All 17 Uses of
wretched
in
Middlemarch
- She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if she had been born in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John Milton when his blindness had come on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an amiable handsome baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks even when she expressed uncertainty,—how could he affect her as a lover?†
Chpt 1
- It is a wretched life for you.†
Chpt 1 *
- Fred felt that he made a wretched figure as a fellow who bragged about expectations from a queer old miser like Featherstone, and went to beg for certificates at his bidding.†
Chpt 1
- They were a wretched waste of the evenings; and now, when he had talked a little more to Rosamond, he meant to excuse himself and go.†
Chpt 2
- And one of those who suck the life out of the wretched handloom weavers in Tipton and Freshitt.†
Chpt 4
- But Wrench had a wretched lymphatic wife who made a mummy of herself indoors in a large shawl; and he must have altogether begun with an ill-chosen domestic apparatus.†
Chpt 4
- Hearing him breathe quickly after he had spoken, she sat listening, frightened, wretched—with a dumb inward cry for help to bear this nightmare of a life in which every energy was arrested by dread.†
Chpt 4
- Dorothea felt wretched.†
Chpt 4
- He could look nowhere except at the choir in the little gallery over the vestry-door: Dorothea was perhaps pained, and he had made a wretched blunder.†
Chpt 5
- They were wasting these last moments together in wretched silence.†
Chpt 6
- Lydgate was wretched—shaken with anger and yet feeling that it would be unmanly to vent the anger just now.†
Chpt 7
- He had told his wife that he was simply taking care of this wretched creature, the victim of vice, who might otherwise injure himself; he implied, without the direct form of falsehood, that there was a family tie which bound him to this care, and that there were signs of mental alienation in Raffles which urged caution.†
Chpt 7
- Bulstrode's heart sank again at this sign that he could get no grasp over the wretched man's mind, and that no word of Raffles could be trusted as to the fact which he most wanted to know, namely, whether or not he had really kept silence to every one in the neighborhood except Caleb Garth.†
Chpt 7
- Whatever prayers he might lift up, whatever statements he might inwardly make of this man's wretched spiritual condition, and the duty he himself was under to submit to the punishment divinely appointed for him rather than to wish for evil to another—through all this effort to condense words into a solid mental state, there pierced and spread with irresistible vividness the images of the events he desired.†
Chpt 7
- What was the removal of this wretched creature?†
Chpt 7
- Until that wretched yesterday—except the moment of vexation long ago in the very same room and in the very same presence—all their vision, all their thought of each other, had been as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered.†
Chpt 8
- I seemed to see that more clearly than ever, when I was the most wretched.†
Chpt 8
Definition:
-
(wretched) very badin various senses, including:
- unfortunate or miserable -- as in "wretched prisoners sleeping on the cold floor"
- of poor quality -- as in "wretched roads"
- morally bad -- as in "The wretched woman stole his wallet."