"Desolated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conflagration. The church, thus raised, is said by William of Jumieges[37], to have surpassed every other in Neustria; but it is certain that only a very small portion of the original building now remains. A second destruction awaited it. Philip Augustus, who desolated the county of Evreux with fire and sword, stormed the capital, sparing neither age nor sex; and all its buildings, whether sacred or profane, were burnt to the ground. Hoveden, his friend, and Brito, his enemy, both bear witness ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... What he wanted was a divinely commissioned church with sacred mysteries—a spiritual house of refuge from the weary battle of intellectual east winds, blasting and barren, with which he saw Protestant Germany desolated. This house of refuge he found in Cologne, in Vienna; and having once made up his mind that spiritual unity and peace were to be found only in the one mother church of Christendom, not being one of those half characters who, "making I dare not wait upon I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... and Ruth's slicin' the pertaters. Hope them fish is cleaned?" he added with a face of deep anxiety; for that weary task would fall to him if not already done, and the thought desolated his ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... his most humiliating distresses, stooped to so despicable a sacrifice of all that can be dear to man. The war of the succession, unjustly begun by him, had reduced his power, had swallowed up his armies and his navies, had desolated his provinces, had drained his treasures, and deluged the earth with the blood of the best and most faithful his subjects. Exhausted by his various calamities, he offered his enemies at one time to relinquish all the objects for which he had begun the war. That proud monarch sued for peace, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... abode. She was truly alone in the world. Her father now began to advance with more rapid footsteps in the career of dissipation. A victim to that infidelity which presents no obstacle to crime, he yielded himself a willing captive to the dominion of passion, and disorder reigned through the desolated household. Jane had the mortification of seeing a woman received into the family to take her mother's place, in a union unsanctified by the laws of God. A deep melancholy settled down upon the mind of the wounded girl, and she felt that she was desolate and an alien in her own home. She shut herself ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... instead to endure a purgatorial routine of dust and dulness, mosquitoes, malaria and night marches, and the grilling away of useless days in the society of flies and lizards, with only, as a very occasional treat, the smallest glimpse of anything resembling a Front. And all this is in a country so desolated by centuries of war that in spite of obvious natural fertility it is a sullen treeless desert—a desert of blight and thistles, as profitless to our men as their periodically deferred anticipations of a grand advance. A book that sets out to record vacuity can hardly be crammed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... Dioclesian were but imperfectly attained; the internal peace of the empire lasted only during his own reign; and with his abdication of the empire commenced the bloodiest civil wars which had desolated the world since the contests of the great triumvirate. But the collateral blow, which he meditated against the authority of the senate, was entirely successful. Never again had the senate any real influence on the fate of the world. And with ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... half-way up the ridge, then swept along the flank of it, and round the end in huge bulk, to the level on the other side. The water lay soaking into the fields. The valley was desolated. What green things had not been uprooted or carried away with the soil, were laid flat. Everywhere was mud, and scattered all over were lumps of turf, with heather, brushwood, and small trees. But it was early in the year, and there ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Already after the subjugation of the pirates he had, instead of following the example of his predecessors and crucifying his prisoners, whose number exceeded 20,000, settled them partly in the desolated cities of the Plain Cilicia, such as Mallus, Adana, Epiphaneia, and especially in Soli, which thenceforth bore the name of Pompeius' city (Pompeiupolis), partly at Dyme in Achaia, and even at Tarentum. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... heard of no more. It was believed that he had perished in the battle. But he was one of those who, precisely as they are effective when present, are forgotten in absence. And, in the meanwhile, as the Vega was utterly desolated, and all supplies were cut off, famine, daily made more terrifically severe, diverted the attention of each humbler Moor from the fall of the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... recovered and was called away unexpectedly on business," he explained; adding with his lip smile, "He will be desolated to ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... hundred thousand. They were generally widely dispersed through the extensive regions of East Tennessee. But very few emigrants had ventured across the broad and rugged cliffs of the Cumberland Mountains into the rich and sunny plains of Western Tennessee. But a few years before, terrible Indian wars desolated the State. The powerful tribes of the Creeks and Cherokees had combined all their energies for the utter extermination of the white men, seeking to destroy all their ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... up all this mass of treasure will one day be plundered, and fall a prey to rapacious tyrants in power." His prediction was literally fulfilled twenty years after it was uttered. Sir Walter Raleigh regarded omens, and from these predicted truly. Tacitus foresaw the calamities which long desolated Europe on the fall of the Roman empire, and wrote concerning the future events five hundred years before they happened. Solon predicted many of the miseries that overtook the Athenians. Aristotle collected remarkable information ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... nothing is too great or too small; which has absorbed meadow and forest, moor and mountain, which has appropriated most of our rivers and lakes and the fish that live in them; making the agriculturist pay for his seaweed manure and the fisherman for his bait of shell-fish; which has desolated whole counties to replace men by sheep or cattle, and has destroyed fields and cottages to make a wilderness for deer and grouse; which has stolen the commons and filched the roadside wastes; which ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... They were inside that desolated house, the door closed fatefully upon them. The waster disappeared. Bean heard the flapper's voice calling cheerily to him from above stairs. A footman disapprovingly ushered him to the midst ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... dust on their heads, and cried out, weeping and mourning, saying, Woe! woe! the great city by which all who had ships on the sea, were made rich through her precious merchandise! for in one hour she is desolated." Rev. 18:9-20. ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... punished after two months of war, it was at a great loss to the country and to the Spaniards. In the first onset one hundred and fifty of the best Spaniards were killed, almost all citizens, although there were not more than seven hundred citizens. The island was desolated and destroyed for more than twenty leguas round about the city, which was in danger of being lost. The inhabitants who were left had to sally out, and, pursuing the enemy, finally conquered and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... beneath the deep; Or in an insect's form I creep. Of late it was my fate to wear The semblance of the timid hare; And one cold morning in December (The luckless day you may remember), When winter stern in icy chains Had bound the desolated plains, And withered every tender plant, A hare, compelled by urgent want, Ventured within your garden pale To taste your parsley and your kale. Soon of her steps you saw the trace, And whistled Fury to the chace. The fatal scent her track reveals, And the fierce cur pursued her ...
— Think Before You Speak - The Three Wishes • Catherine Dorset
... its defenders, society disintegrates and the worms begin to work.—Add to these the veritable brigands, assassins and robbers. "In 1782,[5329] the provost's court of Montargis is engaged on the trial of Hulin and two hundred of his accomplices who, for ten years, by means of joint enterprises, have desolated a portion of the kingdom."—Mercier enumerates in France "an army of more than 10,000 brigands and vagabonds" against which the police, composed of 3,756 men, is always on the march. "Complaints are ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of F. fusca (showing that it was not a migration) and numerous pupae. I traced a long file of ants burdened with booty, for about forty yards back, to a very thick clump of heath, whence I saw the last individual of F. sanguinea emerge, carrying a pupa; but I was not able to find the desolated nest in the thick heath. The nest, however, must have been close at hand, for two or three individuals of F. fusca were rushing about in the greatest agitation, and one was perched motionless with its own pupa in its mouth on the top of a spray ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... to this request Captain Alphonse declared he was 'desolated,' but that, unfortunately, the Saint Pierre was bound for Europe and not to the greater Antilles; but, strange to say, for I was watching him keenly the while, our friend the 'marquis' did not appear either surprised or dismayed at his supposition as to our destination turning out to be ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... that men are noble, but in exact proportion with their being rational. The happiness which is to be found in virtue alone, is sought for by men through the titles acquired by their fathers for their activity in those wars which have desolated the world, or in the wealth accumulated by their ancestors; both means generally unjust and oppressive, and consequently rather sources of shame and humiliation. For as the Chinese philosopher well observes, 'there is scarcely one rich ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... illusions which bind us to our native country, and softened their regrets in a foreign land. Alas! I have seen these trees, these fountains, these heaps of stones, which are now so completely overthrown,—which now, like the desolated plains of Greece, present nothing but masses of ruin and affecting remembrances, all called into life by the many charming ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... strife The loathing virgin and indignant wife! While wanton carnage sweeps each crowded wood, And all the mountain torrents swell with blood! Lo! Where yon cliff projects its length of shade O'er fields of death, a wounded chief is laid! Around the desolated scene he throws A look, that speaks insufferable woes: Then starting from his trance of dumb despair, Thus vents his anguish to the fleeting air: "Dear native hills, amidst whose woodland maze, I pass'd the tranquil morning ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... menial for me to begone or look out for the bloodhounds. Isn't he the haughty thing? I don't like to 'begone'—I refuse to git when I'm told, so, of course, I paid my respects to Natalie and her mother. But what do you think I found? Mrs. St. Claire desolated, Eva dissolved in tears and her ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... doubt there are many of us who have to look back, if not upon a year desolated by some blow that never can be repaired, yet upon a year in which failing resources and declining business, or diminished health, or broken spirits, or a multitude of minute but most disturbing cares and sorrows, do make it hard to recognise ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... weight. Then comes a fox which finds its way within, and then a portion is torn off by a dragon that issues from the gaping earth. Thus far it is easy to recognize the persecutions of the Roman emperors which so harried the Church, the heresies by which it was desolated, and the schisms by which it was torn. Soon, the eagle reappeared, less menacing but not less dangerous; he shook his plumes above the sacred car, which speedily underwent a monstrous transformation. From divers parts of it arose seven heads armed ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... of the great war. Germany was desolated. Towns and villages were destroyed by flames. Order and law had given way to savage power; and from the walls of many a ruined house of God the wooden image of the Saviour looked down with a face of anguish on the ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... carve out a home for himself and his children? How much more noble is such courage, how infinitely superior is such a warfare, one which mows down forest trees instead of men, which creates green pastures, broad meadows, and fields of waving grain, instead of smouldering cities, and desolated homes! How much more pleasant is the sound of the woodman's axe, than that of the booming cannon! How much more cheerful the smoke that goes up from the burning fallow, than that which hangs in darkness over the desolation of the battle field, beneath which ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... forevermore, upon the family of the President dead; upon the President living upon the Ministers of state; upon the united Houses of Congress; upon the Judges of our Courts; upon the officers of the Army and the Navy; upon the broken families and desolated homes all over the laud; and especially upon the nation. And grant that grace and peace and mercy from the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of God the Spirit, may rest upon and abide with us ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... died, and the "Black Death," a fearful pestilence, desolated a land already decimated by protracted wars. The valiant old King, after a life of brilliant triumphs, carried a sad and broken heart to the grave, and Richard II., son of the heroic ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... days have produced no remarkable outrages, and though the state of the country is still dreadful, it is rather better on the whole than it was; but London is like the capital of a country desolated by cruel war or foreign invasion, and we are always looking for reports of battles, burnings, and other disorders. Wherever there has been anything like fighting, the mob has always been beaten, and has shown the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... people" Governor Hunter, and the assistance he gave them as an encouragement to industrious exertion. Scarcely, however, had they begun to revive after this calamity—scarcely had they repaired the ravages occasioned by this tremendous inundation—scarcely had the desolated lands once more confessed the power of cultivation, before those ill-fated settlers were doomed to experience a repetition of the destructive calamity; and on the 2d of March, 1801, the river again overflowed its banks, and rushed impetuously to renew its former devastations. Flocks and ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... mischief—for I never could discover an adequate motive—induced the king to attempt the dissolution of the marriage, and failing in this, to authorise them to murder Inez during a brief absence of her husband. Pedro raised a rebellion, and desolated the estates of the assassins, who escaped, one into France, and two into Castile. Pedro laid down his arms on the entreaty of his mother, but would never again see his father, and lived with his two children in the strictest retirement ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... I have no home now. It has been desolated by treason. I heard since I came over that my wife was dead. I had a son, a boy of fifteen; I know not where he is. Well, well; I will not groan or complain. I will do my duty to my country, and that shall cheer my heart;" and with an effort of his powerful will, ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... so strong a grip on the situation that the present unlawful sale of game would be completely stopped. Half-way measures in preventing the sale of game will not answer. Already Connecticut has wasted thousands of dollars in fruitless efforts to restock her desolated woodlands and farms with quail, and to introduce the Hungarian partridge; but even yet she will not protect ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... passed away, and then, far and near the papers teemed with accounts of the horrible Norwalk catastrophe, which desolated many a home, and wrung from many a heart its choicest treasure. Side by side they found them—Nellie and her husband—the light of her brown eyes quenched forever, and the pulses of ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... slave-ships, fled to the mountains of Sierra Leone, where they now dragged on a miserable existence. The son himself was sold, in his turn, soon after. In short, the whole of that unhappy peninsula, as he learnt from eye-witnesses, had been desolated by the trade in slaves. Towns were seen standing without inhabitants all over the coast; in several of which the agent of the Company had been. There was nothing but distrust among the inhabitants. Every one, if he stirred from home, felt himself ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... Almighty God,—heroes as religious as they were brave, an unexampled band of warriors, rivalling Joshua, Saul, and David in the brilliancy of their victories. All the Jews who remained true to their faith in the districts which he overran and desolated, Judas brought back with him ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... spirit panted for a career of arms—civil war then desolated France, and, at the age of twenty, I embraced the cause of my religion and my king. Fortune, prodigal of her flatteries, twined my brow with clustering laurels, and at the close of my first campaign, my sovereign's favor and the people's love already hailed me by a hero's title. Fatigued ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... eleventh commandment: "Thou shalt not be discovered." It had smashed Nan Brent, who had violated it, desolated her, ruined her—she who had but followed the instinct that God Almighty had given her at birth—the instinct of sex, the natural yearning of a trustful, loving heart for love, motherhood, and masculine protection from a brutal ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... smoking villages of Flanders and the putrified fields of La Vende—from Africa the unnumbered victims of a detestable Slave-Trade. In Asia the desolated plains of Indostan, and the millions whom a rice-contracting Governor caused to perish. In America the recent enormities of the Scalp-merchants. The four quarters of the globe groan beneath the intolerable iniquity of the nation.' See ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... at the hideous bondage." It was this "conspiracy of himself against himself" that was the poison of his life. He describes it with frantic pathos as "the scourge, the curse, the one almighty blight, which had desolated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... relief came. A deluge of rain fell, and when day broke and the sun shone through a murky heaven there was left no sign of what the lake had been, except for the dead bodies that floated on its surface or lined its shores. The living things had returned into their desolated wilderness—and among them Neewa ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... these same things that Peter sensed, came understanding that brought with it an uneasiness which changed swiftly into the chill of a growing fear. The utter lifelessness told him how vast the destruction of the fire had been. Its obliteration was so great no life had adventured back into the desolated country, though the conflagration must have passed in the preceding autumn, many months ago. The burned country was a grave and the nearest edge of it, judged from the sepulchral stillness of the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... charred cities, wan with pain, War-desolated mothers live, While lips of babies tug in vain At breasts that have ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... times been found one of the most fertile sources of hostility among nations. Perhaps the greatest proportion of wars that have desolated the earth have sprung from this origin. This cause would exist among us in full force. We have a vast tract of unsettled territory within the boundaries of the United States. There still are discordant and undecided claims between ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... to send us trials,—have they done their work, have they brought us nearer to Him, have they told us this is not our abiding place, have they shown us the instability of earthly happiness? Have you reflected for one moment, amidst your late rejoicings, of the hundreds whose hearths have been desolated by cruel but necessary war, and then with a full and grateful heart humbly thanked the God who has not only spared you these heavy inflictions, but preserved all ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... "this is the country of Brittany, and we weep because our county is desolated by a giant. He makes us bring him food. First, he ate up all the oxen we had, and then our horses. Next he demanded our children, and now there are no little ones in the land. To-day he took our good duchess of Brittany, and carried her off to ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... to island fifty yards from shore. Found stronghold ruined, slave irons and neck-rings, plenty of skeletons. Evidently place was swept by plague, none escaping. Burned slave-barracoon and house. All very old—at least ten years. Slavers' stronghold explains desolated country. ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... is about to enter upon his description of the plague that desolated Athens, one of his modern commentators assures the reader that the history is now going to be exceedingly solemn, serious and pathetic; and hints, with that air of chuckling gratulation with which ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... one bright deluge whelms the works of men. Amidst this savage landscape, bleak and bare, Hangs the chill hermitage in middle air; Its haunts forsaken, and its feasts forgot, A leaf-strown, lonely, desolated cot ! Is this the scene that late with rapture rang, Where Delphy danced, and gentle Anna sang ? With fairy step where Harriet tripp'd so late, And, on her stump reclined, the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... outbursts of grief—real, as in the hopeless words of Catullus over his brother's tomb; or academic, like Milton's Lycidas. We are not to suppose that Milton was heart-broken by the death of young Mr King, or that Shelley was greatly desolated by the death of Keats, with whom his personal relations had been slight, and of whose poetry he had spoken evil. He was nobly stirred as a poet by a poet's death—like Mr Swinburne by the death of Charles Baudelaire; but neither Shelley nor Mr Swinburne was ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... create others in their place, but scarcely had they seen the light when symptoms of death set in. So much has been done, and no more. I have before me a stupendous labour, an immense social and political reconstruction. I have to set myself to building up, in this desolated country, on bases whose solidity is guaranteed by experience, a grand edifice, where every legitimate interest and every reasonable ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... not the enjoyment of this life be increased, and also abundant treasures be laid up in heaven, by using the wealth thus economized in diffusing similar enjoyments and culture among the poor, ignorant, and neglected ones in desolated sections where many now are perishing for want of such Christian example ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... place at all. Now this effect has evidently been especially chosen by Turner for Loch Coriskin, not only because it enabled him to relieve its jagged forms with veiling vapor, but to tell the tale which no pencilling could, the story of its utter absolute barrenness of unlichened, dead, desolated rock:— ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... soldier is fighting for the security of our Northern homes; and the issue resolves itself into this: The resistance of invasion; the vindication of our manliness as a people; the protection of our own firesides—else be overrun, outraged, desolated, enslaved by the minions of a Southern oligarchy, which indulges the insane conceit that it is ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... one hundred and eighty-two thousand (1,82,000) rupees a year to Government; but he was driven, out of it in 1846-47, by Rughbur Sing, the contractor, who, by rapacity and outrage, drove off the greater part of the cultivators, and so desolated the estate that it could not now be made to yield thirty thousand (30,000) rupees a- year. The Raja has ever since resided with a few followers in an island in the Ghagra. He has never openly resisted or defied ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... beautiful and fertile tract of country was reduced to a solitude. There was none left round the ashes of the cottages of the Acadians but the faithful watch-dog, vainly seeking the hands that fed him. Thickets of forest-trees choked their orchards; the ocean broke over their neglected dikes, and desolated ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... above all things, like disembarking from the Styx into the desolated underworld, was this landing at night. There was the raw, half-lighted, covered-in vastness of the dark place, boarded and hollow underfoot, with only desolation everywhere. Ursula had caught sight of the big, pallid, mystic letters 'OSTEND,' standing in the darkness. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... second cabin, where the manner of the stewards was quite different. She wept because they had been caught in the steerage. She wept because she was ashamed, and because people were too kind. She was at once delighted and desolated. She wanted to outpour psalms of gratitude, and ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... no words between the covers of the dictionary which can bring home to one who has not witnessed them the awful violence of the shell-storms which have desolated these hills about Verdun. In one week's attack to the north of the city the Germans threw five million shells, the total weight of which was forty-seven thousand tons. Eighty thousand shells rained upon one shallow ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... the destruction that hath heretofore been there, was not by earthquakes (as the Egyptian priest told Solon concerning the island of Atlantis, that it was swallowed by an earthquake), but rather that it was desolated by a particular deluge. For earthquakes are seldom in those parts. But on the other side, they have such pouring rivers, as the rivers of Asia and Africk and Europe, are but brooks to them. Their Andes, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... internal quarrels, the smothered rage of the Irish broke forth into acts of fearful violence. On a sudden, the aboriginal population rose on the colonists. A war, to which national and theological hatred gave a character of peculiar ferocity, desolated Ulster, and spread to the neighbouring provinces. The castle of Dublin was scarcely thought secure. Every post brought to London exaggerated accounts of outrages which, without any exaggeration were sufficient to move pity end horror. These evil tidings roused to the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... succession, were bad for grass, much more for grain; no herring came either; very cleanness of teeth was like to come in Eyvind Skaldaspillir's opinion. This scarcity became at last their share of the great Famine Of A.D. 975, which desolated Western Europe (see the poem in the Saxon Chronicle). And all this by Eyvind Skaldaspillir, and the heathen Norse in general, was ascribed to anger of the heathen gods. Discontent in Norway, and especially in Eyvind Skaldaspillir, seems to ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... sort of way that contracted Silas's throat to witness, and left the old man almost as undone as herself, and without further argument he drove on to Nathan Hornby's desolated home, where he lifted her tenderly down from the high seat, with a mist before his eyes that blurred her image till it was unrecognizable, and stood watching ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... one lies, for he who speaks a lie is thenceforth regarded as dead; he is no more thought of, or honoured by us. No vice is tolerated by us. Every year we undertake a pilgrimage, with retinue of war, to the body of the holy prophet Daniel, which is near the desolated site of Babylon. In our realm fishes are caught, the blood of which dyes purple. The Amazons and the Brahmins are subject to us. The palace in which our Super-eminency resides, is built after the pattern of the castle built by the Apostle Thomas for the Indian king ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... should fall—on the heads of its blood-stained authors. If this is not done, after we have put down the whites we shall have to meet the blacks, and after we have waded knee-deep in the blood of both, we shall end the war where it began, but with the South desolated by fire and sword, the North impoverished and loaded down with an everlasting debt, and our once proud, happy and glorious country the by-word and scorn of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Emily Sherwood as he had first seen her—a vision of loveliness and grace. He thought of her as he had beheld her almost the last time on that clear summer morning, and like refreshing dew on his scorched and desolated heart fell the remembrance of her gentle words and loving looks. Could they have deceived? Ah no! and his whole nature seemed suddenly softened. He seemed to see her before him now, with her angel face and her floating white robes; he seemed even yet to be looking ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... soulless and immortal died, As if they filled the self-same part; The flower, the girl, the oak, the man, Made the same dust from pith or heart, Then spoke I, calmly as one can Who with his purpose curbs his fear, And thus to both my question ran:— "What two are ye who cross me here, Upon these desolated lands, Whose open fields lie waste and drear Beneath the tramplings of the bands Which two great armies send abroad, With swords and torches in their hands?" To which the bright one, as a god Who slowly speaks the words of fate, Towards ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... my brother's eyes; a sense of mortal agony crept over my frame. Before, I had only imagined the wretchedness of my desolated home; the reality came on me as a new, and a not less terrible, disaster. I tried to calm Ernest; I enquired more minutely concerning my father, and ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... chosen a different path; with no motives of interest to allure, or of ambition to betray him, instead of making himself respected as the powerful chief of a united republic,—that of science,—he has grasped at despotic power, and stands the feeble occupant of its desolated kingdom, trembling at the force of opinions he might have directed, and refused even the patronage of their names by those whose energies he might ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... free people may commit, even to the putting of the powers of legislation in the hands of the little competent and less honest, despair not of the final result. The terrible teacher, EXPERIENCE, writing his lessons on hearts desolated with calamity and wrung by agony, will make them wiser in time. Pretence and grimace and sordid beggary for votes will some day cease to avail. Have FAITH, and struggle on, against all evil influences and discouragements! ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... whose mangled forms Emily almost expected to see; and she again entreated her companions to proceed, who were, however, too intent in their examination, to regard her, and she turned her eyes from this desolated scene to the castle above, where she observed lights gliding along the ramparts. Presently, the castle clock struck twelve, and then a trumpet sounded, of which ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... their fellow-citizens; when their ammunition was spent, they discharged ingots of gold and silver from their engines; but the Moguls introduced a mine to the centre of the capital; and the conflagration of the palace burnt above thirty days. China was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction; and the five northern provinces were added ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... between the right hand and the left, took active measure to promote the migration of Protestant refugees from all parts of Germany to the English colonies in America. In the year 1709 a great company of these unhappy exiles, commonly called "poor Palatines" from the desolated region whence many of them had been driven out, were dropped, helpless and friendless, in the wilderness of Schoharie County, and found themselves there practically in a state of slavery through their ignorance of the country and its ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... thy sad and silent home; Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth; Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come, And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth. The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head, The blooms of dewy Spring shall gleam beneath thy feet: But thy soul or this world must fade in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... This war, which desolated Kaarta soon after I had left that kingdom, and spread terror into many of the neighbouring states, arose in the following manner. A few bullocks belonging to a frontier village of Bambarra having been stolen by a party of Moors, were sold to the Dooty or chief man of ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... row of houses, stood by itself, a heap or line of ruins; but in Talcahuano, owing to the great wave, little more than one layer of bricks, tiles, and timber with here and there part of a wall left standing, could be distinguished. From this circumstance Concepcion, although not so completely desolated, was a more terrible, and if I may so call it, picturesque sight. The first shock was very sudden. The mayor-domo at Quiriquina told me, that the first notice he received of it, was finding both the horse he rode and himself, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... literary men at Koenigsberg, afflicted with the evils which desolated their country, ascribed it to the general corruption of manners. According to these philosophers, it had stifled true patriotism in the citizens, discipline in the army, and courage in the people. Good men therefore were bound to unite to regenerate the nation, by setting the example of every ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... that the king their brother was dead) armed themselves to attack the Christians and avenge themselves. The Christians went against them with some horsemen. Horses are the most deadly arm possible among the Indians. They worked such havoc and slaughter, that they desolated, and depopulated half the kingdom. 11. The fourth kingdom is that which is called Xaragua. This was as the marrow, or the Court of all this island. It surpassed all the other kingdoms in the politeness of its more ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... tomb were utterly desolated, but his mummy had been taken away from his own tomb, before it was desolated, ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... maid-servant or queen; and if, from queens to maid-servants, girls were taught thus to think of love, there might be a few more "broken" hearts perhaps, but there would certainly be fewer wicked hearts; far fewer corrupted lives of men, and degraded lives of women; far fewer unholy marriages, and desolated, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... different from their natures and spheres have been the nature and sphere of the woman who sits in the prisoner's dock to-day, mourning with the heart of Alcestis her children and her lot; by whose desolated hearthstone a solitary daughter wastes her uncomforted life away in tears and prayers and vigils for the dawn of hope; and this wretchedness and unpitied despair have closed like a shadow around one of earth's common pictures of domestic peace and social comfort, destroyed ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... earlier, but for the peremptory orders of Canning, at that time president of the board of control, who positively forbade him to embark on a new war. These orders were greatly relaxed after the bloodthirsty raid of Chitu, the famous Pindari leader, who in 1816 desolated vast tracts of Central India. Still no effective action against the Pindaris was possible until the Maratha lords who harboured and encouraged them had been crippled and overawed. With their connivance, a second ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... works of peace. The military instincts of the Swedish kings not only sacrificed thousands of lives that were urgently needed in building up their country and cost the kingdom enormous sums of money but likewise impaired commerce, surrounded the empire with a broad belt of desolated territory, and implanted an ineradicable hatred in every adjacent state. Then, too, the extravagance and negligence of the sovereigns led to chaos in domestic government. Taxes were heavy and badly apportioned. The nobles recovered many of their political privileges. The royal ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... moment the snowfall might recommence. The fact remained, however, that it was the beginning of the end. Probably in a few more weeks, perhaps days, it would be safe to start their journey. Bill was desolated by ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... increase; and when the spoiler came all the valley was dotted over with pretty villages and magnificent cotton plantations, containing and sustaining a prosperous, rich, intelligent, and happy population. They are swept away, and ruin reigns over this desolated land. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... endeavored to take advantage of the weakness incident to the rule of a minor, and attacked and ravaged the empire at their pleasure. The Arabs were especially aggressive, and made continual raids into Babylonia, Khuzistan, and the adjoining regions, which desolated these provinces and carried the horrors of war into the very heart of the empire. The tribes of Beni-Ayar and Abdul-Kais, which dwelt on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf, took the lead in these incursions, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... the hard siege with various fate sustains. Cornwallis, towering at the British van, In these fierce toils his wild career began; He mounts the forky streams, and soon bestrides The narrow neck that parts converging tides, Sinks the deep trench, erects the mantling tower, Lines with strong forts the desolated shore, Hems on all sides the long unsuccour'd place, With mines and parallels contracts the space; Then bids the battering floats his labors crown, And pour their bombard on the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... near the centre of the north aisle, almost opposite to the beautiful chantry tomb of William of Wykeham. A large slab of black marble in the pavement marks the place. Her own family only attended the funeral. Her sister returned to her desolated home, there to devote herself, for ten years, to the care of her aged mother; and to live much on the memory of her lost sister, till called many years later to rejoin her. Her brothers went back sorrowing to their several ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... now, nearly ten years old. He would go home and see him just once, even although he dreaded meeting aversion in the child's eyes. Then, when he had bade him good-bye, and, with him, good-bye to all that remained to make for good in his desolated existence, he would go ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fire of 1666 desolated two-thirds of London, destroying thirteen thousand two hundred houses and eighty-nine churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral. Down to this time the architecture of London had been mostly of the timber, brick, and plaster type ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... explained with many flourishes that he was desolated to come for the first time to this so distinguished a Gymnasium upon an errand so distasteful, but that a lady had laid her commands on him ("Dis the body mean Lucky Jamieson?" whispered Speug to a neighbour), and he had ever been a slave of the sex (Bulldog ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... The annoyance of this when, after ten hours in the saddle, you come to fill your tobacco-bag and find the precious treasure hopelessly wet, your writing-paper in your brushes, the lovely photographs, a desolated family presented on your departure, brilliant with yellow mud—I pause: there are inconceivable capacities for misery to be had out of a complete daily wetting of camp-traps. I don't think the captain ever quite got over this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... hands, and that on your determination will depend the happiness or misery of many thousand men. If I mistake as to the means I think best adapted to terminate the calamities which for along time have desolated Europe, I shall at least have the consolation of reflecting that I have done all that depended on me. With the consequences which may result I can never ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... communicate with the fleet under Admiral Dahlgren (whom I find a most agreeable gentleman, accommodating himself to our wishes and plans). Then I would favor an attack on Wilmington, in the belief that Porter and Butler will fail in their present undertaking. Charleston is now a mere desolated wreck, and is hardly worth the time it would take to starve it out. Still, I am aware that, historically and politically, much importance is attached to the place, and it may be that, apart from its military importance, both you and the Administration may prefer ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... was desolated were he left in the same room with a cat ... but he was not in the least afraid of being alone in the same room with Anne of Austria, whose claws were of a far ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... afflicted son to her brother's prison, that they came to arrest her first-born. An appalling situation for any mother. To make matters worse, poor Theodore died. He was eighteen years old, charming and handsome. I was desolated to hear of his death, for I was very fond of him. These dreadful misfortunes which, one after another, assailed my mother, impelled those who were my father's true friends to exert themselves on her behalf. A leading figure among them ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... unparalleled influx of mankind into the manufacturing districts during the last forty years, which can bear a comparison to nothing but the collection of the host with which Napoleon invaded Russia, or Timour and Genghis Khan desolated Asia—that we are gravely told that it is to be arrested by education and moral training; by infant schools and shortened hours of labour; by multiplication of ministers and solitary imprisonment! All these are very good things; each in its way is calculated to do a certain amount ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... boyish faith come to mind. Pierre lives over again in swift review years of a misspent past. With comprehensive view of its wasted, perverted chances, the broad compass of desolating and desolated perspective ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... this country has been desolated by a hail. I considered the newspaper accounts of hailstones of ten pounds weight as exaggerations. But in a conversation with the Duke de la Rochefoucault the other day, he assured me, that though he could not say he had seen such himself, yet he considered the fact as perfectly established. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... they passed was desolated and wasted, and the army would have fared badly had it not been for the herds of captured cattle they drove along with them, and the wagons laden with flour and wine taken at New Brandenburg and the other towns they had stormed. The marches were long, for Tilly was anxious to accomplish ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... "I do not know you, nor why you should interest yourself in the concerns of a desolated woman. But, Heaven knows, I am in no case to stand pondering the aid you offer, nor, indeed, do I doubt the good faith that moves you. Let me hear, sir, how you ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... investiture with absolute power of whoever, among the competitors for it, should come triumphantly out of what was sure to be a protracted and a sanguinary struggle. In what state did Horace find Italy after his return from Philippi? Drenched in the blood of its citizens, desolated by pillage, harassed by daily fears of internecine conflict at home and of invasion from abroad, its sovereignty a stake played for by political gamblers. In such a state of things it was no longer the question, how the old Roman ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... Van Lew's life was now in danger. There was urgent need of special protection for her. Feeling against the northern victors was at fever height in poor, desolated, defeated Richmond, and it is small wonder that one born in their city, who yet stood openly and fearlessly against all that the Southerners held sacred, should have been despised, and worse than that. Realizing her danger, and knowing the priceless service ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of the sixteenth century Ferdinand erected to himself the superb monument with the four captive corsairs at the corners, whose noses I had failed to get in range, and in the meanwhile many great public works had been constructed and the city desolated by another plague. It was now time for the English to appear in those waters, and in 1652 they were defeated by the Dutch off Leghorn. About seventy-five years later the grippe paid Leghorn a first visit, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... inhabitants before them, destroying their crops, seizing on all the people they could lay hands on, and selling them as slaves. The contrast to what Livingstone had seen on his last journey was lamentable. All their prospects were overcast. How could commerce or Christianity flourish in countries desolated by war? ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... seemed the very Beauty of the World, as in her black robes she sat in her garden at her tapestry frame, or listened with veiled eyes to the singing of his minstrels. And in his heart was a battle greater than any he had ever waged in desolated lands, for his nobler self told him he had no right to wed her. But his wild love drove like a tempest across ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... in their desolated city, the people of Poland knew that theirs was a country no longer on the map. Russia, Austria and Prussia at least had met. There was no longer any Poland. For generations there had been no Polish ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... year spread itself, and burned with such violence that the citizens, in despair, gave over their endeavours to extinguish it, so in the plague it came at last to such violence that the people sat still looking at one another, and seemed quite abandoned to despair; whole streets seemed to be desolated, and not to be shut up only, but to be emptied of their inhabitants; doors were left open, windows stood shattering with the wind in empty houses for want of people to shut them. In a word, people began to give up themselves to their fears and to think that all regulations and methods ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... to build up the waste places desolated by war and by long years of misgovernment. We shall not wait for the end of strife to begin the beneficent work. We shall continue, as we have begun, to open the schools and the churches, to set the courts in operation, to foster industry ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... supposed the common bond which connected them; for there were rumors amongst the sisterhood of St. Agnes that this lady had suffered afflictions heavier than fell to an ordinary lot in the course of the war which now desolated Germany. Her husband (it was said), of whom no more was known than that he was some officer of high rank, had perished by the hand of violence; a young daughter, the only child of two or three who ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... mutual love); and, as the day broke, Ghanim rose and donned his clothes and going to the bazar, as was his wont, took what the occasion required and returned home. He found her weeping; but when she saw him she checked herself and, smiling through her tears, said, "Thou hast desolated me, O beloved of my heart. By Allah, this hour of absence hath been to me like a year![FN114] I have explained to thee my condition in the excess of my eager love for thee; so come now near me, and forget the past and have thy will of me." But he interrupted her crying, "I seek refuge ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Bengal even in time of profound peace, and before the whole weight of the public charge fell upon that unhappy country for the support of other parts of India, which have been desolated in such a manner as to contribute little or nothing to their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... trumpet-call. "Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner - by carrying off themselves," he wrote. "Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbachis, shall, I hope, clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned." ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... Bretagne, that miserable country became a scene of horrors and crimes—oppression and perfidy on the one hand, unavailing struggles on the other. Ten years of civil discord ensued, during which the greatest part of Bretagne was desolated, and nearly a third of the population carried off by famine and pestilence. In the end, Conan was secured in the possession of his throne by the assistance of the English king, who, equally subtle and ambitious, contrived in the course of this warfare to strip Conan of most of his provinces ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... her hand she clutched at her riding-habit of green velvet, as if preparing to depart, "you are not yourself. I am beyond measure desolated that you should have so spoken to me. We have been good friends, M. La Boulaye. Let us forget this scene. Shall we?" Her tones grew ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... assembled guests to drink to the health of the knights of St. John, who had saved the commerce and seacoast of Italy from the greatest danger that had menaced them since the days when the Northern rovers had desolated the shores of the Mediterranean. The toast was drunk with enthusiasm, and Gervaise then replied with a few words of thanks for the honour done to himself and ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... fellow was so sincerely desolated over the loss of his necessary finger that I couldn't accuse him of shooting himself intentionally. I detailed a man named Bealer to take Issy back to a dressing station. Well, ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... poor. "What may the Persians say unto your kings, When they shall see that volume, in the which All their dispraise is written, spread to view? There amidst Albert's works shall that be read, Which will give speedy motion to the pen, When Prague shall mourn her desolated realm. There shall be read the woe, that he doth work With his adulterate money on the Seine, Who by the tusk will perish: there be read The thirsting pride, that maketh fool alike The English and Scot, impatient of their bound. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... of the novel is this. The heroine, who is young, but not in her first girlhood, has in her aspect and her natural disposition everything that is akin to the mystical aspirations of the saint; but, more or less desolated by the diffused skepticism of the day, she has been robbed of innocence by a man, an old family friend, and has never been at peace with herself or wholly escaped from his sinister power since. The ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock |
