Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Woe   /woʊ/   Listen
Woe

noun
(Formerly written also wo)
1.
Misery resulting from affliction.  Synonym: suffering.
2.
Intense mournfulness.  Synonym: woefulness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Woe" Quotes from Famous Books



... at night, and woe to any belated native or domestic animal that happened to be near; he would leap upon them, and kill them with one ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... now is that it was a spectacle to freeze the blood. Poor Almia could scarcely retain consciousness as she gazed upon the awful scenes of woe and suffering which spread out beneath her. And she could do nothing! Her labors would be useful only in cases of isolated woundings. If she were to mingle in the fray she would perish in the general slaughter; and if she were to go and offer assistance ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... he should recover his spirits or facility of manner; his gaiety was forced, his tenderness constrained; his heart was heavy within him; and ever and anon the source whence all this disappointment and woe had sprung would recur to his perplexed and ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... was almost out on the horse's tail. His alarm had, therefore, become overwhelming. No fondness for the nice warm fur of the bunnies, no faith in the larger boy in front, could suffice to drive from his tiny face the look of woe unutterable, expressed by his eyes and his trembling ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

... the jury were shaken a little when Gore Cross-examined about her engagements before, For Jones was the sixth of the strings to her bow And with five other verdicts she solaced her woe. ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams

... hollowed the marble cheeks, and the stronger suffering that cannot weep had chiselled out great shadows beneath her brows. Her thin clasped hands seemed wringing each other into strange shapes of woe; and though she stood erect as a slender pillar against the black rock, it was rather from the courage of despair than because she was straight and tall by her ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... case of young offenders between the ages of 16 and 21. This is the most momentous for weal or woe of all periods of life. During this stage, the transition from youth to manhood is taking place; the habits then formed acquire a more enduring character, and, in the majority of cases, determine the whole future of the individual. If youths between the ages just mentioned could ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... we have played a large part in the world, and we are bent upon making our future even larger than the past. In particular, the events of the last four years have definitely decided that, for woe or for weal, our place must be great among the nations. We may either fall greatly or succeed greatly; but we can not avoid the endeavor from which either great failure or great success must come. Even if we would, we can not play a small part. If we should try, all that would follow would be that ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... ancient parents, Without the crown of pride; They were moving slow, in weeds of woe, No maiden ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... horse-trader was behind the dog; so close behind that he came out on the continuation of the pipe-line path while the hound was still nosing among the leaves where Tom had lain sunning himself and telling his tale of woe. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... obliged to receive it. I lament now, I must ever lament, those few short months of Paradisaical bliss; I disobeyed no command, I ate no apple, and yet I was ruthlessly driven from it. Alas! my companion did, and I was precipitated in his fall.[19] But I wander from my relation—let woe come at its appointed time; I may at this stage of my story ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

... the swing, and poor Madge with it! You fairly scream as you catch her up. But she is not hurt,—only a cry of fright, and a little sprain of that fairy ankle; and as she brushes away the tears and those flaxen curls, and breaks into a merry laugh,—half at your woe-worn face, and half in vexation at herself,—and leans her hand (such a hand!) upon your shoulder, to limp away into the shade, you dream ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... have spent in Paradise, we were not there more than three days, and then the same wretched state of things began again. What I wrote when there was a head wind or calm, I should be sorry to reproduce. Woe to him who then came and said it was ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... only to warn Hereward of danger to his life,—and hers. She might be writing again, only for the same purpose. But still, she did not wish that either Hereward, or she, should owe Alftruda their lives, or anything. They had struggled on through weal and woe without her, for many a year. Let them do so without her still. That Alftruda had once loved Hereward she knew well. Why should she not? The wonder was to her that every woman did not love him. But she had long since gauged ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... Jimmy, and in accents commendably clear considering that he uttered them with his nose deep in the tankard of mulled ale. "Up to now I have played the good boy who is seen but not heard. I break the self-imposed silence only to say: 'Woe betide the man who attempts to ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... neglect of a sacred duty; but still more by the wailings and entreaties of the wounded, who clung around their knees, and implored not to be abandoned to certain destruction. Amid this scene of universal woe and dejection, a fresh and unwonted spirit of energy and heroism seemed to be infused into Nicias. Though suffering under an incurable complaint, he was everywhere seen marshalling his troops and encouraging them by his exhortations. ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... saying," he continued, turning again to my partner, "we all of us make mistakes and I made the biggest one when I annexed the present Mrs. D. I was a young fool hardly out of my teens, and the sight of a pretty face and a tearful story of woe were too much for me. She was an actress. Comprenez? A sort of Lydia Languish, la-de-da kind of a girl. Oh, she caught me fast enough, and it was only after I had swallowed the hook, sinker and all, that I found ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... succeeded in cutting it down. At eventide the king of the desert fell; the sound of its fall resounded far and wide, like a sigh in the solitude; the soldier shuddered as though he had heard some voice predicting woe. ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac

... length they ceased to come at all, and footsore peasants slunk to the gate after sunset, and did their errand there, by stealth. Once, a vassal was dispatched in haste to the abbey at dead of night, and when morning came, there were sounds of woe and wailing in the sisters' house; and after this, a mournful silence fell upon it, and knight or lady, horse or armour, was seen ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... of the same pattern. Whether in town or country, give me the girls that work. The Girls That Work! But evidently it is high time woe began a ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... never been seen to spend a penny, unless it was to save twopence. If fellows had dared, they would have liked now and then to pay his subscriptions to the clubs; or even hand on an old pair of cricket shoes or part of the contents of a hamper for his benefit. But woe betide them if they ever tried it! The only extravagance he had ever been known to commit was some months ago, when he bought a book of trout-flies, which rumour said must have cost him as much as an ordinary Classic's pocket-money ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... for him by Ruby, who by no means greeted him with a happy countenance. It was the second morning after the night of her imprisonment; and nothing had occurred to alleviate her woe. At this very moment her lover should have been in Liverpool, but he was, in fact, abed in Welbeck Street. 'Yes, sir; she's at home,' said Ruby, with a baby in her arms and a little child hanging on to her dress. 'Don't pull so, Sally. Please, sir, is Sir Felix still in London?' ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... found it in the forest dark, A blossom of the snow; I read upon its face so fair, No heed of human woe. ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... fleas in Jewry Jumped up and bit like fury; And the progeny of Jacob Did on the main-deck wake up (I wot those greasy Rabbins Would never pay for cabins); And each man moaned and jabbered in His filthy Jewish gaberdine, In woe and lamentation, And howling consternation. And the splashing water drenches Their dirty brats and wenches; And they crawl from bales and benches In ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... as for thee, thou false woman, My sister and my fae, Grim vengeance, yet, shall whet a sword That thro thy soul shall gae: The weeping blood in woman's breast Was never known to thee; Nor th' balm that draps on wounds of woe ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway

... responsible for a good many things. They were their masters' dressers, so to speak, in that they were required to carry supplies of the greasy clay or earth with which the blacks anoint their bodies to ward off the sun's rays and insect bites; and beside this, woe betide the wives if corroboree time found them without an ample supply of coloured pigments for the decoration of their masters' bodies. One of the principal duties of the women-folk, however, was the provision ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... England!" cried he, with a voice that rose over them, high, solemn, and majestic—yet had always a tremor through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse and woe—"ye, that have loved me!—ye, that have deemed me holy!—behold me here, the one sinner of the world! At last—at last!—I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have stood, here, with this woman, whose arm, more ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... no friend to share my woe And bitter tears unseen may flow, To soothe my grief I silent go To tell ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... to me a profanation—an insult heaped on injury—an unjustifiable prying into the saddest secrets of the great prison-house of human woe—for us visiters to be standing here; and, though I apologised for it with a sovereign, which grain of sand will, I am sure, be wisely applied to the mitigation of this mountain of misery, I was yet in haste to be gone. Yet I leaned over the rail and made some inquiry ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... that a reorganization, with the insurgents fairly recognized, would be as bad as these interested people claim, or would be half so bloody as any organized civil government will prove to be with them left out. Woe to the Spaniard in the island if war again breaks out here! Gomez is at the head of the Cuban military forces, but there are others, generally good men, who are recognized heads of the Cuban insurgent civil power. These are the people who will have to be dealt with, or they ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... years of waiting, was it not? And now wouldst thou repeat the history? Say what thou wilt, I tell thee that evil will come of it; for to him who doeth, at the least, good breeds good and evil evil, even though in after days out of evil cometh good. Offences must needs come; but woe to him by whom the offence cometh. So said that Messiah of whom I spoke to thee, and it was truly said. If thou slayest this innocent woman, I say unto thee that thou shalt be accursed, and pluck no fruit from thine ancient tree of love. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... that when the fruit was ripe they encamped for the night under the trees. When a durian fell to the ground with a great thud, they all jumped up to look for it, as the fallen fruit belongs to the finder, and they loved it so that they willingly sacrificed their sleep for it. Woe be to the man, however, on whose head the fruit falls, for it is so hard and heavy ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... lad's eyes clouded. To have displeased these knights, the greatest men in all the world, for so he thought them. Then and there he wished he could die. Woe had the ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe

... of the sleeping man, when they were distinguishable by the hunter, who, crouching, beneath the curtain, listened to his sleeping speech. But all was not exultation. The change from the voice of triumph to that of woe was instantaneous; and the curse and the cry, as of one in mortal agony, pain or ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... want of this agrarian law. No description could be more likely to turn an individual into ridicule than this of his taking upon himself to represent in his own person the sorrows of the city. The picture of the man with the self-assumed garments of public woe, as though he were big enough to exhibit the grief of all Rome, could not but be effective. It has been supposed that Cicero was insulting the Tribune because he was dirty. Not so. He was ridiculing Rullus because Rullus had dared ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... she took the little silver crucifix which hung around her neck, pressed it tightly to her bosom, and turning her woe-begone face to him, said, as she rose, "You do not know, or you would not say such things ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... to forget what he had been, what he might still be, and all that he had lost? He took up his hat from the table on which his father's unjust testament lay, tore from it the crape that surrounded it—that outward semblance of woe, which in his case was a bitter mockery—and trampled it beneath his feet. His mother raised her weeping eyes silently and imploringly to his face. He returned to her side, pressed her hand affectionately between his own, and casting a contemptuous glance upon his brother, quitted the apartment, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... his decision. It cannot be asserted that his enviable position was due either to perfect impartiality or to infallible wisdom. But every one knew that his judgments would be informed by shrewd sense and good-humour, and would be followed by a story, and woe betide the disputant whose perversity deferred that pleasure. So Garotte became a sort of theocracy, with Judge Rablay as ruler. And yet he was, perhaps, the only man in the community whose courage had never been tested ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... truth and manliness, are lost together in the furious chaos of human elements. The tortured airs of heaven howl out curses in a horrid unison, this fair free soil of ours, dishonored and befouled, moans beneath our feet in a dismal drone of hopeless woe; there is no rock or cavern or ghostly den of our mighty land but hisses back the echo of some hideous curse, and hell itself is upon earth, split and ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... different things all sauced up to be unlike themsels. Even the potatoes daurna look like potatoes. If the food in a club looks like what it is, the members run about, flinging up their hands and crying, "Woe is me!" Then this is another thing, you get your letters sent to the club instead of to your lodgings. You see you would get them sooner at your lodgings, and you may have to trudge weary miles to the club for them, but that's a great advantage, ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie

... to them, do ye think so to carry it above? Nay, persuade yourselves you must one day appear, and none to speak for you, God your Judge, your conscience your accuser, and Satan, your tormentor, standing by, and then woe to him that is alone, when the Advocate becomes Judge. In that day blessed are all those that have trusted in him, and used him formerly as an Advocate against sin and Satan, but woe to those for ever, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... tooth-and-nail when you can get it, see you that no man is left to find a day for himself. In this old country, with its seething hard-worked millions, its heavy taxes, its swarms of ignorant, its crowds of poor, and its crowds of wicked, woe the day when the dangerous man shall find a day for himself, because the head of the Government failed in his duty in not anticipating it by a brighter and a better one! Name you the day, First Lord; make a day; work for a day beyond your little time, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... echo around the globe! For a long time I hoped to enlighten her and redeem her, but I have failed. But I am bound to enlighten you and save you, am I not? From the feeling you harbor can spring only an additional shame for Cesarine, and certain, perhaps irreparable woe for you. Stop, turn about and look the other way. A man of twenty, who may naturally live another three-score years and work during two of them, who would talk to you of that nonsense, love's sorrow? ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... page aright Where Hope, the soothsayer, reads our lot, Thyself shalt own the page was bright, Well that we loved, woe had we not, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... often grow From out the darkest voids of woe; As fissures by the sea-worm drilled In Eastern ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey

... Bobby would return to that spot his ainsel' And Ailie, being only a maid, whose portion it was to wait and weep, lay across the window-sill, on the pediment of the tomb, a limp little figure of woe. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... my song, a tale of woe: I came into the world as do so many: My mother bore me in the street below, And as for father, why, I hadn't any! Till now I've faithfully her shame concealed: I tell it now to make my song complete. O drop a shilling ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... and won a great reputation, and yet this effect and this reputation have been altogether wide of its author's aim. Swift's Gulliver is one example. As Mr. Birrell put it the other day, "Swift's gospel of hatred, his testament of woe—his Gulliver, upon which he expended the treasures of his wit, and into which he instilled the concentrated essence of his rage—has become a child's book, and has been read with wonder and delight by generations ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... came the last, absorbing kiss, True Love can ne'er forego,— That dreamy plenitude of bliss Or antepast of woe,— That seeming child of Heaven, which at its birth Briefly expires, ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... upon the floor below. O weary lady Geraldine, I pray you drink this cordial wine, It is a wine of virtuous powers; My mother made it of wild flowers. And will your mother pity me, Who am a maiden most forlorn? Christabel answer'd—Woe is me! She died the hour that I was born, I have heard the grey-hair'd friar tell, How on her death-bed she did say, That she should hear the castle bell Strike twelve upon my wedding-day. O mother dear! that thou wert here! I would, said Geraldine, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... upon Lord Sidmouth,[55] who has been prophesying woe and destruction from the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Such prophecies, he says, will, in the process of time, become matter of pleasantry even to "the sedulous housewife and the Rural Dean." There is always a copious supply of Lord Sidmouths in the world, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... their people have given themselves to the production of only one article. "It is the custom of our people" is the final word. And what has become customary is by caste enactment made obligatory. And woe be to him who defies caste. And thus the caste-prescribed trade becomes the be-all and ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... not how to be Happy! They turn to darkness and to woe All that is made for joy. They deal with men As, far across the mountains, in the south, Men trap a singing thrush, put out his eyes,— And cage him up and bid him then to sing— Sing before God that ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody

... him. There he would stand, his great head poked through the bars, watching his master out of sight; and then would turn and trot, self-reliant and defiant, sturdy and surly, down the very centre of the road through the village—no playing, no enticing away, and woe to that man or dog who tried to stay him in his course! And so on, past Mother Ross's shop, past the Sylvester Arms, to the right by Kirby's smithy, over the Wastrel by the Haughs, to await his master at the edge of ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... soberness there was something about him which people liked. Most of his friends had taken delight in jollying him and he was one of those boys who are always being nicknamed wherever they go. Over in the Toul sector they "joshed" and "kidded" him from morning till night but woe be to you if you had sought ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... slight shock of earthquake had been experienced; that stones had danced about, and several hills had trembled. The sun, quite naturally, had appeared blood-red; trouble and desolation had entered every heart, and animals had prophesied woe and destruction, predicting ruin and misfortune to the town till the good Bishop should ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... was sitting up. At sight of Parker he commenced to curse bitterly, in Spanish and English, this invader who had brought woe upon the house of Farrel. But John Parker was ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... what if we be clyd, [15] Long we cannot foist & nip at last we shall be spyed, [16] If that we be spied, O then begins our woe, With the Harman beake out and alas, [17] To Wittington ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... no sad spell my spirit binds As when, in days on which it broods, October hunted with the winds Along the reddening sunset woods. Alas, the seasons come and go, Brightly or dimly rise and set The days, but stir no fount of woe, Nor kindle hope, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... repellent about him. The hero of a novel attracts in part by his physiognomy, his manner, or even his dress; his character is qualified by circumstances and society; his impulses vary according to the impressions of outward things; he is the sport of fortune, dependent for weal or woe on the acquisition of some external blessing which the development of the plot may or may not bestow on him. As circumstances make his life what it is, so the particular combination of circumstances, called happiness, constitutes its end. Instead of losing his merely ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green

... has taken to her hymnal, this morning, in search of consolation. I tried to coax her to get up and go ashore; but she said there was no use in experiencing the same woe twice." ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... horse him cast, Where as he lay, till that men him up took. This was a fair chevachie* of a cook: *cavalry expedition Alas! that he had held him by his ladle! And ere that he again were in the saddle There was great shoving bothe to and fro To lift him up, and muche care and woe, So unwieldy was this silly paled ghost. And to the Manciple then spake our Host: "Because that drink hath domination Upon this man, by my salvation I trow he lewedly* will tell his tale. *stupidly For were it wine, or old or moisty* ale, *new That he hath drunk, he speaketh in his ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... seasons he has not been to this village; when the moon comes again, it will be four." He said this with proper significance, and the flat face of the melancholy girl by his side puckered and creased miserably before she opened her large mouth to wail her woe. ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... is not so. In the jungle where he lives the stems of the bamboos are light, and the markings of the tiger are so like his surroundings that you might get quite close to him and never know it. He walks through the dense thick jungle with the loose, springy step of a cat, and woe be to any luckless animal he sees! Sometimes he will find an enclosure with some young bullocks in it; then he will take one, and leave the others, for, unless he is a very young tiger, he does not ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... searching for some access to this valley. The last time he was here, he found the passage by which you entered. Four of the Danites held the passage against a hundred warriors, and the Navajoes were repulsed. But Ko-pe-tah swore he would come again. If he ever gets in here, woe unto the Danites!" ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... in a state of abject want, and then they are very humble. But in the strawberry season they make a little money, and while it lasts are fat and saucy enough. We can't do anything with them, they won't work. There they are in their cabins, just as you see them, a poor, woe-begone set of vagabonds; a burden upon the community; of no use to themselves, nor ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... and fro, To flee from certain death and woe; While he, with visage grim and dark, Would still surround the ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... Quin devoted all his spare time to the grateful occupation of diverting the Martels' woe-begone little guest. Hardly a day passed that he did not suggest some excursion that would divert her without bringing her into contact with her own social world, from which she shrank with aversion. On Sundays and half-holidays he took her on long trolley rides to queer out-of-the-way ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... angels upon the slopes of Eden; hewers of wood and drawers of water, who think that the wood they hew and the water they draw, are better than the pine-forests that cover the mountains like the shadow of God, and than the great rivers that move like his eternity. And so comes upon us that woe of the preacher, that though God "hath made everything beautiful in his time, also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... shade was gradually invading. The sun had disappeared, but the moon, then in her decline, was not yet up. There was thus, between sunset and the rising of the moon, a rather long interval. It was a bitter one for husband and wife; bitter, like the certain expectation of some great woe. ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... we shall suppose that slavery is one of those offences which in the providence of God needs must come, and which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those Divine attributes, which the believers in the Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam

... telegram. I cursed the man who invented telegraphs. Now I curse him again. I was to be arrested for desertion, for murder, and que sais-je? I escaped from the prison. I fled, I starved. I met the men of Monsieur le Cure. They brought me here. I am full of woe. But I return not to France. Better to risk my life in these horrible places than to ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... is," said Lady Corisande, "but I frequently feel that some great woe is hanging over ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... gleefully; 'go out, Len, or you will never be able to endure Harry afterward, for your counterpart will be peeping out, and then woe to your pride!' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... flowers, that have a breath For every passion that we feel! That tell us what the Master saith Of blessing, in our woe and weal, And all events of life ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... woe-begone figure as the cub scrambled upon the bank and stood limp and dripping, but safe. The next moment the smile froze upon his lips. Bearing down upon him was a whirlwind of blazing eyes and gaping mouth, propelled by the powerful muscles of a very big and ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... a churchyard bell — good-bye! Poor weeping eyes! Poor head, bowed down with woe! Kiss me again, dear love, before you go. Ah, me, how fast the precious moments fly! ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... any one see the like?" The candle threw great shadows against the damp wall. I huddled closer and closer. Suddenly, just as I thought the visit happily ended, and was beginning to breathe easier again, I heard the old creature give a sigh so long and so full of woe that I knew something unusual was happening. I risked just the least glance, and I saw Dame Gredel Dick, her under jaw dropped and her eyes sticking out of her head, staring at the bottom of the barrel behind which I ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian

... which revived the child's interest, for they had another and a quainter melody, in the minor mode, full of half tones and delicious sadness that ended in a peal of exultation. For the Prophets, though they thundered against the iniquities of Israel, and preached "Woe, woe," also foretold comfort when the period of captivity and contempt should be over, and the Messiah would come and gather His people from the four corners of the earth, and the Temple should be rebuilt in Jerusalem, and all the nations would worship the God who ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... babbling cry of childhood. The coronach was again, and for the last time, shrieked as the body was carried into the interior of the church, where only the nearest relatives of the deceased and the most distinguished of the leaders of the clan were permitted to enter. The last yell of woe was so terribly loud, and answered by so many hundred echoes, that the glover instinctively raised his hands to his ears, to shut out, or deaden at least, a sound so piercing. He kept this attitude while the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... This is the month when those warm, south, driving rains often keep the ground too wet to work for days at a time, and weeds grow by leaps and bounds. Woe betide the gardener whose rows of sprouting onions, beets, carrots, etc., once become green with wild turnip and other rapid-growing intruders. Clean cultivation and slight hilling of plants ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... pass without danger and woe? What merchandise may forby be ago? For needs him must take trewes every foe: Flanders, and Spain, and other, trust to me Or else hindered all for ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... Although you may not be able to mark the traces of her grief and the furrowings of her anguish upon her winning countenance, yet be assured they are nevertheless preying upon her inward person, sapping the very foundation of that heart which alone was made for the weal and not the woe of man. The deep recesses of the soul are fields for their operation. But they are not destined simply to take the regions of the heart for their dominion, they are not satisfied merely with interrupting her better feelings; but after a while ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sky, that with the gathering darkness of the warm summer night disclosed its twinkling stars, and wished that she could suddenly die out there in the field in some mysterious way, so that there might be much self-condemning woe at the farm-house when they found her, cold and still. And she could not refrain from weeping with sheer pity for herself. After pondering for a while on the sad picture of her untimely death, she changed to one ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... Mary's Church, to help old Dawson, the sexton, to ring the Grammar School bell. {100a} As the Doctor was very active in his movements, any boarders who were late in starting, could only reach the school in time, by running across the fields between the two branches of the canal, called "The Holms." Woe betide those ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... night—which the wakeful eye, in the still, small hours, sees moving in the darker corners, or passing swiftly by the bedside, or hovering in the air, wearing the semblance of one's dead friends, or filling large portions of the room with some formless presence of unutterable malignity and woe. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... as she came in, Schmucke made her a warning sign; for, true friend and sublime German that he was, he too had read the doctor's eyes, and he was afraid that Mme. Cibot might repeat the verdict. Mme. Cibot answered by a shake of the head indicative of deep woe. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... the trouble of looking after them, for when in that state they fight like tigers, especially if they have not been long together. Once, however, the bulls become friendly, they only fight in a more or less half-hearted way amongst themselves; but woe betide any alien who finds himself near them—they will then band themselves together and fall upon that stranger until even his master would not recognise him. There is no fun attached to travelling along a much-frequented track, on which mobs of twenty to fifty camels may be met with; and there ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... to the miners about the presence of a thief in the settlement. At that time there was no toleration for thieves. The punishment visited upon them was short, sharp, and decisive. The judge most in favor was Judge Lynch, and woe be to the offender who ventured to interfere ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger

... of these letters afforded the circumstances, which gave birth to so much suffering. They contained usually some affecting tale of woe. At Bristol my feelings had been harassed by the cruel treatment of the seamen, which had come to my knowledge there: but now I was doomed to see this treatment over again in many other melancholy instances; and, additionally, to take in the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... well-known footsteps following, and a mad notion flashed across her brain that she would go to the wide full river, and end the hopeless misery she felt enshrouding her. There was a sure hiding-place from all human reproach and heavy mortal woe beneath the rushing waters borne landwards ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... conquered nor harassed that country. Sterile labors! how many millions lost in putting one stone upon another, under the forms of temples and churches! Alchymists convert stones into gold; but architects change gold into stone. Woe to the kings (as well as subjects) who trust their purse to these two ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... of a human being—of the man who had discovered it on its former visit, for thus splendidly does astronomy honor its votaries. Less scientific people regarded it askance as in some sort harbinger of woe, and spoke of presage, recalling other comets, and the commotions that came in their train—from the Deluge, with the traditional cometary influences rife in the breaking up of "the fountains of the great deep," to the victories of Mohammed II. and the threatened overthrow of Christendom, and even ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... goes back to Fumin Wood, and how we stuck it out, Eight days of hunger, thirst and cold, mowed down by steel and flame; Waist-deep in mud and mad with woe, with dead men all about, We fought like fiends and waited for relief that never came. Eight days and nights they rolled on us in battle-frenzied mass! "Debout les morts!" We hurled them back. By God! ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... to mark the year As one of memorable woe, Two men to the two nations dear Laid in one fatal winter low! About the streets the mourners go; But I within my chamber rest, Or walk the room with measured tread, Murmuring, with head upon my breast, My ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... especially at court. The King's tradesmen are ruined, his servants starving, and even angels and archangels cannot get their pensions and salaries, but sing, "Woe! woe! woe!" instead of Hosannahs. Compi'egne is abandoned; Villiers-coterets and Chantilly(44) crowded, and Chanteloup(45) still more in fashion, whither every body goes that pleases; though, when they ask leave, the answer is, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... pearled rows that nature's pride encloses; Two mounts fair marble-white, down-soft and dainty, A snow-dyed orb, where love increased by pleasure Full woeful makes my heart, and body fainty: Her fair (my woe) exceeds all thought and measure. In lines confused my luckless harm appeareth, Whom sorrow clouds, whom pleasant ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... lives, were suddenly dismissed, mostly with a small gratuity, which would about suffice to pay their debts, and told to find their living as best they could. It was indeed a case of vae victis,—woe to ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... long coming to a conclusion; but, having satisfied herself of its justice, she was likely to be immovable in it. She gave John her hand frankly and lovingly, and promised, in poverty or wealth, in weal or woe, to stand truly by his side. It was not a very hopeful troth-plighting, but they were both sure of the foundations of their love, and both regarded the promise as ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... that ye be not judged," he cannot be forbidding all severity of judgment, for no one could be on occasion more severe, or unsparing, or denunciatory than he. "Woe unto you, hypocrites," he says to some of the respectable church-leaders of his time. "Beware of false prophets," he says in this passage, "for they are inwardly ravening wolves." No, Jesus certainly ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... ever been informed by your unfortunate slaves, that they had no connexions in the country from which they have forcibly been torn away: or, if you will take upon you to assert, that they never sigh, when they are alone; or that they never relate to each other their tales of misery and woe. But you judge of them, perhaps, in an happy moment, when you are dealing out to them their provisions for the week; and are but little aware, that, though the countenance may be cheered with a momentary smile, the heart may be exquisitely tortured. Were you to shew us, indeed, ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson

... woe-begone face to hers, and said, almost irritably, "Yes—no—or at least I am as well as I ever expect to be, and perhaps better." Then with a sudden impulse he asked, "Does annihilation seem such a dreadful thing ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... been couched in the language of persiflage. And when M. Max O'Rell traverses the statements of the two Englishmen and exaggerates American civilisation, we must bear in mind first that la vulgarite ne se traduit pas, and secondly, that the foes of our foemen are our friends. Woe be to the man who refuses to fall down and do worship before that brazen-faced idol (Eidolon Novi Mundi), Public Opinion in the States; unless, indeed, his name be Brown and he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... But woe is him if a nasty foe, or somebody trying to be one, annoyed for the moment with him, yet meaning no more harm than pepper, smite him to the quick, at venture, in his most retired and privy-conscienced hole. And when this ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... my Lotus-faced! my woe! my love! Whose broad brow, with the tilka-spot above, Shames the bright moon at full with fleck of cloud; Thou to mistake so little for so much! Thou, Krishna, to be palm to palm with such! O Soul made for my joys, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... the boy may have grief of his own that strikes deep in his heart; that an angry frown, or a broken toy, may inflict for a time a cureless smart; and that little pain is as great to him as a weightier woe to an older mind. Aye! the harsh reproof, or unfavoured whim, may be sharp as a pang of a graver kind. Then, how dim-sighted and thoughtless are those, who would they were frolicsome children and free; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various

... who warned, and they Who heeded not, and came to woe, I wonder why they'd never say: "That's right, old chap, ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... life's divinest draught doth not In the wells of joy abound! For the purest streams are those that flow Out of the depths of crushing woe, As from the springs of love and thought Hid in some narrow mound, Making ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... short inaugural message, or homily, or sermon, has been received. It is filled with texts from the Bible. He says both sides pray to the same God for aid—one upholding and the other destroying African slavery. If slavery be an offense,—and woe shall fall upon those by whom offenses come,—perhaps not only all the slaves will be lost, but all the accumulated products of their labor be swept away. In short, he "quotes Scripture for the deed" quite as fluently ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... Codfish. He must be The saltest fish that swims the sea. And, oh! He has a secret woe! You see, he thinks it's all his fault The ocean is so very salt! And so, In hopeless grief and woe, The Codfish has, for many years, Shed quarts of salty, briny tears! And, oh! His tears still flow— So great ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... in solemn might to shake The peoples of the earth, Through the long shadow and the fires that make New altar and new hearth! And with the besom of red war He sweeps The sin and woe away, To purge with fountains from His ancient deeps The dust of old decay. O not in anger but in Love He speaks From tempest round Him drawn, Unveiling thus the fair white mountain peaks Which tremble ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... "Woe to thee, O land," &c., "And thy princes eat in the morning." (Eccles. xi. 16.) The principal meal is in the evening, and no people of these countries think of eating a hearty meal "in the morning" ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... Abenali underwent a struggle. "Woe is me!" he said. "Wottest thou, my son, that the secrets of the sword of light and swiftness are the heritage that Abdallah Ben Ali brought from Damascus in the hundred and fifty-third year of the flight ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... calmer now. Courage, my poor heart, courage!—Should a day of misfortune again overwhelm me, I will read these lines written under the impression of the most cruel grief I can ever feel, and I will say to myself: 'What is the present woe compared to that past?' My grief is indeed cruel! it is illegitimate, ridiculous, shameful: I should not dare to confess it, even to the most indulgent of mothers. Alas! there are some fearful sorrows, which yet rightly make men shrug their shoulders in pity or contempt. Alas! ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... views than these within appear, And Woe and Horror dwell for ever here; For ever from the echoing roofs rebounds A dreadful Din of heterogeneous sounds: From this, from that, from every quarter rise Loud shouts, and sullen groans, and doleful cries; * ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... example of the people round him that makes the comic man so generous. Everybody is generous on the stage. They are giving away their purses all day long; that is the regulation "tip" on the stage—one's purse. The moment you hear a tale of woe, you grab it out of your pocket, slap it in to the woe-er's palm, grip his hand, dash away a tear, and exit; you don't even leave yourself a 'bus fare home. You walk back quickly ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome

... neither does he make so free with his presence, but still it is no difficult thing for any of his subjects to obtain an audience. He will stop a man at haphazard on the road and examine his weapons, and woe betide him if his revolver is carried empty. Every chamber but one ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon



Words linked to "Woe" :   wretchedness, suffering, woefulness, mournfulness, miserableness, misery, ruthfulness, sorrowfulness



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org