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Annihilation   Listen
noun
Annihilation  n.  
1.
The act of reducing to nothing, or nonexistence; or the act of destroying the form or combination of parts under which a thing exists, so that the name can no longer be applied to it; as, the annihilation of a corporation.
2.
The state of being annihilated.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Annihilation" Quotes from Famous Books



... humanity only prolong their mischievous existence, while the surface of life stagnates in calm. Their annihilation follows when strong emotion stirs in the depths, and raises the storm. The estrangement of the day before passed as completely from the minds of the husband and wife—both strongly agitated—as if it had never existed. ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... hain't danced none yit," said Captain Pharo, too confident to show contempt; "only warmin' my spavins;" and he heartlessly turned the complete flower in view for the further annihilation ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... match for two or three Turkish ships.[44] Every year they cruised from Sicily to the Levant, and many a prize laden with precious store they carried off to Malta. The commerce of Egypt and Syria was in danger of annihilation; the Barbary Corsairs, even Dragut himself, shunned a meeting with the red galleys of "the Religion," or their black capitana; and the Turkish fleet, while holding undisputed sway over the Mediterranean, was not nimble enough to surprise the Maltese squadron in its rapid ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... things came to the worst, was to leave an exit for him to slip out of, unnoticed. He's always kept us guessing—my sister and I. He never knew his father. From a silent, observing child he ran into a stormy, vivid youth that often threatened disaster if not positive annihilation—but he's of the breed that dashes to the edge, grinds his teeth, plants his feet, and looks over!—then, breathing hard, draws back. After a while I got to banking on that balking trick of his. Once I got used to the fact that the boy meant to know life—not abuse it—I knew a few easy years ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... became apparent that, if complete annihilation was to be avoided, a retirement must be attempted; and the order was given to commence it about 3.30 P. M. The movement was covered with the most devoted intrepidity and determination by the artillery, which ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... nor punished by him. In consequence, our gracious Seigneur of Austria has been obliged to restore the land and people to his sovereignty and that of the House of Austria, which he has done with God's aid to prevent the complete annihilation and total destruction ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... fortune for Bonaparte! To crush with one blow all that remained of those who were resisting and of those who were combating! To finish with them once for all! We were beaten, granted, but was it necessary to add annihilation to defeat? No possible chance of success. The brains of an army cannot be blown out. To do what Charamaule advised would be to open the tomb, nothing more. It would be a magnificent suicide, but it would be a suicide. Under certain circumstances it is selfish to be merely ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... the spiritual or material world, would He not be denying Himself, counteracting the necessities of His own righteous essence, to which evil is so antagonistic, that we can not doubt it must be in the end cast into total annihilation—into the allegorical lake of fire and brimstone, which is the "second death?" Nay, do they not in reality deny Him and His holiness almost as much as Atheists do, who preach that the one great salvation which He has sent into the ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... London Scottish, and behind came the Queen's Westminsters and the Kensingtons, who were to advance through their comrades to a farther objective. Across a wide No Man's Land they suffered from the bursting of heavy crumps, and many fell. But they escaped annihilation by machine-gun fire and stormed through the upheaved earth into Gommecourt Park, killing many Germans and sending back batches of prisoners. They had done what they had been asked to do, and started building up barricades of earth and sand-bags, and then ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... the kingdom of God.' It always was, always will be, hard to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is hard even to believe that one must be born from above—must pass into a new and unknown consciousness. The law-faithful Jew, the ceremonial Christian, shrinks from the self-annihilation, the Life of grace and truth, the upper air of heavenly delight, the all-embracing love that fills the law full and sets it aside. They cannot accept a condition of being as in itself eternal life. And hard to believe in, this life, this kingdom of God, this simplicity of absolute ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... his head, and discharging it, spattered his brains over the Roulette wheel. It was said that the banker, looking up calmly, called out—'Triple Zero,' 'Treble Nothing,'—a case as yet unheard of in the tactics of Roulette, but signifying annihilation,—and that, a cloth being thrown over the ensanguined wheel, the bank of that particular table was declared to be closed for the day. Very probably the whole story is but a newspaper canard, devised by the proprietors of some ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... anxious, of course, to receive authentic intelligence at last as to the fate, of the Armada. The entire overthrow of the great project was now, for the first time, fully revealed in Spain; the fabulous victories over the English, and the annihilation of Howard and all his ships, were dispersed in air. Broken, ruined, forlorn, the invincible Armada—so far as it still existed—had reached a Spanish port. Great was the consternation of Idiaquez and Moura, as they listened to the tale, and very desirous was each of the two ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... human will, is as sure in Determination as it is in Consciousness. Habit is as inevitable as Memory; and as nothing can be forgotten, but, when once known, is known forever,—so nothing is done but will be done again. Lethe and Annihilation are only myths upon the earth, which men, though suspicious of their eternal falsehood, name to themselves in moments of despair and fearful apprehension. The poppy has only a fabled virtue; but, like Persephone, we have all tasted of the pomegranate, and must ever to Hades and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... summer of that melancholy, or hypochondria, which is inherent in my constitution.... While afflicted with melancholy, all the doubts which have ever disturbed thinking men come upon me. I awake in the night dreading annihilation, or being thrown into some horrible state of being.' He recounts a complimentary letter he had received from Lord Mayor Wilkes, and continues:—'Tell me, my dear Temple, if a man who receives so many marks of more than ordinary consideration can be satisfied to drudge in an obscure corner, where ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... Britain would be forced in time by various sordid elements into a war of extermination with the Boers. It was equally clear that this danger could only be averted by armaments on a most extensive scale. We were conscious that the impending war of annihilation would incur the sharpest condemnation on the part of the other European Powers, but history had taught us that not one of these Powers would be roused to intervene in our favour. In these circumstances we had to rely ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... to the English: he owes it mainly to the ardent appreciation of France." This sentiment of the novelist's obligation to Great Britain was uppermost in the heart of the reviewer in the "United Service Journal." An uneasy impression, however, weighed upon his mind lest Cooper, who had now suffered annihilation several times without injury, might have survived the particular one inflicted by the (p. 205) "Quarterly." He honestly confessed, therefore, that he had waited some months before criticising the "Naval History," so that he might not look at it with a jaundiced or malignant eye in consequence ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... impulse the next day was to plunge headlong into some physical labor which should not allow him a moment's interval of idleness. He found no labor to his taste; but he spent the day so actively, in the mechanical annihilation of the successive hours, that Gertrude's image found no chance squarely to face him. He was engaged in the work of self-preservation,—the most serious and absorbing work possible to man. Compared ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... shown during the siege, all seemed now to evaporate. When the shot of the foe were crumbling the walls of Barcelona, he was in danger of the terrible doom of being taken a captive, which would have been the annihilation of all his hopes. Despair nerved him to effort. But now his person was no longer in danger; and his natural inefficiency and dilatoriness returned. Notwithstanding the urgent intreaties of the Earl of Peterborough to pursue ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... strange to him, but he liked them just as they were. Their father and mother he had never spared in the general destruction, but when hereafter he called to God to ask of Him the salvation of the world through its annihilation, he made a silent exception of ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... Zimmern, "it was that or extermination. Even now we who wish to put an end to this isolation, we few who want to see the world as our ancestors saw it, know that the price may be annihilation." ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... sent up a cheering voice in strong and earnest resolutions, approving heartily his course, and urging him to, perseverance therein. The Legislatures of Massachusetts and Vermont, rallied to his support. In solemn convocation, they protested against the virtual annihilation of the right of petition—against slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia—gave their entire sanction to the principles advocated by Mr. Adams, and pledged their countenance to all measures calculated to ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... history of the abuses which then disgraced Christianity, and which, in truth, became so intolerable in their character, and so hideous in their features, as to be the chief influencing cause to bring about their own annihilation. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... acute and patient thought; but their attempt to solve the problem of the divine and human natures, of human destiny and duty, has ended in total failure. Each system baseless, and all mutually conflicting; systems cold and cheerless, that frown on love and virtuous exertion, and speak of annihilation or its equivalent, absorption, as our highest hope: such is the poor result of infinite speculation. "The world by wisdom knew not God." O, that India would learn the much-needed lesson of humility which the experience of ages ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... carried the revolt on its bayonets, opposing a constant front to the mighty concentration of power brought against it; which, receiving terrible blows, did not fail to give the like, and which, vital in all its parts, died only with its annihilation." ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... counter-attack on such a scale had previously been delivered in any campaign, and the scarcely interrupted advance of the German armies received a permanent check, while the strategic aim of the German Staff, namely, the speedy annihilation in the field of the Franco-British armies, had to ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... singing YOUR dismal GUNDLINGIANA as if inspired by Heaven, how infinitely better!—Courage, courage! I discern, across these hideous jargons, the reign of greater silence approaching upon repentant men; reign of greater silence, I say; or else that of annihilation, which will be ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... startling assertion, that "of Rodrigo Diaz, el Campeador, we absolutely know nothing with any degree of probability, not even his existence!" (Hist. Critica, tom. xx. p. 370.) There are probably few of his countrymen, that will thus coolly acquiesce in the annihilation of their favorite hero, whose exploits have been the burden of chronicle, as well as romance, from the twelfth century down to ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... of souls, seeking the presence of the gigantic feathered biped Simurgh, their god, traverse seven Seas (according to others seven Wadys) of Search, of Love, of Knowledge, of Competence, of Unity, of Stupefaction, and of Altruism (i.e. annihilation of self), the several stages of contemplative life. At last, standing upon the mysterious island of the Simurgh and "casting a clandestine glance at him they saw thirty birds[FN250] in him; and when they turned their ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... necessity, perhaps," Charley replied, thoughtfully. "They had probably lost many men by the time they reached this island, and had concluded that to continue on meant utter annihilation, while here they, with their superior arms and suits of mail, could stand off the enemy. So they decided to remain and make the best of it. With the labor of the Indians they captured from time to time they proceeded to fortify the island and make ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... are in the race alone. George Eliot's strong accentuation of the race is the Gospel of annihilation to the individual. Yet the most personal and imaginative of poets has treated this lofty altruism in his strange, sad, beautiful poem of "The Pilgrims," with a fervour greater even than ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne

... friends as Pelisson, as La Fontaine, as Moliere? with such a mistress as—Oh! if you knew how utterly lonely and desolate I feel at this moment, and how you, who separate me from all I love, seem to resemble the image of solitude, of annihilation—death itself." ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Brattle to Mrs. Fenwick;—and now the assizes were at hand, and how was Carry to demean herself there? Who would take her? Who would stand near her and support her, and save her from falling into that abyss of self-abasement and almost of self-annihilation which would be her doom, unless there were some one there to give her ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... with the Civic Guard, had beaten back German patrols from the place. Had the British now landed an army at Ostend, Von Kluck, between the Belgian and British forces, would have been in serious danger of annihilation. With the German right wing thus crumpled, the whole of their offensive would have broken down. But the British did not come, and so the Belgians were left to fight it out single handed. This fighting went on for three weeks, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... Tarzan, it only angered him, for he saw that it was beyond even his powers to combat and that meant that it might cause him to lose his kill, and Tarzan was hungry. There was but a single alternative to remaining for annihilation and that was flight—swift and immediate. And Tarzan fled, but he carried the carcass of Bara, the deer, with him. He had not more than a dozen paces start, but on the other hand the nearest tree was almost as ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... little, for he is not able to discover by its records the operation of principles yielding hope for his race. Such there may be, but he does not find them. What hope for the rising wave that knows in its rise only its doom to sink, and at length be dashed on the low shore of annihilation? ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... the sugar crop of the West Indies affected Great Britain only, and there chiefly the poor. It was a matter of no moment to capital, that labor should have one comfort less. Yet it has forced a reduction of the British duty on sugar. Who can estimate the consequences that must follow the annihilation of the cotton crop of the slaveholding States? I do not undervalue the importance of other articles of commerce, but no calamity could befall the world at all comparable to the sudden loss of two millions of bales of cotton annually. From the deserts of Africa to the Siberian ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... of annihilation, however, is of brief duration, never exceeding more than five or six hours: losses are gradually repaired, an obscure sense of existence manifests itself, and the sleeper passes into the ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... be regarded as a political intriguer and a conspirator with savage assassins against the lives of innocent settlers and their families. If there are those who, reading the earlier pages of this volume, have mourned over the disappointment and annihilation of two magnificent schemes of Catholic domination on the North American continent as being among the painful mysteries of divine providence, they may find compensation for these catastrophes in later advances ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... persecuting the protestants, urged him to the enterprise. He excommunicated the queen, and published a crusade against her, with the usual indulgences. All the ports of Spain resounded with preparations for this alarming expedition; and the Spaniards seemed to threaten the English with a total annihilation. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... the Spanish.)—Suddenly King Alphonso Riberro Fernando rose from his couch, and sallying from his tent with fierce looks and sword in hand—swore the total annihilation of every ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various

... preached about it. On seeing the story put to such uses, one feels sometimes like using the ad hominem argument, and quoting the wholesale destruction of pagan libraries under Valens, the burning of books by the Latin stormers of Constantinople, the alleged annihilation of 100,000 volumes by Genoese crusaders at Tripoli, the book-burning exploits of Torquemada, the bonfire of 80,000 valuable Arabic manuscripts, lighted up in the square of Granada by order of Cardinal Ximenes, and the irreparable ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... population of the new quilombo was greatly increased. Slaves and freemen were eager to join their brethren in the forest. It seemed prudent, however, to go farther away from the white settlements, lest the very strength of the Negro town should invite annihilation or re-enslavement by the planters. Thus it was that the inland site of Palmares, not far from present-day Anadia, was chosen. A town was founded, and all seemed well except for one thing—an essential to permanence was lacking, for there were no women. A detachment of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... time, when the strength of the nation had been wasted, when victory itself was dark with mourning for sons slain, the loss of the one wise leader to whom all turned with uplifted hearts seemed the signal for annihilation; and then, indeed, it appeared that the prophecy of Mary Ballard's old grandfather had been fulfilled and the curse of slavery had not only been wiped out with blood, but that the greater curse of anarchy and misrule had taken its place to still ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... enough to make no display of the cherished emptiness of his swept and garnished rooms. I do not mean to blame him. He did not fancy himself the holder of any Mephistophelean commission for the general annihilation of belief like George Bascombe, only one from nature's bureau of ways and means for the cure of the ailing body—which, indeed, to him, comprised all there was of humanity. He had a cold, hard, business-like manner, which, however admirable on some grounds, destroyed any hope Helen had cherished ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... emphatically as it has disproved others. But there is one point upon which authorities are unanimous. If the artillery of the investing forces is exposed and readily distinguishable, the aerial forces of the beleaguered will bring about its speedy annihilation, as the defensive artillery will be concentrated upon ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... her consent to a very early marriage; on the plea of a possibly approaching Session, and also that they had waited long. The consent, notwithstanding the hurry of preparations, it involved, besides the annihilation of her desire to meditate on so solemn a change in her life and savour the congratulations of her friends and have the choir of St. Catherine's rigorously drilled in her favourite anthems was beautifully yielded to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the rebellion were a fight for dear life, a constant struggle to avert entire annihilation, for to all who were there it seemed as though no power on earth could save them. But Providence willed it otherwise, and after the full extent of the danger was realized, gloomy forebodings gave way to stern endeavours. Men arose, great in council and in the field, statesmen and warriors—Lawrence, ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... was indeed alive, if my lungs and throat, the configuration of my mouth, the vocalic impact of the air, was a fact, a sound, a meaning, or whether it all was some phantasmagoria, beautiful and fair indeed, to be dispelled with a shock of annihilation. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... cannot then fully appreciate the intention of the great artist who conceived these works. Yet even in their ruin and their isolation the pediment-figures of the Parthenon are the sublimest creations of Greek art that have escaped annihilation. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... he then discovers the divinity, and becomes himself God. Of all the incarnations of this kind that God has hitherto taken, the greatest and most solemn was that in which he appeared thirty centuries ago in Kachemire, under the name of Fot or Beddou, to preach the doctrines of self-denial and self-annihilation." ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... of Jews, swept to Amsterdam by the mighty wave of faith and joy, Rabbis and scholars and presidents of colleges, were drawing up a letter of homage to the Messiah. And while the Grand Seignior was meditating the annihilation of all the Jews of the Ottoman Empire for their rebellious projects, with the forced conversion of the orphaned children to Islam, the Jews of the world were celebrating—for what they thought the last time—the Day ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... well to say 'damn the torpedoes,'" said Secretary Daniels, in discussing this point, "but a navy cannot invite annihilation by going into mined harbors, and ships can do little or nothing against coast fortifications equipped with 14-inch guns. Experience at Gallipoli emphasizes this fact. And yet"—here the secretary became cryptic—"there is more than one way to kill a cat. No place is impregnable. ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry

... money, of credit, and of all sorts of money tokens, confirms this significance of money ever more and more. Money is a new form of slavery, which differs from the old form of slavery only in its impersonality, its annihilation of all humane relations with ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... before her terrified soul, swept phantom after phantom, all from the miserable spirit-land of the past. Once more she lived through a night dark as this, when a wretched, betrayed, dishonored girl, she had slunk through the streets of Rome in search of death—death and annihilation in the black waves of the Tiber. She felt the waters engulf her, she heard her own death-cry, the last protest of youth against self-destruction; and then she felt the grasp of Podstadsky—Podstadsky who, in restoring ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... future is guarantied. It is impossible that the present knowledge in the world should be extinguished. Nothing but a stroke of imbecility upon the race, nothing but the destruction of its libraries, nothing but the paralysis of the printing-press, and the annihilation of these means of intercommunication,—nothing but some such arbitrary intervention could accomplish it. The facts already in human possession, and the constitution of the mind, together insure what we have as imperishable, and what we are to obtain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... will be there whenever we go for it; and while I could fetch it now, and catch up with you in a moon or two, I shall feel safer for you to know that you are not alone on the trail. When I see how helpless you are, D'Arnot, I often wonder how the human race has escaped annihilation all these ages which you tell me about. Why, Sabor, single handed, could exterminate a thousand ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... will sometimes admit—naturally think it their duty rather to change the manager of the trust than to impair the subject of it; while others, who consider them as the right or property of the king, will as naturally act as they would do in the case of any other property, and consent to the loss or annihilation of any part of it, for the purpose of preserving the remainder to him whom they style the rightful owner. If the people be the sovereign and the king the delegate, it is better to change the bailiff than to injure the farm; but if the ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... as his model from the first. Mahomed Ali led the way in Egypt by the annihilation of ancient privileges, and it was not until he had succeeded that Mahmoud resolved ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... in some minds, resembles the delirium of opium. The passionate excitement of Love and the buoyancy of spirit attendant upon intoxication are its less holy pleasures— the price of which, to those souls who make choice of "Al Aaraaf" as their residence after life, is final death and annihilation. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... this ultimate happening, and various interpretations have been offered. Professor De la Vallee Poussin has pointed out that in the Pali texts Nibbana has sometimes been represented as a happy state, as pure annihilation, as an inconceivable existence or as a changeless state ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... seemed, was to believe too much—was to believe more than, without proof which was not to be had, Richard would care to believe? The nature of the case grew clearer to him. As a man does not fear death while yet it seems far away, so a man may not shrink from annihilation while yet he does not realize what it means. To cease may well seem nothing to a man who neither loves much, nor feels the bitterness of regret for wrong done, the gnawing of that remorse whose mother is tenderness! He was ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... while the wall, looming like a mountainside, seemed to be toppling, insensately bent upon his annihilation; even so his momentum, decreasing with frightful swiftness, seemed possessed of demoniac ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... against Shakespeare, Balzac, Wagner, Raphael, fails them. They have staked everything on one hand, and they lose. They have driven the blood until it will drive no further, they have played their nerves up to the point where any relaxation short of absolute annihilation is impossible. Every idealist abuses his nerves, and every sentimentalist brutally abuses them. And in the end, the nerves get even. Nobody ever cheats them, really. Then "the awakening" comes. Sometimes it comes in the form of arsenic, as it came to "Emma Bovary," sometimes ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... (Aug. 23), and driven back upon the Elbe. Bluecher had turned upon Macdonald in Silesia, and completely overthrown his army on the river Katzbach, at the very moment when the Allies were making their assault upon Dresden. It was vain to think of a march upon Prague, or of the annihilation of the Austrians, when on the north and the east Napoleon's troops were meeting with nothing but disaster. The divisions which had been intended to support Vandamme's movement from Koenigstein upon the rear of the Great Army were retained in the neighbourhood ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... the privilege of hunting fur seals on St. Paul and St. George to the Alaska Commercial Company, but the business was so attractive that vessels came to the Aleutian straits from many parts of the Pacific, and it looked as if the United States must choose between the annihilation of the herds and the adoption of some means for protecting them. The revenue service thereupon began the seizure in 1886 of British sealing vessels, taking three in that year and six during the next. The British government protested ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... French chateau, and it seemed too bad to have to expend any of their precious bombs in bringing about its downfall. But of course they knew full well it was the policy of the Huns never to leave anything intact that could be of the slightest assistance or comfort to the enemy. Hence the annihilation of the chateau was already ordained when Ludendorff should ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach

... now, and bailed incessantly. The old man was on his knees his hands clasped and his lips moving as if in prayer. Billy, his face set, sat in the stern. Again and again with a quick twist of his paddle he saved the canoe from annihilation ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... and admired the Spectator, Adventurer, Rambler, and World; but still with a certain regret, that they were so thoroughly and entirely English. Alas! have I often said to myself, what are all the boasted advantages which my country reaps from the union, that can counterbalance the annihilation of her independence, and even her very name! I often repeat that couplet of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... mental, have been subjects of the most critical examination. In the course of these researches many have been at a loss to account for the change which takes place in the body at the time of death. By some it has been attributed to the flight of its tenant, and by others to its final annihilation. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... to eliminate it as we had disease, but failed. It was an inherited molecular structure of the brain. Science could not reconstruct it. The only remedy was annihilation. Criminals had no posterity." ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... rushed up only to be dismissed. The door of the restaurant had not yet ceased swinging behind him—there was too much to explain. He felt that all was over between him and his father. It was unpleasant, terrible even, for it meant the annihilation of his resources. But though he still had an almost physical fear of the old man, far more terrible even than the presence of his father was the presence of Miss Gladys Wynne. To explain, to brazen it out, either course was equally impossible. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... and the essay are on the negative side of the question, which, in the essay at least, is pronounced the happier and better view, as conducive to unselfishness. Unselfishness, it must surely be, of a supreme kind. Annihilation is not a cheerful word. Bacon has a highly rhetorical passage flouting the fear of death. His was probably not a very loving nature, nor does he seem to have thought of the parting ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith

... those beautiful eyes. Could he, on whom those two stars smiled, die? Could he wish for annihilation, at ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... employing them may be adopted in that part of time sometimes called unborn eternity. As a rule, the result usually has been: limit the increase of population without adequate cause, and the reaction causes deterioration or annihilation." [19] ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... awaited them. Accordingly an engagement took place not far from Noreia in the modern Carinthia, in which the betrayed gained the victory over the betrayer and inflicted on him considerable loss; a storm, which separated the combatants, alone prevented the complete annihilation of the Roman army. The Cimbri might have immediately directed their attack towards Italy; they preferred to turn to the westward. By treaty with the Helvetii and the Sequani rather than by force of arms they made ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... Rubicon. Shall we take the plunge? Already a leaf has been torn out of the book of the Sybil. Shall we wait until the whole volume is consumed? On our right is the crater of the volcano: on our left the precipice. One false step, and we go down to annihilation dragging the whole human race with ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... resented when employed by a person of low origin. And it would seem that middlemen are not as a race persons of agreeable character. All the old rags of feudalism which have hung about Connemara long after their annihilation elsewhere, have been saved wherever it was possible by ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... the community who are best fitted to survive, that is to propagate their kind, in the ordinary environment of political life. Conscription, indeed, spreading a wider net than the voluntary system, may be described as an institution for exposing the best citizens of a state to abnormal risks of annihilation. As a matter of historic fact we are told, though I don't know on what authority, that the Napoleonic wars, how much less deadly than our own, reduced by an inch the average height of the ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato

... conquest from regarding them with respect. And there would be the small tumult Bors had said was in preparation. The king and the Kandarian fleet would fight, quite hopelessly and to their own annihilation, when the Mekinese fleet appeared. It would be something Kandar would always remember. It was likely that she would not be the most docile of the worlds conquered by Mekin. The Mekinese would always and everywhere be resented. But on Kandar ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... it was the Slavic race sentiment that inspired Russia's quick action. Servia, a country of Slavs, brothers in race to a large section of the people of Russia, was threatened with national annihilation and her great kinsman sprang to her rescue, determined that she should not be absorbed by her land-hungry neighbor. This seemed to many a sufficient cause for Russia's action. Not many years before, when Austria annexed her wards, Bosnia and Herzegovina, both Slavic ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... Federation, Guthrie, Oklahoma. I will publish full instructions in the Hatchet so that any prohibitionist so desiring, can perfect an organization in any vicinity. This is in perfect harmony with all efforts for annihilation of the manufacture or sale of intoxicating liquors for any purpose. The constitution gives all the largest liberty to do that which is right and none at all or the smallest to do that which is wrong. I feel much relieved to. get into more definite work, rather than going hither and ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... Jew, they follow Leonard, and observe us no longer. I see with my own eyes, I understand with my own mind, and for the last time before it engulfs me, the chaos now generating in the abyss of Time, in the womb of Darkness, for my own destruction, for the annihilation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... is "pessimism,"—the doctrine gravely propounded in the systems of Schopenhauer and E. Von Hartmann, that the world is radically and essentially evil, and personal existence a curse from which the refuge is in the hope of annihilation. In its view of the world as springing from an unconscious force, and of the extinction of consciousness as the state of bliss, as well as in its notions of evil as inwrought in the essence of things, this philosophy ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... borne in upon him irresistibly that he had been dead since he had seen Helen,—as dead as the son of the Widow of Nain before the bier was touched and he sat up and began to speak. There was an interval between two conscious moments which appeared to him like a temporary annihilation, and the thoughts it suggested were ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... not necessary for me to trace here the development of that financial policy which resulted in the ruin, I may say the annihilation of this order. Suffice it to say that it formed the capital fund of the government which exhausted it, and when the source of supply was destroyed, production ceased, and with it, of course, all means of governmental support. ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams

... first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise ...
— The Federalist Papers

... not afraid of any danger; if a man were to come into the room I should kill him without trembling. I am not afraid of ghosts, nor do I believe in the supernatural. I am not afraid of dead people, for I believe in the total annihilation of every being that disappears from the face ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... surmised, were numerous and trying. When leaving the Mandan chief at his village, near the mouth of the Yellowstone, that excellent Indian gave the party some timely advice, and it prevented their absolute annihilation on several occasions. Captain Williams was especially urged to exercise the greatest vigilance day and night; to pay the strictest attention to the position of his camps and the picketing of his animals. He was told that, although the average Indian ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... while Livia ranged among the flowers with Faustula, the Emperor and the Queen held earnest discourse—not only on the subject which chiefly agitated Zenobia, but on the general principles on which he was proceeding in this attempted annihilation of Christianity. Sure I am, that never in the Christian body itself was there one who pleaded their cause with a more winning ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of preordination and night of their forebeings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasis, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had a handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... thee!—And shall I follow? Again to stand aloof? To carry this inextinguishable jealousy even to yon distant realms? Earth is no longer a tarrying place for me, and hell and heaven offer equal torture. Now welcome to the wretched the dread hand of annihilation! ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... season of decay. Hence the conclusion, probably prevalent in all times and countries, that designs and undertakings which expect increase should belong to the new moon, and that only operations which aim at the annihilation of existence should be carried on during the waning quarter. In Hellenic antiquity, the dark of the moon is mentioned as the suitable time for magical operations; for such, no doubt, as were concerned with a forwarding of life. Our collection exhibits the full survival of the usage ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... then as a half-decayed corpse torn asunder by ravens, and finally as a heap of bones. The series ends with a cherry-tree in splendid bloom, into which the heroine, after her body had passed through all the stages of annihilation, has been changed. The cherry-tree in blossom is considered by the Japanese the ideal of beauty in the vegetable kingdom, and during the flowering season of this tree excursions are often undertaken to famous cherry-groves where hour after hour ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... "No, sir, I don't think it could. No doubt it might kill itself with much facility in various ways, for fifty horsepower, properly applied, would do for an elephant, much more a dog. But I don't believe that power to be sufficient to produce annihilation. There would have ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... that you had better try, with or without orders,' my father replied. 'The annihilation of Baillie's force, and the miserable retreat of Munro, have made a terribly bad impression through the country, and a success is sorely needed to raise the ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... in the way of great scenes, there was always a mountain pass—the mountains being composed of a chair and two tables—and Richard was forever leading his little band over the pass while the band, wholly indifferent as to whether the road led to honor, glory, or total annihilation, meekly followed its leader. For some reason, probably on account of my early admiration for Richard and being only too willing to obey his command, I was invariably cast for the villain in these early dramas, and the end of the play always ended in a hand-to-hand conflict between the hero and ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... Illyrian coast; and when that failed, of the long march into Thessaly, where Pompey was at last forced into battle, against his judgment, by his own officers, on the fatal plains of Pharsalia; of the annihilation of the Senatorial army; of Pompey's flight to Egypt; of his treacherous murder there; of Caesar's pursuit. The books on the Alexandrian, the African, and the Spanish wars, which continue the narrative down to Caesar's final victory at Munda in southern Spain, are by ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... how much 'knowledge is power.' He has now acquired a dominion over the material world, and a consequent power of increase, so as to render it probable that the whole surface of the earth may soon be overrun by this engrossing anomaly, to the annihilation of every wonderful and beautiful variety of animal existence which does not administer to his wants, principally as laboratories of preparation to befit cruder elemental matter ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... their doom is sounding—Seneca, lying Cayuga, traitorous Onondaga, Mohawk, painted renegade—all are to go down into utter annihilation. Nor is that all. We mean to sweep their empire from end to end, burn every town, every castle, every orchard, every grain field—lay waste, blacken, ravage, leave nothing save wind-blown ashes of that great Confederacy, and of the vast granary which has fed the British ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... translator, though their labours cannot be ranked with those of the diurnal historiographer, yet must not be rashly doomed to annihilation. Every size of readers requires a genius of correspondent capacity; some delight in abstracts and epitomes, because they want room in their memory for long details, and content themselves with effects, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... happened, however, to have another association, more significant than any ironical contrast for the present purpose of Antipater. It was the day on which, thirteen years before, Alexander had punished the rebellion of Thebes with annihilation. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... to hers, and said, almost irritably, "Yes—no—or at least I am as well as I ever expect to be, and perhaps better." Then with a sudden impulse he asked, "Does annihilation seem such a dreadful thing ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... brought to bear upon me to alter my dispositions so as to make a dangerous stand on lines and in places which, in my judgment, would have exposed the British Army to the greatest danger of annihilation. ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres

... self-destruction than the prospect of a night ride on the Scotch express, and the view from the windows of the train as it passes through the northern part of London is particularly conducive to thoughts of annihilation.' ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... cut to pieces or taken prisoners the liberation of those kind friends arrested by our revengeful foes, for no other reason than their compassionate care of our sick and wounded, would have been laurels sufficient for your brows. But soldiers, the utter annihilation of General Jonson's brigade, composed of twenty-four picked companies, sent on purpose to take us, raises your reputation as soldiers, and strikes fear into the craven hearts of your enemies. General ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... the one who alone knew of the extent which the destruction was destined to reach. The annihilation of all mankind was his work, undertaken without consulting his associates. The latter were aware only of the intended destruction ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... their "complete annihilation of the crack poison division," as Roscoe said, they followed the ragged edge of the woods where it thinned out to the north, verging around with it until they were headed in ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh



Words linked to "Annihilation" :   self-annihilation, annihilate, vaporization, vaporisation, extermination, wipeout, extinction, obliteration, pulverisation, destruction, devastation, disintegration, atomisation, pulverization, atomization, demolition



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