A state of ill-being due to affliction or misfortune

Usage examples of wretchedness.

Formerly, such a visit would have been attended with great danger to the parties making the attempt, from the number of desperate characters who inhabited the back-slums lying in the rear of Broad-street: where used to be congregated together, the most notorious thieves, beggars, and bunters of the metropolis, amalgamated with the poverty and wretchedness of every country, but more particularly the lower classes of Irish, who still continue to exist in great numbers in the neighbourhood.

That little word contained all his sense of indignation and horror at one sort of wretchedness having to feed upon the anguish of the other - at the poor cabman beating the poor horse in the name, as it were, of his poor kids at home.

It was iniquitous destiny beginning afresh: the most crushing toil falling upon a beast of burden, the son hebetated after the father, ground to death under the millstones of wretchedness and injustice.

Knowing what wretchedness this meant on shore, we were glad of the crowded shelter of our P-boat, maugre its noises and discomforts.

War and Famine and Pestilence filled up the measure of evil, and over the sharp flints of misfortune and wretchedness man toiled with naked and bleeding feet.

But render the idea in this way, the blessedness offered to men in the revelation of grace made by Jesus outweighs the wretchedness brought upon them through the sin introduced by Adam, and the sense is satisfactory.

No gift of futurity had disclosed to her the wretchedness and penury that after years had prepared for her.

In it we find misery enough, we find sorrow and wretchedness, without the hand of compassion being held forth to help the miserable from the deep and fearful gulf with which penury and want abound.

I turned away, pretending not to know her, for the sight of her was disagreeable to me, but in a sad voice she called me by my name, congratulating me on my prosperity and bewailing her own wretchedness.

In other terms, as the recognition of the retributive law of God through rebellion and guilt filled the consciences of men with wretchedness, so the acceptance of the pardoning love of God through faith and conformity will fill them with blessedness.

Madame Angelin quivered and closed her eyes as if to escape the spectacle of all the terrifying things that she evoked, the wretchedness, the shame, the crimes that she elbowed during her continual perambulations through that hell of poverty, vice, and hunger.

Pagans are in a state of the extremest wretchedness in consequence of the grossness of their superstitions.

Wretchedness and love, joined to a false spirit of courage, makes a fool of a man all the world over.

As I re-mounted, I told myself that, were I in a condition of wretchedness, I would not seek out the Overseers in their wigs and wanton finery, but rather be at pains to conceal myself from them by whatever means I could devise.

And all the time I suffered a long gnawing worry, a helpless wretchedness as I contemplated the inevitable.