"Ruin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been ruined by him and those like him. All his life he had not planted one tree in his own garden, nor grown one blade of grass; and living among the living, he had not saved one fly; he had done nothing but destroy and ruin, and ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... organized—the Shannon, the Liffey, and the Foyle—and the campaign will be entirely predatory or guerilla in its conduct. The British Coast Guard stations will fall easy conquests, their number and isolation contributing to their ruin; while from the Wicklow Mountains, through all the rocky fastnesses of Ireland, the cottagers will descend upon the British garrisons, maintaining perpetual and bloody rebellion till the better news comes across the sea or the patience of England ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... I must tell you all—my madness and my ruin will be completed if I am left to my father's will. I know what is hanging over me. He is only waiting till I am of age—at Midsummer, and the year of mourning is over for poor Oliver—I am sure no one mourns for him more ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all!" said half a dozen low voices (every ruin in India becomes sooner or later a dwelling place of snakes, and the old summerhouse was alive with cobras). "Stand still, Little Brother, for thy feet may ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... sainted mother died; And such the sounds which, while I strove To wake a lay of war or love, Came marring all the festal mirth, Appalling me who gave them birth, And, disobedient to my call, Wailed loud through Bothwell's bannered hall. Ere Douglases, to ruin driven, Were exiled from their native heaven.— O! if yet worse mishap and woe My master's house must undergo, Or aught but weal to Ellen fair Brood in these accents of despair, No future bard, sad Harp! shall fling Triumph or rapture from thy string; One short, one final strain shall ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... wonderfully good fortune; his tub was launched so neatly, and ballasted so nicely by him sitting in the bottom, that it shipped but a splash of water, and he floated away, unhurt and scarcely wet at all, amidst the general ruin. ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... sense of degradation! If such supreme fortune befall us once, we cannot hope for it a second time. Men of true greatness, whose strength and worth are veiled by poetic grace, and who charm by some high spiritual power, men made to be adored, beware of love! Love will ruin you, and ruin the woman of your heart. This is the burden of my cry as I ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... anxious about my health, dear girl!" said Mrs. Montgomery, as the bride moved to another part of the room. "She thinks me failing rapidly. And, without doubt, the foundations of this earthly house are giving way; but I trust, that ere it fall into ruin, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens, will be ready for ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... quite as well, and who knew their family and connections, put Andrew also on the quarter-deck; and what was the consequence? Why, they are now both post-captains, commanding fine frigates. So you see, going on board of a man-of-war, which they conceived as their ruin, was the means of their rising to rank and riches, for they have been very lucky in the service. I heard Captain Archibald tell the story himself one day as I helped at dinner in the cabin when I was ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... leaving and now very violently went. "That's your tone, is it? I might have known! That's all you can say, is it? To see me ruin my life and then reproach me! Ruin my life! It's not I that's ruined my life. It's you. There, now I've told you! I can see things now. What sort of a chance have I ever had? What sort of a home have I ever had? Have I ever had a mother? When I was a kid did ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... a dozen pretenders to the throne. As he travels about, he beholds signs of mourning and despair, crowds of beggars, people dying of hunger, a broken bridge which no one is mending, an abandoned suburb which is going to ruin, fields choked with weeds, the blackened walls of burned houses. Such sights and impressions, repeated from childhood to old age (and we must remember that this has actually been the state of things in what are now the fairest parts of the globe), cannot fail to deepen whatever elements ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... you, Socrates (Ischomachus replied). It is neither knowledge nor lack of knowledge in these husbandmen which causes some to be well off, while others are in difficulties; nor will you ever hear such tales afloat as that this or that estate has gone to ruin because the sower failed to sow evenly, or that the planter failed to plant straight rows of plants, or that such an one, [1] being ignorant what soil was best suited to bear vines, had set his plants in sterile ground, or that another [2] was in ignorance that fallow must ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... not do. Good DEEDS are demanded,—actions founded upon truth and justice, and in accordance with nature's irrevocable laws. We boast of our greatness, and power, and intelligence. Of what avail are all these, if they will not save us from national ruin? What boots it that a slumbering giant dreams of his strength while he is falling upon the bosom of a burning lake? The mightiest empires have sunk to oblivion. Are we soon ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... maimed, and even murdered the unhappy sufferers, through a wantonness of barbarity. They circulated letters demanding sums of money from certain individuals, on pain of reducing their houses to ashes, and their families to ruin; and even set fire to the house of a rich merchant in Bristol, who had refused to comply with their demand. The same species of villany was practised in different parts of the kingdom; so that the government ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... you that I dare not," cried the ruffled page. "It would ruin me not only with her majesty, but with the reigning emperor. The widowed empress has no more voice in state affairs, and the emperor never will suffer her to have any, for he has all the power to himself, and he never means to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Avoiding the destructive paws, he leaped in and away, and then in, all the while employing the thing in his hand until Obe's life-stuff had run its course in crimson ruin. ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... sense of the divinity of her nature, of the worth of her soul, of the dangers to which she will be exposed, of the honor and felicity to which she is capable of ascending with Thy blessing, and of the ruin in this world and the misery in the world to come which springs from wicked passion and conduct. Give them grace to check the first risings of forbidden inclinations in her breast, to be her defense against the temptations incident to childhood ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... lusting to be seen. His leprosy's so perfect that men call him clean! Listen the long, sincere, and liberal bray Of the earnest Puller at another's hay 'Gainst aught that dares to tug the other way, Quite void of fears With all that noise of ruin round his ears! Yonder the people cast their caps o'erhead, And swear the threaten'd doom is ne'er to dread That's come, though not yet past. All front the horror and are none aghast; Brag of their full-blown rights and liberties, Nor once surmise When each man gets his ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... to make him see it? That was another matter, and one which staggered the faithful, anxious girl. To run away! What folly, and what sure ruin! But, if Collin would not see that ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... high heels and her shocking openwork stockings and her negligible dress and her exposed throat and her fur stole, and she was so delicious and so absurd and so futile and so sure of her power that—that—well, you aren't going to countermand any new frock. That chit has the right to ruin me—not because of anything she's done, but because she is. I am ready to commit peccadilloes, but not ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... quality than formerly. Lavezaris complains of Portuguese hostility and intrigues; a Bornean king also has attempted an expedition against the Spaniards. The governor sends a cargo of cinnamon to Felipe; if only he had ships in which to transport that precious commodity, he could ruin the Portuguese trade therein. This enterprising official has sent to New Spain plants of ginger, tamarind, cinnamon, and pepper; the first two are already flourishing there. He suggests that it would be well ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... well-contented with the present state of things, and apt to get a little impatient at any talk about national ruin and agricultural distress. 'They talk of public distress,' said the General this day to me at dinner, as he smacked a glass of rich burgundy and cast his eyes about the ample board: 'They talk of public distress, but where do we find it, sir? I see none; I see no reason anyone ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... man, Todd," answered the parson, and he was casting his eye over the huddled people before him when a wail came clear and distinct from within the ruin. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... green hinterland of forest which lies below the southern slopes. Trees yet to die stand in passive bands at their feet; the stark, black trunks of trees long dead rise here and there in spots where the sand-glacier has done its work of ruin ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... upon the floor, and the House laughed itself almost into hysteria, whilst the hapless orator stood waving in apologetic dumb show. Now here was a tragedy indeed: to have the dream of a whole lifetime at last actually realised and concrete and then to see it go to ruin in that way. So swift a transition from the very height of triumph to the very gulf! When our laugh was over I am sure there was not one of us who did not profoundly sympathise with the sufferer, and Mr Newdigate never attempted ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... "an' I think you'll like the way I've done it. I couldn't stand her follerin' me about, an' sayin' 'ow they did things in Hingland, while her red-faced girl was a-spendin' the days on the airy steps, a-lookin' through the railin's. 'Now, Mrs. Bowlin',' says I, 'it'll just be the ruin of you an' the death of me if you keep on makin' a picter of yourself like that lonely Indian a-sittin' on a pinnacle in the jographys, watchin' the inroads of civilization, with a locomotive an' a cog-wheel in front, an' the buffalo an' ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... property of the receiver; that debts may be paid and credits received agreeably to the customs that have been ever in force beneath the heavens and on the face of the earth. By the observance of the laws a country is made to flourish, and where they are neglected or violated ruin ensues. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... such a basis," Amherst broke out with sudden emphasis. He walked across the room, and came back to her side with a determined face. "It's a delusion, a deception," he exclaimed, "to think I can stand by any longer and see things going to ruin at Westmore! If I've made you think so, I've unconsciously deceived us both. As long as you're my wife we've only one honour between us, and that honour is mine ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... many vices of the south, spreading their corrupting influence through the social body, that of gambling stands first. Confined to no one grade of society, it may be found working ruin among rich and poor, old and young. Labour being disreputable, one class of men affect to consider themselves born gentlemen, while the planter is ever ready to indulge his sons with some profession they seldom practise, and which too ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... hear my tale ere I require thine. Yesterday I should have called myself the last priestess of Apollo in this fallen land, to-day I have neither shrine nor altar. Moved by I know not what madness, my countrymen have long ago forsaken the worship of the Gods. The temples crumbled into ruin, prayer was no longer offered or sacrifice made as of old, the priestly revenues were plundered; the sacred vessels carried away; the voice of oracles became dumb; the divine tongue of Greece was forgotten, its scrolls of wisdom mouldered ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... the afternoon of next day when we reached the landing-place; but we immediately set out to see the ruin, if ruin it can be called, for it is almost in perfect preservation. After traversing a broad extent of ground covered with rank grass and prickly plants, we came to the customary palm-grove, and then entered what romancers would probably call the 'good ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... manufacturers thought themselves likely to be ruined by the introduction of cotton cloth, "to the ruin of the staple trade of the kingdom," and succeeded in placing an excise ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... were called in, and a long debate ensued, their two countrymen charging them with the ruin of all their labour, and a design to murder them; all which they owned before, and therefore could not deny now. Upon the whole, the Spaniards acted the moderators between them; and as they had obliged the two Englishmen not to hurt the three while they were naked and unarmed, so ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... "His zeal will ruin us in time. He is deucedly in the way," he continued, in his usual tone of easy cynicism. "We should have let him into our plans from the first, and then if he chose to take no part in them we would ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... me in dazed admiration. "Then," I went on, "there are the retail merchants of Fredonia. Has it ever occurred to them, in their excitement in favor of this road, that it'll ruin them? Where will the shopping be done if the women can get to Chicago in two hours and ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... supplementing the weakness of the one by the strength of the other, all the fine things upon which the beauty, durability, and growth of human relations depend,—these are what decide the future of her marriage. These she misses while she insists on her rules; and ruin is often the end. Study the causes back of divorces and separations, the brutal criminal causes aside, and one finds that usually they begin in trivial things,—an irritating habit or an offensive opinion persisted in on the one side and not endured philosophically on the other; a petty ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... the former disappeared from the sight of men, he was the victim of nameless tortures. As he told the tale of what he had suffered on the night that followed his arrest; of the ghastly tortures and mutilations which had wrecked his manhood, and left him the pitiable ruin he then was, the White Man writhed in sympathy, and was filled with a ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... foretop-mast stay-sail was blown clean away to leeward, floating in the air like a white kite against the dark background of the sky. Finally, the foretop-gallant mast was carried by the board to complete the ruin, leaving the ship rolling like a wreck upon the waters, though, happily, no lives as yet ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... who had taught in a manner so sublime, how great losses should be mourned? We once heard it remarked by a native of his own country: "these pages could only have been written by a Pole." All that the funeral train of an entire nation weeping its own ruin and death can be imagined to feel of desolating woe, of majestic sorrow, wails in the musical ringing of this passing bell, mourns in the tolling of this solemn knell, as it accompanies the mighty escort on its way to the still city of the Dead. The intensity ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... yet, I think. But I cannot face her and tell her that the man she is going to marry has misconducted himself. I don't even know whether she ought to be told. Knowing as she does that I dislike him, she will suspect me, and think that I want to ruin her match. I simply don't know what to make of such a thing. I trust your judgment. What ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... those rare cases, in which anything is justifiable. Seton had his chance at the trial. He chose to keep silence. I do not praise him or blame him for that. It was the only course open to a man of honor. I maintain that his silence then binds him to silence for ever. He has no right to ruin my life and the happiness of my wife by subtle threats, to hold those foolish letters over our heads, like a thunderbolt held ever in suspense. You are ambitious, I believe, Mr. Aynesworth! Get me those letters, ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to say that it is with you as with us, where, if a man becomes so involved in a quarrel that he is challenged, it is against him and almost ruin to him whether he fights or does not fight? Or is public opinion decidedly in favor of the man who does not fight, and against the man who does? For instance, suppose you ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... destruction upon earth. Go and proclaim unto them that they shall find neither peace nor pardon. For every time they take joy in their offspring, they shall see the violent death of their sons, and sigh over the ruin of their children. They will pray and supplicate evermore, but never shall they attain to mercy ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... leaping stags along the lake, the birds singing morning awake,—Shakespeare incorporates all these in himself. He is what may be named, in a spiritual sense, this world's animal delight in life. There is a view of life sullen as November; and to be sympathetic with this mood is to ruin life and put out all its lights. Shakespeare's resiliency of spirit would teach us what a dispassionate study of our own nature would have taught us, that to succumb to this gloom is not natural; to feel the weight of burdens all the time would conduct to insanity ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... brighter skies. They were as bright as they could ever be, of that she was sure; her hopes lay within the small circumference that Sara Wrandall made possible for her. She knew that her peril, her ruin lay in the desire to step outside that narrow circle, for out there the world was cold ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... AND UNBELIEF, and thus into ruin, since our salvation depends on believing the truth as it ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... don't mean the first Rudiments only, (That would be an Affront to them;) I am now speaking of those who take upon them the part of a Legislator in the most finished part in Singing; and should we then wonder that the good Taste is near lost, and that the Profession is going to Ruin? So mischievous a Pretension prevails not only among those, who can barely be said to sing, but among the meanest instrumental Performers; who, though they never sung, nor know how to sing, pretend not only to teach, but to perfect, and find some that ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... forced to leave it. Never had it all been so precious; never had the beauty and luxury of it seemed so great. All that was nothing, though, to the thought of his children, especially of that youngest child, whom his heart was so wrapt up in, and whom he was going to leave to shame and ruin. The words she had spoken from her pride in him, her ignorant censure of that drunkard, as a man who had better die since he had become nothing but a burden and disgrace to his family, stung on as if by incessant repetition. He had crazy ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... Lillyston indignantly, as he caught the almost diabolical expression of Brogten's face. "Not content with doing your best to ruin Home, you are using personal violence to one not so strong as yourself. Come, sir, you have felt what I can do before. Drop that whip, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... disgraced? No; if that be Matilda's child, tell me, and I will bear, as man may do, the last calamity which the will of Heaven may inflict. If, as I have all reason to think, the tale be an imposture, speak and give me the sole comfort to which I would cling amidst the ruin ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Malachi; "what threatened your ruin has turned out to your advantage. Next year you will see every thing green and fresh as before; and, as Martin says, you have to thank the fire for clearing away more land for you than a whole regiment of soldiers could have done in two ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... have never, like the Wesley family, heard "that mighty leading angel," who "drew after him the third part of heaven's sons," scratching in my cupboard. I have never been enticed to sign any of those delusive bonds which have been the ruin of so many poor creatures; and, having always been an indifferent horse man, I have been careful not to venture myself on ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... knew him well enough; knew him incapable of love apart from passion, and that to him there was no sacredness in maiden chastity or wifely vows. So he but gained his end he cared no whit what followed after; ruin, broken hearts, lost souls, a man slain now and then to keep the scale from tipping—all were as one to him, or to the Francis Falconnet ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Liberalism afforded to them absolute proof that any abandonment of the ancient creed and the revered confession meant ruin both to State and Church. So they followed the time-honoured practice of the Dutch race; they separated, broke away from a species of liberty which was not of their liking, and became 'Anti-Revolutionists' and 'Separatists' ('Afgescheidenen'); Calvin, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... attendants of lover and husband, between whom she sits in state with great gravity. The sub-marriages generally last twenty years together, and the lady often commands the poor lover's estate, even to the utter ruin of his family. These connections, indeed, are as seldom begun by any real passion as other matches; for a man makes but an ill figure that is not in some commerce of this nature; and a woman looks out for a lover as soon as she's ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... The missionaries were to stay as priests, and to teach the Indians in schools, but the Mission lands were to be divided so that each Indian family might have a small farm to cultivate. From that time the Missions began to decay and were finally given up to ruin. ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... Applying the term with all its English associations in such a state of things; to one who had only a limited right they gave an absolute right, from another because he had not an absolute right they took away all right, drove whole classes of people to ruin and despair, filled the country with banditti, created a feeling that nothing was secure, and produced, with the best intentions, a disorganization of society which had not been produced in that country ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... 'have pity, protect us; when have I been impudent? Before God Almighty, I swear it was beyond my strength. Sofron Yakovlitch has taken a dislike to me; for some reason he dislikes me—God be his judge! He will ruin me utterly, your honour.... The last ... here ... the last boy ... and him he....' (A tear glistened in the old man's wrinkled yellow eyes). 'Have pity, gracious ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... trade might undoubtedly be put under wholesome regulations, and made productive of great commercial advantages. But, if it were abolished, it would render the city of London one scene of bankruptcy and ruin. It became the house to take care, while they were giving way to the goodness of their hearts, that they did not contribute to the ruin of the mercantile interests of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... the civil courts came into play; but within the Assembly, surely its own laws and votes prevailed. However, this distinction could bring little comfort to the Assembly at present; for the illegality of the deposal was now past all dispute; and the attempt to punish, or even ruin a number of professional brethren for not enforcing a by-law, when the by-law itself had been found irreconcilable to the law of the land, greatly displeased the public, as vindictive, oppressive, and useless to the purposes of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... when he reduced it.[490] Dor was one of the places where the shell-fish which produced the purple dye were most abundant, and remained in the hands of the Phoenicians during all the political changes which swept over Syria and Palestine to a late period.[491] It had fallen to ruin, however, by the time of Jerome,[492] and the present ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... hysterical abuse of a large part of the American press. Both those gentlemen would have been openly accused of being the tools of (if not actually subsidised by) the corporations, and (but for Mr. Bonar Law's company) Mr. Lloyd George's attitude would, I think, be sufficient to ruin an Administration. These statements contain no reflection on the American point of view. The conditions are such that that point of view may, in America, be the right one. But the absurdity is that Englishmen hear these things, or read of them ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... a few days before had been a field of carnage where the American boys had driven back the Germans. Walking in the trenches and looking out, in the clear moonlight, over the field of desolation and ruin, and thinking of the inferno that had been enacted there only so recently, he suddenly felt his foot rest on what seemed to be a soft object. Taking his "ever-ready" flash from his pocket, he shot a ray at his feet, only to realize that his foot was resting ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... to the core of his nature and his strenuous and determined efforts to pay his debts, or rather the debts of the firm with which he had become involved, has always appeared to us one of the grandest things in biography. When his publisher and printer broke down, ruin seemed to stare him in the face. There was no want of sympathy for him in his great misfortune, and friends came forward who offered to raise money enough to enable him to arrange with his creditors. "No! "said he, proudly; "this right hand shall work it all off!" "If we lose ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... swiftly, King," went on Rachel, "and let them depart at once, for know that this white chief and his servant are under the protection of the Heavens, and if harm comes to them, then I lay my curse upon the land, and it shall break up in blood and ruin. Bid them say to Darrien, that the Inkosazana-y-Zoola, she who stood with him once on the rock in the river while the lightnings fell and the lions roared about them, sends ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... The predominance of England in the affairs of the United Kingdom is secured by sanctions which in the long run can neither be defied nor set aside; the constitution which does not recognise this predominance is doomed to ruin. That its overthrow would be just no one dare predict; the future is as uncertain as it is dark. A main reason why a wise man must deprecate the weak surrender by Englishmen of rightful power is the dread that, if in a moment of irritation they reassert their strength, they may ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... antiquity. No sooner had he finished his education under the centaur Chiron, than he went boldly to Pelias, who had banished him, and mounted the throne, and demanded the kingdom. Pelias, for various reasons, durst not appeal to arms, but, to accomplish the warlike youth's ruin, advised him to undertake an expedition against AEetes, king of Colchis, who had murdered their relation Phryxus, and, on his return, promised to resign to him the crown. To this proposal Jason agreed, and undertook the voyage to obtain the golden fleece, so celebrated in history ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... their heads over him and spoke of the wild devil that had come upon him because the woman he loved was being tortured to death by her husband only a mile away. He was drinking, they said, and his farm was going to ruin, and he would speak to nobody—and they shook their heads. It was not through cowardice that Peter had avoided him, but since those three years at Dawson's he had been lonely and silent himself, and Stephen had never sent for him as he would have ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... driven. It is that in which boys build their snow-houses. I shall not easily forget how, once, accompanying a piscatorial friend on the Loch of Curran, near Ballyskelligs, in Kerry, I stepped on a small island to visit a Norman ruin there, and saw, besides the ruin and a stone cross, one of these small rough domes, testifying, by its venerable simplicity, that it had stood there centuries before the Norman church beside it. But the peculiar characteristics of the architecture ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... was another form of the intense curiosity to discover the motive principle of things, the why and how they act, that appeared in the boy's love of engineering and of anatomy. The unity of this motive and the accident which bade fair to ruin his life at the outset, and actually levied a lifelong tax upon his bodily vigour, are best told ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... not to be outdone in bidding for unholy notoriety, had the insolence to invite this blasphemous charlatan to their riot of revolutionary ranting called a 'protest meeting.' He and other creatures of his ilk, summoning the forces which are organizing red ruin in our city, proceed to rave at the police and the courts for denying to mobs of strikers the right to throw brickbats at honest workers looking for jobs, and to hold the pistol of the boycott at the heads of employers who dare to ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... should break his promise of silence, and might probably by that means involve the safety, perhaps the life, of this woman, who had risked her own to preserve his, and who had voluntarily endowed him with this treasure,—a generosity which might thus become the means of her ruin. This was not to be thought of. Besides, he was a stranger, and, for a time at least, unprovided with means of establishing his own character and credit to the satisfaction of a stupid or obstinate country magistrate.—"I will think over. . ,the matter more maturely," he said; "Perhaps there ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... maturely weighed what was necessary to be done, we cannot foresee, for this fort and city of Manhattans, in further resistance, aught else than misery, sorrow, and conflagration; the dishonor of women, the murder of children, and in a word the absolute ruin of fifteen hundred innocent souls, only two hundred and fifty of whom ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... Ireland can supply her with: She knows therefore, that there is no Cause for Rivalship, and if there was, she wou'd exert herself to discourage the Manufactures of Foreigners, before she wou'd attempt to ruin a Sister Nation, so closely united to her in the great Cause of Religion and Liberty, and all the weighty Interests that tie Nations together. This is so evedent, so sacred a Truth, that I am so far from being jealous of Opposition and Rivalship from that Quarter, that I am confident of all ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... packers. All these laws have already justified their enactment. The interstate commerce law, for instance, has rather amusingly falsified the predictions, both of those who asserted that it would ruin the railroads and of those who asserted that it did not go far enough and would accomplish nothing. During the last five months the railroads have shown increased earnings and some of them unusual ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... successful speculator, he suffered himself to be involved in transactions of an extensive nature, which he was led to believe would double his wealth. They proved to be the fraudulent schemes of sharpers, planned for their own profit and my father's ruin. It was in vain that he was warned of their designs—he was infatuated, and would listen to no counsel but that of his treacherous betrayers, who plunged him deeper and deeper into obligations and liabilities, ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... river's, whose winter flood it had been safer to breast; no roar but ocean's, whose stormiest waves it had been safer to ride, than encounter the flood of city temptations, which has wrecked their virtue and swept them into ruin." ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... reproofs, and exhortations to concord. It had been fortunate for the proprietors, if they had removed one or both of the commanders; but every one had too much concern to retain his friend in post, so that private views proved the cause of public ruin.—Harris. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... kingdoms arisen each from its mother earth, as it were in obedience to some inward impulse of inevitable necessity, but amid constant assimilation and rejection, ever repeated wars to secure their future, and a ceaseless struggle with opposing elements that threatened their ruin. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Germanophobia, were bound to damage me in the eyes of the United States Government and public opinion. It is thus obviously absurd to accuse me of being responsible in any way for the acts in question, seeing that any such instigation, or even approval on my part, would have involved the utter ruin ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... no need of you, your ways, or your place. But the man Allan would rule or he would ruin. He overthrew and killed our chief, the great Kamrou himself—Kamrou the Terrible! To us he brought dissensions. From us he bore the patriarch away and slew him, and then made us a great ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... you to go and see for yourself. Outrageous!" He snapped the last word out in almost one syllable, then he turned away muttering: "Do you imagine a case like this will help my professional reputation? One more would ruin ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... much more easily put than answered. Descartes, determined as he was to strip off all the garments which the intellect weaves for itself, forgot this gossamer shirt of the "self;" to the great detriment, and indeed ruin, of his toilet when he began ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... following is known as the mile drift, and had in ancient times formed the approach to the gates of Honham Castle, the seat of the ancient and honourable family of de la Molle (sometimes written "Delamol" in history and old writings). Honham Castle was now nothing but a ruin, with a manor house built out of the wreck on one side of its square, and the broad way that led to it from the high road which ran from Boisingham,[*] the local country town, was a drift ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the empire, and should rule the nation; this would be a nobler purpose; but one doesn't now-a-days hear of the very existence of such persons! Hence, the study of books makes them worse than they ever were before. But it isn't the books that ruin them; the misfortune is that they make improper use of books! That is why study doesn't come up to ploughing and sowing and trading; as these pursuits exercise no serious pernicious influences. As far, however, as you and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... was done, the place saved from hideous ruin by an explosion; and as the last man rushed from the place, the energy my father had brought to bear was ended, and I had just time, in response to Morgan's warning, to save him from falling as he ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... "the five years didn't completely ruin you, after all. Your nose still turns up and your cheeks still dimple when you smile. You have a nice tan and your hair's grown long again. Concentrated food hasn't hurt your figure, either." She turned this way and that before the ...
— The Passenger • Kenneth Harmon
... introduced to a barrister, a member of the assembly and proprietor of an estate. He was in the assembly at the time the abolition act was under discussion. He said that it was violently opposed, until it was seen to be inevitable. Many were the predictions made respecting the ruin which would be brought upon the colony; but these predictions had failed, and abolition was now regarded as the salvation of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in a low voice, "I believe that man's been up to some trick again. You know how he treated us over the Crusade? Now I suppose he's going to ruin us!" The satisfaction of a justified prophet seemed to mingle with the dismay of a wife and the anger of a sufferer; Lady Richard had expected nothing less ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... about you. One of us has to be sacrificed, you or me. I can see only one thing. If I stick to you, my machinery will be smashed and my works will be burned. I'm deeply sorry this has happened, and I don't deny for a moment the great value of your services; but, after all, I can't ruin myself ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... much against my will, I consented to leave him there for three days under the charge of Mrs. Hayes, since it was evident that it was impossible to inform the police where he was without telling them also who was the murderer, and I could not see how that murderer could be punished without ruin to my unfortunate James. You asked for frankness, Mr. Holmes, and I have taken you at your word, for I have now told you everything without an attempt at circumlocution or concealment. Do you in turn be ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and a keen wit will carry me through; while the least hesitation might, indeed, ruin us. These English first ask, and then take without asking, if you tell them no. Corpo di Bacco! who ever heard, either, of a lazzarone's refusing ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... all sides. Under the exercise of these, matters will go on smoothly and, if possible, more prosperously. Without them, everything must rub; the wheels of government will clog; our enemies will triumph, and, by throwing their weight into the disaffected scale, may accomplish the ruin of the goodly fabric we ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... when it is going down, of turning away from unwholesome subjects just because we know them to be so unwelcome and threatening, and of buying a moment's exemption from discomfort at the price of a life's ruin? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... never in the most turbulent times of old, witnessed such outrage. Queen's Square is but half standing; half is a smoking ruin. As you may be apprehensive for my safety, it is right to let you know that my friends and I are undisturbed, except by our fears for the progress of this mob-government, which is already somewhat broken into parties, who wander stupidly about, ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Negro;" for this is the bed-rock, in their opinion, of Negro evangelization! "Send him to Manual Labor Schools," cries out another set of philanthropists. "Hic haec, hoc," is going to prove the ruin of the Negro" says the Rev. Steele, an erudite Southern Savan. "You must begin at the bottom with the Negro," says another eminent authority—as though the Negro had been living in the clouds, and had never reached the bottom. Says the Honorable George T. Barnes, of Georgia—"The kind of ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... a large, open square, on the farther side of which the immense mass of the cathedral was seen rising, like a gray and venerable ruin. The wall which formed the front of it, and which terminated above in the unfinished mason work of the towers, was very irregular in its outline on the top, having remained just as it was left when the builders stopped their work ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... Before those formidable frowns and scowls The dogs fled, tail-tucked, with affrighted howls, And horses, terrified, with flying feet O'erthrew the apple-stands along the street, Involving the metropolis in vast Financial ruin! Man himself, aghast, Retreated east and west and north and south Before the menace of that twisted mouth, Till Jove, in answer to their prayers, sent Night To veil the ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... Speak not of it! How damp and cold it was! How my bones ached And my head reeled, when I was working there! I am too old. I will stay here in Rome, Where all is old and crumbling, like myself, To hopeless ruin. All ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... he finished. After yet another harangue at the Maison aux Piliers on 15th June 1358, he was acclaimed by people with "Navarre! Navarre!" and elected the Captain of Paris. An obscure period of plot and counterplot followed which culminated in the ruin of Marcel and his followers. Froissart accuses the provost of a treacherous intent to open the gates of St. Honore and of St. Antoine to Navarre's English mercenaries at midnight on 31st July, and gives a dramatic ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... of people will be delighted to see you back! First, dear old Dr. Marshall, who is in despair over the Institute, of which he declares only a melancholy ruin will be left if you do not speedily return. Indeed, it is pretty bad. The boys are quite terrible, and even my "angels" are becoming infected. Your special pet, Coley, after reducing poor Mr. Locke to the verge of nervous prostration, has "quit," ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... he does and what he doesn't do," Apollonie lamented, louder than ever. "The poor master is sick, and all his servant does is to stumble about the place, not asking after his needs and letting everything go to rack and ruin. Not a cabbage-head or a pea-plant is to be seen. Not one strawberry or raspberry, no golden apricots on the wall or a single little dainty peach. The disorder everywhere is frightful. When I think how wonderfully it used ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... tell all the things that he has hid; I know not how to cheat you. Yes, Rosate A ruin is, from which the smoke ascends. The bishop, lord of Monferrato, guided The German arms against Chieri and Asti, Now turned to dust; that shepherd pitiless Did thus avenge his own offenses on His flying flocks; himself with torches armed The German hand; houses and churches saw Destroyed, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... she crossed his path, how often warned those whom he had planned to injure! Yes, she was a sorceress, for she knew too much about his ways. But now his time would come, for he too knew something concerning her that must ruin her forever. He had known it for some time, but only now was it possible to accuse her. He shook his fist at the cliffs in silent rage; the thought of taking revenge filled his heart with sinister joy, and made him forget the fatigue and ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... the forests. It ravages the future production of the timberlands. It pays no heed to the young growth of the forest. It does not provide for the proper growth and development of the future forest. Our vast stretches of desolate and deserted cut-over lands are silent witnesses to the ruin which has been worked by the practice of destructive lumbering. Fortunately, a change for the better is now developing. With the last of our timberland riches in sight on the Pacific Coast, the lumbering industry is coming to see that it must prepare for the future. Consequently, ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack
... What would my ruin matter anyway? Put it, that the making public of our claim—our right to each other—is to be allowed by any possibility to affect the cause of a nation—the justice of that cause: doesn't that fact, if true, show that the whole basis ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... go over the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where the hobgoblins are; where the light is darkness; where the way is full of snares, pits, traps, and gins. They told me also of Giant Despair, of Doubting Castle, and of the ruin that the Pilgrims met with there. Further they said I must go over the Enchanted Ground: which was dangerous. And that, after all this, I should find a river, over which I should find no bridge, and that that river did be betwixt me and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
