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Crumble   /krˈəmbəl/   Listen
Crumble

verb
(past & past part. crumbled; pres. part. crumbling)
1.
Fall apart.  Synonyms: break down, collapse, crumple, tumble.  "Negotiations broke down"
2.
Break or fall apart into fragments.  Synonym: fall apart.  "The Sphinx is crumbling"
3.
Fall into decay or ruin.  Synonyms: decay, dilapidate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Crumble" Quotes from Famous Books



... stood, a colossus of wealth and stability to the eye, though ready to crumble at a touch; and indeed self-doomed, for bankruptcy was ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... backwards and forwards, so that each time it strikes the wall or door a heavy blow. As the beam is of great weight, and many men work it, the blows are well nigh irresistible, and the strongest walls crumble and the most massive gates splinter under the shock of ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... cheese, this meagre irregular supper being considered as a sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and horn before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than cut, his bread. His wife, a thin, pale, shrewish-looking woman, was warming her child's feet at the fire, before putting him to bed, and an old woman sat spinning and nodding on a settle ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... asserted Stanton, "unless something happens. They can crumble our cities with heat and bury us ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... as little time as possible should elapse between the opening of the tomb and the arrival of the photographer and the Chief Inspector. Things which have remained intact for thousands of years in the even, dry temperature of an Egyptian tomb, crumble and fade away like the fabric of our dreams when they are exposed to ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... die, and no matter what came of it he would n't back out. If he did, Honey would never believe in him again. His little kingdom would crumble. So he grinned. "I think I'll have a ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge

... O mortal man, wilt thou give heed To the world's phantom voices? The hours speed, And fame and fortune yield to moth and rust, And good and evil crumble into dust. Even now the sands are running in the glass; Set not your heart upon vain things that pass; Ambitions, honors, toils, are but the snare Where lurks for aye the blind old world's despair. Nay, ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... cried Tom, as he saw that all was in readiness. "Lively now! I can see the top of the dam beginning to crumble," and he laid aside the telescope ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton

... is somewhat difficult of digestion; but a crust that is brittle and easily crumbled is more readily digested than one that is moist and pasty. Pie crust should crumble as finely as a cracker. To prevent moist and pasty pie crust, it is advisable to bake "one crust" pie. If an under crust only is used, it should be baked before adding the filling. The filling should be cooked and sweetened before adding it ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... totter, empires crumble, All their glories cease to be; While she, Christ-like, crowns the humble, And ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... individuals, die. Their birth presents an ethnical element; their death, which is the most solemn event that we can contemplate, may arise from interior or from external causes. Empires are only sand-hills in the hour-glass of Time; they crumble spontaneously away by the process of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... fresh, and clean, and neat, Come and take your proper seat: Do not loiter and be late, Making other people wait; Do not rudely point or touch: Do not eat and drink too much: Finish what you have, before You even ask, or send for more: Never crumble or destroy Food that others might enjoy; They who idly crumbs will waste Often want a loaf to taste! Never spill your milk or tea, Never rude or noisy be; Never choose the daintiest food, Be content with ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... have dreamed that this was the germ of the most potent, the most regenerative force the world had ever known? That thrones, empires, principalities, and powers would melt and crumble before His name? Of all miracles, is not this ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... imagine,' he said, 'an excavation on the site of St. Paul's; fancy a lecture by the Owen of his future era on the thigh-bone of a minor canon, or the tooth of a dean: the form, qualities, and tastes he would discover from them.' 'It is a great proof of shyness,' he said, 'to crumble your bread at dinner. Ah! I see,' he said, turning to a young lady, 'you're afraid of me: you crumble your bread. I do it when I sit by the Bishop of London, and with both hands when I sit by ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... have lived," Mercedes said complacently. "And it's a fine bride old Barry'll have to come and lie beside him." She closed the lid and sighed. "Though I wish it were Bruce Anstey, or any of the pick of my young men to lie with me in the great dark and to crumble with me to the dust that is the ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... hard usage, is as solid to-day as when it was built, and as plumb, without crack or crevice. Even the towering fragment at Beauvais, poorly built from the first, which has broken down oftener than most Gothic structures, and seems ready to crumble again whenever the wind blows over its windy plains, has managed to survive, after a fashion, six or seven hundred years, which is all that our generation had a ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... veins of this dying state, shall reproduce the very vigor and freshness of its early age. Rome, my mother, is now but a lifeless trunk—a dead and loathsome corpse—a new and warmer current must be infused, or it will soon crumble into dust.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... field de second year of de war, 1862. It sho' made me hungry. I 'members now, how I'd git a big tin cupful of pot liquor from de greens, crumble corn bread in it at dinner time and 'joy it as de bestest part of de dinner. Us no suffer for sumpin' to eat. I go all summer in my shirt-tail and in de winter I have to do de best I can, widout any shoes. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... you But stammering tongues that never can confess. Undaunted then in answer here I cry, 'You wanton, that control the hand of him Who masquerades as wisdom in a sky Where holy, holy, sing the cherubim, I will not pay one penny to your name Though all my body crumble ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... Face he had ever looked into. It was the Face of Eternity. On its brow was written in words of blazing light the one word "Now." And as he looked into that calm, awful Face and read that word, Mr. Hardy felt his soul crumble within him. When the Face spoke it was the speech of a thousand oceans heaved by a million tempests, yet through the terror of it ran a thread of music—a still, sweet sound like everlasting love—as if angels sang somewhere a divine ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon

... Saal, in Merseburg, forming part of Saxony, at the time of which we speak, governed by the aged and excellent Elector Frederick, stood the Castle of Lindburg. It was one of those feudal piles of the Middle Ages, impregnable to the engines of ancient warfare, but which were destined to crumble before the iron shots with which cannon assailed them, as the system they represented was compelled to succumb to the light of that truth which the Gospel was then diffusing over the ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston

... hope, and against it all the powers of earth shall not prevail. It is just as certain that Virginia would come back to the unchallenged control of her white race—that before the moral and material power of her people once more unified, opposition would crumble until its last desperate leader was left alone, vainly striving to rally his disordered hosts—as that night should fade in the kindling glory of the sun. You may pass force bills, but they will not avail. You may surrender ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time and the wind and weather should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds and to enjoy a great deal of happiness in this ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... and colours: very gay—almost as gay as the Head-Waiter. They are of unpronounceable and unknown brands. They vary in price and size, but agree in flavour—liquorice, tempered by ink. Like the fabled fruit, they crumble to ashes in your mouth. If you are only a bird of passage, you will often find a box or so in your room. "Great opportunity—veritable Pestarenas of Nockudaun—one whole box for a sovereign English," the Head-Waiter assures you. The memory of that man is astounding; he remembers all the numbers, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various

... work of the ceiling has almost entirely lost its crystallization, and is as ready to crumble as the enclosed clay, which is still retained because it had not yet reached the necessary point of deterioration to be carried out before the great volume of water, required for that service, retired from this ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... from Asquithian into plain English, meant that now was the time for Home Rule. The pledge to postpone the question till after the war was to be swept aside, and, instead of building up by sound and sensible administration what Mr. Birrel's abnegation of government had allowed to crumble into "breakdown," the rebels were to be rewarded for traffic with the enemy and destruction of the central parts of Dublin, with great loss of life, by being allowed to point to the triumphant success of their activity, which was certain to prove the most effective ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... week, Major Belwether kindly suggested Klondyke for Siward's benefit, which proved more quickly disastrous to him than anything yet proposed; and he went back to Bridge, preferring rather to "carry" Agatha Caithness at intervals than crumble into bankruptcy under the sheer deadly ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... subsistence. Plainly, the day is approaching when the Army of the Potomac, unfortunate at times in the past, derided, ridiculed, but now triumphant through unparalleled hardship, endurance, courage, persistency, will plant its banners on the defences of Richmond, crumble the Rebel army beyond the possibility of future cohesion, and, in conjunction with the forces in other departments, crush out the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... hang. "The soul that sinneth it shall die." But if the fire is "an accident," owing to "a defective flue," if the fire-escape breaks, the stairs give away under a little extra weight, or ill-built walls crumble prematurely—who can we lay hands on? Where is the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... his host, and he was so startled that, hungry though he was, he hardly touched the food which the horse heaped on his plate, expecting every moment that a magician might appear or the whole castle crumble away. ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... shake and ooze with sweat, His eyes to fever out, his voice to cease. He stood, and heard not Thea's sobbing deep; A little time, and then again he snatch'd 140 Utterance thus.—"But cannot I create? Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth Another world, another universe, To overbear and crumble this to nought? Where is another chaos? Where?"—That word Found way unto Olympus, and made quake The rebel three.—Thea was startled up, And in her bearing was a sort of hope, As thus she quick-voic'd spake, yet ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... stucco of marble dust or at least with a mixture of clay and chaff and amurca, for amurca will serve to keep out mice and weevil and will make the grain solid and heavy. Some men even sprinkle their grain with amurca in the proportion of a quadrantal to every thousand modii of grain: others crumble or scatter over it, for the same purpose, other vermifuges like Chalcidian or Carian chalk or wormwood, and other things of that kind. Some farmers have their granaries under ground, like caverns, which they call silos, as in Cappadocia and Thrace, while in hither Spain, in the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... rather than to inflict a blow. He, the while, with steady impetus pushed forward his armament, like a ship-of-war prow forward. Wherever he brought his solid wedge to bear, he meant to cleave through the opposing mass, and crumble his adversary's host to pieces. With this design he prepared to throw the brunt of the fighting on the strongest half of his army, while he kept the weaker portion of it in the background, knowing certainly ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... to this saying, so long as the old Zulu sits there, looking down the stairway he defended when alive, so long will the New House of the Stairway, springing from the union of the Englishman and Nyleptha, endure and flourish; but when he is taken from thence, or when, ages after, his bones at last crumble into dust, the House will fall, and the Stairway shall fall, and the Nation of the Zu-Vendi shall ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... the whole secret of life is told: 'Tis because we're earth, and not of gold, 'Tis because we're ware that beware we must, Lest we crack, and break, and crumble to dust. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... terribly dangerous game. As things are at present, he has a very pleasant and responsible position as the supporter and friend of very able men. With regard to this new movement, he may find the whole ground crumble away beneath his feet. Fischer is playing the game of a madman. It isn't only political defeat that might come to him, ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... follows that the oily part of the earth is melted by it, whereas the hard and what I might call the bony part of it is left as it was. Hence the masses of earth necessarily become porous and when exposed to the dry air crumble into dust, but when they are placed in a swirl of water and sand grow into a solid piece; as much of them as is in the liquid hardens and petrifies. The reason for this is that the brittle element in them is disintegrated and broken up by the fire, which possesses, the same nature, but by ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... among the glacier-worn pebbles, especially where the latter have themselves been disturbed since their accumulation. They are also found among water-worn pebbles, wherever the rocky beds of our rivers or the rocky bluffs of our sea-shores crumble down. In investigating the character of loose materials transported from greater or less distances, either by the agency of glaciers or by water-currents, it is important at the very outset to discriminate between these deposits of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... write with a disposition to place Mr. Pitt rather higher than he had been placed before in the 'Review;' but upon a careful survey of his conduct on each of these questions, I found the ground crumble away under me. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... are not annihilated into nothingness. Suns and worlds also die, after performing their allotted revolutions in the cycle of the universe. Suns glow for a time, and planets bear their fruitage of plants and animals and men, then turn for aeons into a dreary, icy listlessness and finally crumble to dust, their atoms joining other worlds in the ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... was discovered that the south-west clerestory was beginning to crumble away. Lord Grimthorpe had this shored up at his own expense. A new committee was soon after this appointed, and in March, 1877, a faculty was granted to this committee "to repair the church and fit it ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... which spread over his features at my rejoinder was so perfect that I felt all my suspicions begin to crumble away. ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... mother ship. Madden looked back quickly. From the top deck there was a jet of fire, as if someone were turning a hose of flame in the direction of the small boat. Leonard looked back at the dinghy. It appeared as if the ray of light were beating the little vessel into splinters. It seemed to crumble into itself, to wither, to go to dust, and the water beneath it beat up in a froth through ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... she saw the glow of pleasure kindle in his unclouded blue eyes. "Even rocks crumble when we put too much weight on them," he responded, "but since you have done so much for us, perhaps you may be able to convince Patty that nothing can make any difference between her and me. Won't you ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... proper. The material used for all structures—the large and the small ones—was brick. In earlier times the bricks were merely dried in the sun. The buildings, as a consequence, suffered much from the influence of the heat and rain, and required frequent repairs. Often the tower would crumble away, and an entirely new edifice would have to be erected. The later custom of kiln-dried bricks was an improvement, and still more solidity was insured when the exterior series of brick was glazed. In the older buildings, the bricks were merely piled together, without cement. Afterwards straw ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... fossil parties united, as they always do. Now, this new great idea, if rejected, will disintegrate these old parties; take that which is fit, proper, and deserving for its own great mission, leaving the residuum to unite, and crumble and pulverize together under the feet of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... These and other thin fish for broiling should be split down the back before cooking. In serving, divide through the middle lengthwise, and then divide each half into such portions as may be desired. Be careful not to break or crumble them. ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln

... advance with confidence. But this mass of land-ice became narrower as they proceeded, till at last it dwindled to a mere narrow ledge, clinging to the high, perpendicular cliffs, and looking as if at any moment it might crumble off and fall with them into the open water between it and the ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... stumbled over a loose rock as he struck the ground and rolled flat on his back. He got up, grinding his teeth. His hands were tied behind him. He turned his back on the broken rock and sawed the ropes against it. To his dismay he felt the rock edge crumble away. It was some chalky, friable stuff, and it ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... as accurately as before and twice as fast. The trench began to yawn in wide holes, and its sides to crumble and collapse. No. 2 Platoon occupied a portion of the trench that ran out in a blunted angle, and it caught the worst of the fire. One shell falling just short of the front parapet dug a yawning hole and drove in the forward wall of the trench in a tumbled ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... ravines in Lempo's forest, From the thickets of the pine-wood, From the dwellings of the fir-glen? Quick retrace thine evil footsteps To the dwellings of thy master, To the thickets of thy kindred; There thou mayest dwell at pleasure, Till thy house decays about thee, Till thy walls shall mould and crumble. Evil genius, thee I banish, Got thee hence, thou horrid monster, To the caverns of the white-bear, To the deep abysm of serpents, To the vales, and swamps, and fenlands, To the ever-silent waters, To the hot-springs of the mountains, To the dead-seas of the Northland, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... taking advantage of the door being open. He did not want to listen, for he was afraid and did not want his hopes to crumble slowly with each obstinate refusal of his father. He preferred to learn the truth at once, good or bad, later on; and he went out into the night. It was a moonless, starless night, one of those misty nights when the air seems thick with humidity. A vague odor of apples floated through ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... something held him there—something hardened the grasp of his fingers. Newman's satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too deliberate and mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and comprehensive for this fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke. The very foundation seemed fatally injured, and yet he felt a stubborn desire still to try to save the edifice. He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever known, or than he had supposed ...
— The American • Henry James

... his capabilities to control. New York, Philadelphia, and the Eastern field as a whole,—each was a problem in itself, and each was getting farther and farther out of hand. The Guardian's field men were demoralized, beholding the fine agency plant of their company crumble and melt away while they stood helpless to hold it together. And Mr. Gunterson, when asked for remedies, could reply only in nebulous words of even more crepuscular and doubtful pertinence. New York was admittedly beyond him, and Philadelphia, harkening to siren voices that promised great things, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... which had not seemed the night before, to casual examination, to differ from other cloth, had begun to crumble away in a very curious manner. The texture seemed strangely brittle and strengthless. It fell apart at a touch, and was reduced to a fine powder under the pressure of the fingers. She could not possibly have worn ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... the great wall that held the body of water began to crumble at the top sent a message begging the people of Johnstown for God's sake to take to the hills. He reports no serious accidents at ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... like the look of things, at all," he had said to Bull and Ryan, the evening before the siege guns began their work. "In the first place the defences will crumble, in no time, under the French fire. In the second place, I don't think that the Portuguese, with the exception of our own men, have any fight in them. Da Costa, the lieutenant governor, openly declares that the place is indefensible, and that ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... wife's death there was no one to regulate the household expenses. Disorder gradually crept in, he kept open table and took to drinking, until at last he was obliged to sell what little land he had round the chateau. Finally the chateau itself began to crumble away. He could not have it repaired, as he had no money to pay the workmen. The wind could be felt through the cracks, and the rain came in. The family were obliged to give up one room after another, taking ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... shall quake, quaking! and the mountains shall crumble, crumbling, and become like ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... or satisfaction. Dear as toleration was to them, the general interests of religion were dearer, and not only these but national freedom was now at stake. Holland, the bulwark of Protestantism abroad, seemed to crumble into ruin at the first blow of France. Lewis passed the Rhine on the twelfth of June, and overran three of the States without opposition. It was only by skill and desperate courage that the Dutch ships under De Ruyter held the English fleet under the Duke of York at bay in an obstinate ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... the sun the angles from the stony ice; the jagged rocks may from encounter with the wind and rain grow smooth; this hilly globe may grow at length to be as level as is the sea, and every jutting headland of the shore may crumble and disappear; but your bright image must to the eventide of life's cogitation, stay, like a sacred peak whose lofty brow stands ever gilded in the setting sun. Forget you! little hazard: he whose heart is impressed with the absent's form, needs wear no miniature upon the breast; ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... all lands. Everywhere the rocks are crumbling away; their fragments are creeping down hillsides to the stream ways and are carried by the streams to the sea, where they are rebuilt into rocky layers. When again the rocks are lifted to form land the process will begin anew; again they will crumble and creep down slopes and be washed by streams to the sea. Let us begin our study of this long cycle of change at the point where rocks disintegrate and decay under the action of the weather. In studying now a few outcrops and quarries we shall learn a little of some common rocks ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... institutions in which Christendom has embodied its conceptions of God's truth will crumble away. Many of the conceptions will have to be modified, neglected truths will grow, to the dislocation of much systematic theology, and the Word better understood will clear away many a portentous error with which the Church has darkened the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... very thin, prick lightly all over, and bake brown—it will take about five minutes in a quick oven. Cool on cloth and keep dry. Handle delicately—if the wafers are what they should be; they break and crumble ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... eyes; he stooped at the shoulders, and his chest had hollowed in. Yet she could have returned his compliment and called him a beauty still. He was so to her. Every line and movement of his body had a distinction all his own, and "What a shame it is," she thought, "for that profile to crumble away before it has been carved ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... was examined by an Englishman, to whom it was shown privately by a black, was of a substance like quartz, about the size of a pigeon's egg, and transparent, like white sugar-candy. The small particles of crystal which crumble off are swallowed in order to prevent illness. Many other instances of the like superstitious folly might very easily be gathered from the writings of those who have had the best opportunities of becoming acquainted with the manners of the ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... demonstrated to it that its god is only an idol of wood or of stone, that what was once adored must henceforth be despised, it feels ready to die, and imagines that some spring must give way in the vast machine of the universe, that the sky must fall, the earth crumble away; and yet a woman's error of judgment is not a matter of such very grave import. The sun continues to shine, the earth to revolve upon its axis, as though it had not occurred. The machine of the universe would be subject to quite too many accidents should it become unsettled ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... such vessels and that the government could not honorably refuse to uphold them in exercising their right. "Once accept a single abatement of right," he asserted, "and many other humiliations would certainly follow, and the whole fine fabric of international law might crumble under our hands piece by piece." Moreover he felt that the conduct of international relations lay in the hands of the executive and that divided counsels would embarrass him in dealing with Germany. He therefore asked the House to discuss the McLemore resolution at once and come ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... dreary alternations of effort and torpor, and for the imperfect harvest of imperfectly righteous acts, the attitude of receiving, which supersedes painful strife and weary endeavour. To seek after a righteousness which is 'my own,' is to seek what we shall never find, and what, if found, would crumble beneath us. To seek the righteousness which is from God, is to seek what He is waiting to bestow, and what the blessed receivers blessedly know is more than they ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... salvation, from which one corner of darkness may hide us; from whose blessed health and freedom a disordered brain may snatch us; making us hopeless outcasts, till first the physician, the student of physical laws, shall interfere and restore us to a sound mind, or the great God's-angel Death crumble the soul-oppressing brain, with its thousand phantoms of pain and fear and horror, into a film of dust in the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... are weak, and to reward them (if the common privilege of manhood may be called a reward) because they are faithful. We are not fanatics, but a nation that has neither faith in itself nor faith toward others must soon crumble to pieces by moral dry-rot. If we may conquer you, gentlemen, (and you forced the necessity upon us,) we may surely impose terms upon you; for it is an old principle of law that cui liceat majus, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... upon the hearth. And he lost himself in a profound reverie, the while he built a castle in the air of his own designing, in which Self had no part. How many airy fabrics of beauty and joy had he not raised one after the other in his mind, only to see them crumble into dust!—but this one, as he planned it in his thoughts, nobly uplifted above all petty limits, with all the light of a broad beneficence shining upon it, and a grand obliteration of his own personality serving as the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... an entire reconstruction of Europe—two empires, and seventeen new kingdoms with new sovereigns either from or in the interest of the imperial houses! "Rhapsodies," he said, "which proved that all Europe might crumble without exciting a single emotion of sorrow, astonishment, or satisfaction in a people degraded beneath all others, beneath all imagination, and which, worn out, demoralized to the point where every trace of even national feeling is wiped ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... the slippery back of the thing, as though riding on a plowshare, while trees clashed and tilted and fell from the enormous furrow on every side; then, suddenly out of the woods into the moonlight, far ahead of us we could see the grassy upland heave up, cake, break, and crumble above the burrowing course of ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... to his bed. A fever was consuming him; in a few hours he had seen all his dreams crumble away. The very next day he took the road back ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... soap, and also on the amount of perfume or medicament to be added, but speaking generally, a range of 11 to 14 per cent. gives good results. If the soap contains less than this amount it is liable to crumble during the milling, will not compress satisfactorily, and the finished tablet may have a tendency to crack and contain gritty particles so objectionable in use. If, on the other hand, the soap is left too moist, it is apt to stick to the rollers ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume, and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... it is not a mere matter of instinct, inertia, and routine. The Tite Barnacles of Dickens's satire were perfectly honest people according to their lights. They were sincerely convinced that the British Empire would crumble to pieces the moment its ligaments of red tape were in the slightest degree relaxed. Their strength lay in the fact that they represented an innate tendency in the nation, or at any rate in the dominant class at the period of which ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... Ormskirk took his arm. "Fy, Harry, bid the daws seek their food elsewhere, for a gentleman may not wear his heart upon his sleeve. Empires crumble, and hearts break, and we are blessed or damned, as Fate elects; but through it all we find comfort in the reflection that dinner is good, and sleep, too, is excellent. As for the future—eh, well, if it ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... forward The world's one nature, and all the loose lives therein, Carried and greatly streaming on a gale Of craving, swept fiercely along in beauty;— Like a great weather of wind and shining sun, When the airs pick up whole huge waves of sea, Crumble them in their grasp and high aloft Sow them glittering, a white watery dust, To company with light: so we are driven Onward and upward in a wind of beauty, Until man's race be wielded by its joy Into some high incomparable day, ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... the old lady's knees seemed to crumble under her. Her poor old painted face looked out ghastly and ashamed from her wedding finery. But Evelyn in her red coat flew to her and took her in her arms as though she was a child. And like a child, Mrs. Kingdon sobbed ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... that you stand upon the brink of ruin. Such are your groundless fears. I cannot lift a finger to hurt you. Easier it would be to stop the moon in her course than to injure you. The power that protects you would crumble my sinews, and reduce me to a heap of ashes in a moment, if I were to harbour a thought hostile to your safety. Thus are appearances at length solved. Little did I expect that they originated hence. What a portion is assigned to you? Scanned by the eyes of this intelligence, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... wood that is always under water, such as the bottoms of ships and the round piles you see at the wharves. He hollows or bores out winding tunnels in the wood with the sharp edge of his shell until the piles crumble to pieces. This small animal would finally destroy the largest wooden ship if sheets of copper were not put on the sides ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... down, for worms a feast, To rot and perish like a beast; Who dost, of punishment afraid, And by thy crimes a coward made, To every generous soul a curse Than Hell and all her torments worse, When crawling to thy latter end, Call on Destruction as a friend, Choosing to crumble into dust Rather than rise, though rise you must: 110 Thou hypocrite! who dost profane, And take the patriot's name in vain; Then most thy country's foe, when most Of love and loyalty you boast; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... foe, we whose industries are paralysed, my country from whom the life-blood is being slowly drained. You English, what do you know of the war? No enemy has set foot upon your soil, no Englishman has seen his womankind dishonoured or his home crumble into ashes. The war to you is a thing of paper, an abstraction—that same war which has turned the better half of my beloved country into a ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... unwise to wait for an order, when anything was going to destruction without benefiting anyone. As the chateau is fast approaching the condition of the furniture, and my fortune does not permit me to repair it, I will sell it before the walls crumble away." ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... car rested a minute, the light, dry earth began to crack and crumble away from under the tires, rolling in a miniature avalanche down the steep declivity into the water. And not until Wemple had backed fifty yards down the narrow road did he find solid resting for the car. He came ahead on foot and examined the acute angle formed by the two zig-zags. Together with ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... and the Ben-Weleed, the Whigs and Tories of Ghadames, but pushed to such extremities of party spirit, as almost to be without the limits of humanity. Notwithstanding the assumed sanctity of this holy and Marabout City of Ghadames, and its actually leaving its walls to crumble away, and its gates open to every robber of the highways of The Desert—trusting to its prayers for its defence and to its God for vengeance—it has nourished for centuries upon centuries the most unnatural ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... epitaph to guard a name Which men shall praise while worthy work is done. He lived and died for good, be that his fame. Let marble crumble: this is living-stone." ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... those that the Muses would love best lie more than all others under the menace of an early death. Sometimes their defects will save them. Sometimes a book fair to see may—to use a lofty expression—have no individual soul. Obviously a book of that sort cannot die. It can only crumble into dust. But the best of books drawing sustenance from the sympathy and memory of men have lived on the brink of destruction, for men's memories are short, and their sympathy is, we must admit, a very fluctuating, ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... crumble like that, don't vanish like that!" She stared, astonished, at the scenes she had left behind her, the shining of the dark Cathedral, the ripple on the Moselle. "But they do, they do, ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... bitterest aloe: No bitterer things than aloes or than patience for mankind, * Yet bitterer than the twain to me were Patience' treachery: My sere and seamed and seared brow would dragoman my sore * If soul could search my sprite and there unsecret secrecy: Were hills to bear the load I bear they'd crumble 'neath the weight, * 'Twould still the roaring wind, 'twould quench the flame-tongue's flagrancy, And whoso saith the world is sweet certes a day he'll see * With more than aloes' bitterness and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... then another thousand, and still another, while Mother Earth uneasily thrust forth her rocky children out of the ocean into the light of day. Surprised at such treatment by the storms and seas, the newly born earth masses began to crumble and "weather." The detached fragments slipped back, or were washed back, into the deeper or shallower parts of the ocean, and were there tossed back and forth, pounded and ground into sand and silt, into ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... old women I do believe was never drawn before. And there were all the smallest incidents recorded, such as do really make up humble life, but which die out of all mere literary memoirs, as the houses where the Egyptians or the Athenians lived crumble and leave only their temples standing. I know, for instance, that on a given day of a certain year, a kindly woman, herself a poor widow, now, I trust, not without special mercies in heaven for her good deeds,—for I read her name on a proper tablet in the churchyard ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... yet equally without hope, the Union troops crumble to groups, and then to individuals. The attempt of McDowell to turn the left of the Enemy's Bull Run ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... laughter is their love after this up on the sunny height—and declares to the "mad-cap treasury of glorious deeds" that laughing she will love him, laughing lose the light of her eyes, laughing they will accept destruction, laughing accept death! Let the proud world of Walhalla crumble to dust, the eternal tribe of the gods cease in glory, the Norns rend the coil of fate, the dusk of the gods close down,—Siegfried's star has risen, and he shall be, to Bruennhilde, for ever, everything! In equally fine and joyous ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... on the west side, nearly opposite Fort Ontario, and less than five hundred yards distant from it. The trading-house, which formed the centre of the place, was built of rough stone laid in clay, and the wall which enclosed it was of the same materials; both would crumble in an instant at the touch of a twelve-pound shot. Towards the west and south they had been protected by an outer line of earthworks, mounted with cannon, and forming an entrenched camp; while the side towards Fort Ontario was left wholly ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... woollen cord made from the fur of the opossum, the contents proved to be a quartz-like substance of the size of a pigeon's egg, he allowed me to break it and retain a part. It is transparent like white sugar-candy; they swallow the small crystalline particles which crumble off as a preventative of sickness. It scratches glass, and does not effervesce with acids. From another specimen the stone appears to be agate of a milky hue, semi-pellucid, and strikes fire. The vein from which it appears broken off is one inch and a quarter thick. A third specimen ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... Tom stated, "I may have to use a new kind of explosive. That used for my giant cannon would merely crumble the hard rock for ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton

... to swear at the biscuit for not softening quicker, helping it to crumble with his mighty thumb thrust in the cup. To "get food into her" was his main idea, it didn't matter about thumbs. He was not without experience of starvation and thirst and what they can do to people, and, as he worked away talking to her, pictures from the past ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... miles, and from its entrails vomited forth redhot stones, with a flood of liquid fire." The crater of the extinguished volcano is still visible, though shattered and powdered down by the tread under which Alps and Appennines themselves crumble away—that of Time. The only point on which we are sceptical is the late origin of the promontory. Nothing beyond a sandhill or a heap of ashes has been produced on the face of nature since the memory of man. That a rock, or rather a mountain chain, with a peak 1800 feet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... superstructure was to be reared in other years and by other hands. The palace or temple, by its lofty and majestic proportions, attracts the eye and gratifies the taste; but its unseen foundations, with their nicely adjusted arches, without which the superstructure would crumble to atoms, are not less the result of the profound knowledge and practical wisdom of the architect. The explorations made by Champlain early and late, the organization and planting of his colonies, the resistance of avaricious ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... of the door being open. He did not want to listen, so much was he afraid, and he did not want his hopes to crumble with each obstinate refusal of his father. He preferred to learn the truth at once, good or bad, later on; and he went out into the night. It was a moonless night, a starless night, one of those foggy nights when the air seems thick with humidity. A vague odor of apples floated through the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... dared not let him see how desperately sorry for him she felt; the most perfunctory phrase might betray her. Her knowledge of his falseness stood between them like a wall; blindly she struggled to keep it staunch, not letting her rushing pity undermine and crumble it. He had been false to her, like his father. Father and son, they had deceived and betrayed her; honor and truth were ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... crumble to dust; but we, watchers remaining, Attest their endurance through centuries past, Oh, fear! lest in future to Judgment attaining, These woes, uncomplaining, confront ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... upon it, the more confused were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled him with her arms, and throbs of her heart, that beat against her breast like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven intervals. She looked about her with the wish that the earth might crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She was free. She advanced, looking at the paving-stones, saying to herself, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... your God and mine is dead. And Satan in his place—Satan who is The father of the gods—lures on your hearts Unto an idol in the untrodden skies, That, while ye dream oblivious in the void, The earth may crumble. Or if God there be, He is the God of dying hearts and spent— A deity of chaos, for whose ends One thing alone is mete—ruin of life, Of loathings and of longings that on earth Restlessly grapple with the powers of Hell. ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... bones of dead horses, bones of dead men. The tribute exacted by the Kansas prairie: bones. A waste of bones, a sepulcher that did not hide its bones, but spread them, exulting in its treasures, to bleach and crumble under the stern sun upon its sterile wastes. Bones of deserted houses, skeletons of men's hopes sketched in the dimming furrows which the grasses were reclaiming ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... course of ages e'en the Holy House shall crumble, And the broad and stately steeple one day bend to its decline, And high arches, ancient arches bowed and decked in clothing humble, Creeping moss shall round ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... improving in education and numbers, he has formed a strong body who find that it is their interest to support him. When it is no longer their interest so to do, the whole fabric of Russian government will crumble to the dust." ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... yet, walls of brick and stone may crumble and split. The laws which endure come into being through the ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... vanish, the hall of festival is riven in twain, the walls crumble, he sees himself again in his own chamber, sleeping in the escutcheoned chair of his ancestors. Silence, horror, and remorse are around him—and at this moment the great clock of the palatines ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... blanching, vertical eye-glare Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death— Most like a monumental statue set In everlasting watch and moveless woe Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet: If it could weep, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... these it was not long until there came from out the desert the sound of the marching of a mighty host, heralding the approach of the Arab, the despising and despised. Before these barbarous hordes the principalities of the East were doomed to crumble and yield up their accumulated treasures of the ages, and so triumphant were these invaders from the desert they decided to appropriate for themselves the whole world, and from this they were not dissuaded ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... day. Let the North say to the South, "We will not interfere with your 'peculiar institution,' but we will not defend it; if you cannot keep your slaves in subjection, you must expect no aid from us." Let them only say this, and do nothing, and the whole fabric of slavery would instantly crumble and fall. The edifice is rotten, and is propped up only by the buttresses of the North. The South retains the slave, because the free States furnish ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... towns, after having served a certain number of centuries for the use and pride of men, could be released to a gentle, unmolested decay. I, for my part, would like to have the ducal cities of North Italy, such as Mantua, Modena, Parma, and Ferrara, locked up quietly within their walls, and left to crumble and totter and fall, without any harder presence to vex them in their decrepitude than that of some gray custodian, who should come to the gate with clanking keys, and admit the wandering stranger, if ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... obliged to open his month's ledgers to a competent jury of inspectors, before he was allowed to take the holy sacrament and avow himself a humble follower of Christ, what a revolution might ensue! How church spires would crumble for lack of support, and poorhouses lessen in number ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... banker stood, a colossus of wealth and stability to the eye, though ready to crumble at a touch, and, indeed, self-doomed; for bankruptcy was now his game. This was a miserable man, far more so than his son, whose happiness he was thwarting; and of all things that gnawed him, none was more bitter than to have borrowed L5,000 of his children's trust money, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... Minister was to be kindly treated; politically he was negligible; he was there to be put aside. London and Paris imitated Lord John. Every one waited to see Lincoln and his hirelings disappear in one vast debacle. All conceived that the Washington Government would soon crumble, and that Minister Adams would ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... our mouths an hol' our johnny cake wid our han's. I can jus' see myself drinkin' now. Hit was so good. There was so many black fo'ks to cook fuh that the cookin was done outdoors. Greens was cooked in a big black washpot jus' like yo' boils clothes in now. An' sometime they would crumble bread in the potlicker an give us spoons an we would stan' roun' the pot an' eat. When we et our regular meals the table was set under a chinaberry tree wid a oil cloth table cloth on when dey called us to th' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... couldn't. Then when I found they were letting a whole crowd of millionaires live in New York at a third of the price they were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant, and said, this is the last feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself. In that moment—in that memorable moment, I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I was become just a mere moral sand-pile, and I lifted up my hand, along with those seasoned and experienced deacons, and swore off every rag of personal property I've got in ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... stately forms of the venerable English monarchy. Finance has been the keystone. Take finance away from the House of Commons, take the complete control of financial business away from the representative Assembly, and our whole system of government, be it good, bad, or indifferent, will crumble to pieces ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... was to crumble away with a regretful kind of superiority the arguments of two Conservative speakers, to the sudden amusement of the Opposition, who presently cheered him. He looked up as though a little surprised, waited patiently, and went on. The iconoclasm ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the thyrsus down, {110} To comfort me on my entablature Whereon I am to lie till I must ask "Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude To death: ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone— Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat As if the corpse they keep were oozing through— And no more lapis to delight the world! Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, But in a row: and, going, turn your backs {120} ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... shall part in pity; You have not here either house or home. You soon shall dwell in that narrow city, Where sun and moon never lit the dome; Where crest and foil At the gate shall crumble— And, from his toil, Be released the humble; Where captives' fetters, and love's sweet band, Shall, fragile, break by the same ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin

... that has delighted them before, And lets us be what we were once no more. No, we may suffer deeply, yet retain Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain, By what of old pleased us, and will again. No, 'tis the gradual furnace of the world, In whose hot air our spirits are upcurl'd Until they crumble, or else grow like steel— Which kills in us the bloom, the youth, the spring— Which leaves the fierce necessity to feel, But takes away the power—this can avail, By drying up our joy in everything, To make our former pleasures all seem stale. This, or some tyrannous single thought, some ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... all good colour in oil, water, or anything else, lies primarily in that sentence spoken to me by Mulready: "Know what you have to do." The process may be a long one, perhaps: you may have to ground with one colour; to touch it with fragments of a second; to crumble a third into the interstices; a fourth into the interstices of the third; to glaze the whole with a fifth; and to reinforce in points with a sixth: but whether you have one, or ten, or twenty processes to go through, you must go straight through them, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... who was arrested last night—every one who was in prison in the city before that time—will be liberated in an hour, and you have not soldiers nor policemen enough to stop the tide that will flow against you then. Your empire will crumble like dust, and your life will go out like the snuffing of a candle. For the present, I am the Czar of Russia, and you are only Alexander Alexandrovitch." He sat still and looked at me with staring eyes. "You are only a man, after all, monsieur," ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... profitable abuses, of such a crass and flagrant character that if once the popular apprehension is touched by matter-of-fact reflection on the actualities of this businesslike policy the whole structure should reasonably be expected to crumble. If the present conjuncture of circumstances should, e.g., present to the American populace a choice between exclusion from the neutral league, and a consequent probable and dubious war of self-defense, on the one hand; as against entrance into the league, and ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... and artists talk about putting their souls into their work, Duckford?" Duckford pursed his lips. "Everything lives—even a bronze statue," he said seriously. "If it was not so it would atrophy, it would crumble and disappear. ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... head of her stick against her heart as she stood looking at the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the once white cloth all yellow and withered; everything around in a state to crumble ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... his deplorable decision must give rise; I urged the injustice he had committed, the sin that would lie at his door; and showed how, almost before his eyes had closed, the work he had achieved at peril to his soul, would sink and crumble in an ocean of blood and tears. Alcudia supported me; the others chimed in; this document was ready, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... not tell— It has a thousand voices in thy brain. Danced all the leaflets to and fro? —Thy feet have trod them long ago! Sprung the glad music up the blue? —The hawk hath cut the song in two. All the mountains crumble, All the forests fall, All thy brethren stumble, And rise no more at all! In the dim woods there is a sound When the winds begin to moan; It is not of joy or yet of mirth, But the mournful cry of our mother Earth, As she calleth back her own. Through the rosy air to-night The living creatures ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... the pang is brief, Do thy part, Have thy pleasure! How perplexed Grows belief! Well, this cold clay clod Was man's heart: Crumble it and what ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... stood white and awe-stricken, expecting the cliff to crumble away beneath them, but save that a stream of fire roared out of the opening, all ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn

... The rocks I've gained through chimneys rough and steep That crumble at a careless touch, and send A rattling train of rubble bounding down The icy slopes, which great crevasses rend. Re-entrant over here the mountain dips Into a ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren

... that the one beside the Duomo at Florence is higher than the one at Venice, and that the Leaning Tower at Pisa is a campanile, or bell-tower, also. When I told him that one of my friends saw the Campanile at Venice crumble to a heap of ruins on that Sunday morning back in 1907, and that another friend had been of the last party to go to the top of it the evening before, he became quite excited, and then I knew that I had succeeded in investing the subject with human ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... might be hidden there in the ground; and advised them digging a hole there with their little spades, to try for it. Accordingly, to work they went, and by my return in the evening they had grubbed up a piece of a jawbone, with several teeth in it. The bone was very much decayed, and ready to crumble to pieces, but the teeth were quite sound. I could not tell whether they were human grinders; but I showed the fossil to one of the physicians I have mentioned, who came out the next evening, and he pronounced them human teeth. The same conclusion was come to a day or two later by ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... approaching maelstrom. It looked to him like the end for us and he exclaimed calmly, "By God, boys, we're gone!" With terrific impetus we sped into the seething, boiling turmoil, expecting to feel a crash and to have the Dean crumble beneath us, but instead of that unfortunate result she shot through smoothly without a scratch, the rocks being deeper than appeared by the disturbance on the surface. We had no time to think over this agreeable delivery, for on came the rapids or rather other rough portions of the unending ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... see the Falls rolling and tumbling, and roaring and leaping, all day long, with bright rainbows making fiery arches down a hundred feet below us. When the sun is on them, they shine and glow like molten gold. When the day is gloomy, the water falls like snow, or sometimes it seems to crumble away like the face of a great chalk cliff, or sometimes again to roll along the front of the rock like white smoke. But it all seems gay or gloomy, dark or light, by sun or moon. From the bottom of both Falls, there is always rising up a solemn ghostly cloud, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... pride and reserve began to crumble. Penelope turned to her old friend, trying at first to speak lightly, but her troubled eyes told the story of tension within. Then came the confession—in broken words. There were two things on her conscience—one that she had done, but ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... commentator's voice broke in again. "Notice that tall stack just over the plant—see how it's starting to tremble!... It's beginning to crumble!... This must be it!" ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... and the Sunrise team turned to a rock ledge as invincible as the limestone foundation of their beloved college halls. The center from which all strength radiated was Victor Burleigh. Against him the weight of the line-bucking plunged. If he wavered the line must crumble. The crowd hardly breathed, so tense was the strain. But he did not waver. The ball was lost and the last struggle of the day began. Two minutes more, the score tied, and only ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... the Wall, "I am not the strongest; the big grey Rat who lives in the cellar is stronger than I. When he gnaws and gnaws at me I crumble and crumble, and at last I fall; go to ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... like glass! How brittle, alas! 'Tis hollow, and resteth never. How bright the sphere, Still brighter here! Now living am I! Dear son, beware! Nor venture there! Thou too must die! It is of clay; 'Twill crumble away; There ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... had sinned, how did they fall and crumble before the anger of God! they had not power to withstand the terror, nor could there be worth found in their persons or doings to appease displeased justice. But behold here stands the Son of God before him in the sin ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of a statue. Its marble hair was done in the bold lines of a helmet, on its lips the chisel had left a faint smile, and it resembled Miss Moorsom. While he was staring at it fixedly, the head began to grow light in his fingers, to diminish and crumble to pieces, and at last turned into a handful of dust, which was blown away by a puff of wind so chilly that he woke up with a desperate shiver and leaped headlong out of his bed-place. The day had really come. He sat down by the cabin table, and taking his head between his hands, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... turn. As Jehovah created us for himself, has preserved us for himself, and redeemed us for himself, we ought at once to acknowledge his claim and devote ourselves to his service. This self-surrender is the true foundation of all giving to the Lord. Any system of beneficence not built on this must crumble. Giving one's self is an earnest and pledge that everything else will be given; on the contrary, while self is withheld, there is no warrant that our possessions will be yielded, much less that God will accept the offering. But self being surrendered, all is virtually ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark

... house. The guhr and nitro-glycerine are mixed in lead tanks (about 1-1/2 foot deep, and 2 to 3 feet long), in the proportions of 75 of the nitro-glycerine to 25 of the guhr, unless the guhr is found to be too absorbent, which will cause the dynamite to be too dry and to crumble. In this case a small quantity of barium sulphate, say about 1 per cent., should be added to the guhr. This will lessen its absorbing powers, or a highly absorptive sample of guhr may be mixed with one of less absorptive power, in the proportions found by experiment ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... and liberally strewn with masses of drift bowlders. The flats largely formed of silting while they still constituted beds of lakes, have a deep soil of fine sand and mold resting on coarse gravel and bowlder drift. Ridges composed of brecciated lavas, which crumble easily under the influence of atmospheric agencies, are covered with soil two or three feet, or even more, in depth, where gentle slopes or broad saddles have favored deposition and prevented washing. The ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... a mistake. Instead of being a waste and a desert, it keeps the earth itself from becoming a waste and a desert. It is the world's fountain of life and health and beauty, and if it were taken away, the grass would perish from the mountains, the forests would crumble on the hills. Water is as indispensable to all life, vegetable or animal, as the air itself. This element of water is supplied entirely by the sea. The sea is the great inexhaustible fountain which is continually pouring up into the sky precisely as many streams, and as large, as all ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof

... the grass in the neighborhood is seen to be sprouting. Well-decayed manure should be spread at the rate of not less than a bushel nor more than double that quantity to the square yard, and as soon as the soil is dry enough to crumble readily it should be dug or plowed as deeply as possible without bringing up the subsoil. This operation of turning over the soil should be thoroughly performed, the earth being pulverized as much as possible. To accomplish this no hand ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains



Words linked to "Crumble" :   wear, droop, change integrity, deteriorate, ruin, corrode, eat at, break, change, disintegrate, bust, erode, rust, wilt, gnaw, wear out, wear away, weather, gnaw at



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