United States or Finland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Sometimes he was reduced so far as to share the soup of his valet, for lack of richer and more independent fare. Then he was constantly fretted by enemies at home, who disliked his trenchant diplomacy, and distrusted the strength and independence of a mind which was too vigorous to please the old-fashioned ministers of the Sardinian court. These chagrins he took as a wise man should.
Beyond this, fate has denied me all other correspondence with him. When the exile of my two friends became known, I was assailed by a whole host of chagrins of every kind; but a great misfortune renders us in a manner insensible to fresh troubles.
Let the King but think that it is not for himself that he is marrying me, but for MYself; nay he too will have a thousand chagrins, to see two persons hating one another, and the miserablest marriage in the world; to hear their mutual complaints, which will be to him so many reproaches for having fashioned the instrument of our yoke.
It was thus not upon a pleasant record of personal success that Emmy could look back, but rather upon a series of chagrins of which each was the harder to bear because of the history of its precursors. Emmy, between eighteen and nineteen at the time of her mother's death, had grasped her opportunity, and had made the care of the household her lot.
But her real power lay in the wonderful harmony of her nature, in the subtle penetration that divined the chagrins and weaknesses of others, only to administer a healing balm; in the delicate tact that put people always on the best terms with themselves, and gave the finest play to whatever talents they possessed.
But my facetious friend had his especial chagrins. "I have all my life," said he, "been longing to see Paris, and have never been able to stir a step beyond this stupid province. Yet I have had my chances too. I was once valet to a German count, and we were on the way to Paris together when the post-chaise was stopped, the baron was arrested as a swindler, and I was charged as his accomplice.
To measure Pattison's astounding collapse, we have a right to recall Johnson, Scott, Carlyle, and a host of smaller men, whom no vexations, chagrins, and perversities of fate could daunt from fighting the battle out. Pattison was thirty-eight when he missed the headship of his college.
Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression.
I became the receptacle of the complaints of all, and a sort of confidential adviser. Don José imparted to me with more frankness than good taste his chagrins with regard to his wife's indolence, ill-temper, and bad management, and his wife in turn omitted no opportunity to vent complaints against her husband for similar reasons.
As a friend I adore her, but to fall in love with her! Ah, non, merci! I have had a checkered childhood and my full share of suffering; I wish some peace in my old age. At sixteen one goes to the war of love blindly, but at forty it is different. Our chagrins then plunge us into a state of dignified desolation. Poor Tanrade!
Word Of The Day