"Wreck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have adopted the Tory idea of 'follow your leader': never think for yourself. In the Parliament, in the Newspapers, in Arguments of Foreign War, at the Hustings, they treat it as 'Treason to the Party' not to do whatever the Premier says they must do, or he will resign and wreck the party.... I see only one sunbeam through the clouds ever since the fatal Egyptian war; and that is the recent Peace-Union of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. I look on it as the inauguration of the future European Confederacy ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... handsome, had soft, dark hair, and a delicate, womanish complexion. His mother dressed him in velvet, and idolized him. He never did anything useful, but went about in fine company and spent large sums of money. In his fortieth year he died suddenly, a physical and moral wreck. The announcement of the death gave a stroke as the cause; but the truth was that rumors had begun to circulate of a scandal in which he was implicated together with some persons of high standing. It was at the end of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... strange night came to an end. Dreadful things may and do happen in this world, but, as a general rule, they do not last a great while. The fire did its work, and then stopped. It was fearful while it raged, and it left a pitiful wreck; still, as Mrs. Parlin said, it was "not so bad but it might have been worse." "Nothing," she always declared, "ought to make us really unhappy ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... start to their arrival at Komati-poort; their failure at the bridge in consequence of the strong guard that the Boers had set over it; and how, finding that the main object of their journey could not be carried out, they proceeded to wreck the station yard ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... ceased as Trent crossed the Boulevard St. Germain, but the entrance to the rue de Seine was blocked by a heap of smoking bricks. Everywhere the shells had torn great holes in the pavement. The cafe was a wreck of splinters and glass, the book-store tottered, ripped from roof to basement, and the little bakery, long since closed, bulged outward above a mass of slate ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... Terra. Since he had come here to Simonides, and had wormed his way into the very highest position beneath its emperor—a weak old man he had had no trouble dominating—he was naturally suspicious of anyone who might be attempting to discover and wreck ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... she brought fifty-five thousand dollars: so that the prize-money won by that action kept the sailors in good-humor for many months to come. But, before the prize could be safely carried into an American port, she had a gantlet to run, in which she narrowly escaped capture. After the wreck of battle had been cleared away, the brig and her captor made for Savannah, but were sighted and chased by two British frigates. The "Peacock," in the hope of drawing away the pursuers, left her prize, and headed out to sea. One frigate only followed her, and the other pressed on hotly ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... The wreck of the old fishing dock—a favorite haunt of little Lottie Drugg—was at the foot of the hill, and Janice halted here a moment to look out across it, and over the quiet cove, to the pine-covered point that gave ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... upon the slippery deck— Men roll off from the blood-drenched wreck; Dead bodies float down with the stream, And from the shores witch-ravens scream. The cold blue river now runs red With the warm blood of warriors dead, And stains the waves in Karmt Sound With the last drops ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... fancied danger, returned in face of a real one, which they were ready to brave in order to save their fellow-creatures. The tempest did not deter them. As heroic as they had before been credulous, fastening ropes round their waists, they rushed into the waves to the aid of those on the wreck. ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... O blower of the horn, Harper, and thou hast been a rover too, For, ere I mated with my shambling king, Ye twain had fallen out about the bride Of one—his name is out of me—the prize, If prize she were—(what marvel—she could see)— Thine, friend; and ever since my craven seeks To wreck thee villainously: but, O Sir Knight, What dame or damsel have ye kneeled ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... respect for age," said Jim, removing her tray and putting a pillow on her head. "Every one finished? then I'll clear away the wreck and go and dress." He piled the three trays on top of each other and goose-stepped from the room solemnly—his long legs in pyjamas, under a military great coat, ending a curious effect to the spectacle. Miss de Lisle and Norah ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... could only look helplessly at de Spain as de Spain hastily made him stand up on his shaking knees, threw a big blanket around him, sat him down, kicked open the stove drafts, and called to McAlpin for more whiskey to steady the wreck of it crouching over ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... as, if obtained, promises, as much as any human disposition of things can promise, security and permanence. It holds out nothing at all definite towards this security. It only seeks, by a restoration to some of their former owners of some fragments of the general wreck of Europe, to find a plausible plea for a present retreat from an embarrassing position. As to the future, that party is content to leave it covered in a night of the most palpable obscurity. It never once has entered into a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... whole tribe of Bears, large and small, had experienced as little favour as those at the head of the avenue; and one or two of the family pictures, which seemed to have served as targets for the soldiers, lay on the ground in tatters. With an aching heart, as may well be imagined, Edward viewed this wreck of a mansion so respected. But his anxiety to learn the fate of the proprietors, and his fears as to what that fate might be, increased with every step. When he entered upon the terrace, new scenes of desolation were visible. The balustrade was ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the changing suns and rains Beat on men's work—to wreck and to decay— But nature builds more perfectly than they, Her changing unchanged ...
— All Round the Year • Edith Nesbit
... Wandering Jew entered into my soul, and while it opened a scene and actions utterly new to me, it sobered me far beyond anything that had ever happened to me. About the same time I had many gloomy days and nights of terror from having seen the bodies of twenty-five drowned passengers from the wreck of a steamboat which plied between Norwich and New York City. Our poet clerk took me with him to see them the morning they were brought to the dock on another steamboat of the same line. They were laid out in rows on the main deck, frozen stiff, for it was the winter season, covered ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... Beulah! Your pride will wreck you; wreck your happiness, your peace of mind. Already its iron hand is crushing your young heart. Beware lest, in yielding to its decrees, you become the hopeless being a similar course has rendered me. Beware! But why should I warn you? ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... from the city into the great woods wandering, Into the great silent white woods where they waited in their beauty and majesty For man their companion to come: There, in vision, out of the wreck of cities and civilizations, Slowly out of the ruins of ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... strike me at all. I think it is for the interest of the Union that Davis should be where he is. He is vain, arrogant, silly, and dull. He will alone wreck the rebel cause if he is given time. There couldn't be a greater misfortune for the North than to have Davis displaced by some one of real ability, such as Stephens, Lee, Benjamin, Mason, Breckenridge, or, in fact, any of the men identified ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... navigator of the ocean did not disdain to use. For a little time things went well. The Isle of Man was passed; but unfortunately, on the second day out, the good ship struck the shore of the north-east coast of Ireland and became a total wreck. As the weather was extremely fine, and there appeared to be no reason for the disaster, the subject became matter for investigation by the authorities connected with the Board of Trade. During the inquiry it was deposed that the Calf of Man ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... right, Mr. Dunkin; 'f I had a beast I'd go with ye. There'll be no Apaches round these parts agin for a considerable spell," and his eyes ran sadly over the ruins of his home, the wreck of his property, resting finally on the grave of ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... them after a sudden storm, the solitary survivor of a wreck that had partly drifted ashore, and, as he said, gone down with all his fortune. The mild air and easy livelihood of the spot pleased the Jew, after his first despair, and he set about making another fortune. Capable, solitary and active, he soon outstripped all ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the year of grace 1552, a boy was born, as beautiful as day, and christened Walter Raleigh. His father was a gentleman of ancient blood: few older in the land: but, impoverished, he had settled down upon the wreck of his estate, in that poor farm-house. No record of him now remains; but he must have been a man worth knowing and worth loving, or he would not have won the wife he did. She was a Champernoun, proudest of ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... to strenuous people. Its beauties are contemplative rather than pungent, and the travellers were frankly advised to fall back on books and ping-pong. Crawling across an interminable alkali basin in the late afternoon their train was laid out a long time by a freight wreck. ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... 2 2 &c. is the apartments about 30 feet square. this house is built of bark of the White Cedar Supported on long Stiff poles resting on the ends of broad boads which form the rooms &c. back of this house I observe the wreck of 5 houses remaining of a very large Village, the houses of which had been built in the form of those we first Saw at the long narrows of the E-lute Nation with whome those people are connected. I indeavored to obtain from those people of the Situation ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... wonderment at least for a week. They saw squirrels for the first time, and for the first time beheld a hedgehog. Their parents were busy in the house; Mr. Ferrars unpacking and settling his books, and his wife arranging some few articles of ornamental furniture that had been saved from the London wreck, and rendering their usual room of residence as refined as was in her power. It is astonishing how much effect a woman of taste can produce with a pretty chair or two full of fancy and colour, a table clothed with a few books, some family miniatures, a workbag of rich material, and some toys that ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... the stake in the bank below the hut, they fastened the boat to it, and stepping out, moved through the dense mist to where the hut loomed indistinctly before them, looking in the blank and awful stillness like a forlorn wreck drifting upon an ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... that we can get Excuse is found for nearly every moral delinquency Frivolous old woman fighting to keep the skin-deep beauty Granted that woman is the superior being Held to strict responsibility for her attractiveness History is strewn with the wreck of popular delusions Hot arguments are usually the bane of conversation Idleness seems to be the last accomplishment of civilization Insists upon applying everywhere the yardstick of his own local ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... now?" The little chemist, finding his theory apparently confirmed, was at a loss. "Could we wreck ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... replied, without taking his eye from the glass. 'I know her by the white stripe along her black hull. She's a perfect wreck, and both the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Earthquake Begins the Wreck of San Francisco and a Conflagration without Parallel Completes the Work of Destruction—Tremendous Loss of Life in Quake and ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... and as I come thrashing through the bushes he sits on a rock munching some burnt flour. He announces with an unsteady voice: 'Well, she's gone.' We say not much, nothing that indicates poor courage, but go about to find what we can in the wreck, and pack up for a tramp down river. In an hour we have picked out everything useful, including my money, nails, thread and damaged provisions, and are on the way down river hoping to pass the rapids ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... Sicily,—and always among friends. And then my steps went back in fancy to the battlefields, where our guns had been in action. I saw again the great peaks and the precipitous valleys of the Trentino. I saw the wreck of liberated Asiago, ringed round with mountains whose sides were clothed with shattered pine trees, heavy with snow, and I went down once more by that astounding mountain road from Granezza to Marostica, with the Venetian Plain and all its cities spread out beneath my ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... told of the deed, And I, e'en I, will tell it in the day of the Niblungs' Need: For I sat night-long in my armour, and when light was wide o'er the land I slaughtered Sigurd my brother, and looked on the work of mine hand. And now, O mighty Atli, I have seen the Niblungs' wreck, And the feet of the faint-heart dastard have trodden Gunnar's neck; And if all be little enough, and the Gods begrudge me rest, Let me see the heart of Hogni cut quick from his living breast, And laid, on the dish before me: and then shall I tell of the Gold, And become thy servant, Atli, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... save what I kin out of the wreck," he said to himself, and quietly manufactured a dummy contracting company to whom he let the entire job for a lump sum of thirty-eight thousand seven hundred dollars. The dummy contractor ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... outskirts of the village we saw signs of the Hun evacuation: deserted huts and stables, a couple of abandoned motor-lorries. The village itself was a wreck, a dust-heap, not a wall left whole after our terrific bombardments. Not a soul in the streets, not a single house habitable even for troops. Of the mill that had been Brigade Headquarters three years before, one tiny fragment ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... are! Fong's brought out breakfast. He says the kitchen's a wreck and he had to make the coffee on an alcohol lamp. The range is all broken and there's something the matter with the gas in the gas stove. Did you ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... when her family and favorites stood on the brink of ruin, her little portion of mind was employed only to preserve herself from danger. As a proof of the justness of this assertion, it is only necessary to observe that, in the general wreck, not a scrap of her writing has been found to criminate her; neither has she suffered a word to escape her to exasperate the people, even when burning with rage and contempt. The effect that adversity may have on her choked understanding, time will show [this ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Swan River. Search for the supposed Turtle-dove Shoal. Approach to Houtman's Abrolhos. Find an anchorage. View of the Lagoon. Guano. Remnants of the wreck of the Batavia. Pelsart Group. Visit the Main. Geelvink Channel. Enter Champion Bay. Appearance of the Country. Striking resemblance of various portions of the coast of Australia. Leave Champion Bay. Coast to the northward. Resume our examination of the Abrolhos. Easter Group. Good Friday ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... drummer in the army, and whom he had publicly espoused after having repudiated and confined his own wife in a convent,—proposed that he should try by bribery to induce the Grand Vizier to allow him and the wreck of his forces to retreat The Czar approved of the proposition, without hoping for success from it. He sent to the Grand Vizier and ordered him to be spoken to in secret. The Vizier was dazzled by the gold, the precious stones, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... fellows can get their warning to the ranch and the boys will be captured, or at least their plan to rescue Mr. Hampton will be spoiled. No, sir, we'll have to wreck the radio plant here to give them a chance. If Jack has been able so far to interfere with the warning, and we put this plant out of commission now, they may be able to carry out their rescue after all. Let's see. How will we ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... was at a motor race at Palm Beach. There was a big smash-up and a French car was wrecked. We had entered our "Model K"—the high-powered six. I thought the foreign cars had smaller and better parts than we knew anything about. After the wreck I picked up a little valve strip stem. It was very light and very strong. I asked what it was made of. Nobody knew. I gave the stem to ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... dozed off. The door was open, and I could hear what they said downstairs when they spoke loud. At first they talked low, and I didn't heed what they were saying; then I heard a word or two which frighted me, and then I got up and went quiet to my door and listened. Jack, they are going to wreck the engines, so as to stop the pumping and drown the mines. They are going to do for the 'Vaughan,' and the 'Hill Side,' and 'Thorns,' and the 'Little Shaft,' and 'Vale.' It's to be done to-night, and they begin with the 'Vaughan' at ten o'clock, ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... thought back of the girl confronting him with his mother's eyes. The backward path was black and wreck-strewn; it led—where? ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... witty, she soon won her way to the brilliant and fashionable society of the crippled wit, buffoon, and poet, who was coarse, profane, ungodly, and physically an unsightly wreck. In this society, which the burlesque poet amused by his inexhaustible wit and fancy, and his frank, Gallic gayety, she showed an infinite amount of tact and soon made his salon the most prominent social centre of Paris. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... of faith and works—not to glorify ourselves, but him who has bought us with his own most precious blood. Carry the solemn inquiry to the throne of grace, Have I passed from death unto life? for whosoever thus liveth believeth in Christ, and amidst the fatal wreck of professors, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that he did not seem to be any nearer meeting her than when they started. He had hoped to get Uncle Caspar into a conversation and then use him, but Uncle Caspar was as distant as an iceberg. "If there should be a wreck," Grenfall caught himself thinking, "then my chance would come; but I don't see how Providence is going to help me in any ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... glide down the stream of time unrewarded by this country?" This, then, is his reward. To his old comrade in the battle-fields of Liberty, George Washington, Paine owed his ten months of imprisonment, at the end of which Monroe found him a wreck, and took him (November 4) to his own house, where he and his wife nursed him back into life. But it was not for some months supposed that Paine could recover; it was only after several relapses; and it was under the shadow of death that he wrote the letter to Washington so much ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... wreck before the inquisition came to an end. He had not even sufficient spirit left to fly at me for entering his distinguishing marks as "a general air of honesty, tempered by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... in the day of the Niblungs' Need: For I sat night-long in my armour, and when light was wide o'er the land I slaughtered Sigurd my brother, and looked on the work of mine hand. And now, O mighty Atli, I have seen the Niblung's wreck, And the feet of the faint-heart dastard have trodden Gunnar's neck; And if all be little enough, and the Gods begrudge me rest, Let me see the heart of Hoegni cut quick from his living breast, And laid on the dish before me: and then shall I tell ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... living proof of the practicability of natural transports. By what grace, indeed, could the creature which earned the Almighty's bitter curse be accepted as "wilsam"—goods of God's mercy driven ashore, no wreck or ship being visible? ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... most extraordinary volumes of this or any age. We know of no English author who could have written it. It is a work to which the proud genius of our country, standing with one foot on the Aroostook and the other on the Rio Grande, and holding up the star-spangled banner amid the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds, may point with bewildering scorn of the punier efforts of enslaved Europe.... We hope soon to encounter our author among those higher walks of literature in which ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... bravest and the brightest woman I know, and yet the furnace was heated sevenfold for her. Make believe that he is alive! Why, he has never been dead to her! It is her vivid faith and her vivid imagination that has helped her to live all these years instead of lying there a crushed wreck for ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... aware only of her torment. The trees were bending, the water hissing, the grasses all this way and that, like hands of a delirious people in surges of wreck. She scorned the meaningless shake of the garments of earth, and exclaimed: 'If we were by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to keep Mr. Watts from proposing. As Snell relieved me from sentry duty, I was called by Kruger to discuss certain details of next morning's start for Cairo; and at midnight, when I crawled to my room a shattered wreck, the letters were ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... imagined that, at a moment like this, most of those who had a stake in the country were pondering over the great and real drama that was then taking place. Napoleon had fled to Rochfort; the wreck of his army had retreated beyond the Loire; no list of killed and wounded had appeared; and, strange to say, the official journal of Paris had made out that the great Imperial army at Waterloo had gained ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... black hand awtrocities. Angus swears the second one rocked the dug out so his mess kit slid right offen the table. Things quieted down after that so we went out finally to see if we could pick up any soovenirs out of the wreck. ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... there was will behind the voice. His wasted face had a gentleness that was most moving to the father. He could not look at the pitiful wreck of his once proud and fearless boy without weeping, and being mindful of Harold's prejudice against sentiment, he left the room to regain his composure. To Mary Mr. Excell said: "I don't know you—but you are a noble woman. I give you a father's ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... to me, for I had foreseen some time that all was going to wreck, and had been taking care to reserve something if I could, though it was not much, for myself. But when he sent for me, he behaved much better than I expected, and told me plainly he had played the fool, and suffered himself to be surprised, which he ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... nothing else. They found sea-calves and birds upon the island, and were obliged to eat them raw, and drink their blood, for there was no water. After some weeks, they made a raft with fragments of the wreck, lashed together with calf-skin thongs: three men went off upon it, and were lost. Two, and a boy, staid upon the island—one of whom, Moreno, died four days afterwards raving mad, having gnawed the flesh off his arms: the survivors, Master John and the boy, dug holes in the sand with tortoise-shells, ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... clothe us with whatever feelings and powers, place us in whatever scenes may come—but gift us with this universal faculty, our power of knowing truth. Otherwise, with rudder lost, we are dreamers on a drifting wreck, and where were the Divine One, and this harmonious architecture of the universe, and all ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... loss. The Turks lost two hundred vessels, and when we recollect the number of men embarked on board of the sixteenth-century galleys we can see that the numbers are by no means exaggerated, especially as no quarter was given on either side. When the Captain Ojeda recaptured the battered wreck which had been the Capitana of Malta, we are told that on board of her were three hundred dead Turks; if this were the cost of the capture of one galley we need not ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... followed, both the horsemen looked at the man before them, who seemed like a fragment of the wreck of great armies which Napoleon had filled with men of bronze sought out from among three generations. Gondrin was certainly a splendid specimen of that seemingly indestructible mass of men which might be cut to pieces ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... the previous incomprehensible difference between the distant "C" and present person, the realization of the companionship, the romance, the friendship gone to wreck on this reef of musk and bear's-grease came over Nattie with a rush, and for a moment so affected her that she could hardly restrain her tears. And yet, after all, was not "C," her "C," the "C" whom she knew by his conversation only—"picked out of books!"—an unreal, intangible being, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... competition, when the Company had to fight rivals who used it in trade. Secret orders were given to the captains before sailing. These orders contained the harbour signals. Ships not displaying these signals were to be fired on by the forts of Hudson Bay or lured to wreck by false lights. The sailing orders were always signed 'a God speede, a good wind, a faire saile, y'r loving friends'; and the gentlemen of the Committee usually went down to the docks at Gravesend to search lockers for illicit trade, to shake hands and toss a sovereign and quaff drinks. From ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... and in the fourth book of the series, called "Tom Swift and His Submarine," you may read how he went after a sunken treasure. The party had many adventures, and were in no little danger from their enemies before they reached the wreck with ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... as usual in such cases, performed various involuntary evolutions, cutting right angles, sliding, spinning round, and rolling over, as if Oberon's magic horn were playing an occasional blast amidst the roaring winds; whilst the stewards alone, like Horace's good man, walked serene amidst the wreck of crockery and the fall of plates. Driven from our stronghold on deck, indiscriminately crammed in below like figs in a drum; "weltering," as Carlyle has it, "like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers," the cabin windows all shut in, we tried to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... and ruin wrought in one case proved another's safeguard, for the door opened and a miserable wreck of a man entered. As Dennis looked at his blotched, sodden face, trembling hand, shuffling gait, and general air of wretchedness, embodying and suggesting the worst ills of humanity, he decided not to drink for the sake ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... all that had occurred since the Laulie and Osprey parted company, and Mr. Neeven, as well as the lads of Lunda, was deeply moved by the story. Yaspard alluded as little as possible to the light which had caused the wreck, and he did not mention at all that he had seen one ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... a more practical guide in affairs. But Machiavelli was the theorist of humanity in politics, not the observer only. He distinguished the two orders of research. And, during the Italian Renaissance such distinction was supremely necessary. With a crumbled theology, a pagan Pope, amid the wreck of laws and the confusion of social order, il sue particolare and virtu, individuality and ability (energy, political genius, prowess, vital force: virtu is impossible to translate, and only does not mean virtue), were the dominating and unrelenting factors of life. Niccolo Machiavelli, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... sacrifice offered on the altar of our faith. His very intellect, his reason,—God's most precious gift,—a gift dearer than life,—perished in the great endeavor to harmonize the works and word of the Eternal. A most inscrutable event, that such an intellect should have been suffered to go to wreck through too eager a prosecution of such a work. But amid the mystery, which we cannot penetrate, our love, and our veneration, and our gratitude, toward that so highly gifted and truly Christian man shall only grow the deeper ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... she took hold of the basket, to lift it down to the admiring audience. Scarcely had she touched it, when, lo! the basket fell to the ground, and only the handle remained in her hand. All eyes were fixed upon the wreck. Exclamations of sorrow were heard in various tones; and "Who can have done this?" was all that Rosamond could say. Bell stood in sullen silence, which she obstinately preserved in the midst of the inquiries that were made ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... year, Mr. Coan had made the circuit of Hawaii, a foot and canoe trip of 300 miles, in which he nearly suffered canoe-wreck twice. In all, he has admitted into the Christian church by baptism, 12,000 persons, besides 4000 infants. He gave a most interesting account of one great baptism. The greatest care was previously taken in selecting, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Laut. Meet Proas. Chief Lomba. Traces of the Crew of the Charles Eaton. Their account of the wreck and sojourn on the Island. Captain King's account of the Rescue of the Survivors. Boy Ireland's relation of the sufferings and massacre of the Crew. Appearance of the shores of Timor Laut. Description of the Inhabitants. Dress. Leprosy. Canoes. Village of Oliliet. Curious Houses. Remarkable ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... Cowper is remembered at all is due more to his shorter poems such as Boadicea and The Wreck of the Royal George, and chiefly, perhaps, to John Gilpin, which in its own way is a treasure that we would not be without. Other of his shorter poems are full of a simple pathos and gentle humor. The ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... both are poor: that you could ill bear the humiliations of that haughty poverty which those born to higher fortunes so irksomely endure. You tremble to link your fate with one who has been imprudent—lavish—selfish, if you will. You recoil before you intrust your happiness to a man who, if he wreck that, can offer you nothing in return: no rank—no station—nothing to heal a bruised heart, or cover its wound, at least, in the rich disguises of power and wealth. Am I not right, Constance? Do I not ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said he to the workmen, who were busy in carrying out the furniture from Miss Sharperson's house, "all hands are at work, I see, in saving what they can from the wreck of the Sharperson. She was as well-fitted out a vessel, and in as gallant trim, as any ship upon the face of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... you a terrible story, and then I heard who was on the train due here to-morrow night. Mr. Watkins, don't, for God's sake, ask me how I found out, but I hope to die if I ain't telling you the living truth! They're going to wreck that train—No. 17—at Dead Man's Crossing, fifteen miles east, and rob the passengers and the express car. It's the worst gang in the country, Perry's. They're going to throw the train off the track, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... sent off stores of goods to await my coming in the different places I intended to visit. I took ship at a distant seaport, and for some time all went well, but at last, being caught in a violent hurricane, our vessel became a total wreck in spite of all our worthy captain could do to save her, and many of our company perished in the waves. I, with a few others, had the good fortune to be washed ashore clinging to pieces of the wreck, for the storm had driven us near an island, and scrambling ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... The day's doing had packed the always-crowded money lane. The newsboys were shouting afternoon editions. "Terrible panic in Wall Street. One man against millions. Robert Brownley broke 'the Street.' Made twenty millions in an hour. Banks failed. Wreck and ruin everywhere. President Snow of Asterfield National a suicide." Bob gave no sign of hearing. He strode with a slow, measured gait, his head erect, his eyes staring ahead at space, a man thinking, thinking, thinking for his salvation. Many hurrying men looked ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... away from control, to pass from instinctive opposition to antagonism, from antagonism to contempt, from contempt to rebellion and revolt. Arrogance of mind, irreverence, self-idolatry, blindness, follow in their course, and the whole nature loses its balance and becomes through pride a pitiful wreck. ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... dancing at a dozen points about the wreckage on the listing deck. A grotesque broken thing, queerly illuminated by the growing fires, was hanging over the wheel—the body of Larsen. No living thing was visible; and Dan, after a second look at the wreck of the bow, knew that he must be the sole survivor ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... William and Richard, were drowned in the White Ship on their way to England. The occurrence caused a very painful and widespread sensation, for besides the brilliant young nobles of the suite, eighteen high-born ladies, many of them of royal blood, perished in the wreck. In Orderic Vital, in William of Malmesbury, in Henry of Huntingdon, the story is fully set forth. The captain was the son of that pilot who had steered William the Conqueror to Pevensey in the good ship "Mora" built at Rouen. The weather ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... and many a night after the day when she and Peter and Phyllis had saved the train from wreck by waving their little red flannel flags, Bobbie used to wake screaming and shivering, seeing again that horrible mound, and the poor, dear trustful engine rushing on towards it—just thinking that it was doing its swift duty, ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... wid us now, but dey don't forgit us. Dey writes to us and visits us often and us goes to see dem. One son is goin' mighty well as a lawyer in Washin'ton, D.C., and our baby lives in New York City. It's been 'bout 3 years now since my daughter Juliette died atter a automobile wreck near Dalton, Georgia. Did you know 'bout Juliette? She give her life to wuk for de Y.W.C.A., and she went all over de world tryin' to make things better for de young women of our race. Somebody writ a memorial book 'bout her. I wish dere was a copy of dat book ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... you, as a bird Flings o'er his shivering plumes the fountain's spray. See! to the breaking mast the sailor clings; Ye scoop the ocean to its briny springs, And take the mountain-billow on your wings, And pile the wreck of navies round ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... any new relationship, we must first have sufficient intellectual light to satisfy our mind that we are entitled to stand in this relationship. The shadow of a question here will wreck our confidence. Then, having seen this, we must make the venture, the committal, the choice, and take the place just as definitely as the tree is planted in the soil, or the bride gives herself away ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... making answer. Then he observed: "Wrenn, this contest, as you know, has been too widely advertised to wreck it just as it is about to begin by the arrest of this man, Peter Deveaux. Say nothing to him about it; in fact, we will none of us mention a word of this to anybody; but when the race is over you can quietly dismiss him ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... said Katherine, "we'll have documentary evidence to show Westville that those two great political enemies, Mr. Blake and Mr. Peck, are secretly business associates—their business being a conspiracy to wreck the water-works and defraud the city. I think such a document would ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... maybe murderers. Guess they're everything you can think of, and a sight more. But they're men, and their blood's hot, warm blood the same as yours and mine. And you reckon to chaffer that blood for a price. You're going to sell it—for a price. You're going to do more. Yes. You're going to wreck a woman's conscience for life for those filthy, blood-soaked dollars. The price? Effie, things are mighty hard with us. Maybe they're harder with you than me. But I just can't believe we've dropped so low ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... guard will have to go," said Mr. Bland, grimly. "There has been a wreck and they have missed it. The special has obviously run off the metals without disturbing the line—how it could have done so passes my comprehension—but so it must be, and we shall have a wire from Kenyon or Barton Moss presently ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but here end my pain: Distrust may make me wretched once again. Now, with full sails, into the port I move, And safely can unlade my breast of love; Quiet, and calm: Why should I then go back, To tempt the second hazard of a wreck? ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... [Then more thoughtfully] But you describe this strange boy's mind as a wreck! In what part of the mouldering timbers can I fix the grappling-hook? Here it seems that most of the supports on which we can best rely, when we would save another, fail us,—religion, honor, the associations of childhood, the bonds ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Barry, scrutinizing the nervous wreck puttering about the stained table, muddling with bottle and glasses. "That's why we're here, because he only got some of it. No, no drink, thanks; and it won't be a bad notion if you leave it alone for a while, until we settle our ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... but we can contrive to make some cavern in the mountains a comfortable place of shelter, till you are better able to undertake a long journey; and believe me, it rejoices my soul to see you display the same firmness in adversity as you did in the hour of danger. In the wreck of your little fortune, you have preserved that noblest treasure, an upright heart. Many who now bask in affluence, would give their ill-acquired eminence to call that jewel without ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the Voyage affords an account worthy of a place among the pages of either of the three great novels. The landlady, an incredibly mean and heartless shrew, inflicted daily annoyances and extortions on her wind-bound victims. The squalid building, partly constructed of wreck-wood, could scarce house the party. The food supplies, other than those the visitors brought with them, were chiefly 'rusty bacon, and worse cheese,' with very bad ale to drink. And on the first afternoon, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... your cold coquette, who can't say 'No,' And won't say 'Yes,' and keeps you on and off-ing On a lee-shore, till it begins to blow— Then sees your heart wreck'd, with an inward scoffing. This works a world of sentimental woe, And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin; But yet is merely innocent flirtation, Not quite adultery, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... When man the first, last time, has leave to lay His whole heart bare before its Maker, leave To clear up the long error of a life And choose one happiness for evermore. With all mortality about me, Charles, The sudden wreck, the dregs of violent death— What if, despite the opening angel-song, There penetrate one prayer for you? Be saved Through me! Bear witness, no one could prevent My death! Lead on! ere he awake—best, now! All must be ready: did you say, Balfour, The crowd began to murmur? They'll be kept Too late ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... had successively defeated both his antagonists; drifting in with them until almost under the guns of the fortress, but never leaving them until, by his superior gunnery and seamanship, he had sunk one of them, and driven the other a helpless wreck on shore. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the Roman Empire, her laws were lost in the general wreck. During the 200 years, which followed the reign of Constantine the Great, Europe was a scene of every calamity, which the inroads of barbarians could inflict, either on the countries through which they passed, or those in which they settled. About the sixth century, ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... a wreck; Greene had to not only assist in closing it up, but pay Radford's notes as well. Lincoln afterwards spoke of these notes, which he finally made good to ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... young man came to the Salvation Army officer and told him that his regiment was to depart that night and that he was in great distress about his wife who on her way to see him had been caught in a railroad wreck, and later taken on her way by a rescue train. "I think she is in Rockford somewhere," he said anxiously, "but I don't know where, and I have to leave in ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... Aztec fell among friends, his unhappy antagonist was secured, and borne away in triumph to the sacrifice. The struggle was long and deadly, but by degrees the opening in the causeway was filled up by the wreck of the waggons, guns, rich bales of stuffs, chests of solid ingots, and bodies of men and horses which had fallen into it; and over this dismal ruin those in the rear were able to reach the other side. Cortes had found a place that ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... awful and disgraceful end; perhaps if he had been kinder, gentler, more sympathising for this first offence, he might have been saved the anguish of driving his poor boy to lower and wilder depths of sin and sorrow. It was all over now; and amid the apparent wreck of all his hopes, even after the death-blows which recent events had dealt to his old pride in his noble child, he yet regarded him as he lay there— wounded and in such a way—with all the pity of a Christian's forgiveness, with all the ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... number. She was not as heavily freighted (to continue for a moment the nautical metaphor) as some that sunk around her; but as she bore my all, it looked at first pretty much like a life-and-death business, especially the latter. For a time, all was horror and confusion; but as the wreck cleared away, I soon discovered that there would, at any rate, remain to me the consolation that others would not lose through my misfortunes; that the calamity, if such it were, would affect no one but myself. My own experience, and my observation ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... will, disrupted these magnetic relations; he tore apart the unseen filaments that bound them; and, the sustaining influence gone, he fell—a mighty wreck—on the bleak shore of ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... nurse," in the foregoing lines from the "Voluspa," is meant the Mundane Tree Yggdrasil, which shall survive unscathed, and wave mournfully over the universal wreck. But in the "Edda" Hor tells Gangler that "another earth shall appear, most lovely and verdant, with pleasant fields, where the grain shall grow unsown. Vidar and Vali shall survive. They shall dwell on the Plain of Ida, where Asgard formerly stood. Thither shall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... He looks for rain, and lets his crop stand; the bright sun injures it, or he loses a good chance to harvest it. The ship-master expects fair weather, puts out from port, and his ship is driven back upon the shore, a wreck. He expects a storm, stays in port, and misses the fair wind that would have ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... he agreed, slowly; "I am bound hand and foot. It isn't only what Alice—as a wife—claims from me. But there are Acton and Leslie; there is hardly a month that my brother doesn't propose some plan that would utterly wreck their affairs if I didn't put my foot down. They're both absolute children in money matters; Judge Lee is getting old—there's no one to take my place. Your Aunt Marianna, too; I've always managed everything ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... lies in one of the bunks. A sandy, sawney-looking Bourke native takes great interest in this wreck; watches his every movement as though he never saw a sick man before. The men lie about in the bunks, or the shade of the hut, and rest, and read all the soiled and mutilated scraps of literature they can rake out of the rubbish, and sleep, and wake up swimming in perspiration, ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson |
