They were, moreover, in the present case,
embittered with certain circumstances, which being mixed with sweeter ingredients, tended altogether to compose a draught that might be termed bitter-sweet; than which, as nothing can be more disagreeable to the palate, so nothing, in the metaphorical sense, can be so injurious to the mind.
His every movement is jealously watched by the police till he comes of age and presents himself for inspection; then he is either destroyed, if he is found to exceed the fixed margin of deviation, or else immured in a Government Office as a clerk of the seventh class; prevented from marriage; forced to drudge at an uninteresting occupation for a miserable stipend; obliged to live and board at the office, and to take even his vacation under close supervision; what wonder that human nature, even in the best and purest, is
embittered and perverted by such surroundings!"
Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an
embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it.
Verily, it was always your doing: ye
embittered to me my best honey, and the diligence of my best bees.
In the matter of wills, personal qualities were subordinate to the great fundamental fact of blood; and to be determined in the distribution of your property by caprice, and not make your legacies bear a direct ratio to degrees of kinship, was a prospective disgrace that would have
embittered her life.
Prince Vasili's words frightened her, an
embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a moment; then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more tightly.
The consequence was, that after a flying transit through part of France and part of Italy, I came back nearly as ignorant as I went, having made no acquaintance with persons and manners, and very little with things, my head swarming with a motley confusion of objects and scenes; some, it is true, leaving a deeper and more pleasing impression than others, but these
embittered by the recollection that my emotions had not been shared by my companion, but that, on the contrary, when I had expressed a particular interest in anything that I saw or desired to see, it had been displeasing to him, inasmuch as it proved that I could take delight in anything disconnected with himself.
But today that satisfaction was
embittered by Matrona Philimonovna's advice and the unsatisfactory state of the household.
I had remained with them at the cottage--I had tried hard not to embitter the happiness of my return to THEM as it was
embittered to ME.
For, if evil chance him, the last moment of your life would be
embittered with regret for denying that which I ask of you.''
He remembered that all the first part of his life had been
embittered by a woman and he thought with alarm of the influence love might assume over so fine, and at the same time so vigorous an organization as that of Raoul.
He was
embittered by the conviction that all this desolation had been brought about by the accident of her being a d'Urberville.