"Disastrously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the end of this chapter should be carefully examined by all who are not absolutely letter perfect in the conventional leads. The present tendency of players taking up Auction is to regard the leads as unimportant, and this often results disastrously. The quondam Whist-player realizes the necessity of having every lead at his fingers' ends, but for the benefit of those who have never participated in the older game, it may be said that the conventional leads have been determined upon only after years of experimentation; as a consequence ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... over and done—disastrously done, she thought; but its results were just beginning for Jim ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Parliament, and been checkmated by Lucy Carlisle. So the fatal standard was reared, ten months ago, on that dismal day at Nottingham,—the King's arms, quartered with a bloody hand pointing to the crown, and the red battle-flag above;—blown down disastrously at night, replaced sadly in the morning, to wave while the Cavaliers rallied, slowly, beneath its folds. During those long months, the King's fortunes have had constant and increasing success,—a success always ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... almost prophetic. In less than half an hour after that moment they met with the first really serious accident of the entire journey, and one which easily might have resulted disastrously to life ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... would never have succeeded in getting his drawings accepted at 85 Fleet Street, any more than one of the artists on the staff of "Punch" could paint a fresco which should hold its own against Da Vinci's Last Supper. Michael Angelo again and Titian would have failed disastrously at modern illustration. They had no more sense of humour than a Hebrew prophet; they had no eye for the more trivial side of anything round about them. This aspect went in at one eye and out at the other—and they lost more than ever poor Peter Bell lost in the matter ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... ashamed to say I have not the smallest recollection of it; for while I looked into the brilliant spaces of the air I seemed still to see only what I saw in the depths of the Roman baths—the image, disastrously confused and vague, of a vanished world. This world, however, has left at Nimes a far more considerable memento than a few old stones ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... it; nor is there any wind to shake down and disperse it. Tempest is white; the church is white: the whole world colorless and blinding. I have been in the habit of looking upon Vick as a white dog; to-day she appears disastrously dark—dirty brunette. Soap-and-water having entirely failed to restore her complexion. Bobby kindly proposes to ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... things he may have thought," interrupted Barnes, smiling. "It is barely possible that my arrival may have caused him to act more hastily than he intended. That may be the reason why the job ended so disastrously for him." ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... of Preston was a place of ill omen to the superstitious Highlanders. There, thirty years before, their countrymen had been disastrously defeated. They had a presentiment that they too would never get beyond that point. To destroy this fear, Lord George Murray marched half his army across the river and encamped ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... back from the territory they had purchased in 1917 with half a million lives. On Wednesday the headline was "British and French Check Germans"; but still the retreat went on. Back—and back—and back! Where would it end? Would the line break again—this time disastrously? ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of twice his strength, Lee is not entitled to commendation. It is justifiable only—if at all—by the danger of the situation, which required a desperate remedy, and peculiarly by the success which attended it. Had it resulted disastrously, as it ought to have done, it would have been a serious blow to Lee's military prestige. The "nothing venture, nothing have" principle applies to it better than any ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... afterward, heated with alcohol, he shocked me by advocating theories which were both novel and repulsive to me. Once, after drinking more than usual, he entirely forgot his assumed part, and revealed himself in his true character. He declared he bitterly regretted that our love affair had ended so disastrously. It was deplorable to think that so happily conceived and so skilfully conducted a scheme should have terminated in bloodshed. And the blow had fallen just as he fancied he had reached the goal; just as he thought he would reap ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... to listen to this. He had begun to doubt but that Nolan's zeal would lead him into some indiscretion, and would end disastrously to himself. He spent the evening alone in front of the Cafe de la Paix, pleasantly occupied in watching the life and movement of that great meeting of the highways. It did not seem possible that he had ever been away. It was as though ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... latter, in turn, were to move farther north, on the lower Rhine, to favor by a diversion an intended invasion of Holland by a combined force of Russians and British. This gigantic flank movement and change of plan resulted most disastrously. In the midst of it the French general Massena, commanding in Switzerland, the centre of the great hostile front which extended from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, made a vehement and sustained attack upon the Austro-Russians at Zurich, on the 25th of September. Gaining a complete victory, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... this event the Moors declared war on the Christians. The king's country was invaded, and the Christians were about to be disastrously defeated, when a strange knight with a magic whip (Pugut-Negru) appeared on the field and put the Saracens to flight. This knight wounded himself in his left arm so that he might receive the attention of the princess. The king's youngest daughter (Pugut-Negru's own wife) dressed ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... Soliman, accompanied by his two sons, Selim and Mohammed, left Constantinople. With the campaign conducted by the Sultan we are not concerned here; it was directed against the Ionian Islands, which had been in the possession of Venice since 1401. On August 18th Soliman laid siege to Corfu, and was disastrously beaten, re-embarking his men on September 7th, after losing thousands in a fruitless attack on the fortress. He returned to Constantinople utterly discomfited. It was the seventh campaign which the Sultan had conducted in person, but the first in which the ever-faithful Ibrahim had ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... already angry monster to a perfect frenzy of rage. Even at this critical moment there was time for another shot; but Mildmay most unfortunately forgot that he had nine loaded chambers still available, and instead of firing again he flung away his piece and ran for his life. The race was a disastrously short one, however; he had not run more than twenty yards when the huge creature was upon him. The great uplifted trunk gave one whirl in the air and descended with force enough to slay an ox. It struck poor Mildmay on his right side, and, but for the fortunate ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... and to it only. Dr. Darwin's use of the word "thence" here is clearly a slip, and nothing else; but it is one which brings him for the moment into the very error into which his grandson has fallen more disastrously. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... four-foot natural cover. Fortunately for them, the machine-gun battery on the River Clyde raked the slope, kept the fire of the Turkish defenders down and prevented any counterattacks, which might have ended disastrously for the British troops. The troops still on board the River Clyde, numbering about 1,000 were effectively protected from the fire of the Turks, suffering few casualties, although shrapnel tore four great holes in the side ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... formerly been. A change had taken place, both in Master Hugh, and in his once pious and affectionate wife. The influence of brandy and bad company on him, and the influence of slavery and social isolation upon her, had wrought disastrously upon the{143} characters of both. Thomas was no longer "little Tommy," but was a big boy, and had learned to assume the airs of his class toward me. My condition, therefore, in the house of Master Hugh, was not, by any means, so comfortable as in former years. My attachments were ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... to realize that to expend our ammunition for the big guns at that time might result disastrously for us later, when, the parallels having been brought nearer, an assault ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... men is not so frequently referred to, but we sometimes have an ugly fellow vainly trying to live up to suggestions that he is an Adonis and merely looking ridiculous in consequence. The matter of age, too, enters into the question—at times disastrously. Some actresses are like Cleopatra or Ninon de l'Enclos, but many look twice their reputed age. It is only in the case of Juliet that it is deemed decent to refer to this difficulty, and then merely because Shakespeare has set her so cruelly young that everybody ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... however, had other plans. At Liege they had rashly endeavored to storm a strong fortress by a massed infantry attack, which had failed disastrously until their new Krupp siege guns had been brought up. These quickly demolished the defenses. These siege guns, therefore, which had thus fully demonstrated their value against fortifications soon brought about the total defeat of the French offensive, and compelled ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... downfall; and repeat it, in the first instance at least, with a result more disastrous than either the flight from Pultowa or the retreat from Moscow. And though necessarily an expedition on a similar scale, it seemed by no means improbable that its ultimate consequences might bear even more disastrously on British power in the East, than the results of the several expeditions into Russia, under Charles and Napoleon, bore on the respective destinies of Sweden and of France. That substratum of opinion in the minds of an hundred millions ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... in the cabin, so disastrously begun, finished, under the mellowing influence of wine and woman, in excellent feeling and with some hilarity. Mamie, in a plush Gainsborough hat and a gown of wine-coloured silk, sat, an apparent queen, among her rude surroundings ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... calaboose by the marshal—large name for a constable, but that was his title. At two in the morning, the church bells rang for fire, and everybody turned out, of course—I with the rest. The tramp had used his matches disastrously: he had set his straw bed on fire, and the oaken sheathing of the room had caught. When I reached the ground, two hundred men, women, and children stood massed together, transfixed with horror, and staring at the grated windows ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had been constructed, destroyed also all the parallel walls, and thereupon made a sudden start and set out for Thessaly. During this same time that Dyrrachium was being besieged Lucius Cassius Longinus and Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus had been sent by him into Macedonia and into Thessaly. Longinus was disastrously defeated by Scipio and by Sadalus, a Thracian; Calvinus was repulsed from Macedonia by Faustus, but on receiving accessions from the Locrians and Aetolians he invaded Thessaly with these troops, and after being ambushed and then again laying counter-ambuscades conquered Scipio in battle, and by that ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... Versal's hypotheses were right or wrong, he always had a reply to any objection, and the prestige which he had gained by his disastrously correct theory about the watery nebula gave him an advantage so enormous that nobody felt enough confidence in himself to stand long against anything that ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... McClellan and very modest about his own capacity. Perhaps both these things prejudiced Lincoln in his favour. He continued in active service till nearly the end of the war, when a failure led to his retirement; and he was always popular and respected. At this juncture he failed disastrously. On December 11 and 12, 1862, Lee's army lay strongly posted on the south of the Rappahannock. Burnside, in spite, as it appears, of express warnings from Lincoln, attacked Lee at precisely the point, near the town of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... burdened, youth so dauntless and dutiful—Nettie gazed with a pity too deep for words at the awful spectacle of that existence lost. That the lifeless thing in the room below could have been a man, and yet have come and gone so disastrously through the world, was terrible to think of, to that living labouring creature, in the depth of her own strange toils and responsibilities. Her heart ached over that wretched, miserable fate. Neither toil nor anguish was to be compared to the dread loss of ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... that day in Grosvenor Square, and met several of the "old guard" whom she knew very well, disastrously well. After lunch the duchess alluded to the brown man they had met in Bond Street, described him minutely, and asked if anyone knew him. Nobody knew him. But after the description everyone wanted to know him. It was generally supposed that he must be ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... sentiment, like gravitation, diminishes in the ratio of the square of the distance, and at any considerable remove can no longer be reckoned upon as a counter-balance to the lawlessness of egotism. Athenians could be passably just, or at least not disastrously unjust, to Athenians; Spartans to Spartans; but Sparta must needs oppress the other cities of Laconia, while Athens was at best a fickle ally; and when Grecian liberty could be strong only in Grecian union, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... cannot wholly prevent it. As a matter of fact, the spaces between the rows are seldom thoroughly loosened late in the fall. The mulch too often is scattered over a comparatively hard surface, which, by the following June has become so solid as to suffer disastrously from drought in the blossoming and bearing season. I have seen well-mulched fields with their plants faltering and wilting, unable to mature the crop because the ground had become so hard that an ordinary ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... to the Jury how little evidence there was to support the plaintiff's case. Instead came this unlucky indisposition: and his place was taken by "my Brother Gaselee:" with what results Mr. Pickwick was to learn disastrously. ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... more checkered. In the West the Americans gained the command of the Great Lakes by rapid building and good sailing, and with it followed the command of all the western peninsula of Upper Canada. The British General Procter was disastrously defeated at Moraviantown, and his ally, the Shawanoe chief Tecumseh, one of the half dozen great men of his race, was killed. York, later known as Toronto, the capital of the province, was captured, and its public buildings were burned and looted. But in the East fortune was ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... maledictions and struggled to get at his sword where it hung against the wall, while his comrades, clinging to him and impeding him, were trying in every variety of bad French to dissuade him from a purpose which they were well enough aware must needs end disastrously for him. For they all knew, what the raw Biscayan did not know, how strong was the arm and how terrible the sword of the hunchback whose studies Pinto had so rudely and so foolishly interrupted. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... skilful evolution of a plot, contenting itself with a succession of scenes, arranged merely in order of time, that should carry a comprehensive story to its finish. We shall see this influence operating disastrously in plays other than History, and must mark it as a retrograde movement in the development of perfect drama. One extremely valuable contribution of these History Plays was their insistence upon absolute humanness in the characters. To present a Prince Hal, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... retired. In 1821 he died, and my father succeeded him, and dissipated most of the money. Ten years ago he died also, leaving me a net income of about two thousand a year. Then it was that I undertook an expedition in connection with that," and he pointed to the iron chest, "which ended disastrously enough. On my way back I travelled in the South of Europe, and finally reached Athens. There I met my beloved wife, who might well also have been called the 'Beautiful,' like my old Greek ancestor. There I married her, and ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... my clients, Mr. Bingle," said he, "to extend to you the customary amenities in such cases, wherein a contest ends so disastrously for one party or the other. We are not unmindful of the teachings of 'The Christmas Carol.' Indeed, we have all read it with great interest. Joseph Hooper's recommendations to his children in ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... have or have not degenerated compared with (say) fifty or a hundred years ago may be a question difficult to settle, but it is quite clear that we are pitifully, disastrously below the normal standard of manhood and womanhood which a ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... condition may result, as in Hamlet's case, from an untoward conjunction of outward circumstances; or it may be of physiological (liverish) origin. The methods of treatment are many—some of them (such as the administration of alcohol in large doses) disastrously unwise. In some states of society and periods of history, religion is the popular specific; and there have been, and are, forms of religion to which alcohol would be preferable. Fortunately, one can say without a shadow of hesitancy that ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... room. One of them wore a black veil over her gray hair. Her hands were brown, and knotty at the joints; her eyes looked unnaturally bright for her age; innumerable wrinkles crossed and re-crossed her skinny face; and her aquiline nose (as one of the ladies present took occasion to remark) was so disastrously like the nose of the great Duke of Wellington as to be an offensive feature in ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... the age of ten, it did not appear that I should ever be working as a craftsman for my living. Unhappily, at that time my father slipped, one night, into the mill pond and was drowned; and when his affairs came to be wound up, it was found that he had speculated disastrously in wheat; and that, after paying all claims, there was ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... knew her to be, trying to induce her to join in a game of pretending that nothing had happened. Gabrielle realised his humane attempt from the first and even, for a time, tried to play up to him, but the affair ended disastrously in a flood of bitter, uncontrollable tears for which neither the parson nor the man could offer any remedy. It seemed to him that this was a woman's job, and so he and Jocelyn met in solemn consultation ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... the public we protest that the managers have not only placed themselves in a very unenviable position by their action in the premises, but have done a lasting injury to the American Institute, the results of which will be disastrously felt in future exhibitions. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... to injure irreparably the compressed parts, to impede circulation and respiration, and in many ways which we are not aware of, as well as by the more obvious evils which they have been proved to produce, destroy the health of the system, affect disastrously all its functions, and must aggravate the pains and perils of child-bearing.... Many women here, when they become mothers, seem to lose looks, health, and strength, and are mere wrecks, libels upon ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... twenty prisoners were secured and taken over to the American shore; the enemy's loss was more severe than ours, his resistance being very stubborn, and a good many cannon were destroyed, but the expedition certainly ended most disastrously. The accounts of it are hard to reconcile, but it is difficult to believe that Mr. ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... illustrious as that of Hermann. The German patriot was neither braver nor wiser than the Batavian, but he had the infinite forests of his fatherland to protect him. Every legion which plunged into those unfathomable depths was forced to retreat disastrously, or to perish miserably. Civilis was hemmed in by the ocean; his country, long the basis of Roman military operations, was accessible by river and canal, The patriotic spirit which he had for a moment raised, had abandoned him; his allies had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... until to-day she had never gone so far as to confess to him the reasons why she had never married, and would never marry, not if the last man in the world asked her. She told him of her first engagement and how it had resulted disastrously, how she had loaned the object of her affections large sums of money, until finally he ran away, leaving her penniless, and she had been compelled to work for a living. Von Barwig was very sympathetic that morning and it was this sympathy which drew ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... dressing is provided for. Animals so treated will not ordinarily resist because of pressure from the bandages. Pressure is unavoidable in the use of adhesive dressings or where careful attention is not given the manner of applying cotton to the parts. Such methods are sure to result disastrously. But if subjects are kept quiet after the parts have been properly bandaged, no difficulty is encountered in maintaining asepsis in an uninfected wound. Recovery takes place in favorable cases in from three ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... horse-flesh. He was the peacemaker in all quarrels. He was everybody's friend—the best-natured, most sensible, best-informed, most modest, unassuming, kindest, gentlest, roughest, strongest, best young fellow in all New Salem or the region about. But Mr. Offutt's trading enterprises ended disastrously in the year 1832. The store was closed, the mill was shut down, and Lincoln ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... we get a towering idealist who is the moulder of his own fate. With sublime [Greek: hubris] he takes it upon himself to wield the avenging bolts of Jove, but finds that Jove rejects his assistance. He errs disastrously in his judgment, like any short-sighted mortal, and his work goes all agley. But when the end comes it is not depressing. We see no longer a revolting fratricide and the painful sacrifice of virtue to the meanest of passions, but ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... political considerations cut disastrously across economic. In a regime of Free Trade and free economic intercourse it would be of little consequence that iron lay on one side of a political frontier, and labor, coal, and blast furnaces on the other. But as it is, men ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... Apollyon was now putting on the steam at a prodigious rate, anxious, perhaps, to get rid of the unpleasant reminiscences connected with the spot where he had so disastrously encountered Christian. Consulting Mr. Bunyan's road-book, I perceived that we must now be within a few miles of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, into which doleful region, at our present speed, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cherished by kings. These two, viz., exertion and destiny, are equal (in their operation). Of them, I regard exertion to be superior, for destiny is ascertained from the results of what is begun with exertion. Do not indulge in grief if what is commenced ends disastrously, for thou shouldst then exert thyself in the same act with redoubled attention. This is the high duty of kings. There is nothing which contributes so much to the success of kings as Truth. The king who is devoted to Truth finds happiness both here and hereafter. As regards ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... l'Apicius invariably have ended disastrously. Eager gourmets, ever on the look-out for something new, and curious scholars have attempted to prepare dishes in the manner prescribed by Apicius. Most of such experimenters have executed the old precepts literally, instead of trying ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... relate a little episode that occurred in my very early days in Calcutta, which nearly resulted disastrously for every one concerned. It will serve, amongst other things, to enlighten people of the present generation as to the wide difference that subsists between that time and the present in respect of the treatment of policy-holders generally by insurance companies. The firm with which ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... into the oval saloon, where his two and twenty comrades had devoured the banquet, which ended so disastrously for themselves. But, all this while, he had held the snow-white flower in his hand, and had constantly smelt of it while Circe was speaking; and as he crossed the threshold of the saloon, he took good care to inhale several long and ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were thus disastrously conducted in this quarter, the party under Colonel Thornton had gained the landing-place. On stepping ashore, the first thing they beheld was a rocket thrown up as a signal that the battle was begun. This unwelcome sight added wings to their speed. ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... were undismayed and unshaken either in spirit or efficiency, and were known both to expect and to desire a resumption of the assault. Even after the subsequent charge of Pickett, which resulted so disastrously, the ragged infantry were heard exclaiming: "We've not lost confidence in the old man! This day's work won't do him no harm! Uncle Robert will get us into Washington yet!" Add to this the fact that the issue of the second day had stirred up in ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... and sodden socks at once:" dry stockings and slippers after a hunt may make just the difference of your being able to go out again, or never. Take care never to check perspiration: during this process the body is in a somewhat critical condition, and the sudden arrest of the function may result disastrously, even fatally. One part of the business of perspiration is to equalize bodily temperature, and it must not be interfered with. The secret of much that is said about bathing when heated lies here. A person overheated, panting it may be, with throbbing ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... Bourg-Achard; and then, last of all, came their despairing general tramping on foot between two orderlies, powerless to attempt any action with these disjointed fragments of his forces, himself utterly dazed and bewildered by the downfall of a people accustomed to victory and now so disastrously beaten in spite of its ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of such a prophecy, of a favourable kind, will be found at the end of this chapter; and another, disastrously fulfilled, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the instruments, Arcot got the hints that led him to the solution of the problem, for the documents, from which Taj Lamor had gotten his information, had been disastrously wiped out, when one of their cities fell, and Taj Lamor had but copied the machines ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... showed that he was approaching headlong the point of danger; and she, if she were his friend, was bound to keep him back. He was not in love with her or with any one, but he was in that insane mood when honourable men marry, sometimes disastrously. Any woman, even she, could draw him to her now by holding out ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... Abyssinian emperor was becoming more and more incensed at Italy's pretensions to exercise a protectorate over Ethiopia. In 1893 Menelek denounced the treaty of Uccialli, and eventually, in a great battle, fought at Adowa on the 1st of March 1896, the Italians were disastrously defeated. By the subsequent treaty of Adis Ababa, concluded on the 26th of October 1896, the whole of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the one hand and labor on the other, with the odds largely in favor of nonproductive wealth because of the undue advantage given the latter by the pernicious monopoly in land which limits production and forces population disastrously upon subsistence. My purpose is to show that poverty and misfortune make no invidious distinctions of "race, color, or previous condition," but that wealth unduly centralized oppresses all alike; therefore, that the labor ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... in the mortar of adversity till he numbers the strokes of the pestle by the hairs of his head, yet will not this fool notion depart from him. He is always going to win the next time, however frequently and disastrously he has lost before. And he can always give you the most cogent reasons for the faith that is in him. His chief reliance is on the "fatal mistakes" made since the last election by the other party. There never was a year in which the party in power and the party out of power did not make bad mistakes—mistakes ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... resolved to call the very next morning on Mr. Clair, and have a talk with him about the lads, for Mr. Murray had a very strong reason for being interested in their future. It was he who had persuaded their father to invest money in the speculation that ended so disastrously, but he had no idea that Mr. Rivers became such an extensive shareholder; he forgot that a simple country gentleman, without either knowledge or experience, could not be as prudent and far-seeing as a man all his ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... English demand, while Private 'Enery Irving, who had hitherto borne some reputation as a French speaker—a reputation, it may be mentioned, largely due to his artful knack of helping out spoken words by imitation and explanatory acting—found his bubble reputation suddenly and disastrously pricked. He made some attempt to clutch at its remains by listening to the remarks addressed to him by a Frenchman, with a most potently intelligent and understanding expression, by ejaculating "Nong, nong!" and a profoundly ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... felt abundantly able to cope with the situation. He made a detour that put him far from where the three he most dreaded to meet were apt to be, and struck out at the pinto's best pace for the river at the point where he had crossed so disastrously the ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... first expedition had terminated so disastrously, on his arrival in England Lieutenant Speke again volunteered to accompany Lieutenant Burton on an expedition to survey that part of the centre of Africa, in the neighbourhood of the Mountains of the Moon, where an enormous lake was supposed to exist, equal ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the roots from drying is the chief precaution to be observed during the planting process, and for this reason a cloudy day is preferable to a sunny day for planting. In case of evergreens, the least exposure of the roots is liable to result disastrously, even more so than in case of deciduous trees. This is why evergreens are lifted from the nursery with a ball of soil around the roots. All bruised roots should be cut off before the tree is planted, and the crown of the tree of the deciduous species should be ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... the city youth, "any one might fancy you a bank cashier who had speculated disastrously with the funds of the institution. Four dollars and sixty-five cents—that was the amount of your loss; and you look as if you had ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... the great numbers requiring relief, the credit which the shopkeepers give at high interest is withdrawn after a time, and want compels the working-man to place himself once more under the yoke of the bourgeoisie. But strikes end disastrously for the workers mostly, because the manufacturers, in their own interest (which has, be it said, become their interest only through the resistance of the workers), are obliged to avoid all useless reductions, while the workers feel in every reduction imposed ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... that on the restoration of international peace this will be seen to be the case. What interests us, however, specially, at the moment of writing, is the lamentable, yet undeniable, fact that German Social Democracy has, on this occasion, disastrously failed to prevent the outbreak of war, notwithstanding the vigour of its efforts to do so during the last week of July; and still more that it has failed up to date to stem the rising flood of militarism and jingoism in the German people. That before many months are over the scales ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... the Grande Redoute, in the planter of forty-five, busy with his cotton and his sugar-cane, who made a fortune in a short time by dint of energy and good sense? His success, told of in France, was the indirect cause of another emigration to Texas, led by General Lallemand, and which terminated so disastrously. Colonel Chapron had not, as can be believed, acquired in roaming through Europe very scrupulous notions an the relations of the two sexes. Having made the mother of his child a pretty and sweet-tempered mulattress whom he met on a short trip to New Orleans, and whom he brought back ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... and not to the destruction of the forests, because I do not think that the latter reason has sufficiently progressed to produce the result, although it is well known that the destruction of growing timber about the head waters of streams operates disastrously upon the volume of their waters and the regularity of its flow. Minnesota is the best watered state in the Union, and every precaution should be taken to maintain this advantage. From the extent of the interest displayed in the direction of forest reserves ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... were otherwise, however. Resolution came back upon the crest, as it were, of the wave that brought me full knowledge; the more disastrously showed the ruin I had made, the more stoutly I determined to ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... commonly-used single rope corral, held up by men at the corners, they will not try to break through. Bronco-busters only last a few years, the hard jarring affects their lungs and other organs so disastrously. ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... abhorrence of maternity, is carried to a still greater extent by American women, with grave national consequences resulting; but though we have not yet reached the Transatlantic limit, the state of the feminine feeling and physical condition among ourselves will disastrously affect the future unless something can be done to bring our women back to a healthier tone of mind and body. No one can object to women declining marriage altogether in favor of a voluntary self-devotion to some project or idea; but, when married, it is a monstrous doctrine to hold ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... sole knowledge of makeup is confined to the boudoir, is very prone to overdo in her maiden attempts at stage makeup, and so disastrously decorate her face that under the unaccustomed and little understood lights of the theatre she appears hideous to the folks out in front. And this is especially true of the most beautiful type of women, who think ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... situations a thing like this is going to lead to? I am well aware that whoever she be, a woman is an incubator of sorrow and annoyance. If she is good she is probably stupid, or perhaps she is an invalid, or perhaps she is so disastrously fecund that she gets pregnant if you look at her. If she is bad, one may expect to be dragged through every disgusting kind of degradation. Oh, whatever you do, you're in ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... none too much to offer where men are left to control themselves, and to be forbidden to follow your inclinations and desires because sometimes they may result disastrously, is to give up what seems to be a substance for what is most likely ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... open before him as soon as he should find himself within the boundaries of Mokembe. Some five years before, the government of the day had sent a small expedition to this Debatable Land, which had failed disastrously, both from the diplomatic and the military points of view. He went backward and forward to the shelves of the fine "Service" library which surrounded him, taking down the books and reports which concerned this expedition. He buried himself in them for an hour, then threw them aside with contempt. ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... capital of Nedj, Mehemet Ali conceived the idea of extending his possessions in the interior of Africa, and of subduing the country of the negroes, where he hoped to find much treasure. He accordingly sent his son, Ishmail Pasha, with five thousand men, upon this expedition, which ended most disastrously with the murder of Ishmail and his guard by Melek Nemr, and the destruction of the remainder of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... bland denial of Truth, and is the antipode of Christian Science. To mentally argue in a manner that can disastrously affect the happiness of a fellow-being—harm him [5] morally, physically, or spiritually—breaks the Golden Rule and subverts the scientific laws of being. This, therefore, is not the use but the abuse of mental treat- ment, and is mental malpractice. It is needless to say that such ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... December everything was coming in in our favor. On the 5th everything was receding from us. It was like a mighty sea which was going out. The tide had come in gloriously, it went out disastrously. Gloomy ebb and flow ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... this training early in life, a new interest among the farmers will emerge and some of our sins of omission will be remedied. As a planter of trees for the future, the American farmer, both of yesterday and today, has notoriously, thoughtlessly, and disastrously failed both his children and himself. By all standards, he should be the first-ranking tree planter of the land. As a matter of fact, it is practically impossible to interest the average farmer at all. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... anchor to the north of the rough stone pier, was soon disburdened of her passengers—the ladies going ashore with undisguised delight, and leaving behind them many gracious messages of thanks to the gentleman whose gallantry had resulted so disastrously; for Conyngham was still in bed, though now nearly recovered. Truth to tell, he did not hurry to make his appearance in the general cabin, and came on deck a few hours after the departure of the ladies, whose gratitude he desired ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... with Jack and Frank aboard, steamed down the Thames and out into the North Sea to take up again her patrol of those waters; and there was nothing to warn those on board of the great battle that even now was impending and that was to result disastrously for Great Britain, even though the Germans were to ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... more to be the judge of his own actions, and all actions are being estimated more in regard to their special relation and environment, as the relativity of right and wrong, that most just of modern conceptions, is becoming understood. The hidden sins of the pious and respectable are coming disastrously into the light, and it no longer avails for a man to be a pillar of orthodoxy on Sundays if he be a pillar of oppression all the rest of the week; while the negative virtues of abstinence from the common human pleasures go for less than nothing in a world that no longer regards ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... revert to the homes they have left. They forget all the sorrows and trials which they endured there, and by the pressure of which they were driven to the determination to leave their native land; and now they mourn bitterly that they were induced to take a step which is to end so disastrously. They think that they would give all that they possess to be once more restored to ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... Her surrender to him was as complete and as unselfish as his own acquiescence seemed unmanly and weak. He rose and paced the little room to relieve his feelings. Days and weeks of almost constant dissipation had affected his mental poise quite as disastrously as the strain of the past twenty-four hours had told upon his physical control, and he was shaking nervously. He paused at the sideboard finally and ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... never talk in this mock heroic style; there is no period at which the young male is more sensitive and serious and afraid of looking a fool. This is a blunder; but there is another much bigger and blacker. It is completely and disastrously false to the whole nature of falling in love to make the young Eugene complain of the cruelty which makes Candida defile her fair hands with domestic duties. No boy in love with a beautiful woman would ever feel disgusted when she peeled potatoes or trimmed lamps. He would like her to be domestic. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... patronising liberal opinions, and labouring to ameliorate the condition of the poor, till they were driven by the murder of Marie Antoinette into a paroxysm of rage and terror—why, above all, Louis XVI., who attempted deeper and wiser reforms than any other sovereign, failed more disastrously than any—is not the answer this, that all these reforms would but have cleansed the outside of the cup and the platter, while they left the inside full of extortion and excess? It was not merely institutions which required ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... is curious that a session which was destined to witness the important proposals of the Whigs in the direction of free trade, and to end so disastrously for the Liberal party, and so well for the Conservatives, should have ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... wave of heat without seeing at once the sweep of mischief which exposure to the wave may effect. It exerts an influence on healthy life in the middle-aged man, and I know of no disease which it does not influence disastrously. Is the healthy man exhausted, it favors internal congestion; has he a weak point in the vascular system of his brain, it renders that point liable to pressure and rupture, with apoplexy as the sequence; is he ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... opportunity for self-education came many real hardships—to say nothing of imaginary hardships—which nearly resulted disastrously to my health. I was poorly clad for the extraordinary winter then setting in. I had only one undershirt and one pair of drawers. I could not, of course, put these articles in the laundry, and therefore had to pull them off on Saturday nights, wash them, and get them dry ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... could ask for a more perfect case. Upon this fact I pin my hopes. Where an Aylesbury rushes in I fear to tread. The analogy with an angel was accidental, Knox!" he added, smilingly. "In other words, it is all too obvious. Yet I have failed once, Knox, failed disastrously, and it may be that in my anxiety to justify myself I am seeking for subtlety where ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... of them in his poems, is to be found in about the largest emotional element that has appeared anywhere. This, if not controlled by a potent rational balance, would either have tossed him helplessly forever, or wrecked him as disastrously as ever storm and gale drove ship to ruin. These volcanic emotional fires appear everywhere in his books; and it is really these, aroused to intense activity and unnatural strain during the four years of the war and his ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... company more than the decision which I gave upon that proposal. Upon no account could two men be in the same works with equal authority. An army with two commanders-in-chief, a ship with two captains, could not fare more disastrously than a manufacturing concern with two men in command upon the same ground, even though in two different departments. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... Learned societies in Paris, in London, in other countries of Europe, were proud to number him among their members. He had reached the age of assured eminence, where all fear of opposing influences that might disastrously affect the medical career of a younger man, had no weight. Surely, if any living man can speak ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... safeguard and govern financial operations, I do not understand; but, as far as I can comprehend, it seems to me that custom has hitherto sanctioned what disaster has now placed under a bann. It seems to me that the very men who now blame your father have all done successfully what he did so disastrously. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... was a settlement fifteen miles northwest of Moonstone where Mr. Kronborg preached every Friday evening. There was a big spring there and a creek and a few irrigating ditches. It was a community of discouraged agriculturists who had disastrously experimented with dry farming. Mr. Kronborg always drove out one day and back the next, spending the night with one of his parishioners. Often, when the weather was fine, his wife accompanied him. To-day they set out from home after the midday meal, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... statutory powers to impose taxation and secure supplies in opposition to the Legislature during its very first session, all the hopes of friendly co-operation based on the new constitution would have been wrecked far more disastrously and permanently than by any "Non-co-operation" movement. The Legislative Assembly was wise enough to exercise its rights with sufficient insistence to show that it was conscious of them, but never to ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... so act, it falsely and arbitrarily and futilely and disastrously acts, just as would one who draws a circle in the sea, including a few waves, saying that the other waves, with which the included are continuous, are positively different, and stakes his life upon maintaining that the admitted and ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... route leads across a low alkali bottom, through which dozens of small streams are flowing to the Humboldt. Many of them are narrow enough to be jumped, but not with a bicycle on one's shoulder, for under such conditions there is always a disagreeable uncertainty that one may disastrously alight before he gets ready. But I am getting tired of partially undressing to ford streams that are little more than ditches, every little way, and so I hit upon the novel plan of using the machine for a vaulting-pole. Beaching it out into the centre of the stream, I place one hand on the head and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... his studious solitude. It was evident that by keeping silence he had caused Sidwell to throw off something of her reserve. The course dictated by prudence was to maintain an attitude of dignity, to hold himself in check. In this way he would regain what he had so disastrously lost, Sidwell's respect. There was a distinct pleasure in this exercise of self-command; it was something new to him; it flattered his pride. 'Let her learn that, after all, I am her superior. Let her fear to lose me. Then, if her love ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... that he anticipated; and had the Confederates moved as Lee intended, there can be no question but that the Federal army, deprived of all supplies, cut off from Washington, and forced to fight on ground where it was unprepared, would have been disastrously defeated. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... on again with the general course of the history of the times, it will be well to consider for a moment the theory which worked so disastrously for England in 1667; that, namely, of maintaining a sea-war mainly by preying upon the enemy's commerce. This plan, which involves only the maintenance of a few swift cruisers and can be backed by the spirit of greed in a nation, fitting out privateers without direct expense to the State, possesses ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... mentioned, for Hugh McNeil belonged to the family almost as much as Lancy himself, seeing that he had been cared for by Mrs. Gurney before Lancy was born. He was the son of a strange marriage, a marriage that had turned out disastrously. His father had been valet to Mr. Gurney's eldest brother, and, while attending his master in Paris, had fallen in love with a pretty French waitress, and secretly married her. On returning to England with ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... as possible, and that the young girl should not know the name of her deliverer,—it might save awkward complications. It was not likely that she would be disposed to talk of her adventure, which had ended so disastrously, and thus the whole story would soon ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Lord, as it might well amaze anyone who had not read the letter. In spite of her supreme confidence of the moment before, the woman now suddenly realized that this promising interview was destined to end disastrously to her plans. ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... story which had ended so disastrously for the young conductor threw a rather lurid sidelight upon Jackson's accuser. Fairness was the superintendent's fetish, and the revenge which would sleep on its wrongs and go about deliberately and painstakingly to strike a deadly blow in the dark was revolting ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... away in safety. It was a scorching hot day and a number were sunstruck, some cases proving fatal. I was exhausted and had to lie down in the shade. It was a miserable Sunday scrape and ended like all the rest that had been started on a Sunday, disastrously. The loss of life was ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... arguments that he had heard his mother and his father use in their discussions. The boys thought favorably of the scheme, but most of them were inclined to let some one else do the experimenting. It might result disastrously. Just to encourage them, Danny became insolent, as he had already become inattentive; he told the manager what he would do and what he would not do, and positively declined to deliver a message that would carry his work a few ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... greatest state of excitement. The news that the English had lost the battle had long since reached the city, and the apprehensions which had long been entertained that such tidings could not fail to have a disastrously disquieting effect upon the Indian population, were only too soon seen to be justified. In all the brown faces which he saw directed towards him Heideck clearly read detestation and menace. They naturally regarded him as an ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann |
