"Devastate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is good for them to reflect on their sins at all times and under any circumstance. Nowadays you would have your well-water analysed and ask what the Sanitary Inspector had been about. Or, again, if a fire were to devastate our little town, we should not smite our breasts in the manner of those same forefathers, and attribute it to what there is amongst us of sloth and self-indulgence, to God's wrath upon our drinking ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... natural than that he should most ardently long to talk with the older schoolboys about the wonders of the real world, where people ride in coaches, devastate cities, marry princesses, and stay up in the evening till after 10 o'clock—even if it isn't a birthday. And then at the table one helps one's self, and may select just whatever one wants to ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... find civilised nations do not put their prisoners to death, do not devastate towns and countries, this is because their intelligence exercises greater influence on their mode of carrying on War, and has taught them more effectual means of applying force than these rude acts of mere instinct. The invention of gunpowder, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... cousin of my wife's who is a doctor in a field hospital says...." "I know a man who was talking with a wounded Tommy, and he...." "An undergraduate friend of my boy's who is just back from France...." Once stories begun in this way would empty a room; but not so now. Now they no longer devastate but fascinate. It does not matter what the stories are about, the fact remains that an opening gambit which three months ago would stamp a man as a triple bore now holds everyone breathless. In short, relations at last have come to their own. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... common toil and ordinary pleasure—turns the aspiring mind! Still as we gaze on that lofty and immemorial rock we recall the famine and the siege; and own that the more daring crimes of men have a strange privilege in hallowing the very spot which they devastate. ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... devastate his country, Private Canary Bird Pee-wee," she said. "Now you see what the Girl Scouts of America can do. Maybe sometime you'll want to know how to break through hostile territory and then you'll ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... into crannies, pounding here and there to make the grubs stir in their hiding places, jabbing and prying with their beaks, and chiseling out all kinds of larvae, grubs, and borers that would, if permitted to live and multiply, soon devastate the timber and fruit trees and make this world a desert indeed. True, the other feathered clamberers and carpenters are fully as useful, but depend upon it, the nuthatches do their share in ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... against an enemy, and, removing the danger from oneself, to bring another into peril? Can there be a stronger instance than Hannibal himself, or one more to the point? It makes a great difference whether you devastate the territories of another, or see your own destroyed by fire and sword. He who brings danger upon another has more spirit than he who repels it. Add to this, that the terror excited by unknown circumstances is increased on that account. When you have entered the territory of an enemy, you may have ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... their way to the old capital of Russia, Moscow. The Russian roads from Vilna to Vitebsk are full of endless lines of troops, squadrons of cavalry in close formation, and enormous baggage trains. The Russians know that their freedom is in danger; they burn their own towns and villages, devastate their own provinces, and retire little by little, as they did a hundred years earlier when Charles XII. invaded Russia. At length there is a battle at Moscow, and the French army enters the town. We see in imagination the September nights lighted up far and wide ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... rob, pillage, ravage, depredate, despoil devastate, sack; corrupt, vitiate, debase, mar, demoralize, deprave, sophisticate, infect, defile, contaminate; disfigure, deface, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... orders to Sheridan were twofold: he was to move south by the valley, no matter where Early might be, or what he might be doing, in full confidence that Early would surely be found in his front; and he was to devastate the valley so far as to destroy its future usefulness as a granary and a storehouse of the Confederate army ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... disposed to try and shoot one or other of the nocturnal birds that flitted silently by, or one of the great fruit bats that, longer in their spread of wings than rooks, flew in flocks on their way to devastate some orchard ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... about capture of KAISER'S cloak. SARK suggests that this interesting robe should be put up for sale to highest bidder (as if it were the First L1 note), proceeds to be contributed to Fund for Relief of Belgians. This would give opportunity for remarking that having taken off his coat to devastate the homes of the Belgians, WILHELM gave them ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... days of yore were pleasant. Sweet to climb for alien pears Till the irritated peasant Came and took us unawares; Sweet to devastate his chickens, As the ambush'd catapult Scattered, and the very dickens Was ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he arrived. In the meantime, Dacre, in charge of the English border, had been fomenting quarrels [Footnote: Lang, Hist. of Scotland, i., 395. L. & P., ii., 779, 795.] and suborning outlaws to raid and devastate in the border counties, and plotting unsuccessfully to have James carried off into England to the tender care of his uncle. Albany, for his part, demanded the custody of the child, which was refused by Margaret; who however was forced to surrender with a show of friendliness. But she ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... his garden-tree, or by the hearth of his home. But the tyrant who kept Europe in awe is now a pitiable object for scorn to point the finger of derision at: and humanity shudders as it remembers the scourge with which this man's ambition was permitted to devastate every home tie, and ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... our destitution of gun-boats, and well apprised of the paucity of our garrisons, are sending expeditions southward to devastate the coast. They say New Orleans will be taken before spring, and communication be opened with Cairo, at the mouth of the Ohio. They will not succeed so soon; but success is certain ultimately, if Mr. Benjamin, Gen. Winder, and Gen. Huger do not cease to pass Federal ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... to Serbia in the summer of 1914, asking nothing less than what Shylock asked from Antonio—his life. To punish Serbia, Germany made an alliance with the Bulgars, and sent her troops and her iron—the best product of their culture—to destroy the Serbian state, to devastate the Serbian country, and to take more than a million of human lives for the life of the Austrian Crown Prince. And this has been done with an unprecedented perfection. And this destructive deed has been praised with eloquent words in all ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... being still in Siena, and Cesare's patience exhausted, he issued an ultimatum from his camp at Sartiano in which he declared that if, within twenty-four hours, Petrucci had not been expelled from the city, he would loose his soldiers upon Siena to devastate the territory, and would treat every inhabitant "as ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... a fear of profanation of the dead, perhaps of their being eaten by a victorious enemy. To devastate the cemeteries and temples of the foe was an aim of every invading tribe. It was considered that mutilating a corpse injured the soul ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Europe a fair fight, the duty of every American would be to keep on the side-lines and preserve an open mind. But it is not a fair fight. To devastate a country you have sworn to protect, to drop bombs upon unfortified cities, to lay sunken mines, to levy blackmail by threatening hostages with death, to destroy cathedrals is not to ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... would care if in the explosion a common foe of all was eliminated? But let the Arab Union, or possibly the Soviet Complex, or even others, learn definitely where El Hassan is and a bomb could well devastate twenty square miles seeking him out." Crawford shook his head. "No, we've simply got to keep on ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... to get the brains behind them, if we have to send every warship we own into the z'Srauff star-cluster and devastate every planet in it. We don't let dogs snap at us. And when they do, we don't kick ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... type, and it is he that the ego-friskish imitate. Such a critic in the jovial person of Mr. Chesterton, or Professor Phelps, or Heywood Broun, contributes much to the vividness of our sense for books. But their imitators, although they sometimes enliven, more often devastate reviewing. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... form building material for countless generations of birds. The fat cornfields were often littered with a varied wreckage which the farmers must soon heap together and burn, to be rid of it, and everywhere were proofs of the river's power to devastate as well as enrich its shores. The dwellers there had no power against it, in its moments of insensate rage, and the land no protection from its encroachments except in the simple device of the willow hedges, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to the call of De Capitaneis. He forms them into two bodies. One proceeds to devastate Dauphine and the district near from the west, while the other division, attacking from Piedmont, is to ravage the east; and as the two bodies approach each other they aim to enclose their victims, and so to prevent their escape. These victims were ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... can there be an opposition without some subject for grumbling,—some matter on which a minister may be attacked? No one really thought that the Prussians and French combined would invade our shores and devastate our fields, and plunder London, and carry our daughters away into captivity. The state of the funds showed very plainly that there was no such fear. But a good cry is a very good thing,—and it is ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... feelings, often very inhuman and cruel. This is the history of thousands-of Jeromes, Lauds, Puritans who scourged Quakers, Quakers who cursed Puritans; nonjurors, who though they would die rather than offend their own conscience in owning William, would plot with James to murder William, or to devastate England with Irish Rapparees and Auvergne dragoons. This, in fact, is the spiritual diagnosis of those many pious persecutors, who though neither hypocrites or blackguards themselves, have used both as instruments of ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... this state of things could not last forever, Acquet, despite Bonnoeil's oft-repeated protests, continued to devastate Donnay, so as to get all he could out of it, cutting down the forests, chopping the elms into faggots, and felling the ancient beeches. The very castle whose facade but lately reached to the end of the stately ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... about my intention. I should like to return to the city seated by your side; and as the good inhabitants of Innspruck are very anxious to see a French general, one of Bonaparte's generals, who does not come with his troops to devastate the city, to rob and plunder, I request you to let us make our entrance in an ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... either side, because the enemy, having the advantage in numbers, attempted to weaken the Roman strength by dividing it into many parts, as not being likely to suffice for all points of attack. At the same time the camp was besieged, at the same time a part of the army was sent to devastate the Roman territory, and to attempt the city itself, if fortune should favour. Lucius Valerius was left to guard the city: the consul Postumius was sent to repel the attacks on the frontiers. There was no abatement in any part either in vigilance ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... of the mandioca root. Bowls of this are placed on the ground in the sheds where the women prepare farinha; it is generally done carelessly, but sometimes intentionally through spite when stray oxen devastate the plantations of the poorer people. The juice, is almost certain to be drunk if cattle stray near the place, and death is the certain result. The owners kill a beast which shows symptoms of having been poisoned, and retail the beef in the town. Although every one knows it cannot ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... orders from General Leslie, who commanded the royal forces, to march down toward the border, accompanied by two regiments of horse. He was to devastate the country and to fall back gradually before Cromwell's advance, the cavalry harassing him closely, but avoiding any serious conflict with the Roundhead horse. The whole party were under the command ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... trade were based on a purely economic motive—the desire for profit. In order to satisfy that desire, the American people helped to depopulate villages,—to devastate, burn, murder and enslave; to wipe out a civilization, and to bring the unwilling objects of their gain-lust thousands of miles across an impassable barrier ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... by, and indeed still is subject to, terrible earthquakes. These dire calamities seem to recur at regular intervals. The Japanese islands appear to be in the centre of great volcanic disturbances—a fact which probably accounts for those seismic outbreaks which periodically devastate considerable tracts of the country and cause tremendous havoc to life and property. The written records, extending back some 1,400 or 1,500 years, clearly prove that earthquakes even more terrible in their effects than any that have taken place in recent times were of frequent ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... charitable and devout and virtuous testament or will, Mistress Merrylack," said Mr. Bossolton; "and in a time when anarchy with gigantic strides does devastate and devour and harm the good old customs of our ancestors and forefathers, and tramples with its poisonous breath the Magna Charta and the glorious revolution, it is beautiful, ay, and sweet, mark you, Mrs. Merrylack, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... size-change principle of the space-globe? And Groff had gotten the secret. An abnormality here—Groff with the power of evil latent within him, tempted by this opportunity. What could he have hoped to accomplish? Of what use to him would it be to devastate this little realm? Bitter irony swept Lee. Of what use was vast personal power to anyone? Those madmen of Earth's history, with their lust for conquest—of what use could the conquest be to them? And yet they ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... Not common stones but precious gems to show; And tears (the holy water from sad eyes) Back to God's sea, from which all rivers rise Let me convey, not blood from wounded hearts, Nor poison which the upas tree imparts. When over flowery vales I leap with joy, Let me not devastate them, nor destroy, But rather leave them fairer to the sight; Mine be the lot to comfort and delight. And if down awful chasms I needs must leap Let me not murmur at my lot, but sweep On bravely to the end without one fear, Knowing that He who planned my ways stands near. Love sent me forth, to ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... things which sadden me deeply. The chaplain reads the papers aloud to us, and I see that the republic loses daily in power and dignity; the neighboring powers invade it under divers pretexts; their troops pillage and devastate the country, while the Government refuses to interfere.... I dare not think of the future, but my father says we must enjoy the present. All speak in subdued tones of the woes which threaten Poland, and then dance and drink; the joyous festivals and banquets would deceive one ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Becker, "their weakness is of more service to them than the strength of the noblest trees, and they are spread and multiplied by the same tempests that devastate the forests. Added to this, the species to which this class of plants belong—the grasses—are remarkably varied in their characteristics, and better suited than ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... rancour, but equally without pity. Beatrice was contemptuous. What right, said her countenance, had a servant-girl to covet jewellery? And how pitiable the spirit that prompted to a filching of half-crowns! For the criminals of finance, who devastate a thousand homes, Miss French had no small admiration; crimes such as the present were ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... Nature. We might well ask why the myriads of bacteria do not devastate the earth with their marvelous rapidity of propagation. So indeed they might, were it not for the winds, rains, melting snow and ice which scatter them far ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... day or in what night. All will be manifest to them—they will know and understand whether a calamity will come, a famine or wild beasts, floods or drought; whether there will be abundance of grain or dearth; whether the wicked will rule the world; whether locusts will devastate the land; whether the fruits will drop from the trees unripe; whether boils will afflict men; whether wars will prevail, or diseases or plagues among men and cattle; whether good is resolved upon in heaven, or evil; whether blood will ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... contain powers sufficient to self-destruction. But I will not enlarge here. Let the necessary cause be exerted which will give vent to this hidden power and actions the most astonishing and destructive would be the effect. These are often witnessed in the tremendous earthquakes which devastate whole cities, states, and empires; in the tornados which pass, like the genius of evil, over the land, levelling whatever is found in its course; or in the waterspouts and maelstroms which prove the grave of all that comes ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... bounds; what to him was the value of the capture of Aisa, of the Turkish alcaid, of the ten thousand of the baser sort; nay, what to him was the value of "Africa" itself when once again like a mocking spirit Dragut had glided beyond the sea horizon to devastate, to plunder, and to slay once more, the scourge ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... understood, medical science seems obliged to accept many anomalies which it can not explain. About all that can be said of such exceptional cases is this: In the great conflagrations which at times devastate large cities, some huge mass of solid masonry is occasionally seen in the midst of the wide-spread ruin, looking down upon prostrate columns, broken capitals, shattered walls, and the cinders and ashes of a general desolation. The solitary tower unquestionably stands; but its chief utility lies ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... his property. When these things were finished, he asserts in the council that he, invited by the Senones and the Carnutes, and several other states of Gaul, was about to march thither through the territories of the Remi, devastate their lands, and attack the camp of Labienus: before he does that, he informs them of what he desires ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... West had been separated, though sometimes coalescing under one head, but in 476, the last titular Emperor of the West had been deposed. Italy had been the prey of successive swarms of Teutonic nations. Vandals and Ostro-or Eastern Goths had burst upon Rome, and while the Vandals proceeded to devastate the great Roman province of Northern Africa and set up a kingdom there, the Goths had established another in Italy. Constantinople still held its ground as the magnificent capital of the Eastern Empire, maintaining the old civilization, but her dominions were threatened ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... Oedipus. The man— Eteocles I mean—who died for Thebes Fighting with eminent prowess on her side, Shall be entombed with every sacred rite That follows to the grave the lordliest dead. But for his brother, who, a banished man, Returned to devastate and burn with fire The land of his nativity, the shrines Of his ancestral gods, to feed him fat With Theban carnage, and make captive all That should escape the sword—for Polynices, This law hath been proclaimed concerning him: ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... of infanticide, such a state of things is far from incredible when we remember the extremely insanitary state of China, the superstitions that flourish unchecked, and the famines, floods, and pestilences that devastate the country. It would appear probable that when vital statistics are introduced into China they will reveal a condition of things very similar to that we find in Russia, but in a more marked degree. No doubt it is a state of things which will be remedied. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... of wind that shook his window-sashes, as if it said, "We will get in and spoil your pleasure, whether you like it or not"; and there was a shower of bullets, as from a Maxim, that threatened to smash in and devastate all the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... deride you, such are the folk that ignore the gods whom Miramon fashioned, such are the folk whom to-day I permit you freely to deal with after the manner of gods. Do you now make the most of your chance, and devastate all Poictesme in time ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... same Blacklock went bad about two summers after our meet-up with the blizzard. He worked down Yuma way and over into New Mexico, where he picks up with a sure-thing gambler, and the two begin to devastate the population. They do say when he and his running mate got good and through with that part of the Land of the Brave, men used to go round trading guns for commissary, and clothes for ponies, and cigars for whisky and such. There just wasn't any money left ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... attempt is made to secure such a distribution, it seems impossible but that extreme seasonal want, from seasonal idleness, will be combined with exhausting seasonal work from overtime or exhausting seasonal work in speeding, in a manner apparently arranged by fortune to devastate human energy in the least ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... with an extraordinary, uncouth, primeval impetuosity. The door flew open with a clatter, and the wild figure it disclosed seemed anxious to devastate the room in leaps and bounds; but Ricardo raised his open palm, and the creature came in quietly. His enormous half-closed paws swung to and fro a little in front of his bowed trunk as he walked. Ricardo ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... beneath the hanging lamp, trying to collect her thoughts, trying to realise, but totally unable to do so, that ruin had come upon her home, her children, herself. Ruin which she had seen visit the homes of other people, devastate them; but whose shadow she had never imagined falling on the fortunes of ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... deal with desires and passions that are absolutely not unnatural or bad, but very common at your age. But do not seek relief from them with unworthy, licentious persons. Of the great danger I have already warned you, have I not? Do not forget that in a few moments you can, through defilement, devastate your entire life." ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... said the visitor. "Not so very much to see after all. Little streaks and shreds of pink. And yet those little particles, those mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city! Wonderful!" ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... partridges were there in sufficient number to afford a good day's sport under other circumstances, while a profusion of various kinds of flowers afforded satisfaction to the eye, in strong contrast to the bare and barkless trunks of trees riven by the frequent storms that devastate these hills. In one place a most gruesome sight was met with. Under a small tree beside a tiny stream stood a three-legged cooking-pot, and round it lay three skeletons, with a scattering of shrapnel bullets to silently tell the story of the tragedy. Beside ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... And that is all. Under such conditions, signs can be seen only by a sharp and practised eye. I am alluding now to troubles which are subtle often to the extent of not being understood by the very hearts they devastate or uplift. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... advanced years. His enemies, who were not few, said that the shrewdest action of his surpassingly shrewd life had been his voluntary retirement from the Senate and from political activities at the first low murmur heralding the muck-raking cyclone which was to devastate public life as men of his type understood it. But every inhabitant of the State, including his enemies, took an odd pride in his fiercely debonair defiance to old age, in his grandiloquent, too fluent public addresses, and ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... everything! What in Zen would you have to gamble, captain? The whole Haer family fortunes are tied up. Hovercraft is out for blood. They won't be satisfied with a token victory and a negotiated compromise. They'll devastate us. Thousands of mercenaries killed, with all that means in indemnities; millions upon million in expensive military equipment, most of which we've had to hire and will have to recompensate for. Can ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... "restorations"; this is the Greek, Roman, and barbarian work of professors according to Vitruvius and Vignole. This magnificent art produced by the Vandals has been slain by the academies. The centuries, the revolutions, which at least devastate with impartiality and grandeur, have been joined by a cloud of school architects, licensed, sworn, and bound by oath; defacing with the discernment and choice of bad taste, substituting the chicorees of Louis XV. for the Gothic lace, for the greater glory of the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... moreover, and do great damage, seemingly wantonly, to any crops or garden patches that they may find in their neighborhood. Usually the natives are too terrified to offer any resistance and placidly allow the animal to devastate to the bent of his will. The cliff dwellers, however, had suffered so much from the depredations of this particular animal that they were determined to drive him out of their neighborhood, and that was the real ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... famine must decide her fall. He now sailed forth to take possession of the Athenian towns, which fell one after another into his power as soon as he appeared before them. About November he arrived at AEgina, with an overwhelming fleet of 150 triremes, and proceeded to devastate Salamis and blockade Piraeus. At the same time the whole Peloponnesian army was marched into Attica and encamped in the precincts of the Academus, at the very gates of Athens. Famine soon began to be felt within the walls, and at the end of three months it became ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... different way and teach us manners by imposing one taxation after another, or billeting a troop of soldiers upon us, who in one hour empty our coffers and purses, and do not quit as long as we have a farthing left, and in addition, by way of thanks, burn and devastate house and home, and outrage and kill wife ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... country, your Nueva York," he said. "Truly the cars in the streets devastate one, and the engine that cooks the nuts terribly makes a squeak in the ear. But, ah, Senor Kelley—the senoras with hair of much goldness, and admirable fatness—they are magnificas! ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... The present appearance of these ruins is thus, to a great extent, to be explained. Travellers in the country agree in describing them as irregular mounds, deeply seamed by the rains; and the sides against which the storms and waterspouts that devastate Mesopotamia would chiefly spend their force are those on which the damage is most ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... visited by savage strangers from the north, whom they treated hospitably. Soon these visits became more frequent and annoying. Then their troublesome neighbors, ancestors of the present Utes, began to forage upon them, and at last to massacre them and devastate their farms. So, to save their lives at least, they built houses high up on the cliffs, where they could store food and hide away until ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... left the castle and village before sunset, leaving the gates open and the drawbridge down, as they expressly said that the English might be under no temptation to devastate a place which must soon be in their ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... minister, to his credit, advised the Presbytery of Edinburgh that it was better to cleanse than to fast, and cleanse they must swiftly or else, in spite of all prayers and fastings of a united but inactive nation, the cholera would devastate them. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... neglect of the marvels of mother earth.[346] The greatest of miracles is close at hand, Etna, the home of eternal fire. Deep in the heart of earth dwell two irresistible forces, wind and fire.[347] It is their conflict that causes the outbursts of flame and molten rock that devastate the slopes of Etna. It is no smithy of the gods, no Titan's prison. The causes are natural, water and wind and fire. He has seen Etna; he describes the crater,[348] the volcanic rock that can imprison fire,[349] the clouds that ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... and having learned, we must choose. We must injure Ourselves. God will not injure us. We invite our own miseries. God does not send them. The evils and sorrows that afflict mankind are of mankind's own making. Even in natural catastrophes, which ruin cities and devastate countries, it is well to remember that Nature, which is the MATERIAL EXPRESSION of the mind of God, will not tolerate too long a burden of human iniquity. Nature destroys what is putrescent; she covers it up with fresh earth on ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... example of the Huns, and proclaimed, "It is to the empire of the world that the German genius aspires" (Kaiser Wilhelm, Speech at Aix-la-Chapelle, June 20, 1902)—a nation thus armed, instructed, disciplined, and demoralized had broken loose. Another Attila had come, with a new horde behind him to devastate and change the face of the world. In the tumult and darkness which enfolded Europe, the Werwolf was at large. We could hear his ululations in the forest. The cries of his victims grew louder, piercing our hearts with ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... were admitted as soldiers, ay, and as conquerors, at Plataea? From that moment we knew our strength. Listen to me. At Samos once a thousand slaves—mark me, but a thousand,—escaped the yoke—seized on arms, fled to the mountains (we have mountains even in Laconia), descended from time to time to devastate the fields and to harass their ancient lords. By habit they learned war, by desperation they grew indomitable. What became of these slaves? were they cut off? Did they perish by hunger, by the sword, in the dungeon or field? No; those brave men ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... and Gentlemen of the Continental Congress:—Why do we delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to an American republic. Let her arise, not to devastate and to conquer, but to reestablish the reign of peace and law. The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... either forgotten or not believed, so that when several Spanish galleys suddenly made their appearance in Mounts Bay, and landed about two hundred men near Mousehole, the inhabitants were taken by surprise. Before they could arm and defend themselves, the Spaniards effected a landing, began to devastate the country, and set fire to the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... own home, and was the first nun of the sisterhood she founded. Moreover when she was preaching at Aix a fearful dragon by the name of Tarasque inhabited the river Rhone, and came out each night to devastate the country until Sainte Marthe ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... each other, and do not keep me in ignorance of what concerns you. My heart is full to bursting and the remembrance of you eases it a little from its perpetual disquiet. I am afraid lest these barbarous guests devastate Croisset; for they continue in spite of peace to make themselves odious and disgusting everywhere. Ah! how I should like to have five billions in order to chase them away! I should not ask to get ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... slot machine. The acquired sweets were wrapped in a paper covering, on which different notices were printed, the majority were to this effect: "Remember the shameful Baralong outrage, in punishment for which our airships shall devastate the Eastern Counties of England and destroy London." We showed this to our guards, who firmly believed that it would shortly come to pass, and could not understand our amusement. A few minutes out from Cologne, as we went ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... had I a river, I would gladly let all honest anglers that use the fly cast line in it, but, where there is no protection, then nets, poison, dynamite, slaughter of fingerlings, and unholy baits devastate the fish, so that 'Free Fishing' spells no fishing at all. This presses most hardly on the artisan who fishes fair, a member of a large class with whose pastime only a churl would wish to interfere. We are now compelled, if we would catch fish, to seek Tarpon in Florida, Mahseer ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... out like a sneaking burglar from under a hearth-stone, or through an over-heated flue, they would "have at him" with the hand-pumps and quench him at once. When he came forth like a dashing party of skirmishers, to devastate a wood-yard, or light up a music-hall with unusual brilliancy, they sent an engine or two against him without delay, and put him down in an hour or two. When he attacked "in force," they despatched ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... herself. But never had Mr. Brumley noted quite so vividly Lady Beach-Mandarin's habitual self-surpassingness. She helped him, he felt, to understand better those stories of great waves that sweep in from the ocean and swamp islands and devastate whole littorals. She poured into the Harman nursery and filled every corner of it. She rose to unprecedented heights therein. It seemed to him at moments that they ought to make marks on the walls, like ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Grendel has frequented Heorot as a demon, he could not become ruler of the Danes, on account of his hostility to God. (2) Hrothgar was much grieved that Grendel had not appeared before his throne to receive presents. (3) He was not permitted to devastate the hall, on account of the Creator; i.e. God wished to make his visit fatal to him.—Ne ... wisse (169) W. renders: Nor had he any desire to do so; 'his' ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... birth-place, destroy all kinds of vegetation that comes in their way, and direct their course to the cultivated fields, which they desolate until the period when their wings appear. They then take flight in order to devastate more distant plantations. ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... landlordism to devastate Ireland unchecked. The capital that should have gone to enrich and develop the soil was squeezed out of it in rack-rents, largely absentee. The whole agricultural economy of the country was stricken with a sort of artificial anaemia. Then very late in the day you enact in shreds and ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... his family. The little "God's acre" is scarcely an acre, and it should be enclosed. Flat slaty stones, suitable for wall, lie around in abundance, brought down by the avalanche, which a year or two ago endangered the station, but happily did no more damage than destroy the powder-house and devastate the burial-ground. Kegs of powder and tombstones were carried far out on to the ice of the bay. Most of the latter were recovered unbroken and replaced, and among them the one of which we are in search. Here it is, a simple square slate tablet of touching interest. ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... project, scheme, plot. Playful, mischievous, roguish, prankish, sportive, arch. Plentiful, plenteous, abundant, bounteous, copious, profuse, exuberant, luxuriant. Plunder, rifle, loot, sack, pillage, devastate, despoil. Pretty, beautiful, comely, handsome, fair. Profitable, remunerative, lucrative, gainful. Prompt, punctual, ready, expeditious. Pull, draw, drag, haul, tug, tow. Push, shove, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... year for the Jack-rabbits. A foolish law had set a bounty on Hawks and Owls and had caused a general massacre of these feathered policemen. Consequently the Rabbits had multiplied in such numbers that they now were threatening to devastate the country. ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... unblinking as a marble in a museum! Do you wonder that I welcome the hurricane, in which no man dare think of any but his puny self? For the moment I am free, and as alive, as triumphant as that great wind outside—as eager to devastate, to fight, to conquer, to live—to live—to live. What do I care for civilization? If James Hamilton were out there among the flying trees and called to me, I would go. Hark! Listen! Is ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... sitting still while SCHINES AND Co. are spouting. You and I, my brothers and sisters, as I'm proud to call you, we don't spout, do we? We mean business! And PHILIP means business too! At any moment he may come down on us and devastate our quiet picturesque little demes which we all love so well and get disgustingly drunk on our wine. So give us the word, SCHINES AND Co.—not many words, please, but just one word—and we'll tackle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... fresh gladness in their song. A hammer can pound ice to powder, but every particle is still unconquered ice, and only the gentle kiss of the sun can subdue and melt it into sweet water. High explosives and poisonous gas can devastate the earth, but only the balmy breath of the springtime can clothe it in verdure and cause it to burst into ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... to be built with all possible speed. The news of this spread through the town, and when the reasons were asked and the reply was given that the boats were in anticipation of a mighty flood that would ere long devastate the entire region, everyone screamed with laughter; but Chung let ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... the family;—yes, the fame of the late lord, who lived as though he were a fiend let loose from hell to devastate mankind. The glory of the family! And how will he maintain it? At racecourses, in betting-clubs, among loose women, with luscious wines, never doing one stroke of work for man or God, consuming and never ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... made a descent in the Elbe and the Weser, pillaged Hamburg, penetrated far into Germany, and after gaining two battles, retreated with immense booty. The pirates, thus reinforced on all sides, long continued to devastate Germany, France, and England; some penetrated into Andalusia and Hetruria, where they destroyed the flourishing town of Luni; whilst others, descending the Dnieper, penetrated even ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... this time, too, a particular tang of romance was in the air. The Germans had threatened to devastate our Atlantic coast from Eastport to Key West with a flock of submersibles. There actually were a few submarines lurking about the pathways of our coastwise shipping; but, as usual, the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... assembly would have been justified by the exigency of the crisis. But while the Athenians remained inactive behind their walls, the cavalry was sent out on skirmishing expeditions, and a large fleet was sent to the Peloponnesus with orders to devastate the country in retaliation. The Spartans, after having spent thirty or forty days in Attica, retired for want of provisions. AEgina was also invaded, and the inhabitants were expelled and sent to the Peloponnesus. Megara was soon after invaded by an army under ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... population is flying into all the neighboring countries to escape from the incessant hail of shrapnel and howitzer shells from British cannon, French cannon, German cannon, and, most tragic of all, Belgian cannon; for the Belgian Army is being forced to devastate its own ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... coastal range recedes and is of much lower elevation, and to these facts perhaps is to be attributed our modified rainfall compared with the plethora of the immediate North; but we get our share, and when people deplore the droughts which devastate Australia, let it be remembered that Australia is huge, and the most rigorous of Australian droughts merely partial. This country has never known drought. During the partial drought which ended with 1905, and which occasioned great losses throughout the pastoral tracts ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... protection of a marine, commercial people, who were for the most part opposed to it. When Clay, in the lofty style common to the time, declared the Americans unconquerable, and that if the enemy should lay in ashes New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and should devastate the whole Atlantic coast, the people would retreat beyond the Alleghenies to live and flourish there, a member from New Jersey protested that this was too high a price for him; that he had no inclination to go beyond the Alleghenies; and that even the Mississippi valley would be a poor ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... the leafage and young shoots of various trees, the wild fig being a favorite. There are other trees of which they eat the bark, and the young roots of the bamboo form a large source of their food supply. Rice is, however, their favorite article of food, and they often devastate whole plantations in a single night. It is fortunate that the slightest fence will keep them away from any spot so protected: a single blow of their trunks would destroy a bamboo fence, but they never attempt it. Some idea, of which we can know nothing, possesses them ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... which this corrective was tested. It was in the case of a sulky dog of a breed between the red Irish setter and something larger, but less patrician, upon whom the thirst for blood fell at uncertain intervals, impelling him then to devastate the very sheepfolds of which in his capacity as watch-dog he might have been considered as ex officio the guardian. This vile malefactor had been ordered for execution, and the noose was already coiled for his caitiff neck, when a neighbor of his master's—a great raiser of sheep—begged for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... rats. Therese is wise about that, and it is because she is wise that I do not listen to her; for in spite of my tranquil mien, I have always preferred the folly of the passions to the wisdom of indifference. But just because my own passions are not of that sort which burst out with violence to devastate and kill, the common mind is not aware of their existence. Nevertheless, I am greatly moved by them at times, and it has more than once been my fate to lose my sleep for the sake of a few pages written ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... tallow trade." He becomes sadly conscious that his entire time, purpose, energies are being simply, with his own dull consent, "melted down for the tallow trade," and that he himself is by way of being on a far more perilous margin than that of any one of the gently depressed spirits who devastate his days, and command him to create for them,—not energy, purpose, will,—but, instead, external conditions in which they may more luxuriously enjoy their romantic languor and their comforting ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... went on, and Annie Darling had not come. Weeds began to devastate her garden, and Wilfred used to look over the fence and wish uncle Jim would do something. Once he spoke to uncle Jim about it, in the way everybody had of making him responsible for the floral well-being of the neighborhood; but Gardener Jim would ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... the history of wars has taught us nothing. We haven't heard much of plagues and epidemics yet, in the carefully censored reports from London, but it won't be long before disease will devastate whole armies." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... future time if not now, we can punish South Carolina as she deserves, and as thousands of the people in Georgia hoped we would do. I do sincerely believe that the whole United States, North and South, would rejoice to have this army turned loose on South Carolina, to devastate that State in the manner we have done in Georgia, and it would have a direst and immediate bearing on ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... itself. A good feature may be found in the property that is threatened. Often the fire in itself is insignificant, but because of a high wind or other circumstances it threatens to spread to neighboring buildings or to devastate a large area. In such a case the amount of property threatened or endangered deserves a place in the very first line, especially if it exceeds the amount of property actually destroyed and if it can be ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde |
