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Luckless   /lˈəkləs/   Listen
Luckless

adjective
1.
Having or bringing misfortune.  Synonym: unlucky.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Luckless" Quotes from Famous Books



... country. Send home every one who is abroad, lest they should find no country to return to. Come home and stay at home while there is a country to save. When it is lost it will be time enough then for any who are luckless enough to remain alive to gather up their clothes and depart to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... conciliation. Although Ormond was a prominent member of the Lancastrian party, he at once made gracious overtures to him. Desmond, too, he won over by his courtesy, and upon the birth of his son George—afterwards the luckless Duke of Clarence—the rival earls acted as joint sponsors, and when, in 1451, he left Ireland, he appointed Ormond his deputy ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... where the horses, whose shoes were worn entirely smooth, could obtain no footing, and where every moment they and their drivers dropped down exhausted together. The famished soldiers immediately fell upon these luckless animals and tore them to pieces; then at fires, kindled with the remains of their carriages, they broiled the yet bleeding ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... took them, but began again at once in a tearful voice complaining of the dog, of Gavrila, and of her fate, declaring that she was a poor old woman, and that every one had forsaken her, no one pitied her, every one wished her dead. Meanwhile the luckless Mumu had gone on barking, while Gerasim tried in vain to call her away from the fence. 'There ... there ... again,' groaned the old lady, and once more she turned up the whites of her eyes. The doctor ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... Mind is shown One far above forethinking; processive, Yet superconscious; a Clairvoyancy That knows not what It knows, yet works therewith.— The cognizance ye mourn, Life's doom to feel, If I report it meetly, came unmeant, Emerging with blind gropes from impercipience By listless sequence—luckless, tragic Chance, In ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... and dropped to the bottom of the trench far below. To Smith's grief and Brewster's delight the automobile was hopelessly ruined, a clear loss of many thousands. Monty's joy was short-lived, for it was soon learned that three luckless workmen down in the depths had been badly injured by the green meteor from above. The mere fact that Brewster could and did pay liberally for the relief of the poor fellows afforded him little consolation. His carelessness, and possibly ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... Sleep no more, my gentle mate! With your tiny tawny bill, Wake the tuneful echo shrill, On vale or hill; Or in her airy rocky seat, Let her listen and repeat The tender ditty that you tell, The sad lament, The dire event, To luckless Itys that befell. Thence the strain Shall rise again, And soar amain, Up to the lofty palace gate Where mighty Apollo sits in state In Jove's abode, with his ivory lyre, Hymning aloud to the heavenly choir, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the Indian hastened its end, and with a rush and a yell of delight the whole party fell upon the luckless animal. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... ready to take the worst advice, got ready for his task, and on Easter Eve embarked upon the river, leaving his Vicar-General under orders to proclaim the general ban. This was done, and the edict so contrived as to catch the luckless Governor in every church. The practical effect was to close all the churches, for to whatever church the Governor went the priest refused to celebrate the Mass. Several other persons were mentioned ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... "The Early Worm is up to Catch the Fish;" the worm, caught as bait, will in turn serve as captor for some luckless fish. This, possibly, is the Bornese version of our own proverb, "The early bird ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin

... was moved at the story of his son's luckless wooing, without seeing therein, however, an irreparable misfortune. He advised him to think of something else, placed at his disposal his entire fortune, and recommended him to marry a stout Poitevine heiress, very gay and healthy, who would bear him some fine children. Then, as his estate ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... and mentally to wage a winning battle against those black vapours which flock so frequently about luckless youth, had suffered and yielded and gone down in misery. She had been crying, just why she knew not; crying because she could not help it. Hers was a state of overwrought nerves which forbade clear thinking, which distorted and warped and magnified. The babble ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... or rather Irish, history is supplied by Macaulay and belongs to the year 1689. It is one of the incidents in James the Second's brief and luckless ...
— The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst

... goat and prong, Mounted on these we whirl along; Who vainly strives to climb to-night, Is evermore a luckless wight! ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... laughter drowned the words of the luckless second speaker, and some one yelled vociferously, "Neddie the fortune-teller! Don't tell me he's shipped ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... servant of the Queen, Is a dismal failure—is a Might-have-been. In a luckless moment he discovered men Rise to high position through a ready pen. Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore—"I, With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high." Only he did not possess when he made the trial, Wicked wit of C-lv-n, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... Denison found that Jacky had not deviated from the truth—the alligators did eat the ducks, the tiger and carpet-snakes and iguanas did crawl about the place at night-time and seize any luckless fowl not strong enough to fly up to roost in the branch of a tree, the hawks did prefer live poultry to long-deceased bullock, and those hens physically capable of laying eggs laid them on an ironstone ridge about a mile away from the house. He went ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... folk around his standard. Earl Hakon and Ragnfrod sighted one another off the northernmost part of South More, & straightway Hakon gave battle, he that had most men but withal smaller ships. Hard was the struggle & therein waxed Hakon luckless; men fought from the prows and sterns, as the custom was in those times. Now there was a current in the sound, and all the ships were driven into shore, so the Earl bade his folk rest on their oars, and drift to land at such place where he should ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson

... make himself absolute, and to restore Romanism in England, caused leading Englishmen to enter on a conspiracy—kept secret with extraordinary success—with William of Orange. The luckless monarch was abandoned on every hand, and fled from his kingdom to France, an object of universal mockery. Yet Louis resolved to aid him. A French force accompanied him to Ireland, and Tourville defeated the united fleets ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... same namby-pamby style, and with the same soft voice and sweet smile, Sir Amyas talked on of pictures and battles, and carnage and levees, and drawing-rooms and balls, and butterflies.—He has a museum for the ladies, and he took me to look at it.—Sad was the hour and luckless was the day!—Among his shells was one upon which he peculiarly prided himself, and which he showed me as an unique. I was, I assure you, prudently silent till he pressed for my opinion, and then ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... plates, and the handles of their knives and forks, which, by a mysterious inspiration, were always hot. When they were ready to go, March experienced from the apathy of the baggage clerk and the reluctance of the porters a more piercing distress than any he had known at the railroad stations; and one luckless valise which he ordered sent after him by express reached his bankers in Paris a fortnight overdue, with an accumulation of charges upon it outvaluing the books which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... some unfeeling husbands, who have treated their luckless wives with unvaried and unremitting unkindness, till perhaps the arrival of their last illness, and who then became all assiduity and attention. Bat when that period approaches, their remorse, like ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... home, where his first act was to smash the luckless hat and replace it with another. But it was some time before he recovered from the horrors of that near approach to extermination, and he passed a very ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum

... easy reach of their capital, the later French sovereigns had little reason to take the air in the dreariest province of their kingdom. Chambord therefore suffered from royal indifference, though in the last century a use was found for its deserted halls. In 1725 it was oc- cupied by the luckless Stanislaus Leszczynski, who spent the greater part of his life in being elected King of Poland and being ousted from his throne, and who, at this time a refugee in France, had found a compensation for some of his misfortunes in marry- ing his daughter ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... winding ascent towards Posilipo with its glorious views over bay and mountains, all tinged with the deep rose and violet of a Neapolitan sunset; or the stroll along the fashionable sea front, named after the luckless Caracciolo the modern hero of Naples, where in endless succession the carriages pass backwards and forwards within the limited space between the sea and the greenery of the Villa Reale. Or it may be that our more active feet may ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... but ineffectually against this practice. Indeed, they exaggerated its evils, for many of the "criminals" were only mild offenders against unduly harsh and cruel laws. A peasant caught shooting a rabbit on a lord's estate or a luckless servant girl who purloined a pocket handkerchief was branded as a criminal along with sturdy thieves and incorrigible rascals. Other transported offenders were "political criminals"; that is, persons who criticized or opposed the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... basement ladder, at the ragged gap of Israel's "on'y fittin' way," was visible, to prove his word, another man's head, white-turbaned like his own, and two dark limy hands passing in a pail of mortar. Welcome distraction. True, Greenleaf's luckless question still stood unanswered, but just then an orderly summoned him to the busy generals and ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... he obtained the reputation he had missed when living. His works were widely circulated, and some of them printed so late as 1672. They were reckoned an important help to the student of hermetic science; and the name of the luckless Bernard Trevisan was always included in the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... Navarino for a short time; the other, a more material person, 'the bold Bavarian in a luckless hour,' seems chiefly to lament a fast of three days at Argos, and the loss of twenty-five paras a day of pay in arrear, and some baggage at Tripolitza; but takes his wounds, and marches, and battles in very good part. Both are very simple, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... and receive the prize from the hand of the beautiful Matilda, who smiled on him with particular grace. The jealous knight scrutinised the successful champion with great attention, and surely thought he had seen that face before. In the mean time the forester led the lady to the station. The luckless Sir Ralph drank deep draughts of love from the matchless grace of her attitudes, as, taking the bow in her left hand, and adjusting the arrow with her right, advancing her left foot, and gently curving her beautiful figure ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... colonel essay a joke, and were by no means sure that his first remark was not the preface to serious condemnation of Joe. Colonel Marker had often been heard to treat the subject of smashed machines in a manner decidedly uncomplimentary to the luckless aviator who was responsible. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll

... though, in order to provide Paris with a cosmopolitan population, the world was drained of its rulers, of its prosperous and luckless financiers, of its high and low adventurers, of its tribe of fortune-seekers, and its pushing men and women of every description. And the result was an odd blend of classes and individuals worthy, it may be, of the new democratic ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... All these luckless civilians—four thousand of them—had been herded together in the stables, paddock, and stands of the Ruhleben track. The place was not as suited for a prison as the high land of Zossen, the stalls with their four bunks were dismal enough, and the lofts overhead, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... his own counsel as to the events of the afternoon, and bided the time when he might turn them to his own ends. Eudemius also was more silent than his position as host seemed to warrant. That he was in bad humor was to be seen from the threatening glances he cast at the luckless slave when a dish was delayed or a wine too warm. He was an old man, this latter, white-haired and bent and very skilful, with a sunken face as pale as parchment. Marius, as keen to observe as he was silent, saw that always the old man watched his lord's face with an eager anxiety, like ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... quail at the head of her brood until, romping, laughing, and panting, with a loosened braid of brown hair, a hat hanging by a knotted ribbon from her throat, she came suddenly and violently, in the heart of the forest, upon—the luckless Sandy! ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... the Basin and came beneath the shadow of the frown of Blomidon, Pierrot pointed out first the perilous ledge to which he had climbed for the vanished "star," and then the tide-washed hollow under the cliff, where they had picked up the body of the luckless sailor from St. Malo. "Who knows, Marie," continued Pierrot, "if thou hadst not lost that evil stone thou might'st one day have seen me in such a case as that sailor came unto!" And then, not because she was at all convinced by such reasoning, but because her lover's voice ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... as head cook to the limit of her resources, and with flushed cheek and knitted brow she moved about among her willing assitants with all the importance of a Bechamel, a Felix, the maitre-d'hotel of Cardinal Fesch with his two turbots, or luckless Vatel who fell upon his sword and died because he had no turbot at all; or even, rising in the grandeur of the comparison, we may liken her to Domitian, who, weary of persecuting Christians, one ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... the luckless Montalvo, when the case had been proved to the hilt against him by the evidence of the priest who brought the letter, of the wife's letters, and of the truculent Black Meg, who now found an opportunity of paying back "hot water for cold," there was little mercy. ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... known better with whom he had to deal. The enchantress, indignant at such treatment, determined on revenge. Pretending to be reconciled to the coming marriage, she prepared a poisoned robe, which she sent as a wedding-present to the hapless Glauce. No sooner had the luckless bride put on this perilous gift than the robe burst into flames, and she was consumed; while her father, who sought to tear from her the fatal garment, met ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Farquhart's turn to rub his eyes. He wondered if he was indeed awake. And then the curses that had shaped his lips passed the threshold and poured forth in volumes upon the head of the luckless servant, who was in no wise to blame, and finally upon the Lady Barbara herself. For to Lord Farquhart's mind came no other solution of the mystery than that the Lady Barbara had met with no highwayman at all, that the whole story of the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... in French literature back to Villon and no doubt earlier) follows. With this, as such, we need not trouble ourselves. But Olivier, the friend, takes upon him the duty of providing the wine, and does so by persuading a luckless vintner ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... never suffered with him. It was those who sacrificed the most who loved him best, those who were with him to the end, long after common sense told them his cause was hopeless; indeed, I believe my father knew as much at Nottingham, when that luckless standard was blown down in the tempest. Those who starved for him, and lay out on barren moors through the cold English nights for him, and wore their clothes threadbare and their shoes into holes for him, and left wife and children, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... That Phaethon should check thy fiery steeds, Thy burning car never had scorch'd the earth! And, Henry, hadst thou sway'd as kings should do, Or as thy father and his father did, Giving no ground unto the house of York, They never then had sprung like summer flies; I, and ten thousand in this luckless realm, Had left no mourning widows for our death, And thou this day hadst kept thy chair in peace. For what doth cherish weeds but gentle air? And what makes robbers bold but too much lenity? Bootless are plaints, and cureless are my wounds; No way to fly, nor ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... playing at?" laughed the luckless officer, feigning to treat the affair as a joke, even while the iron truth was entering ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... "Oh, luckless, shameful, that you are!" cried Bathilde, wringing her hands wildly; "you have killed the man whom I love—but, I swear to you, by the memory of my mother, that if he ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... The luckless duke of Brunswick was carried on a bier from the field of Jena to his palace at Brunswick, which he found deserted. All belonging to him had fled. In his distress he exclaimed, "I am now about to quit all and am abandoned by all!" His earnest petition to Napoleon for protection for ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... came bravely on, scorning the odds against them. Larkin's plane engaged the first one, but the second one got in a lucky burst that sent one of the Nieuports nosing down in a disabled effort to make a safe landing. And perhaps the luckless pilot could have saved his life to spend the rest of the war in a German prison camp but for the fact that the German who had crippled him, tasting blood, wanted a more complete victory. Down, down, he followed the plane, spitting lead at the poor ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... luckless novelist, went to Pitou, the unrecognized composer, saying, "I have a superb scenario for a revue. Let us join forces! I promise you we shall make a fortune; we shall exchange our attics for first floors of fashion, and be wealthy ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... Our Luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the Isle of Rhe, and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the Castle of If, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in the Fortress of Joux; and forty-two months, with hardly clothing ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... historical story of the time of Charles I.; 'The Constable of the Tower'; 'The Lord Mayor of London'; 'Cardinal Pole,' which deals with the court and times of Philip and Mary; 'John Law,' a story of the great Mississippi Bubble; 'Tower Hill,' whose heroine is the luckless Catharine Howard; 'The Spanish Match,' a story of the romantic pilgrimage of Prince Charles and "Steenie" Buckingham to Spain for the fruitless wooing of the Spanish Princess; and at least ten other ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... his heart pit-a-pat and jump like a girl's in love; and without stopping any longer to admire the marvels of Nature, he turned hastily back to his uncle's abode, in search of a gun, with which to annihilate the luckless harbinger of spring. He soon found one, ready loaded, in the hall; and, with his heart full of hope and his legs full of precaution, he glided mysteriously from one tree to another, endeavouring, by all possible means, to conceal his approach from ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... various signal codes again. Joe Hooker had not yet put in an appearance, and several of the substitutes were enjoying themselves punting the ball, doubtless also wondering if they were going to be as luckless as before about breaking into the game, this ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... some luckless mortal to give to certain mysterious compounds the appellation of cosmetics! But here is an atonement; for even in our unmythical, unbelieving days, the god 'Terminus' is made to stand guard over every railway station! Again, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... eccentric round of joy complete When happy tourist-traveler, no more to roam, His fascinating, thrilling story shall repeat To impecunious, luckless multitudes who ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... with its underwriting affairs, as the questionable losses from Boston and other similar agencies began to arrive in faster and faster succession, and he clearly perceived the weakness and incapability of Gunterson's management, his irritation rightly directed itself more and more against the luckless Vice-President. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... looked on, aghast, at proceedings which they were powerless to stop. But it is safe to say that there was not a man in the court-martial who did not blush as he admitted the justice of the sentence finally passed upon the luckless prisoner. The proceedings lasted, altogether, a fortnight; during which time all of Russia and a great part of Europe rang with the scandal.—Ivan did not even attempt a defence; though Irina, coming to him on the first evening, went down on her knees in her plea to be allowed to ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... the sweet cider trips in silence round. The laws of husking every wight can tell; And sure, no laws he ever keeps so well: For each red ear a general kiss he gains, With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains; But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast, Red as her lips, and taper as her waist, She walks the round, and culls one favored beau, Who leaps, the luscious tribute to bestow. Various the sport, as ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the right word. Still ignoring his obvious hint, Ethel Dent supplied the word, without charity for her luckless chaperon. "Horridly seasick." She pointed out to the level steely-gray sea. "And ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... my dear fellow," began the police captain, and there was a look of warm, almost fatherly, feeling for the luckless prisoner on his excited face. "I took your Agrafena Alexandrovna downstairs myself, and confided her to the care of the landlord's daughters, and that old fellow Maximov is with her all the time. And I soothed her, do you hear? I soothed and calmed her. I impressed ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... was compelled therefore to bridge a most illogical chasm as best he could. Kharma without a soul to cling to is something in the air. It alights like some winged seed upon a new-born set of Skandas with its luckless boon of ill desert, and it involves the fatal inconsistency of investing with permanent character that ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... yet in Western telegraph circles of Charlie Moore's great exploit. The candidate was in grand form that night, and his speech came rushing forth in a torrent. The missing Wymond was still missing, and the luckless Barr was still ill, but the fledgling sat alone in the box, his face bent over the key, oblivious of the world around him, and sent it all. Through him ran the fire of battle and great endeavor. ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... an old frieze jacket took aim, a shot was heard, and the bullet flew past Fink's cheek, and struck the door behind him. At the same moment a suppressed scream was heard, a flash seen on the top of the tower, and the luckless marksman fell to the ground. The man who had conducted the parley turned his horse, the assailants all fell back, and Fink closed the door. As he turned round, Lenore stood on the first flight of the stairs, the recently-discharged gun in her hand, her large eyes ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... supported many a different party. Yet think not I deride: Many great characters of modern days, (The worthy vicars of convenient Brays) Have thought it no disgrace to change their side. And yet now many a luckless boat, How many a thoughtless, many a jovial crew, How many a young apprentice of no note; How many a maiden fair and lover true— Have passed down thy Charybdis of a throat, And gone, Oh! dreadful Davy Jones, to you! The coroner for Southwark, or the City, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... came flocking round about, some to stare and some to buy. The starers were, however, it is to be presumed, more numerous than the buyers, for notwithstanding his tickets, his handbills, and his advertisements, in less than six months the advertiser had failed, and that stock never, as it's luckless owner used to say, approached for cheapness, was sold off at ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford

... of unequal laws. "The moment which shall deliver the girl from subjection to her parents is come; her imagination opens to a future thronged by chimaeras; her heart swims in secret delight. Rejoice while thou canst, luckless creature! Time would have weakened the tyranny that thou hast left; time will strengthen the tyranny that awaits thee. They choose a husband for her. She becomes a mother. It is in anguish, at the peril of their lives, at the cost of their charms, often to the damage of their health, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... close in his rear, leaped into the water. Scarcely had he disappeared, when on came the pack at full speed, in pursuit. The fox, however, by this time was far away, floating down the stream; but the dogs instantly set upon the luckless badger and tore him to pieces, before they discovered that they had not ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston

... While the luckless Perle drifted aimlessly about, driven slowly onward by varying winds under a cheerless sky, sickness visited them: some were stricken with scurvy; some had lost the use of their limbs and lay helpless, moaning and weeping hour after hour; vermin ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... from the leash, the Kasanumi rushed at that luckless periscope, about which a few bubbles of foam were just beginning to gather at the moment when our stem, towering over it, hid it from my sight. The next instant our hull swept over it and of course snapped it clean off, although we felt no shock whatever, for our draught of ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... had discussed the matter with the Spanish Ministers. "Charles knew that he had had much conference with Isola, the Spanish ambassador." Meanwhile, up to July 1, Colbert was trying to persuade Marsilly's valet to go to France, which he declined to do, as we have seen. However, the luckless lad, by nods and by veiled words, indicated that he knew a great deal. But not by promise of security and reward could the valet be induced to return to France. "I might ask the King to give up Martin, the ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... capture of eels. They do not wait for the eel to come to them, but by shrewd scrutiny discover its whereabouts under the bank of the creek or among the weeds and roots. Then one silent man holds the net widespread, or adroitly dodges it into intercepting positions, while the other beats the luckless fish in its direction with more or less fluster. The persistency with which the creeks are patrolled by men with spears, netted and poisoned, invites one to marvel that any fish escape, and yet once again quite a haul ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... a beauteous youth, But, luckless, in the wave his face beholding, Himself he fascinates, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... Brother dead then? Tell us I intreat you what is become of him?" "Yes, cold and insensible Nymph, (replied I) that luckless swain your Brother, is no more, and you may now glory in being the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... "would not help him on with his coat"—a cutting blow. She would not let her servant accompany him home with a lantern, but heartlessly permitted her elderly lover to stumble home alone in the dark. She spoke to him of his luckless courtship of Widow Denison (a most unpleasant topic), thus giving a clue to the whole situation, in showing that Madam Winthrop resented his desertion of her in his first widowerhood, and like Falstaff, would not "undergo a sneap without reply." He ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... right, my luckless friends. You must raise money for yourselves, after all; which, since the departure of my nation, will be a somewhat more difficult matter than ever. The over-ruling destinies, whom, as you all know ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... be said that South African politicians as a whole were indifferent to the suffering of the luckless victims of the Land Act, but they eased their consciences with the palliative thought that the sufferers were not so many. However this blissful though erroneous self-satisfaction was nailed to the counter by the Rev. A. ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... from his fore arms, they are seen to be of great size, with muscles as firm to the touch as so much rubber. Long practice has made him immensely strong, and quick as a flash to ward and strike. Woe be to the luckless dog, however large, that ventures in the excitement of the hunt within reach of his paw. A single swift stroke will generally put the poor brute out ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... Themistocles, before his ocean-raid at Salamis, sacrificed three young men to Bacchus the Devourer. The Markerstown, in sailing out upon the great deep, immolated at least twelve, old and young, as a festive holocaust to Neptune the Nauseator. Here in their sacrificial crate were the luckless scapegoats, sad-eyed prey of the propeller. It was easy to see, at the first glance, that the Martyr was the central sun round which clustered the planets of propitiation. Born king, he asserted his kingship, and all yielded from the beginning to his sway. Ears and mouths opened toward him the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... foot with her magic girdle, and hangs him upon a nail; Siegfried pitying the condition of the king, promises his aid in depriving the haughty queen of the girdle, the source of all her magic strength. He successfully accomplishes the feat, and in a luckless hour presents the trophy to Chriemhild, and confides the tale to her ear. A dispute having afterwards arisen between the two queens, Chriemhild, carried away by pride and passion, produces the fatal girdle, a token which, if found in the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... by a round-about byway managed to steal down behind and suddenly pushed him by the burst open door, spread-eagle fashion, into the laughing long-room! The poor victim pretended it was an accident, "Ye see, Mr. Yates, I was coming down the stair, and me foot slipped." It seems that the luckless Andrew was coming, so he averred, expressly to expostulate with the boys, to throw himself on their generosity for a subscription towards his ruined greenhouse, and to ask Messrs. "Punsonby," Yates, & Co. to promote it. This ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... well. Did not the very hangman burst into tears as he thrust the unfortunate nobleman off the step? and did not a universal sob of pity break from the vast crowd assembled to see the last of the noble cavalier, victim to an unfortunate tradition of loyalty? What wonder then if we sympathise with this luckless hero of romance? The weak-knee'd villain of this historical drama was 'Charles (his friend),' in which character, be it allowed, this sad dog of a Merry Monarch not infrequently appeared. Thank you much, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various

... wish of obliging the young ladies, or the desire of seeing her parents, I cannot pretend to say, but in a luckless hour Susan yielded, and the party ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... death of the luckless Alexander, Wetamoo married a Pocasset Indian named Petananuit. He was called by the English "Peter Nunnuit." This Peter Nunnuit appears to have been a poor sort of a husband, for he early deserted to the enemy, leaving his wife to ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... old English country home, a fastness still piled up against time; whose stately walls and halls within, and beautiful century-old trees in the park without, record great times and striking figures. The manor was a part of the dowry of Henry the VIII.'s luckless queens. The modern house was built by Clarendon, and the old church among the elms dates from 1200, with carved signs and symbols and brasses of knights and burgesses, and names of strange ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... message: "The gun is loaded, and pointed at the town." Almost simultaneously a panting little bell, not much louder than a London muffin-bell, but heard distinctly all over the town in the clear atmosphere, would give tongue, and luckless folk who were promenading the streets had about three seconds to seek shelter, the alarm being sounded as the flash was seen by the look-out. One afternoon they gave us three shots in six minutes, but, of course, this rapid firing ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... branches. I saw him that chanted it. I saw his fool's bauble. I knew his old grief. I knew that old greenwood and the shadow that haunted it,— My fool, my lost jester, my Shadow-of-a-Leaf! And "why," I said, "why, all this while, have you left me so Luckless in melody, lonely in mirth?" "Oh, why," he sang, "why has this world then bereft me so Soon of my Marian, so ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... blows His ivory pipe, and on the curved dish We lay the reeking entrails. If to rear Cattle delight thee rather, steers, or lambs, Or goats that kill the tender plants, then seek Full-fed Tarentum's glades and distant fields, Or such a plain as luckless Mantua lost Whose weedy water feeds the snow-white swan: There nor clear springs nor grass the flocks will fail, And all the day-long browsing of thy herds Shall the cool dews of one brief night repair. Land which the burrowing ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

... the cabin, where he and the older men bunked, leaving Dan to comfort the luckless heir ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... roadside near a hop garden he came upon a group of an aspect so unusual that it attracted his attention. Its unusualness consisted in its air of exceeding bustling cheerfulness. It was a domestic group of the most luckless type, and ragged, dirty, and worn by an evidently long tramp, might well have been expected to look forlorn, discouraged, and out of spirits. A slouching father of five children, one plainly but a few weeks old, and ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... eye fell on the luckless Jemima, who, in her usual mean attire, was sitting in the background with her head drooping helplessly, for it had ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton

... his teeth. At last, after a long silence, he cried out aloud, "Glorious! The very best verse I ever composed in my life!" and down went something in his note book. From all this, it was plain that the luckless wight was a poet. I approached him with my ordinary courtesies, and when I had convinced him of my gentleness, he let me lie down at his feet, and resumed the course of his thoughts, scratching his head, falling into ecstacies, and ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... into the river; and he announced to the circle of grim wilderness veterans that "he had been that day to Lulbegrud, and had killed two Brobdignags in their capital." To this day the creek by which the two luckless Shawnees lost their lives is ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... "Poor luckless Jannette! the epithets 'divine' and 'heavenly' which have so often been applied to thee are now transferred to miserable daubings with oil and clay. Dame Nature, your triumph has been short. Poor foolish beldam, you thought, indeed, when you had formed your masterpiece ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... Ah, luckless speech, and bootless boast! For which he paid full dear; For, while he spake, a braying ass Did sing most loud ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... morning, the countess being invisible, I watched my man spreading out my suits over the chairs, amongst them being some handsome women's cloaks, and a rich red dress deeply trimmed with fur, which had been originally intended for the luckless Corticelli. I should no doubt have given it to Agatha, if I had continued to live with her, and I should have made a mistake, as such a dress was only fit for a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Lordship (whom I had at once set down as Mr. Justice Blackcap, and was in truth that Dread Functionary), saying, "Brother, is it dinner-time?" But his Lordship to the left, who had an old white face like a sheep, and his wig all awry, was of a more placable demeanour, and looked at me, poor luckless Outcast, with some interest. I saw him turn his head and whisper to the gentleman they told me was the High Sheriff, and who sat on the Bench alongside the Judges, very fine, in a robe and gold chain, and with a great sheathed ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... to fortress, until each group was welded into one mighty unit by twenty-one such bands of force. The unit formed, a ray from each of its seven component structures seized upon a designated sphere, and under the combined power of those seven tractors, the luckless globe was literally snapped into the center of mass of the Vorkulian unit There seven dully gleaming red pressor rays leaped upon it, backed by all the power of seven gigantic fortresses, held rigidly in formation by the ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... or as heroine, this figure of a graceful feminine victim comes into nearly every novel. Virtuous heroes fare little better. Poor Colonel Chabert is disowned and driven to beggary by the wife who has committed bigamy; the luckless cure, Birotteau, is cheated out of his prospects and doomed to a broken heart by the successful villainy of a rival priest and his accomplices; the Comte de Manerville is ruined and transported by his wife and his detestable mother-in-law; Pere Goriot is left to starvation ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... that fellow come from?" queried Ned anxiously, pointing toward the feet of the luckless individual who ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson

... father, virtue hath been vanquished by vice. The low have risen, and the high have fallen. I have been offended again by Sarmishtha, the daughter of Vrishaparvan. Three sons have been begotten upon her by this king Yayati. But, O father, being luckless I have got only two sons! O son of Bhrigu, this king is renowned for his knowledge of the precepts of religion. But, O Kavya, I tell thee that he hath deviated from the path ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... prove that he deserved to wear his spurs, his time had been passed for the most part in making handsome dashes from the Zona Libre into the interior. Already the fame of his brilliant exploits was great along the frontier; already to the luckless officers of the contraresguardo his name was a mocking and a reproach. What with his knowledge of the mountain paths and hiding-places, his boldness and his prudence, his information—coming it might be treason to say from where, but always exact and trustworthy—of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... Luckless members of the Fairport Guard who had not had the precaution to tie on their head-gear, might be seen breaking rank and running indecorously in various directions in pursuit of hat or cap, while the skirts of the captain's ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... for his shortcomings. She was the only one who could meet Farrar on his own ground, and rarely a meal passed that they did not have a tilt. They filled up the holes of the conversation with running commentaries, giving a dig at the luckless narrator and a side-slap at each other, until one would have given his oath they were sworn enemies. At least I, in the innocence of my heart, thought so until I was forcibly enlightened. I had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... in the words of The Nights by the Shaykh al-Nafzawi (p. 207). That most witty and indecent tale The Three Wishes (vol. vi. 180) has forced its way disguised as a babe into our nurseries. Another form of it is found in the Arab proverb "More luckless than Basus" (Kamus), a fair Israelite who persuaded her husband, also a Jew, to wish that she might become the loveliest of women. Jehovah granted it, spitefully as Jupiter; the consequence was that her contumacious treatment of her mate made ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... the name of Thomas Moore, Hornville. There was not the slightest doubt in Barnes's mind that this was the man who had been detailed to shadow the luckless Peter. Only an imperative demand by government authorities could have brought about the stopping of the express at Hornville ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... not draw my lengthen'd lines along, And tire in untamed infamy of song, Lest, in some dismal Dunciad's future page, I stand the CIBBER of this tuneless age; Lest, in another POPE th' indulgent skies Should give inspired by all their deities, My luckless name, in his immortal strain, Should, blasted, brand me as a second Cain; Doom'd in that song to live against my will, Whom all must scorn, and yet whom none could kill. The youth, resisted by the maiden's art, Persists, and time subdues her kindling heart; To ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe

... humble tomb, Obscure the luckless maiden sleeps; Round it pity's flowerets bloom, O'er it ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... the blanket bags in which the men sought to protect themselves, seemed literally black with their crawling and stinging persecutors. Woe to the unhappy wretch who had left unclosed the least hole in his bag; the persevering mosquitoes surely found it out, and as surely drove the luckless occupant out of his retreat. I noticed one man dressed as if in the frozen north, hold his bag over the fire till it was quite full of smoke, and then get into it, a companion securing the mouth over his head at the apparent risk of suffocation; he obtained three hours of ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... to laugh, but laugh I did with a few others. Never has a man been so abused as was that luckless English Consul who penned such a fatuous message. The spy had already marched our troops half way and more; even the pessimistic allowed that they must have started; an authentic message showed clearly that it ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... in that illustrious and luckless household was omnipotent, insulted the Princess in the most outrageous manner. Finding such daily slights and affronts unbearable, Madame complained to the Kings of France and England, who both exiled ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... the Rue St. Georges was pillaged to-day by the mob, who howled like madmen and hurled all sorts of curses and maledictions on luckless Thiers, who has done nothing wrong, and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... that there was no reason why he should not go down to the rectory and see Miss Eversleigh again under pretense of inquiring after the luckless baronet, whose title and fortune had, nevertheless, been so strangely preserved. He began at once his preparations for the journey, and was nearly ready when a servant entered with a telegram. Randolph's heart leaped. The captain ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... any terms, accept a tragic ending. As a matter of fact, the mortality was not very great; for managers were resolute in the old belief, and few dramatists had the courage or authority to stand up against them. But I have often heard playwrights lamenting their inability to massacre the luckless children of their fancy, who, nine times out of ten, had done nothing to incur such a doom. The real trouble was that death seemed to be the only method of ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... section, there was the "feather corner," at the other end, generally conceded to be luxurious, but silently avoided, as having given, on more than one occasion, a sharp suggestion of quills. Over the whole, depressions and excrescences, was stretched a faded chintz cover. But woe to the luckless wight who thought to find repose by throwing himself carelessly down on this hitherto untried structure! It was reserved only to the knowing few to find a ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... Whose offerings, placed in golden ranks, Adorn our crystal rivers' banks; Nor seldom grace the flowery downs, With spiral tops and copple [27] crowns; Or gilding in a sunny morn The humble branches of a thorn. So poets sing, with golden bough The Trojan hero paid his vow.[28] Hither, by luckless error led, The crude consistence oft I tread; Here when my shoes are out of case, Unweeting gild the tarnish'd lace; Here, by the sacred bramble tinged, My petticoat is doubly fringed. Be witness for me, nymph divine, I never robb'd thee ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... botched by Nature in the flesh, no less lamentably than Melrose in the spirit. The legal inquiry into Brand's flight and death was short and mostly formal; but the actual evidence—as compared with current gossip—of his luckless mother, now left sonless and husbandless, and as to the relations of the family with Faversham, hastened the melting process in the public mind. It showed a man in bondage indeed to a tyrant; but doing what he could to lighten the hand of the ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... plead with the wagon-boss for food, and he thought if the teamster had not lost his equanimity and made that first luckless shot the massacre of the Nine Mile Ridge would never have become a thing ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... I be cheerie in the stranger's ha'? A gowden prison drearie, my luckless fa'! 'Tween leavin' o' you, Jamie, An' ills that sorrow me, I 'm wearie o' the warl', An' carena ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... In a luckless hour, the Delawares gave their consent, and agreed to become women. Then the Iroquois appointed a great feast, and invited the Delaware nation to it. They came at the bidding of their treacherous foes, and were declared by them, in the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... brink of destruction, and expecting every moment to share the fate which had already overtaken so many of their companions in misery, the poop was discovered to give way; another wave rolled on with impetuous fury, and the hinder part of the luckless vessel, with all who sought safety in its frail support, was burst away from its shattered counterpart, and about forty wretched beings hurried through the foaming flood ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... asking if there are letters for me?" she says. It is anything to gain time, and he goes at her behest, but—oh, luckless fate!—'tis a false move. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... little fool!" interposed the old man hastily, "has she too tumbled in love with you? Has the luckless word already past ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... the mind travels rapidly. I shall not attempt to record the thoughts that chased one another through the mind of the luckless adventurer. But they were by no ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... hundred francs. In that fatal month Mariette started for London, to see what could be done with the lords while the temporary opera house in the Hotel Choiseul, rue Lepelletier, was being prepared. The luckless Philippe had ended, as often happens, in loving Mariette notwithstanding her flagrant infidelities; she herself had never thought him anything but a dull-minded, brutal soldier, the first rung of a ladder on ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... objects however may come in your sketch, Which, designed by a hand unaccustomed to etch, With a luckless result may be branded; Wherefore add this particular rule to your code, Let all vehicles take the wrong side of the road, And man, woman, and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... letting his men wander at pleasure to right and left gathering reports for him of unusual folk or things. We came very close to being seen by one of them, who emerged from a village near us with a pair of chickens he had foraged, followed by the owner of the luckless birds in a great hurry and fury to get paid ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... evidently been running a long time, for he seemed overcome with fatigue. Seeing that he slackened his speed, his tormentors formed a circle around him, and began pelting him with stones. The luckless creature bowed his head, and, recognizing that he was surrounded by none but enemies, resigned himself to his hard fate with the heroism of a Roman senator. Several stones had already reached him, when Madame de la Grenouillere, seized with deep compassion, descended from her carriage, and, ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire

... burned certain outlying houses from which shots had come and burst open the rest. Also they had repeated the trick of capturing sundry luckless natives and, in their rush through the town, driving these prisoners ahead of them as living bucklers to minimize the danger of being shot at ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... fortune pitiless! Ah, cruel snake! Ah, luckless doom of woes! Like a cropped summer rose, Or lily cut, she withers on the brake. Her face, which once did make Our age so bright With beauty's light, is faint and pale; And the clear lamp doth fail, Which shed pure splendour all ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... rugs, so comfortable to lie under during the cold winter nights. There was often a great deal of sport at the close of one of these social industrial gatherings. When the men came in from the field to supper, some luckless wight was sure to be caught, and tossed up and down in the quilt amid the laughter and shouts of the company. But of all the bees, the apple-bee was the chief. In these old and young joined. The boys around the neighbourhood, with their home-made apple-machines, of all ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

... tell me what I am to do with my stocking," cried Hermione. "Oh well, I know what I will do—something quite as quiet as a mouse. I will wind up my poor worsted." Hereupon the little girl picked up the puckered remains of her luckless grey stocking which a facetious young cat had spent at least a quarter of an hour in ingeniously unravelling with his claws. It was a tiresome tedious job we must admit, and required a strong effort of patient perseverance, ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... file of the Confederate column was one of the usual fellows with more daring than discretion, who was mounted on a tall, white horse. Of course, as long as that horse was on its feet, everybody shot at him, or the rider. But that luckless steed soon went down in a cloud of dust, and that was the end of old Whitey. The effect of our fire on the enemy was marked and instantaneous. The head of their column crumpled up instanter, the road was full of dead and wounded ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... must needs set forth on the morrow. All things went so well, just as they were, that to think of ordering them better were to spoil them. One of my greatest joys was to leave my books safely fastened up in their boxes, and to be without even a case for writing. When any luckless letter forced me to take up a pen for an answer, I grumblingly borrowed the steward's inkstand, and hurried to give it back to him with all the haste I could, in the vain hope that I should never have need of the loan any more. Instead of meddling with those weary ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... These luckless adventurers at length saw themselves surrounded by all the horrors of famine. Many of them were reduced to devour the leaves of trees; the majority were altogether destitute of sustenance. In this state of severe privations, and with very light clothing, they passed the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... 'boy Caesar' who 'wears the rose of youth' (Antony and Cleopatra, III., ii., 17 seq.). Spenser in his Astrophel apostrophizes Sir Philip Sidney on his death near the close of his thirty-second year as 'oh wretched boy' (l. 133) and 'luckless ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson

... own age, was too good a weapon to be neglected by those who sought about for means of defence for their own individualistic theories; whereas others, like the friars of whom Wycliff and Langland spoke, and who headed bands of luckless peasants in the revolt of 1381 against the oppression of an over-legalised feudalism, were blind to this remarkable expression of Aquinas' opinion, and quoted him only when he declared that "by nature all things were in common," and when he protested that ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... Guatusos, but no single volunteer answered our advertisements in San Jose de Costa Rica; I have lived to congratulate myself on that disappointment. Since my day a road has been cut through their wilds to Limon, certain luckless Britons having found the money for a railway; but an engineer who visited the coast but two years ago informs me that no one ever wandered into "the bush." Collectors have not been there, assuredly. So there may be connecting links ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... extraordinary incidents; nor did they appear to be disturbed with any of that seriousness of air which had so unequivocally characterized the deportment of him who had preceded them. On the contrary, each had his quiet tale to relate, now perhaps at the expense of a luckless companion, and sometimes in order that no part of his own individual skill, as a hunter, should be unknown. The delay was accounted for, as similar delays are commonly explained, by distance and the temptations of an unusually successful chase. As the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... through this bosom, and my cruel heart In pieces cleave, break every string and vein; But thou to slaughters vile which used art, Think'st it were pity so to ease my pain: Of luckless love therefore in torments' smart A sad example must I still remain, A woful monster of unhappy love, Who still must live, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... exhibits it should be allowed to control the destinies of the British Empire or indeed of any country. If "all the Jewish women in Palestine are hysterical," presumably many of their menkind suffer from the same disability, which certainly does not promise well for the luckless Arab who is to live beneath their sway. How much of the trouble that has occurred already in Palestine may be attributed to this cause it is impossible to know. The increasing number of Jews in positions of authority in England presents, however, a far greater ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... friendships which sometimes exist between two men, but rarely between two women, of so widely different temperaments. They had roomed together four years in college, and countless were the difficulties from which the sober Arthur had extricated the luckless Thorne, while many a time the rather slender means of Arthur had been increased in a way so delicate that expostulation was next ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes



Words linked to "Luckless" :   hexed, jinxed, unfortunate, unlucky, lucky



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