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Ill-starred   Listen
adjective
Ill-starred  adj.  Fated to be unfortunate; unlucky; as, an ill-starred man or day.
Synonyms: ill-fated, ill-omened, unlucky.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ill-starred" Quotes from Famous Books



... gathered together their allies, and attacking the revellers, defeated them with great slaughter, so that less than half of them escaped in their ships. Yet this was only the first of the many mishaps which befell the ill-starred Ulysses. So persistently did misfortune pursue him that the superstitious Greeks declared that he must have incurred the hatred of the sea-god, Neptune, who would not let ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... for the last time at her lodgings. He brought in his hand a legal-looking paper, which he had found in searching among Alan's effects, for he had carried them off to his hotel, leaving not even a memento of her ill-starred love to Herminia. "This may interest you," he said dryly. "You will see at once it is in ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... Mr. Emilius,—of course without any record of the serjeant's bitter speech,—and the suitor now gave the news to his lady-love. Those two horrid men had at last been found guilty, and punished with all the severity of the law. "Poor fellows," said Lady Eustace,—"poor Mr. Benjamin! Those ill-starred jewels have been almost as unkind to him ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... influence of the central and tangential forces, which Jeremiah Horrocks devised, when pursuing Kepler's theory of planetary motion,—his intuition being, that the motions of the spheres might be represented by terrestrial movements. We may mention the observation which the ill-starred Horrocks makes, in a letter,[1] on the occasion of this experiment, as one of the sublimities of Science:—"It appears to me, however, that I have fallen upon the true theory, and that it admits of being illustrated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... the monkey-tricks of her little brothers; and she told all this with a simple grace and innocent frankness not a little alluring. Yet I was pretty near the truth; for, without being aware of it, she uniformly concluded with the one favourite theme: her ill-starred love. Still I went on acting the part of the UNAMIABLE, in the hope that she would take a spite against me. But whether from inadvertency or design, she would not take the hint, and I was at last fairly compelled to ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... bronzed cheek; it quivered in his hands. The dry and cold atmosphere amplified the graces of his long curling yellow hair that she and his mother loved. His hat was pushed back from his face. He had not spoken to her since the day of his ill-starred confidence, but he would ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... to us The rich gift of thy genius gave, to thee Nought else but misery. Ill-starred Torquato, whom thy song, So sweet, could not console, Nor melt the ice, to which The genial current of thy soul Was turned, by private envy, princely hate; And then, by Love abandoned, life's last dream! To thee, nought real seemed but nothingness, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... the King of Terrors mid the scaith Of many an hurricane and trenched field? Far other: weavers from the stocking-frame; Boys from the plough; cornets with beardless chin, But steeped in honour and in discipline! Weep, Britain, for the Cape whose ill-starred name, Long since divorced from Hope suggests but shame, Disaster, and thy Captains held at bay By naked hordes; but as thou weepest, thank Heaven for those undegenerate sons who sank Aboard the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... laboured under a cold; and that the performance might possibly have been postponed with advantage for some nights further—still keeping the same serene countenance, while M. sweat like a bull. It would be invidious to pursue the fates of this ill-starred evening. In vain did the plot thicken in the scenes that followed, in vain the dialogue wax more passionate and stirring, and the progress of the sentiment point more and more clearly to the arduous developement which impended. In vain the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... thought he was thinking more of her heart-affair than his own, when she finally left him. Kenneth was heartily interested in the ill-starred romance. He bade her good-night with real affection ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... of protested bills and writs. The Levantine, gone off to some spa accompanied by her masseur and her negress, was totally indifferent to the ruin of the establishment; Bompain—the man in the fez—in frightened bewilderment amid the demands for money, not knowing how to approach his ill-starred master, who persistently kept his bed and turned his face to the wall as soon as business matters were mentioned. His old mother alone remained behind to face the disaster, with the knowledge born of her narrow and straitened experience as a village woman, who knows what a stamped document—a ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... prayers, I shall by force, that force which is lawful in the interest of a friend, make Sophronia thine. I know the might of Love, how redoubtable it is, and how, not once only, but oftentimes, it has brought ill-starred lovers to a miserable death; and thee I see so hard bested that turn back thou mightst not, nor get the better of thy grief, but holding on thy course, must succumb, and perish, and without doubt I should speedily follow thee. And so, had I no other cause to love thee, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... whose heart glows with independence, and melts with sensibility, inly pines under the neglect, or writhes in bitterness of soul, under the contumely of arrogant, unfeeling wealth. Oppressed by thee, the son of genius, whose ill-starred ambition plants him at the tables of the fashionable and polite, must see in suffering silence, his remark neglected, and his person despised, while shallow greatness in his idiot attempts at wit, shall meet with countenance and applause. Nor is it only the family of worth that ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... terrible Stelzer, surnamed Lope. This fellow had taken advantage of the passing of Polish refugees, who had at that time already been driven over the frontier and were making their way through Germany to France, to disguise himself as an ill-starred champion of freedom, and he subsequently found his way to the Foreign Legion in Algeria. On the way home from the gathering, Degelow, whom I was to meet in a few weeks, proposed a 'truce.' This was a device which, if it was accepted, as it was ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... Representative Chamber of the Orleans Monarchy, and in the Legislature of the Republic,—delivered for the benefit of readers far removed by time and distance, during the latter months of the rickety infancy of that ill-starred Government and the first period of the Second Empire. Tocqueville spoke from a point of vantage, such as few other men have attained, upon a theme which he had studied profoundly in youth, and upon which Fate had ever since been writing elaborate commentaries. He spoke ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... the frightened raven flies, Soon as the rising eagle cuts the air; The shaggy wolf unseen and trembling lies, When the hoarse roar proclaims the lion near. Ill-starred did we our forts and lines forsake, To dare our British foes to open fight: Our conquest we by stratagem should make; Our triumph had been founded in our flight. 'Tis ours by craft and by surprise to gain; 'Tis theirs to meet in arms, and ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... Thenocris, a poor, unfortunate maiden, dumb of tongue and mind," he answered. "In my country we would call her mute and senseless, but here among the Kemi they revere such ill-starred creatures, thinking that because they act strangely, and look not upon the world as others do, their souls must be turned within to the contemplation of hidden and spiritual things. They think such creatures know the secrets of the ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... and from the ill-starred Guelph sympathies of Florence for a foreign prince, which familiarized it with foreign intervention, came all the disasters which followed. But who does not admire the people which was wrought up by its venerated preacher to a mood of such sustained loftiness that for the first ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... Missolin's victory, Charlemagne went with his twelve knights and his great army through Tarbes on his way to Spain to fight the Moors. And when that ill-starred expedition was defeated and its warriors bold were fleeing back to France, Roland—so the story goes—finding no pass in the Pyrenees where he needed one desperately, cleaved one with his ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin

... think that their return together was something more than a coincidence, and that Lucien and Louise, loving with all their hearts, had been separated by a double treason. Pique, very likely, had brought about this ill-starred match with Chatelet. And a reaction set in ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... reign of the ill-starred John, St. Michael's Mount passed, in common with the rest of Normandy, under the sceptre of France, and suffered severely upon the occasion. Guy of Thouars, then in alliance with Philip-Augustus, advanced against it at the head of an army of Britons; and, experiencing on the part of ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... Dysart was right," says he. "He prophesied there would be rain. He advised you not to undertake our ill-starred journey of—yesterday." There is distinct and very malicious meaning in the emphasis he throws into the ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... the place; for by nearly starving there, years before, with the others of Governor la Barre's ill-starred expedition, he had contributed to giving ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... his lips; and when there came intervals of comparative ease, he would ask of those about him how affairs without were proceeding, giving orders from time to time with all his old acumen and force, and never forgetting to inquire for the wounded who had been brought off from the ill-starred assault, and had been given the best quarters which the camp afforded. He had never any pity for himself, but always plenty ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... please with my own servants, and yours too, as you will find, and have found, I should think. Moreover, I am not going to be lectured by you as if I were a child"—Mrs. Lisle flung herself out of the room, to vent her bad humor upon whatever ill-starred persons should ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... had notoriously threatened the lost young man, and had, according to the showing of his own faithful friend and tutor who strove so hard for him, a cause of bitter animosity (created by himself, and stated by himself), against that ill-starred fellow. He had armed himself with an offensive weapon for the fatal night, and he had gone off early in the morning, after making preparations for departure. He had been found with traces of blood on him; truly, they might have been ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... roused the people of the village, and they crowded round the ill-starred spot. They wished to put out the fire and save the house, but the farmer pushed them back, saying, "Let it be. What does the house matter, if he only perishes? He has tormented me long enough, and I will plague him now, and all may yet ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... that wafted us out of the neighbourhood of the ill-starred City of Calcutta held good, and, gradually freshening and working round more from the southward, eventually resolved itself into the south-east trade, under the beneficent influence of which, with our larboard tacks ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... be discerned from below, Karl, standing on the topmost round of the last ladder that had been planted, saw at once, with the eye of an engineer, that the difficulty was insurmountable. It would be as easy for them to fly, is to stand a ladder upon that ill-starred ledge; and with this conviction fully impressed upon his mind, the young plant-hunter returned slowly and sorrowfully to the ground to communicate the disagreeable ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... scandal, no violence," cried Philometor anxiously. "The best way would be for me to write to Asclepiodorus, and beg him in a friendly manner to entrust this girl—Ismene or Irene, or whatever the ill-starred child's name is—for a few days to you, Cleopatra, for your pleasure. I can offer him a prospect of an addition to the gift of land I made today, and which fell far ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... she had turned her back on the multitude; but Johannes, the Christian lawyer, the chief freedman of the household, had hurried into the court-yard, just in time to entreat her to give up this ill-starred demonstration, and to extinguish the fire she had tried to kindle. So long as Caesar wore the purple, rebellion against him, to whom the Divinity had intrusted the sovereignty, was a sin. The scheme ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... He had not felt his age since he had bought his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it here at Robin Hill over three years ago. It was as if he had been getting younger every spring, living in the country with his son and his grandchildren—June, and the little ones of the second marriage, Jolly and Holly; living down here out ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... admitted into the university as a licentiate in theology; but shortly after his promotion, he quitted his native country, and was for some years a wanderer amongst the splendid ruins of Italy. The treasures of art which mock the nakedness of this ill-starred country were to him what they are ever to the mind of the artist,—they revealed a new world. Unlike many others, however, Kinkel was not bewildered by the beauty which so suddenly burst upon his view. He was not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... to the surface were quickly made. Up and up went the M. N. 1, leaving the ill-starred Pandora to whatever else fate had in store ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... added, "the people really worship the ground she walks upon and since her loss on that ill-starred expedition all Helium ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... commonplace stories from a gentleman in black ... no one durst say black was his eye; while I ... only wanting that ceremony, am made a Sunday's laughing-stock, and abused like a pickpocket. I was well aware, though, that if my ill-starred fortune got the least hint of my connubial wish, my scheme would go to nothing. To prevent this I determined to take my measures with such thought and fore-thought, such cautions and precautions, that all the malignant planets in the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... exertion for raising themselves, individually, from their degraded condition, by the earnest application and improvement of their means and faculties. The feeling of many of them seems to be, that they must and will sullenly abide by the ill-starred fate of their order, till some great comprehensive alteration in their favor shall absolve them from that bond of hostile sentiment, in which they make common cause against the superior classes; and shall create a state of things in which it shall be worth while for the individual to make ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... ill-starred one! In love's chain, Full hard to loose, he captive lies! Not soon his senses will regain Whom ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... brilliant and erratic son. In his short and disastrous sojourn in Boston, when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb, it is not likely that his thought once turned to the old house on Haskins, now Carver, Street, where his ill-starred life began. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... she was actuated by higher principles of humanity than he had a right to look for in exciting and demoralizing times of war. And then could she possibly have recognized him?—for it was no other than he that had borne the ill-starred flag. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... fortune declared in her favour she would have embraced the Duchess as a deliverer. Vanquished and disarmed, she abandoned her. As she had protested in terms of horror against the conspiracy that had failed, her two young, imprudent, and ill-starred accomplices, Cinq Mars and De Thou, mounted the scaffold without breathing her name. Finding also both the King and Richelieu violently exasperated against Mdme. de Chevreuse, and firmly resolved to reject the renewed entreaties of her family to obtain her recall, Anne of Austria, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... the background of his work. He is no idyllic posture-monger. The march of events as they drive forward the primitive earth-born men and women of Wessex, thrills one with the same weight of accumulated fatality, as—the comparison is tedious and pedantic—the fortunes of the ill-starred houses of Argos and Thebes. One peculiarity of Mr. Hardy's method must finally be mentioned, as giving their most characteristic quality to these formidable scenes—I mean his preference for form over ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys

... It was an ill-starred moment for that honest boast. There came a thumping of feet in the hall. The man who burst in was ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... sight of it. I confessed my impatience for the interval to pass; for my interest was now fully awakened and very lively;—so well-informed and so polished a gentleman, so accomplished and so fluent, so ill-starred and sad, so every way ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... An ill-starred wretch, a fiend of wicked heart, Gave answer then, and to his father said:— "We shall not quickly work him any harm, Nor slay him by our wiles; go thou to him; There wilt thou surely find a bitter fight, ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown

... tactics which he would follow when the conflict began. He was certain that he would be chosen to lead his people, for he had led them in numerous native wars, in the conflict in 1881, and later when Jameson made his ill-starred entry into the Transvaal. Cronje was a man who loved to be amid the quietude of his farm, but he was in the cities often enough to realise that war was the only probable solution of the differences between the Uitlanders ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... (so to speak) antithetically with the last misfortune of the unlucky Spithridates. His ill-starred likeness to Cyrus, assisted by a suit of armour which Cyrus has given to him, make the enemy certain that he is Cyrus himself, and he is furiously assaulted in an off-action, surrounded, and killed. His head is taken to Thomyris, who, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... hardly more than a hundred years that the Germans could be said to possess a national literature. Even the literature of the eighteenth century was ill-starred by the partisan strife between the Saxons and the Swiss, a strife which had its origin more particularly in irreconcilable differences of language. Permanent peace was concluded at Weimar without any feeling that the supremacy of this spiritual ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... so securely on the effect of experience and the pressure of events to teach Hadria the desirable lesson, and they were dismayed to find that, unlike other women, she had failed to learn it. Henriette was in despair. It was she who had brought about the ill-starred union. How could she ever forgive herself? How repair the error she had made? Only by devoting herself to her brother, and trying patiently to bring his wife to a wiser frame ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... deserts us; the ancient narrative is broken, and the latter part is lost, leaving us to divine as we may the future of the ill-starred colony. That it did not long survive is certain. The King, in great need of Roberval, sent Cartier to bring him home, and this voyage seems to have taken place in the summer of 1543. It is said that, in after ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... ill-starred concurrence of circumstances, which might have palliated any excesses either of temper or conduct into which they drove him, it was, after all, I am persuaded, to no such serious causes that the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... his knight-errantry which he had laid aside, it was in consequence of having been previously in conclave with the curate and the barber on the means to be adopted to induce Don Quixote to stay at home in peace and quiet without worrying himself with his ill-starred adventures; at which consultation it was decided by the unanimous vote of all, and on the special advice of Carrasco, that Don Quixote should be allowed to go, as it seemed impossible to restrain him, and that Samson should sally forth to meet him as ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... cruel parents' jealousy, gave the vows of her broken heart to the church. And that music is her requiem, and his too! For after those vows had been pronounced, and the black veil had shut out hope for ever, a haggard youth was released from confinement, of whose few and ill-starred years the turbid waters of the Pasig soon ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... Sylvia about the affair; only he was more than usually tender to her in his rough way, and thought, morning, noon, and night, on what he could do to give her pleasure, and drive away all recollection of her ill-starred love. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... of an encampment of some of the men was discovered, and at Beechey Island, near by, carpenters' tools, empty meat cans, and the graves of three of the men threw more light on the mystery of the ill-starred expedition. A few years later, at Victory Point, Lieutenant Hobson found a record of the death of Franklin, the ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... reeling to and fro like a drunken man, fell headlong, raising clouds of smoke and a shower of sparks in his fall. Alas! poor Oreeque, the newly risen sun was now shining on your ashes, and on the dead bodies of the ill-starred Bondia and her child, whose bones, ere his setting, the birds of the air, and beasts of the forest, will leave as white and fleshless as your own. The officer, who belonged to the army investing Carthagena, now treated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various

... as Mrs. Royal watched the little curly head lying upon the pillow, she gave a deep sigh as she bent over and kissed him. Must he go through life handicapped? she asked herself, for no fault of his own? Would he always be looked upon as a waif, an ill-starred child, and in the eyes of the world, ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody

... right and left. Desgrais, chief of the police, by a crafty ruse, penetrated into the secret circle of La Voisin, and she, with a crowd of associates, perished in the fires of the Place de Greve. She left an ill-starred daughter, Marie Exili, to the blank charity of the streets of Paris, and the possession of many of the frightful secrets of her mother ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... accuracy of either of these varying descriptions,—the one penned by a disappointed, and perhaps wavering, adherent, the other by a man whose personal interests were irrevocably involved with those of James. We must trust to other sources to enable us to form a due estimate of the merits of this ill-starred Prince. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... force could be sent to collect it. As late as 1837 the great Sikh leader, Hari Singh Nalwa, fell fighting with the Afghans at Jamrud. The Barakzai, Dost Muhammad, had been the ruler of Kabul since 1826. In 1838, when the English launched their ill-starred expedition to restore Shah Shuja to his throne, Ranjit Singh did not refuse his help in the passage through the Panjab. But he was worn out by toils and excesses, and next year the weary lion of ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... did not permit his master to forget the three promised ass-colts; so Don Quixote wrote an order to his niece in the notebook of the ill-starred Cardenio. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Palaeonto-theologist rushed after a butterfly-net, while Queen Mab, in unutterable indignation, rose slowly into the air, followed by the bewildered Owl, who had not had time to explain the boy's 'new departure' to himself on scientific principles. It was not till they were fully half a mile from the ill-starred spot that the Owl opened his beak to murmur, with an air of long-suffering melancholy but ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... felt beside her; already had both, in fine, begun to console each other with the reflection that the child which Hortense now bore beneath her heart would, one day, be to them a compensation for their ill-starred ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... at the suggestion of the gifted, emancipated and ill-starred Charlotte von Kalb, Jean Paul visited Weimar, already a Mecca of literary pilgrimage and the centre of neo-classicism. There, those who, like Herder, were jealous of Goethe, and those who, like Frau von Stein, were estranged from him, received the new light ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Garden Theatre.—No future account of this theatre will be complete without the facts connected with the ill-starred Delafield; just as, into the Olympic, the history of the defaulter Watts, of the Globe Assurance Office, must ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 49, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1850 • Various

... were her eyes for the sight of it, the sight of the simple name "Agnes Bibby" at the head of her first signed story—the story that was to take away the reproach from the name that the ill-starred interview had brought! ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... narrative and convulsed her hearers with the remedies tried by the fat prince to reduce his weight. Then the story was passed on to Anne. With each narrator it grew funnier, until the party screamed with laughter over the misfortunes of the ill-starred prince. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower

... ill-starred commercial speculation, however, Lincoln derived one incidental benefit, and it may be said it became the determining factor in his career. It is evident from his own language that he underwent a severe mental struggle ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... a little excitement was afforded us, to relieve us from the monotonous life which we are spending. A detachment of the regiment, commanded by Captain Griggs, made a bold dash upon an ill-starred portion of Mosby's band, near Aldie, where we captured three men and twenty horses and equipments, most of which had formerly belonged to our service, having been taken by these wily guerillas. Nearly every ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... of union between Captain Wilde and his wife, only increased their estrangement by furnishing another subject of contention. Alas! the peace of Eden was not more utterly destroyed by the treacherous wiles of the serpent than that of this ill-starred household by the whispers of this serpent in woman's shape. Under her continual exasperations, Mrs. Wilde's temper, naturally harsh, became at last so outrageous and unbridled as to render her unfortunate husband's life one long course ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... This ill-starred expedition was the last sent from St. Domingo against the buccaneers, who thenceforward became the masters and lord proprietaries of Tortuga. Nor were the buccaneers longer exclusively composed of adventurous Frenchmen. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the beautiful little town of Saumur thinks of the historic figures connected with its name? Even the grand personality of Duplessis Morny sinks into insignificance by comparison with that of the miser's daughter, the gentle, ill-starred Eugnie Grandet! And who when Carcassonne first breaks upon his view thinks of aught but Nadaud's immortal ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... religion are those parents who say of their pallid, puny, sedentary, lifeless, joyless little offspring, "He is born for a minister," while the ruddy, the brave, and the strong are as promptly assigned to a secular career! Never yet did an ill-starred young saint waste his Saturday afternoons in preaching sermons in the garret to his deluded little sisters and their dolls, without living to repent it in maturity. These precocious little sentimentalists wither away like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... of the impending outbreak. How their labours eventuated, and how the Fenian insurrection of March, '67, resulted, it is unnecessary to explain; it is enough for our purpose to state that for several months after that ill-starred movement was crushed, Colonel Kelly continued to reside in Dublin, moving about with an absence of disguise and a disregard for concealment which astonished his confederates, but which, perhaps, contributed in no slight degree to ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... while every hour we stayed we dropped further and further astern of the main Armada, so that, had it pleased the Englishmen to spare a ship or two to look after us, I verily believe we might have been cut off for good, and towed into an English port, like these same ill-starred store ships ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... are no less than the royal message bidding him return to 'share the kingdom' with his friend. From that point the first portion of the play easily unfolds: it deals with the strife, the brief triumphs and the bitter defeats which fill the eventful period of this ill-starred friendship. The actual crisis falls within the third act: it is marked by the murder of Gaveston and the resolution of the king at last to offer armed resistance to the tyranny of the barons. The oath by which he seals ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... laughing at me; nevertheless, I deem it incumbent on me to raise my warning voice. Etiquette is something sublime and holy—it is the sacred wall separating the sovereign from his people. If that ill-starred queen, Marie Antoinette, had not torn down this wall, she would probably have met with a less ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... say that I was ever practically embarrassed. The embarrassment, the distress, the agony, were all for my unhappy father at home in Muskegon, struggling for life and fortune against untoward chances, returning at night from a day of ill-starred shifts and ventures, to read and perhaps to weep over that last harsh letter from his only child, to which he lacked the courage ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... South Saxons to Christianity. Although Saint Wilfrid eventually found a home in Sussex and worked hard among its people, his first attempt to bring Christianity to the county was, according to his friend Edda's Vita Wilfridi, ill-starred. I ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... fortune. He became first known as a playwriter, but also having studied architecture conceived the idea of combining his two arts by the construction of a grand theatre on the site of the present Haymarket Opera House. The enterprise was doomed to be one of the many failures from which that ill-starred spot has become remarkable, and Vanbrugh after vainly attempting to support his undertaking by the exertion of all his dramatic power, determined to quit literature altogether, and devoted himself to the more remunerative profession. In this he was successful—he built Blenheim, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... back in his chair, and wondered to himself whether to die might not prove an easy way out of the horrid situation into which chance and his ill-starred tenderness for the Dowager of ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... traffic, especially with reference to the American colonies, exhibited the proportions to which it expanded, and the tenacity with which it held on to its purpose until it met its death in the fate of the ill-starred Southern Confederacy. Every step in his narrative is supported by references to unimpeachable authorities; and the scholarly Monograph bears high testimony to the author's earnest labor, painstaking research and unswerving fidelity. Should the present work stimulate inquiry beyond the scope ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... who had been taken prisoner hard by; and was universally known by the name of Major Andre's tree. The common people regarded it with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake, and partly from the tales of strange sights, and doleful lamentations, told ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving

... man who has an eye—that is, who glares on you like a tiger—he who, in an age of revolution, is most thoroughly revolutionary, and swallows all formulas—he is made a hero, and honourable mention is decreed to him; whilst all who acted with an ill-starred moderation, who strove, with ineffectual but conscientious effort, to stay the wild movement of the revolution, are treated with derision, are dismissed with contempt, or at best ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... to prepare all minds for the deadly blow which Her Majesty received from the infamous plot of the diamond necklace. From this year, crimes and misfortunes trod closely on each others' heels in the history of the ill-starred Queen; and one calamity only disappeared to make ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... went uptown together; he home, to return later to the bank, I to the Waldorf to meet the newspaper men who were there awaiting the news of the subscription. I left him at Thirty-third Street, the question between us still unsolved. In the years that have passed since that ill-starred night, over and over again I have sifted and pounded the talk that then passed between us, and never have I been able to decide how much of what Mr. Rogers said to me was true and how much cunning argument to make me accede to his wishes. I hope none of my readers will ever ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... president of the Freedmans Bank. This ill-starred venture was then apparently in the full tide of prosperity, and promised to be a great lever in the uplifting of the submerged race. Douglass, soon after his election as president, discovered the insolvency of the institution, and insisted that it be closed up. The negro ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... her lot with the fierce Gryffyth had been one not more of public calamity than of domestic grief, and that in the natural awe and horror which the murder of her lord had caused, she felt rather for the ill-starred king than the beloved spouse. She then passed to the differences still existing between her house and Harold's, and spoke well and wisely of the desire of the young Earls to conciliate ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Blasts of frigid wind began to whistle about us, driving stinging pellets of ice into our faces. We quickened our steps, for it would not do to be caught in a storm here. The Grand Plateau has taken more lives than its ill-starred neighbor below. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various

... upon the ocean, others of equally exciting character occur upon that desert isle, where, by ill-starred chance for themselves, the pirate crew ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... emotion the tapestry she worked, the furniture she brought over from France, some mementoes of her unwise marriage, the little room in which she sat at supper with Rizzio and three or four friends when the assassins rushed in through a secret door, stabbed her ill-starred favorite, and dragged him bleeding through her bed-room into an outer audience chamber, and there left him to die, his life-blood oozing out from fifty-six wounds. The partition still stands which the Queen caused to ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... the beginning of his enterprise to give employment to his needy Colonists. Various enterprises were begun with this end in view, but they were all mere bubbles which soon burst. John Pritchard, whom Lord Selkirk had taken as his secretary to London, was largely instrumental in floating the ill-starred scheme known as the "Buffalo Wool Company." Just as on the shores of the Mediterranean, shawls were made from the long wool of the goats, so it was thought that shawls could be made of the hair or wool of the buffalo. A ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... heart to discover whether his own influence or example had helped to bring about this lamentable fall; he turned over in his mind plans for bringing the wanderer back to the fold; he ceased to think about the coming election, and thought of his ill-starred love hardly otherwise than as a possible sin which had helped perhaps to lead to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... the anniversary of her ill-starred visit to X——, and melancholy memories had greeted her at dawn, clung to her skirts, chanted their dismal refrain, and renewed the pain which time had in some degree dulled. Four years ago she had felt her mother's feverish lips on hers, in a parting kiss, and four ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... Church of St. Leu d'Esserens, which makes so fine a figure in the pleasant Oise valley between Creil and Beaumont. He was reclaimed by no less than two bishops; but the Procureur for the Provost held fast by incorrigible Colin. 1460 was an ill-starred year: for justice was making a clean sweep of "poor and indigent persons, thieves, cheats, and lock-pickers," in the neighbourhood of Paris;[11] and Colin de Cayeux, with many others, was condemned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... dealt him. Where was the use in struggling? he began to ask himself. And the poison of the thought acted like a sedative. He grew strangely calm; he almost experienced pleasure and comfort under its influence. Why struggle? Nothing could go right with him. Nothing. He was cursed—cursed with an ill-starred fortune. This sort of thing was his fate. Fate. That was it. Why ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... torch; Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a bed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,—for no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written."—Has Teufelsdrockh, to be put in mind that, nearly related ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... nigh unto the temple, before whose altars, with due devotion, I began thus to pray: 'O Venus, full of pity, sacred goddess whose altars I am joyful to approach, lend thou thy merciful ears unto my prayer; for I come to thee a young girl, though fairly fashioned yet ill-starred in love, fearful lest my empty years lead comfortless to a chill old age; therefore, if my beauty merit that I be counted among thy followers, enter thou into my breast who so desire thee, and grant that in the love ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... only to fling the glaiks in folk's een, wi' their pawky policy, and earthly ingine, their flights and refinements, and periods of eloquence, frae heathen emperors and popish canons. They canna, in that daft trash ye were reading to me, sae muckle as ca' men that are sae ill-starred as to be amang their hands, by ony name o' the dispensation o' grace, but maun new baptize them by the names of the accursed Titus, wha was made the instrument of burning the holy Temple, and other sic ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... magistrate before whom he might be taken, must let him go at once. I thought, perhaps, if I waited a few hours where I was, he would be sure to rejoin me, and we could then return to Port Jervis without Sarah's son to be sure; but, otherwise, no worse off than we were when we set out on this ill-starred ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott

... themselves dependent upon the niggard bounty of a cold and selfish relative. Slowly recovering from a severe wound which he had received in the wars of Lombardy, and disgusted with the ingratitude of the prince he served, the ill-starred Francesco was at first rejoiced to obtain any refuge from the storms of a tempestuous world; and the unceasing efforts of his young and affectionate sister to reconcile him to a bitter lot were not wholly unavailing. Summer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... recovered the Manor of Merdon, with his liberty, on Queen Mary's accession. Then it was that Philip of Spain rode through one of these villages, probably Otterbourne, soaked through with rain, on his way to his ill-starred marriage with Mary. ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... horror-stricken and heartbroken, strove in vain to bring her back to life; she was no more. He broke the fatal weapon into fragments, and flung away the ill-starred diamonds: and while preparations were proceeding for his daughter's funeral instead of her wedding, he had the bleeding but still living Rustem carried into ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... Tree Hill have I rolled from top to foot, while laughing maidens of the East stood round and clapped their hands and yelled; and, in the old-world garden of that pleasant Court, where played the fair-haired children of the ill-starred Stuarts, have I wandered long through many paths, my arm entwined about the waist of one of Eve's sweet daughters, while her mother raged around indignantly on the other side of the hedge, and never seemed to get any nearer to us. I have chased the lodging-house Norfolk Howard to his watery death ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... any hope for you. Galba 38 has seen to that. He has recalled from exile the man whose avarice and sour temper he judged most like his own. You witnessed for yourselves, my comrades, the extraordinary storm which signified Heaven's abhorrence at that ill-starred adoption. The Senate and People of Rome feel the same. They are counting on your courage. You alone can give strength to the right policy: it is powerless without you, however good it be. It is not to war and danger that I call you. All the troops are with us. That single plain-clothes ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... his footsteps in a westerly direction, carefully avoiding an approach to the sea, lest his troops should rise in mutiny, send for the ships, and escape from the ill-starred enterprise. This certainly indicates, under the circumstances, an unsound, if not a deranged mind. For four days the troops toiled along through a dismal region, uninhabited, and encumbered with tangled forests and ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... L'Alleg. 112, "whose bright eyes Rain influence"; Par. Lost, iv. 669, "with kindly heat Of various influence." Astrology has left many traces upon the English language, e.g. influence, disastrous, ill-starred, ascendant, etc. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... springing from his seat, "and what profit did the immortal and ill-starred Torquato Tasso win from all his genius? A few stolen kisses on the steps of a palace. And he died of famine in a madhouse. I say it: the world's opinion, that empress of humankind, I will tear from her her crown and sceptre. Opinion tyrannizes over unhappy Italy, as over all ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France

... in the same chamber, and nearly at the same hour, in which we first presented to the reader Boabdil el Chico, that we are again admitted to the presence of that ill-starred monarch. He was not alone. His favourite slave, Amine, reclined upon the ottomans, gazing with anxious love upon his thoughtful countenance, as he leant against the glittering wall by the side of the casement, gazing abstractedly on ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Eastover by Fairfax, the royal colours were, much to the chagrin of Charles, unexpectedly hauled down from the stronghold, and the garrison, 1000 strong, tamely walked out. The Parliamentary commander made a huge "bag" by the capture. It was, however, in connection with Monmouth's ill-starred enterprise that Bridgwater attained its chief historical notoriety, for it was here that the Duke had his headquarters before the fatal engagement on Sedgemoor. Of the castle—founded by a De Briwere, who is said to have been the ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... not long before their enterprise met with success. They saw Trefusis and his chum cautiously descend by means of the ivy; then, directly the lads set out upon their ill-starred tracking expedition, the Germans, as before related, succeeded in outflanking ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... for an adaptation of "Prometheus Bound," made by the late George Parsons Lathrop for that ill-starred experiment, the Theatre of Arts and Letters. The same thoroughness of research that gave Kelley such a command of Chinese theories equipped him in what knowledge we have of Greek and the other ancient music. He has delivered a ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... quite as ill-starred as the French. Paoli accepted Buonaparte's plan, but appointed his nephew, Colonna-Cesari, to lead, with instructions to see that, if possible, "this unfortunate expedition shall end in smoke."[31] The disappointed but stubborn young aspirant remained in his subordinate ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... messages for the potentates of Europe, including the King of England. They appear to have sailed from the port of Zayton (as the Westerns called T'swan-chau or Chin-cheu in Fo-kien) in the beginning of 1292. It was an ill-starred voyage, involving long detentions on the coast of Sumatra, and in the South of India, to which, however, we are indebted for some of the best chapters in the book; and two years or upwards passed before they arrived at their destination in Persia.[19] ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... plotting—deliberately plotting, as the price of secrecy on one part—to shut me up in a lunatic asylum until my consent could be obtained to that ill-starred marriage! ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... their cargoes, to return. A vessel of this description had arrived at the port of London. The subject of the traffic having become invested with interest, a portion of the members of the House paid a visit to the ill-starred craft. The deplorably narrow quarters where hundreds of human beings were to be stowed away during the weeks that might be necessary to make their passage produced upon the minds of these gentlemen a most unfavorable impression. The various insignia of the trade did not tend to lessen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... to reach. They clinched and stalled for a moment, and the gong came shortly. But Carpentier had shown his tiger streak. Scotty Monteith, manager (so we were told) of Johnny Dundee, sat just in front of us in a pink skirt, and had been gathering up substantial wagers from the ill-starred French journalists near by. Scotty was not in any doubt as to the outcome, but even he was moved by Carpentier's gallant sally. "No one knew he was a fighter like that," ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... hours after the events narrated in the preceding chapters that Mr. Sherlock Holmes assumed command of the Gehenna, which was nothing more nor less than the shadow of the ill-starred ocean steamship City of Chicago, which tried some years ago to reach Liverpool by taking the overland route through Ireland, fortunately without detriment to her passengers or crew, who had the pleasure of the experience of shipwreck without any of the discomforts of drowning. As will be ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... of this ill-starred young gentleman gravitated towards insanity. The inner mind was exasperated by barefaced injustice and oppression; above all, by his letters being stopped; for that convinced him both Baker and Bailey, with their see-saw evasions, knew he was sane, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... catarrhal nose, which is a heritage of this house; that each pair of dark and brooding eyes hide in their depths the shadow of that dread Nemesis which, through all the fateful centuries, has dogged this brave but ill-starred race until now, alas! the place must be let, furnished, to some beastly creature in trade, such as an ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... strength of Juliet's passion. And, even as it is, perhaps there are few of our rational and sober-minded islanders who would not honestly confess, if fairly questioned, that they deem the romance and fervour of those ill-starred lovers of Verona exaggerated and over-drawn. Yet, in Italy, the picture of that affection born of a night—but "strong as death"—is one to which the veriest commonplaces of life would afford parallels without number. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... that traveller's back is turned, the things that Madame Faragon can say about the upstart coxcombry of the wretch, and as to the want of all real comforts which she is sure prevails in the home quarters of that ill-starred complaining traveller, are proof to those who hear them that the old landlady has not as yet lost all her energy. It need not be doubted that she herself religiously believes that no foul perfume has ever pervaded the sanctity of her chambers, and that no living thing has ever been seen ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope

... The ill-starred youngest Toodle but one, who would appear, from the frequency of his domestic troubles, to have been born under an unlucky planet, was prevented from performing his part in this general salutation by having fixed the sou'wester hat (with which he had been previously ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Madame Pauline Bonaparte, widow of General Leclerc, who had died of yellow fever in San Domingo. I recollect having seen this unfortunate general at the residence of the First Consul some time before his departure on the ill-starred expedition which cost him his life, and France the loss of many brave soldiers and much treasure. General Leclerc, whose name is now almost forgotten, or held in light esteem, was a kind and good man. He was passionately in love with his wife, whose giddiness, to ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... Oh, thou ill-starred midnight ranger! dark, forlorn, mysterious stranger! Wildered wanderer from the eternal lightning on Time's stormy shore! Tell us of that world of wonder—of that famed unfading "Yonder!" Rend—oh rend the veil asunder! Let our doubts and fears ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... ministers; the Polignacs, new people, creatures of Queen Marie Antoinette; the Rohans, through the influence of whose great name an unworthy member of the family was to rise to high dignity in the church and the state, and then to cast a deep shadow on the darkening popularity of that ill-starred princess. Such families as these formed an upper class among nobles, and the members firmly believed in their own prescriptive right to the best places. The poorer nobility, on the other hand, saw with great jealousy the supremacy of the court families. They insisted that there ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... could not relate stories in so accurate and unvarying a manner as himself—on the day before that on which all persons were freely set at liberty on account of exceptional public rejoicing. Yet in spite of these and many other very unendurable incidents, this impetuous and ill-starred being never felt so great a desire to retire to a solitary place and there disfigure himself permanently as a mark of his unfeigned internal displeasure, as on the occasion when he endured extreme poverty and great personal inconvenience for an entire year in order that ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... like that of the week before, would, after making an uproar for a day or two, disappear and leave the community in quiet, they were destined to disappointment. The popular exasperation and apprehension which the Squire's ill-starred attempt to regain authority had produced, gave to the elements of anarchy in the village a new cohesive force and impulse, while, thanks to the news of the spread and success of the rebellion elsewhere, the lawless were encouraged ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... were against us, as always in this ill-starred voyage. I, watching from my sand dune, saw a second figure emerge from the arroyo's mouth. It appeared to stagger as though hurt; and every eight or ten paces it stopped and rested in a bent-over position. The murky light was too dim ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... with a very different purpose, has left an elegy, in which he darkly hints at and bemoans the fate of the ill-starred young person, whose very uncommon calamity Whitelaw, Dunlop, and Milne thought a fitting subject for buffoonery and ribaldry. This bard of milder mood was Andrew Symson, before the Revolution minister of Kirkinner, in Galloway, and after his expulsion as an Episcopalian ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... me I am son to Ulysses, but it is a wise child that knows his own father. Would that I were son to one who had grown old upon his own estates, for, since you ask me, there is no more ill-starred man under heaven than he who they tell me is ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... same manner; he calls Iago that "demi-devil," and himself "an honourable murderer"; and Iago calls him a "credulous fool." Othello, too, cries for punishment; instead of "torturers ingenious," he will have "devils" to "whip" him, and "roast him in sulphur." He praises Desdemona as chaste, "ill-starred wench," "my girl," and so forth; then curses himself lustily and ends his lament ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... she him forsaken, she sometime his best-beloved, Left him, though already parted by strange fate, from realm and heirship. Oh, that destiny he girds not—strength it gave him, hero-courage, Added to his lofty spirit, touches of nobler feeling— 'Tis that she, ill-starred one, leaves him! takes the hand so wrinkled Of that old man, Seville's conqueror! Into the night, along the river, Abensaid now forth rushes: Loudly to the rocky limits, Echo bears his lamentations. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of all is the following. Strachey had been in office in the ill-starred Coalition under Fox and North. When the Ministry broke up, the King sent for Lord Shelburne, a member of the Coalition, who, it will be remembered, at once formed a Government of his own. While the Ministry was in the making, Henry Strachey ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... General Douay saw the exhausted condition of the troops, and was convinced that it would be useless to attempt to reach la Besace that day. What particularly influenced his determination, however, was the arrival of the train, that ill-starred train that had been trailing in his rear since they left Rheims, and of which the nine long miles of vehicles and animals had so terribly impeded his movements. He had given instructions from Quatre-Champs ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... Sigurd discovered Brynhild, encased in a complete armor, lying in a death-like sleep, to which she had been condemned by Odin. Sigurd woke her by opening her corselet, fell in love with her, promised to marry her, but deserted her for Gudrun. This ill-starred union was the cause of an ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... fiend, for such is ambition to the female heart. Yes, you will spend the springtime of your life chasing a painted specter, and go down to a premature grave, disappointed and miserable. Poor child, it needs no prophetic vision to predict your ill-starred career! Already the consuming fever has begun its march. In far-distant lands, I shall have no tidings of you; but none will be needed. Perhaps when I travel home to die your feverish dream will have ended; or, perchance, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... Orient. That Gouraud would have to be relieved of his command was painfully obvious, for that gallant officer had been struck by a shell while visiting a base hospital on July 8, hopelessly shattering his right arm, which had to be amputated. As, however, the French military contingent in the ill-starred Gallipoli adventure was but a small affair, the appointment of General Sarrail to the command thereof could only be regarded as the reverse of a promotion. In the first great German offensive toward Paris it was General Sarrail who had ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... sallies, the hero of his most piquant and impossible stories, which convulsed us until I felt sure that the irritated Mr. Frost must cherish a secret but lively desire to punch his head. Possibly Brian was the only one who thoroughly enjoyed himself at that ill-starred dinner, for he is keen on the scent of a precarious situation which is liable to involve everybody in total collapse. In this instance he seemed to snuff the battle from afar and stirred up all the slumbering elements of discord with unctuous satisfaction; ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... to you!" roared Black Dan, with an oath. Whereupon, dragged over the chests, the ill-starred fellow is ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... this march until we reached the Potomac, a short distance above Harper's Ferry. Here we were shown the little round house where John Brown concealed his guns and "pikes" prior to his famous raid three years before. This was his rendezvous on the night before his ill-starred expedition descended upon the State of Virginia and the South, in an insane effort to free the slaves. Our division was headed by the Fourteenth Connecticut, and as we approached the river opposite Harper's Ferry its ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... into it with the cordial confidence she merited. I have spread out this proceeding to your view, not altogether from its intrinsic interest, but because, perhaps, it affords the key to interpret the course of this ill-starred man in his wrangles with his congregation, and his terrible prominency in the awful scenes of the witchcraft delusion. He seemed to have had a love of excitement that was irrepressible, an all but insane passion for getting up a scene. When we come to the details of our story, it will be for ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... light, almost in silence; such vague words as they uttered, low as the murmur of the Loire, stirred their souls to the depths. Just as the sun sank, a last red gleam from the sky fell over them; it was like a mournful symbol of their ill-starred love. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... and scattered my resolves to the tempest. Once in the saloon I drank without regard to consequences, and without caring whether the horse I rode was as jaded and tame as Don Quixote's ill-favored but famous steed, or as wild and unmanageable as the steed to which the ill-starred Mazeppa was lashed. I did not stop to consider that a clear head and steady hand were necessary to guide that horse and protect my life, which would be endangered the moment I again mounted my horse. Ordinarily I would have gone away and left the horse to care for itself, but ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... tell me all that last night?" cried the ill-starred Lancaster. He dared not tell Bullard that the Green Box was safe in his house. Bullard would never, however great the compensation, forgive trickery against himself; and Bullard's theory remained to be proved. Lancaster's soul now seized on its last hope: that Doris would ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell



Words linked to "Ill-starred" :   ill-omened, ill-fated, doomed, unfortunate



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