In spite of her sordid avarice in some matters, the old woman continued bleeding herself for her son, and even robbed the house, promptly thrusting out her claws and setting her teeth ready to bite whenever she was caught in the act, and had to defend some twenty-franc piece or other, which she had been on the point of sending away.

She was so young, so blithe-hearted, so untouched by the sad and sordid things of life.

Then as to the great article of fidelity to your bedAre not women of family, who are well-educated, under greater restraints, than creatures, who, if they ever had reputation, sacrifice it to sordid interest, or to more sordid appetite, the moment they give it up to you?

Pursue with avidity the beaten road which leads to popular honors and sordid gain, but relinquish all thoughts of a voyage for which you are totally unprepared.

Oh! blest of Heaven, whom not the languid songs Of Luxury, the siren! nor the bribes Of sordid Wealth, nor all the gaudy spoils Of pageant Honour, can seduce to leave Those ever-blooming sweets which, from the store Of Nature, fair Imagination culls To charm th' enlivened soul!

Anything like a matrimonial scheme would have been revolting to Lesbia, who had grand, but not sordid views about matrimony.

FRAMPTON Disdaining For sordid pelf to truck the family honours, At risk of the lost estates, resumed the old style, And answer'd only to the name of SELBY

The personal intensity of the author, which is felt to pervade this book, is present again in Jude the Obscure (1895), that record of an aspiring soul, struggling against hopeless odds, heavy incumbrances, and sordid realities.

To think that the Grand Army should have vanished away like a shredding cloud upon a windy day, and yet that every sordid detail of a bourgeois lodging should remain unchanged!

Now upon what grounds has this gentleman of irreproachable character been charged with this mean and sordid crime?

We contrasted these sordid surroundings with the splendours of Silas Upham's front parlour, and then we stared furtively at Wilkins.

Thus speaks the heart which cold disgust invades, When time instructs, and Hope's enchantment fades; Through life's wide stage, from sages down to kings, The puppets move, as art directs the strings: Imperious beauty bows to sordid gold, Her smiles, whence heaven flows emanent, are sold; And affectation swells th' entrancing tones, Which nature subjugates, and truth disowns.

Whether Mrs. Farquhar loved a fiddle as her life is not recorded, but she certainly was not free from all sordid ends and unworthy tricks.

I told Lesbia when I offered myself to her nearly a year ago, that if she would trust me, if she would cleave to me, poverty should never touch her, sordid care should never come near her dwelling.

While these dear maids in beauty's bloom, With want opprest, with rags o'erspread, By sordid labors at the loom Must earn a poor, precarious bread.

Her thoughts wandered away into the bright region of day-dreams after this, and she fancied what their lives might be without that dull sordid trouble of pecuniary embarrassments.

Gylippus was a man who, to the national bravery and military skill of a Spartan united political sagacity that was worthy of his great fellow-countryman Brasidas; but his merits were debased by mean and sordid vices; and his is one of the cases in which history has been austerely just, and where little or no fame has been accorded to the successful but venal soldier.

But Ernest turned sadly from the wrinkled shrewdness of that sordid visage, and gazed up the valley, where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by the last sunbeams, he could still distinguish those glorious features which had impressed themselves into his soul.

" This sordid way of life became habitual with Michelangelo.

Was it worth while to play the game as she must play it for some time to come, drudge away at mean, sordid work and amid the dreariest sort of environment?

They hate the sensual, and scorn the vain, The parasite their influence never warms, Nor him whose sordid soul the love of gold alarms.

Outside there are the dingy street, the crowded shops, the pavement to play on, and both outside and in, the bleaker and more sordid aspects of life, sometimes miserable, sometimes exciting.

Stealing the People's Forest Land The history of the acquisition of the forests of Washington, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and California is a long, sordid story of thinly veiled robbery and intrigue.

Ah, how often do the poor Italians, those children of the sun, pine and die when shut up in our dismal, sordid streets!

And yet I had not been long in this pleasant sitting-room, with its outlook on blossom-laden fruit-trees, creamy-spired chestnuts and wooded down, before I became aware that a pitiful and rather sordid little domestic drama was in progress within fifty yards from my open windows.