"Fatal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... religion of the Greeks was the spiritual side of their political life. And we must add that in one respect their religion pointed the way to a higher political achievement than they were ever able to realise in fact. One fatal defect of the Greek civilisation, as is familiar to students of their history, was the failure of the various independent city states to coalesce into a single harmonious whole. But the tendency of religion was to obviate this defect. We find, for example, that at one time or ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... had taken all these precautions, for fear of the sultan's anger, she told him faithfully how Aladdin had seen the princess Buddir al Buddoor, the violent love that fatal sight had inspired him with, the declaration he had made to her of it when he came home, and what representations she had made to dissuade him from a passion "no less disrespectful," said she, "to your Majesty, as ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... if that's what you mean, but I didn't get much fun out of it. I suppose after the first fatal plunge the rest ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... her husband, John Carter. Where have you been, O my Prince? All Helium has been plunged in sorrow. Terrible have been the calamities that have befallen your great-grandsire's mighty nation since the fatal day that ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Mahabarata is said: "Even as when he casteth off an old garment, man clothes himself in new raiment, even so the soul, casting off the wornout body, takes on a new body, avoids the fatal paths leading to hell, works for its salvation, and proceeds ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... past offences of the barons were now buried in oblivion, they ought, on their part, to forget their complaints against their late sovereign, who, if he had been anywise blameable in his conduct, had left to his son the salutary warning, to avoid the paths which had led to such fatal extremities; and that, having now obtained a charter for their liberties, it was their interest to show, by their conduct, that this acquisition was not incompatible with their allegiance, and that the rights of king and people, so far from being hostile and opposite, might mutually ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... wearers of silk and velvet, dwellers in drawing-rooms with pure white ceilings bordered with gold, "with showers of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre". They, as surely as the tainted Hindley, are bound to perish in any struggle with strong, fierce, primeval flesh and blood. The fatal moment in the tale is where the two half-savage children, Catherine and Heathcliff, come to Thrushcross Grange. Thrushcross Grange, with all its sickly brood, is doomed to go down before Wuthering Heights. But Thrushcross Grange ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the baby, and Gray Wolf. It was natural that the strongest passion in him should be his hatred of the lynx, for not only Gray Wolf's blindness and the death of the pups, but even the loss of the woman and the baby he laid to that fatal struggle on the Sun Rock. From that hour he became the deadliest enemy of the lynx tribe. Wherever he struck the scent of the big gray cat he was turned into a snarling demon, and his hatred grew day by day, as he became more completely ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... to laugh at this, a fatal proceeding, for afterward came a great sob, and the tears came down in good earnest. Philosophical Tom always professed great contempt for tears, and he knew that Erica must be very much moved indeed to cry in his presence, or, indeed, to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... might, if angered, even destroy it; though in order to destroy it, they must help to arouse a wild excitement among the ignorant poor, which, if once roused, may not be easily calmed, and which may be fatal to far more ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... most of us would like to allow. If you once permit yourself to set up an "Old Man of the Sea," farewell to free agency, happiness, even tolerable comfort, from that time forth! Sometimes your burden takes the shape of a renewed bill, sometimes of a fatal secret, sometimes of an unwise attachment, sometimes only of a bad habit; but whatever it be, the farther you carry it the heavier it seems to grow; and in this case custom does not in the least degree ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... anaesthetic during the operation, the patient, unless of a very apathetic temperament, is in that state of severe nervous strain, when any unexpected movement or remark, or sight of a soiled instrument, may produce an alarming or fatal syncope. The earliest local anaesthetic was cold, produced by a mixture of ice and salt. In place of this cumbersome method, the skin is now frozen by means of a fine spray of ether or ethyl chloride directed upon it. The spraying is discontinued ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the conquest of Prussia by Napoleon I. was either natural or necessary, or that any similar calamity befalling a nation should be a matter of indifference to the poet or philosopher. We may need such a philosophy or religion to console us under evils which are irremediable, but we see that it is fatal to the higher life of man. It seems to say to us, 'The world is a vast system or machine which can be conceived under the forms of logic, but in which no single man can do any great good or any great harm. Even if it were ...
— Sophist • Plato
... against them, before taking refuge inside the walls of the city. An hour after parting from Mr. Chambers I am wheeling briskly down the same road on the eastern slope of the pass where Mukhtar Pasha's ill-fated column was drawn into the fatal ambuscade that suddenly turned the fortunes of the day against them. While rapidly gliding down the gentle gradient, I fancy I can see the Cossack regiments, advancing toward the Turkish position, the unwary and over-confident Osmanlis leaping from their intrenchments to advance along the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... and found Peter sitting all alone in the dumps," continued the captain. "He has been very down of late, and, what was worse, he had got a bottle of whiskey on the table. That's a fatal thing to begin; and partly to keep him company, but mainly to prevent him drinking more than was good for him, I helped him finish the bottle—there wasn't ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... he was tempted to watch the scouts and it proved fatal. He was drawn head over ears into scouting, and became leader of the new Elk Patrol in the First Bridgeboro Troop. For three seasons he was a familiar, if rather odd figure, at Temple Camp, which Mr. John Temple of Bridgeboro had founded in the ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... things—we see them Without the aid of wizard's spell; But there are other things—we dree them, No art of wizard can foretell: Strange thing the heart where love has power, So tossed with joy or racked with pain! Dark Willie from that fatal hour Seemed fated ne'er ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... on the glacis, and, receiving no answer, had fired. The guard sent out presently returned, bearing a lifeless figure in their arms. The new sentry's zeal, joined with an ex-frontiersman's aim, was fatal. ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... brilliance, what a revolution! Thanks to the antiseptic system operations were performed such as the great Pirogov had considered impossible even in spe. Ordinary Zemstvo doctors were venturing to perform the resection of the kneecap; of abdominal operations only one per cent. was fatal; while stone was considered such a trifle that they did not even write about it. A radical cure for syphilis had been discovered. And the theory of heredity, hypnotism, the discoveries of Pasteur and of Koch, hygiene based on statistics, and the ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... be fatal, for it was only a matter of a few minutes before that ring would close upon them with a grip of iron. At all ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... one of Barouche's chapter of policy Carnac almost sprang to his feet in protest when Barouche declared it. To Carnac it seemed fatal to French Canada, though it was expounded with a taking air; yet as he himself had said ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... they see twenty or thirty Grays plastered on the slope at the point where the charge was checked. Every one of those prostrate forms is within fatal range. Not one moves a finger; even the living are feigning death in the hope of surviving. Among them is little Peterkin, so faithful in forcing his refractory legs to keep pace with his comrades. If he is always up with them they will never know what is in his heart ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Verdant Green, slowly and deliberately - feeling that his time was coming on, and cowardly anxious still to fight off the fatal words - "you said that you didn't dislike me; and, in fact, that you liked ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... long lines of low ramparts that face the water seems to have been at one time substantially fortified; but the works are now dilapidated and neglected. They were constructed in the first instance, I am told, with fatal ingenuity; in the event of an attack the garrison would find them as dangerous to abandon as to defend. Paknam is indebted for its importance rather to its natural position, and its possibilities of improvement under the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... says Pliny, "who gloried that they needed neither rain nor sun to produce their corn, and who believed they might confidently contest the prize of plenty with the most fruitful countries of the world, were condemned to an unexpected drought, and a fatal sterility; from the greatest part of their territories being deserted and left unwatered by the Nile, whose inundation is the source and sure standard of their abundance. 'They then implored that assistance from their prince which they had been accustomed to expect only from ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... I write; in the pleasant, careless, impecunious days of my youth. A cheap and highly popular restaurateur named Pinson rented the old theatre. A costumier hung out wigs, and masks, and debardeur garments next door to the restaurateur. Where the fatal tumbril used to labor past, the frequent omnibus now rattled gayly by; and the pavements trodden of old by Voltaire, and Beaumarchais, and Charlotte Corday, were thronged by a merry tide of students and grisettes. Meanwhile ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... we shall be successful," said Nigel, helping himself to some more of what may be styled Durian cream. "To judge from the weight and hardness of this fruit, I should think a blow on one's head from it would be fatal." ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... or remembering you only to cause you trouble,—all that while you were walking in the humble path of hard work, making your way slowly but surely to the fortune which I tried so madly to snatch. While you grew better, I grew worse; a fatal element entered into my life through my own choice. Yes, unbounded ambition makes an obscure existence simply impossible for me. I have tastes and remembrances of past pleasures that poison the enjoyments within my reach; once I should have been satisfied with them, now it is ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... Mr. Bryan soothingly, "don't introduce religion, let me beg of you. That would be fatal. We peacemakers are all agreed that there must be ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... the president with St Clair after the fatal fourth of November," says the late Mr. Custis[35] (who was present), "was nobly impressive. The unfortunate general, worn down by age, disease, and the hardships of a frontier campaign, assailed by the press, and with the current of popular opinion setting hard against him, repaired ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... we had settled ourselves at the Depot, Mr. Browne had a serious attack of illness, that might have proved fatal; but it pleased God to restore him to health and reserve him for future usefulness. At this time, too, the men generally complained of rheumatism, and I suspected that I was not myself altogether free from that depressing complaint, since I had violent pains in my hip joints; but ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... two children in four years—David Suveret and Louise Stephanie. Louise resented the advent of the second so intensely that poor Sandy become conscious, before the child appeared, of a fatal and appalling change in her relation to him. She had been proud of her first-born—an unusually handsome and precocious child—and had taken pleasure in dressing it and parading it before the eyes of the other mothers in their terrace, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... javeline. It was exciting sport to bring to bay a drove of these animals. To shoot from horseback lent a charm, yet made aim uncertain, nor was it advisable to get too close range. Many a young dog made a fatal mistake in getting too near this little animal, and the doctoring of crippled dogs became a daily duty. All surplus game was sent to the ranchito below, where it ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... was there to pull it down. This consideration enables us to pass into a higher and more reposing order of reflection, to leave the sterile impeachment of individual incapacity, and rise to the broader question, and ask why and how that incapacity was endowed with such fatal potency for evil. As it has been well remarked, the loss of a battle may lead to the loss of a state; but then, what are the deeper reasons which explain why the loss of a battle should lead to the loss of a state? It is not enough ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... finally holding that "direct taxes" within the meaning of the Constitution included taxes on personal property and the income of personal property, as well as taxes on real estate and the rents or income of real estate. This conclusion was fatal to the act. It was conceded that the tax, in so far as it affected income derived from a business or profession, was an indirect tax and therefore valid without apportionment among the states, but the provisions ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... which attended the death of John Hunter. This distinguished surgeon and physiologist died in a fit of enraged passion; and, what is somewhat extraordinary, he had often predicted that such excitement would prove fatal to him. He died at St. George's Hospital, Oct. 16, 1793, under these circumstances: being there in the exercise of his official duty as surgeon, he had a warm dispute with Dr. Pearson, on a professional subject; upon which he said, "I must retire, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... price of your head," replied Jonathan, knitting his brows. "Sir Rowland," he added, savagely, and with somewhat of the look of a bull-dog before he flies at his foe, "if it were my pleasure to do so, I could crush you with a breath. You are wholly in my power. Your name, with the fatal epithet of 'dangerous' attached to it, stands foremost on the list of Disaffected now before the Secret Committee. I hold a warrant from Mr. Walpole ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... interest when I told him that the Senator came from Connecticut, his native state. I warned him that the passage of the measure of disfranchisement had been no more than retarded. I pointed out the fatal consequences for the community if the bill should ever become law—the fatal consequences for the leaders of the Church if the non-polygamous Mormons, deprived of their votes, were ever left unable to control ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... with what splendour we buried him. Of what avail are undertakers' feathers and heralds' trumpery? I went out and shot the fatal black horse that had killed him, at the door of the vault where we laid my boy. I was so wild, that I could have shot myself too. But for the crime, it would have been better that I should, perhaps; for what has my life been since that sweet flower was taken out of my bosom? A succession of miseries, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to go further back to find instances of a fatal termination to the punishment. Such a case occurred in 1676. One Major Strangeways and his sister held in joint possession a farm, but the lady becoming intimate with a lawyer named Fussell, to whom the Major took a strong dislike, he threatened that if she married ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... big boats); they start early, fish all day; if no fog comes up, they are all right and get back to their boats at dark, but if a sudden fog comes on they often can't find their boats and remain out all night, half frozen. One night they can stand, but two nights' cold and exposure are always fatal. When the fog lifts the little boat is sometimes quite close to the big one, but the men are dead—frozen. M. de G. tells us all sorts of terrible experiences that he has heard from his men, and yet they all like the life—wouldn't ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... sufficiently true to themselves to be true to an old idea. It is no proof of an inconstant mind, but exactly the opposite, when the idea will not bear close comparison with the reality, and the contrast is a fatal shock to it. Such was Clennam's case. In his youth he had ardently loved this woman, and had heaped upon her all the locked-up wealth of his affection and imagination. That wealth had been, in his desert home, like Robinson Crusoe's money; exchangeable with no one, lying idle in the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... been fatal. Robert had no whip, but doubling the lines and shouting at the top of his voice, he braced himself and lashed the gray. The respectable beast leaped with astonishment, dragging its fellow along. The fore wheels cleared the track, ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... news, that sixteen workmen had perished in the mine of M. Robinot, was soon circulated in the town of St. Etienne. It was regarded as one of those fatal and deplorable events unfortunately, too common in that neighborhood, and on the ensuing Thursday it was no longer talked of. Politics, and the state of parties in Paris, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... Vanslyperken, jumping up from the deck, "but five minutes—to die in five minutes," continued he, looking up with horror at the rope at the yard-arm, and the fatal noose at the end of it, held in the hand of Corporal Van Spitter. "Stop, I have gold—plenty of gold—I can ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... came floating in over the dark canopy of cypress trees. My companion, wise in the ways of hunters, as well as the habits of birds, suspected something wrong and presently found nearby the body of an Egret lying on the ground, its back, from which the skin bearing the fatal aigrettes had been torn, raw and bloody. A little farther along we came to the remains of a second and then a third, and still farther on, a fourth. As we approached, we were warned of the proximity of each ghastly spectacle by the hideous buzzing of green flies swarming over the ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... tested in turn. But, as illustrating the general procedure, take the last, which contains whatever metal may have had the fatal result. First, the chemist tests with "group reagents." He knows that if he puts into the glass containing the last brew certain bodies in succession, some metals, if they are there, cannot be kept from rushing ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... precautions or remedies prescribed, is a question of fact to which the answer varies in every individual case. It may be that in the great majority of cases the harm is insignificant in comparison with the good. However that may be, the question is there, and it is of itself fatal to the conclusiveness of the argumentum ex machina. That this is not a captious criticism, that it is based on substantial facts of life, ordinary experience sufficiently attests; but it may not be amiss to point to a conspicuous ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... all, got between Dorothy and the bell. Dorothy's uncle and Dorothy's father should know; but not then. She had hoped that with reason she might rescue her daughter from a step so fatal as marriage with a hopeless beggar who could not live without the charity of his patron. These things and much more spake Mrs. Hanway-Harley; but she might as well have remonstrated with a storm. The gate-post grandsire had ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Too little sleep is fatal to health. Perhaps you have to work hard all day; but that is no reason why you should resolve, "If I cannot have pleasure by day, I will have it at night." You are taking the very substance of your body when you burn the lamp of pleasure till one or two o'clock in the morning. God has made sleep ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... shouldn't wonder if souls need the right sort of food as well as bodies in order to be healthy. I have some neighbours that my heart just aches for; all their reading is yellow-covered books, such as 'The Pirate's Bride,' and 'The Fatal Secret.' Such food is worse than cracker-water, and arrowroot, for they are starving souls instead of bodies, and the Word can't find any place to take root, much less to grow, when the mind is filled ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... did its fatal mischief. It ended the struggle against himself which had kept Nugent Dubourg in Paris. On the morning when he received it, he started for England. Here is the entry in ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... children under five years of age every year. Now, if nine tenths of the mortality among infants in the Dublin Hospital were caused by breathing bad air, we may reasonably infer that at least one half of the deaths in the United States of children under the age of five years proceed from the same fatal cause. And those who have noticed what pains are taken by excessively careful mothers[48] and ignorant nurses to exclude from the lungs of infants the "free, pure, unadulterated air of heaven," and, by means of many thicknesses of enveloping shawls and ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... could obtain from any extraneous source, and rather puzzled to know whether he should interfere in the project or not. The state of the case was this:—Osborne's symptoms were, in Mr. Gibson's opinion, signs of his having a fatal disease. Dr Nicholls had differed from him on this head, and Mr. Gibson knew that the old physician had had long experience, and was considered very skilful in the profession. Still he believed that he himself was right, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... mirror that Lord Henry had given to him, so many years ago now, was standing on the table, and the white-limbed Cupids laughed round it as of old. He took it up, as he had done on that night of horror, when he had first noted the change in the fatal picture, and with wild, tear-dimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words: "The world is changed because you are made of ivory ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... back to-night," he said. "The direct way is hardly ever the way they take to anything—let alone a matter like this, in which the slightest mistake might be fatal to their reaching ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... This solicitor did, it seemed, everything possible, and strained every nerve to get him out of his difficulties. "I tell you what you might try," he said more than once; "go to so-and-so and so-and-so," and the solicitor drew up a regular plan for getting round the fatal point that hindered everything. But he would add immediately, "It'll mean some delay, anyway, but you might try it." And Levin did try, and did go. Everyone was kind and civil, but the point evaded seemed to crop up again ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... discovery of her absence took place, the rest of the family having been of opinion that she had gone to bed in the early part of the evening, as was mostly her habit. The priest suspected, from her weak state of health and shattered constitution, that such a journey would probably prove fatal, and with his usual discrimination he calculated upon the restoration to reason ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... You mean those rumours, those lies of the enemy. Tell me how I could suppose you were alluding to them. You bring them forward now to justify your charge of "fatal" against her. She has one fault; she wants courage; she has none other, not one that is not excuseable. We won't speak of France. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... terrible shock of so fatal a termination to what seemed an attack of little consequence, would have daunted most Romanists desirous of effecting a death-bed conversion. It did not daunt Isabel. No sooner did she perceive that her husband's life was in danger, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... made no conquests worth speaking of. Nay, we believe that as far as there has been change, that change has been in favor of the Church of Rome. We cannot, therefore, feel confident that the progress of knowledge will necessarily be fatal to a system which has, to say the least, stood its ground in spite of the immense progress made by the human race in knowledge since the time of Queen Elizabeth." If, then, Protestantism, as regards increase and development, has been at a stand-still for the last two(13) hundred ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... a hand in compassing the death of King Charles I.; and this coming, in some strange manner (through inquiries he had made in London), to the ears of Authority, he was distinctly told that his prisoner was not one of those bold bad men who, misled by Oliver Cromwell, had signed that fatal Warrant:—the names and doom of the Regicides being now all well known, as having suffered or fled from Justice, or being in hold, as Mr. Martyn was. So Colonel Glover, being well assured that what was done was for the King's honour, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... seemed first to ache, and then to swell, and then to turn numb with the intense cold. My brother bore it better than I, from having been more out upon the hills. He did not speak, except to call Lassie. I strove to be brave, and not complain; but now I felt the deadly fatal sleep stealing ...
— The Half-Brothers • Elizabeth Gaskell
... all upon these solemn words, I leave this with you as a plain fact, that the meekest, lowliest, and most sane and wise of religious teachers made deliberately over and over again this claim, which is either absolutely true, and lifts Him into the region of the Deity, or else is fatal to His pretensions to be either meek or modest, or wise or sane, or a religious teacher to whom it is worth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... proper shape Bent up the fatal pin, And tied it carefully with thread Upon a withy thin. Then little Bell the eldest said: ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... good thing," continued Robert. "When a great Indian chieftain is a friend to a man, any insult to that man is a double insult to the chieftain. It is usually avenged with the utmost promptitude, and place is no bar. An angry glance even may invite a fatal blow." ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... dexterously to slip the ring off his finger. He struggled to regain it. She threw it away. The quarrel now grew more violent, until at last, in his rage, and as unconscious of what he was doing as an intoxicated man, he struck the fatal blow, and Annie fell dead at his feet. In the midst of his horror and remorse—for even he was filled with horror at such a deed—he thought of himself, and provided for his safety by hiding the body among the thorny and poisonous bushes, knowing it would be more unlikely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the kitchen, and their young sister Magdalen trying a yet prettier knot to her kerchief, took their way by the fords of Glen Lochar to an eminence then denominated plainly the Whinny Knowe, the same which afterwards gained and has kept to this day the more fatal designation of Knock Cannon. The lads were dressed as became the sons of so prosperous a craftsman (and master armourer to boot) as Malise ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... some of the strongest and most athletic girls among us have lost their health and become invalids for years, simply by being allowed to live the robust, careless, indiscreet life on which boys thrive so wonderfully. It is fatal, if they do too little, and disastrous, if they do too much; and between these two opposing perils the process of steering is so difficult that the majority of parents end in letting go the helm and leaving the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... not believe you guilty of this crime which I am about to charge against you, and to prove before the world. You were a spoiled, capricious beauty when I met with you, and I, merely a fortune hunter. Our marriage was a fatal mistake. But you have discharged your duties faithfully, and I know it will be a satisfaction in the future to have this to ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... took my eye off them, but urged my horse in their wake, taking every turn they did, and swerving from nothing. Fortunately, Brilliant was thoroughbred and the fences light, or, even with my weight, such a style of riding must soon have produced fatal results. I shall never go again as well as I did that day; but do what I would I could not shake off Mrs. Lumley. If I lost sight of her for an instant, she was sure to gain a turn upon me, and on one or two occasions ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... to a curtain with his fatal Christmas-candle. Now he raved and shouted in vain: no one would ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... wrong. Used in this way, it was a maxim of Oriental despotism, and fit only for a nation where law had no empire. Many of the illustrious patriots of the Great Parliament saw this; and felt the necessity of abolishing a maxim so fatal to the just liberties of the people. But some of them fell into the opposite error of supposing that this abolition could be effected only by the direct negation of it; their maxim accordingly was—'The king can do wrong,' i.e. is responsible in ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... having sent for the commons, he told them that although he might think himself unkindly used in being deprived of his guards, which had constantly attended him in all his actions; yet, as he believed nothing could be more fatal to the nation than any distrust or jealousy between him and his parliament, he was come to pass the bill ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... fatal of all forms of general diseases of the nervous system are those which are due to the later extensions of ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... acquaintance with London, Paris, Vienna, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, asserts that a handsome or even attractive-looking prostitute, is rare, and that the general average of beauty is lower than in any other class of women. "Whatever other evils," he remarks, "the fatal power of beauty may be responsible for, it has nothing to do with prostitution" (Woods Hutchinson, "The Economics of Prostitution," American Gynaecological and Obstetric Journal, September, 1895). It must, of course, be borne in mind that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... violate its charter and set the laws at defiance with impunity; and when, too, it had become most apparent that to believe that such an accumulation of powers can ever be granted without the certainty of being abused was to indulge in a fatal delusion? ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... upon him. It was William-a-Trent, the best runner among the Sheriff's men. He had come within twenty feet of Scarlet and was leaping upon him with long bounds like a greyhound, when John rose up quickly, drew his bow and let fly one of his fatal shafts. It would have been better for William-a-Trent to have been abed with sorrow—says the ballad—than to be that day in the greenwood slade to meet with Little John's arrow. He had run ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... coyness. Jealousy has helped to develop chastity, woman's cardinal virtue and the condition of all refinement in love and society. Monopolism has been the most powerful enemy of those two colossal evils of savagery and barbarism—promiscuity and polygamy; and it will in future prove as fatal an enemy to all attempts to bring back promiscuity under the absurd name of "free love," which would reduce all women to the level of prostitutes and make men desert them after their charms have faded. Two other ingredients of love—purity and the admiration of personal ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... courtiers over the abjectness of the People in adversity was so emphatic, that Dorp and Van Loon, Berendrecht and Gieselles, with the men under their command, who had disputed every inch of Little Troy for three years and three months, and had covered those fatal sands with a hundred thousand corpses, had not been giving of late such evidence of the People's cowardice in reverses as theory required. The siege of Ostend had been finished only three years before, and it is strange that its lessons should so ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... precisely; an attitude, it will be seen, which is after all not so very different from Addison's, allowing for the distance in time and place, and for Scott's livelier imagination.[49] Scott had his laugh at Mrs. Radcliffe, and in his reviews of Hoffmann's "Tales" and Maturin's "Fatal Revenge" [50] he insists upon the delicacy with which the supernatural must be treated in an age of disbelief. His own management of such themes, however, though much superior to Walpole's or Mrs. Radcliffe's, has not the subtle art of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... our lot to meet with disciples of the Oxford Tract School, who have, by a fatal indulgence of an appetite of belief; brought themselves to believe any mediaeval miracle, nay, any ghost story, without examination, saying, with a solemn face, 'It is better to believe that to reason.' They believe as they will to believe; and thus is reason avenged. Reason, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... her son. Until then her every thought had been, for Paul, and she had hardly realized that this creature was the cause of all his errors; but the baron's argument had suddenly brought this rival who possessed such fatal influence vividly to her mind, and she felt that between this woman and herself there must be a determined, bitter warfare. With that thought came another one as terrible—that she would rather lose her son than share him ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... garden when the Elders came. The Doctor's wife declared that Dan spent most of his time in the garden now, and that, when there, he did nothing because that nurse was always helping him. Good Martha has the fatal gift of telling a bit of news so vividly that it ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... and now, what would I do? I will tell you. Were I in love with a woman, I would make myself a child, and adore her, and sell my soul for her caresses; and make my brain the tool of my infatuation by yielding to her false, fatal sophistry, because that sophistry would be uttered by red lips, and would become truth in the dazzling light of her seductive smiles. Do you expect me, because I know it is all a lie, to resist sighs and murmurs, and those languid glances, which women employ to gain their ends? If you ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... if you are not a swimmer, if you will but keep your hands under water. The reason so many people drown is because directly they come to the surface they raise their hands above their head and shout for help. This is fatal. The moment the hands are raised out of the water the body will sink ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... her."] O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade Justice to break her sword!—one more, one more.— Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, And love thee after.—One more, and this the last. So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep, But they are cruel tears; this sorrow's heavenly; It strikes where it ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... heard this awful racket And seized the mole, just like a packet. He carried him across the seas To teach the young gulls A B C's. But the loving mole went blind with rage And they had to put him in a cage, And ever since that fatal night The moles have ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... the fatal, conclusion of political economy,—a conclusion which I shall demonstrate by evidence hitherto unknown in this field of inquiry,—Death to ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... but the Jews under Asinai's government remonstrated against the idolatries which the Parthian woman had introduced into a Jewish household, and prevailed on Asinai to require that she should be divorced. His compliance with their wishes proved fatal to him, for the woman, fearing the consequences, contrived to poison Asinai; and the authority which he had wielded passed into the hands of Anilai, without (so far as we hear) any fresh appointment from the Parthian monarch. Anilai had, it appears, no instincts but those ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... the struck eagle stretched upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart And winged the shaft ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... connected with this schooner, that her master was, according to his account, one of the only three persons in his native place, Fairhaven, who, in the last fatal election of a President for the United States, had voted for the Southern ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... silence. That poignant word quivered in Shefford's heart. He believed it was a lie. It seemed he would have known it if this hour was the first in which he had ever seen the girl. He heard, he felt, he sensed the fatal thing. The beautiful voice had lacked some quality before present. And the thing wanting was something subtle, an essence, a beautiful ring—the truth. What a hellish thing to make that pure girl a liar—a perjurer! The heat deep ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... are over. I shall certainly speak to James. He cannot afford to call attention to himself in any way. That breach-of-promise case of his three years ago, is, I hope and trust, forgotten, but the slightest slip on his part might start the papers talking about it again, and that would be fatal. The eventual successor to a title must be quite as ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... centralising in order to be better able to germanise and preserve the German character of the State, if she does not resist all efforts for the creation of a customs and economic union with Germany, the Pan-German movement will prove fatal for her. To preserve and maintain a state the sole ambition of which was to be a second German State after Germany, would be superfluous not only for the European Powers, but also for the non-German nations ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... exclaimed she; "beloved, but too ambitious mother! but for one little hour to lay this head upon your bosom! Fatal hath been the dream you rejoiced in at my nativity—in which the moon shone out so brilliantly, and then descended into the earth at your feet. I have shone but a little, little time, and now am I buried, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... yet in the sky. It shines here on earth, tho' deputed from Heav'n; And remarkably flam'd last year—Fifty sev'n. In Wodon's[36] bold figure, three thousand years past, O'er ancient Germania its lustre it cast. Next, wearing Arminius[37], thy form, it return'd; And, fatal to Rome's blasted legions, it burn'd. Now, attended with all the thunders of war, Our Prussia's great Frederick is that Blazing Star! Heav'ns proxy to nations opprest; but a Sign To tyrants he comes of a vengeance divine. Eccentric and rapid the north saw him rowl: (For heroes ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... baffled or defied us as with a sort of supreme rightness. Everything about him of keenest and brightest (yes, absolutely of brightest) suggestion made so for his having been charged with every privilege, every humour, of our merciless actuality, our fatal excess of opportunity, that what indeed could the full assurance of this be but that, finding in him the most charming object in its course, the great tide was to lift him and sweep him away? Questions and reflections after the fact perhaps, yet haunting for the time and during the short interval ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... Bleeding, nay sometimes after the first, and that even where I thought I had sufficient Indications from the Pulse to draw Blood a second time." See his Essay on Fevers, chap. viii. And Dr. Pringle observes, that in the second Stage of the Disorder large Bleedings have generally proved fatal, by sinking the Pulse, and bringing on a Delirium. Observations on the Diseases of the Army, part III. ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... hopeless condition of the army, the half of them killed, and the situation of the remainder desperate, brought discouragement to many a brave heart. It was useless to make further effort, which promised only a more fatal result. A retreat therefore was ordered, Colonel Darke being directed to charge the Indians that intercepted the way toward Fort Jefferson, and Major Clark with his battalion to cover the rear; these movements were successfully made, and the most of the troops ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... their ancient enmity, was fought at this place 1788; only seventeen or eighteen were killed, for the great superiority of the Danes and Norwegians obliged the Swedes to submit; but sickness, and a scarcity of provision, proved very fatal to their opponents ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... well was the result of the prosperous condition of the country at that day, the system my father had adopted in his life-time, and the good qualities of the different agents he had chosen, every one of whom remained in the situation in which he was at the sad moment of the fatal accident at the mill. Had matters really depended on the knowledge and management of the most excellent divine, they would soon have been at ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... City Hall to suit your plans? I can readily believe that. If you can convince me that I ought not to run for mayor, do so. I can accept any reasonable argument. But bluster will do no good. For a man of your accredited ability, you are making a poor move, even a fatal one." ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... matured reflecting powers would insist upon informing him of the fearful lapse from reasonableness that lay in this infatuation. It threw him into a sweat. What if now, at last, he were doomed to do penance for his past emotional wanderings (in a material sense) by being chained in fatal fidelity to an object that his intellect despised? One night he dreamt that he saw dimly masking behind that young countenance 'the Weaver of Wiles' herself, 'with all her subtle ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... all your War be freed: Oh, let me not explain that fatal Line, for fear it mean, you shall be freed ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn |
