"Devastation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... devastation before her, and that even her own little garden in the corner had not escaped from the general wreck, she mingled ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... seemed to have jumped in a few weeks. A key had turned in the formerly open door of his spirit. The indeterminate lips had shut hard, the long-lashed eyes had definitely put a guard upon their dreams. He was shockingly thin and colorless, however. Sheila dwelt painfully upon the sort of devastation she had wrought. Girlie's face, and Dickie's, and Jim's. A grieving pressure squeezed her heart; she lifted her chest with an ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... a fortnight ago he had been in Bun Hill with no idea of travel in his mind, and that now he was between the Falls of Niagara amidst the devastation and ruins of the greatest air fight in the world, and that in the interval he had been across France, Belgium, Germany, England, Ireland, and a number of other countries. It was an interesting thought and suitable for conversation, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... The thatched roof was full of holes and the interior showed the devastation that wind and water had worked. Tall weeds filled the little garden and the general effect was ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... with God, in and through the Son of Man, even the Son of God made manifest. Now can it be doubted by the attentive and unprejudiced reader of St. Matthew, c. xxiv, that the Son of Man, in fact, came in the utter destruction and devastation of the Jewish Temple and State, during the period from Vespasian to Hadrian, both included; and is it a sufficient reason for our rejecting the teaching of Christ himself, of Christ glorified and in his kingly character, that his Apostles, who disclaim all certain knowledge of the awful event, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... on guard watching his enemy's movements, his mind recalled in swift review the various wrongs he had suffered at his hands, the fright and insult to his wife, the devastation of his home, the cattle-raid involving the death of Raven, and lastly he remembered with a deep rage his recent humiliation at the Indian's hands and how he had been hauled along by the neck and led like a dog into the Indian camp. At these recollections ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... alive, of which we have miserable Instances amongst us.... I have only to add that A few Hundreds of men well armed and immediately sent to our relief would prevent much bloodshed, confusion and devastation ... as the appearance of being supported would call back many of our fugitives to save their Harvest for their subsistence, rather than suffer the inconveniences which reason tells me they do down the Country and their with their families return must ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... watch a slow, implacable, methodical devastation of their country, tract by tract. Day by day they fight, and one by one they fall. Comrades and friends drop at each other's sides; sons drop by fathers, and brothers by brothers. The smoke rises in the ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... protect; all these cities from the greatest to the least occupied in watching for the most favorable moment for falling upon and pillaging their neighbors; sieges terminated by unspeakable atrocities, and after all this, famine, speedily followed by pestilence to complete the devastation. Then let us picture to ourselves the rich Benedictine abbeys, veritable fortresses set upon the hill-tops, whence they seemed to command all the surrounding plains. There was nothing surprising in their prosperity. Shielded by their inviolability, they were in these disordered ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... noble charger, he refused the indulgence of a litter, determining that no illness, while he had any power to master its disabilities, should make him recede from his duty. The image of his mother, too, so near the threatened spot, rushed on his soul. In quick march he led on his troops. Devastation met them over the face of the country. Scared and houseless villagers were flying in every direction; old men stood amongst the ashes of their homes, wailing to the pitying heavens, since man had none. Children and woman sat by the waysides, weeping ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... with the arrival of Bugeaud, the war in Africa was changed; hitherto it had been a mere war of occupation,—a holding of the ground already French against the attacking Arabs; now it was to be a duel, a war of devastation; thus only could France hope to tame the indefatigable Abd-el-Kader, and permanently hold her own. The trouble was not so much to fight him as to get near enough to fight him; for he pursued a truly Fabian policy, and being lighter armed, was consequently swifter than the invaders. Under Marshal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of the improvements remained, and in place of a small rippling stream came a great river, which swept away four houses with stables and other buildings and eight wooden bridges. It seemed almost as if the devil had been vexed with the prospectors for interfering with his water, and had caused this devastation to punish them for their audacity. But a great effort was made in 1818, and a more permanent scheme on similar lines was completed; and Dawlish as we saw it in 1871 was a delightful place suggestive of a quiet holiday or honeymoon resort. Elihu Burritt, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... were dealt around without mercy or discretion; and the very generation that committed devastation in the first settlements in different sections of our country, generally lived to witness a scarcity of fuel; and means were resorted to for the purchase of sugar, that were far more expensive than would have been its manufacture, under a proper mode of ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... may be affirmed, are so far from the truth as that which makes the Iroquois a band of treacherous and ferocious ravagers, whose career was marked everywhere by cruelty and devastation. The clear and positive evidence of historical facts leads to a widely different conclusion. It is not going too far to assert that among all uncivilized races the Iroquois have shown themselves to be the most faithful of ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... masses of the castle ruins which lie scattered about and in the vale below, form a scene of havoc and devastation, at once magnificent and impressive. The towers were blasted with gunpowder, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... from his hands. "I know," he said. "It is absolute devastation, nothing more or less. I'm ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... succeed in persuading him. He was instant, nevertheless, pledged himself to help him, assured him that he need not doubt the result, promised that God would be with him, whom all his adversaries would not be able to resist.[264] He laid before him also the oppression of the poor and the devastation of his country; yet ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... sensation which this unresponsive hardness inflicted on her. That is a strong word, but not too strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness—calling their denial knowledge. You may ask why, in the name of manliness, Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in that way. Consider that his was a mind which ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... To God, his neighbour, and himself, by man Force may be offer'd; to himself I say And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds Upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes By devastation, pillage, and the flames, His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites In malice, plund'rers, and all robbers, hence The torment undergo of the first round In different herds. Man can do violence To himself and his own blessings: and for this He ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... of the tempest's wrath Sufficed to mark one dreadful path With scenes of devastation; While over piles of wild debris Rose shrieks of ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... [2] The devastation of Bohemia in 1303, by Albert of Austria (the "German Albert" of the sixth canto of Purgatory), will soon set in motion the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... do" she broke in, coldly furious, but with a volcano in her breast that threatened eruption and devastation shortly. "Will you let me go, Captain Carey? Or must I call my servants to my assistance? I ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... better. To relieve his impatience, therefore, I wrote a more or less 'sensational' novel dealing with the absinthe drinkers of Paris, entitled "Wormwood," which did a certain amount of good in its way, by helping to call public attention to the devastation wrought by the use of the pernicious drug among the French and other Continental peoples—and after this, receiving a strong and almost imperative impetus towards that particular goal whither my mind was set, I went to work again with renewed vigour ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... well, openly deplored their fate. Their talk was no longer of the horrors of the recent bloody peace: they reverted to the records of the civil wars, the taking and retaking of Rome by her own troops, the devastation of Italy, the pillage of the provinces, the battles of Pharsalia, Philippi, Perusia, and Mutina,[87] those bywords of national disaster. 'The world was turned upside down,' they mused, 'even when good men fought for the throne: yet ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... groups of pine parasols above some ruined walls, were all the vegetation which met Alba Steno's eye. But the scene accorded so well with the moral devastation she bore within her that the barrenness around her in her last walk was pleasant ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... into an empty bunk, the stout youth left it to look after itself, and rushed out with Adams to the scene of devastation. ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... this frightful view, but the lights didn't go on in the lounge. Inside the Nautilus all was gloom and silence. It left this place of devastation with prodigious speed, 100 feet beneath the waters. Where was it going? North or south? Where would the man flee after this ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... of the French Renaissance; it is really a lesson in good taste. Originally placed in the great abbey-church of Saint Martin, which was for so many ages the holy place of Tours, it happily survived the devastation to which that edifice, already sadly shattered by the wars of religion and successive profanations, finally succumbed in 1797. In 1815 the tomb found an asylum in a quiet corner ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... such devastation in the town, which had blown a welcome tramp back to his native haunts, had done even more. It had revealed the secret of years. Part of the chimney lay heaped on the floor, and among the fallen bricks and stones appeared a big tin box. A most ordinary box, such as many people ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... have been swallowed by the terrible Dog-Fish, who for some days past has been spreading devastation and ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... Romans conquering and colonizing Gaul, Spain, Britain, the Danubian Principalities and Greece, Western Asia and Northern Africa. Then again, at a later time, follow the great ethnic convulsions of Eastern Europe, and the devastation and re-population of the ancient seats of civilization by Goths, and Lombards, and Vandals, and Saxons; while at the same time, and for many centuries to come, the few strongholds of civilization in the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... boat until the Battery was reached. Then all the world rushed up the gang plank; Jew and Gentile crowded for the best places. Italian women, with babies, dragged after husbands with lunch baskets. Stout Irish matrons looked with scorn on the "foreigners" and did great devastation in claiming camp stools. Very young Jewish girls and boys were the most conspicuous element in the crowd, but there were groups of gentle Armenians, of Syrians, of Chinese and parties of tourists with field glasses ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Was any one of us so mad as to fancy that he would survive the desired destruction? We ought to imagine the whole of Europe with St. Petersburg, Paris, and London transformed into a vast rubbish-heap. How could we expect the kindlers of such a fire to retain any consciousness after so vast a devastation? He used to puzzle any who professed their readiness for self-sacrifice by telling them it was not the so- called tyrants who were so obnoxious, but the smug Philistines. As a type of these he pointed to a ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... carronades across her main-deck. The name of this ship, be it mentioned, was the Good Samaritan, as ill-fitting a name as could be for such a craft, which, instead of being designed for the healing of wounds, was intended to inflict such devastation as those ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... tariff, and not to receive into their houses girls belonging to the neighborhood. The institutions of this kind lasted for three centuries. It was, in part, perhaps, the impetus of the new Protestant movement, but mainly the terrible devastation produced by the introduction of syphilis from America at the end of the fifteenth century which, as Burckhardt and others have pointed out, led to the decline of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to survive the downfall of his empire, the devastation of his city, and the annihilation of his people. Cortes spared his life and at first treated him generously. He afterward marred his reputation by yielding him and the Cacique of Tlacuba to torture at the urgent and insistent demand of the soldiery. There was no treasure found in the city. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... dust of this hemisphere, now, for the first time, visited by Europeans,—tears of joy for the overflowing of a proud spirit, grateful and pious,—tears of sadness for this virgin soil, seeming to foreshadow the calamities, and devastation, with fire and sword, and blood and destruction, which the strangers were to bring with their pride, their knowledge, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... that it was vain to attempt to save his father's castle, remained for a time upon the scene of ruin and devastation. His father, Sir Oscar, had been slain by an arrow, and his body was devoured by the flames. When Allan had tended the wounded, both foes and friends, he took six of his best men-at-arms with him, and by devious ways ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... a scene of devastation, as far as the scientist's study was concerned. It looked as though a volcano had irrupted there: bookshelves were overturned, chairs and tables were sprawling legs in air, liquids were oozing in rainbow hues over manuscripts, odours of the most objectionable kind filled the air. A tame raven was ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... glad course, He scattered them on either side, and like a billow overwhelmed them in front. The Bards of the world judge those to be men of valour, Whose counsels are not divulged to slaves. {119a} The spears in the hands of the warriors were causing devastation; And ere was interred under {119b} the swan-white steed, {119c} One who had been energetic in his commands, His gore had thoroughly washed his armour: {119d} Such was Buddvan, {119e} the son of ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... baseless, but is the more unjustifiable coming as it does, in the midst of a great war, from the Commandant-General of one of the British Dominions. Your reference to barbarous acts during the South African War cannot justify the criminal devastation of Belgium, and can only be calculated to sow hatred and division among the people of South Africa. You forget to mention that since the South African War the British people gave South Africa her entire freedom, under a Constitution which ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... life is, in a general way, to conserve the barbarian temperament, but with the substitution of fraud and prudence, or administrative ability, in place of that predilection for physical damage that characterizes the early barbarian. This substitution of chicanery in place of devastation takes place only in an uncertain degree. Within the pecuniary employments the selective action runs pretty consistently in this direction, but the discipline of pecuniary life, outside the competition for gain, does not work consistently to the same effect. The discipline of modern life in the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... la campagne[4].' But the hour of pastoralism had come, and while the ladies and gallants of the court were playing the parts of Watteau swains and shepherdesses amid the trim hedges and smooth lawns of Versailles, the gates were already bursting before the flood, which was to sweep in devastation over the land, and to purge the old order ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Devastation and plunder, revenge and gain, not permanent conquest, were his objects; and hence his course was everywhere marked by ruin and carnage, by smoking towns, ravaged fields, and heaps of slain. His cruelties have no doubt been exaggerated; but when we hear ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... regions can form but a faint conception of the fearful hurricane that burst upon the island of Mango at this time. Before we reached the temple, the storm burst upon us with a deafening roar, and the natives, who knew too well the devastation that was to follow, fled right and left through the woods in order to save their property, leaving us alone in the midst of the howling storm. The trees around us bent before the blast like willows, and we were about to flee in order to seek shelter, when the teacher ran towards ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... an impolitical wretch! I have not the art of the least artful of any of our Christian princes; who every day are guilty of ten times worse breaches of faith; and yet, issuing out a manifesto, they wipe their mouths, and go on from infraction to infraction, from robbery to robbery; commit devastation upon devastation; and destroy—for their glory! And are rewarded with the names of conquerors, and are dubbed Le Grand; praised, and even deified, by orators and poets, for their butcheries ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... frightful devastation of Germany by the religious dissensions of the early part of the seventeenth century and the Thirty Years War, it fell to Frederick the Great, not only to lay a firm foundation for the Prussian State but to elevate it definitely as a rival to Austria in the leadership of Germany. Thenceforth ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... the highroad, trodden by so many barbaric armies, this city had suffered repeated devastation. Its great buildings stood desolate, or had fallen to utter ruin, and the country around, once famous for its fertility, showed but a few poor farms. What inhabitants remained dwelt at the foot of the great hill on whose summit rose the citadel, still united with the town by two ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... cruelty.—Yet when we take them from Africa, we deprive them of a country which God hath given them for their own; as free as we are, and as capable of enjoying that blessing. Like pirates we go to commit devastation on the coast of an innocent country, and among a people who never did ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... after, the previously unscathed division of the army, or not attacking it at all at the time, yet returning at a distant interval, when all traces of the former epidemic had ceased, and committing the same devastation. Now, will any man, not utterly blinded by prejudice, candidly reviewing these facts, pretend to say, that this could be a personal contagion, cognizable by, and amenable to, any of the known or even ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... that Zachariah guard The king, forbidden to expose himself. Meanwhile the queen, with poniard in her hand, Laughs at the feeble check of our brass gates. To crush them she attends the fatal engines, Breathing, in short, but blood and devastation. Some priests, my sister, at the first proposed, That in a secret cave, our fathers' dug, The precious ark at least should be concealed. "O base insulting fear my father cried, The ark which caused so many gorgeous towers To fall, and forced the Jordan's backward course; ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... in quite unexpected ways. For who could have imagined that a young girl, daughter of a ruined Royalist whose life was held only by the contempt of his enemies, would have had the power to bring death and devastation upon two flourishing provinces and cause serious anxiety to the leaders of the revolution in the very hour of its success!" He paused to let the wonder ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the terrible devastation of the Mongol conquerors. Many districts, swarming with life, were entirely swept of their population by these destroyers of the race, and have remained to this day desolate ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... clouds of smoke are rising from sacked and ruined warehouses and from long trains of burning cars. Here and there little groups of striking employes have gathered, holding aloof from the reckless and infuriated mob, appalled at the sight of riot and devastation resulting from their ill-advised action. Many of their number, conscious of their responsibility for the scenes of bloodshed and pillage and wanton destruction of property, public and private, would now gladly undo their work and array ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... in the night, as she goes about her devastation of human rights with the tread of a thief and with the cunning of a bold deceiver, which she is, and this country must station trustworthy men upon the ramparts of this government to watch her progress and batter down ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... devastation in the two cities, it should be remembered that the cities' differences in shape and topography resulted in great differences in the damages. Hiroshima was all on low, flat ground, and was roughly circular in shape; Nagasaki was much cut up by hills and mountain spurs, with no regularity ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... wander amid the saddest memories. All the wounds of his still bleeding heart opened afresh. The serenity of the starry sky, the silence of that solemn hour, the ideas of order, peace, and justice, which such a scene ever awakens, contrasted strangely with the material devastation around worked by time. The natural effect of a grand spectacle like this, is to render sadder still those moral ruins accumulated within by the wickedness ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... at Westminster upon the Friday morning, and were eagerly bent upon the work of devastation in Duke Street and Warwick Street at night, were, in the mass, the same. Allowing for the chance accessions of which any crowd is morally sure in a town where there must always be a large number of idle and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... as a secondary restraining force there is the reasonable fear of devastation. The "good German" vindictiveness might make one ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... fire, cross fire; volley of grapeshot, whiff of the grape, feu d'enfer [Fr.]. cut, thrust, lunge, pass, passado^, carte and tierce [Fr.], home thrust; coupe de bec [Fr.]; kick, punch &c (impulse) 276. battue^, razzia^, Jacquerie, dragonnade^; devastation &c 162; eboulement [Fr.]. assailant, aggressor, invader. base of operations, point of attack; echelon. V. attack, assault, assail; invade; set upon, fall upon; charge, impugn, break a lance with, enter ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... under date 1st March, 1779, says—"An opinion prevails here that government (the British) will adopt the mode of devastation. If that should really take place, adieu to all the hopes of the friends of government ever again living in America. Be assured that, should government be restored by such means, her friends would find it impossible to travel this country without a guard to prevent assassination. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... of this side of his art. Here he produces an indelible impression by a series of light touches applied with unerring skill. Unlike Zola, unlike Tolstoi, he shows us neither the loathsomeness nor the devastation of a battlefield, but its insignificance, its irrelevant detail, its unmeaning grotesquenesses and indignities, its incoherence, and its empty weariness. Remembering his own experience at Bautzen, he has made his hero—a young ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the fortress of Goletta, and as the night darkened the scene with massy clouds, the flames of burning fragments became more visible, and the fiery course of the red bullets was perceptible as they crossed each other in their path, while their effects in fire and devastation were fearful to behold. It was evident that the Mussulmans had been attempting a sally, for a sharp fire of musketry burst forth suddenly amid the roaring of the cannon. The fight was approaching ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... therefore, that we have not witnessed within the last three thousand years the devastation by deluge of a large continent, yet, as we may predict the future occurrence of such catastrophes, we are authorized to regard them as part of the present order of nature, and they may be introduced into geological speculations respecting the past, provided that we ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Iconoclast, in shattering the monasteries? No less was the crime of Puritanism in dismantling our churches and stripping them of treasures which were beyond price. The antiquarian Carter says, “Before the hand of destruction wrought such fatal devastation, every sacred edifice throughout England, whether of confined or extended dimensions, teemed with a full and resplendent show of painted glass, all equally excellent, all equally meritorious” (Remarks on York Minster, Winkle’s “Cathedrals,” ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... France ones sees what devastation the Revolution wrought on the Church, and one compares the condition there with the very light and easy way in which she has been taken out of her temporal throne and seated on the ground in Italy. She has been treated there too ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... could be successfully resisted only by large armies, and sometimes the armies were not large enough to cope with them. Again and again during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Tartar hordes swept over the country—burning the villages and towns, and spreading devastation wherever they appeared—and during more than two centuries Russia had to pay a heavy tribute ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... "look at that fleet of Frenchmen. Think of the havoc and devastation they will commit among our merchantmen and colonies if they get free away from this. Every one of them we could destroy with our fire-ships and explosion vessels. It must be done. I shall never forgive myself if I do not stir every nerve to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... require more time and labor than I can afford to give an adequate account of so many effusions or improvisations as served for fuel to boil the scanty and precarious pot of his uncertain and uncomfortable sustenance. "The Wonderful Year" of the death of Elizabeth, the accession of James, and the devastation of London by pestilence, supplied him with matter enough for one of his quaintest and liveliest tracts: in which the historical part has no quality so valuable or remarkable as the grotesque mixture of horror and humor in the anecdotes appended ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage chimney up the mountain-side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants had but gone forth to view the devastation of the slide and would shortly return to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had left separate tokens by which those who had known the family were made to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? The story has been told far and wide, and will for ever be a legend ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... neighbouring hills, and have very little water. At the distance of eighteen miles the Missouri makes a considerable bend to the southeast: the game is very abundant, the common, and mule or blacktailed deer, elk, buffaloe, antelope, brown bear, beaver, and geese. The beaver have committed great devastation among the trees, one of which, nearly three feet in diameter, has been gnawed through ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... screams of the horses in the barns and corrals were mingling with the bawling of the heifers in the calf pens when the sound of the explosion caught up with the devastation of the shock and ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... received up into glory." 1 Tim. 3:16. The writers of the Gospels record the event of his crucifixion. On the cross he cried, "It is finished." His mission was completed, the sacrifice was made, the blood was shed. The blood has a great atoning power, the devastation caused by sin is covered by the blood. It destroys ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... and destiny to smoke in ruins, so surely must the high-souled Anna fall—'Ill starred wench!'—I, Fairfax, like other conquerors, cannot shut pity from my bosom. While I cry havoc I could almost weep; could look reluctant down on devastation which myself had made, and heave a sigh, and curse my proper prowess!—In love and war alike, such, Fairfax, is towering ambition. It must have victims: its reckless altars ask a full and large supply; and when perchance a snowy lamb, spotless and pure, bedecked for sacrifice, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... had become a torrent; Moodna Creek was reported to be in angry mood, and the family hastened through breakfast that they might drive out to see the floods and the possible devastation. Several bridges over the smaller streams had barely escaped, and the Idlewild brook, whose spring and summer music the poet Willis had caused to be heard even in other lands, now gave forth a hoarse roar from the deep glen through which it raved. An iron ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... God only knows the number, to a drunkard's hell. What he has manufactured has, no doubt, prepared many men to murder their wives; mothers to neglect, starve, and even destroy their children; and, I have no hesitancy in saying, I believe has caused more wide-spread devastation and ruin in this Dominion since its establishment than what has been caused in the same period by those two destructive agencies—flood and fire combined. The meeting was convened for the purpose of taking ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... made on Rowcliffe by the Vicarage was that of a house and a household rehabilitated after a long period of devastation, by the untiring, selfless labor of a woman ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... events, every attempt made to obtain possession of these outlawed chiefs was unavailing. After plundering the country of all that could be found in it, leaving devastation and misery behind, the expedition returned without obtaining their object, but with the satisfaction of knowing that by taking away 30,000 more cattle, they left thousands of women and children to die of starvation. But I must leave off now. The results of the war, and the fate ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... Although this devastation caused me much vexation, I could not help laughing at their antics, and at the humble and submissive manner in which I had advanced to pay homage to them. I called my sons, who laughed heartily, and rallied "the prince of ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... fifteen years?" Pitov demanded. "You know, there were people inside the Soviet Union—not many, and they kept themselves well hidden—who were dedicated to the overthrow of the Soviet regime. They, or some of them, might have thought that the devastation of both our countries, and the obliteration of civilization in the Northern Hemisphere, would be a cheap price to pay for ending the rule of ...
— The Answer • Henry Beam Piper
... economic ruin with which South Africa is now threatened, make it necessary for both belligerents to ask themselves dispassionately, and as in the sight of the Triune God, for what they are fighting, and whether the aim of each justifies all this appalling misery and devastation. ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... You know we are always better tempered when this is the case. I come in full dress. And do the honour to the Duke's motto. I saw my little man off on Monday, after expedition over Bank and Tower. Thence to Pym's, Poultry: oysters consumed by dozings. Thence to Purcell's: great devastation of pastry. Thence to Shoreditch, where Sons calmly said: "Never mind, Papa; it is no use minding it. I shall soon be back to you," and so administered comfort to his forlorn Dad.—My salute to the Conquered One, and I am ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... devastation could not have been completed many minutes before their arrival, the elephant appeared to have gone away from the ground. At east, it was not to be seen anywhere near the spot; and it is needless to say that it was carefully looked for. Dreading its dangerous proximity, ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... a broad band of yellow was rapidly mounting into the sky, and in the blended light of moon and day the churchyard presented a melancholy scene of devastation. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... up his spirit, till by habit it has become as unyielding as a rock. The latter has learnt to be brave. So we should learn to be soldiers in the war with selfishness, by perseveringly girding our minds to the deadly conflict.—Has depraved man such energy of will in spreading devastation and death; and shall not Christians exhibit as great force of resolution in diffusing the blessings of salvation? Who dare say, I cannot, or will not, exercise it? Let us be mindful of our obligations. If our minds may be wrought up to such invincible firmness ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... commonly take place in the dead of the night. We never go to our fields, but we are seized with an involuntary fear, which lessens our strength, and weakens our labour. No other subject of discourse intervenes between the different accounts, which spread through the country, of successive acts of devastation; and these, told in chimney corners, swell themselves in our affrighted imaginations into the most terrific ideas. We never sit down, either to dinner, or supper, but the least noise spreads a general alarm, and prevents ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... of the poet Whittier who met the Indians, armed only with kindness and the high courage of their peaceful convictions, were treated by the red men as friends and superiors. In the raids of general devastation they were unmolested. Their descendant has a natural right to express the pathos of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... her darling infant. The sword of men is executing the vengeance of God. The earth is emptying its inhabitants into the bottomless pit. On every hand are "confused noises, and garments rolled in blood." Fire and sword fill the land with consternation and dismay. Amid the universal devastation wild shrieks and despairing groans fill the air. God of mercy! is Thy ear heavy, that Thou canst not hear? or Thy arm shortened, that Thou canst not save? The heavens above are brass, and the earth beneath is iron; for Jehovah is pouring His ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... The devastation of war left an impoverished South, and as free schools depend upon the generosity of the individual states, many, though desirous, were utterly unable to make suitable ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... Old English lyrical feeling," says Ten Brink, citing the lines that immediately follow sw n, "is fond of the image of physical destruction"; but I do not think these lines have a merely figurative import. The reference is to a period of real devastation, antedating the Danish incursions. "We might fairly find such a time in that parenthesis of bad government and of national tumult which filled the years between the death of Aldfrith in 705 and the renewed peace of ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... utmost degree to the exchequer. He centralized, in a manner hitherto unknown in the West, the whole judicial and political administration. No office was henceforth to be filled by popular election, under penalty of the devastation of the offending district and of the enslavement of its inhabitants. The taxes, based on a comprehensive assessment, and distributed in accordance with Mohammedan usages, were collected by those cruel and vexatious methods without which, it is true, it ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... my eyes with a daylight view of the terrible devastation, I went away leisurely up the street with my hands in my breeches-pockets, comparing the scene in my mind with the downfall of Babylon the Great, and Sodom and Gomorrah, and Tyre and Sidon, and Jerusalem, and all the lave of the great towns that had fallen to decay, according to the foretelling ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... sort. But there were also Christians who, while they hated the olden culture of Paganism, were ambitious to supply a Christian literature in prose and verse to take the place of the Classical. There had been an awful devastation of Gaul; the barbarians of the north had been, now and again, uneasy and troublesome; but see how Julian—even he, with the Grace of God all against him—had chastised them! The head of the Roman State would always be ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... allured by thy hospitable form. Suddenly, unexpectedly, in a moment still as night, there is a fermentation in the treacherous gulf of fire; it discharges itself with raging force, and away over all the plantations of men drives the wild stream in frightful devastation. WALLENSTEIN. Thou art portraying thy father's heart; as thou describest, even so is it shaped in his entrails, in this black hypocrite's breast. O, the art of hell has deceived me! The Abyss sent up to me the most spotted of the spirits, the most skilful in lies, and placed him ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... subdued. Not one unattacked village which was originally adverse throughout that vast continent has yet submitted from love or terror. You have the ground you encamp on, and you have no more. The cantonments of your troops and your dominions are exactly of the same extent. You spread devastation, but you do not enlarge ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... soldiers killed on the Yalu, together with the maimed Retvisan and her sister ships, with our lost torpedo-boats, teach our cruisers with what devastation they must break in upon the shores of base Japan. She has sent her soldiers to shed Russian blood, and no quarter should be afforded her. Now one cannot—it is sinful—be sentimental; we must fight; we must direct such heavy blows that the memory ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... captured the city through the treachery of its commander and turned the streets to rivers of blood. The Mohammedans were almost exterminated, and the ruined stone walls testify to the completeness of the Chinese devastation. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... gladly hailed by the occupants of the wrecked raft, also disclosed the extent of the devastation caused by the flood. As they had surmised, the Venture was stranded at the foot of the huge stone bagasse-burner. The mill near by was partly demolished. The great house, standing amid its clumps of shrubbery and stately trees, a quarter of a mile away, was surrounded by water that rose ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... artillery strove to pick up the plan of the attack, to beat down the torrent of our batteries' fire, to smash in the forward trenches, shake the defense, open the way for the massed attack. But the contest was too unequal, the devastation amongst the crowded mass of German infantry too awful to be allowed to continue. Plainly the attack, ready or not ready, had to be launched at speed, or ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... expensive means of fighting them; but after all the strain had to come somewhere, and the long struggle of Ladysmith may have meant a more certain and complete collapse in the future. At least, by the plan actually adopted we saved Natal from total devastation, and that must count against ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... attempt to paint any of the countless scenes of degradation, and horror, and misery, which this demon has caused to be enacted. I shall leave without comment the endless train of crimes and vices, the beggary and devastation following the course of this foul Titan devil of ruin and damnation. I shall only endeavor to give a plain, truthful history of one who has felt every pang, every sorrow, every agony, every shame, every remorse, ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... in so doing. The sisters elect to meet in thunder, lightning, or rain. To them "fair is foul, and foul is fair," as they "hover through the fog and filthy air." The whole of the earlier part of the third scene of the first act is one blast of tempest with its attendant devastation. They can loose and bind the winds,[1] cause vessels to be tempest-tossed at sea, and mutilate wrecked bodies.[2] They describe themselves as "posters of the sea and land;"[3] the heath they meet upon is blasted;[4] ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding |
