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Nemesis   /nˈɛməsɪs/   Listen
Nemesis

noun
(pl. nemeses)
1.
(Greek mythology) the goddess of divine retribution and vengeance.
2.
Something causing misery or death.  Synonyms: bane, curse, scourge.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Nemesis" Quotes from Famous Books



... commit a great enormity. It is the whole and sole responsibility of the individual, responsibility to that inner arbiter sitting foro conscientiae, and the sight of those frowning attendants of the court, Nemesis and Adraste, ready with the scourge to follow crime, that keep the man honest. Put not confidence, Eusebius, in bodies, in guilds, and committees. Trust not to them property or person; they may be all individually good Samaritans, but collectively they will rather change places with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... appeared again, and told her that she would be haunted by his unwelcome presence so long as the necklace remained in her possession. She then drove off with it, and deposited it with her lawyer, who locked it up in a tin case, doubtless with a secret smile at his noble client's superstitions. But Nemesis lay in wait for him, and the last thing Mr Romilly had heard upon the subject was that the lawyer himself was made so exceedingly uncomfortable by the attentions of the Egyptian gentleman that he was ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... a cruel but an inevitable Nemesis which reduces even a man of real genius, keen-witted and sharp-sighted, to the level of the critic Jobson, to the level of the dotard and the dunce, when paradox is discoloured by personality and merriment is distorted by malevolence.(!) No man who really knows the qualities ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... north and unmoved by the glorious aims that, like a star of hope, led Hudson on. They saw no star of hope, and felt only hunger and cold and that dislike of the hardships of life which is the birthright of the weakling, as well as his Nemesis. ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... plainly evident to me that Aunt Martha knew the awful relatives of Bunch, and that the old lady was camping on my trial. Yes; there she stood, old Aunt Nemesis, glaring at me ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh

... getting rid of the reality of evil we preserve or affirm the more emphatically the reality of good; if we confidently pronounce our experience of evil an illusion, what value can there attach to our finding that our {121} experience of its opposite is a fact? Such is the Nemesis which waits on remedies of the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... Rhamnusia.—Ver. 406. Nemesis, the Goddess of Retribution, and the avenger of crime, was the daughter of Jupiter. She had a famous temple at Rhamnus, one of the 'pagi,' or boroughs of Athens. Her statue was there, carved by Phidias out of the marble which the Persians brought into Greece for the purpose of making a statue of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... The conception which it replaced was that of providence. But the Greeks and Romans knew nothing of providence. They were under the influence of another idea of a different character, the idea, namely, of nemesis and fate. And before them there were more primitive peoples who had no conception of man's destiny at all. In a paper, not yet published, Ellsworth Faris has sketched the natural history of the idea of progress and its predecessors and of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... always serious and generally obvious, he is really affected from time to time by a certain spirit of which that climate theory is a case—a spirit that can only be called one of senseless ingenuity. I suppose it is a sort of nemesis of wit; the skidding of a wheel in the height of its speed. Perhaps it is connected with the nomadic nature of his mind. That lack of roots, this remoteness from ancient instincts and traditions is responsible ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... Mr Burke submit to the yoke, but the humiliation could never be forgotten. Nemesis favours genius: the inevitable hour at length arrived. A voice like the Apocalypse sounded over England and even echoed in all the courts of Europe. Burke poured forth the vials of his hoarded vengeance into the agitated heart of Christendom; he stimulated ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... are dishonest cheat themselves. They narrow their souls. They grasp after a substance and find a shadow. A sure Nemesis follows the present gain. The great poet says: 'Who steals my purse ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick

... from the British press spoke with various voices. The Morning Post commented, without much distress, on the obvious disintegration and collapse of the League, which had always had within itself the seeds of ruin and now was meeting its expected Nemesis. Such preposterous houses of cards, said the Morning Post, cannot expect to last long in a world which is, in the main, a sensible place. It did not now seem probable that, as some said, Bolshevists were behind these outrages; on further consideration it was ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... upon the panel had still a further meaning, it represented the unhappiness, the misfortunes, the Nemesis of two hundred years. This family of Idens had endured already two hundred years of unhappiness and discordance for no original fault of theirs, simply because they had once been fortunate of old time, and therefore they had to work out ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... This M. Mazade believes he has found. It reads: "The manes of Sulpicia Pallas have avenged her. Here lies Lucius Horatillavus, physician, who poisoned himself." If the epitaph is genuine, it is a confession of guilt. The death of the quack by his own poison is a curious Nemesis. The manner of his death proves that it was accidental, as few quacks are bold enough to take ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... proffered hand; but he continued his inquiries after the convalescents, though neither inquired in return after Mrs. Moy, feeling, perhaps, that they would rather not hear a very sad account of her state just before letting their inevitable Nemesis descend; also, not feeling inclined for reciprocal familiarity, and wanting to discourage the idea that ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... wrong," said MacGregor with gentle irony, "and neither can the law. Remember that, Philip, as long as you are in the service. The law may break up homes, ruin states, set itself a Nemesis on innocent men's heels—but it can do no wrong. It is the Juggernaut before which we all must bow our heads, even you and I, and when by any chance it makes a mistake, it is still law, and unassailable. It is the greatest weapon of the clever and the rich, so it bears ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... to the eighteenth century had its nemesis in the belief that we were awakened by foreigners to the greatness of Shakespeare. Even one so eminently sane as Hazlitt lent support to this opinion. "We will confess," says the Preface to the Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, "that some little ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... defence. They are so unused to kindness, that when they occasionally meet with it they look upon it with suspicion, as a dog often beaten snaps at your fingers if you attempt to caress him. "They are ungrateful, notoriously, abominably ungrateful!"—this is the general cry. Now, in the name of Nemesis! for what are they to be grateful? Where is the human being that ever conferred a benefit on Greek or Greeks? They are to be grateful to the Turks for their fetters, and to the Franks for their broken promises and lying counsels. They are to be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... life of helpfulness to others. In other words I have always felt behind me a great force pressing me out into public work. When I was a child, it was so strong that I was sat down upon brutally, to so great an extent that I feared to voice my convictions and that fear still clings to me like a nemesis. It seems that every individual personality in a public or private audience rises up to overwhelm me, causing my tongue to grow heavy and my mind to become a blank. This enervating fear blends into every thought ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... tricky. It happened a few years later that this Caesar laid rough hands on my most intimate fate. In anger at this I betrayed the secret of his Caesar mania and made my erstwhile benefactor such a laughing stock, that his existence became unbearable to him. And now listen how Nemesis overtakes one! A year later I wrote a book-I am, you must know, an author who's not made his name.... And in this book I described incidents of family life: how I played with my daughter—she was called Julia, as Caesar's ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... spray with a trembling finger and his voice was rich with doleful emphasis, but the commander held his course and carried on. There seemed neither sympathy nor understanding on that unsteadiest of ships. Curley Crothers, solemn-faced as Nemesis and looking half as compassionate, moved his wheel a trifle. Joe Byng in the chains kept up his even sing-song, expressionless, as if he were an automatic clock that did not care, but must record the truth each time his dripping pendulum ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... from the afflicted community for the policing of the devastated region, and there is no doubt it is greatly needed. Happily, Nemesis does not sleep this time in the face of such provocation as is given her by these atrociously inhuman human beings. It is a satisfaction to record that something more than a half dozen of them have been dealt with as promptly and as mercilessly as they deserve. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... inherited from a lot of indolent, pleasure-loving Harpeth Valley Tennesseans, let me pack up my graduating thesis, my B.S., and some delicious frocks, and go off to Paris for a degree from the Beaux Arts in Architecture, we would be caught up with by some kind of Nemesis or other, and put in our place in the biological and ethnological scheme of existence. Yes, Fate and I are placed, and Jane ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... not a curse upon us and our people, upon our children and our children's children, for every little one we murder by our social sins? Can it be that Nemesis sleeps for us, he who never slept yet for any, he who never yet saw wrong go unavenged or heard the innocent blood cry unanswered ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... revengement[obs3]; vengeance; avengement[obs3], avengeance|, sweet revenge, vendetta, death feud, blood for blood retaliation &c. 718; day of reckoning. rancor, vindictiveness, implacability; malevolence &c. 907; ruthlessness &c. 914a. avenger, vindicator, Nemesis, Eumenides. V. revenge, avenge; vindicate; take one's revenge, have one's revenge; breathe revenge, breathe vengeance; wreak one's vengeance, wreak one's anger. have accounts to settle, have a crow to pluck, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... impulse he added: "This man whom I know did wrong, but he was falsely accused of doing a still greater. The consequence of the first thing followed him. He could never make restitution. Years went by. Some one knew that dark spot in his life—his Nemesis." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... spirit, Time persists in being bigotedly Greek. The tragedy—provided one lives long enough—is always played out to its logical conclusion. For every hour you have spent, no matter how quietly or beautifully or wisely, Nemesis takes toll in the end. You peter out; the engine dulls; the shining coin wears thin. If it's only that it is all right; you are fortunate if you don't become greasy, too, or blurred, or scarred. And Mr. McCain had ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... these problems, he at the same time lowered his physical strength by abstinence, living upon bread, milk, and vegetables, giving up meat and wine. In this unpromising frame of mind, and in the course of solitary rambles, he composed The Nemesis of Faith.* The book is, both in substance and in style, quite unworthy of Froude. But in the life of a man who afterwards wrote what the world would not willingly let die it is an epoch of critical importance. To ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... figure bustling through a crowd on Market Street on Saturday or elbowing its way through a throng at any formal gathering, or jogging through the night behind his sorrel mare or moving like a pink-faced cupid, turned Nemesis in a county convention, made him a marked man in the community. But what was more important, his distinction had a certain cheeriness about it. And his cheeriness was vocalized in a high, piping, falsetto voice, generally gay and nearly always soft and kindly. It ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... female into all animal shapes, and a similar series of pursuits by the male in appropriate form, "in this manner pairs of all sorts of creatures down to ants were created". This myth is a parallel to the various Greek legends about the amours in bestial form of Zeus, Nemesis, Cronus, Demeter and other gods and goddesses. In the Brahmanas this myth is an explanation of the origin of species, and such an explanation as could scarcely have occurred to a civilised mind. In other myths in the Brahmanas, Prajapati creates ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... luck, fortune, destiny, the irony of Fate or Nemesis, is the greatest of all the Battle-gods that move on the waters. As I will show you later, knowledge of gunnery and a delicate instinct for what is in the enemy's minds may enable a destroyer to thread ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... Story, rather than "The Ashburnham Tragedy", just because it is so sad, just because there was no current to draw things along to a swift and inevitable end. There is about it none of the elevation that accompanies tragedy; there is about it no nemesis, no destiny. Here were two noble people—for I am convinced that both Edward and Leonora had noble natures—here, then, were two noble natures, drifting down life, like fireships afloat on a lagoon and causing miseries, heart-aches, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... are wet, thy cheeks are wan, Yet art thou born of an immortal sire, The child of Nemesis and of the Swan; Thy veins should run with ichor and with fire. Yet this is thy delight and thy desire, To love a mortal lord, a mortal child, To live, unpraised of lute, unhymn'd of lyre, As ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... of that haughty old peeress so humiliated was wonderfully pleasant to the wounded pride of Rachael Closs. But far beyond this was the yearning, almost passionate fondness she felt for her brother and the beautiful girl who had been to her at once a Nemesis and ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... keep up with events, even out here, well enough to know that you're the Mars City government's chief nemesis where there's any suspicion of extrasensory perception. I doubt that you chose to make this trip yourself without reason, ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... personal habits, and paid much attention to his dress, which was always kept neat and tidy. I was often much amused and surprised by the oddity and justness of his remarks upon the many strange sights which a voyage of this kind brought before him. The Nemesis steamer under weigh puzzled him at first—he then thought it was "all same big cart, only got him shingles** on wheels!" He always expressed great contempt for the dullness of comprehension of his countrymen, ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... warped the poor child's nature. Whether the end of the book is justified is apart from my present purpose, which is chiefly exposition, though I feel that Captain Anthony is not tenderly treated. But "there is a Nemesis which overtakes generosity, too, like all the other imprudences of men who dare to be lawless and proud...." And this sailor, the son of the selfish poet, Carleon Anthony, himself sensitive, but unselfish, paid for his considerate treatment of his wife Flora. Only Hardy could have treated ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... be united effort among the leaders of the race along all lines to this end. Advocates of higher learning and of industrial education must accord respect to each other's opinions and work unitedly, in order that neither may fall a sacrifice to the "Nemesis of Neglect." And the race must sustain its leaders of thought and action. There is no time to lose, none to waste in eternal strife. The field is large enough for all to glean and work in. The race must make ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough

... of shoulders and depth of chest; he was big-boned, lean-loined, quick and furtive of movement as a panther. In short, Captain Jim was altogether the most fearsome-looking man I ever saw, the very incarnation of a relentless, inexorable, indomitable, avenging Nemesis. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... those Caucasians who believe in a God of any kind. Their root-conviction is that if God would only let them alone they would get along well enough; but as a terrible avenging spirit, like the Fury or the Nemesis of the ancients, he is always tracking them down. The aversion from God so noticeable in the mind of to-day is, I venture to think, chiefly inspired by the instinct to get away from, or to hide from, the ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... the Nuremberg bookseller, shot precisely as was Miss Cavell, was finally avenged when Bluecher gave Napoleon the coup de grace at Waterloo. No one more clearly felt the invisible presence of his Nemesis than did Napoleon. All his life, and even in his confinement at St. Helena, he was ceaselessly attempting to justify to the moral conscience of the world his ruthless assassination of the last Prince of the house of ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck

... gazing into the sunset. She was happier already, and younger. Something of that hard maturity was fading from her eyes—the tiny dented corners of her lips were softer.... Oh, undoubtedly he had done the right thing! And everything had run so smoothly. There had been no trouble. No unlocked for Nemesis had dogged his steps even in the matter of that small strategy concerning his unhappy past. He had been unduly worried about that, owing probably to early copy-book aphorisms. Honesty is the best policy. Yes, but—nothing had happened. Mary, bless her, was already only a memory. She ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... "Nemesis." She lay still for a moment. "Thank God!" she said at length, and let her hands fall relaxed upon the counterpane. She seemed as if asleep but for the ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... boards; and the virgin and the prostitute expiring in the same nudity: everywhere despair, consumption, hunger, hunger! . . And this people, which expiates the crimes of its masters, does not rebel! No, by the flames of Nemesis! when a people has no vengeance left, there is no longer ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... not for us to punish men nor avenge ourselves for slights, wrongs and insults—wait, and you will see that Nemesis unhorses the man intent ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... his Nemesis all day. Fred knew he could have given the party the slip at some station, had Ruth not kept such a sharp watch upon him. And here she was on his very heels, when he might ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... Street of Beverley, as "Three Times Dead." In "Three Times Dead" I gave loose to all my leanings to the violent in melodrama. Death stalked in ghastliest form across my pages; and villainy reigned triumphant till the Nemesis of the last chapter. I wrote with all the freedom of one who feared not the face of a critic; and, indeed, thanks to the obscurity of its original production, and its re-issue as the ordinary two-shilling railway novel, this first novel of mine has almost entirely escaped the critical lash, ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... good may yet spring from it. Hubert Tracy will not have the power to injure my reputation. He may succeed for a time, but there is a Nemesis cruel as death." ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... fossicker seems to see a vision of the future. He seems to be standing somewhere, an old, old man, with a younger one at his side; the younger one has Isley's face. Horses' feet again! Ah, God! Nemesis once ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... the door of the hall listened to the wisdom of the men whose seats they were destined at some future time to fill. Immense successes were thus obtained at an immense price; for Nike too is followed by her Nemesis. In the Roman commonwealth there was no special dependence on any one man, either on soldier or on general, and under the rigid discipline of its moral police all the idiosyncrasies of human character were extinguished. Rome reached a greatness such as no other state of antiquity ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... probe for himself the Catholic claims, and the child would say to the father, 'Father, if there be such a sacrament as Penance, can I go?' And the good Archbishop, being evasive in his answers, the young boy found himself emerging more and more in a woeful Nemesis of faith." It would be literally impossible, I think, to construct a story less characteristic both of Hugh's own attitude of mind as well as of the atmosphere of our family and household ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the priest, passing his wan hand over his brow. 'If this be true, what—what can be done to save her? They may not admit me. I know not all the mazes of that intricate mansion. O Nemesis! ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... It was the voice of the male parent who has stood all he's jolly well going to stand from that kid, and is out for vengeance. They'd got to the pears! Oh, crumbs! They'd got to the pears! And even the thought of Nemesis to come could not dull for William the ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... not wild, When wreaked on the tyrants of the land— For you were transfigured to Nemesis, child, With ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... "for ridding the world of a sordid worm;* of a man whose very soul was dross, and who never had a feeling for the Truthful and the Beautiful? When I stood before my uncle in the moonlight, in the gardens of the ancestral halls of the De Barnwells, I felt that it was the Nemesis come to overthrow him. 'Dog,' I said to the trembling slave, 'tell me where thy Gold is. THOU hast no use for it. I can spend it in relieving the Poverty on which thou tramplest; in aiding Science, which thou knowest not; in uplifting Art, to which thou art blind. Give Gold, and thou art ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... do it, my friend, we can't do it. Memory is always with us. She is an impartial Nemesis; she dogs the steps of the righteous and the unrighteous. To obliterate memory, that is it! And where might I find this obliteration, save in this life? Drugs? Pah! Oh, I have given Haggerty a royal chase. It has been meat and drink to me to fool the cleverest policeman ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath

... the Nemesis that waits on woman's folly has been swifter of foot than common. I have no wife, Angela; and you have no sister that you will ever care to own. My Lady Fareham has crossed the narrow sea with her lover, Henri de Malfort—her paramour always—though ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... knew how I felt at getting into such a scrape, you wouldn't look at me as if you were an Avenging Conscience, or a Nemesis, or any of those horrid furies. No; and you wouldn't look speechlessly sorrowful, either. Of course I ought to have told him at once that Henry did not live here, and I ought to have sent him next door instead ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... Japan, the Nemesis of the East, had won her maiden spurs on the field of warfare in her brief conflict with China in 1894, but that was looked upon as a fight between a young game-cock and a decrepit barn-yard fowl, and the Western ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... have 'wetted your lips, and left your palate dry.' You have not had to wait long for retribution; you spoke unadvisedly in scorn of human needs; and, this little while after, behold you making public renunciation of your freedom! Surely Nemesis was standing behind your back as you drank in the flattering tributes to your superiority; did she not smile in her divine fore-knowledge of the impending change, and mark how you forgot to propitiate her before you assailed the victims ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... she. 'Never mind love. After all, what is it? The dream of a few weeks. That is all its joy. The disappointment of a life is its Nemesis. Who was ever successful in true love? Success in love argues that the love is false. True love is always despondent or tragical. Juliet loved. Haidee loved. Dido loved, and what came of it? Troilus loved and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... with cannon and newly invented implements of war, under a Marshal of France, and with an Emperor besides. As this succession of surprises was crowned with what seemed the greatest surprise of all, there remained a greater still in the surprise of the French Empire. No Greek Nemesis with unrelenting hand ever dealt more incessantly the unavoidable blow, until the Empire fell as a dead body falls, while the Emperor became a captive and the Empress a fugitive, with their only child a fugitive also. ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner

... people to serve their nefarious purpose of dominating the world by violence), suppose these masters had really known the meaning and felt the truth of the Greek tragedies, which unveil reckless arrogance—Hybris—as the fatal sin, hateful to the gods and doomed to an inevitable Nemesis. Might not this truth, filtering through the masters to the people, have led them to the abatement of the ruinous pride which sent Germany out to subjugate the other nations in 1914? The egregious General von ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... thickened. Be it so: she would act her part with the rest. For the second time in her experience, her mind was lightened by the intervention of Mrs. Ford. Before the scorn of her own conscience, (which never came,) before Jack's deepest reproach, she was ready to bow down,—but not before that long-faced Nemesis in black silk. The leaven of resentment began to work. She leaned back in her chair, and folded her arms, brave to await results. But before long she fell asleep. She was aroused by a knock at her chamber-door. The afternoon was far gone. Miss ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... looking outward, with the inquisitiveness of a land to which few strangers come, did not see that recognition of a Nemesis, and quickly, in order that the stranger himself might not see it, the man drew a long breath into his chest and schooled himself to the stoic bearing of one who calmly ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... I believe him to be," replied Mr. Carlyle, glancing round to make sure that none could hear the assertion save those present. "But what I say to you and Barbara, I would not say to the world. Whatever be the man's guilt, I am not his Nemesis. Dear Mrs. Hare, take courage, take ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... mistaken because Themis, the Goddess of Justice, held in front of them a pair of scales in which she weighed the actions of men. Their decrees were instantly carried out by a pitiless goddess, Nemesis, or Vengeance by name, armed with a whip red with the gore of ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... formed a chain with a weak, if not a missing, link in the middle. Picture, if you will, an insane man being choked by a supposedly sane one, and he in turn being choked by a temporarily sane insane friend of the assaulted one, and you will have Nemesis as nearly in a nutshell as any mere rhetorician has yet ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... existent in The austerest form of naked majesty, Thou who beheldest, mid the assassins' din, At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie, Folding his robe in dying dignity, An offering to thine altar from the queen Of gods and men, great Nemesis! did he die, And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been Victors of countless kings, or puppets of ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... of Nemesis has been opened again," answered Socrates. "Aristophanes has never been ingenuous hitherto; now he is so with a vengeance. Very well, Aristophanes, I sympathise with you that you can no more scoff at me. I pardon you, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... tormenting and in the end so disgusting, this is not because we no longer think its marbles bright, its fountains cool, its athletes strong, or its roses fragrant; but because, mingled with all these supreme beauties, there is the ubiquitous shade of Nemesis, the sense of a vacant will and a suicidal inhumanity. The intolerableness of this moral condition poisons the beauty which continues to be felt. If this beauty did not exist, and was not still desired, the tragedy would disappear and Jehovah would be deprived of the worth of ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... all, is the great issue which underlies everything. Is there or is there not in the affairs of men a Providence which the ancients pictured as the slow-footed Nemesis, but which we moderns have somewhat learned to disregard? "If right and wrong, in this God's world of ours, are linked with higher Powers," is the great question which the devout soul, whether warrior or saint, has ever answered in one way. When in this country ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz

... darkness of his cruel superstition he had done it, to save his human brothers from a fancied inconvenience; and yet, by that very act of cruelty, he had himself called destruction upon their heads. The Nemesis that followed punished him through them—him, that wronged, through those that wrongfully he sought to benefit. That spirit who watches over the sanctities of love is a strong angel—is a jealous angel; and this ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... horror, and sublimity, blackness, suffocating gases, scorching heat, crashings, surgings, detonations; half seen fires, hideous, tortured, wallowing waves. I feel as if the terrors of Kilauea would haunt me all my life, and be the Nemesis of weak and ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... Yuan Shih-kai realized that the Nemesis which had dogged his footsteps all his life was again close behind him. In the Japanese attack on Kiaochow he foresaw a web of complications which even his unrivalled diplomacy might be unable to ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... Minerva, Nemesis, and the Queen of Sheba," said Henry, "and you're all five in one package. I retract everything I said. And if I may be permitted to kiss the hem of your garment, to show I'm properly humbled, why—in plain English, that idea has ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... soul. Once a little boy, who could just stretch himself up as high as his papa's knee, climbed surreptitiously into the store-closet and upset the milk-pitcher. Terrified, he crept behind the flour-barrel, and there Nemesis found him, and he looked so charming and so guilty that two or three others were called to come and enjoy the sight. But he, unhappy midget, did not know that he looked charming; he did not know that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... with a lawyer's blind confidence; but under our English law he need never at least fear that the suspicion will be permanent. For lawyers repeat their own incredible commonplaces about the absolute perfection of English law so often that at last, by a sort of retributive nemesis, they really ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... fiery to admit of reconciliation, and which, indeed, a few years after their withdrawal, culminated in civil war. As illustrating the inevitableness of any great moral issue, no matter how vast the distance which at a critical moment we may put between it and ourselves,—as indicating how surely the Nemesis, seemingly avoided, but really only postponed, will continue to track our flying footsteps, even across the barren wastes of ocean, that ought, if anything could, to interpose an effectual barrier between us and all pursuers, and, having caught up with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... well-supported fact, he urged that probably the Devil had sent a spirit to take the apparent form of the hare while he had hurried the woman to the bush and had presumably kept her invisible until she was found by the boy. It was the Nemesis of a bad cause that its greatest defender should have let himself ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... Buck. Slim Buck, falling back on his tribal dignity, was killing all possible time in making the preparations. When pursuit was resumed Jolly Roger would have at least a mile the start of the red-headed nemesis who hung to his trail. And Wollaston Lake, sixty miles from end to end, and half as wide, offered plenty of room ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... fortnight was over the Nemesis had come, and Lucia, woman as she was, could not repress a thrill of malicious joy, even though Elsley became more intolerable than ever ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... more favourable conditions than in any other country on the face of the earth. The wealth of Croesus was nothing to [210] that which we have accumulated, and our prosperity has filled the world with envy. But Nemesis did not forget ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... those dark restless waters merged into the brooding mystery of the black night. How unspeakably dreary, lonely, hopeless it all was! Into what tragic unknown fate had this earliest comrade of my manhood been remorselessly swept? Was all indeed well with him? or had the Nemesis of a wrong once done dealt its fatal stroke at last? The voices of the night were silent; the chambers of the great tossing sea hid their secret well. Had this gallant and reckless young soldier of France, this petted courtier ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... but nothing came out. He shut it, thought for a second and then tried again. He got as far as: "I—" before Nemesis overtook him. The second sneeze was even louder and more powerful ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett

... declined to put in a claim to the Tsin succession against his brothers "because he had not been in mourning whilst a fugitive." In 642 Sung and her allies made war on Ts'i, which was then mourning for the First Protector; by a just Nemesis the Tartars came to the rescue and saved Ts'i. In 627, after the Second Protector's death, Ts'in declared war, whilst Tsin was mourning, upon a petty orthodox principality belonging to the same clan as Tsin and the Emperor, and belonging also ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... which is perfectly devastating: and there is a presence of the most disastrous atmosphere of sham sentiment, sham morality, sham almost everything, that can be imagined. It was hinted in the last volume that Madame de Stael's lover, Benjamin Constant, shows in one way the Nemesis of Sensibility; so does she herself in another. But the difference! In Adolphe a coal from the altar of true passion has touched lips in themselves polluted enough, and the result is what it always is in such, alas! rare cases, whether the lips were polluted or not. In Delphine there is a desperate ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... midnight dreams, black NEMESIS! Whom,[1] self-conceiving in the inmost depths Of CHAOS, blackest NIGHT long-labouring bore, When the stern DESTINIES, her elder brood. And shapeless DEATH, from that more monstrous birth Leapt shuddering! haunt his slumbers, Nemesis, Scorch with the fires of Phlegethon his heart, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... Olga, I cannot endure his persecution much longer. No, not even for you. Sooner or later I shall turn him over to the authorities. In fact, I am half minded to explain all to the captain before we land. On a French liner it were an easy matter, Olga, permanently to settle this Nemesis ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... black night wall, as though unconscious of his actions, yet forgetting no trick, no skill of the plains. But the equally silent man behind clung to him like a shadow of doom, watching his slightest motion—a Nemesis that would ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... intense. Salmon and lamb in February, and green pease and new potatoes in March, can hardly make a man happy, even though nobody pays for them; and the feeling that one is an antecedentem scelestum after whom a sure, though lame, Nemesis is hobbling, must sometimes disturb one's slumbers. On the present occasion Scelestus felt that his Nemesis had overtaken him. Lame as she had been, and swift as he had run, she had mouthed him at last, and there was nothing left for him but to listen ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... The Greeks invented tragedy, the poetical reflection of the severity of fate. Would any modern audience be found, which would be prepared to sit for a whole summer day listening eagerly to the grand expression by such poets as Aeschylus and Sophocles of the power of Nemesis, the instability of all prosperity, the misfortunes which hunt those who have the ill luck to displease the gods? Surely not. And not in Greek tragedy only, but in elegiac poetry and in epigram, we find perfect reflections of our most gloomy moods. But for such ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... ability it gave not the least hint of those rich resources of humour that since have diffused so much innocent pleasure. Most of her successes have been gained as the formidable lady who typifies in comedy the domestic proprieties and the Nemesis of respectability. It was her refined and severely correct demeanour that gave soul and wings to the wild fun of A Night Off. From Miss Garth to Mrs. Laburnum is a far stretch of imitative talent for the interpretation of the woman nature that everybody, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... to friends. He worshipped General Lee and the old time "Virginia gentleman"; and those with whom he lived, and for whose unclean profits he sold himself, never guessed the depths of his contempt for all they stood for. They had the dollars, they were on top; but some day the nemesis of Good-breeding would smite them—the army of the ghosts of Gentility would rise, and with "Marse Robert" and "Jeb" Stuart at their head, would sweep away the hordes ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... Henry. "I am rejoiced to see a man of your character invested with these functions. But, to speak truth, I have small confidence in this systematic justice, set up by the moderates of the Convention, in this complaisant Nemesis that is considerate to conspirators and merciful to traitors, that hardly dares strike a blow at the Federalists and fears to summon the Austrian to the bar. No, it is not the Revolutionary Tribunal will save the Republic. ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... Mr. Perkins hears of it, Mr. Finn," put in Thaddeus. "I am told that he is wondering yet what hit him, and having put the affront upon you, and through that inexcusable act lost the election, he ought to know that you were his Nemesis." ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... influence of Newman, and contributed to his Lives of the English Saints, and in 1844 he took Deacon's orders. The connection with Newman was, however, short-lived; and the publication in 1848 of The Nemesis of Faith showed that in the severe mental and spiritual conflict through which he had passed, the writer had not only escaped from all Tractarian influences, but was in revolt against many of the fundamental doctrines ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... been the sensationalism of angry fate, and even less likely to be believed than the work of fiction. Nor was the vulture face of the Nemesis yet smoothed down. The grief of her bereavement had only partially diverted Effie's mind from the recollections of him who had ruined her, and yet could not be hated by her, nay, could not be but loved by her. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... extent than most good people seem to be aware of. It needn't be true, to do this, any more than Homeopathy need, to do its work. The Spiritualists have some pretty strong instincts to pry over, which no doubt have been roughly handled by theologians at different times. And the Nemesis of the pulpit comes, in a shape it little thought of, beginning with the snap of a toe-joint, and ending with such a crack of old beliefs that the roar of it is heard in all the ministers' studies of Christendom! Sir, you cannot have people ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... wealthy of their neighbours have their miseries and causes of disquiet. Our little innocent Muse of Blanche, who sang so nicely and talked so sweetly, you would have thought she must have made sunshine where ever she went, was the skeleton, or the misery, or the bore, or the Nemesis of Clavering House, and of most of the inhabitants thereof. As one little stone in your own shoe or your horse's, suffices to put either to torture and to make your journey miserable, so in life a little obstacle is sufficient to obstruct ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... moderate enemies he will hold his own. But when there comes one immoderately forcible, violently inimical, then to that man he will open his bosom. He will tempt into his camp with an offer of high command any foe that may be worth his purchase. This too has answered well; but there is a Nemesis. The loyalty of officers so procured must be open to suspicion. The man who has said bitter things against you will never sit at your feet in contented submission, nor will your friend of old standing long endure to be superseded by ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... Tribulation," in which the Despenser story is begun, and its end told from another point of view. That volume left Isabelle of France at the height of her ambition, in the place to reach which she had been plotting so long and so unscrupulously. Here we see the Nemesis come upon her and the chief partner of her guilt; the proof that there is a God that judgeth in the earth. It is surely one of the saddest stories of history—sad as all stories are which tell of men and women whom God has ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... Valley, doubtless, had much to do with his continued implacable hatred to the Union. Sheridan was his nemesis. Just after Kirby Smith had surrendered in 1865 and Sheridan was on his way to the Rio Grande, the latter encountered Early escaping across the Mississippi in a small boat, with his horses swimming beside it. He got away, but his ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... busy life—whether while stern justice and exacting business claimed his energies and harassed his thoughts—he now and then gave one moment, dedicated one effort, to keep alive gentler fires than those which smoulder in the fane of Nemesis, it was not easy to discover. He seldom went near Fieldhead; if he did, his visits were brief. If he called at the rectory, it was only to hold conferences with the rector in his study. He maintained his rigid course very steadily. Meantime the history of the year ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... Nemesis had called at last in the shape of a rival claimant. I staggered for an instant; then I said, "Oh, I think you are under a mistake; that dog is ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... His nemesis seized Carmichael so soon as he reached the Dunleith train in the shape of the Free Kirk minister of Kildrummie, who had purchased six pounds of prize seed potatoes, and was carrying the treasure home in a paper bag. This bag had done after its ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... wrong—at home?" Elinor cried, holding out her hand to him—coming to herself, which meant only awakening to the horror of a danger far more present than she had ever dreamt, and to the sudden sight not of her boy, but of that Nemesis which she had so carefully prepared for herself, and which had been awaiting her for years. She was not afraid of anything wrong at home. It was the first shield she could find in the shock which had almost paralysed her, to conceal her terror and distress at the sight of him from the astonished, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... carved staircase which led into the hall, and watched him going down, step by step, with lagging tread. From the morning-room came the distant sound of a piano, and a man's voice singing to it; singing softly, as though no Nemesis were approaching; singing slowly, as if there were time enough and to spare. But Nemesis had reached the bottom of the staircase; Nemesis, with a heavy step, was going across the silent hall—was even now opening ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... exercise of her wit and the extreme compass of her legal rights, had succeeded in producing in a country for whose welfare she had always professed an exaggerated regard. Such was the effect of French diplomacy. But there is a Nemesis that waits on international malpractices, however cunning. Now, as before and since, the very astuteness of the French Ministers and agents was to strike a terrible blow at French interests and French influence in Egypt. At this period France still ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... equalizes every injustice, balances every perversion, punishes the wrong and rewards the right. The Universe is self-lubricating and automatic. The Greeks clearly beheld the sublime truths of Compensation when they pictured Nemesis. It is absurd to punish—leave it to Nemesis—she never forgets—nothing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... bacon; and another one protest at the amount of glucose in the olive oil; and another that there is too high a percentage of nitrogen in the anchovy. A man of distorted imagination might think this tasting of chemicals in the food a sort of nemesis of fate upon the members. But that would be very foolish, for in every case the head waiter, who is the chief of the Chinese philosophers mentioned above, says that he'll see to it immediately and have the ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... infected with the pagan view that he sees a sort of Nemesis pursuing the hero whom the slighted Aphrodite reproaches with lack of reverence—religious reverence—for her power. This primitive pagan view, crude, non-moral, but essentially sincere, animates the story of Tom Jones and gives it a character which is lacking ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... It is the Nemesis of pedantry to be always wrong. Your true prig of a pedant goes immensely out of his way to be vastly more correct than other people, and succeeds in the end in being vastly more ungrammatical, or vastly more illogical, or both at ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... till there was scarce a trace of it left in this prettiest and wildest little scamp of all the Army in Africa. But strive to kill it how she would, her sex would have its revenge one day and play Nemesis to her. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... passed in sordid struggle and disappointment. He was not prepared to make a living even in America, where the day laborer eats wheat instead of rye. Apparently the American flag could not protect him against the pursuing Nemesis of his limitations; he must expiate the sins of his fathers who slept across the seas. He had been endowed at birth with a poor constitution, a nervous, restless temperament, and an abundance of hindering prejudices. In his boyhood his body was starved, that his mind might be stuffed with ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... to be found. He had evidently realized, when it was too late, what would be the consequence of his terrible crime, and had fled to escape the Nemesis, in the form of avenging justice, which he knew would soon be on ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... the incarnation of that wrong, and by your hand must he be destroyed." He rose, and caught the younger man's hands again in his own, forced Mr. Caryll to confront him. "He shall know when the time comes whose hand it was that pulled him down; he shall know the Nemesis that has lain in wait for him these thirty years to smite him at the end. And he shall taste hell in this world before he goes to it in the next. It is God's own justice, boy! Will you be false to the duty that lies before ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... The look in Rigby's eyes meant something, after all—and Rigby was Graydon's best friend! Harbert was in Chicago to act—and to act first! This thought shot into the man's brain like burning metal. It set every nerve afire. His nemesis had already begun his work. Before he left the Cable home that night he would be asking his host and hostess what they knew ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... a standing horse paws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals in sport: because ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on the organism. But, clearly, the old order was already in part reversed. The Nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace. Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back changed! Already the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew. They were becoming reacquainted ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... followed as a matter of course. The unhappy wife recklessly broke the bond which she had as recklessly formed, and which the poet would have honorably and truly respected all his life; and then her passionate regret reacted fatally on herself,—and on him also, by a Nemesis not so very strange or unnatural, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... and peoples of Asia had he broken, grievous slavery was he bringing even to thee, O Rome,—for all else had fallen before that man's sword,—when suddenly, in the midst of his struggle for mastery, headlong he fell, driven from fatherland into exile. Such is the will of Nemesis; at a mere nod, in a moment of time, the ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... illustration of the profitlessness of all crime. Sin is, as one of its Hebrew names tells us, missing the mark—whether we think of it as fatally failing to reach the ideal of conduct, or as always, by a divine nemesis, failing to hit even the shabby end it aims at. 'Every rogue is a roundabout fool.' They put Joseph in the pit, and here he is on a throne. They have stained their souls, and embittered their father's life for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... peer into their tenebrous depths—on and on, skirting the grim walls that typified the mediaevalism surrounding and fettering his restless thought—on to the long incline which led up to the broad esplanade on the summit. Must he forever flee this pursuing Nemesis? Or should he hurl himself from the wall, once he gained the top? At the upper end of the incline he heard the low sound of voices. A priest and a young girl who sat there on the parapet rose as he approached. He stopped abruptly in front of them. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... of Nemesis seemed reaching out to grasp Nevill, and he shuddered as he realized his danger. The rustle of the bank notes in his breast pocket afforded him a momentary relief as he remembered that they would give ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... proverbial old lady) in keeping a devil. But, as Johnson observed, a man may be very wicked and 'very genteel.' Richardson lectures us very seriously on the evil results which are sure to follow bad courses; but he evidently holds in his heart that, till the Nemesis descends, the libertines are far the most amusing part of the world. In Sir Charles Grandison's company, we should be treated to an intolerable deal of sermonising, with an occasional descent into the regions of humour—but the humour is always ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen



Words linked to "Nemesis" :   Greek mythology, curse, bane, Greek deity, scourge, affliction



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