"Earthquake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enthusiasm for the cause, no anger against the enemy. There is but a single mention of the Germans from beginning to end; the poet does not seem to know of their existence. His experiences, his agonies, his despair, are what a purely natural phenomenon, such as the eruption of a volcano or the chaos of an earthquake, might cause. We might read his poems over and over again without forming the slightest idea of what all the distress was about, or who was guilty, or what was being defended. This is a mark of great artistic sincerity; but it also points to a certain moral ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... yet irrepressible,— which no force can stay, no violence restrain, like love, that wins its way and cannot be withstood by any human power, because itself is divine power. If spring came but once a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with a sound of an earthquake and not in silence, what wonder and expectation would there be in all hearts ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... political hazards of the times, we promised to adhere to him, in every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? I know there is not a man here who would not rather see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself, having twelve months ago, in this place, moved you, that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be raised, for defense of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Astonishment Smote them at last. Through all those serried ranks, Compact so late, sudden confusions ran Like lines divergent through a film of ice Stamped on by armed heel, or rifts on plains Prescient of earthquake underground. Their chiefs Sounded the charge;—in vain: Distrust, Dismay, Ill Gods, the darkness lorded of that hour: Panic to madness turned. Cadwallon sole From squadron on to squadron speeding still ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... replies: 'How dropp'd you first,' I ask, 'the legal Yoke? What the first word the living Witness spoke? Perceived you thunders roar and lightnings shine, And tempests gathering ere the Birth divine? Did fire, and storm, and earthquake all appear Before that still small voice, What dost thou here? Hast thou by day and night, and soon and late, Waited and watch'd before Admission-gate; And so a pilgrim and a soldier pass'd To Sion's hill ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... occurring most frequently was that, whatever happened, all was well in one way, at any rate. He had the twenty pounds. There would be something colossal in the shape of disturbances when his uncle learned the truth. It would be the biggest thing since the San Francisco earthquake. But what of it? He had ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... witnessing this double ruin by flame and earthquake, are at such times filled with consternation: to them it seems that nothing will survive, that beyond these cataclysms there will never again be stability and peace—a new and better age, safer footing, wider ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... naturalist had to solve. For it is no longer—Why did a powerful and benevolent Being create a world in which there is evil—but only—The world being given, how far are its different arrangements consistent with one another? According to this, the earthquake at Lisbon, Voltaire's favorite instance, destroyed thousands of persons, because it is in the nature of things that subterraneous vapors should explode, and that when houses fall on human beings they ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... honeycomb the land in all directions, and extend in galleries of grottoes for two miles under the sea. By the falling in of the more ancient collieries numerous houses have been swallowed, as if by an earthquake, and a consternation spread, like that of Lisbon, in 1755. So insecure and treacherous was the site of the place now about to be assailed by a desperado, nursed, like the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... from something very humble. They demonstrate conclusively that there is nothing in man which the dissecting-table will not explain; that his aspirations towards another life have their root in the fear of death, or, say others of them, in that of earthquake or thunder; that his affinities with the past are merely inherited from remote ancestors who lived in that past, perhaps a million years ago; and that everything noble about him is but the fruit of expediency or of a veneer of civilisation, while everything ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... were best distinguished was a certain position of countenance, which gave undoubted intelligence to what degree or proportion the spirit agitated the inward mass. For after certain gripings, the wind and vapours issuing forth, having first by their turbulence and convulsions within caused an earthquake in man's little world, distorted the mouth, bloated the cheeks, and gave the eyes a terrible kind of relievo. At which junctures all their belches were received for sacred, the sourer the better, and ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... a wild and strange retreat, 625 As e'er was trod by outlaw's feet. The dell, upon the mountain's crest, Yawned like a gash on warrior's breast; Its trench had stayed full many a rock, Hurled by primeval earthquake shock 630 From Benvenue's gray summit wild, And here, in random ruin piled, They frowned incumbent o'er the spot, And formed the rugged silvan grot. The oak and birch, with mingled shade, 635 At noontide there a twilight ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... grow up into a rank and poisonous crop, choking the good grain utterly, and corrupting the very soil of which they have taken hold. There is but one hope—but one! To tear them from the root forcibly, though the heart-strings crack, and the soul trembles, as with a spiritual earthquake. To nerve the mind firmly and resolutely, yet humbly withal, and contritely, and with prayer against temptation, prayer for support from on high—to resist the Evil One with the whole force of the intellect, the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... situation comes from the unsteadiness of the deck. How is one to cope with the caprices of an inclined plane? The ship had within its depths, so to speak, imprisoned lightning struggling for escape; something like the rumbling of thunder during an earthquake. In an instant the crew was on its feet. It was the chief gunner's fault, who had neglected to fasten the screw-nut of the breeching chain, and had not thoroughly chocked the four trucks of the carronade, which allowed play to ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... several handsome squares, and sumptuous buildings, the largest of which is the King's palace. Such was the state of this opulent city till the 1st of November, 1755, when the greatest part of it was reduced to a heap of ruins by a most tremendous earthquake, which was followed by a terrible fire. A gentleman who was present, giving an account of the calamity to his friend in England, says, "It is not to be expressed by human tongue, how dreadful and awful it was ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... soon learned that there was nothing to fear over there. He discovered that it was the noise the flock made when leaping down upon the ledge that alarmed Uncle Jerry Chuck. Drowsing in his underground chamber Uncle Jerry had thought there must be an earthquake. That was why his teeth chattered. That was why his nose twitched, when he peeped out of ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... smooth and pale yellow in the saucerlike basin between Barren Butte and the foothills of Starvation. In the soft light of the afterglow it seemed to smile at him with a glint of malice, like the treacherous thing it was. For Furnace Lake is treacherous. The Big Earthquake (America knows only one Big Earthquake, that which rocked San Francisco so disastrously) had split Furnace Lake halfway across, leaving an ugly crevice ten feet wide at the narrowest point and eighty feet deep, men ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... meet him with sharp reproach. "Why are you so foolish? I believe you would have gone on rolling if there had been an earthquake. You must be wet through and through." She ran her little thin hand over him. "Yes, I knew you were. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... the inhabitants buried it there to save it from the Goths: they were buried with it themselves; which is a caution we are not told that they ever took. You remember in Titus's time there were several cities destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, attended with an earthquake. Well, this was one of them, not very considerable, and then called Herculaneum. (195) Above it has since been built Portici, about three miles from Naples, where the King has a villa. This under-ground city is perhaps one ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... hook-shaped iron supports fastened to the inner sides of the doors; and when the doors were closed, with this great plank in place, a person inside the building might seem entitled to count upon the enjoyment of privacy, except in case of earthquake, tornado, or fire. In fact, the size of the plank and the substantial quality of the iron fastenings could be looked upon, from a certain viewpoint, as a real compliment to the energy and ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... white dress to put on. Dey had a tent fer us to go in to change our clothes. We was baptized in de Fairforest jes' above de Harris Bridge. Everybody sung while we was going under de water. Some of 'em shouted, too. It took de earthquake to shake religion in my husband. He was Emanuel Gist, de ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... fain to give a notion of its completeness by calling it 'peace, peace.' The mind which trusts is steadied thereby, as light things lashed to a firm stay are kept steadfast, however the ship toss. The only way to get and keep fixedness of temper and spirit amid change and earthquake is to hold on to God, and then we may be stable with stability derived from the foundations of His throne to which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Devil was not idle. In the night-winds he and his legions would shriek and yell and rattle among the scaffolding and cranes in vain. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, he shook the structure with a frightful earthquake, which terrified all Alsatia, and, although whole streets were thrown down in Strasburg, yet the foundations of the Wunderbau, as the Germans love to call it, were not loosened, and no stone was moved from its place. A few years afterward, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... results of the disturbance would themselves be sufficiently complex. Besides the numberless dislocations of strata, the ejections of igneous matter, the propagation of earthquake vibrations thousands of miles around, the loud explosions, and the escape of gases; there would be the rush of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to supply the vacant space, the subsequent recoil of enormous waves, which would traverse both these oceans and produce ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... in the very centre of the impending earthquake, and before Italy had any idea that the earliest shocks were at hand he had profited by the perturbed preoccupation of other people to give the lie to that famous speech we have reported. He created cardinal John Borgia, a nephew, who during the last pontificate had been elected Archbishop ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of his confidence, and suggested that the stream, which was probably only a measly mud hole, could have dropped to purgatory in an earthquake tremor since those first old mission days, or filled up ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... should trace the steamers As they thread the curving channel Opened by the ancient earthquake, She would see them pass an island On whose red and barren summit She was wounded in the battle. White men call it Red Rock Island, Knowing not the crimson color Is from blood, shed in the battle Fought ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... God would serue the world so all the yeere, weed finde no fault with the tithe woman if I were the Parson, one in ten quoth a? and wee might haue a good woman borne but ore euerie blazing starre, or at an earthquake, 'twould mend the Lotterie well, a man may draw his heart out ere a ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... volcanic environs, where the ancients aptly located their heaven and hell, and where a luxurious, passionate people absorbs into its blood the spirit of the soil, and the fire and languor of the clime. From Naples to Rome, where we saw St Peter's, that bubble on the surface of the globe, which the next earthquake may burst, the Vatican, with its marvels of statuary, the ruined temples of the old gods and heroes, the Campagna, the Pope, and—Flora. We had but a glimpse of her. It was one night, at the Colosseum. We had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... have explained an earthquake as being caused by a synod of ghosts assembled under ground! It is one of the best of the numerous jokes attributed to the great Samian; a good nut for the spirit rappers to crack. There is an epigram by Diogenes Laertius, on one Lycon, who ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... brought me low. It is a plague nearer than the skin, it overwhelms my soul as an earthquake, it is farther than the height of the sky, and harder to win than the treasures of the Fairy Folk. If I contend with it, it is like a combat with a spectre; if I fly to the ends of the earth from it, it is there; if I seek to seize ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... came a blast of fire behind him, for the Fire-eaters had disappeared, and all was whirling and shaken before his eyes; and the Plough sped desperately over earthquake and space. For the plucking of the Rose had awakened the giant from his sleep; and the dream shrivelled and spun away in a whirl of flame-coloured vapours. Leaping into clear day out of the unravelment of ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... little, and have, indeed, performed miracles. They have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of the heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... whence he put forth with a prosperous wind, but a contrary gale blowing from the sea carried him back to Italy the next day. He put again to sea, and having reached Dyrrachium, on his coming to shore there, it is reported that an earthquake and a convulsion in the sea happened at the same time, signs which the diviners said intimated that his exile would not be long, for these were prognostics of change. Although many visited him with respect, and the cities of Greece contended with each other in honoring him, he yet continued ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Scythia. Here he not only relates the wanderings, but foretells the future lot of Io, and likewise alludes to the fall of Jove's dynasty. Disdaining to explain his meaning to Mercury, he is swept into the abyss amid terrific hurricane and earthquake. ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... insufficient visitation of angry fate, other misfortunes, no less cruel, now came upon the city. In these years, indeed, it seemed that Nature herself was leagued with the enemies of Quebec; for in the Jesuit Relations we have a circumstantial if highly imaginative account of a violent earthquake which visited the Province ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... all its hopes; his melancholy father, his fond and sanguine mother, the tender-hearted Katherine, the devoted Glastonbury, all rose up before him, and crowded on his tortured imagination. In the agony of his mind he wished himself alone in the world: he sighed for some earthquake to swallow up Armine and all its fatal fortunes; and as for those parents, so affectionate and virtuous, and to whom he had hitherto been so dutiful and devoted, he turned from their idea with a sensation of weariness, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... We concluded we had struck in passing over some hidden rock. The lead was thrown, but no ground was found; the pumps were set a-going, but we were free of water. The captain attributed the shock to an earthquake, and on our arrival at Chile, his conjecture was confirmed. In Valdivia, in the latitude of which place we were at the time, a severe shock of an earthquake ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... pictures of Chinatown. He marched to the mouth of Limehouse Causeway, through which, in the customary light of grey and rose, many amiable creatures were gliding, levelled his nice new Kodak, and got—an excellent picture of the Causeway after the earthquake. The entire street in his plate ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... called the Accused—the Assured, I mean—has paid blank pounds, shillings and pence Premium or Consideration ... to insure him/her from loss or damage by Lightning, Explosion, Earthquake, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... of water running through a mesa at the foot of a sierra, whence looking across the sea, they could descry Santa Catalina Island. This was San Juan Capistrano, and here they rested on the 25th. On the 28th they reached the Santa Ana river, near the present town of that name; a violent shock of earthquake which they experienced caused them to name the river Jesus de los Temblores[19]. July 30th and 31st they were in the San Gabriel valley, which they called San Miguel, and on August 1st they rested near the site of the present city of Los Angeles. The stop this ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... secretly to them the gift of fire, and arts whereby they could prosper upon the earth. Then was Zeus sorely angered with Prometheus, and bound him upon a mountain, and afterward overwhelmed him in an earthquake, and devised other torments against him for many ages; yet could he not slay Prometheus, for he ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... that this world-old tragedy should come into her life with all the stinging novelty of a calamity. People and press talked about a murder, about an earthquake, about a fire. Yet what was death or ruin or flames beside the horror of knowing love to be outgrown, of living beside this empty mask and shell of a man whose mind and soul were in bondage elsewhere? ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... northern storm. Ben Gillam jerked up sober and grasped an idle pole to lend a hand. Through the whirl of spray M. Radisson's figure loomed black at the bow, and above the boom of tumbling waves came the grinding as of an earthquake. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... years older than I. Then followed that period of social loneliness, the longing for the companionship of boys and girls—girls particularly, in spite of agonies of shyness and the awakening terrors of shame when the domestic troubles ended in an earthquake which gave me to my father and Helen to my mother, and a scandal to the newspapers.... O hell! I'm talking like an autobiography! Don't go, if you can stand it for a moment longer; I'm never ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... inference from a small part of the facts before him. I feel a slight tremor run through the house with a little rattling of the windows, and assume that a train has gone by on the railroad below the hill a hundred yards away: as a matter of fact it may have been one of the slight earthquake shocks which come every few years in most parts of the world. The mistakes that most of its make in recognizing people are of the same sort: from some single feature we reason to an ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... earthquake of nine years before a little Welsh girl named Mary Price was then attending a London school. The children were frightened nearly out of their wits by the upheaval, the crash of broken glass, the long subterranean rumbling, and, in common with many London ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... regard to time that you would have been going ahead in regard to the possibility of mountain-chains being created in a fraction of the period required to convert a swan into a goose, or vice versa. Nine feet did the Rimutaka chain of New Zealand gain in height in January, 1855, and a great earthquake has occurred in New Zealand every seven years for half a century nearly. The "Washingtonia" (Californian conifer) (47/6. Washingtonia, or Wellingtonia, better known as Sequoia. Asa Gray, writing in 1872, states his belief that "no Sequoia now alive can sensibly antedate the Christian era" ("Scientific ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... whole of the last night in searching every nook and crack of the house, using a powerful magnifying lens. At times I thought Ul-Jabal was watching me, and would pounce out and murder me. Convulsive tremors shook my frame like earthquake. Ah me, I fear I am all too frail for this work. Yet dear is the love ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... proclamations which he scattered as he advanced, ranged themselves spontaneously and even enthusiastically upon his side. How different world have been the result of his campaign but for the unexpected earthquake which at that instant was to appal Christendom, and to scatter all his well-matured plans and legitimate hopes. His chief reliance, under Providence and his own strong heart, had been upon French assistance. Although ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to San Francisco. From thence I ordered them to New Zealand and Australia, then to the Philippines, China and Japan, and home through Suez—they stopped in the Mediterranean to help the sufferers from the earthquake at Messina, by the way, and did this work as effectively as they had done all their other work. Admiral Evans commanded the fleet to San Francisco; there Admiral Sperry took it; Admirals Thomas, Wainwright and Schroeder rendered distinguished service under Evans and Sperry. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... productions of the mind, embodied with the happiest art, we grieve most bitterly. The view of what has been done by man, produces a melancholy, yet aggrandizing, sense of what remains to be achieved by human intellect; but a mental convulsion, which, like the devastation of an earthquake, throws all the elements of thought and imagination into confusion, makes contemplation giddy, and we fearfully ask on ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the same feeling reappears whenever the established order of things is upset, when security ceases to exist, when all that is protected by the laws of men or those of protected nature, is at the mercy of unreasoning and ferocious brutality. The earthquake crushing a whole nation under crumbling houses; the overflowing river swirling the bodies of drowned peasants along with the dead oxen and the beams torn away from the roofs, or the glorious army massacring those who defend themselves, taking away the others ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... "you've had enough to eat. I've got to see those marks while they're still there. I'm desperately afraid an earthquake will swallow that cave before I get a ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Missions are really dead, and near that of La Purissima may still be seen the rent in the ground made by the earthquake which destroyed it. Others, like San Gabriel and San Juan Capistrano, are dragging out a moribund existence, under the care of only one or two priests, who move like melancholy phantoms through the lonely cloisters, and pray among the ruins of a noble ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... plains and the lower slopes, and gathered at the summits. Popular life was at a stand. No great idea stirred the nations to their depths. The religious convulsions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were over, and the earthquake of the French Revolution had not begun. At the middle of the eighteenth century the history of Europe turned on the balance of power; the observance of treaties; inheritance and succession; rivalries of sovereign houses struggling to win power or ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... worked again until a 7:30 dinner. His wife and I went to bed about 10:30 leaving him preparing his material for the next day. Towards 1 A.M. a ponderous tread as he passed my door on his way to bed woke me to a general impression of an earthquake. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the swathed woman stood, looking out upon that slaughter, calm and still, shrouded with an unearthly tranquillity—viewing it, it came to me, with eyes impersonal, cold, indifferent as the untroubled stars which look down upon hurricane and earthquake in ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... showed clearer than by day; the panels in high relief, of full rigged ship, the double dolphin and the skeleton seemed too fragile to have stood through earthquake and typhoon and the conflagrations of war for more than two hundred years. The exquisite frieze composed of many unconventionalized flowers extending across the front, wherein the artist and worker had been one, ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison
... condition of the country be changed! What would become of the lofty houses, thickly-packed cities, great manufacturies (sic), the beautiful public and private edifices? If the new period of disturbance were to commence by some great earthquake in the dead of night, how terrific would be the carnage! England would be at once bankrupt; all papers, records, and accounts would from that moment be lost. Government being unable to collect the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the hand of violence and rapine would go uncontrolled. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... allow for the motion of the earth. And this calculated counteracting of the movements of a world, this holding of the mirror exactly opposite to the Mirrored, this steadying of the faculties unerringly, through cloud and earthquake; fire and sword, is the stupendous cooperating labour of the Will. ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... during the progress of an important trial that a sharp shock of earthquake occurred, throwing the whole assembly into confusion. When order had been restored a cry of horror and dismay burst from the multitude—the judge's head lay flattened upon the floor, a dozen feet below the bench, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... almost at once. As a fact, I believe there was another somnolent interval of an hour or so before I did actually reach this stage of taking refreshment and asking questions. It was then late evening, and I was in bed in the Sydney Hospital. There had been no earthquake, nor yet even the collapse of an archway. Nothing at all, in fact, except that I had been smitten over the head with an iron bar. There had been two blows, I believe; and, if so, the second must really have been a work of supererogation, for I was conscious ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... idea of how much misery that meant to her, or how fervently she used to pray for something to happen to prevent her going to the class, which was held at a friend's house some miles away. A sprained ankle, or a slight earthquake, not bad enough to hurt anyone, were among her usual aspirations, but nothing of the kind ever occurred, and she was borne away with her brothers and sisters by the relentless Miss Tasker to the scene of torture; the suffering of martyrs, whom she had read ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... But I am inclined to think that neither this or any other monastery was erected in South Britain till the seventh century, after Austin the monk came into England. As to the tradition of its having been built upon the ruins of the temple of Apollo, destroyed by an earthquake, I do not doubt but the monks were very ready to propagate a fable of this kind, who formed so many others to show the triumphs of Christianity over paganism, and to induce their proselytes to believe that heaven miraculously ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... vivid flash of light, and the air seemed to be full of blocks of stone, which were driven up with a dense cloud of smoke. Then there was a deafening report, which echoed back from the side of the mountain; a trembling of the ground, as if there had been an earthquake; the great pieces of stone fell here and there; and then, as the smoke spread, a few Indians could be seen rushing hard towards where their companions were gathered with their horses, while about the spot where the earth had seemed to vomit forth flame, rocks and stones were piled-up in hideous ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... companions were asleep, so I lay listening. The sounds came from a considerable distance, and the crash which had aroused me was succeeded by others much less formidable. The first explanation which occurred to me was that it was an earthquake; for, although the night was breathlessly calm, the broad river was much agitated and the vessel rolled heavily. Soon after, another loud explosion took place, apparently much nearer than the former one; then followed others. The thundering peal rolled backwards and forwards, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... force of 200 Spaniards, partly horse and part foot, with 300 Indians to carry the baggage, he marched to Guixos, the most distant place or frontier of the empire of the Incas; in which place there happened a great earthquake, accompanied with much rain and dreadful lightning, by which seventy houses were swallowed up. From that place they passed over a chain of cold and snowy mountains, where they found many Indians frozen to death, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... and the treaty of Fontainebleau came upon his friends with the shock of an earthquake. Especially to his sister Pauline it was as though the foundations of the earth were tottering. He had been the Providence of all his family, dividing the nations between them; but Pauline had been his favourite, he had ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... rebellion! and a new ejection of the Anti-Aristotelian! The brother of that Gabriel Harvey who was the friend of Spenser, and with Gabriel had been the whetstone of the town-wits of his time, distinguished himself by his wrath against the Stagyrite. After having with Gabriel predicted an earthquake, and alarmed the kingdom, which never took place (that is the earthquake, not the alarm), the wits buffeted him. Nash says of him, that "Tarlton at the theatre made jests of him, and Elderton consumed his ale-crammed nose to nothing, in bear-baiting him with whole bundles of ballads." Marlow ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... who watches over those who see no other way out of an embarrassing predicament save the unlikely arrival of an earthquake or an aeroplane now intervened in Mrs. Milo's behalf. Dora came in, showing that the bell had, indeed, been summoning the mistress of the house. Behind Dora was Tottie, and the attitude of each to ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... launch, which lay hidden below the cliffs on the north coast. The passage led to this boat. It was always ready to put out to sea. But one night it was destroyed by the great rocks which fell from the cliffs in an earthquake. When I came here, I at once thought of the passage. You will see that the doors into the cellar cannot be opened from this chamber; the locks and bolts are on the other side. I knew where the keys were hidden. It was easy to unlock ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... before the departure, just as they were about to take supper, Penellan was breaking up some empty casks for firewood, when he was suddenly suffocated by a thick smoke. At the same instant the snow-house was shaken as if by an earthquake. The party uttered a cry of terror, and Penellan ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... order that an investing force might have no cover. It is estimated that within a fortnight the Belgian sappers and engineers destroyed property to the value of L16,000,000. Not San Francisco after the earthquake, nor Dayton after the flood, nor Salem after the fire presented scenes of more complete desolation than did the suburbs of Antwerp after the soldiers had ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... progress. Relatively high oil prices in recent years have enabled Iran to amass some $22 billion in foreign exchange reserves, but have not eased economic hardships such as high unemployment and inflation. In December 2003 a major earthquake devastated the city of Bam in southeastern Iran, killing more ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... great scourges devastated the world. In A.D. 526 Antioch was destroyed by an earthquake, and it is said that 250,000 people perished, but the most dreadful visitation on mankind was the great plague which raged in A.D. 542 and the following years, and, as Gibbon writes, "depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his successors." Procopius, who was versed in medicine, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... Protestantism, embattled over an enormous space, was lost in the din of conflict among the respective supporters of conditional and unconditional damnation within the pale of the Reformed Church. The earthquake shaking Europe rolled unheeded, as it was of old said to have done at Cannae, amid the fierce shock of mortal foes in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... by a zone of violent volcanic and earthquake activity sometimes referred to as the "Pacific Ring of Fire"; subject to tropical cyclones (typhoons) in southeast and east Asia from May to December (most frequent from July to October); tropical cyclones (hurricanes) may form south of Mexico and strike ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... these phenomena I felt as if I were surrounded by the results of an earthquake which had upset the usual order of things. My brother-in-law, Friedrich Brockhaus, who could justly taunt the former authorities of the place with their inability to maintain peace and order, was carried away by ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... 1761 the citizens of London were alarmed by two shocks of an earthquake, and the prophecy of a third, which was to destroy them altogether. The first shock was felt on the 8th of February, and threw down several chimneys in the neighbourhood of Limehouse and Poplar; the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... cried Dan, pretending to be lost in admiration. But at that same moment there once more reached their ears sounds as of an approaching earthquake. ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... suffered martyrdom in Antioch itself on the 20th December, A.D. 115 (^3), when he was condemned to be cast to wild beasts in the amphitheatre, in consequence of the fanatical excitement produced by the earthquake which took place on the ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... kingdoms of the world, Thy holy church, O God! Though earthquake shocks are threatening her, And tempests ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... elements as to discover any new state-religion fitted to take the place of the old. So the besom of revolution swept doubtless at times very roughly through the cobwebs of the augural bird-lore;(1) nevertheless the rotten machine creaking at every joint survived the earthquake which swallowed up the republic itself, and preserved its insipidity and its arrogance without diminution for transference to the new monarchy. As a matter of course, it fell more and more into disfavour with all those who preserved ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... show that the most frequent and evident of these causes are variations of atmospheric pressure and local storms. With regard to earthquake shocks as a cause of such fluctuations of level, it is a singular and significant fact that since Forel has established the delicate self-registering apparatus on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, no less than ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... this passage-way he came to a huge projecting stone, which seemed as though it had been dislodged in some way. So large was this stone, and so peculiar was its dislocation, that Harry could only think of an earthquake as an adequate cause. It was about eight feet in length by four feet in height, and one end jutted forth, while the other end was sunken in, behind the surface of the wall, in a corresponding manner. At the end where the stone jutted out there was a crevice a few inches in width, which seemed ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... of it. But what stumps me is the mountain range three thousand feet high, crossing the desert and the canyon just above where we crossed the river. How did the river cut through that without the help of a split or earthquake?" ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... fear, be taken as a truism that "the man in the street" (collectively, the "general public") knows little and cares less for what is called physical science. Now and again when something remarkable happens, such as a great thunderstorm, or an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption, or a brilliant comet, or a total eclipse, something in fact which has become the talk of the town, our friend will condescend to give the matter the barest amount of attention, whilst he is filling his pipe or mixing a whisky ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... thought was that there had been an earthquake and that the cabin had caved in. He never could rightly remember the order of events that followed, but he had a confused memory of a shriek, a scratching of matches, and the glimmer of a candle that made him sit up ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the commercial earthquake came and toppled over the whole fabric of trade and commerce in the West, reducing it to ruins. The entire West was devastated, and Ohio City received a blow from which, as a separate municipality, it never recovered. Among ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... hills, which, like a row of Alpine mountains with pinnacles formed like saws, frown over the sea, which is separated from them only by high clay banks; and year after year the sea bites a large mouthful off of these, so that their edges and summits topple over as if shaken by an earthquake. Thus they look at this day, and thus they were many years ago, when the happy young couple sailed from Spain ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... Asia the great star was a ball of dull red fire because of the steam and smoke and ashes the volcanoes were spouting forth to salute its coming. Above was the lava, hot gases and ash, and below the seething floods, and the whole earth swayed and rumbled with the earthquake shocks. Soon the immemorial snows of Thibet and the Himalaya were melting and pouring down by ten million deepening converging channels upon the plains of Burmah and Hindostan. The tangled summits of the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... thousands out of work, and left them without legitimate means of sustaining life. A bad harvest supervened. Distress reached its climax. Endurance, overgoaded, stretched the hand of fraternity to sedition. The throes of a sort of moral earthquake were felt heaving under the hills of the northern counties. But, as is usual in such cases, nobody took much notice. When a food-riot broke out in a manufacturing town, when a gig-mill was burnt to the ground, or a manufacturer's house was attacked, the furniture thrown into the streets, and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... that it selects, heightens, and falsifies. Only its Nemesis is the same as that of other arts: if it loses all care for truth it loses all form likewise. The modern who paints too cleverly produces a picture of a cow which might be the earthquake at San Francisco. And the journalist who reports a speech too cleverly makes ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... dost thou show in this; And great affections wrestling in thy bosom Doth make an earthquake of nobility. O, what a noble combat hast thou fought Between compulsion and a brave respect! Let me wipe off this honourable dew That silverly doth progress on thy cheeks: My heart hath melted at a lady's tears, Being an ordinary ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Frank, "but from the kind of pleasure I've got out of it so far, I should say that this holiday was capable of an earthquake before midnight." ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... made, sleeps in a nameless grave. The subaltern whose surname is scarcely heard beyond the roll-call on parade, bears the colors of his company where the fight is hottest. And the corporal who heads his file in the final charge, is forgotten in the "earthquake shout" of the victory which he has helped to win. The victory may be due as much, or more, to the patriot courage of him who is content to do his duty in the rank and file, as to the dashing colonel who heads the regiment, or even to the general who plans the campaign: and yet unobserved, unknown, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... intercommunication of the sexes from childhood, in the primitive days of Georgia's first settlement, was seen in the harmony of families. In the age which followed, a separation or divorce was as rare as an earthquake; and when occurring, agitated the whole community. For then a marriage was deemed a life-union, for good or for evil, and was not lightly or ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... of the street had died away, though now and then the sound of shouting still came from the distance, and the dull, leaden silence seemed like the quiet after an earthquake or a storm. Villiers turned from the ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... this occurred in 1851; and in that year, while in the town of Sonora, Screech and many others remembered to have heard a huge explosion in that direction which they then supposed was caused by a local earthquake. ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... the dates that span the ninety-eight years of the life of a woman whose deeds were great in the service of the world, but of whom the world itself knows all too little. Of the interest attaching to the life of such a woman, whose recollections went back to the great earthquake at Lisbon; who lived through the American War, the old French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon; who saw the development of the great factors of modern civilization, "from the lumbering post wagon in which she made her first journey from Hanover to the railroads and ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... inclined to disperse. Guy incautiously showed himself at the door; a ringing shot was heard, and he staggered back, pierced through the heart. Grasping the doorpost in the last unconscious throes of his mighty frame, the whole side of the house yielded to that earthquake tremor, and we had barely time to escape before the whole building fell in ruins. I thought of Samson, the giant judge, etc., etc.; but all ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... person. I am infinitely harassed. If I could cry, 'To Italy tomorrow!' Ah! . . . Do not set me down for complaining. I know the lot of man. But, Laetitia, deceit! deceit! It is a bad taste in the mouth. It sickens us of humanity. I compare it to an earthquake: we lose all our reliance on the solidity of the world. It is a betrayal not simply of the person; it is a betrayal of humankind. My friend! Constant friend! No, I will not despair. Yes, I have faults; I will remember them. Only, forgiveness is another question. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exceedingly grave one, full of risk, in the then mood and condition of the world; that he, in the whole world, has no sure friend but his Army; and that in regard to IT he cannot be too vigilant! The world is ominous to this youngest of the Kings more than to another. Sounds as of general Political Earthquake grumble audibly to him from the deeps: all Europe likely, in any event, to get to loggerheads on this Austrian Pragmatic matter; the Nations all watching HIM, to see what he will make of it:—fugleman ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... bleeding and your nails broken—and how you told the captain to 'crack on' (I think he said) in the storm, when he was terrified himself—and the danger of that horrid mutiny"—(Nares had been obligingly dipping his brush in earthquake and eclipse)—"and how it was all done, in part at least, for Jim and me—I felt we could never say how we admired ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (Verse 33), had given them no supper (Verse 34), and had thrust them into the inner prison and made their feet fast in the stocks. He was utterly hardened. The praying and singing hymns to God by Paul and Silas, the sudden earthquake, Paul's crying out against his committing suicide, had convicted him of sin, such a conviction as had produced sorrow, for he came trembling and fell down before them; and the sorrow had led to an entire change of mind ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... engaged. All this speaking generally. In Flora de Barral's particular case ever since Anthony had suddenly broken his way into her hopeless and cruel existence she lived like a person liberated from a condemned cell by a natural cataclysm, a tempest, an earthquake; not absolutely terrified, because nothing can be worse than the eve of execution, but stunned, bewildered—abandoning herself passively. She did not want to make a sound, to move a limb. She hadn't the strength. What was the good? ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... if the whole Allied Army were pounding the building. On top of the prison anti-aircraft guns were mounted and when they were discharged, which was continuously and rapidly, they shook the building violently. Indeed an earthquake could scarcely have set up a more agitated oscillation of ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... moving his head round slowly, as if it worked on a pivot which, wanted greasing, so as to confront me. He was as mild and imperturbable as usual. An earthquake, I believe, would not have ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... shaking upon the cane chair till its very foundations seemed threatened as by an earthquake, and was obliged to apply the flight of storks to his eyes before he could in any degree recover his equanimity. At length he glanced up with tears rolling down ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... compelled to face the scorching furnaces; we do not have to forge the iron that resists the invading cyclone and the leveling earthquake. We could quit cold and let wild nature kick us about at will. We could have cities of wood to be wiped out by conflagrations; we could build houses of mud and sticks for the gales to unroof like a Hottentot ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... description, though it may be in a degree suggested by the absence throughout the many-paged American newspaper of the least mention of a European circumstance unless some not-to-be-blinked war or revolution, or earthquake or other cataclysm has happened to apply the lash to curiosity. The most comprehensive journalistic formula that I have found myself, under that observation, reading into the general case is the principle that the first duty of the truly appealing sheet in a given community is to teach every individual ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the angel cried, Who, with an earthquake's might and giant hand, Severed these riven rocks, and bade them stand Severed for ever! The vast ocean-tide, Leaving its roar without at his command, Shrank, and beneath the woods through the green land Went gently murmuring on, so to deride The frowning barriers that its force defied! But ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... is on an empire's dust! An earthquake's spoil is sepulchred below! Is the spot marked with no colossal bust? Nor column trophied for triumphal show? None; but the moral's truth tells simpler so, As the ground was before, thus let it be; - How that red rain hath made the harvest grow! And is this all the world has gained by thee, Thou ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world: Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... seed nary a Yankee, but fer two days an' nights I hyard de guns roarin' an' felt de earth shakin' lak a earthquake wuz hittin' it. De air wuz dark an' de clouds hunged low, de whole earth seemed ter be full of powder an' yo' nostrils seemed lak dey would bust ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... less powerful wrists had never been able to achieve. The bees tumbled off in a dense shower, asking questions to the last; then, sighting the familiar entrance to the hive, they bustled in without waiting to investigate the cause of the earthquake. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... know the bitter truth. I felt forebodings of this hour; It did my happiest thoughts o'er power, With a dark weight; but then I thought, 'Twas by my foolish fancy wrought. 'Twas like the omen which precedes The earthquake when the summer reeds Are strangely still, until the shock The central earth shall wildly rock. Thou dost not love me, child of Spain! Thy heart can love no thing but gain; The paltry dust I tread above, To thee, is more than woman's love. My love is vain, and life is ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... frame, the landscape rose in a gentle slope to the summit of the thundering mountain. But indications were not wanting of the peril with which the city was threatened. The whole district is volcanic; and a few years before the final catastrophe, an earthquake had shaken Pompeii to its foundations; some of the buildings were much injured. On August 24, A.D. 79, the inhabitants were busily engaged in repairing the damage thus wrought, when suddenly and without any previous warning a vast column of black smoke burst from the overhanging ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Come to the mother's when she feels, For the first time, her first-horn's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song and dance and wine; And thou art terrible—the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know or dream or ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... special interest in the William Salt Library at Stafford, whose treasures were familiar to him, and whose contents he was ever ready to search and report on for any of his friends. In 1869 he issued the first of some proposed reprints of some of his own rarities, in "A True Relation of the Terrible Earthquake at West Brummidge, in Staffordshire," &c., printed in 1676; and early in 1882 (the year of his death) "The Rent Rolls of Lord Dudley and Ward in 1701"—a very curious contribution to local history, and full of ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... simmer beneath a brittle crust of good order and regular administration, all the latent possibilities of volcanoes which this inward fire betokens, are, on the contrary, always present to the mind of the visionary; rumblings are heard, and they herald the earthquake. The vehement and passionate England that produced the great rising of 1381, and the heresy of Wyclif, that later on will give birth to the Cavaliers and Puritans, is contained in essence in Langland's work; we divine, we foresee ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... arbour at the end, is the pretty dwelling of the shoemaker, a pale, sickly-looking, black-haired man, the very model of sober industry. There he sits in his little shop from early morning till late at night. An earthquake would hardly stir him: the illumination did not. He stuck immovably to his last, from the first lighting up, through the long blaze and the slow decay, till his large solitary candle was the only light in the place. One cannot ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... only "people with carriages."[4126] Many of them in the country and several in the towns are legitimists[4127], at least at heart, and Napoleon knows it; but, as he says; "these folks do not want the earthquake"; they are too much interested, and too personally, in the maintenance of order.[4128] Moreover, to represent his government, he needs decorative people; and it is only these who can be so gratis, be themselves, look well, at ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... phenomena of the air to those of the earth itself, we learn that Anaxagoras explained an earthquake as being produced by the returning of air into the earth. We cannot be sure as to the exact meaning here, though the idea that gases are imprisoned in the substance of the earth seems not far afield. But a far more remarkable insight than this would imply was shown by Anaxagoras ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the guns leap in their carriages, and several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks. Captain Davis, who lay with his head on a gun, was thrown out of his cabin! Lionel then goes on to impute the shock to an earthquake, and seems to substantiate the imputation by stating that a great earthquake, somewhere about that time, did actually do great mischief along the spanish land. but i should not much wonder if, in the darkness of that early hour of the morning, the shock was after all caused by an unseen whale ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... constructing. Tommy was brought up before the assembled class, and they voted unanimously that he be forbidden to approach within ten yards of Play Town. Tommy grinned maliciously. That night the town appeared to have been the victim of an earthquake. ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... far now from the highest peak of the Cordilleras, but there was not the slightest trace of any beaten path. The entire region had been overturned by recent shocks of earthquake, and all they could do was to keep on climbing higher and higher. Paganel was rather disconcerted at finding no way out to the other side of the chain, and laid his account with having to undergo great fatigue before the topmost peaks of the Andes could be reached, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... deities. In the course of the journey, he lodged one night with his two companions in what he supposed to be a huge hall, but which turned out to be the glove of a giant named Skrymir, who was asleep and snoring as loud as an earthquake, near by. When the giant awoke, he said to Thor, who stood near,—"My name is Skrymir, but I need not ask thy name, for I know that thou art the god Thor. But what hast thou done with my glove?" Sure enough, on looking, Thor found that he had put up that night in Skrymir's handshoe, or glove. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... religion, i.e., a spiritual concern. This in itself is already monstrous, and pretty much the same as it would be to order a charge of bayonets against gravitation, or against an avalanche, or against an earthquake, or against a deluge. But, suppose it were not so, what incomprehensible reasoning justifies the notion that not we are to be paid, but that he is to be paid for a change not concerning or affecting our ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... had dared to speak I would have done so, but I felt that a word would be like dynamite, and would tear the silent house into a pile of smoking bricks and plaster. I felt sure it would act like an earthquake, toppling the house over into the street. I felt that a word would be like the roaring voice of some strange god that would send everything off in thin vapor. I felt I must shut the door, and I went away remembering the words ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... the midst of the Forum, there yawned open a fearful gulf, so wide and deep that the superstitious Romans viewed it with awe and affright. Whether it was due to an earthquake or the wrath of the gods is not for us to say. The Romans believed the latter; those who prefer may believe the former. But, so we are told, it seemed bottomless. Throw what they would in it, it stood unfilled, and the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... filled superstitious minds with dark forebodings, reminding old men of that sad shower of rain that fell when Charles was proclaimed at Whitehall, on the day of his accession, and of the shock of earthquake on his coronation day; of Edgehill and Lindsey's death; of the profligate conduct of the Cavalier regiments, and the steady, dogged force of their psalm-singing adversaries; of Queen Henrietta's courage, and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... to his extreme terror, he felt the huge cliff on which he stood tremble, stoop slowly forward, and gradually sink from its position. Projecting as it was, and shaken as its equilibrium had been by the recent earthquake, it lay now so insecurely poised, that its balance was entirely destroyed, even by the addition of the young man's weight. Aroused by the imminence of the danger, Arthur, by an instinctive attempt at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... within us until some chasm yawns which must be filled, or till the rending asunder of our affections forces us to become conscious of a need. St. Paul in his Roman cell; John Huss led to the stake at Constance; Tyndale dying in his prison at Amsterdam; Milton, amid the incipient earthquake throes of revolution, teaching two little boys in Aldgate Street; David Livingstone, worn to a shadow, dying in a negro hut in Central Africa, alone—what failures they might all have seemed to themselves to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... largest mine that had been exploded along the front, and the tremor of the earth could only be compared to an earthquake. ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... first to greet her, for Jinendra's priest was fat; there was no gainsaying it. After about a minute a sort of earthquake taking place in him began to reach the surface; he rocked on his center in increasing waves that finally brought him with a spasm of convulsion to the floor. There he stood in full sunlight with his bare toes turned inward, holding his stomach with both hands, while Yasmini ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... reservoir catchments, seasonal disparity in rainfall, and most potable resources concentrated in the Turkish Cypriot area); water pollution from sewage and industrial wastes; coastal degradation; loss of wildlife habitats from urbanization natural hazards: moderate earthquake activity international agreements: party to - Air Pollution, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and cry, All's mine; cry as the Devil did, and be the Devil, mark what an Echo follows, build fine March-panes, to entertain Sir Silk-worm and his Lady, and pull the Chappel down, and raise a Chamber for Mistress Silver-pin, to lay her belly in, mark what an Earthquake comes. Then foolish Merchant my Tenants are no Subjects, they obey nothing, and they are people too never Christened, they know no Law nor Conscience, they'll devour thee; and thou mortal, the stopple, ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... 2 And when that day shall come they shall be visited of the Lord of Hosts, with thunder and with earthquake, and with a great noise, and with storm, and with tempest, and with the ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... hundred ants, while others contained only a few. In some of the interior passages the ants had not been affected by the heat, and were packed in great masses and evidently fast asleep; they soon recovered, however, and walked off slowly in different directions, as if wondering if an earthquake ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... parts the venerable time-worn appearance of some ancient fortress. Between this craggy ridge and the sea-cliffs, every spot bears the striking impress of some violent convulsion, such in fact as would be produced by an earthquake: but in proportion to the time that shall have elapsed, so all the more rugged marks of devastation are either obliterated by the liberal hand of Nature, or converted into positive beauties. Originally the whole of this tract, or nearly so, was rock resting ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... Grant Adams came hurrying into Brotherton's store. As he strode down the long store room, Brotherton thought that Grant in his street clothes looked less of a person than Grant in his overalls. But the big man rose like a frisky mountain in earthquake and called: ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... by strangers, but without dwellings for want of wood. The vast quarries must, of course, have lain useless, for want of transporting power,—our friend's coal and iron undisturbed, waiting for an earthquake,—and the poetical pioneer's beets and Indian corn unplanted, and therefore uncelebrated. Well may it be said here, that iron is more valuable than gold. Population, agriculture, the mechanic arts, literature, taste, civilization, in short, are all magnetized by the beneficent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... than the fate of QUINTILIAN; it was in the midst of his elaborate work, which was composed to form the literary character of a son, that he experienced the most terrible affliction in the domestic life of genius—the successive deaths of his wife and his only child. It was a moral earthquake with a single survivor amidst the ruins. An awful burst of parental and literary affliction breaks forth in Quintilian's lamentation,—"My wealth, and my writings, the fruits of a long and painful life, must now be reserved ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... As the earthquake and the great fire in San Francisco in the year 1906 were events of such unusual interest, and realizing how faulty is man's memory after time passes, I have here jotted down a few incidents which I personally observed, and shall lay them away, so ...
— San Francisco During the Eventful Days of April, 1906 • James B. Stetson
... motion, the foundation of mechanics. In his early youth, at Pisa, he had been similarly occupied; he had discovered the pendulum, he had refuted the Aristotelians by dropping weights from the leaning tower (which we must rejoice that no earthquake has yet injured), and he had returned to mechanics at intervals all his life; and now, when his eyes were useless for astronomy, when the outer world has become to him only a prison to be broken by death, he returns once more to the laws ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... Wanderer went down from his fallen home to the city on the sea, walking warily, and watching for any light from the houses of the people. But they were all as dark as his own, many of them roofless and ruined, for, after the plague, an earthquake had smitten the city. There were gaping chasms in the road, here and there, and through rifts in the walls of the houses the moon shone strangely, making ragged shadows. At last the Wanderer reached the Temple of Athene, the Goddess of War; but the roof had fallen in, the pillars were overset, ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... shone warmly, brightly, over the roaring city, perched on its savage height and crowding down to its precipices, as if seeking for destruction. Clarions sounded from the woods, where hidden soldiers were carrying out evolutions. Now and then a dull roar in the distance, like the noise of a far-off earthquake, proclaimed the activities of men among the rocks. From the bazaars in the maze of covered alleys that stretch down the hill below the Place du Chameau, from the narrow and slippery pavements that wind between ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... that sweeps along; Blazing fire, and earthquake strong; In the lightning's trackless flight; Gathering cloud, and curtain'd night! In the fragrant passing breeze; Thunders loud, or raging seas. Stormy worlds, or gentle flower, God proclaims His sovereign power. But the still ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... whose interests the consul is appointed inspector, should not have been displayed in the neighbourhood lately by any ship of war, the short memory of a pasha is in danger of forgetting that nation's claim to respect; for any thing that he knows, it may have been revolutionised or sunk by an earthquake,—at least he cannot bear the trouble of imagining any other reason for the non-appearance of its executive ministers, than the obvious one of its having no ships to send. Thus, in matters of precedence, consuls are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... having paid the utmost attention that a man can in office, with access to all the papers, and seeing all the observers he is able to see, I do not feel for a moment that this discovery of a secret society or a secret organisation involves any question of an earthquake. I prefer to look upon it, to revert to my own figure, as clouds sailing through the sky. I do not say you will not have to take pretty strong measures of one sort and another. Yes, but strong measures in the right direction, and with the right qualifications. I think any ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... were—unutterably sweet— Even though with garments rent, and bleeding feet, To wander over the deserted places Where once thy princely palaces arose, And 'mid the weeds and wild-flowers mark the traces, Where the ground, yawning in its earthquake throes, The ark of covenant and the cherubim Received, lest stranger hands, that reek'd the while With blood of thine own children, should defile Its heaven-resplendent glory, and bedim: And my dishevell'd locks, in my despair, All madly should I tear; And as I cursed ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Westminster, from its aspect and its monastery. The church is remarkable for the coronation and burial of the Kings of England. Upon this spot is said formerly to have stood a temple of Apollo, which was thrown down by an earthquake in the time of Antoninus Pius; from the ruins of which Sebert, King of the East Saxons, erected another to St. Peter: this was subverted by the Danes, and again renewed by Bishop Dunstan, who gave it to a few monks. Afterwards, King Edward the Confessor built it entirely new, with the tenth ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... serious this time," answered Leslie; "It is quite a novel experience to me, I admit; but there can be only one possible explanation of it, and that is that we have just sustained a shock of earthquake. If I am right in my surmise, this extraordinary disturbance of the sea will subside almost as rapidly as it has arisen, and that will be an end of the whole business. But, by Jove, I am not so sure that it will be, after all," he added in quite another tone of voice. ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... a terrible chasm in the Forum, most likely from an earthquake, but nothing seemed to fill it up, and the priests and augurs consulted their oracles about it. These made answer that it would only close on receiving of what was most precious. Gold and jewels were thrown in, but it still seemed bottomless, and at last the augurs declared that ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a violent shock: An earthquake rocked the ground. The Columns which supported the roof under which He stood were so strongly shaken, that every moment menaced him with its fall, and at the same moment He heard a loud and tremendous burst of thunder. It ceased, and his eyes being fixed upon the Staircase, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... foam-crested billows; not the sense of the awful imprisoned force which was wrestling in the depths below me. The ship is made to struggle with the elements, and the giant has been tamed to obedience, and is manacled in bonds which an earthquake would hardly rend asunder. No! It was the sight of the boats hanging along at the sides of the deck,—the boats, always suggesting the fearful possibility that before another day dawns one may be tossing about in the watery Sahara, shelterless, fireless, almost ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... gleans in vain. Here the fat priest to the contented king Points out the contrast and the people sing— There mothers eat their offspring. Well, at least Thou hast provided offspring for the feast. An earthquake here rolls harmless through the land, And Thou art good because the chimneys stand— There templed cities sink into the sea, And damp survivors, howling as they flee, Skip to the hills and hold a celebration In honor of Thy ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... dussebeiV kai apotropaioi, andreV ek sktouV anadunteV, thV gar 'Esperiou moiraV uphrcon gennhmata, (Phot. Epist. p. 47, edit. Montacut.) The Oriental patriarch continues to apply the images of thunder, earthquake, hail, wild boar, precursors ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... then among stone-cutters who shrink from nothing; we are treated then to clouds that look like muffins—to waves that resemble pancakes. Apotheosis becomes preposterous; allegory goes fairly mad. Glancing at certain post-Roubiliac achievements, we long for an earthquake. Nicholas Read, the least competent of his pupils, upon the sculptor's death occupied his studio, advertised himself as successor to Mr. Roubiliac, and, strange to say, was largely employed: the execution of the monuments to Admiral Tyrrell and the Duchess of Northumberland, in Westminster ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... place where the treasure-cave was situated before he led the expedition there for the purpose of recovering the remainder of the gold and jewels. But to his utter consternation he found, when he reached the locality, that an earthquake had recently occurred which had changed the whole ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... stone. A slip of it a couple of feet long and an inch in diameter each way bends in the hand like a half-frozen snake. This conduct of a substance that we have been taught to regard as inflexible impairs one's confidence in the stability of nature and affects him as an earthquake does. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ask permission to pay a few words. I have never before addressed a promiscuous assembly; nor is it now the maddening rush of those voices, which is the indication of a moral whirlwind; nor is it the crashing of those windows, which is the indication of a moral earthquake, that calls me before you. No, these pass unheeded by me. But it is the "still small voice within," which may not be withstood, that bids me open my mouth for the dumb; that bids me plead the cause of God's ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage |
