"Calamitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... destination of exported coal have since the beginning of this year been withheld. England is presumably desirous of saving the French and Italians the further distress of reading for the future in black and white the calamitous decline in their coal supply. The serious nature of this decline, even up to the end of 1916, may be ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... a long one, but it contained at least the calamitous figures that came out in the above conversation. The Colonel found himself in a rather uncomfortable place—no $1,200 salary forthcoming; and himself held responsible for half of the $9,640 due the workmen, to ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Jerome Otway could never have been one of them. He was ardent and impulsive; marriage becoming a necessity, he clutched at the first chance which in any way addressed his imagination; and the result was calamitous. In a year or two his wife repented the thoughtlessness with which she had sacrificed the possibilities of her birth and breeding for marriage with a man of no wealth. Narrow of soul, with a certain frothy intelligence, she quickly outgrew the mood of social ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... event are set alight throughout the city. The play naturally falls into three divisions. The first introduces the Chorus of Argive elders, Clytemnestra, and a Herald who tells of the hardships of the siege and of the calamitous return, and ends with the triumphal entrance of Agamemnon with Cassandra, and his welcome by the Queen; the second comprehends the prophecy of the frenzied Cassandra of the doom about to fall upon the house and the murder of the King; the third the conflict between the Chorus, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... captive, overpowered with the sense of her calamitous situation, bowed down her head upon her knees, and concealing her agitated face in her garments, wept in silent agony. Visions of horror presented themselves to her bewildered brain; all that Indiana had described of the cruelty ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... prosperous country will not be readily moved by the arguments of hatred and universal upheaval which are employed by the Third International. It is necessary, in appealing to a prosperous country, to lay stress on hope rather than despair, and to show how the transition can be effected without a calamitous loss of prosperity. All this requires less violence and subversiveness, more patience and constructive propaganda, less appeal to the armed might ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... I fear may have stimulated them to commence their hostilities. Governor Blount has indefatigably labored to keep these people in a pacific humor, but in vain. War is unavoidable, however ruinous and calamitous it may be." [Footnote: State Dep. MSS., Madison Papers, Sevier's letter, Oct. 30, 1792.] The Federal Government was most reluctant to look facts in the face and acknowledge that the hostilities were serious, and that they were unprovoked by the whites. The Secretary of ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Secretary of the Navy. The occurrence during the last few months of marine disasters of the most tragic nature, involving great loss of human life, has produced intense emotions of sympathy and sorrow throughout the country. It may well be doubted whether all these calamitous events are wholly attributable to the necessary and inevitable dangers of the sea. The merchants, mariners, and shipbuilders of the United States are, it is true, unsurpassed in far-reaching enterprise, skill, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Congress of the United States resumes its annual legislative labors. An all-wise and merciful Providence has abated the pestilence which visited our shores, leaving its calamitous traces upon some portions of our country. Peace, order, tranquillity, and civil authority have been formally declared to exist throughout the whole of the United States. In all of the States civil ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... that I was the nearest of kin got into the newspapers; and in my first drive down St. James's, I had the pleasure of discovering that I had cured a vast number of my friends of their calamitous defect of vision. But if the "post equitem sedet atra cura" was the maxim in the days of Augustus, the man who drives the slower cabriolet in the days of George the Fourth, cannot expect to escape. The "hour too many" overtook me in the first week. On one memorable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... British government they took up arms in his Majesty's service, and, relying on the justice of their cause and the support of their Sovereign and the British nation, they have persevered with unabated zeal through all the vicissitudes of a calamitous and unfortunate war.... That whatever stipulations may be made at the peace for the restoration of the property of the Loyalists and permission for them to return home, yet, should the American Provinces ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... could not. Why, oh, why, had she gone to bed so early to-night of all nights? She was ready to cry with the passion of a disappointment that seemed, not a little thing, but something crushing and calamitous, a loss for which she never could be repaid. She could imagine Justin and Lois meeting the kind glances of those gray eyes, smiling when he did. He was beautiful when he smiled! She was within a few yards of him, but convention, absurd yet maddening, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... Guarino, walked Florentine streets arm-in-arm with Vespasiano, thrilled Aeneas Sylvius, then Pope, with a Latin oration, and returned to his own country with many books, some of which he intended to give to Oxford University—one of the best deeds of his unhappy and calamitous life.[1] While in Italy, William Grey, who sat under Guarino, and made Niccolo Perotti, well known as a grammarian, free of his princely establishment, was conspicuously industrious in accumulating books. If he could not obtain them in any other way he employed scribes to copy for him, and an ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... charge may be seen in Philopater Iren. i. 150-160; Clarendon, viii. 68. Oxford, 1726. It is evident that the conduct of Rinuccini in breaking the first peace was not only reprehensible in itself, but productive of the most calamitous consequences both to the cause of royalty and the civil and religious interests of the Irish Catholics. The following is the ground on which he attempts to justify himself. Laying it down as an undeniable ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... the calamitous consequences of this event thus terminate. It seems to have sown deeply the seeds of ambitious discord in the family of Henry. The young prince, after a visit to France with his consort, formally demanded of his father some ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... the villain's custody; nor could I obtain anything beyond a legal certificate of her death. And, finally, the blooming, laughing Mariamne, she also had died—and of affliction for the loss of her sister. You, my friend, had been absent upon your travels during the calamitous history I have recited. You had seen neither my father nor my mother. But you came in time to take under your protection, from the abhorred wretch the jailer, my little broken-hearted Mariamne. And when sometimes you fancied that you had seen me under ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Mrs. Robinson, beguiled by these pursuits from preying upon itself, became gradually reconciled to the calamitous state of her health; the mournful certainty of total and incurable lameness, while yet in the bloom and summer of life, was alleviated by the consciousness of intellectual resource, and by the activity of a fertile fancy. In 1791 she passed the greater part of the summer ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... biddest, as much as thou wishest, wherever thou findest the opportunity out of doors: this one object I except, to my thought a reasonable boon. But if thy evil mind and senseless rutting push thee forward, scoundrel, to so great a crime as to assail our head with thy snares, O wretch, calamitous mishap shall happen thee, when with feet taut bound, through the open entrance radishes ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... inveterate barbarism, and savage ferocity. This system had interwoven itself with our commercial existence so closely, as to require the most sagacious policy to eradicate it; at the same time it was the highest consideration for our magnanimity to interfere for that being whose thraldom and calamitous state had so long contributed to our wealth and commercial prosperity, before ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... exposure of a very prevalent and highly popular, but at the same time most calamitous misapprehension,—it will not become necessary for Editors of the Text of the New Testament to reconsider their conclusions in countless other places:—whether they must not be required to review their method, and to remodel their text throughout, now that they have been shewn the insecurity of the ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... its inhabitants in a situation that accident or delay might not affect. His Majesty's ship Guardian afforded a melancholy recollection how much this colony had already felt from misadventure, and the delay which occurred in the voyage of the Lady Juliana transport had proved equally calamitous. The recent circumstance of a ship arriving without a supply of flour, and other contingencies, spoke with a warning voice, and loudly demanded that every arm which could be raised should be exerted to make provision against the hour of want. Few, however, in comparison ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... his Holiness's long delay, have grown out of it, and are now so vast and of so ill example that I know not whether this or the Turk be the worst. Sorry am I to have been compelled to importune your Majesty so often in this matter, for sure I am you do not need my pressing. But I see delay to be so calamitous, my own life is so unquiet and so painful, and the opportunity to make an end now so convenient, that it seems as if God of his goodness had brought his Holiness and your Majesty together to bring about ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... all, he calls it wisdom itself.[95] A wise man, therefore, is never without it, never without the exercise of it; therefore thou sentest Moses to thy people, that they might learn to fear thee all the days of their lives,[96] not in heavy and calamitous, but in good and cheerful days too; for Noah, who had assurance of his deliverance, yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark, for the saving of his house.[97] A wise man will fear in everything.[98] And therefore, though I pretend to no other degree ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... the republic, if one were ignorant of previous history, and imagined that this was the first time any such thing had happened. But, in truth, it was in a similar manner that Andriscus of Adramyttium, a man of the very lowest class, assuming the name of Philip, added a third calamitous war to the previous Macedonian wars. Again, while the emperor Macrinus was at Antioch, it was then that Antoninus Heliogabalus issued forth from Emessa. Thus also Alexander, and his mother Mamaea, were put to death by the unexpected enterprise of Maximinus. And in Africa ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Western frontier of Beerbhoom the state of affairs was, perhaps, most calamitous. In 1776, four acres out of every seven remained untilled. Though in earlier times this district had been a favourite highway for armies, by the year 1780 it had become an almost impassable jungle. A small ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... was again in England resuming his prosperous practice. Then occurred the accident which hindered all further pursuit of his art. Reading an account of a calamitous fire, he was so impressed with the idea of showing his household and pupils the proper mode of effecting their escape, in the event of such an accident befalling his own house, that he ascended with them to the top storey, and pushing a ladder through the loft door, mounted quickly, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... account of the war between Athens and Sparta, since it is the greatest and the most calamitous of all wars hitherto to the Greeks. For the contest with the Medes was decided in four battles; but this war was protracted over many years, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... conversation to Dr. Blackwell; the other all his to me, to which I only gave negative or affirmative answers as laconically as I could, except asking him how Mrs. Logan did. He seemed disposed to be very polite, and while Dr. Blackwell and myself were conversing on the late calamitous fever, offered me an asylum at his house, if it should return or I thought myself in any danger in the city, and two or three rooms, by way of accommodation. I thanked him slightly, observing there would be no call ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... That is, none of them has ever been caught doing anything downright calamitous ... yet," Melroy replied. "The moron I'm afraid of can go on for years, doing routine work under supervision, and nothing'll happen. Then, some day, he does something on his own lame-brained initiative, and when he does, it's only at the whim of whatever gods there ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... went so much into detail that he left nothing to Boardman's imagination. He lost the sense of its calamitous close in recounting the facts of his story at Campobello; he smiled and blushed and laughed in telling certain things; he described Miss Anderson and imitated her voice; he drew heads of some of the ladies on the margin of a newspaper, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... he impressed her profoundly. He did not over-estimate her father's passionate belief in himself and the value of his work. If anything, Hunter had slurred the immense influence Eustis exerted, and the calamitous effect his failure would have upon the plain people who looked up to him with such unlimited trust. They would not only lose their money; they would lose something no ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... all respect to Avis Everhard, it must be pointed out that Everhard was but one of many able leaders who planned the Second Revolt. And we to-day, looking back across the centuries, can safely say that even had he lived, the Second Revolt would not have been less calamitous in its outcome than ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... fearful pressure of poisonous and heated air upon the excited brain. The deaths of Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle of our present Chief Justice, and of Ezekiel Webster, the brother of our great statesman, are memorable examples of the calamitous effects of the errors dwelt upon; and yet, strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend these errors, and give the body an equal chance with the mind in the pressure of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... Chiputneticook country proved a very hard one—game scarce and hunting difficult; and toward the end of February the pack drew in toward the settlements, in the hope of more abundant foraging. Fate promptly favoured the move. Some sheep, and a heifer or two, were easily killed, with no calamitous result; and the authority of the leaders was somewhat discredited. Three of the young wolves even went so far as to besiege a solitary cabin, where a woman and some trembling children awaited the return of the man. For two ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... suggested kettle, and the name fitted the circumstances. In England, where economy is so much the fashion, it was finally pronounced an excellent excuse for the suppression of expense, and it came over to New York during a calamitous period, just after "Black Friday." Ladies were glad to assemble their friends at an hour convenient for their servants, and with an entertainment inexpensive to their husbands. So a kettledrum became the most fashionable of entertainments. People after ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... enough, on a time, reading and lazing and dreaming Wrought the calamitous ill all had predicted for Peter; For, of a morning in spring when lay the mist in the valleys— "See," quoth the folk, "how the witch breweth her evil decoctions! See how the smoke from her fire ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... long since, I think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my family—all but poor Anne, an impoverished and embarrassed man, I am deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone. Even her foibles were of service to me, by giving me things to think of beyond ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Nuremberg. Forty-three days we were, day after day, traveling, almost always on foot. I had now obtained the desire of my heart. I had seen Switzerland. But still I was far from being happy. The Lord most graciously preserved us from many calamitous circumstances, which, but for His gracious providence, might have overtaken us. But I did not see His hand at that time, as I have seen it since. Sickness of one or more of us, or separation from one another, which might have so easily befallen ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... maintained that 'mercy was totally abolished by French maxims; for, if all men are equal, mercy is no more.' Piozzi's Synonymy, i. 370. Johnson, in 1740, described slavery as 'the most calamitous estate in human life,' a state 'which has always been found so destructive to virtue, that in many languages a slave and a thief are expressed by the same word.' Works, v. 265-6. Nineteen years later he wrote of the discoveries ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the kingly title. The Germans, having by this time come round to Stevenson's opinion, backed the claims of Mataafa, which they had before stubbornly disallowed, while the English and Americans stood for another candidate. In 1899 these differences resulted in a calamitous and unjustifiable action, the bombardment of native villages for several successive days by English and American war-ships. As a matter of urgent necessity, to avert worse things, new negotiations were set on foot between the three powers, with the result that England ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the other, when he reflected on his fatal oath. When he reached home, his wife and children received him with all the demonstrations of perfect joy. But he, instead of returning their caresses, wept so bitterly, that his family apprehended something calamitous had befallen him. His wife enquire reason of his excessive grief and tears; "We are all overjoyed," said she, "at your return; but you alarm us by your lamentations; pray tell us the cause of your sorrow." "Alas!" replied the husband, "I have but a year to live." He ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the god) his race derives From Ithaca, and wondrous woes survives; Laertes' son: girt with circumfluous tides, He still calamitous constraint abides. Him in Calypso's cave of late! view'd, When streaming grief his faded cheek bedow'd. But vain his prayer, his arts are vain, to move The enamour'd goddess, or elude her love: His vessel sunk, and dear companions lost, He lives reluctant on a foreign coast. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... but the example of the hermit Peter was before his eyes; and while he assured the crusaders of the divine favor, he prudently declined a military command, in which failure and victory would have been almost equally disgraceful to his character. [33] Yet, after the calamitous event, the abbot of Clairvaux was loudly accused as a false prophet, the author of the public and private mourning; his enemies exulted, his friends blushed, and his apology was slow and unsatisfactory. He justifies his obedience to the commands of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... much less than might have been expected, the rebels in the palace cannot be very comfortable, for they say that the air is infected by the number of unburied dead bodies lying there; indeed there are many lying unburied on the streets, which is enough to raise a fever, to add to the calamitous state of things. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... looking back over my previous adventures, I had been no better than a mad young fool, following after a will-o'-the-wisp to my own hurt and destruction. And though I cannot say that that ill-starred and calamitous love of mine for Marian, which had haunted me since I first saw her in the tavern of the "Three-decker" at Yarmouth, was abated at this time, yet I think I did now begin to perceive how evil an influence ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... though indeed she must often have pondered the success of such a manoeuvre as she lay alone absorbed in her interminable games of patience (and though it must have plunged her in despair from the first moment of its realisation, from the first of those little unforeseen facts, the first word of calamitous news, whose accents can never afterwards be expunged from the memory, everything that bears upon it the imprint of actual, physical death, so terribly different from the logical abstraction of its possibility) she would fall back from time to time, to add an interest to her ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... spices from India; no wines from Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira; none of those multitudinous articles of luxury, for which every corner of the globe is rifled, and which are the causes of so much individual rivalship, such calamitous and sanguinary national disputes. In the history of modern times, the avarice of commercial monopoly, no less than the ambition of weak and wicked chiefs, seems to have fomented the universal discord, to have added stubbornness ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... treatment as to give to the whole both beauty and worth beyond the sum of these qualities exhibited in the several parts. Vigilant waiting in the Lord's cause, and the dangers of unreadiness are exemplified in the story of the virgins; diligence in work and the calamitous results of sloth are prominent features of the tale of the talents. These two phases of service are of reciprocal and complementary import; it is as necessary at times to wait as at others to work. The lapse of a long period, as while the Bridegroom ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Wu-ist priests are endowed with magical properties which are considered to enable the wearer to control the order of the world, to avert unseasonable and calamitous events, such as drought, untimely and superabundant rainfall, and eclipses. These powers are conferred by the decoration upon the dress. Upon the back of the chief vestment the representation of a range of mountains is ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... of the Supreme Court on one of the most momentous questions ever submitted to a judicial tribunal, has not startled the country more by its far-reaching and calamitous results, than it has amazed jurists and statesmen by the poverty of its learning and the feebleness of its logic. It has surprised all, too, by its total want of sympathy with the spirit in which the war for the Union was prosecuted, and, necessarily, with those great issues growing out of ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... hands, has done for the wine-grower and for the vinegar-maker, and try to capitalise its value, we shall find that it will go a long way towards repairing the money losses caused by the frightful and calamitous war of this autumn. And as to the equivalent of Redi's thought in life, how can we over-estimate the value of that knowledge of the nature of epidemic and epizootic diseases, and consequently of the means of checking, or eradicating them, the dawn ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... by circumstances doubly calamitous. Though destined to survive all his brothers and sisters, Anthony was a weak, sickly child, not considered never heard the mention of his mother's name, or was the Archdeacon himself capable of showing any tenderness whatever. In place ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... whole conduct, never seemed intent upon coming to extremities with William: he was satisfied with keeping this great warrior in some awe, without bringing things to a decision, that might involve his kingdom in the same calamitous fate that had oppressed England; whilst his wisdom enabled him to reap advantages from the fortunes of the conquered, in drawing so many useful people into his dominions, and from the policy of the Conqueror, in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... darkest season of a most calamitous depression of his spirits, that I was summoned to the house of my inestimable friend the Translator, in the month of January, 1794. He had happily completed a revisal of his HOMER, and was thinking of the preface to his new ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... those times a poem of more general dignity or elevation than comedy; it required only a calamitous conclusion, with which the common criticism of that age was satisfied, whatever lighter pleasure it ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... country began to steam like a caldron. A cart, too, succeeded now and then in struggling up with a load of fresh provisions; reviving a few sinking spirits for a time, and almost making the owner's fortune; but, at the best, it was a drearily calamitous season,—one which caused many a sick heart to hate the sight and name of gold, and many a digger to resolve to quit the land, and all its treasures, at ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... this harvest, even the process of moving into the new house, are obscured in my mind by the clouds of smoke which rose from calamitous fires all over the west. It was an unprecedentedly dry season so that not merely the prairie, but many weedy cornfields burned. I had a good deal of time to meditate upon this for I was again the plow-boy. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... ancient Egypt which Joseph filled with corn in the seven years of plenteousness and opened in the seven years of dearth, when "famine waxed sore in the land." But the building of the Ganges Canal and the railroads have rendered it almost impossible that a widespread calamitous famine should again occur in this section of India—the former by providing a more thorough system of irrigation, and the latter by affording means for the rapid and easy transportation of food from one province to another. The extent of the recent famine has been grossly exaggerated. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... 'and having been born on the Douglas lands, he well knew the claim he had to my fidelity. He gave me this packet, and conjured me to lose no time in conveying it to you. The task was difficult; and, as in these calamitous seasons we hardly know whom to trust, I determined to ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... about, Sabrina? It would have been a world's wonder and a black, burning shame if my girl had gone after her lad in such a calamitous time. No, no, Christina Binnie isn't the kind of girl that shrinks in the wetting. When her time of trial came, she did the whole of her duty, showing herself day by day a witness and a testimony to ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... desirable a city of refuge. But during my rapid approach, I observed that the external walls of the nameless edifice beneath the arcade were covered, and without a single interstitial interval, by small pictures in oil-colours, equal in size, and equal in demerit, and each and all representing some calamitous crisis of human existence—a fire, a ship-wreck, a boat-wreck, a battle, a leprosy! It occurred to me at the same moment, that this gallery of mortal casualties and afflictions must be a collection of votive offerings, and that the seeming ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... ships and warehouses had been destroyed by hurricanes and fire? Faith given, patience follows: and the trial is morally the same, whether the news be true or false. Remarkably enough, after the calamitous time is past, when the good man of Uz is discerned as rewarded by heaven for his patience by the double of every thing once lost—his children remain the same in number, ten. It seems to me quite possible that neither camels, &c., nor children, really had been killed. Satan might have meant it ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... aspiration, there are many who believe, with reason, that the country is not ripe for the adoption of European institutions, that the foundations on which to construct them do not yet exist, and that any attempt to introduce them would lead only to calamitous results; while there is even a large party which contends that, far from needing them, Russia is happily situated in being exempt from the struggles and the storms, the wars of classes and of factions, that have attended the course of Western civilization, and in being left free to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... confess, sir, there are instances in which the hardships of the seafaring part of the nation are peculiar, and truly calamitous. A sailor, after the dangers and toils of a long voyage, when he is now in the sight of the port, where he hopes to enjoy that quiet which he has deserved by so long a series of fatigues, to repair ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... in their mother's new-spilt gore Red-garmented and ghastly, from the door They reel.... O horrible! Was it agony Like this, she boded in her last wild cry? There lives no seed of man calamitous, Nor hath lived, like ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... little; but that little I once believed you would ever haste to do with a generous eagerness and enthusiasm, and therefore I used to contemplate your character with an enthusiastic affection. That character, high as it was, sunk in my estimation from the calamitous delay concerning the promised pension of Cowper, a delay which allowed that dear and now released sufferer to sink into utter and useless distraction before the neglected promise was fulfilled. Will you make me some amends for the affectionate concern I suffered for the diminution ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... knife somebody else made. And what's more, you can't know the results of your discoveries. All you can see is a thin film of events on the surface of an immediate situation, so you can't say whether the long-term results will be beneficial or calamitous. ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... as most of our own big guns are out of sight of their objective, and fire entirely by range, and in this case the guns were trained on the third trench while this battalion rushed through to the fifth, with calamitous results. This battalion—either Royal Scots, Scotch Fusiliers, or K.O.S.B.'s I forget which—had lost all its officers, but, with no one to lead them, they dashed on, greatly to the admiration of all onlookers. Two Munster officers ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Carl patiently essayed a comforting word of advice and followed Dick indoors to seek relief in less calamitous showers. Before he did so, however, he read his ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... etc. A tragedy is a drama in which the principal characters are involved in desperate circumstances or led by overwhelming passions. It is invariably serious and dignified. The movement is always stately, but grows more and more rapid as it approaches the climax; and the end is always calamitous, resulting in death or dire misfortune to the principals. As Chaucer's monk says, before he begins to ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... fame, and of his agency was great. The man had come up from poverty through a series of vicissitudes to a high standing in his peculiar and, to many, distasteful profession; but to any one in need of such in themselves calamitous services, his very famous and decidedly patriotic connection with the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln was a recommendation. He, or rather his service, had guarded the latter all his stormy incumbency at the executive mansion. There were offices for the management of the company's business ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... time in this discipline, the offenders are finally, by a counter-incantation, restored to their original forms, being by the severities they had suffered entirely cured of the vices which had occasioned their calamitous condition. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... some difficulty. Lord Percival had declared he did not understand I.O.U.'s in an affair of that kind. He had always thought that gentlemen did not play for stakes which they could not pay at once. This was not said to Gerald himself;—or the result would have been calamitous. Nidderdale was the go-between, and at last arranged it,—not however till he had pointed out that Percival, having won so large a sum of money from a lad under twenty-one years of age, was very lucky in receiving ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... when Finow, a Friendly Island chief, acquired the supreme power in that most interesting group of islands, after a bloody and calamitous civil war, in which his enemies were completely overpowered, the barbarian forced a number of the vanquished to embark in their canoes and put to sea; and during the revolution that issued in the subversion of paganism in ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... The calamitous effects of the system had reached the humblest concerns of human life. Provisions had risen to an enormous price; paper money was refused at all the shops; the people had not wherewithal to buy bread. It had ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... am glad to say, escaped from those dreadful islands three years later, and reached England in safety. And so I come to the end of this tale of a very strange and calamitous voyage, brought about mainly through the obstinacy of the ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... now, my lord, too late to offer any thing by way of defence or vindication; nor can we expect from your lordships, in this court, but the sentence which the law requires you, as judges, to pronounce against men of our calamitous condition. But we are also persuaded, that as mere men, and out of this seat of rigorous justice, you are susceptive of the tender passions, and too humane not to commiserate the unhappy situation of those, whom the law ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... an address to the Divine Providence that regulates into one vast harmony all the events of time, however calamitous some of them may appear to mortals. The second Strophe calls on men to suspend their private joys and sorrows, and devote them for a while to the cause of human nature in general. The first Epode speaks of the Empress of Russia, who died of an apoplexy on the 17th of November 1796; having just concluded ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... obtain supplies by pillaging the country. The Hungarians, and other nations on our western frontiers, Christians, like themselves, did not hesitate to fall upon this disorderly rabble; and immense piles of bones, in wild passes and unfrequented deserts, attest the calamitous defeats which extirpated ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... hope to avert the calamities of war and to effect a reunion and reconciliation with our brethren of the South. I yet hope it may be done, but I am not able to point out to you how it may be effected. Nothing short of Providence can reveal to us the issue of this great struggle. Bloody—calamitous —I fear it will be. May we so conduct it if a collision must come, that we will stand justified in the eyes of Him who knows our hearts and who will judge our every act. We must not yield to resentments, ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... state of affairs in South Africa which have arisen in consequence of the differences between the Governments of South African Republic and Her Britannic Majesty, which constitute a threatening danger for bringing about hostilities, the calamitous effect of which would be incalculable for all white inhabitants of South Africa, being bound to the South African Republic by the closest bonds of blood and alliance and standing in most friendly relations towards Her Majesty's Government, fearing that should ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... later that prudent members of Going Away Clubs always left money concealed behind them, as this was the sole way of providing against a calamitous return. The pair existed on the remainder of the six shillings and on credit for a week. William Henry became his hard self again. The prison life was resumed. But Annie did not mind, for she had lived for a week at the rate of a thousand a year. And in a fortnight William Henry ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... lost his breath and there burst upon him a perception of the results to which he was being committed by this calamitous reading. And also simultaneous the outbreak of the class into cachinnations of delight, severely repressed by the perplexed but ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... windswept waste of the New Forest. I tell you it was amazing to arrive there from Waterbury. And it came into my head—for Teddy Ashburnham, you remember, had cabled to me to "come and have a talk" with him—that it was unbelievable that anything essentially calamitous could happen to that place and those people. I tell you it was the very spirit of peace. And Leonora, beautiful and smiling, with her coils of yellow hair, stood on the top doorstep, with a butler and footman and a maid or so ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... of the general relations of the United States, the president said: "While many of the nations of Europe, with their American dependencies, have been involved in a contest unusually bloody, exhausting, and calamitous, in which the evils of foreign war have been aggravated by domestic convulsion and insurrection, in which many of the arts most useful to society have been exposed to discouragement and decay; in which scarcity of subsistence has embittered other sufferings; ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... which for want of money has been substituted for supplying the army, by assessing a proportion of the productions of the earth, has hitherto been found ineffectual, has frequently exposed the army to the most calamitous distress, and from its novelty and incompatibility with ancient habits, is regarded by the people as burthensome and oppressive, has excited serious discontents, and, in some places, alarming symptoms of opposition. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Ch'eng Tzu, Chu Tzu and Chang Tzu were ordained to see light in an auspicious era. Whereas Ch'i Yu, Kung Kung, Chieh Wang, Chou Wang, Shih Huang, Wang Mang, Tsao Ts'ao, Wen Wen, An Hu-shan, Ch'in Kuei and others were one and all destined to come into the world during a calamitous age. Those endowed with extreme benevolence set the world in order; those possessed of extreme maliciousness turn the world into disorder. Purity, intelligence, spirituality and subtlety constitute the vital spirit of right which pervades heaven ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the settlement of an Irish family in one of our suburban neighborhoods. The householders view with fear and jealousy the erection of any dwelling of less than a stated cost, as portending a possible advent of Irish; and when the calamitous race actually appears, a mortal pang strikes to the bottom of every pocket. Values tremble throughout that neighborhood, to which the new-comers communicate a species of moral dry- rot. None but the Irish will ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... are the sentiments expressed by these virtuous and calamitous persons, they leave us cold: they are too self-sufficient to need our sympathy. Pain and death have no terrors for them; why should we pity them? But it would be unjust to lay the blame for this absence of pathetic power entirely on the influence ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Many of the calamitous effects of the tremendous revolution which has passed over the Southern States still remain. The immeasurable benefits which will surely follow, sooner or later, the hearty and generous acceptance of the legitimate ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... crime, or to accuse My other self, the partner of my life; Whose failing, while her faith to me remains, I should conceal, and not expose to blame By my complaint: but strict necessity Subdues me, and calamitous constraint; Lest on my head both sin and punishment, However insupportable, be all Devolved; though should I hold my peace, yet thou Wouldst easily detect what I conceal.— This Woman, whom thou madest to be my help, And gavest me as thy perfect gift, so good, So fit, so acceptable, so divine, That ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... indeed, the effect of his activity, if he had /continued/ it to a more advanced age, would probably not have been so great as it now necessarily became, when, like many other extraordinary men, he was distinguished by fate through a strange and calamitous end. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... more than a child. In the dim light he could not see her face distinctly; even the form was shadowy. But again he was reminded of Tirzah, and a sudden tenderness fell upon him—just so the lost sister stood with him on the house-top the calamitous morning of the accident to Gratus. Poor Tirzah! Where was she now? Esther had the benefit of the feeling evoked. If not his sister, he could never look upon her as his servant; and that she was his servant ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... of this modern era. Nottingham, where the family was then located, suffered heavily, a large proportion of its poorer classes being reduced to the verge of starvation. My father, who had invested the entire savings of his lifetime in small house property, was seriously affected by these calamitous circumstances; ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... woollens in Blackwell Hall. The charter of the ports is one hundred years older than that of London, but, notwithstanding this priority of right, the citizens of London prevailed. The result was indeed calamitous, for after the decay of the haven, the chief source of prosperity to the town of Sandwich consisted in the woollen manufactures, and as the freedom of buying and selling was now denied, the manufacturers immediately removed, and were soon followed by the owners of the trading vessels, and the merchants; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... up for a sort of country empiric, a character which, even in his best days, he was fond of assuming. It is remarkable, that, instead of informing me of these circumstances, that I might have had the relative of my late wife taken such care of as his calamitous condition required, Mr. Ratcliffe seems to have had such culpable indulgence for his irregular plans as to promise and even swear secrecy concerning them. He visited Sir Edward often, and assisted in the fantastic ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... who kept us moral but unengaging seniors from the favors of the fair; there were subtle, conspiring Rings among our creditors, which sent us into bankruptcy and restricted our credit. In fact it would not be hazardous to say that all that was calamitous in public and private experience was clearly traceable to that combination of power in a minority over weakness in a ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... Christians, but of pagans, and of all who would depart from the religion of Christ as interpreted by Rome. It was a death-bed repentance for the cruel old empire, a repentance which might delay, but could not avert a calamitous ending, and an unexpected event was near at hand which would hasten the ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... knows that such follies are often more calamitous than the ambition of kings; and that intolerance and bigotry have been infinitely greater curses to mankind than ignorance and error. Better any error than persecution! Better any opinion than the thumb-screw, the rack, and the stake! And he knows also ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... spices from India; no wines from Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira; none of those multitudinous articles of luxury, for which every corner of the globe is rifled, and which are the cause of so much individual rivalship, and such calamitous and ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... campaigns, the triumphs of Ulm, of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Wagram. Napoleon's disasters in Russia, in 1812, were imputed by his admirers to the elements; his reverses in Germany, in 1813, were attributed by them to treachery: and even those two calamitous years had been signalised by his victories at Borodino, at Lutzen, at Bautzen, at Dresden, and at Hanau. His last campaign, in the early months of 1814, was rightly cited as the most splendid exhibition of his military genius, when, with a far inferior army, he long checked ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A. |
