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Destructive   /dɪstrˈəktɪv/   Listen
Destructive

adjective
1.
Causing destruction or much damage.  "Destructive criticism"



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"Destructive" Quotes from Famous Books



... subject to the same bacterial blight that is so destructive to tomatoes. The only way to prevent this disease is to plant in ground not lately used for tomatoes ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... which he had not been accustomed. A pot of scalding pitch was in use for caulking the seams of the upper deck, and when those who were employed in laying it upon the planks turned their heads from him, he dipped one paw into it, and carrying it to his chin, rubbed himself with the destructive substance. His yell of pain called the attention of the sailors to him, and they did all in their power to afford alleviation; the pitch was taken off as well as it could be, his pouches being entirely burnt away, his ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... solitude? Yet he looked simple and placid; his melancholy was subdued and calm, as if life were over for him, and he were waiting for death to come with a friend's greeting upon noiseless wings some summer night across the fen-lands in a cloud of soft destructive fever-mist. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... life, whether we remember the bloody atrocities of the savages on the often defenceless colonists, or the fiercely contested wars between the French and English that demoralized the whole state of society north of the St. Lawrence, or the tremendously destructive fires that swept away whole cities in whirlwinds of flame, or the pestilences that filled so many wayside graves, and not always with the dead. She was an eye-witness of these woes, and what wonder is it if her ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.

... sad feeling at my heart that a quarrel was imminent between England and the States, and that any such quarrel must be destructive to the cause of the North. I had never believed that the States of New England and the Gulf States would again become parts of one nation, but I had thought that the terms of separation would be dictated by the North, and not by the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... compromise when he attributed the introduction of tobacco, not to the devil, but to Pluto,—"Pluto's Proclamation concerning his Infernal Pleasure for the Propagation of Tobacco." It appears in the folio collection of his works of the year 1628. The confusion of tobacco with opium and such destructive drugs seems to have been common with the travelers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. Camerarius, in his "Historical Meditations," translated into English by John Malle (folio, 1621), speaks of tobacco as ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... acquainted both with our philosophers and with our philosophical works; and he had neither natural capacity to distinguish errors from reality, nor judgment enough to perceive that what appeared improving and charming in theory, frequently became destructive and improper when attempted to be put into practice. Returned to his own country, his acquired half-learning made him wholly dissatisfied with his Government, with his religion, and with himself. In our Revolution he thought that he saw the first approach towards the perfection of the human ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the reading world has been frequently informed, was invented in the fifteenth century, and undoubtedly had, to a considerable extent, a destructive effect upon the craft of professional copyists. But in the fifteenth century the art of the writer and that of the illuminator had long been separate professions. There was no particular reason, therefore, why the invention ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... course anticipate that English people, slow as they are to be influenced by ideas, and instinctively distrustful of all that is logical, will take a leap in the dark and attempt to put Tolstoi's theory of life into practice. But one may at least be sure that his destructive criticism of the present social and political REGIME will become a powerful force in the work of disintegration and social reconstruction which is going on around us. Many earnest thinkers who, like Tolstoi, are struggling to find their way out of the contradictions of our social ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... whether from being frightened off their nests by the rats, which are very numerous and destructive, or from some other cause hitherto prevalent in Sumatra, do not hatch their chickens in the ordinary way, as is seen in almost all other climates. The natives have for this purpose, in each village, ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various

... discussion, by competent heads, in the proper place, should be precluded. In doing this they have used, or sanctioned the use of, arguments which may he applied with equal or even greater force to the carrying of any measure whatever, no matter how atrocious in its character or destructive in its consequences. They have appealed directly to the argument of the greater number of voices, no matter whether the utterers were drunk or sober, competent or not competent; and they have done the utmost in their power to ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... men, whose characters have been vindicated during recent times from aspersions which for centuries had been thrown on them. The spirit of modern inquiry, and the tendency of modern scholarship, both of which are often said to be solely negative and destructive, have, in truth, restored to splendour, and almost created anew, far more than they have assailed with censure, or dismissed from consideration as unreal. The truth of many a brilliant narrative of brilliant exploits has of late years been triumphantly demonstrated; and the shallowness ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... spent in exploring the Salaam and Angrab rivers. They are interesting examples of the destructive effect of water, that has during the course of ages cut through and hollowed out, in the solid rock, a succession of the most horrible precipices and caverns, in which the maddened torrents, rushing from the lofty chain of mountains, boil along until they meet the Atbara ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... guess," the oldster with the silver bar and the keystone-shaped red patch on his left shoulder replied. "It is a shocking habit—destructive to the logical faculty. What seems strange to you is only so because you do not follow my train of thought. For example, the wheels and their framework under your flying machine are splashed with mud which seems to be predominantly brick-dust, ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

... of another cargo of wines, etc., for Messrs. Laneville & Co., was duly acknowledged by another carousal in the cabins of the vessel, which ended in results far more destructive to the reputation of James, and to the happiness of himself and friends, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... after the election give me and my friends quiet hell. Nothing public, you know—just unfortunate assassinations that he will regret exceedingly, me bye. But I have never yit been assassinated, and, on principle, I object to being trated so. It's very destructive to ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... his strong point, tempting people. It is one way of recognizing some of his kin. It is a mean, contemptible sort of thing. He had fallen into a hole of his own digging, and would pull in everybody else. He is never constructive in his work, always destructive. Best at tearing down. Never builds up. His allies can often be told by their resemblance to him here. Jesus is to be tempted by this master-tempter. He is going to prove to all his brothers that the tempter has no power without the consent of the tempted. The door ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... save as inflicting needless agony, as only hate could devise. No strategic value justified them. They were spontaneous outgrowths of venom, nursed during the winter deadlock and now grown to full size and destructive power. ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... much of which can be abated by the application of well-established means of prevention. In a practical sense, certain fires are to be considered as unpreventable, being caused by exposure to fires in other burning buildings, but there are very few fires whose destructive results might not have been prevented by the exercise of precautions entirely ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... man, and not a mutinous beast, and has eyes to see. To thee, caitiff, these things were and are, quite incredible; to us they are too awfully certain,—the Eternal Law of this Universe, whether thou and others will believe it or disbelieve. We, not to be partakers in thy destructive adventure of defying God and all the Universe, dare not allow thee to continue longer among us. As a palpable deserter from the ranks where all men, at their eternal peril, are bound to be: palpable deserter, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... advice and struck the first blow. The man from Cow Flat was very willing, and they fought a long, destructive battle; and through it all Danny danced about the ring, bristling with excitement and crying fierce and persistent encouragement to ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... had no sooner made himself comfortable in his new quarters than he surprised and slightly discomposed the inhabitants of the casa by paying them a flying visit. He had been one of the most determined advocates, and the most ruthless executant, of the Republican Government's policy of destructive suppression of the island's industries, and Don Hermoso's firm opposition to that policy had created something very nearly approaching to bad blood between the two; but now, when it was too late, he probably recognised ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... violent shock was preceded by a slight undulating motion, so that most of the inhabitants were enabled to escape into the streets, and a small number only perished of those who had assembled in the churches. It is a generally received opinion at Cumana, that the most destructive earthquakes are announced by very feeble oscillations, and by a hollow sound, which does not escape the observation of persons habituated to this kind of phenomenon. In those fatal moments the cries ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... to disprove his own maxim. We, too, repudiate it utterly. Professor Peirce has proved by statistics that the best scholars in our colleges survive the rest; and we hold that virtue, like intellect, tends to longevity. The experience of the literary class shows that all excess is destructive, and that we need the harmonious action of all the faculties. Of the brilliant roll of the "young men of 1830," in Paris,—Balzac, Soulie, De Musset, De Bernard, Sue, and their compeers,—it is said that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... news?' was his next question. Well, I'm always open to any fresh slants on the business, so I asked him politely what he knew. He put on an expression like a prayerful owl and said, 'Suppose I came into your office with the information that a destructive plague was killing off the earthworms?' Naturally, I thought one of the librarians had put up a joke on me; so I said, 'Refer you to the Anglers' Department of the All-Outdoors Monthly.' 'That is as far as you could see into the information?' he said severely. I had to confess that ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... powerful instrument of industrial development, and of progress in the conquest of man over inert matter, and a terrible engine of devastation in warfare, and of massacre and vandalism where homicidal and destructive passions were ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... the last outbreak of the destructive principle in Europe. An insurrection takes place against tradition and aristocracy, against religion and property. Destruction of the Semitic principle, extirpation of the Jewish religion, whether ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... the creek below us, and about one mile ahead of our advance. Shortly after, they opened fire on the gunboats from batteries behind the cavalry and infantry. The boats not only replied to the batteries, which they soon silenced, but poured a destructive fire into their lines. Heavy skirmishing was also heard in our front, supposed to be by three companies from the Sixth and Eighth Missouri, whose position, taken the previous night to guard the creek, was beyond the point reached by the enemy, and consequently ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... of their vast mythology, he worked cunningly upon the credulity of his people. The case was strong. Opposing the creative principles as embodied in the Crow and the Raven, he stigmatized Mackenzie as the Wolf, the fighting and the destructive principle. Not only was the combat of these forces spiritual, but men fought, each to his totem. They were the children of Jelchs, the Raven, the Promethean fire-bringer; Mackenzie was the child of the Wolf, or in other words, the Devil. For them to bring a truce to this perpetual ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... it is a subject not worth while pursuing,' she replied. 'You know the sensitiveness, nervous delicacy, and scrupulous innocence of the fair sex in this country, and I may speak plainly to you as a man of the world. You must perceive how destructive of all modesty in their juvenile minds, when impressions are so easily made, it would be to familiarise their youthful eyes to the larger limbs of gentlemen enveloped in pantaloons. To speak plainly, I am sure I needn't ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... commodities! not sensible that such an attempt was impracticable, and that, were it possible to reduce the price of provisions by any other expedient than by introducing plenty, nothing could be more pernicious and destructive to the public. Where the produce of a year, for instance, falls so far short as to afford full subsistence only for nine months, the only expedient for making it last all the twelve, is to raise the prices, to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... the countless visions, the many affectations of nursery days, there will be recalled also a very real love of nature; varying, of course, in its intensity from a mere love of fresh air and free romping, and a destructive taste for nosegays, to a living romance about the daily walks of the imaginative child,—a world apart, peopled with invisible company, such as fairies, and those fancy friends which some children devise for themselves, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Brandenburg. Then, when the third night closed in, he made a forced ride back to Wittenberg, and for the third time set fire to the city. Herse, who crept into the town in disguise, carried out this horrible feat of daring, and because of a sharp north wind that was blowing, the fire proved so destructive and spread so rapidly that in less than three hours forty-two houses, two churches, several convents and schools, and the very residence of the electoral governor of the province were reduced to ruins ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... metaphysical science is a mere delusion, arising from the fancied insight of reason into that which is in truth borrowed from experience, and to which habit has given the appearance of necessity. Against this assertion, destructive to all pure philosophy, he would have been guarded, had he had our problem before his eyes in its universality. For he would then have perceived that, according to his own argument, there likewise could not be any pure mathematical science, which assuredly cannot exist ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... very destructive in the days of the old weapons; it is only since the introduction of firearms that they have become a real danger to the race as a whole. They even had their advantages, in forcing the men to keep themselves in condition, and in providing them with a regular occupation, such as preparing ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... acknowledge the spirit of the detachment under General Wayne, in their engagement with the whole of the British army, of which he was an eye witness. He requests General Wayne and the officers and men under his command, to accept his best thanks. The bravery and destructive fire of the riflemen, rendered essential service. The fire of the light infantry checked the enemy's progress round our right flank. The General was much pleased with the conduct of Captain Savage, of the artillery, and is satisfied, that nothing but the ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... Which first invite by halves: then bolder grow, Till fascination spreads, and bosoms glow? Our Damon fancied this already done, Or, at the best, might be too soon begun: On these foundations gloomy views arose, Chimeras dire, destructive of repose. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... concern themselves. The next score of years, while they will probably do much for the country as regards commercial and intellectual improvement, will prove fatal in a degree to the picturesqueness which now renders Mexico so attractive. Radical progress in one direction must needs be destructive in another, and while some of the allurements of her strong individuality will disappear, her moral and physical status will be greatly improved. Her ragged, half-naked people will don proper attire, sacrificing ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... most singular institutions that ever existed in any part of the world—spread universal licentiousness over the island. It was the voluptuous character of these people which rendered the disease introduced among them by De Bougainville's ships, in 1768, doubly destructive. It visited them like a plague, sweeping them ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... ruined walls, a hillock on the plain right before us. It boasts also a fine church, enriched with curious objects of art; but the town has dwindled to a collection of hovels with a small population, few of whom, we are told, survive their fiftieth year, so destructive is the intempérie. We turn away: Ozieri stands invitingly on rather a bold eminence at the head of a gorge where the plain narrows towards the hills. The rays of the setting sun are full upon its houses and churches. It is a place of some importance, and lies in our proposed line through ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... indeed. What could it do for you but ruin you? You know it as well as I do; but you are selfish enough to wish to continue a romance which would be absolutely destructive to me, though for a while it might afford a pleasant relaxation to your graver studies. Harry, you can choose in the world. You have divinity, and law, and literature, and art. And if debarred from love now by the exigencies ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... apprehension that the mass of the public will dismiss it as preposterous and impossible. And yet nothing is more certain in my opinion than that penal imprisonment for crime must cease, and if it be not abolished by statute, it will be by force. It must be abolished because, alarming or socially destructive though alternatives to it may appear, it is worse than any alternative, being not only dangerous, but wicked, and it breeds and multiplies the evils it pretends to heal or diminish. It is far more wicked and dangerous than it was a thousand or a hundred years ago, because society ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... course in February, 1879. At Laigle, France, on April 26th, 1803, about one o'clock in the day, from two to three thousand fell. The largest did not exceed seventeen pounds weight. One fell in Weston, Connecticut, in 1807, weighing two hundred pounds. A very destructive shower is mentioned in the book of Joshua, chap. x. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... golden words, "let us cease this mutual accusation of each other. Let us cease our destructive quarrelling. Let us join in seeking those higher objects which we both have in common, and let us remember that we are both of one origin, one nation, one blood and one spirit. Think of it, dear lords, and try to find some way ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... and much more every tree, bears a certain value. Except that portion which is required for fuel or materials by an extremely scattered population in a very mild climate, there is nothing carried off from the forests, and, were it not for the frequent and destructive fires which the natives kindle in many parts, no check worth mentioning would be placed upon the natural increase and decay of the woods of New Holland. The consequence of this is, that trees are to be seen there in ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... that that which you have done is,—is,—is a thing altogether destructive of a young woman's name and character." Madame Staubach's voice, as she said this, was tremulous with the excess of her eagerness. If this were Peter Steinmarc's decision, Linda would bear it all without a complaint. She bowed her head in token that she accepted the disgrace of which her aunt had ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... mysterious, dreadful events to occur, wholly destructive of a person's happiness. He to impute them to various persons and causes, but ultimately finds that he is himself the sole agent. Moral, that our ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... good pilots, have not been dismayed by this great tempest On the contrary, there have been thirty-two members [of the Society] distributed throughout Japon, holding fast to the helm of this little craft, toiling lest the sea should swallow it up in so furious and destructive a tempest. Not less valor has been shown in this matter by the chief pilot, Father Francisco de Vera, whom our father general sent as visitor of Japon from one of the provinces of India. When he reached Macan and learned how cruel the persecution ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... master's favourite. To the work of that grave master, nevertheless—of Parmenides—a very different person certainly from his rattling disciple, Zeno's [32] seemingly so fantastic doctrine was sincerely in service. By its destructive criticism, its dissipation of the very conceivability of the central and most incisive of sensible phenomena, it was a real support to Parmenides in his assertion of the nullity of all that is but phenomenal, leaving open and unoccupied space (emptiness, we might say) to that which really is. ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... good sense disregarded. So it came about that the land was flooded by ruin as by a mighty stream, which, a tiny spring at first, gathers strength and volume from its tributaries, and overflowing its bounds, rushes over blooming meadows, fields, and pastures, drawing into its destructive depths the peasant's every joy and hope. That is the soil from which a legend like ours ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... horrible doctrine? It is only God overthrowing Pharaoh by means more humane than His fearful plagues, and less destructive than the billows of that relentless sea over which redeemed Israel so exultingly sang. No, brethren; the sword of the Lord and of Gideon has not ceased to be a useful instrument. It is the proper ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... have the whole Cabalistic legend of a secret doctrine descending from Moses, of Christ as an Egyptian initiate and founder of a secret order—a theory, of course, absolutely destructive of belief in His divinity. The legend of the Ordre du Temple goes on ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... from theory that he urged a nation on to nihilism. The phrase is not his, but Tourgueneff's, I believe, but the idea certainly belongs to him. He got his program of agricultural communism from Herzen, and his destructive radicalism from Pougatcheff, but he did not stop there. I mean that he went on to evil for the sake of evil. Herzen wished for the happiness of the Slav peasant; Pougatcheff wanted to be elected Emperor, but all that Bakounine ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... upon meaner; it whets the sword for destruction; it urges the laudable acts of humanity; it is the universal hinge on which we move; it glides the gentle stream of usefulness, it overflows the mounds of reason, and swells into a destructive flood; like the sun, in his milder rays, it animates and draws us towards perfection; but, like him, in his fiercer beams, it scorches ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... usually affected by 15 and struck by five to six cyclonic storms per year; landslides; active volcanoes; destructive earthquakes; tsunamis ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... majestic as the Hebrew language. The far sky, with its pallid moon,—the deep, shadowy valley, with its ghostly warriors,—the group on the near mountain, with its superb youth, its venerable age, and its manhood too strong and vital for the destructive years;—in the presence of such a creation there is ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... entirely and sagged wantonly awry with the displacement of the stone blocks, between which the vines and grasses had long been carrying on their destructive work. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... fancies it happiness enough to live with people who can give an inside to the world; without reflecting that they are prisoners, too, of their own thought, and cannot apply themselves to yours. The conditions of literary success are almost destructive of the best social power, as they do not have that frolic liberty which only can encounter a companion on the best terms. It is probable you left some obscure comrade at a tavern, or in the farms, with right mother-wit, and equality to life, when ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... villagers to quit their old life; but of course there were other causes, less conspicuous here than they have been elsewhere, yet operative here too. Free Trade, whilst it made the new thrift possible, at the same time effectually undermined many of the old modes of earning a living; and more destructive still has been the gradual adoption of machinery for rural work. We are shocked to think of the unenlightened peasants who broke up machines in the riots of the eighteen-twenties, but we are only now beginning to see fully ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... faith is to come, but to steady the wavering young minister; to sustain his preaching power by helping him to a definite message, and to encourage him to a slow and guarded acceptance of critical opinions destructive of "the faith once delivered ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell

... It is evident that the present tendency is to reduce the number of men assigned to constant occupancy of the first line trenches. This is due to the effectiveness of rifle fire at close range, the destructive effect of shell and shrapnel, the infrequency of daylight attack on intrenched positions, and the severe strain on the men. The aim seems to be the placing here and there of a lookout or trench guards, who, when necessity ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... goddess, hear! Wipe the wan cheek, deep-lav'd by many a tear; Nature, the triumph foul of horror o'er, Shall raise her frame to scenes of blood no more; Pale recollection shall recall her woes, Again shall paint her agonizing throes: These, o'er the earth thine empire firm shall raise, Unaw'd by war's destructive storms, ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... is the lesson of history, that real wrongs, unredressed, grow into preposterous demands. Men are much like nature in action; a little disturbance of atmospheric equilibrium becomes a cyclone, a slight break in the levee a crevasse with immense destructive power. ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger

... eighty pounds. Besides these there were two culverins which threw balls of sixty pounds, and a huge basilisk, the projectile from which weighed no less than one hundred and sixty pounds. A terrible fire was opened against the walls of the fort, and so destructive did it immediately become that the Bailli of Negropont, the Knight in command, very soon became aware that his trust must be in the stout hearts and strong arms of his garrison; as the walls by which they were surrounded were ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... said the Colonel, beginning to wax indignant, 'do they send such a museum relic here to fight a reasonably accurate and decidedly destructive mortar?' ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... times do I pronounce thy name. O Isis, who givest birth to serpents, crocodiles, and ostriches, may thy name be thrice praised. O Isis, who preservest grains of wheat from robber whirlwinds, and the bodies of our fathers from the destructive toil of time, Isis, take pity on my son and preserve him! Thrice be thy name repeated and here and there and beyond, today and forever, and for the ages of ages, as long as the temples of our gods shall gaze on themselves in the ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... these two great Principles, which are destructive of Chearfulness in their own Nature, as well as in right Reason, I cannot think of any other that ought to banish this happy Temper from a Virtuous Mind. Pain and Sickness, Shame and Reproach, Poverty and old Age, nay Death it self, considering the Shortness of their Duration, and the Advantage ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... and the most unspeakable ingenuity in torture, all devised for the glory of God, and the furtherance of what its devotees believed to be His word. International politics have plunged mankind into a series of bloody and destructive wars, culminating in the present cataclysm. Finance can only prosper through production; its efforts are inevitably failures, if they do not tend to the growing and making of things, or the production of services, that are wanted. Destruction, ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... Fifteen thousand seamen and soldiers were on its payroll; in that one year it used more than one hundred thousand pounds of powder—significant of the grim quality of business done. It had more than four hundred cannon and thousands of other destructive weapons.[5] Anything conducive to profit, no matter if indiscriminate murder, was accepted as legitimate and justifiable functions of trade, and was imposed alike upon royalty, which shared in the proceeds, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... converting it into plant tissue. It consumes only part of the carbon dioxide, however, for the oxygen that is tied up in the carbon dioxide is set free and given back to the air, only the carbon being retained. So the plant is continually taking in the destructive carbon dioxide and giving out the wholesome oxygen, thus keeping the air pure and fit for us to breathe. In short, the plant eats with its roots and with its leaves. With its roots it eats certain things it finds in the earth, ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... granaries. To these they come for supplies whenever necessary. All poverty-stricken voles are also fed from these storehouses, since it is the product of the community as a whole. Aristotle wrote at length about their wise and destructive ways. ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... article in order to make some observations on my own account with reference to the above quotations from Stout. In the first place, the conception of "psychical states" seems to me one which demands analysis of a somewhat destructive character. This analysis I shall give in later lectures as regards cognition; I have already given it as regards desire. In the second place, the conception of "objects" depends upon a certain view as to cognition which I believe to be wholly mistaken, namely, the view which ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... by a most destructive fire. One-half of the business part was swept away. Thousands of dollars of property were lost, and it is supposed that about fifty persons ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson

... not independent and judicious travellers or visitors abroad collect and forward to Great Britain (the last refuge of freedom) some materials which, though scanty and insufficient upon the whole, may, in part, rend the veil of destructive politics, and enable future ages to penetrate into mysteries which crime in power has interest to render impenetrable to the just reprobation of honour and of virtue." If, therefore, my humble labours can preserve loyal subjects ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... of being shut up at night in a place where not a breath of air can come to them, which in a climate like this must be not only uncomfortable in the last degree, but also very destructive to European constitutions; they say, further, that the people with whom they are placed are much affected with that disagreeable and contagious disorder the itch; and that the provisions with which they are fed are too scanty, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... times, when their ancestors dwelt in the country in their separate districts, had been consecrated in each of their little forts and villages, and which, even after they were incorporated into one city, they did not neglect or forsake. That around all these temples Philip had scattered his destructive flames, and left the images of the gods lying scorched and mutilated among the prostrated pillars of their fanes. Such as he had rendered the country of Attica, formerly opulent and adorned, such, if he were suffered, would he render ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... back to his ships booty of every description. He returned to Lilybaeum, the third day after he set out, with a hundred and thirty transports laden with corn and booty. The corn he sent immediately to Syracuse; and had it not been for the very seasonable arrival of this supply, a destructive famine threatened alike the ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... principals, Jews are playing a part in all subversive movements. A Christian Jew, no renegade to his race but deeply concerned for their future development, said recently to the present writer: "The growing materialism amongst Jews has made them the most destructive force in the world. The only hope for them is to accept Christianity. At present they are the greatest danger that ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... entered; that the denial of that right was a violation of the letter and spirit of the compact between the States; and that the war waged by the Federal Government against the seceding States was in disregard of the limitations of the Constitution, and destructive of the principles of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... attacks the Skeptics of the day who devoted their minds to destructive dialectical quibbling and sophistry[112] instead of seeking for God and the human good. They ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... the issue of protracted resistance is prophesied (vs. 12, 13). 'Therefore' sums up the instances of refusal to be warned, and presents them as the cause of the coming evil. The higher the dam is piled, the deeper the water that is gathered behind it, and the surer and more destructive the flood when it bursts. Long-delayed judgments are severe in proportion as they are slow. Note the awful vagueness of threatening in that emphatic 'thus,' as if the Prophet had the event before his eyes. There is no need to specify, for there can be but one result from such obstinacy. The 'terror ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... than she had done when she knelt at the girl's feet and envied her happiness while she pinned up the shining train. Failing love, she had filled her life with an inextinguishable curiosity; and this passion, being independent of the desires of others, was proof alike against disillusionment and the destructive processes ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... Right opposite to the south-west is Turleum—rising to the height of 1300 feet—the highest hill in Scotland wooded to the top, as our local boast was—shorn of its beauty somewhat in recent years, but, although bare, still picturesque enough with its comb of sturdy fir-trees, survivors from the destructive gale of November, 1893. To the right of it, and running due west, is the pass into the misty hill country by Comrie and St Fillans—the glen of Bonnie Kilmeny and Dunira. Midway between us and the mouth ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... railroads, and penny papers did not exist. Murders were committed then, as now, but little was said, and less was known about them. Wrecks occurred then, as now, but few, except the persons immediately concerned, heard of them. "Destructive fires", "terrible accidents", and the familiar round of "appalling catastrophes" occurred then, as now, but their influence was limited, and their ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... end that a dollar or pound or franc may command as nearly as possible the same amount of commodities when a contract is completed as when it is made. Economists dispute about almost everything else, but they are unanimous in this: That a money which changes rapidly in purchasing power is destructive of all stability and even of commercial morality. Will anybody pretend that gold has not changed rapidly in purchasing power within the last twenty years? Has not the universal experience shown that the variation ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter

... to do but had left undone. Indeed that is manifestly part of the business of this year of reckoning and assessment. There is no means of judging the future except by assessing the past. Constructive action must be weighed against destructive comment and reaction. The Democrats either have or have not understood the varied interests of the country. The test is contained ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... confinement does not obtrude itself in his book. Yet there is no doubt, I fear, that internment everywhere (at Ruhleben, as elsewhere) is becoming "intolerable." To live, as at Alexandra Palace, day and night, for years in a great hall with more than a thousand others must become almost destructive to any sensitive nature. But (to quote Dr. Siegmund Schulze once more) "We ought not to conclude from this that we are justified in making reproaches.... in respect of the treatment of prisoners, but rather conclude that we should work energetically ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... holding out for over three months, until on May twenty-second Captain Horatio Nelson, who had virtually controlled operations for eighty-eight days continuously,—nearly the entire time,—directed the guns of the Agamemnon with such destructive force against the little city that when the land forces from St. Florent appeared it was weakened beyond the power of resistance and surrendered.[44] The terms made by its captors were the easiest ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... show that the surface of the earth must wear; but M. de Luc, although he allows the principles on which this reasoning is founded, labours to prove that those destructive causes will not operate in time. Now, What would be the consequence of such a system?—That the source of vegetation upon the surface of the earth would cease at last, and perfect sterility be necessarily the effect ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... Brahminic Mysteries of Hindostan the ceremony of initiation was terminated by intrusting the aspirant with the sacred, triliteral name, which was AUM, the three letters of which were symbolic of the creative, preservative, and destructive principles of the Supreme Deity, personified in the three manifestations of Bramah, Siva, and Vishnu. This word was forbidden to be pronounced aloud. It was to be the subject of silent meditation ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... of the room. Now, I saw that time was beginning its destructive work, even on this strange old building. That it had stood through all the years was, it seemed to me, proof that it was something different from any other house. I do not think, somehow, that I had ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... most destructive are the red, and the large black ant, which attack, and frequently entirely destroy the roots before you can be aware of its approach; powdered turmeric should therefore be constantly kept strewed around ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... especial magnificence of style, throughout The King of the Golden River. There will appear the saddened mood of the modern in the face of the human miseries that make happiness a mockery, as in "The Happy Prince." The destructive effects of the possessive instinct upon all that is finest in human nature is reflected in "The Prince's Dream." That the most valuable efforts are often those performed with least spectacular settings may be discerned in "The Knights of the Silver Shield," while ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... writer "has something to tell about" the Gospels, "any anecdote of interest respecting them," Eusebius will record it. This is the only information of the slightest value to this work which could be looked for in these writers. So far, therefore, from producing the destructive effect upon some of the arguments of Supernatural Religion, upon which he somewhat prematurely congratulates himself, Dr. Lightfoot's elaborate and learned article on the silence of Eusebius supports them ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels

... Peanut-planter has to contend with many enemies. In many cases moles are exceedingly destructive to the planted seed, burrowing along the rows, and eating the seed, hill by hill. Often raccoons, foxes, and squirrels grabble them up. And everywhere the larger birds, such as crows, doves, and partridges come in for a share of the seed, and annoy and hinder the ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones

... person to call any restoration whatever, judicious. Of all destructive manias, that of restoration is the frightfullest and foolishest. Nevertheless, what good, in its miserable way, it can bring, the poor art scholar must now apply his common sense to take; there is no use, because a great work has ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... words!" says Hamlet, disparagingly. But God preserve us from the destructive power of words! There are words which can separate hearts sooner than sharp swords—there are words whose sting can remain in the heart ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... third and what with the youngest? Go now unto that Lapita of sweet smiles and endued with youth, unto whom thou didst go of old, beholding me deficient in everything!' Mandapala replied, 'As regards females, there is nothing so destructive of their happiness whether in this or the other world as a co-wife and a clandestine lover. There is nothing like these two that, inflames the fire of hostility and causes such anxiety. Even the auspicious and well-behaved Arundhati, celebrated amongst ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... state of lassitude, neutralizing the energies so essential to success in business. Verily, "wine is a mocker." The use of intoxicating drinks as a beverage is as much an infatuation as is the smoking of opium by the Chinese, and the former is quite as destructive to the success of the business man as the latter. It is an unmitigated evil, utterly indefensible in the light of philosophy, religion or good sense. It is the parent of nearly every other evil ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... can be kept to a great age without rotting, because the liquid contained within their substances has a bitter taste which by its pungency prevents the entrance of decay or of those little creatures which are destructive. Hence, buildings made of these kinds of wood last for an unending period ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... might have dedicated some of his great strength to a potent warning against its adoption by any young man. I believe temptation often assails the finest manly natures; as the pecking sparrow or destructive wasp attacks the sweetest and mellowest fruit, eschewing what is sour and crude. The true lover of his race ought to devote his vigour to guard and protect; he should sweep away every lure with a kind of rage at its treachery. You will think ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... sir, you dont suppose I mean that vulgar, ugly, silly, senseless, malicious and destructive thing, the harlequinade of a nineteenth century English Christmas pantomime! What was it after all but a stupid attempt to imitate the success made by the genius of Grimaldi a hundred years ago? My daughter does not know of the existence of such a thing. I refer to the graceful ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw

... it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive of ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... waiting? Let us, then, remind ourselves that excess and precipitation are more than wasteful,—they are directly destructive. The fire that blazes beyond bounds not warms the house, but burns it down, and only helps infinitesimally to warm the wide out-of-doors. Any live snail will out-travel a wrecked locomotive, and besides will leave no trail of slaughter on its track. Though despatch be the soul of business, yet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... juvenile cousins, Reginald Rumbullion. Now, whether because on this youthful Rumbullion's account Billy had suffered the pangs of that most terrible passion, jealousy, or from his natural enjoyment of playing practical jokes destructive of all dignity in his elders, Billy marched into the room, and, having shut the door behind him, paralyzed the crowded parlor by an announcement that Mr. Daniel Lovegrove ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow

... depresses the nervous system, that it takes away twenty-five per cent. of the physical vigor of this generation, and that it goes on as the years multiply and, damaging this generation with accumulated curse, it strikes other centuries. And if it is so deleterious to the body, how much more destructive to the mind. An eminent physician, who was the superintendent of the insane asylum at Northampton, Massachusetts, says: "Fully one half the patients we get in our asylum have lost their intellect through the use of tobacco." If it is such a bad thing to ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... the surrender of outward beliefs. By their side, however, we shall see a more moderate school claim its own, and one not less efficient. It will proclaim words of charity, faith, and hope. To the negations and destructive aphorisms of the realistic school it will oppose firm confidence in the early regeneration of the Jewish people, called to fulfil its destiny upon its national soil. The Zionist appeal will unite the orthodox ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... country accessible. Only those who have had the fortune to travel through this country can realize how difficult this endeavor has been and must continue to be, chiefly because of the great local complexity of the mountain system, but also because of the severely destructive storms of this region, with consequent torrential violence of the streams affected. But little money, too, can be, or has been, spent for the necessary road-work. In spite of the difficulties involved, however, a system of road-making has been set on foot, the labor needed ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... "Christian charity." They freely call an obnoxious individual their "personal foe" (ECHTHROS), and if they can defeat, humiliate, and ruin him, they bless the gods. The usual outlet for such ill-feeling is a fierce and perhaps mutually destructive lawsuit. ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... the fear of treason to ladies' eyes, and to mountain streams, and to morning dew, which kept me from yielding the point to him. One is apt always to generalise too quickly in such matters; but there can be no question that lustre is destructive of loveliness in colour, as it is of intelligibility in form. Whatever may be the pride of a young beauty in the knowledge that her eyes shine (though perhaps even eyes are most beautiful in dimness), she would be sorry if her cheeks did; and which of us ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... fond of her son, and imbued him with a desire to shine in aristocratic circles. He was a clever lad, without any principle; he would lie unblushingly, and steal deliberately, if he thought he could do so with impunity. He was cautious, acquisitive, imaginative, self-conceited, and destructive. He had strong perceptive faculties, and much invention and versatility, but his "moral sense" was almost entirely wanting. He found that his fellow clerks were not of that "gentlemanly" stamp which his mother thought so admirable, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... poverty; the war has doubled prices so that nobody can live." "Many families are without bread. The inhabitants desert the country, and crowd into the towns." [Footnote: Lettres de Frontenac et de Champigny, 1691, 1692.] A new enemy appeared in the following summer, almost as destructive as the Iroquois. This was an army of caterpillars, which set at naught the maledictions of the clergy, and made great havoc among the crops. It is recorded that along with the caterpillars came an unprecedented ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... stood in silence he slowly lifted his black stick like a long black finger and pointed it at the peacock trees above the wood. And a queer feeling of disquiet fell on the girl, as if he were, by that mere gesture, doing a destructive act and could send ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton

... drew water, for his dwelling-place. Pretty little lizards, with light blue and red tails, run among the rocks, catching flies and other insects. These harmless—though to new-comers repulsive—creatures sometimes perform good service to man, by eating great numbers of the destructive ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... measured the pent-up power, the destructive possibilities of the whining, snapping, living sea of sinew and fang ahead of them. And they were Josephine's! They were her slaves! What need had she of his protection? What account would be the insignificant automatic at his side in the face ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... be looked to as the first and principal correctors of this most destructive of human habits; ... and the united and simultaneous efforts of the civilized world should be exerted in the overthrow of a monster so destructive to the good looks and life of man. Every physician should advise his patients, and every boarding-school in existence and every hospital should have ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke

... grand epic, and suggested as a subject 'The Battle of Parnassus,' as described by Pausanias. His reasons for this choice were based upon the legend related by Pausanias, viz., that in the second century B.C. the Muses from Parnassus aided the combined Greek armies against the destructive invasion of the Gauls by provoking a panic among the latter. I actually began my heroic poem in hexameter verse, but could not get through the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... The Alps have no past nor present nor future. The human beings who live upon their sides are at odds with nature, clinging on for bare existence to the soil, sheltering themselves beneath protecting rocks from avalanches, damming up destructive streams, all but annihilated every spring. Man, who is paramount in the plain, is nothing here. His arts and sciences, and dynasties, and modes of life, and mighty works, and conquests and decays, demand our whole attention in Italy or Egypt. But here the mountains, immemorially ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... of gambling is peculiarly destructive. It spares neither age nor sex. It visits the domestic hearth with a pestilence more quiet and stealthy, but not less deadly, than intemperance. It is at once the vice of the gentleman, and the passion of the blackguard. With deep shame ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... of natural fuel on Uller, to set up nuclear power reactors and furnish large quantities of plutonium to the geeks to fuel them. The Company doesn't want the natives here learning of the possibility of using nuclear energy for destructive purposes. Well, gentlemen, that's a dead issue. They've learned it, thanks to our people on Niflheim, and unless my estimate is entirely wrong, King Orgzild already has at least one First-Century Nagasaki-type plutonium bomb. I am inclined to believe that he had at least one such ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... directions, so that the fore-chains of the French vessel should be hooked by the spare anchor of the Aspasia. The enemy, who, in his disabled state, was not in a situation to choose whether he would be boarded or not, poured in a double-shotted and destructive broadside; and it was well for Captain M—- that his ship's company had received the reinforcement which they had from the Susanne, for the French frigate was crowded with men, and being now within pistol-shot, the troops, who were so thick ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... concerning any person which do signify in us ill-opinion, or contempt, anger, hatred, enmity conceived in our minds towards him; which are apt in him to kindle wrath, and breed ill-blood towards us; which tend to beget in others that hear ill-conceit or ill-will towards him; which are much destructive of his reputation, prejudicial to his interests, productive of damage or mischief to him. It is otherwise in Scripture termed [Greek], to rail or revile, (to use bitter and ignominious language); [Greek], to speak contumeliously; [Greek], to bring railing ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... not present to us so much as a single specimen. To obtain any idea of them, we must quit the mother country, and betake ourselves to the colonies, especially to those island colonies which have been less subjected than the mainland to the destructive ravages of barbarous conquerors, and the iconoclasm of fanatical populations. It is especially in Cyprus that we meet with extensive remains, which, if not so instructive as might have been wished, yet give us some important ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... have now had to abandon their free use of the forests, which was highly destructive in its effects, and their indiscriminate slaughter of game. Many of them live in the open country and have become farmservants and field-labourers. A certain proportion are tenants, but very few own villages. Some of the Tadvi Bhils, however, still retain villages which were originally ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... for this time." Greatly to the joy of Belleisle; infinitely to the chagrin of her Hungarian Majesty,—who declared it a crying injustice (though I believe legally done in every point); and by and by, even made it a plea of Nullity, destructive to the Election altogether, when her Hungarian Majesty's affairs looked up again, and the world would listen to Austrian sophistries and obstinacies. This was an essential service from Kur-Sachsen. [Began, indistinctly, "in March" (1741); languid "for some months" ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Natural hazards: destructive earthquakes and cyclones; flooding and landslides common during rainy season (June to September); ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... to caste formation and a rigid and stratified social structure, which is in the end self-destructive, and cannot survive a change of environment. The governing caste may, as Reibmayr says, favor the growth of culture, but it is usually the culture of that caste, and not of the people at large. The ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner

... characters will be an intelligent generation, it will understand and say, 'Not all were asleep in the night of our ancestors!' The mystery of these curious characters will save my work from the ignorance of men, just as the mystery of strange rites has saved many truths from the destructive priestly classes." ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... admiration for their singular daring and ingenuity. One of the most remarkable is known in border history as Brady's Leap. The energetic Brodhead, by an expedition into the Indian country, had delivered such destructive blows that the savages were quieted for a time. The general kept spies out, however, for the purpose of guarding against sudden attacks on the settlements. One of the scouting parties, under the command of Captain Brady, had the French creek country assigned as their field of duty. The ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous

... little influence rendered the adoption of some other means absolutely necessary. The men, with whom the ordinary methods failed, belonged to the defective classes already described as mathematical dullards, deficient in self-control, and stupids. The habits of vice seem to have wrought such a destructive work upon the will-power of these men that in order to repair it some potent influence would have to be brought into operation. The conception was to entirely disengage the mind of its connection with the past and to concentrate ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... once remarkable beauty naught remained but her hair, which was still magnificent, though it was in wild disorder, and looked as if it had not been touched by a comb for weeks; and her big black eyes, which gleamed with the phosphorescent and destructive brilliancy of fever. Everything about her person bespoke terrible reverses, borne without dignity. Even if she had struggled at first, it was easy to see that she struggled no longer. Her attire—her torn ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... in that gay July sunshine that anything dark or tragic could happen to one. But after all man cannot be so different from Nature which produces him, and the night before had given them a passionate, brief, destructive thunder-storm. Creed noted the ravages of it here and there; the broken boughs, the levelled or uprooted herbage, the washed and riven soil, as his ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... study human nature, the more possible it will seem to you. It is not, I believe, infidelity, but fanaticism, which England has to fear just now. The infidelity of England is one of mere doubt and denial, a scepticism; which is in itself weak and self-destructive. The infidelity of France in 1793 was strong enough, but just because it was no scepticism, but a faith; a positive creed concerning human reason, and the rights of man, which men could formulize, and believe in, and fight for, and persecute ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... significance. Radioactivity has shown us what undreamt-of energy is bound up in the atom, and many are the prophesies regarding the harnessing of these forces for constructive activities. At least one prominent novelist has pictured their destructive use in the radioactive bomb. But the use of this wonderful store of energy for peace and war can only result from years of costly and voluminous research, and we have no idea of the difficulties involved in production, without which any invention, however telling and revolutionary, has ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden

... ornamented externally with all the profusion of Eastern taste, but they are falling into ruins, as are also the mosques and houses inside the town. Time has laid its destructive hand upon this city, as upon Delhi and Agra. The ruins of Lahore are already as extensive as those of that ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... and destructive forces, such as sin, disease, and death, mortals virtually name substance; but these are the substance of things not hoped for. For lack of knowing what substance is, the senses say vaguely: ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy



Words linked to "Destructive" :   vitriolic, constructive, annihilating, wasteful, ravaging, destroy, erosive, damaging, caustic, ruinous, destructive metabolism, destructiveness, cataclysmal, harmful, cataclysmic, blasting, destructive distillation, soul-destroying, corrosive, annihilative, mordant, iconoclastic, negative, crushing, devastating, withering, self-destructive



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