"Devastation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they could, to rob and to plunder for the very means of life. Goaded by hunger and distress of every kind, those formidable and ferocious "wood kernes" only paid the country back, by inflicting on it that plunder and devastation which they had received at its hands. Neither is it surprising that they should make no distinction in their depredations, because they experienced, to their cost, that no "hosting," on either or any side, ever made a distinction with them. Whatever hand was uppermost, whether in the ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... allured by thy hospitable form. Suddenly, unexpectedly, in a moment still as night, there is a fermentation in the treacherous gulf of fire; it discharges itself with raging force, and away over all the plantations of men drives the wild stream in frightful devastation. WALLENSTEIN. Thou art portraying thy father's heart; as thou describest, even so is it shaped in his entrails, in this black hypocrite's breast. O, the art of hell has deceived me! The Abyss sent up to me the most spotted ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was a garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness: Yea, and nothing should escape them.' All things were going to wrack; the country was overrun by foreign invaders; bankruptcy, devastation, massacre, and captivity were for perhaps 100 years the normal state of Gaul, and of most other countries besides. I have little doubt that Salvian was a prudent man, when he thought fit to bring no more human beings into the world. That is an ugly thought—I ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... no time to persuade him further, as she began to hunt for her heavy winter shoes, which were still in the wardrobe. But before she had brought them forth to the light, the door opened and the mother was looking full of horror at the devastation. ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... knowledge seemed stricken from them. The look of them cut to his very soul, quick and sensitive from the working of the great change, made ready as a wind-harp by the silent days of dreams, the nights of visions. To him alone was the devastation within them apparent. He stretched out a timid ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... be relied on, we are at this hour in a most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless 'Armament of Mechanisers' and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! 'The world,' says he, 'as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker combustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the past Forms of Society; replace them with what it may. For the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... I seen such view of devastation, of relentless, savage cruelty, and I gave utterance to a sudden sob, and shrank back against De Artigny's arm, hiding my eyes with my hand. He stood and stared, motionless, breathing heavily, ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... wedged up, and there poured forth its bowels in a spout of broken mineral; man with his picks and powder, and nature with her own great blasting tools of sun and rain, labouring together at the ruin of that proud mountain. The view up the canyon was a glimpse of devastation; dry red minerals sliding together, here and there a crag, here and there dwarf thicket clinging in the general glissade, and over all a broken outline trenching on the blue of heaven. Downwards indeed, from our rock eyrie, we behold ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... garrisons of the towns might protect; all these cities from the greatest to the least occupied in watching for the most favorable moment for falling upon and pillaging their neighbors; sieges terminated by unspeakable atrocities, and after all this, famine, speedily followed by pestilence to complete the devastation. Then let us picture to ourselves the rich Benedictine abbeys, veritable fortresses set upon the hill-tops, whence they seemed to command all the surrounding plains. There was nothing surprising in their prosperity. Shielded by their inviolability, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Liechtenstein was established within the Holy Roman Empire in 1719; it became a sovereign state in 1806. Until the end of World War I, it was closely tied to Austria, but the economic devastation caused by that conflict forced Liechtenstein to enter into a customs and monetary union with Switzerland. Since World War II (in which Liechtenstein remained neutral), the country's low taxes have spurred outstanding economic growth. Shortcomings in banking regulatory ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... amazement with the teeth of chagrin, by dragging through their valleys a long chain, as if they meant to take prisoners. These unwelcome Firengis were also to be known by certain strange inventions on three legs, into which they would gaze by the hour. Were they warriors, threatening devastation? Or were they magicians, spying into the future and laying a spell upon the people of Luristan? Their account of themselves the Father of Swords found far from satisfactory, claiming as they did that they proposed to build a road of iron, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... thousand ills which human flesh is heir to, have spread such devastation among the family of man as small-pox. Its universality has ranged from the untold tribes of savages to the silken baron of civilization; and its ravages on life and beauty have been shown in many a sad tale of domestic suffering. To stay the destroying hand of such a scourge, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Thirty Years' Truce? No, all this is a mere pretence, and if we are deceived by it, we shall be led on step by step to deeper and still deeper humiliation. It may seem a hard thing to give up the fair land of Attica to pillage and devastation. But think how far greater was the sacrifice made by our grandsires, who refused the fairest offers from Persia, and gave up all they had, rather than betray the common cause. Athens and Attica were then all the country they had, and these lost they had nothing left but their ships, their ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... to prove that carnage and devastation spread over their land have not afflicted this noble people so deeply as this more searching warfare against the conscience and the reason. They groan less over the blood which has been shed, than over the arrogant assumptions ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Grant, from the deck of one of the larger tugs, sighted what had been once the estuary of Sidon Creek. The leader of a party of scientific observation and relief, he had kept a tireless watch of eighteen hours, keenly noticing the work of devastation, the changes in the channel, the prospects of abatement, and the danger that still threatened. He had passed down the length of the submerged Sacramento valley, through the Straits of Carquinez, and was now steaming along the shores of the upper reaches of San ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... devastation had gone deep into the Middle. Bulkheads, walls, floors, structural members; were torn, sheared, twisted into weirdly-distorted shapes impossible to understand or explain. And, much worse, were the absences; for in dozens of volumes, of ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... that this quarter accurately represents what the Germans came out of Germany into France deliberately to do. This material devastation, this annihilation of effort, hope, and love, this substitution of sorrow for joy—is just what plans and guns were laid for, what the worshipped leaders of the Fatherland prepared with the most ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... taken place all at once, without any apprenticeship. The noon-day sun is not clearer than the fact, that no preparation was required on the part of the slaves. It was the dictate of an accusing conscience, that foretold of bloodshed, and burning, and devastation. Can it be supposed to be an accidental circumstance, that peace and good-will have uniformly, in all the colonies, followed the steps of emancipation. Is it not rather the broad seal of attestation to that heaven born principle, "It is safe to do right." Dear brother, if you ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... tempter spirit Behar, for the angel of peace guides his soul. Flee before the malice of Beliar, whose sword is drawn to slay all that pay him obedience, and his sword is the mother of seven evils, bloodshed, corruptness, error, captivity, hunger, panic, and devastation. Therefore God surrendered Cain to seven punishments. Once in a hundred years the Lord brought a castigation upon him. His afflictions began when he was two hundred years old, and in his nine hundredth year he was destroyed by the deluge, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... person, he took counsel with them, and then collecting all the men-at-arms within his reach, he fell upon the neighbouring provinces and executed a fearful vengeance, both with fire and sword, upon the innocent inhabitants. How long this rage for devastation might have lasted cannot be told, but Dom Pedro was at length brought to a better mind by Goncalo Pereira, Archbishop of Braga, who, by the help of the Queen, succeeded in establishing peace between ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... rapidity of movements, his ever-ready munitions for battle and siege, made his later campaigns always successful. He felt that he was carrying on war in his own country; so his wars were not wars of devastation, but the crushing of armies and ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... were also Christians who, while they hated the olden culture of Paganism, were ambitious to supply a Christian literature in prose and verse to take the place of the Classical. There had been an awful devastation of Gaul; the barbarians of the north had been, now and again, uneasy and troublesome; but see how Julian—even he, with the Grace of God all against him—had chastised them! The head of the Roman State would always be the Master ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... piece of forethought to work unceasingly at that time, for soon commerce attacked the swamp and began its usual process of devastation. Canadian lumbermen came seeking tall straight timber for ship masts and tough heavy trees for beams. Grand Rapids followed and stripped the forest of hard wood for fine furniture, and through my experience with the lumber men "Freckles"' ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... richly endowed, for ancient piety deemed it could never give enough to God. The shrines were adorned with jewels, purchased with the wealth which the monks had renounced for their own use; the sacred vessels were costly, the gifts of generous hearts. The Danes commenced their work of plunder and devastation in the year 795. Three years after, A.D. 798, they ravaged Inis-patrick of Man and the Hebrides. In 802 they burned "Hi-Coluim-Cille." In 806 they attacked the island again, and killed sixty-eight of the laity and clergy. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... soon now. The New York and New England men alike were full of fire, eager to avenge Braddock's defeat and equally eager to drive back and punish the terrible clouds of savages which, under the leadership of the French, were ravaging the border, spreading devastation and terror ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... importance still—Alfred's moral welfare. His early separation from his family would be a sad thing; but not half so fearful as the risk of sending him into the society of the dissolute, or, at best, the careless, where his duty will lie in scenes of bloodshed and devastation, where his employment will be to contrive and execute plans for spreading ruin and wasting life. Can we devote him to an employment like this? Some may represent the matter in a different light, and say that he is promoting the prosperity of his country and the extension of commerce by ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... Butchered and scalped, many of them after being promised quarters, and some scalped alive, of which we have miserable Instances amongst us.... I have only to add that A few Hundreds of men well armed and immediately sent to our relief would prevent much bloodshed, confusion and devastation ... as the appearance of being supported would call back many of our fugitives to save their Harvest for their subsistence, rather than suffer the inconveniences which reason tells me they do down the Country and their with their families ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... his tiles deteriorating in value. It was not a soothing consideration, and the squire was almost ready to quarrel with his shadow. He wanted a vent for his ill-humour; and suddenly remembering the devastation on his covers, which he had heard about not a quarter of an hour before, he rode up to the men busy at work on Lord Cumnor's land. Just before he got up to them he encountered Mr. Preston, also on horseback, come to overlook his labourers. The squire ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... conflagration spread with lightning swiftness over an illimitable extent of country, filling the atmosphere with driving clouds of suffocating fume, and leaving a broad and blackened trail of spectral trunks shorn of limbs and foliage, smoking and burning, to mark the immense sweep of its devastation. ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... destruction of the harborage of Venice, the endless cost of delaying it, the malaria of the whole coast down to Ravenna, nay, the raising of the bed of the Po, to the imperiling of all Lombardy, are but secondary evils. Every acre of that increasing delta means the devastation of part of an Alpine valley, and the loss of so much fruitful soil and ministering rain. Some of you now present must have passed this year through the valleys of the Toccia and Ticino. You know therefore the devastation that was caused there, as well as in the valley ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... not from thy skies, lamented shade, Nor view that land to misery betray'd: If ignorance can cloud immortal sight, Be Sweden's fortunes wrapp'd in tenfold night! Thou saw'st not Devastation sweep her shore, Her forests smoke, her rivers roll in gore; Thou saw'st not half her woes. Her senate low, Thou thought'st her people would revenge the blow; And hope shone kindling in thy dying eye, That some new sun would rise to light her starless sky.— ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... thousand years the sovereign pontiffs had been rulers of the city. True, it had witnessed many scenes of devastation for which they were not responsible; but they were responsible for this, that they had never made any vigorous, any persistent effort for its material, its moral improvement. Instead of being in these respects an exemplar for the imitation of the world, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... nothing so dishonorable. Why should you bury me alive? Is it because one friend still comes with no scheme for the devastation of our sylvan home?" ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... granting a Royal Commission to one or other of the northern "Reguli," who were ever prepared, under the plea of loyalty, to strengthen their own hands, and exterminate their brethren; but this, as had been often felt before, was to abandon the country to utter devastation; and a more pacific and singular policy was now adopted. One association of Lowland barons, chiefly from Fife, took a lease from the Crown of the Isle of Lewis, for which they agreed, after seven years' possession, to give the King an annual ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... carronades across her main deck. The name of this ship, be it mentioned, was the Good Samaritan, as ill-fitting a name as could be for such a craft, which, instead of being designed for the healing of wounds, was intended to inflict such devastation as ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... feared by every property holder, and the theaters were frequently the scenes of outbreaks of the apprentices. The danger of the plague from the crowd at plays was the greatest of all. London was hardly ever free from it, and suffered terrible devastation in the years 1593 and 1603. For these reasons the theaters were forbidden within the city's jurisdiction, and were driven into the outskirts. The best companies appeared frequently at court, and on the accession of James I they were licensed directly as servants of various members ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... mistake in the well-stored pantry of his benefactor for a whole day, where milk, butter, bread, and meat, within his reach, were in abundance. On the return of the servant to the pantry, seeing the dog come out, and knowing the time he had been confined, she trembled for the devastation which her negligence must have occasioned; but on close examination, it was found that the honest creature had not tasted of anything, although, on coming out, he fell on a bone that was given to him, with all the ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... with his fleet proceeded to the isle of Fyen, went on land, plundered, and made great devastation. So says Arnor, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... proselytes deserted from the Imperial service to join this military association. In the possession of Gallipoli, [499] the Catalans intercepted the trade of Constantinople and the Black Sea, while they spread their devastation on either side of the Hellespont over the confines of Europe and Asia. To prevent their approach, the greatest part of the Byzantine territory was laid waste by the Greeks themselves: the peasants and their cattle retired into the city; and myriads of sheep and oxen, for which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... A. The devastation of the monasteries, religious houses, and chantries, which followed their suppression, discouraged the study of ecclesiastical architecture, (which had been much followed by the members of the conventual ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... south of the Pyrenees (409). In Gaul they "destroyed the cities, ravaged the fields, and drove before them in a promiscuous crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars." Brief as was this period of devastation, it marks the severance of Gaul from ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... to break as the party quitted the scene of devastation. The king and Suffolk, with the archers, returned to the castle; but Wyat, Surrey, and Richmond rode towards the lake, and proceeded along its banks in the direction ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... over the State the feeling for Judge Terry was very strong. Harm to him would have precipitated a domestic row, which would have caused immense sacrifice of life, and the destruction of San Francisco. It would have extended into the interior, and raged there in bloodshed and devastation. The peaceful way out of the difficulty was thought the better course, if it could be accomplished. The occasion was extraordinary, and never contemplated—the exigency beyond immediate solution. As James Dows, one of ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... I wrote a more or less 'sensational' novel dealing with the absinthe drinkers of Paris, entitled "Wormwood," which did a certain amount of good in its way, by helping to call public attention to the devastation wrought by the use of the pernicious drug among the French and other Continental peoples—and after this, receiving a strong and almost imperative impetus towards that particular goal whither my mind was set, I went to work again with renewed vigour ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... devastation such as that two hundred years ago, is, I am sorry to say, just as clear to me; and the end of the tale will be, despotism enthroned amidst universal ruin. In fifty years, and probably much less, there will be no trace left of free institutions, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... dangerous foe. Technically conquered, it would not be well for his opponent to try conclusions with him again in the still uncertain position of the Napoleonic power. Rather reap the field secured, the daunted conqueror reasoned, than risk devastation by grasping for more. This, and no other, is the explanation of that remarkable somersault in Napoleon's diplomacy which followed ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... her. What a change it was! While she approached, what with the trees left, and the towers, the rampart, and the outer shell of the courts—little injured to the distant eye, she had not an idea of the devastation within. But when she rode through one entrance after another with the gates torn from their hinges, crossed the moat by a mound of earth instead of the drawbridge, and rode through the open gateway, where ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... wanted or had not been able to influence the behavior of France, as her mother had conjured her to do. "My dear lady— daughter," wrote Maria Theresa, "Mercy is charged to inform you of my cruel position, as sovereign and as mother. Wishing to save my dominions from the most cruel devastation, I must, cost what it may, seek to wrest myself from this war, and, as a mother, I have three sons who are not only running the greatest danger, but are sure to succumb to the terrible fatigues, not being accustomed to that sort of life. By making peace ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... boarded, night having come on apace. In the morning she aimed to clear out the balance of the Union fleet. That night, however, the Monitor, a flat little craft with a revolving tower, invented by Captain Ericsson, arrived, and in the morning when the Merrimac started in on her day's work of devastation, beginning with the Minnesota, the insignificant-looking Monitor slid up to the iron monster and gave ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... means a pleasure trip; but, putting all perils aside, regarding them merely as the vicissitudes of a soldier's lot, what impressed Fritz more than anything else was the ruin and devastation which, following thus in the rear of a ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... dispossession, dismantling; plunder, desolation, devastation, depredation, despoliation, fleecing, sacking, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... inroad into the bones of the Flying Scud—more beams tapped and hewn in splinters, more planking peeled away and tossed aside—and every night saw us as far as ever from the end and object of our arduous devastation. In this perpetual disappointment, my courage did not fail me, but my spirits dwindled; and Nares himself grew silent and morose. At night, when supper was done, we passed an hour in the cabin, mostly without speech: I, sometimes dozing over a book; Nares, sullenly but busily drilling sea-shells ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the aspect of a ruder devastation; and though every thing seemed now quiet, the repose was like that of death, spread over features, which retain the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... success, setting all in flames till we came to the church of St. Anne's, where we put up for this night, and were joined by Captain Ross, with about one hundred and twenty men of his company." The work of devastation continued the following day, until the forces reached Ange Gardien. August 28, Captain MacDonell with Captain Ross took post at Chateau Richer. September 1st, Chateau Richer was burned, and the force marched to Montmorenci, burning all the houses ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... scattering destruction in his path; and, though he retired before cavalry sent to pursue him—he even shot his horses as they gave out, in the forced flight—his expedition had accomplished its object. It had proved that no point of harassed territory was safe from Federal devastation; that the overtaxed and waning strength of the South was insufficient to ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... such damage as it could. Guerrilla warfare is not perhaps a respectable method of fighting. It involves much of what is commonly regarded as outlawry, of pillage and of plunder, of destruction and devastation. These results become respectable only when attained through conventional processes, and are in some way supposed to be ennobled by those processes. But they sometimes become the only means by which the weak can ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... devastation could not have been completed many minutes before their arrival, the elephant appeared to have gone away from the ground. At east, it was not to be seen anywhere near the spot; and it is needless to say that it was ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... accompanied the decision to use the bomb. Residents of Arizona wanted it dropped in California; San Franciscans urged the poetic justice and great utility of applying it to the very spot where the growth originated; all were in favor of the devastation at the farthest possible ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the devastation which had been accomplished in a brief half-hour; the black-currant trees were the apple of Joseph's eye, and she had just fixed her choice of a flower-bed in the ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... for you are a magnificent instrument of ruin and devastation. Yet it will be by means of you that I shall crush all those who have been an obstacle in my pathway; I take you, not for my wife, but for my slave, ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... account of so many effusions or improvisations as served for fuel to boil the scanty and precarious pot of his uncertain and uncomfortable sustenance. "The Wonderful Year" of the death of Elizabeth, the accession of James, and the devastation of London by pestilence, supplied him with matter enough for one of his quaintest and liveliest tracts: in which the historical part has no quality so valuable or remarkable as the grotesque mixture of horror and humor in ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... or floor of the gulch, and it was not till several more miles had been passed that the bandit rode out into what Joan first thought was a hideous slash in the forest made by fire. But it was only the devastation wrought by men. As far as she could see the timber was down, and everywhere began to be manifested signs that led her to expect habitations. No cabins showed, however, in the next mile. They passed out of the timbered part of the gulch into one of rugged, bare, and stony slopes, with ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... Norfolk crossed the Borders. The transport broke down; the commissariat was most imperfect; and Sir George Lawson of Cumberland was unable to supply the army with sufficient beer.[1127] Norfolk had to turn back at Kelso, having accomplished nothing beyond devastation.[1128] James now sought his revenge. He replied to Norfolk's invasion on the East by throwing the Scots across the Borders on the West. The Warden was warned by his spies, but he had only a few hundreds to meet the thousands of Scots. ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... the expedition managed to bring in all the priests and nuns attached to the cathedral mission. Old Father d'A——, a charming Italian priest, was the most important man rescued. After having been forty years here, he surveys the present scenes of devastation and pillage with the remark, "En Chine il n'y a ni Chretiens ni civilisation. Ce ne sont la que des phrases." That ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the sound,' or, as the Word might literally be rendered, the 'voice thereof,' from the little whisper among the young soft leaves of the opening beeches in our woods to-day, up to the typhoon that spreads devastation over leagues of tropical ocean. That voice, now a murmur, now a roar, is the only manifestation of the unseen force that sweeps around us. And if you are a Christian man or woman your new life should be thus perceptible to others, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... domestic makeshifts and managed somehow, with Mrs. Jerry's help, to make the bond of mutual liking serve very well in the place of intelligible speech. For another, the don fairly committed himself to the promise of a peon or two to help in the further devastation of the trees upon the Picardo mountain slope behind the little, natural meadow, which Jerry Simpson had so calmly appropriated to his ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... the fact that no rain had fallen since the establishment of the Colony to cause any very great or sudden flood, it appeared to me, that the place selected for the City bridge was too low. Ordinary floods so completely change the channel of the river, and make such devastation in its bed, that it is hardly to be recognised when the water subsides, so that unless the banks are high, and the soil of which they may be composed stiff enough to resist the impetuosity of the stream, I fear no bridge across the ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... the labours of two able-bodied men and a charwoman, all of whom were toiling as they had never toiled before. The woman was dusting law books and the men were packing them away in boxes. The front room of the suite was in a state of devastation. A dozen boxes stood about the floor; rugs and furniture were huddled in the most remote corner awaiting the arrival of the "second-hand man"; the floor was littered with paper. Droom was directing operations with a broken umbrella. It ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... you, and hate Satan because in some desperate hour he tricked you, and hate all men because, poor fools, they scurry to obey your whims! and chiefly you will hate yourself because you are so pitiable! and devastation only will you love in that strange time which is to come. It is adjacent, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... the present edition is composed, were principally written under the circumstances there stated, which had forcibly called my attention to the fatal effects of those ever-recurring tempests, which scatter devastation and misery round our coasts, where the veteran commander and his hardy crew, with their helpless passengers of every age and station in life, are left wretchedly to perish from the want of that succour which it has become my object earnestly to solicit ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... livings, and otherwise punished, for not conforming to the royal conscience. But persecution and penal laws fanned a fanatical spirit, which, in the reign of Charles, burst out into a destructive flame, and spread devastation and ruin through all ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... always acted as dutiful, Faithful and Loyal Subjects to their most Gracious Sovereign the said Queen of Hungary even during the many Revolutions that have happened in Prague within these few Years and notwithstanding the great Devastation and Excesses which Naturally occur'd therefrom they have continued and still do continue firm and unshaken in their Principles of Affection & Fidelity to her said Majesty and her ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... to my father's house, I found there, too, the horrors of devastation. Our pear-tree had lost not only its young fruit but likewise all its beautiful leaves, and stood there bare as in winter: what is more, a very fruitful plum-tree, which used to supply not only ourselves ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... one way for America to be safe from invasion and that is for America to be ready for it. We are not ready today, we never have been ready, yet war may smite us at any time with all its hideous slaughter and devastation. Our vast possessions constitute the richest, the most tempting prize on earth, and no words can measure the envy and hatred that less rich and less favoured ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... Chandernagor hovers over peaceful India, a perpetual menace to the free and liberal government established by England. Some day the military spirit of Chandernagor will break loose, and those ten soldiers will spread death and devastation in some peaceful neighboring meadow, or ruthlessly loot some happy, pastoral melon-garden. Let the Indian Government be warned in ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... ruin, perdition, havoc, vandalism, subversion, desolation, devastation, iconoclasm. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... E'en now the devastation is begun, 395 And half the business of destruction done; E'en now, methinks, as pond'ring here I stand, I see the rural virtues leave the land: Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail, That idly waiting flaps with ev'ry gale, 500 Downward they move, a melancholy band, Pass ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... service." "I confess my sin," he wrote to Walsingham, "I have followed man too much," and he saw why his efforts had been in vain. "Baal's prophets and councillors shall prevail. I see it is so. I see it is just. I see it past help. I rest despaired." His policy of blood and devastation, breaking the neck of Desmond's rebellion, but failing to put an end to it, became at length more than the home Government could bear; and with mutual dissatisfaction he was recalled before his work was done. Among ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... condition compared to Sebastopol. Here, you may look in whatsoever direction you please, and your eye encounters scarcely any thing but ruin, ruin, ruin!—fragments of houses, crumbled walls, torn and ragged hills, devastation every where! It is as if a mighty earthquake had spent all its terrible forces upon this one little spot. For eighteen long months the storms of war beat upon the helpless town, and left it at last the saddest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Mr Seagrave, "the wreck and devastation which are here. See how the pride of man is humbled before the elements of the ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... nature, his deep and earnest sympathy with the afflictions of the whole people, resulting from the war, and by the march of hostile armies through the South; and that his earnest desire seemed to be to end the war speedily, without more bloodshed or devastation, and to restore all the men of both sections to their homes. In the language of his second inaugural address, he seemed to have "charity for all, malice toward none," and, above all, an absolute faith in the courage, manliness, and integrity of the armies in the field. When at rest or listening, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Mammy, rushing impulsively forward, pushed them all aside, and cried and laughed over me alternately, while she almost crushed me with the violence of her affection. Before I was well seated, Fred spied out the bag of hazel-nuts; and a vigorous sound of cracking informed me that the work of devastation ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... "filament." We have had the vague consciousness of assisting at a great development whose evidences to-day on every hand attest its magnitude. We have felt the fierce play of volcanic effort, lifting new continents of opportunity from the infertile sea, without any devastation of pre-existing fields of human toil and harvest. But it still remains to elucidate the actual thing done; to reduce it to concrete data, and in reducing, to unfold ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the village in total paralysis of all natural activities. It was like a deadly pall. This was no new terror; it was old devastation—bred into ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... be easy or interesting to attempt to compress the details of a long war of seven years in a single lecture. The records of war have great uniformity,—devastation, taxes, suffering, loss of life and of property (except by the speculators and government agents), the flight of literature, general demoralization, the lowering of the tone of moral feeling, the ascendency of unscrupulous men, the exaltation ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... fancy that he would survive the desired destruction? We ought to imagine the whole of Europe with St. Petersburg, Paris, and London transformed into a vast rubbish-heap. How could we expect the kindlers of such a fire to retain any consciousness after so vast a devastation? He used to puzzle any who professed their readiness for self-sacrifice by telling them it was not the so- called tyrants who were so obnoxious, but the smug Philistines. As a type of these he pointed to a Protestant parson, and declared ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... from the top of the box grabbed up a fresh piece. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Bessie was doing the same thing, although what we were going to do with them, or how account for such wholesale devastation of goods, we were too perturbed to consider. At last, however, after repeated trials, and by guiding the seam with laborious care, I succeeded in completing one garment without disaster; and I had just started ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... in a gregarious mood, yearning for the society of their fellow creatures; but in about three minutes the talk was running on pheasants. Mr. Carrington did not like pheasants, except from the point of view of eating; and he dwelt at length on the devastation the sacred bird was working in the English countryside: villages were being emptied and let fall to ruin that it might live undisturbed; the song-birds were being killed off to give it the woods ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... The slaughter and devastation that followed this storm of "hail and fire" is thus described: "The banks of the Rhine were crowned like those of the Tiber, with houses and well-cultivated farms; and if a poet descended the river, he might express his doubts on which side was situated the territory of ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... length, became the theatre in which these two demagogues exercised their mutual animosity: John was possessed of the temple, while Si'mon was admitted into the city; both equally enraged against each other; while slaughter and devastation were the consequence of their pretensions. Thus did a city formerly celebrated for peace and unity, become the ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the benches between French Hill and Skookum Hill, caught a wider vision of things. Beneath him lay the richest part of Eldorado Creek, while up and down Bonanza he could see for miles. It was a scene of a vast devastation. The hills, to their tops, had been shorn of trees, and their naked sides showed signs of goring and perforating that even the mantle of snow could not hide. Beneath him, in every direction were the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... importance in the opinion of its inhabitants. None was so prosperous, none so flourishing, when a most horrible misfortune befell the land, in the appearance of a terrific green dragon, of huge proportions, who ranges up and down the country, creating devastation and dismay in every direction. No corner of the land is safe from his ravages; no one can hope to escape the consequences of his appearance. Every day his insatiable maw must be fed with the body of a young maiden, while so pestiferous is the breath which exhales from ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... the Colonne Vendome where the great Corsican in bronze gazed on a scene of wanton madness never equalled. Not even when drunken Nero mocked at the devastation of the imperial city by the Tiber, ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... catastrophes befell these brave but silent helpers of the patriots. Especially was this true in the South, where the British overran the country, destroyed homes, seized food, cattle, and horses, and left devastation to mark the trail. In 1779 Mrs. Pinckney's son wrote her that Provost, the British leader, had destroyed the plantation home where the family treasure had been stored, and that everything had been burned or stolen; but her ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... contains the first revelations of God; the New Testament, the last revelations. Our Christian Brother "forgets" to remind the visitor that the difference of opinion regarding these two Testaments of God has caused more sorrow, bloodshed, harm, devilment, misery, and devastation than any other single item in the life and ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... mist in the last second. "Lord, I'm glad you're not a woman! And from now on just stop knowing the creatures exist—Pat Whitworth and her kind. None of that tea-throwing in Hayesville, sir! We've got work to do to put out a fire—fire of dishonor and devastation. No time for tea-fighting here. Come on to my car over there; ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a fearful scene of ruin and devastation, only fourteen out of two hundred and fifty ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... characteristic is stated in the sacred account of the plagues of Egypt, where their faculty of devastation is also mentioned. The corrupting fly and the bruising and prostrating hail preceded them in that series of visitations, but they came to do the work of ruin more thoroughly. For not only the crops and fruits, but the foliage of the forest itself, nay, the small ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... at the Inn and that and a walk about the campus under the stars completed the devastation. Before it was over Skippy actually heard himself called "Jack," had shaken hands on an eternal friendship, promised to write from time to time of Hippo's progress and needs, agreed to defend him from bodily injury and promised to accompany him home for the short Thanksgiving ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... Lord Auckland's policy, and the equivalent obtained for the thousands of lives, and millions of treasure, lavished in support of them;—failure so complete, that but for the ruins of desolated cities, and the deep furrows of slaughter and devastation, left visible through the length and breadth of the land, the whole might be regarded as a dream, from which the country had awakened, after the lapse of five years, to take up the thread of events as they were left at the end of 1838. But the connexion of our eastern empire with trans-Indian politics ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... may well be that they served as such in Stephen's time, for the northern one was severely battered. It differs somewhat in detail from that on the south side, there being an interlacing arcade half-way up, possibly being so rebuilt when the devastation caused by the siege was being repaired. There are six stages on each tower, but only the uppermost four are in any way ornamented. These have blind arcades and window openings of circular form; but the details differ ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... soul anywhere in sight; I was surrounded with evidences of terrific violence—the shattered trees, the shell holes in the road, the brown-lipped craters in the earth of the fields, the battered inn; but there was not a sign of the creators of this devastation. A northwest wind blew in great salvos across the mournful, lonely plateau, rippling the furze, and brought to my ears the pounding of shells from behind the rise. When I got to this rim a soldier, a big, blond fellow of the true Gaulois type with drooping yellow mustaches, climbed slowly out ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... are on the jump, sprawl is also gnawing away at the countryside. Given our present pace of change, many Basin towns will soon become Basin cities, and around each, if they are left to grow in the rudimentary traditional patterns, the devastation that has taken place around Washington will reproduce itself. In many places it ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... although altogether unsuccessful in rooting out the Vaudois, created such terrible devastation in the mountains and valleys that the Irish name and nation will long remain odious to the Vaudois. Six generations have since passed away, but neither time nor subsequent calamities have obliterated the impression made by the waste and desolation ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... suppress the Bible—particularly versions in the language of the common people, Gaussen says: "The decree of Toulouse, 1229," which established the "tribunal of the Inquisition against all the readers of the Bible in the vulgar tongue, ... was an edict of fire, bloodshed, and devastation. In its 3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th chapters, it ordained the entire destruction of the houses, the humblest places of concealment, and even the subterranean retreats of men convicted of possessing the Scriptures; that they should ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... went to take the Lord's sepulchre from the infidel, while their brothers left at home rose against one another, each petty state against its neighbor, in unsparing wars of rapine and devastation,—wars that slew, or, less mercifully, mutilated prisoners,—that snatched the babe from the embrace of its violated mother, and dashed out its brains upon the desolated hearth. A hopeless, hellish time of sack, plunder, murder, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... were increased, both by the dispatch of fresh levies to Cuba and by the addition to the horrors of the strife of a new and inhuman phase happily unprecedented in the modern history of civilized Christian peoples. The policy of devastation and concentration, inaugurated by the Captain-General's bando of October 21, 1896, in the Province of Pinar del Rio was thence extended to embrace all of the island to which the power of the Spanish arms was able to reach by occupation or by military ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... Etna took place. According to the Chinese annuals, about 4,000,000 of people perished by famine in the neighbourhood of Kiang in 1337; and deluges, swarms of locusts, and an earthquake which lasted six days, caused incredible devastation. In the same year, the first swarms of locusts appeared in Franconia, which were succeeded in the following year by myriads of these insects. In 1338 Kingsai was visited by an earthquake of ten days' duration; ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... ministers of the Cape Parliament—Messrs. Merriman and Sauer—went to England on a similar errand, but fared no better. In vain did they offer their services to the Imperial Parliament by way of suggesting a basis for a settlement, which would terminate a war of devastation and ruination. The war party would have none of them. Forsooth, they too were ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... remonstrating, and Meeson, having glared around at the other clerks and warned them that unless they were careful—very careful—they would soon follow in his tracks, continued his course of devastation. ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard |
