"Collapse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must be happy, and he suddenly elopes, leaving all their anticipations bankrupt, with a certain joyous Mrs. Wilton, who has nothing but her beauty to recommend her. Deserted thus by the ignis fatuus of youth, the collapse of the three old people is complete. Under the shock the brain of Borkman gives way, and he wanders out into the winter's night, full of vague dreams of what he can still do in the world, if he can only break from his bondage ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... his faculties until aid was near at hand, and then the long strain of physical and mental agony had brought about a collapse. ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... mechanical or materialistic conception of the universe. They who would commend that view of the cosmos have not only to reckon with philosophical and religious idealism, but also with all the bright band of poets and artists and seers. Such an issue once resolutely forced would therewith collapse, for it would pit the qualitative standards against the quantitative, the imagination against literalism, the creative spirit in man against the machine ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... failed her, and that, besides, things were getting less clear to her; to his considerable relief, inasmuch as, though he would not have objected to joining hands, the expression of Miss Chancellor's figure and her averted face, with their desperate collapse, showed him well enough how she would have met such a proposal. What Miss Birdseye clung to, with benignant perversity, was the idea that, in spite of his exclusion from the house, which was perhaps only the result of a certain high-strung jealousy on Olive's part of ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... come off with flying colours in an elementary examination, showed signs of uneasiness as the advanced one approached. "Stick an observation into him," said Huxley. It was stuck, and acted like a stiletto, a jump into the air and utter collapse ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... of meteors dragged at him, until he became dizzy, and especially the moon exerted at this period a terrible power over him. It sucked in his strength, and Engelhardt imagined that at any moment the ground might give way beneath him and he might sink into the depths and the whole universe might collapse above him. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... this period of crisis the patient is pronounced past the worst. But, being in a state of collapse, it becomes necessary to rouse him with a strong stimulant. So, having sent the ladies to a place of safety, we take off the plaster tenderly, and kindly show Mac the oatmeal and the sand. We tell him that ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... ye killed," she said savagely—"I'll have ye killed"; and then suddenly he felt her collapse, submissive, ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... of the West Yorkshire Mounted Infantry only twenty strong had sustained, in storming a kopje, no less than ten casualties. The lieutenant, shot through the base of the skull, lay in that hospital in utterly helpless, if not hopeless, collapse; and near to him was his sergeant who, while bandaging the wounds of a comrade, was shot through the bridge of the nose, and his eye so damaged it had to be removed; whilst yet another of this group, shot through the shoulder, with characteristic cheerfulness said, "Oh, it's ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... while being bumped over a rough road in an old broken-down stagecoach, required but the sight of his nephew to cause an explosion. He had not closed his eyes during the entire night, and like his sister, Mrs. Forest, was in a state of collapse. His usually florid complexion had turned to a brilliant crimson, giving him the appearance of ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... Environment. To bewail our weakness is right, but not remedial. The cause must be investigated as well as the result. And yet, because we never see the other half of the problem, our failures even fail to instruct us. After each new collapse we begin our life anew, but on the old conditions; and the attempt ends as usual in the repetition—in the circumstances the inevitable repetition—of the old disaster. Not that at times we do not obtain glimpses of the true state of the case. After seasons of much ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... realization, an instinctive feel of awful pressure around you. Logic tells you how you are clamped about, but deeper than logic is the intuition that the glass walls are pressing in on themselves—at the point of collapse. Your ears, tingle with the feel of it: your ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... occupied by milliners' shops, and peopled, it was said, by thousands of rats. To get rid of this collection of shanties, they were sawn through below, and allowed to come down with a crash. Crowds of people came to witness the collapse, in the hope of seeing the expected multitude of rats rush out. There was not a single one! They had all cleared out in good time. Such is the wisdom of ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... than assets, and his astute helmsmanship had resulted in running all seven soundly and irrevocably upon the rocks. From the wreck he emerged, in the first lifeboat to leave, with his broad white brow as untroubled and serene as ever. The collapse, however, left him without visible means of support, so he took a short trip abroad, returning in a month or two as the American manager of a large German company which was just entering ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... my own collapse came; but praise his great name, he was with me in the darkness and ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... 431 (or thereabouts) to 479 or perhaps a few years later. Much had happened between the death of Ausonius and his birth. The lights were going out all over Europe. Barbarian kingdoms had been planted in Gaul and Spain, Rome herself had been sacked by the Goths; and in his lifetime the collapse went on, ever more swiftly. He was a young man of twenty when the ultimate horror broke upon the West, the inroad of Attila and the Huns. That passed away, but when he was twenty-four the Vandals sacked Rome. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... Daffodil Group in Eldorado County. The wreckage from the Benicia Line he turned into the Napa Consolidated, which was a quicksilver venture, and it earned him five thousand per cent. What he lost in the collapse of the Stockton boom was more than balanced by the realty appreciation of his key- ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... saved the Roman empire from imminent collapse; but it was impossible that it should be more than a makeshift, like Cromwell's protectorate. There were huge classes with perpetual grievances; the removal of the military forces to the provinces left the city of Rome without adequate governors of the provinces themselves. And ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... are almost invariably cylindrical, and are very commonly internally fired, either by one flue or by two; we owe it to the late Sir William Fairbairn, President of the British Association in 1861, that the danger, which at one time existed, of the collapse of these fire flues, has been entirely removed by his application of circumferential bands. Nowadays there are, as we know, modifications of Sir William Fairbairn's bands, but by means of his bands, or by modifications ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... Assyria, and Sharduris III. of Armenia, that Israel, under Jehoash, and his son Jeroboam II.; inspired by the exhortations of Elisha the prophet, was rehabilitated for a season, winning victories over the Syrians and taking vengeance on Damascus, and then attacking the Moabites. The sudden collapse of Damascus led to the decline of Syria, but though Jeroboam II. seemed to be firmly seated as king in Samaria, the downfall of Israel and Judah alike, as well as of Tyre, Edom, Gaza, Moab, and Ammon, was foretold by the prophet Amos, while from the midst of Ephraim the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... after the great nine days of late September and early October, the prisoners' line leaps suddenly to such a height that a new piece has to be added perpendicularly to the chart, and the wall can hardly take it in. What does that leaping line mean? Simply the collapse of the German morale—the final and utter defeat of the German Army as a fighting force. I hope with all my heart that the General Staff will allow that chart to be published before the fickle popular memory has forgotten too much ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... another garret, this time in Green-Arbour Court, Fleet Street, in a wilderness of slums. The Coromandel project, however, on which so many hopes had been built, fell through. No explanation of the collapse could be got from either Goldsmith himself, or from Dr. Milner. Mr. Forster suggests that Goldsmith's inability to raise money for his outfit may have been made the excuse for transferring the appointment to another; and that is probable ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... considered necessary. The additional center ring, E, is intended to prevent leakage through the cut in the expanded ring and over the face of the unexpanded one, which might occur when the rings and cylinder should become so worn that the rings, when not expanded, should collapse and leave the surface of the cylinder. The rivets, F, shown by the dotted lines, are placed near the cuts in the L-rings, and are intended to hold the outside and inside rings together at that point, and prevent any tendency on the part of the latter to collapse and let steam ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... one o'clock the next day. The doctor was very pleased at her long and sound sleep, the like of which the old lady had not enjoyed since her first collapse, and which, in his view, was certain to presage a ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... meeting a social hiatus in our British system that is offered by certain southern regions in the American United States for meeting another hiatus within the same British system. Without tea, without cotton, Great Britain, no longer great, would collapse into a very anomalous sort of second-rate power. Without cotton, the main bulwark of our export commerce would depart. And without tea, our daily life would, generally speaking, be as effectually-ruined as bees without a Flora. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... a low sound of laughter, looked up and nearly fell backwards, that is, metaphorically, for the chair prevented such a physical collapse. ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... democratic development since first holding multiparty elections in 1991, but deficiencies remain. International observers judged elections to be largely free and fair since the restoration of political stability following the collapse of pyramid schemes in 1997. In the 2005 general elections, the Democratic Party and its allies won a decisive victory on pledges of reducing crime and corruption, promoting economic growth, and decreasing the size of government. The election, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... The collapse of a composure so strong and bridled filled Masanath with consternation. Had Rachel's spirit been of weaker fiber the Egyptian's own forceful individuality would have longed to sustain it, but when it broke in its strength she knew that here was a stress of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... are studying; Bernard Shaw is never frivolous. He never gives his opinions a holiday; he is never irresponsible even for an instant. He has no nonsensical second self which he can get into as one gets into a dressing-gown; that ridiculous disguise which is yet more real than the real person. That collapse and humorous confession of futility was much of the force in Charles Lamb and in Stevenson. There is nothing of this in Shaw; his wit is never a weakness; therefore it is never a sense of humour. For wit is always connected with the idea that truth is close and clear. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... you say, the party be properly matronized. I'—H'm—h'm! that refers to little explanations of my own. Well, all is, I was going to do this very thing,—with enlargements. And now Miss Craydocke and I may collapse." ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... to the Bristol, Brock and Miss Fowler found the fair Edith in a pitiful state of collapse. She declared over and over again that she could not face the Rodneys; it was more than should be expected of her; she was sure that something would go wrong; why, oh, why was it necessary to deceive the Rodneys? ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... I can't believe it could collapse. Do tell me about something else you made, which you loved—something you sculpted. Oh, it makes my heart burn to hear you!—Do you think I might call you Anabel? I should love to. You do call me ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... of the volcano, that seemed to shrink and collapse from this gigantic and appalling apparition, nevertheless threw its light, redly and steadily, upon another shape that stood beside, quiet and motionless; and it was perhaps the contrast of these two things—the Being and the Shadow—that ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... countries concerned. The growth of revolutionary feeling abroad made imperialistic governments even more aggressive towards the Workers' and Peasants' Republic than they would otherwise be. It was now making their intervention difficult, but no more. It was impossible to say that the collapse of Imperialism had gone so far that it had lost its teeth. Chicherin speaks as if he were a dead man or a ventriloquist's lay figure. And indeed he is half-dead. He has never learnt the art of releasing himself from ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... everything on which the Queen had set her heart. He yielded all the more readily now, because he did not believe in the possibility of my ascent; he was convinced that even though the balloon should mount a few feet into the air, it would collapse immediately, whereon I should fall and break my neck, and he should be rid of me. He demonstrated this to her so convincingly, that she was alarmed, and tried to talk me into giving up the idea, but on finding that I persisted in my wish to have the ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... in her chair with an air of nervous collapse, and did not say anything. Westover saw her watching the young couples who passed in and out of the room where the dancing was, or found corners on sofas, or window-seats, or sheltered spaces beside the doors and the chimney- piece, the girls panting and the men leaning forward to fan them. She ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... administration of the country, but because they thought, rightly or wrongly, that some mediaeval custom, which they considered as their sacred privilege, had not been observed. During the last years of the Spanish regime, frequent riots broke out in Brussels because, after the accidental collapse of a tower containing old documents, the people had been able to read again the Grand Privilege of Mary of Burgundy, granted two centuries before. They had reprints made of it under the name Luyster van Brabant (Ornament of Brabant) and wanted to persuade ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... prefigure the implacable sternness of the ultimate shepherds. A strange life is theirs, taking them day after day into the bosom of homes prostrated by the emigrating throe. Does this matter-of-fact bearing conceal an infinite tenderness, a pity that dare not show itself for fear of unmanly collapse? Are they secretly broken by the sight of the desolate nursery, the dismantled crib, the forgotten clockwork monkey lying in a corner of the cupboard where the helpless Urchin laid it with care before he and his smaller sister were deported, to be out of the way in the final storm? Does the ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... country for a long distance. The architecture was simple but effective, and the house had evidently been a home of comfort and ease in better times. We were frankly and cordially welcomed, and allowed to see the mixed feelings with which the reassembled family accepted the collapse of the Confederacy. Among the young people was a son of the governor who had been desperately wounded but had recovered. The rebellion had had their devoted support, but they said, "That is all past now," and seemed eagerly desirous to get ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Wildfire was white except where he was red, and that red was not now his glossy, flaming skin. A terrible muscular convulsion as of internal collapse grew slower and slower. Yet choked, blinded, dying, killed on his feet, Wildfire heard ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... heart full of anguish, he had sought to reason away the dread that Mabel Manderson had known too much of what had been intended against her husband's life. That she knew all the truth after the thing was done, he could not doubt; her unforgettable collapse in his presence when the question about Marlowe was suddenly and bluntly put had swept away his last hope that there was no love between the pair, and had seemed to him, moreover, to speak of dread of discovery. In any case, she knew ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... stood by her. Grasping Elise's hand firmly, she whispered: "Don't you collapse, Elise! If you cry I'll never forgive you! Brace up now and help me through. It will be all right if we don't ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... and he did it at once, not stopping to cry over spilt milk, but with good courage and the old enthusiasm that never failed him, he returned to the trade of authorship. He dug out half-finished articles and stories, finished them and sold them, and within a week after the Jones collapse he was at work on a novel based an the old Sellers idea, which eight years before he and Howells had worked into a play. The brief letter in which he reported this news to Howells bears no marks of depression, though the writer of it was in his fifty-sixth year; he was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... real than it seemed, but helped to steady one who was holding herself together with a struggle, on the verge of nervous collapse. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... obligations to Luxemburg and Belgium; saw that the triumph of the imperial militants would involve the disruption of the concert of the nations, the abrogation of International Law (laboriously instituted through three centuries of painful effort) and the collapse of the democratic order; and felt, finally, that upon British intervention depended the very existence of the British Empire with all that it means of good to one-fifth part of the human race. Over against this group ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... hardly remind our readers, has only been rescued from subsidence and collapse at an immense cost by a lavish use of the resources of modern engineering. The building itself is not without merits, but its site is inconspicuous and the swampy nature of the soil is a constant menace to its durability. The scheme which we venture with all humility ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... abandon the notion that biology prescribes in detail how we shall run society. True, this foundation has never received a surplus of intelligent consideration. Sometimes human societies have built so foolishly upon it that the result has been collapse. Somebody is always digging around it in quest of evidence of some vanished idyllic state of things which, having had and discarded, we should return to. This little excursion into biology is made in the full consciousness that social mandates are not to be found there. Human projects are the ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... have watched artisans like dwarfs at work still higher, among knitted steel, seen them balance themselves nonchalantly astride girders swinging in space, seen them throwing rivets to one another and never missing one; seen also a huge crane collapse under an undue strain, and, crumpling like tinfoil, carelessly drop its load onto the populous sidewalk below. That particular mishap obviously raised the fear of death among a considerable number of people, but perhaps only for a moment. Anybody in America will tell you without ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... to take Polly over to Colonel Gresham's," the Doctor explained. "He keeps on calling for 'Eva,' and nothing will quite him. He is on the verge of collapse." ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... incendiary, hysterical utterances. All workingmen were to be called out on a general strike; every man that had a trade was to take part in a "death struggle." But Sommers could see the signs of a speedy collapse. In a few days the strong would master the situation; then would follow a wrangle in the courts, and the fatal "black list" would appear. The revenge of the railroads would be ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... thus always ready-to-serve, with no cook glowering at the clock, no cheese souffle ready to collapse, no dishes to wash or frying-pans to scour, life is ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... continued and deepened in every part of the world during the past year. In many countries political instability, excessive armaments, debts, governmental expenditures, and taxes have resulted in revolutions, in unbalanced budgets and monetary collapse and financial panics, in dumping of goods upon world markets, and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to be more or less in a state of collapse! The bal masque is over, the guests have departed, and all that is left to us now are the recollections of a delightful party that gave full return for our efforts to have it ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... though it was a summer's night, without a breath of wind, and at an hour when the splash of a fish leaping in the stream would have created a commotion. Now, Miss Melhuish was an active and well-built young woman, an actress, too, and therefore likely to meet an emergency without instant collapse. Yet she allows herself to be struck dead or insensible without cry or struggle! How do you ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... to the window and raised the blind half way. I examined the old man attentively. There was no doubt about the curious pallor of his skin. It was like the pallor of extreme collapse, save for the presence of a faint colour in his cheeks which seemed to lie as a bright transparency over a dead background. My fingers again sought his pulse. It was full and steady. As I counted it my eyes ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... Building and engineering partook of the general impetus. Speculation moved with an accelerated velocity every successive day, the only disagreeable contingency connected with it being the possibility of a collapse. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... at finding Zoie in a state of collapse, Aggie opened her arms sympathetically to receive the weeping confidences that she was ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... Bent and Dora had returned to the hotel. Mrs. Hauksbee had come out of the Valley of Humiliation, had ceased to reproach herself for her collapse in an hour of need, and was even beginning to direct the affairs of ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... collapse of an attempt of the people of the "Western District" to set up an independent State by the name of Franklin, the North Carolina Assembly erected the three counties included in the Cumberland settlement into a superior court district; ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... William Raines of Saint Louis and I regret that—that—" At the beginning of my sentence I had drawn myself up into the attitude of the old Marquis of Flanders in the hall of the ruined Chateau de Grez, but when I had got to the point—of, shall I say, my own sword?—I was forced to collapse and I could feel my knees under the tea table begin to shake together and huddle for their accustomed and ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... dies away, inarticulate. I see his lips whiten and draw back upon his teeth. His hands clutch me as a convulsive spasm wrenches his muscles. There is a tense, rigid silence, and then one deep-drawn groan. Nerve, limb, muscle, and flesh collapse as the Life is set loose. The damp body sinks back, leaving its death sweat on my arms, its gasp in my ears. Tomkins is dead. But the impulse is not done with me yet. I cannot get out of that hospital ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... foreseen. For, almost as they entered they saw lying on the floor a suit of striped pyjamas, and close to it, gagged, bound, helpless, trussed up like a goose that was ready for the oven, gyves on his wrists, gyves on his ankles, their chief, their superintendent, Mr. Maverick Narkom, in a state of collapse, and with ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... moment between boulders and trees, giving out a great wailing cry, unearthly enough had there been any to hear it. Then he began to run wildly through the thick darkness. In his ear—for her head lay close—he heard her dear voice, between the sobs of collapse, calling his inner name most sweetly; and the sound summoned to the front all in him that was ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... unless under the influence of opium, was sleepless, his mind was clear, and he gave the impression of being extremely ill, although not in collapse." ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... Desvarennes; and no politeness held good on her part when it was a question of business. From his first words, she had found a weak point in the plan, and had attacked him with such plainness that the financier, seeing his enterprise collapse at the sound of the mistress's voice-like the walls of Jericho at the sound of the Jewish trumpets—had beaten a retreat, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "A defeat would mean collapse, annihilation and horrors most dreadful for all of us.[72] Our imaginations revolt at such a possibility. Our representatives in the Reichstag have unanimously declared on innumerable occasions that the Social Democrats could not leave their ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... unjustly distributed taxation. Worse and worse became the condition of the soldiers at the front; ever more scandalous the neglect of the sick and wounded. Incompetence, corruption, and treason combined to hurry the nation onward to a disastrous collapse. The Germanophiles were still industriously at work in the most important and vital places, practising sabotage upon a scale never dreamed of before in the history of any nation. They played upon the fears of the miserable weakling who was the nominal ruler of the vast Russian Empire, and ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... Eleanor to keep you out so long! You must be exhausted, I am sure. I know how trying the first days of recovery from illness are, and how even a little exertion will produce absolute collapse. Now, will you have a little brandy in your tea, Mr. Vernon? A teaspoonful will sometimes produce a magical effect," she added, as if she were recommending a peculiarly startling firework. "No? You are quite sure? And what is this Richard is telling me about two horses? He came rushing in just ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... the very fact that has been specially diluted or denied. But though moderns deny the existence of sin, I do not think that they have yet denied the existence of a lunatic asylum. We all agree still that there is a collapse of the intellect as unmistakable as a falling house. Men deny hell, but not, as yet, Hanwell. For the purpose of our primary argument the one may very well stand where the other stood. I mean that as all thoughts ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... which Sterne had attributed to the violence of his literary emotions was no doubt due to the rapid decline of bodily powers which, unknown to him, were already within a few months of their final collapse. He did not set out for London on the 20th of December, as he had promised himself, for on that day he was only just recovering from "an attack of fever and bleeding at the lungs," which had confined him to his room for nearly ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... was almost in collapse. Without a word he dropped the cold, limp little body into our arms, and prostrated himself till his forehead touched the dust. We had not time to think of him, we hardly noted his extraordinary submission, for all our thought was for the babe. There was no pulse to be felt, ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... Europe with railway lines, can give an idea of the zeal with which the urban populations set about building cathedrals; ... anecessity at the end of the twelfth century because it was an energetic protest against feudalism." The collapse of the unscientific Romanesque vaulting of some of the earlier cathedrals and the destruction by fire of others stimulated this movement by the necessity for their immediate rebuilding. The entire reconstruction of the cathedrals of Bayeux, Bayonne, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... its presence in world markets. From 2001-03 real wages fell and Brazil's economy grew, on average, only 2.2% per year, as the country absorbed a series of domestic and international economic shocks. That Brazil absorbed these shocks without financial collapse is a tribute to the resiliency of the Brazilian economy and the economic program put in place by former President CARDOSO and strengthened by President LULA DA SILVA. In 2004, Brazil enjoyed more robust growth that yielded increases in employment and real wages. The three pillars of the economic ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... knew him best, and who could appraise at their true value the toils and trials and disappointments of his daily lot, the wonder was not that he broke down; it was rather that physical collapse had not overtaken him sooner. There are many kinds of heroism, but it may be doubted whether any touches a higher level than that exhibited by this patient sower of the seed of life on the sterile field ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... petillating roar of laughter, which ran along the line from end to end and back again—a roar of laughter so loud that hardly a man knew that the band was now playing in full force "God save the Queen," with an additional obbligato from the drums—that one known as the "big" threatening collapse from the vigorous action of the stick-wielder's ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... remote risk of any unpleasant aftermath. Why, the thing was over and done with—let by-gones be by-gones. As for those other matters supposed to be upon his mind—hints of approaching trouble for himself, and the knowledge of Mr. Carstairs's bitter disappointment over the collapse of his all but triumphant scheme—he could not for the life of him give them any ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... acceptable than this one to poets in general. They are far more likely to earn the world's ridicule by the deadly seriousness with which they take verse writing. If the object of his pursuit is a sport, the average poet is as little aware of it as is the athlete who suffers a nervous collapse before the ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... well be said that it was Nostromo alone who saved the lives of these gentlemen. Captain Mitchell, on his part, never left them till he had seen them collapse, panting, terrified, and exasperated, but safe, on the luxuriant velvet sofas in the first-class saloon of the Minerva. To the very last he had been careful to address the ex-Dictator as ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... was practically inevitable, but its effect was such as only one anticipated. That one was his adversary, who slowly bent under his weight as though overcome thereby, shifting his grip lower and lower till it almost looked as if he were about to collapse altogether. But just as the breaking-point seemed to be reached there came a change. He gathered himself together and with gigantic exertion began to straighten his bent muscles. Slowly but irresistibly he heaved his enemy upwards. There came a moment of desperate, confused struggle; ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... we are apt to collapse suddenly after a movement. In fact, it is harder to control the release of the contraction of the muscles than to control the gradual increase of their contraction. This is illustrated in the difficulty ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... denied them. They were powerless to move a limb, save as jerked painfully by those shrieking currents. Breath was taken away, and an enormous weight bore down upon them, threatening to produce a fatal collapse through their ribs ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... burden to carry with him — some of the cordials that had been found to give most relief in cases of utter collapse and exhaustion, a few simple medicaments and outward applications thought to be of some use in allaying the pain of those terrible black swellings from which the sickness took its significant name, and some simply-prepared food for the sufferers, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... state bordering between exhaltation at his success and collapse over the narrow margin by which he had put through a deal which at one time appeared as elusive as ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... end of his polemic, the irresistible implications of the facts force M. Garofalo to a series of eclectic compromises, which produce on the reader, after so many accusations and threats of repression, the depressing impression of a mental collapse, as ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... might be in for a serious nervous illness. Perhaps what she wished to tell him might be buried in oblivion for months, if indeed it ever came to light. It even occurred to him that she might wake up completely ignorant of everything that had preceded her collapse. In that case what should he do? how should he behave? He knew he could never rid his mind entirely of the suspicion she had planted there, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... with the appalling roar and scream of the flames; showers of sparks were flung up against the black sky, as with a tremendous crash the inside of one of the piles would collapse; and still the engine ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Marshall," and he spoke more seriously, "pardon my giving you advice, but you have had a hard morning and you will feel better, later on, for a little food. As for me, I have had nothing since yesterday, and shall collapse without it. Suppose I go to the house and scrape up some sort of a lunch. Won't you come there in ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... look at me and you can see why. I'm hard as rocks. And I like the work. But I tell you a chap's got to break in to it. It's a great thing when he's learned to pick grapes a whole long day and come home at the end of it with that tired happy feeling, instead of being in a state of physical collapse. That fireplace—those big stones—I was soft, then, a little, anemic, alcoholic degenerate, with the spunk of a rabbit and about one per cent as much stamina, and some of those big stones nearly broke my back and my heart. But I persevered, and used my body in the way Nature ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... her fling at the little squabbles and absurdities of provincial society, the "sets" and petty distinctions, giving a humorous relation of the collapse of her well-meaning efforts, in conjunction with friends at the sous-prefecture, to do away with some of these caste prejudices, of the horror and indignation created in the oligarchy of La Chatre by the apparition of an inoffensive music-master and his wife at the ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... the first. In another form of this pernicious malaria the symptoms resemble true cholera, and is peculiar to the tropics. In this there are violent vomiting, watery diarrhea, cramps in the legs, cold hands and feet, and collapse. Sometimes the attack begins with a chill, but fever, if any, is slight, although the patient complains of great thirst and inward heat. The pulse is feeble and the breathing shallow, but ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... instructions, pushed on to the Lahore Gate, no good, as it turned out, would have been effected. Nicholson's columns, as related, had been forced to retire; the gate would have remained closed, and possibly the undertaking would have resulted in a more serious collapse than the ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... the wild intoxicating dreams which fill a young head so full of delicious excitement. Young men at his age take no account of obstacles nor of dangers; they see success in every direction; imagination has free play, and turns their lives into a romance; they are saddened or discouraged by the collapse of one of the visionary schemes that have no existence save in their heated fancy. If youth were not ignorant and timid, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... eventful date a financial earthquake of a violence absolutely without precedent shook every great center of the civilized world, closing their markets one by one until New York, the last of all, finally suspended in order to forestall what would have surely been a ruinous collapse. The four and a half months during which this suspension continued stand to the ten days closing of 1873 in a proportion which fitly illustrates the relative gravity of the ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... of the rapid collapse of the Granger movement, the unfortunate experience which the farmers had in their attempts at business cooperation was probably chief. Their hatred of the middleman and of the manufacturer was almost as intense as their hostility to the railroad ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... Adolescence had turned his desire to play into a fury of passion for his art: he practised on single passages for ten or twelve hours a day, and would often sink in a swoon from sheer exhaustion. This deep, torpor-like sleep saved him from complete collapse, just as it saved Mendelssohn, and he would arise to go ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... determined measures, she had counselled the Emperor to remain in Peking and face the barbarians; she is further believed to have urged the execution of Parkes and Loch, the order luckily arriving too late to be carried out. For the next three years the Regents looked anxiously for the final collapse of the T'ai-p'ings, having meanwhile to put up with the hateful presence of foreign diplomats, now firmly established within the Manchu section of the city of Peking. No sooner was the great rebellion entirely suppressed (1864), than another rising broke out. The Nien-fei, ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... gained access to the ward, and when she heard the boy's desire for "turn-overs" promised him some. The next day she found an opportunity to keep her promise. At midnight, Dr. Gore and I having been hastily summoned, met at the bedside of the poor fellow, who was in a state of collapse, and died before morning. Dr. Gore was so overcome that he actually wept. The boy had been a patient of his from his infancy, and in a piteous letter, which I afterwards read, his mother had implored the doctor to watch over ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... and deformations, and even the moss and lichen which time has planted on them need not be disturbed. Pointing is of no avail to preserve a building, as it only enters an inch or two in depth. Underpinning is dangerous if the building be badly cracked, and may cause collapse. But if you shore the structure with timber, and then weld its stones together by applying the grouting machine, you turn the whole mass of masonry into a monolith, and can then strengthen the foundations in any way that may be found ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... British control, that Pen's battalion was relieved and sent far to the rear for a long rest. Even unwounded men cannot stand the strain of continuous battle for many weeks at a stretch. The nervous system, delicate and complicated, must have relief, or the physical organization will collapse, or the ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... for salamanders, for it was in such sites that we found notably large numbers of the animals and most of the clutches of eggs that we collected; this kind of log is not frequently found, for its wood is saturated with water and completely punky and nearly ready for final collapse. ...
— Natural History of the Salamander, Aneides hardii • Richard F. Johnston
... the biblical description of Paradise. Therefore, following our own wishes and the advice of several poets—they all are poets down there—we decided to drive to the play rather than to expose ourselves to the rigours of the local railway service: the abject collapse of which, under the strain of handling twelve or fifteen hundred people, the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... in a whirlwind of long-repressed excitement, slammed, locked and bolted all the doors leading from her apartments into the hall, and then fled into her dressing-room and cast herself head long down upon the floor in the collapse of utter, infinite despair—despair in all its depth of darkness, without its ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... from side to side under that fearful jolting—his mouth was ajar, his eyes staring, a fearful mask of a face; yet he clung in place. When he was stunned, instinct still kept his feet in the stirrups and taught him to give lightly to every jar. He fought hard but in time even Red Perris must collapse. ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... without affecting the lower part. (See Fig. 3.) As the load increases the projecting ends sometimes split horizontally. (See Fig. 4.) The irregularities in the load are due to the fact that the fibres collapse a few at a time, beginning with those with the thinnest walls. The projection of the ends increases the strength of the material directly beneath the compressing weight by introducing a beam action which ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... understand. Use and disuse were invoked expressly to help us over these hard places; but whatever changes can be induced in offspring by direct treatment of the parents, they are not of a kind to encourage hope of real assistance from that quarter. It is not to be denied that through the collapse of this second line of argument the Selection hypothesis has had to take an increased and perilous burden. Various ways of meeting the difficulty have been proposed, but these mostly resolve themselves into improbable ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... dogs according to Scott's directions. He proceeded to Hut Point with Dimitri and the two dog teams on 13th February, and was kept in camp by bad weather until 19th, when Crean reached the Hut and brought in the news of my breakdown and collapse at Corner Camp. A blizzard precluded a start for the purpose of relieving me, but this expedition was undertaken immediately the weather abated. It was only during a temporary clear that ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... the earth will fall into the sun, Just as sure and as straight, as if shot from a gun." And he worried about it. "For when gravitation unbuckles her straps, Just picture," he said, "what a fearful collapse! It will come in a few million ages, perhaps." ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Minerva, worn with anxiety and on the verge of a collapse, dropped into a chair on her veranda, her faithful Major by her side. He had come to offer help and sympathy as soon as he heard of her distress, and, finding her in such a softened, dependent, and receptive mood, the Major had remained to try ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... on the Stock Exchange, although for that matter a great many mornings during the past three weeks had been the same. The bottom had fallen out of innumerable cans. Persons with scarlet or greenish white faces were waving their hands and calling on the Deity to explain the collapse of cast iron securities. If there had been a threat of war things could hardly have been worse. The worst of it was that none of the big sellers seemed disposed to give their reasons for unloading. Mr. Hilbert ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... effect would be equal to a large amount of capital. Generals stood well in Wall Street; generals were excellent men (when endorsed by bishops) to send abroad to effect loans; generals were capital fellows to get well out of a financial collapse; in fact, generals were just the men to get through any sort of difficulty. Society bowed to a general; the people were charmed by a general; a general was every thing to a Young American Banking House like that of Pickle, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... threatened me in all sorts of ways—said he would put me in prison and all that if I didn't help him. Oh, he's the worst man there ever was!" groaned the overwrought boy. And now the others could see that he was on the verge of collapse. ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... leaders expect to carry the people over to new mores by the might of two or three dogmas of political or social philosophy. The history of every such attempt shows that dogmas do not make mores. Every revolution suffers a collapse at the point where reconstruction should begin. Then the old ruling classes resume control, and by the use of force set the society in its old grooves again. The ecclesiastical revolution of the sixteenth century resulted in a wreck whose discordant fragments we have inherited. It left us a ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of about three-quarters of a mile from the brig, the studding-sails of the Aurora were seen to suddenly collapse, and in a few seconds they had entirely disappeared, being taken in, all at once, man-o'-war fashion. This showed George, not only that his old craft was heavily manned, but also that she was in the command of a man who knew how to handle her. But the sight did not greatly disturb him; he had had ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... position to remain in his place, nobody else was compelled to do so; and Sir Richard addressed the general, void, encasing air. There was some more speech-making of the like kind—still to empty air—when suddenly and almost unexpectedly the debate was allowed to collapse. At first, this was unintelligible—for, senseless as was the amendment, it was no worse than scores of others which the Tories have made the pretext ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... occurred, in the history of joint-stock enterprise, such another day as the 30th of November, 1845. It was the day on which a madness for speculation arrived at its height, to be followed by a collapse terrible to many thousand families. Railways had been gradually becoming successful, and the old companies had, in many cases, bought off, on very high terms, rival lines which threatened to interfere with their profits. Both of these ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... on such an occasion, when left far behind, that one of the ungainly legs found its way into a badger hole. The collapse was harder and more complete than usual, and the little sufferer would have died there had he not been found by Dave and Irene in the course of their rides. Dave, after a moment's examination, drew his revolver, but Irene pled for the life ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... mischievous. But on the night of the third day out from Aden, the full force of the monsoon swells strikes the Mandarin, and, true to her character, she responds by rolling and pitching about in the trough of the sea in a manner that fills the mules with consternation, and ends in their utter collapse and demoralization. Planks break and give way as the whole body of mules are flung violently and simultaneously forward, and before midnight the mules are piled up in promiscuous and struggling heaps, while tons of water come on deck and wash ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... examination may be recognised by the presence of a number of very small black points. From the leaves the fungus quickly spreads over the leaf-stalks and finally to the heart of the plant, ending in its total collapse. So rapid is the multiplication of the spores, especially in moist weather, that a few diseased plants are capable of infecting a large plot within two or three weeks. Immediately discoloration of a leaf is noticed ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... and to weather conditions. Despite attempts by the government to diversify, the economy is still largely dependent on agriculture and related industries. The agricultural sector accounts for over one-third of GDP and about 80% of export earnings and employs about 85% of the labor force. A collapse of world cocoa and coffee prices in 1986 threw the economy into a recession, from which the country had not ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... fathoms tell on all but men of sturdy build. Occasionally a declivity perhaps ten fathoms below the surface has to be fished, and this demands the service of picked men, divers possessing the highest vitality. Several divers collapse every season through toiling at unusual depths, and two or three pay the penalty of death. Most divers, however, live to as full a span as men pursuing other ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... of these drugs for a while the body demands the continuation and if the victim is deprived of his accustomed portion there will be a collapse with intense suffering. Every tortured nerve in the body seems to call out for the drug. The victim will do anything to get his drug. He will lie, steal, and he may even attack those who are caring for him. For the time being ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... and Stevens admitted air until their suits began to collapse. Then, face-plate valves cracked, he sniffed cautiously, finally opening his helmet wide. Nadia followed suit and the man laughed as she wrinkled her nose in disgust as two faint, but unmistakable ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... The collapse of the bridge at the close of the Glacial Epoch left the Atlantic abyss effectually dividing the two hemispheres. Its islands, few and far between, were helpless to maintain intercourse between the opposite shores; this is proven by the fact that all of them from Greenland ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... can't collapse. I can't believe it could collapse. Do tell me about something else you made, which you loved—something you sculpted. Oh, it makes my heart burn to hear you!—Do you think I might call you Anabel? I should love to. You do call me ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... little Francis, your grandchild, I ask you to extend the financial help which I, as your heir-in-law, might demand. You may consider that I have wronged you, but, as you should know and must know, the wrong was unintentional and due solely to the sudden collapse of the worthless American investments which the scoundrelly Yankee brokers ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... field—did not have a position. It was a position. The ship inside it could not be said to be in the real cosmos at all, but when the field collapsed it would be somewhere, and the way it pointed, and how long before collapse, determined in what particular somewhere it would be when it came out. But travel in overdrive ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the meantime the respiration becomes frequent and often difficult, and the temperature rises three or four degrees above the normal; but soon convulsions, affecting chiefly the muscles of the back and loins, usher in the final collapse of which the progress is marked by the loss of all power of moving the trunk or extremities, diminution of temperature, mucous and sanguinolent alvine evacuations, and similar discharges from the mouth and nose.' ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... of Challis's over, for Billy Silver's collapse had occurred at the third delivery. Fenn mistimed the first. Two hours' writing indoors does not improve the eye. The ball missed the leg stump by ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... no wall to which to turn—and fancy that the most dismal sound in the universe was the surly monotone the north-easter harped on the beach. We reposed that night among the camp equipment, the sick man caring for naught in his physical collapse and disconsolation. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Now, she was well-nigh incapable of any bodily activity. There came not even so much as the feeblest moan from her lips. The torment was far too racking for such futile fashion of lamentation. She merely sat there in a posture of collapse. To all outward seeming, nerveless, emotionless, an abject creature. Even the eyes, which held so fixedly their gaze on the window, were quite expressionless. Over them lay a film, like that which veils the eyes of some dead ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... out to play forward, slipped on the wet grass and was stumped. Three balls later Bradford was caught and bowled. It was Gordon's turn to go in. Nearly everything depended on him. If he failed, the whole side would probably collapse. The tail had done miracles in the first innings; but it could not be expected to do the ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... swift enough, creates amazing stability: he had seen how the gyroscope can balance at apparently impossible angles. Perhaps it was so of the mind. If it twirls at high speed it can lean right out over the abyss without collapse. But the stationary mind—he thought of Bishop Borzoi—must keep away from the edge. Try to force it to the edge, it raves in panic. Every mind, very likely, knows its own frailties, and does well to safeguard them. At any rate, that was the most ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley |
