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Shatter   Listen
noun
Shatter  n.  A fragment of anything shattered; used chiefly or soley in the phrase into shatters; as, to break a glass into shatters.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shatter" Quotes from Famous Books



... many years longer than it does now. The longest lived men and women have, as a rule, been those who have attained great mental and moral development. They have lived in the upper region of a higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the friction, and the discords which weaken and shatter most lives. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... you and I could but conspire To grasp this Sorry Scheme of things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits, and then Enfold it nearer to our ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten • Oliver Herford

... thou and I with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits - and then Remould it nearer to the ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... geographer Karl Andree. I eagerly seized his books, first choosing his "Axioms of the Philosophy of the Future," and afterwards devoured everything he had written which the library contained. And at that time I was grateful to my friend the geographer for his advice. True, Feuerbach seemed to me to shatter many things which from a child I had held sacred; yet I thought I discovered behind the falling masonry the image of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... shelter. There she became the mother of two children—the poor creature! Just the seventh part of my mother joy! Who can deny that I am fortunate? Who will doubt that I shall remain happy? Fortune would have a hard time if she undertook to shatter my happiness. Take this or that one from my treasured children; but when would the number of them dwindle to the sickly two of Latona? Away with your sacrifices! Take the laurel out of your hair. Go back to your homes and let me never see ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... Archbishop has them absolved and blest: Whereon his grief and pity grow afresh. Then says Rollanz: "Fair comrade Olivier, You were the son of the good count Reinier, Who held the march by th' Vale of Runier; To shatter spears, through buckled shields to bear, And from hauberks the mail to break and tear, Proof men to lead, and prudent counsel share, Gluttons in field to frighten and conquer, No land has known a ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... for striking that, blow, led him to suppose Mr. Sowerby might be meditating on the extent of the young lady's fortune. He talked randomly of money, in a way to shatter Nataly's conception of him. He talked of City affairs at table, as it had been his practice to shun the doing; and hit the resounding note on mines, which have risen in the market like the crest of a serpent, casting a certain ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came, Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame; Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame. For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no more— God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... his companion, was now examining the infernal machine, which was a metallic canister containing about two pounds of dynamite, enough to shatter the aeronef to atoms. If the explosion did not destroy her at once, it would do so in her fall. Nothing was easier than to place this cartridge in a corner of the cabin, so that it would blow in the deck and tear away ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... in musing mood, A stalwart man was placed, With veteran aspect, like a tower By war, not time, defaced, Whose shatter'd walls exhibit Power Contending still ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits—and then Re-mould it nearer ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith

... the offensive, a certain portion of the artillery should concentrate its fire upon the point where a decisive blow is to be struck. Its first use is to shatter the enemy's line, and then it assists with its fire the attack of ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... might surely—?" He pursued the idea silently and came to a determination. Yet the contemplated action was never destined to be performed, for now an accident so trifling as the chance glimmer of a lucifer match contributed to remodel the scheme of his life and wholly shatter immediate resolutions. Craving a whiff of tobacco, without which he had been since morning, Will lighted his pipe, and the twinkle of flame as he did so showed his face to a man passing across the bridge at that moment. He stopped in ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... counted forty-four knots in his buckskin fringe from the village to the exit, each knot denoting an abrupt curve or angle in the winding canyons. The Topocobya Trail descends a sheer cliff of stupendous majesty, and the Wallapai Trail is enough to shatter the nervous system of any but the most experienced; but the Hopi Trail ascent out of the Canyon is different, in that, in several places, it passes through narrow clefts, with ponderous, overhanging rocks, the whole course barely wide enough to permit ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... wildest fury of the elements, and the power of the sea, and the motion of nature, and of the throes of human desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is that something in the soul which says,—Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere; master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, master of nature and passion and death, and of ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... for the public to understand that the murder of W. C. Brann did not remove all of the abuses from which this country suffers, and the frauds and fakes which prey upon it. Assassination may shatter an instrument, but it cannot conquer a cause. There is still work for the iconoclast to do, and it will be done. It will continue to place its brand upon the forehead of the seducer, the whining hypocrite, the sniveling rogue, the confidence man, the fakir and the fool. It is proposed ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... turret, shatter'd, and outworn, Stands venerably proud; too proud to mourn Its long lost grandeur: fir trees grow around, Aye dropping their hard fruit upon ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats

... equal to our own fleet. The Allies might have fought these, but such was not the present game. They were there to protect their side; while the Allies were out first to destroy, to smash the morale of the soldiers below, to shatter and mutilate and terrorize those in the trenches before our infantry, now probably starting out, should be where their own conclusive ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry

... neighboring restaurant to send in her meals. Then he had gone off on a sea voyage. Holt had seen him driving his double team the day before, evidently on a round of visits. The sea, apparently, had done him little good. Nothing but age, no doubt, would shatter that superb constitution, but he had lost his ruddy color and his face was drawn ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... text-book on the authenticity of the Gospels. He is "perfectly clear" as to the fourth Gospel being a forgery; again for reasons which he alone has discovered. [46] Paul is the first inventor of Christian dogma, without any doubt or hesitation. But the undoubted results of modern science ... shatter to pieces the whole fabric. It is as certain as that 2 2 4 that the world was not created in the manner described ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... wasted places of the land, Charr'd skeletons of cities, circling walls Of Roman might, and towers that shatter'd stand Of that lost world survivors, forth she calls Her new creation:—O'er the land is wrought The happy villagedom by English tribes From Elbe and Baltic brought; Red kine light up with life the ravaged plain; The forest glooms are ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... prepared for him, the thought of a week in the society of one so upright and pure as Charlie became positively odious. The effort to conceal his new condition would be almost impossible, and yet to admit it to him would be, he felt, to shatter for ever the only friendship he really prized. He racked his brain for expedients and excuses to avert the visit, but without avail. If he pleaded illness Charlie would be the first to rush to his bedside; if he pleaded hard work Charlie ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... Gray attacked by the lumberman. The jacks take a hand. Hippy uses a firebrand as a weapon. Overlanders badly punished. Shots from the forest shatter Peg's wooden leg. Henry paws his way into the fight. The Overlanders meet ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower

... he, that blows he should strike me, To shatter my shield, though sure he is mighty [25] In strife and destruction; but struggling by night we Shall do without edges, dare he to look for Weaponless warfare, and wise-mooded Father 25 The glory apportion, ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin

... cherish them, till a sisterhood of happy flowers sprang up to beautify and gladden the lonely spot where they had fallen. Others learned to heal the wounded insects, whose frail limbs a breeze could shatter, and who, were it not for Fairy hands, would die ere half their happy summer life had gone. Some learned how by pleasant dreams to cheer and comfort mortal hearts, by whispered words of love to save from ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott

... Athenian ship of war at this time was the Trireme, or galley with three ranks of oars. It had at the prow a beak ([Greek: embolon]), with a sharp iron head, which, in a charge, (generally made at the broadside,) was able to shatter the planks of the enemy's vessel. An ordinary trireme carried two hundred men, including the crew and marines. These last ([Greek: epibatai]) were usually ten for each ship, but the number was often increased. The transports ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes

... sovereignties. The new conditions bring them so close together and give them such extravagant powers of mutual injury that they must either sink national pride and dynastic ambitions in subordination to the common welfare of mankind or else utterly shatter one another. It becomes more and more plainly a choice between the League of Free Nations and a famished race of men looting in search of non-existent food amidst the smouldering ruins of civilization. In the end I believe that the common sense of mankind ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... into arms. Further, every cavalry soldier has a sword and a dagger. But the rest, who form the light-armed troops, carry a metal cudgel. For if the foe cannot pierce their metal for pistols and cannot make swords, they attack him with clubs, shatter and overthrow him. Two chains of six spans length hang from the club, and at the end of these are iron balls, and when these aimed at the enemy they surround his neck and drag him to the ground; and in order that they may be able to use the club more easily, they do ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... cyclone, said young man was severely caressed by the elements, and tipped over in such a way as to shatter the right leg, just below the gambrel joint. I therefore started out to deliver a few lectures for his benefit, and in so doing have made a 4,000 mile trip over the Northern Pacific railway, and the Oregon River and Navigation company's road. On the former line the passenger is fed ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... whether you propose to resist the English army? I reply that even if this Government had the wickedness (which, on the whole, I believe), it is wholly lacking in the nerve required to give an order which in my deliberate judgment would shatter for years the civilization of these islands." If the Government does not have the nerve to employ its troops, "It will be for the moon-lighters and the cattle-maimers to conquer Ulster themselves, and it will be for you to show whether you are worse men, or your enemies ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... are insolently secure in a world apparently made for them. The little difficulties which perturb their courtship are nine-tenths of them superficial and external matters, and the end comes as smoothly as a fairy tale's, before doubt has ever had an opportunity to shatter or passion the occasion to purge a spirit. From Hawthorne to the beginnings of naturalism there was hardly a single profound love story written in America. How could there be when green girls were ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... do pitchy, 'tis my pride Vor Jenny Hine to reaeke my zide, An' zee her fling her reaeke, an' reach So vur, an' teaeke in sich a streech; An' I don't shatter hay, an' meaeke Mwore work than needs vor Jenny's reaeke. I'd sooner zee the weaeles' high rows Lik' hedges up above my nose, Than have light work myzelf, an' vind Poor Jeaene a-beaet an' left behind; Vor she would sooner drop ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... resulted in the battle of the Metaurus and the triumph of Rome may be summed up as follows: To overthrow Rome it was necessary to attack her in Italy at the heart of her power, and shatter the strongly linked confederacy of which she was the head. This was the objective. To reach it, the Carthaginians needed a solid base of operations and a secure line of communications. The former was established in Spain by the genius ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... they saw the glaring flame of the Gorm. As they looked, its regular pulsations turned irregular: it leaped and splashed as though it was a stormy, choppy sea. Then it gave one final mighty heave, and the universe seemed to shatter beneath them. The "walls" of the shaft collapsed about them and they were enswathed in a raging ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner

... and the scared look in her eyes gave Philippe a real fright. Hitherto, he had felt towards Marthe only the embarrassment provoked by the annoyance of having to tell a lie. He now suddenly perceived the full gravity of the situation, the peril which threatened Suzanne and which might shatter the happiness of his own household. One blunder ... and everything was discovered. And this thought, instead of clearing his brain forthwith, ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... water. I hold it out at arm's length, so. If I did not hold it, it would drop to the floor and shatter into pieces. Thus I, by a human act, suspend the law of gravitation ... so God!—" There was huzzaing and applause. Several professors uneasily shifted the crossing of their knees ... one or two ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... understood my condition, I determined incontinently to die with all the glory possible. Another more fortunate than I would have succeeded a hundred times already. But I'm bewitched; I am impervious alike to bullets and balls; even the swords seem to fear to shatter themselves upon my skin. Yet I never miss an opportunity; that you must see, after what occurred at dinner. Well, we are going to fight. I'll expose myself like a maniac, giving my adversary all the advantages, but it will avail me nothing. Though he shoot at fifteen ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... grass-grown arches, and made them even too distinctly visible. The splendor of the revelation took away that inestimable effect of dimness and mystery by which the imagination might be assisted to build a grander structure than the Coliseum, and to shatter it with a more picturesque decay. Byron's celebrated description is better than the reality. He beheld the scene in his mind's eye, through the witchery of many intervening years, and faintly illuminated it as if with starlight instead of this broad ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... somebody, such is the philosophy of Whitaker; and the great thing is to know who follows whom. Whitaker knows, and let that, so Nature counsels, comfort you, instead of enraging you; and if you can't be comforted, if you must shatter this hour of peace, think of the ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf

... in me, the traveller, a noble king, and (you know) that I hold the crown. Why did you shatter that jar of yours, ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... Women and children and old men, literally mad with terror, had escaped from the burning town, and found their way over the thirteen kilometres that separate Gerbeviller from Luneville. No intelligible account could be got from them; they had seen things that shatter the nerves and brain of the weak and old; they were scarcely human in their extremity of fear. And when, an hour later, we ourselves reached Gerbeviller, the terror which had inspired that frenzied flight became, ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... strongest of the Estates of Scotland, richer than any of the others, and possessing almost all the political ability of the time: on the side of England a new, scarcely recognised, but powerful influence, which was soon to attain almost complete mastery in Scotland and shatter that Church to pieces. In the beginning of James's reign this new power was but beginning to swell in the silent bosom of the country, showing here and there in a trial for heresy and in the startling fires of execution which cut off the first martyrs for the reformed faith. But there is no ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... hardly in human nature to shatter such illusions. Thereafter, the subject of the evening was more guardedly treated, pending her departure. Grandma Plympton, valiant as she was in the social cause, could seldom stay up for more than the first few numbers of a dance, and she could never, of late, remain to the end of an ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... confessed to you. Yes. It is true that I was cruel to you—deliberately. I did want to hurt you. And do you know why? I wanted to shatter that Olympian serenity of yours. You were too strong, too self-confident. You had the air of a being that nothing could hurt. You ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell

... have pass'd over life's wild stream In a frail and shatter'd boat, But the pilot was sure and we sail'd secure When we seem'd but ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... shuffling, pallid invalid, with a face of mingled sanctity and viciousness. If the old man lied, and had not been in prison all these years, he must have had misery far worse, for neither vice nor poverty alone could so shatter a human being. The son's pity seemed to look down from a great height upon the contemptible figure with the beautiful white hair and the abominable mouth. This compassion kept him from becoming hard, but it would also preserve him to hourly sacrifice—Prometheus chained to his rock. In the short ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... jarbling gumps ride hydras green, And utter sharp, a curdling curse, And wingless zimbs that storm each dell, Glare at each shatter'd dome and wall That speak of prowling apes in dream, Of dragons drawing Horror's hearse When bloody lanes of soulless hell ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... his career. He was called a fairly successful man. I dare say the majority of people never knew that he was created for grander things. But something was sapping his energy at the fountain-head. Was he realizing that he had helped to shatter his ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... present systems of education and instruction. I am too painfully conscious of the disastrous errors and abuses to which you were wont to call my attention; and yet I know that I am far from possessing the requisite strength to meet with success, however valiantly I might struggle to shatter the bulwarks of this would-be culture. I was overcome by a general feeling of depression: my recourse to solitude was not arrogance or superciliousness." Whereupon, to account for his behaviour, he described the general character of modern ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... went so far as to describe the scene of destruction, when all the elements would be put in motion to destroy mankind, when volcanoes would deluge the land with liquid fire, and earthquakes shake and shatter the world to ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... demands by force, if necessary; but no declaration of war was issued. Great Britain, in accepting the challenge, equally abstained from acts which would constitute a state of war; but she armed at once to shatter the coalition, before it attained coherence in aught but words. From first to last, until the Armed Neutrality again dissolved, though there was hard fighting, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... come from your anger. Shatter their skulls with blows from your ax and the butt of your musket. These brigands are timid beasts.... They are not men.... May your fist perform the ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne

... wonderfully, so supernaturally to know and understand everything. And, oh, he means so much to me, to us all, for it is he, more than any one else, who has saved us from—from what we were. And he loves us. It would shatter his faith, ruin all that his life has meant to him, and—and we cannot bring him grief and sorrow like that. Oh, what can we do! What can we do! We cannot stop—and we cannot go on! We cannot stay here even if we ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... likewise often suffer by rigorous and piercing colds and frosts; such as in the year 1683, rived many stately timber-trees from head to foot; which as the weather grew milder, clos'd again, so as hardly to be discern'd; but were found at the felling miserably shatter'd, and good for little: The best prevention is shelter, choice of place for the plantation, frequent shreading, whilst they are yet in their youth. Wind-shaken is also discover'd by certain ribs, boils and swellings on the bark, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... and the worthy must suffer in order that their ideas may be known and extended! You must shake or shatter the vase to spread its perfume, you must smite the rock to get the spark! There is something providential in the persecutions of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... the three Reverences," says Wilhelm Meister, "springs the highest Reverence, Reverence for Oneself." Open the pages of Hawthorne. Moving wholly within the framework of established institutions, with no desire to shatter the existing scheme of social order, choosing as its heroes men of the meeting-house, town-meeting, and training-day, how intensely nevertheless does the imagination of this fiction-writer illuminate the ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... to he who borrows, I'll soothe your cares and ease your sorrows; Abuse me, and your nerves I'll shatter, Your heart I'll break, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... Lansing, "any ass can shatter them with his hind heels, so why should he? If he must be an ass, let him be an original ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... and pommel with a blunt, instrument. To batter and to bruise refer to the results of beating; that is battered which is broken or defaced by repeated blows on the surface (compare synonyms for SHATTER); that is bruised which has suffered even one severe contusion. The metaphorical sense of beat, however, so far preponderates that one may be very badly bruised and battered, and yet not be said to be beaten, unless he has got the worst of the beating. To beat a combatant is to disable ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... a long slant arm of yellow light touched the black body of the Earthquaker, and a thrill went through him, and shook the world, so that, far away, the bells rang in Pantouflia. A moment more, and he would waken in his strength; and once awake, he would shatter the city walls and ruin Manoa. Even now a great mass of rock fell from the roof deep down in the secret caves, and broke into flying fragments, and all ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... Manisty, intoxicated with his own phrases, and fluencies, was alternately smoking and declaiming, Neal with his grey hair, his tall spare form, and his air of old-fashioned punctilium, would sit near, fixing the speaker with his pale-blue eyes,—a little threateningly; always ready to shatter an exuberance, to check an oratorical flow by some quick double-edged word that would make Manisty trip and stammer; showing, too, all the time, by his evident shrinking, by certain impregnable reserves, or by the banter that hid a feeling too keen to show itself, how great ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of the murk of heaviest clouds, Out of the feudal wrecks and heap'd-up skeletons of kings, Out of that old entire European debris, the shatter'd mummeries, Ruin'd cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests, Lo, Freedom's features fresh undimm'd look forth—the same immortal face looks forth; (A glimpse as of thy Mother's face Columbia, A flash significant as of ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... another, but it returned with pertinacity, and each time larger than before, until the fear filled all her mind and made her wild and desperate, under the conviction of a sudden, awful life-quake launched against her existence to shatter all her new joy and dash the brimming cup of love ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... will never be vanquished; they will shatter thy enemies. O lord! grant life to him who trusts in thee, But destroy the life of the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... His pages' footsteps pattered o'er the tiles, Speeding to do his errand, and at once Four tapers flickered from each silver sconce. The scene was changed, the dreamer's dream dispelled, And what might else have been his fate withheld From Gawayne's grasp. So may one touch of chance Shatter the fragile fabric of romance, And all the heart's desire,—the joy, the trouble,— Flash to oblivion with ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... fatal security. But, as they were intended only for a Mohammedan ruler, I can see no room for the suspicion that Charles was at this time animated by anything else than an unfeigned desire to realize the plan of Coligny, of a confederacy that should shatter the much-vaunted empire ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... that I am. I love you. Isn't that enough? I'm not worthy of you, maybe. Yet if trying to earn you by being loyal makes me worthy, then I am. Don't say no to me, Kate. It will shatter me—like an earthquake. And I believe you'll regret it, too. We can make each other happy. I feel it! I'd stake my life on ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture to-morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... you to see the truth and face it. Your idealism is admirable, permanent, and shatter-proof; but your starry-eyed schoolgirl's mawkishness is none of the three. You'll have to grow up, some day. In my opinion, forcing yourself to give up one of your hardest-held ideals—virginity—merely because of the utter bilge that those ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... once more, O ye laurels, and once more, Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas? he ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... lessen the strength of the motive, to give the great motor nerve of our moral life a perceptible stroke of palsy. In reference to the question, Can ephemera have a moral law? Richter reasons as follows: "Suppose a statue besouled for two days. If on the first day you should shatter it, and thus rob it of one day's life, would you be guilty of murder? One can injure only an immortal." 9 The sophistry appears when we rectify the conclusion thus: one can inflict an immortal injury only on an immortal being. In fact, it would appear to be a ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... the apple-tree. The hired man skins the tree with the harrow; fire runs through the dry grass; hard winters shatter the vitality, and parts of the tree die; borers enter; rabbits and mice gnaw the bark in winter; loads of fruit and burdens of ice crush the tree; wind storms play mischief; bad pruning leaves long stubs, and rot develops; cankers produce ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... at his elbow the old young man, to Jimmie's disappointment, did not continue to shatter the speed limit. Instead, he seemed inclined for conversation, and the car, growling ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis

... as deeply as ever man was loved. Oh that he knew my heart! He would not then shatter his image there. He would not trifle with a spirit formed for intense, yielding, passionate love, but rigid as steel and cold as ice when its freedom is touched. He should have known me better before linking his ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... cleaning is one way not to shatter scatter and scattering. The one way to use custom is to use soap and silk for cleaning. The one way to see cotton is to have a design concentrating the illusion and the illustration. The perfect way is to accustom the thing to have a lining and the shape ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein

... to know, to understand, even though the seeing blind, though the knowledge sadden, though the understanding shatter the dearest hopes—such has ever been the craving of the upward-striving mind in man. Some regard it as a weakness, as a folly, but I am sure that it exists most strongly in some of the noblest of our race; that from the lips ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... mother-tongues, their native loves and hatreds, from the insignificant, half-barbarous life, which certainly poisoned not the life-blood of a single Christian, though it sweetened not his tea. What bitterness has crept into the great heart of Mr. Carlyle, which beats to shatter the affectations and hypocrisies of a generation, and to summon a civilized world to the worship of righteousness and truth! Is this a Guinea trader or a prophet who is angry when Quashee prefers his pumpkins and millet, reared without the hot guano of the lash, and who will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... the spirit in which it is carried out counts for even more than the system itself. Once place a firm, self-confident man with the centralising spirit strong within him at the head of affairs, and he will often, without any apparent change, go far to shatter any system, however carefully it may have been devised, to encourage decentralisation. Such a man was Napoleon. Every conceivable subject bearing on the government of his fellow-men was, as M. Taine says, "classified and docketed" in his ultra-methodical brain. It ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... flight the haughty eagle flew, Then tore, with bloody beak, the fatal plain; Pierced with the shafts of banded nations through, Ambition's life, and labours, all were vain— He wears the shatter'd links ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... swift surge of hope Blake realized the way to conquer the things. If he could only shatter those flaccid masses of jelly, he would destroy the swarming dozens of beasts at ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells

... least, fall from such a height, that I shall shatter myself in falling." Then giving himself a shake, as though to escape from himself, "Whence came you," ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... his sister's brother, conceived himself immune. Mr. Wilding's avowed courtship of the lady, the hopes he still entertained of winning her, despite the aversion she was at pains to show him, gave Westmacott assurance that Mr. Wilding would never elect to shatter his all too slender chances by embroiling himself in a quarrel with her brother. And—reading him, thus, aright—Mr. Wilding put on that mask of patience, luring the boy into greater conviction of the security of his position. And Richard, conceiving ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... lake, divides, or resolves itself as it dries, into layers of its several elements; slowly purifying each by the patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the mass in which it was mingled. Contracted by increasing drought, till it must shatter into fragments, it infuses continually a finer ichor into the opening veins, and finds in its weakness the first rudiments of a perfect strength. Rent at last, rock from rock, nay, atom from atom, and tormented in lambent fire, it knits, through the fusion, the fibers ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... that fashion, and with a good conscience, for the preservation of all the sick and suffering, which means, in deed and in truth, to work for the DETERIORATION OF THE EUROPEAN RACE? To REVERSE all estimates of value—THAT is what they had to do! And to shatter the strong, to spoil great hopes, to cast suspicion on the delight in beauty, to break down everything autonomous, manly, conquering, and imperious—all instincts which are natural to the highest and most successful type of "man"—into uncertainty, distress of conscience, and self-destruction; forsooth, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... precept, for I saw the land Of my foretold deliv'rance far remote. Thus, therefore, will I do, for such appears My wiser course. So long as yet the planks Mutual adhere, continuing on board My raft, I will endure whatever woes, But when the waves shall shatter it, I will swim, My sole resource then left. While thus he mused, Neptune a billow of enormous bulk Hollow'd into an overwhelming arch 440 On high up-heaving, smote him. As the wind Tempestuous, falling on some stubble-heap, The arid straws dissipates ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... to tell you about it briefly, though I warn you in advance that you will find it a great strain upon your confidence in my veracity. It may even shatter that confidence beyond repair; but I cannot help that. I hold that it is a man's duty in this life to give to the world the benefit of his experience. All that he sees he should set down exactly as he sees it, and so simply, withal, that to the dullest comprehension ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... saileth 'mid glitter and show, As if fortune's rich tide never ebbed in its flow; But see her at night when her gold-light is spent, When her anchor is lost, and her silken sails rent; When the wave of destruction her shatter'd side drinks, And the billows—ha! ha!—laugh and shout as she sinks. No! give us Content, as life's channel we steer. While our Pilot is ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... moral activity weakened than accomplished events rush forward and assail us; and woe to him who opens the door, and permits them to take possession of his hearth! Each one will vie with the other in overwhelming him with the gifts best calculated to shatter his courage. It matters not whether our past has been happy and noble, or lugubrious and criminal, there shall still be great danger in allowing it to enter, not as an invited guest, but like a parasite settling upon us. The result will be either sterile regret ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... even at college to work on late into the night; but at school it ought not to be suffered for one moment. If a lad takes his place in his class every day in a state of nervous tremor, he may be in the way to get his gold medal, indeed; but he is in the way to shatter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... means; make him feel the sense of power over material. Jake's rather boyish, and a boy loves to fire a gun because something startling happens in obedience to his will when he pulls the trigger. Isn't it much the same when one gives the orders that shatter massive rocks and move ponderous stones? However, that's not all. I want you to keep him at the dam and prevent ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... that stopped them an' the surgery to make them sound. I tarried long in the great city, an' every evening we were together in the little room. I bought him a kit o' tools an' some brass, an' we would shatter the clockworks an' build them up again until he had skill, ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... to bed. They got her out of the room after a painful scene, and fell to wrangling again, trying to screw some resolution into the white prince whom they all intended to use as a cat's-paw. About eight o'clock in the morning—they still at it—came a shatter of hoofs in the courtyard, which made Count John jump in his skin. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... annihilates the distinction. As the electricity in the atmosphere may annihilate space by enabling us to flash a thought instantaneously even to a world whose distance is measured in millions of miles, so does this sublime conception of the great Oneness shatter the foundations on which all outside redemptions, priests, sacrifices, formalisms, rituals, sacraments, devilry, hell fire, and the rest repose, by showing every man that he is his own priest and sacrificer. No anointing or ordering can make him more ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... marquises and dukes; rage fills my heart; I should like to fight twenty duels, and to die. Do you wish me to suffer any further insults? No more secrets for me! Prometheus of hell, either finish your work, or shatter it to pieces! ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac

... charts is alone sufficient to shatter the opinion that he utilised the drawings of the English navigator. Had he even seen them, his own work would have been more accurate than it was, and his large chart of New Holland would have been more complete. ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... many weeks of looking for employment had taught her nothing else, they now told her how worse than foolish it would be to shatter at one blow Mrs Hamilton's good opinion of her. In compliance with her employer's request, she returned to the drawing-room, her ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... to a poet's eye?) The spectre-knight, the hell-hounds, and their prey, The chase, the slaughter, and the festal mirth Suddenly blasted. 'Twas a theme he loved, But others claim'd their turn; and many a tower, Shatter'd uprooted from its native rock, Its strength the pride of some heroic age, Appear'd and vanish'd (many a sturdy steer[67] Yoked and unyoked), while, as in happier days, He pour'd his spirit forth. The past forgot, All was enjoyment. Not ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... the thrush brushed heavily against that hedge-sparrow, so that—oh, horror!—it fell, or swung over backwards, rather, and hung head downwards, swaying slightly, like a toy acrobat on a wire, before it fell, so rigidly and so stiffly immovable that one expected it to shatter to pieces like glass as it hit the ground. It did not, however. But it did not matter. The hedge-sparrow was quite, quite dead before it fell, frozen stiff and stark in the night. And none of the other birds seemed to care. Why should they? Such a ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... to be sure," he said to himself, "to shatter the peace of those two poor souls. But, after all, life is made up of such crimes. The life of one is the other's death; one's happiness the other's wretchedness. If only I could be sure that some happiness would result, that the sacrifice of their ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... therefore at once more easy and more difficult. Instead of starting with a standard pattern, he has to invent a web of rhythm which is suited to the sense he wishes to convey; and then, without ever disappointing the ear of the reader by unnecessarily withholding an expected fall of rhythm, he must shatter every inkling of monotony by ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... and powerful judgment took in the position of Europe: France, exhausted by the lingering decay of her government and in travail with new and confused elements which had as yet no strength but to shatter and destroy; Spain, lured on by France and then abandoned by her; England, disturbed at home by parliamentary agitation, favorably disposed to the court of Russia and for a long while allied to Frederick; Sweden and Denmark, in the throes of serious events; there was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... ways were known to him. Usually he went to the Pagoda after the shop was closed, and he returned from there late; it was impossible to be accurate as to the exact hour of his return. To risk detection was to shatter all chance of success, and it was necessary to make sure before attempting to break into the shop and identify the silk rag with the original roll, if that ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... and courageous enterprise on Her Majesty's part may well close this brief notice of the internal and external convulsions which for a time shook, though they did not shatter, the peace of our realm. In the late summer of 1849 a royal visit to Ireland, now just reviving from its misery, was planned and carried out with complete success; the wild Irish enthusiasm blazed up into raptures of a loyal welcome, and the Sovereign, who played her part with all the graceful ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... seemed to Faustus most incomprehensible was, that the shipwrecked mariner should be punished in an after-state for not having guided his vessel better; when the rudder which had been given him to shape his course by was so weak that any extraordinary billow could not fail to shatter it. ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... and however angry, do against two hundred, when his own followers refuse to support him. The valour of the peasants was distinctly of that quality whose better part is discretion. The thunder of that fusillade had been enough to shatter their nerve, and to Souvestre's exhortations that they should become martyrs in the noble cause, of the people against tyranny, in whatsoever guise it came, they answered with the unanswerable logic ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... Out of nowhere he had emerged, out of thirty years' silence, a sinister figure who tapped with significant finger the book of their secret past while his eyes steadfastly demanded a reckoning. Did he know all, or nothing? Knowing, did he deliberately leave them in doubt in order to shatter their confidence? ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... the whole universe appears to be the very incarnation of injustice. The constellations as they come into manifestation shatter the heavens with their titanic combats; it is the vampirism of the greatest among them that creates the suns, thus inaugurating egoism from the very beginning. Everywhere on earth is heard the cry of pain, a never-ending ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... reasoned from this that bigger guns made a proportionally greater amount of noise, and bred an infinitely larger quantity of trouble. Now I was hearing the giants of the world's ordnance, and they were not so impressive as a lively battery of three-inch rifles. Their reports did not threaten to shatter everything, but had a dull resonance, something like that produced by striking an empty barrel with a wooden maul. Their shells did not come at one in that wildly, ferocious way, with which a missile from a six-pounder convinces every fellow in a ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... thus o'er his brow, He falls to such perusal of my face As he would draw it. Long staid he so; At last,—a little shaking of mine arm, And thrice his head thus waving up and down, He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound, As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,[2] And end his being: That done, he lets me go: And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd, He seem'd to find his way without his eyes; For out o'doors he went without their helps, And, to the last, ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... his thoughts as he tried to decide whether he had better shatter that self-contained keep-your-distance attitude of hers with plain questions. He would have to right-about-face on the whole situation to do it, and he was not sure that this was wise just then. One thing was certain, Miss ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... Brutus Dean—not from the North, but a Kentuckian, a slave-holder and a gentleman—would probably start a paper in Lexington to exploit his views in the heart of the Bluegrass; and his quondam friends would shatter his press and tear his office to pieces. So the Major told Chad, and he pointed out some "hands" at work ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... was my great horror, my boundless despair, when the good woman slowly and sadly shook her head, saying, in a voice full of sympathy and commiseration, 'How loath I am to shatter your hopes and add more trouble to your already much overheavy sorrows, you cannot know, Monsieur, but I fear I ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... said the old man, taking off his cap to express his reverence for the King of Art. "His transcendent greatness came of the intimate sense that, in him, seems as if it would shatter external form. Form in his figures (as with us) is a symbol, a means of communicating sensations, ideas, the vast imaginings of a poet. Every face is a whole world. The subject of the portrait appeared ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac

... destructive now than I was then. The moral passion has taken my destructiveness in hand and directed it to moral ends. I have become a reformer, and, like all reformers, an iconoclast. I no longer break cucumber frames and burn gorse bushes: I shatter creeds and demolish idols. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... individuals escaped by some special stroke of fortune, for nearly the whole of the 300 prisoners taken were subsequently executed. Such was the complete and appalling character of the destruction of Hicks's army, which seemed to shatter at a single blow the whole fabric of the Khedive's power in the Soudan, and rivetted the attention of Europe on that particular quarter of the ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... glory or the grave at pleasure. Which was it to be? He lingered long, relishing the details of schemes that he was too idle to pursue. Poor cork upon a torrent, he tasted that night the sweets of omnipotence, and brooded like a deity over the strands of that intrigue which was to shatter ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... like the spears of heroes. He stared between them at the red facade; if she was a coward she would still be somewhere in there. The thought struck him with terror. If she were not waiting for him the moonlight would shatter and turn to darkness, the violence of ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... waters, open thy gate, Open thy gate that I may enter. If thou openest not the gate that I may enter I will strike the door, the bolts I will shatter, I will strike the threshold and will pass through the doors; I will raise up the dead to devour the living, Above the living the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... genius on whose kindly offices he had now fixed his languid hopes. I need not say what the landscape was in mid-August, or how, as they drew near the farm, the air was enriched with the breath of vast orchards of early apples,—apples that no forced fingers rude shatter from their stems, but that ripen and mellow untouched, till they drop into the straw with which the orchard aisles are bedded; it is the poetry of horticulture; it is Art practicing the wise and gracious patience of Nature, and offering ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells

... genuine feeling of love, was bound in adamantine chains to her sister. Time and fortune, that shatter all human institutions and prove human feelings, consolidated the union of their hearts and their destinies. A stranger on stronger proof of the influence of sisterly affection could not be adduced; ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... officers, who used it as their headquarters, and never did tea taste better than on that warm spring day, though it was served with a ladle out of a tin bowl to the music of many guns. The officers were a cheery set who had become quite accustomed to the menace of death which at any moment might shatter this place and make a wreckage of its peasant furniture. The colonel sat back in a wooden armchair, asking for news about the outer world as though he were a shipwrecked mariner on a desert isle; but every now and then he would listen to the ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... real contact with Christ and His Gospel is to reveal a man to himself, to shatter his delusive estimates of what he is, and to pull down about his ears the lofty fortress in which he has ensconced himself. It seems strange work for what calls itself a Gospel to begin by forcing a man to cry out ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... my children, and belong now only to the Tyrol and the emperor. If my blood were sufficient to deliver our country, I should joyously and with a grateful prayer throw myself down from this peak and shatter my bones; and dying, I should thank God for vouchsafing such an honor to me, and allowing me to purchase the liberty of the country with my blood. But I am but a poor and humble servant and soldier of the Lord, and ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... had an additional cause for pain in the empty room adjoining his, though Charley's defection was somewhat overshadowed by the greater misfortune. But to be betrayed on succeeding days by his best friend and by his girl was enough to shatter any ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... effect of this new and latest triumph of modern science, which will shatter the hopes and happiness of thousands ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... general practice is to shatter the aerostat, and to this end either shrapnel, high explosive, or incendiary shells will be used. The former must explode quite close to the balloon in order to achieve the desired end, while the incendiary shell must actually strike ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... towers of Notre Dame, dimming the searchlights which, like the antennae of gigantic fireflies, constantly played round the city from the summit of the Eiffel Tower. So slept Paris, confident that no crash of descending bombs would shatter the blue vault of the starlit sky or rend the habitations in which lay two millions of human beings, assured that the sun would rise through the gray mists of the Seine upon the ancient beauties of the Tuilleries and the Louvre unmarred by the enemy's ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... the enemy to approach without any warning of the resistance they are about to meet, and it is only when the main body of their opponents comes within range that they open a ferocious fire with musketry and cannon, which can shatter the columns of their adversaries. It is a method which has often produced good results for the Russians; so General Wittgenstein had prepared ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... runnels of steam {85} down the mountain side. On the south side, reefs line all approach. North, east, and west are countless abrupt inlets opening directly into the heart of the mountains down whose black cliffs shatter plumes of spray and cataract. Not a tree grows on the island. From base to summit the hills are a velvet sward, willow shrubs the size of one's finger, grass waist high, and such a wealth of flowers—poppy fields, anemones, snowdrops, rhododendrons—that ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... free colored man fell into the road just ahead of me, and went on peaceably.—When passing a public-house, the landlord ran out with a large cudgel, and applied it to the head and shoulders of the man with such force as to shatter it in pieces. When the reason of his conduct was asked, he replied, that he owned slaves, and he would not permit free blacks to come ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... feet of an orthodox bishop. One might almost hazard the conjecture that he remains in the Congregationalist Communion, as so many Anglo-Catholics remain in the Establishment, solely to supply the fermentation of an idea which will shatter its present constitution. One thinks of him as a repentant Cromwell restoring "that bauble" to its accustomed place on ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... way—a man of consummate adroitness, to sail in torpedo-sown waters without exciting an explosion, though conducting wires of local prejudice, class sensitiveness, and personal foible on every hand led straight down to magazines of wrath which might shatter the cause in a moment—a man having resources of his own to such an extent that he could supplement from himself what was wanting in others—always awake, though others might want to sleep, always at work though others might be tired—a man devoted, ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... struck animal tissue, but for the same reason, they had very poor penetration on hard objects. The alloy-steel tape, and the steel spools and spool cases, and the notebook binders, had been enough to shatter the little bullet into splinters of magnesium-nickel alloy, and the stout leather back of the game bag had stopped all of these. But the impact, even distributed as it had been through the contents of the bag, had been enough ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper

... the Saint from Padua's graceless land In silent anguish sought the barren strand, High on the shatter'd beech sublime He stood, Still'd with his waving arm the babbling flood; "To Man's dull ear," He cry'd, "I call in vain, "Hear me, ye scaly tenants of the main!"— 250 Misshapen Seals approach in circling ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... disciples who heard these testimonies from John understood them to be Messianic (John i. 30-34), though their later consternation, when the cross seemed to shatter their hopes (John xx. 9, 10, 24, 25), shows that they did not comprehend their deeper meaning. Two of these disciples at once attached themselves to Jesus, and one of them, Andrew of Bethsaida, was so impressed by the new master ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... sorry pleasures of self-degradation. The kind, calm Pastor of Einsiedeln sees at first only the splendour that hangs around the name of his early comrade, the hero of his hopes. And Paracelsus for a while would forbear with tender ruth to shatter his friend's illusion, would veil, if that were possible, the canker which has eaten into his own heart. But in the tumult of old glad memories and present griefs, it ceases to be possible; from amid the crew of foolish praisers he must find one friend having the fidelity of genuine ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... rare word for shatter-(scatter) brained. cf. The Countess of Winchilsea, Miscellany ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... fear of these curses has charged another to do so; that man, be he king, lord, patesi, or noble, whose name is ever so renowned, may the great god (Anu), the father of gods, who named my reign, turn him back, shatter his sceptre in pieces, curse his fortunes; may Bel the lord who fixes the fates, whose command is not set aside, who extended my sovereignty, cause for him an endless revolt, an impulse to fly from his home, and set for his fortune a reign of sighs, short ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... on the stiff formalities of army posts, on the raw conditions of alkali journalism and on the solemn humbugs of frontier politics. James Russell Lowell used dialect for dynamite to blow the front off hypocrisy or to shatter the cotton commercialism in which the New England conscience was encysted. Robert H. Newell, mirth-maker and mystic, satirized military ignorance and pinchbeck bluster to an immortality of contempt. Bret Harte in verse ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... past, which she cannot destroy; Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care, And bring back the features that joy used to wear. Long, long be my heart with such memories filled! Like the vase, in which roses have once been distilled— You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will, But the scent of the roses will hang round ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... always painted white, and the paint is always very dirty. When they begin to move, they moan and groan in melancholy tones which are subversive of all comfort; and as they continue on their courses they puff and bluster, and are forever threatening to burst and shatter themselves to pieces. There they lie, in a continuous line nearly a mile in length, along the levee of St. Louis, dirty, dingy, and now, alas! mute. They have ceased to groan and puff, and, if this war be continued for six months ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry scheme of Things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits—and then Re-mould it nearer to ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan

... ever in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt even at night, in my dreams, your form in contact with my own, I desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance, with reality. At all events, I hoped that a new impression would efface the first, and the first had become insupportable. I sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had seen you twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... theme of the earth, Look! Must this go? The grave shall have these eyes Which were the bliss of burning Emperors. After what time, what labour the high gods Builded the body of this beauty up! Now at a whim they shatter it! More light! I'll catch the last ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips

... alone to their happiness. The mother kept her own counsel. Raines had disappeared as though Death had claimed him. And the dream lasted till a summons home broke into it as the sudden flaring up of a candle will shatter a reverie ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.

... never a strong one, had been undermined by the luxurious pleasure-seeking of her life and the deadly nerve-poison of the morphia. That night and day on the upturned boat—drenched with the waves, chilled, famished, tortured with thirst—had been an ordeal to shatter even a woman with big reserves of strength, and Olive had no ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... compositors, who were also crooked, ten dollars per man to hold their mouths shut till the morning, with the result that from editors and sub-editors and reporters and compositors the news went seething forth in a flood that the Erie Auriferous Consolidated was going to shatter into fragments like the bursting of a dynamite bomb. It rushed with a thousand whispering tongues from street to street till it filled the corridors of the law courts and the lobbies of the offices, and till every honest ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... place more calculated to quickly shatter the nerves and break the health of a human being than one of those foul, suffocating tunnels under ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes

... chose, nor to rise from his seat and move to any part of the room as the whim seized him. In time, of course, all this was changed; but it was several days before the boy learned so to conduct himself that he did not shatter to atoms the peace and propriety of ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter

... as your experiments appear to have thoroughly satisfied you that I am utterly unworthy of trust. I follow the flattering advice you were so kind as to give me some time since, and make no promises, which shatter like crystal under the hammer of the first temptation. You see, sir, you are teaching ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... of an old shatter'd press, and one small, worn-out font of English, which he was then using himself, composing an Elegy on Aquilla Rose, before mentioned, an ingenious young man, of excellent character, much respected in the town, clerk of the Assembly, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... about? A god less powerful than yourself might be alarmed at what they are doing, but your fame reaches as far as dawn itself. Surely when the Achaeans have gone home with their ships, you can shatter their wall and fling it into the sea; you can cover the beach with sand again, and the great wall of the Achaeans will then ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... once more, O ye Laurels, and once more Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear, I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton



Words linked to "Shatter" :   damage, bust



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