Gold is my fear, my bane, my death! I hate Its yellow glare, its aspect hard and cold. I would be rid of all.—Go bid ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

... venom, virus, toxine, toxicant, irritant, taint, bane, ptomaine. Associated Words: toxicology, toxicophobia, toxicomania, toxiferous, toxicologist, antidote, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... experience on the bench, I have not seen justice bow her head in shame in this court until this day. You little realize what far-reaching harm has just been wrought here under the fickle forms of law. Imitation is the bane of courts—I thank God that this one is free from the contamination of that vice—and in no long time you will see the fatal work of this hour seized upon by profligate so-called guardians of justice in all the wide circumstance of this planet and perpetuated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... barm-cloth tree, The light is in thee, And as spring-tide shines Through the lily lines, So forth from thine heart Through thy red lips apart Came words and love To wolf-bane's grove, And the shaker of battle-board blesseth the Earth For the love and the ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... doctor, getting out his clinical thermometer. "It has been her bane, poor lady, that difficult temper. Years have not softened ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... to put on the proper dresses and to tell their father where they were going, Ruth and Alice DeVere were soon on their way to Central Park, where the scene was to be filmed, or photographed over again—a "retake," as it is called, the bane alike of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope

... and in his Pisan frescoes we have, it is true, many a quaint bit of genre (superior to Teniers only because of superior associations), but never again the fairy tale. And as the better recedes, it is replaced by the worse, by the bane of all genre painting, non-significant detail, and positive bad taste. Have London or New York or Berlin worse to show us than the jumble of buildings in his ideal of a great city, his picture of Babylon? It may be said he here continues mediaeval tradition, ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... were a few stalks of tansy "to kill the thievin' worms in the childhre, the crathurs," together with a little Rosenoble, Solomon's Seal, and Bugloss, each for some medicinal purpose. The "lime wather" Mrs Sullivan could make herself, and the "bog bane" for the linh roe, or heartburn, grew in their own meadow-drain; so that, in fact, she had within her reach a very decent pharmacopoeia, perhaps as harmless as that of the profession itself. Lying on the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... bane of tuna fishermen. More tuna are cut off by sharks than are ever landed by anglers. This made me redouble my efforts, and in half an hour more I was dripping wet, burning hot, aching all over, and so spent I had to rest. Every time I dropped the rod on the gunwale the tuna took line—zee—zee—zee—foot ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... well as for a vermifuge. The lipad, owing to its heavy nauseous odour, is believed to keep off evil soirits. In some places, occupying the sides and hollows of ravines, are found the rose bay (Nerium Oleander), called in Persian khar-zarah, or ass-bane, the wild ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... at our leisure the products of these new fields. He who traverses the woodland paths, at this season, will have occasion to remember the small drooping bell-like flowers and slender red stem of the dogs-bane, and the coarser stem and berry of the poke, which are both common in remoter and wilder scenes; and if "the sun casts such a reflecting heat from the sweet fern," as makes him faint, when he is climbing the bare hills, as they complained who first ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... fatality had made this man the bane of other lives, that were to be brought into contact with mine. I found that the happiness of two noble beings was being wrecked by this same man. One of these two had been my benefactor, had saved me from a fate worse than death, so I set myself to hunt this man down. And here I found that I ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... wench, thou must be gone; thou art chang'd for Antenor; thou must to thy father, and be gone from Troilus. 'Twill be his death; 'twill be his bane; he cannot ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... the Harkaways one and all," was the speech ever upon his tongue; "they have been my bane—my curse through life." ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... any-whither with George Borrow. But, for the most part, the art of writing travels is lost—its imaginativeness, its credulity, its cherishing of mystery, and its proneness to awe. The old travellers are never sentimental—and sentiment is the very bane of road-books,—and they never describe for description's sake. The world was much too wonderful in their eyes for such unprofitable excursions of fancy. Beauty and danger, difficulty and strangeness, novel fashions and unknown garbs, were to them earnest and absorbing realities. ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... great for the city; the shepherds also were included among that population, and all these readily inspired hopes that Alba and Lavinium would be insignificant in comparison with that city, which was intended to be built. But desire of rule, the bane of their grandfather, interrupted these designs, and thence arose a shameful quarrel from a sufficiently amicable beginning. For as they were twins, and consequently the respect for seniority could not settle the point, they agreed to leave it to the ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius

... have delighted Darwin. In the party of engineers which first camped there was Sinclair, and it was by his advice that the contractors selected it for division headquarters. Then came drinking "saloons" and gambling houses—alike the inevitable concomitant and the bane of Western settlements; then scattered houses and shops and a shabby so-called hotel, in which the letting of miserable rooms (divided from each other by canvas partitions) was wholly subordinated to the business of the bar. Before long, Barker's had acquired a worse ...
— The Denver Express - From "Belgravia" for January, 1884 • A. A. Hayes

... became the bane of his existence. The veteran seemed in no hurry to go back to his estate that must have been in serious need of management by this time, but would ride off on mysterious errands and return with a dozen or more black-bearded ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... time he was cross the ford, Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd; And past the birks and meikie stane, Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane; And thro' the whins, and by the cairn, Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn; And near the thorn, aboon the well, Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.— Before him Doon pours all his floods; The doubling storm roars thro' the woods; The lightnings flash from pole to pole; Near and ...
— Tam O'Shanter • Robert Burns

... to-night has given you a greater hold on my affection than you could ever have gained in any ordinary social way; but you're going to promise me that you won't drift into any of that silly love-making that has always been the bane of my existence." ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... bethink me," whispered Dick, "this must be Grimstone. It was a hold of one Simon Malmesbury; Sir Daniel was his bane! 'Twas Bennet Hatch that burned it, now five years agone. In sooth, 'twas pity, for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Acoustic Oil, for deafness Vermifuge Bartholomew's Expectorant Syrup Carlton's Specific Cure for Ringbone, Spavin and Wind-galls Dr. Sphon's Head Ache Remedy Dr. Connol's Gonorrhea Mixture Mother's Relief Nipple Salve Roach and Bed Bug Bane Spread Plasters Judson's Cherry and Lungwort Azor's Turkish Balm, for the Toilet and Hair Carlton's Condition Powder, for Horses and Cattle Connel's Pain Extractor Western Indian Panaceas Hunter's Pulmonary Balsam Linn's Pills and Bitters Oil of ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw

... proceeding; their conduct will tell against them in the country, and when the House of Lords is accused of stopping legislation, people will not fail to ask, What else is the House of Commons doing, or rather how much more? They assert that tithes are the great bane of Ireland, and the cause of the disorder which prevail, and they propose a Tithe Bill as the remedy, but they clog it with a condition which they know, with as much certainty as human knowledge can attain, will prevent its passing into a law, and in this shape ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... t'ink Ay had van chance not to get out. But Ay bane not forget dees. Eef you ever get in a tight place, ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... are not so fortunate as those to whom we have referred. These are the great majority of the organ grinders, the owners, or renters of the vile, discordant instruments which are the bane of city people. They earn comparatively little but kicks and curses. They are ordered off by irate householders, and receive but little or no consideration from the police. They live in wretchedness and want. Their homes are vile ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... spoke well of him, though as yet he had done no deeds, but lived at home on Coldback, managing the farm, for now Thorgrimur Iron-Toe, his father, was dead. But women loved him much, and that was his bane—for of all women he loved but one, Gudruda the Fair, Asmund's daughter. He loved her from a child, and her alone till his day of death, and she, too, loved him and him only. For now Gudruda was a maid of maids, most beautiful to see and sweet to hear. Her hair, like the hair of Eric, ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... sleep almost all the time, and it will if intelligently cared for. Overfeeding is the bane of the baby's life and is the cause of most of its restlessness. The first few months the baby should be awake enough to take its food, and then go to sleep again. As it grows older it ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... beneath Saturnus be,— Red planet, to the necromancer dear,— Inherit, ancient magic-books make clear, Good share of spleen, good share of wretchedness. Imagination, wakeful, vigorless, In them makes the resolves of reason vain. The blood within them, subtle as a bane, Burning as lava, scarce, flows ever fraught With sad ideals that ever come to naught. Such must Saturnians suffer, such must die,— If so that death destruction doth imply,— Their lives being ordered in this dismal sense By ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine

... the courtyard. The first guests came in a straggling fashion, and then suddenly everyone seemed to be rushing in at once. Patricia laughed as she recognized the tall, lanky figure of Bob Wetherill, whose attachment to Rosamond Merton was the bane of that young lady's life. Then she gave a little cry. She ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther

... difficulty did not impede him from an attempted solution. He thought himself performing a great service when he addressed himself to the "destruction of that implicit faith and credulity which is the bane of all reasoning and free inquiry."[136] He refused to acknowledge a Supreme Being, in the following words: "While we argue from the course of nature, and infer a particular intelligent cause, which at first bestowed and still preserves order in the universe, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... tablets, thy taste so absurd, Nor Libya need send thee, nor Phasis, a bird. But capers and onions, besoaking in brine, And brawn of a gammon scarce doubtful are thine. Of garbage, or flitch of hoar tunny, thou'rt vain; The rosin's thy joy, the Falernian thy bane." [Footnote: Martial, b. iii. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... ameliorating the condition of sailors; but it must ever prove a most difficult endeavor, so long as the antidote is given before the bane is removed. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... a boy is of the sort, he'll find someone to be his bane, wherever he goes. I'll have no more of the Grevilles though. If he should not go with me, my brother John would take him into his house, and keep a sharp look out after him. Just tell me, if you have no objection, how the boy strikes you. Most people think him the most taking ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Insomnia is not a bane of our modern civilization alone. This little book shows that our ancestors craved and sought sleep just as we do. Here is a prescription to cure sleeplessness, which might be tried by any wakeful soul of ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... this was Richard Saltire's business on the farm—to rid the land of that bane and pest of the Karoo, the prickly-pear cactus. The new governmental experiment was the only one, so far, that had shown any good results in getting rid of the pest. It consisted in inoculating each bush with certain poisons, which, when they entered the sap of the plant, shrivelled and withered ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... Let us run on ahead, for thunderstorms are my bane. Yes, let us run with all possible speed, run ANYWHERE, for soon the rain will be pouring down, and these parts are ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... considered as a mere formality.[**] The king, justified by success, now exulted in his pacific counsels, and boasted of his superior sagacity and penetration; when all these flattering prospects were blasted by the temerity of a man whom he had fondly exalted from a private condition, to be the bane of himself, of his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... the very sink of sin and seat of hypocrisy, and gulf where true religion was drowned. Here also now reigned presumption, and groundless confidence in God, which is the bane of souls. Amongst its rulers, doctors, and leaders, envy, malice, and blasphemy vented itself against the power of godliness, in all places where it was espied; as also against the promoters of it; yea, their Lord and Maker ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan

... to offer (from the respect he bears you) the fruits of his long experience. Half-price is a very proper privilege for those whose time or pockets do not afford them an opportunity of visiting the theatre earlier; but it is often the bane of an author on the first night of a five-act play. The new-comers know nothing of the foregone part of the drama; and having no context with which to connect allusions in the fourth and fifth acts, are apt to damn without ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... alone, without making parties, or forming sects: the whole weight of the public authority falls upon them; a price is set upon their heads; whilst they are universally regarded as execrable persons, the bane of civil society, with whom it is criminal to ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... me on a royal wane; Down the long sand they led me on, A bride new-decked, a bride of bane, In Aulis to the Nereid's son. And now estranged for evermore Beyond the far estranging foam I watch a flat and herbless shore, Unloved, unchilded, without home Or city: never more to meet For Hera's dance with Argive maids, ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... bribed to active adherence by a grant of a thousand pounds. The Duke of Lancaster, who was not his brother's tool, was quietly disposed of for the moment, by making him so exceedingly uncomfortable, that with the miserable laisser-aller, which was the bane of his fine character, he went home to enjoy himself as a country gentleman, leaving politics to take ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... and safest way to be rich in New York, as elsewhere, is for a man to confine himself to his legitimate business. Few men acquire wealth suddenly. Ninety-nine fail where one succeeds. The bane of New York commercial life, however, is that people have not the patience to wait for fortune. Every one wants to be rich in a hurry, and as no regular business will accomplish this, here or elsewhere, speculation is resorted to. The sharpers and tricksters who infest ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... sister," squeaked back Lulu in the character of Victoria. "I wish they wouldn't come at all. Children are the bane of ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... my only comfort; Oh, tell me not of danger, death, and Burleigh; Let every star shed down its mortal bane On my unshelter'd head: whilst thus I fold Thee in my raptured arms, I'll brave them all, Defy my fate, and meet its ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... it," said the clergyman, "but have little knowledge of it. I wish I had more," he added in a tone of so much regret as to cause his hearer to look curiously at him. "Yes," he said, "I wish I knew more—or less. It's the bane of my existence," declared the rector with a half laugh. John looked inquiringly at him, ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... and his irreversible relations towards his creatures, that his united justice and love shall follow both holiness and iniquity now and ever, pouring his beneficence upon them to be converted by them into their food and bliss or into their bane and misery. There is, then, no essential need of adventitious accompaniments or results to justify and pay the good, or to condemn and torture the bad, here or hereafter. To be wise, and pure, and strong, and noble, is glory and blessedness enough in itself. To be ignorant, and corrupt, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... calm and peaceful, and for some time it was so in reality; but soon I disturbed it more than ever by a vice which education developed in me, and which had hitherto been hidden under coarser but less fatal vices. This vice, the bane of my new ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... a special mission in life. Very well then! If you agree so far, let us proceed to consider the mission of a poet. There's only one justification for his existence—only one thing that distinguishes him from the professional rhymester whom nobody wants, and who is the bane and terror of society, and that is—that he has something to say! Now take your own case—a lad without as much as a moustache on his face; the son of a rich father, who has lain soft all his life, and had the bumps rolled flat before him. ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... myn, the kinges dere sone, The goode, wyse, worthy, fresshe, and free, Which alwey for to do wel is his wone, The noble Troilus, so loveth thee, That, bot ye helpe, it wol his bane be. 320 Lo, here is al, what sholde I more seye? Doth what yow list, to make him live ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer

... bane of life, Spring of tumult — source of strife: Could I but half thy curses tell, The wise would wish thee ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... friends whom he never forgot, being of a very generous and loving disposition. I think that those years at Harrow were the happiest he ever knew, for he was under a strict discipline, and was too young to indulge in those dissipations which were the bane of his subsequent life. But he was not distinguished as a scholar, in the ordinary sense, although in his school-boy days he wrote some poetry remarkable for his years, and read a great many books. He read in bed, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... his own; and that every clerk, and every such person, begins by keeping a servant, and that the latter is generally provided before the wife be installed: I am well aware of all this; but knowing, from long and attentive observation, that it is the great bane of the marriage life; the great cause of that penury, and of those numerous and tormenting embarrassments, amidst which conjugal felicity can seldom long be kept alive, I give the advice, and state the reasons ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... armed: my death and life, My bane and antidote, are both before me. This in a moment brings me to an end; But this informs me I shall never die. The soul, secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... Kendenup and the grazing-ground, and barks round it, keeping the sheep off it, till the whole flock has safely passed. This poison-plant—of which there are several kinds, some more deadly than others—is the bane of the colony. They say that sheep born in the colony know it, and impart their knowledge to their lambs, but that all imported sheep eat it readily and ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... knows what pain is at the bottom of it all?" she said. "But one thing always puzzles me. Ideala rails at evils that never hurt her, and yet she speaks of marriage, which has been her bane, as if it were a holy and perfect state, upon which it is ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... Catalogues are another bane of the motorist's life. He may have just become possessed of the latest thing in a Mercedes (and paid an enhanced price for an early delivery), yet upon seeing some new make of car advertised, he will immediately send for a catalogue and prospectus, ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... to school, from which in the end he ran away, wandered about in Wales for a time, and by-and-by found his way to London; in 1803 was sent to Oxford, which in 1807 he left in disgust; it was here as an anodyne he took to opium, and acquired that habit which was the bane of his life; on leaving Oxford he went to Bath beside his mother, where he formed a connection by which he was introduced to Wordsworth and Southey, and led to settle to literary work at Grasmere, in the Lake District; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... aloud, "that Nature should set the bane and the antidote side by side, the one twined about the other. Well, so it is in everything; yes, even in the heart of man. Shall I gather some of this juice also? No; for then I might repent and save him, remembering that ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard

... been a stern parent, and had opposed Ikey's desire to enlist in the Navy. He always declared he needed the boy to help in the store and to take out orders. Ikey had got so that he fairly hated the store and its stock in trade. Pigs feet and sauerkraut and dill pickles were the bane ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... showing both diseased and healthy specimens of wheat. "Had to hunt hard to find that. Smut is the bane of all wheat-growers. I never saw so little of it as there is here. In fact, we know scarcely nothin' about smut an' its cure, if there is any. You farmers who raise only grain have got the work down to a science. This ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... gentle look, Flying expir'd, with'ring the lily's flower. Look there how he doth knock against his breast! The other ye behold, who for his cheek Makes of one hand a couch, with frequent sighs. They are the father and the father-in-law Of Gallia's bane: his vicious life they know And foul; thence comes the grief that ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... That blade in its blood-rusted scabbard. The PHARAOHS, the CAESARS have found That it wounds him who wields it; and you, though your victim there, prone on the ground, Look helpless and hopeless, you also shall find Persecution a bane Which shall lead to a Red Sea of blood to o'erwhelm selfish Tyranny's train. "Beware!" Tis the shade of MENEPTHA that whispers the warning from far. Concerning that sword there's a lesson the PHARAOH may teach to the TSAR! * * ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various

... is,—splendid, fascinating, and haunting, though at times so dark and fearful. No words of mine can give an idea of the depth, the strength, the madness of his love. It has been the blessing and the bane, the joy and the terror, the angel and the demon of my life. I know it was sinful in its wild excess, and mine was sinful, too, in its blind idolatry, and I know the blessing of God could not hallow such a union. But how can I help feeling the dearth, the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... friend; one would better be trustful of ninety-nine friends who are false than doubtful of one who is true. Suspicion and super-sensitiveness are at once the badge and the bane ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... check th' encroachment—to declare "Thus far! no further, shall the assailant dare;" Thou keep'st thy ermine white, thy State secure, Thy fortunes prosperous, and thy freedom sure; No glozing art deceives thee to thy bane; The tempter and the usurper strive in vain! Thy spear's first touch unfolds the fiendish form, And first, with fearless breast, thou meet'st the storm; Though hosts assail thee, thou thyself a host, Prepar'st to meet the invader on the coast: Thy generous sons ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... if it were not for the incredulity and doubt and agnostico-schismatical hesitation, and very cumbersome air of questioning-and-peering-about, which is the bane of our moderns, very certainly I should now go on to tell of giants as big as cedars, living in mountains of precious stones, and drawn to battle by dragons in cars of gold; or of towns where the customs of men ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... dother (daughter) o' an episcopalian minister, and she keepit a school in Portcloddie. I saw him first mysel' whan I was aboot twenty—that was jist the year afore I was merried. He was a gey (considerably) auld man than, but as straucht as an ellwand, and jist pooerfu' beyon' belief. His shackle-bane (wrist) was as thick as baith mine; and years and years efter that, whan he tuik his son, my husband, and his ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... have due prominence given to them. Else criticism, besides being really false to its own nature, merely continues in the old rut which it has hitherto followed in this country, and will certainly miss the chance now given to it. For what is at present the bane of criticism in this country? It is that practical considerations cling to it and stifle it. It subserves interests not its own. Our organs of criticism are organs of men and parties having practical ends to serve, and with them those practical ends are the first thing and the play of mind the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... You know perfectly well, Jack, that insincerity is the bane of domestic and social life; that hypocrisy is a child of the Evil One, and that vain and false pretensions are the fatal lures that lead us on to destruction. How can we respect ourselves or expect our friends ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... the cry. "Burn it—burn it," and augmented by fresh numbers each minute, the ignorant, and, in many respects, ruffianly assemblage, soon arrived within sight of what had been for so many years the bane of the Bannerworths, and whatever may have been the fault of some of that race, those faults had been of a domestic character, and not at all such as would interfere with the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... and great beauty of person, and he returned only vanity and weakness for these gifts. Oh, how weak is man! Die of Beauty! Die a moral death, or live a useless, foolish life because he is wickedly vain of God's gifts! Beauty is full often the nurse of vanity, and vanity is the bane of womanhood. I am sorry to say it, and more sorry because it is so. It is a pity that so lovely a gift from the Hand Divine should be so wickedly perverted. Beauty ought to inspire rather than weaken its possessor, ought to elevate rather than depress her. And it ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... and blessing of our American life that we are never quite content. We all expect to go somewhere before we die, and have a better time when we get there than we can have at home. The bane of our life is discontent. We say we will work so long, and then we will enjoy ourselves. But we find it just as Thackeray has expressed it. "When I was a boy," he said, "I wanted some taffy—it was a shilling—I hadn't one. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... Germany trembled at the onslaught of the new theologians. For these services the Brethren have been both blamed and praised. According to that eminent historian, Ritschl, such men as Spangenberg were the bane of the Lutheran Church. According to Dorner, the evangelical theologian, the Brethren helped to save the Protestant faith from ruin. "When other Churches," says Dorner, "were sunk in sleep, when darkness was almost everywhere, it was ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... a very bad boy. At least his aunt, Mrs. Dorothy Grumbit, said so; and certainly she ought to have known, if anybody should, for Martin lived with her, and was, as she herself expressed it, "the bane of her existence,—the very torment of her life." No doubt of it whatever, according to Aunt Dorothy Grumbit's showing, Martin Rattler was "a ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... constitution of human nature as he feels it in himself, or has observed it in others,—whether as shown in the private society with which he has mingled, or the public concerns of nations he has observed,—will at once admit that SELFISHNESS is its greatest bane. It is at once the source of individual degradation and of public ruin. He knew the human heart well who prescribed as the first of social duties, "to love our neighbour as ourself." Of what incalculable importance was it, then, to have the mind of Europe, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... value me and what I said accordingly. At dinner we had a great deal of good discourse about Parliament; their number being uncertain, and always at the will of the King to encrease as he saw reason to erect a new borough. But all concluded that the bane of the Parliament hath been the leaving off the old custom of the places allowing wages to those that served them in Parliament, by which they chose men that understood their business and would attend it, and they could ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... is confounded There's an end of the Roundhead, Who hath been such a bane to our nation; He hath now play'd his part, And's gone out like a f-, Together with his reformation; For by his good favour He hath left a bad savour; But's no matter, we'll trust him no more. Kings and queens may appear Once again in our sphere, Now the knaves are ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... an excellent treatise of Criminalison; we, too, want a refonte of our criminal law. What is called civilisation has gorged our society with an infinity of malpractices unknown to our ruder but better fathers; and we suffer from the bane of modern civilisation, that idiot charity towards the refuse of mankind, coupled to a perfect indifference for the honest people they assail or bring to ruin. To that endemic disease of the mind no penal statute ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... all Creole art-effort"—(we take up the apothecary's words at a point where Clotilde was leaning forward and slightly frowning in an honest attempt to comprehend his condensed English)—"the bane of all Creole art-effort, so far as I have seen it, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... bring the ungainly beast into better form. It appeared that he was just recovering from the distemper and "sore tongue," which had followed each other in rapid succession. These two diseases are the terror and bane of Virginian and Maryland stables. An animal who has once surmounted them is supposed to be seasoned, and acquires considerable additional value, like a ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence



Words linked to "Bane" :   scourge, leopard's-bane, curse, wolf's bane



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