"Ravaging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pine branch came whirling up and fell avidly upon a buck bush beside him. The bush crackled and shriveled, a thin spiral of smoke mounting upward into the cloud that rolled overhead. Jack stood dazed, watching the yellow tongues go licking up the smaller branches. While he stood looking, the ravaging flames had devoured leaves and twigs and a dead branch or two, and left the bush a charred, smoking, dead thing that waved its blackened stubs of branches impotently in the wind. Alone it had stood, alone it had ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Malcolm Fraser, an officer in the 78th Highlanders and afterwards first seigneur of Mount Murray, one of the two seigniories into which Malbaie was divided, was sent out on these ravaging expeditions. Years after, some of Fraser's neighbours of French origin rallied him on his capacity for devastation as shown at this time. See Fraser's Journal, Appendix A, p. 253, and the Memoires of Philippe Aubert ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... I was wild. I was with the buccaneers who, off the Tortugas, captured the French ship, Reine Marguerite, all of whose crew and passengers we put to death. From there we ran to Port au Spain, ravaging and plundering. We captured the city, killing most of the men and boys and carrying off the women and girls. Off one of the Bahama Cays we took a Spanish galleon, and although her people fought stoutly, we made them finally walk the plank. Other ships we captured whose names I have ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... poured forth over these lands to enrich them for a stranger's benefit? Is it not under pretence of fighting for the Princess of Cassimir, who has been long since dead, that the Sultan of India's troops are now ravaging, not on our borders only, but penetrating even into the heart of our nation? But suppose ye that the conquerors will give up the treasures they hope to earn by their blood? Will they not rather, invited by the ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... defeated. Thousands were driven by the conquerors into a stream, swollen by the rains, where they miserably perished. The fugitives, led by Sviatopolk, in dismay fled back to Kief and took refuge behind the walls of the city. The enemy pressed on, ravaging, with the most cruel desolation, the whole region around Kief, and in a second battle conquered the king and drove him out of his realms. The whole of southern Russia was abandoned to barbaric destruction. Nestor gives a graphic sketch ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... imagine these four thousand armed bandits falling unexpectedly upon the inhabitants of Saint-Cloud, of Sevres, of Montreuil, ravaging, destroying, robbing all, ransoming the nuns of Longchamps, threatening to pillage Le Landit, it can readily be believed that the merchants were so uneasy that they hastened to place their goods upon carts and to ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... as Greene left him, hurried to Petersburg, Va. A British force during the winter and spring had been plundering and ravaging in Virginia, under the traitor Arnold. Cornwallis took command of this, sent Arnold to New York, and had begun a campaign against Lafayette, when orders reached him to seize ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... crowd the city. They come from all parts of Poland, but principally from the frontier towns and villages which the Germans have been ravaging ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... from Tyre to the Carthaginians at the same time that the Syracusans were ravaging Africa, and had advanced to the very gates of Carthage. But the expedition of Agathocles against Africa cannot agree in time with the siege of Tyre, which was more ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... fine valley of Taos. They had heard of the prosperous condition of San Ildefonso, and hence their hostile visit. Besides, both Apaches and Comanches were en paz with the settlement, and had for some years confined themselves to ravaging the provinces of Coahuila and Chihuahua. No provocation had been given to these tribes to recommence hostilities, nor had they given any signs of such ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... fresh-awakened nameless and aimless desires; panting for bliss and taking it as it comes; making of any sight or sound, perforce of the enchantment they carry with them, a key to infinite, because innocent, pleasure. The passions then are gambolling cubs; not the ravaging gluttons they grow to. They have their teeth and their talons, but they neither tear nor bite. They are in counsel and fellowship with the quickened heart and brain. The whole sweet system ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with his ravaging band ... Matak, alone, searching for him in the night ... Ledesma's daughter, that gentle, big-eyed girl, at the mercy of such beasts ... would the patrols never return? He rose and paced the floor, frantic with the enforced inaction. Schooling himself to a semblance of patience, ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... man of great and inventive genius, and his ambition was noble and lofty. Instead of ravaging the newly-found countries, he sought to found regular and prosperous enterprises. He was naturally irritable and impetuous, but, though continually outraged in his dignity, and foiled in his plans by turbulent and worthless men, he restrained his valiant and indignant spirit, and brought himself ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... the Lectisternium (lectus, a couch, sternere, to spread), to implore the favor of offended deities. They placed images of the gods upon cushions or couches and offered them viands, as if the images could really eat them. Naturally this did not effect any abatement of the ravaging disease, and under orders of the priests, stage plays were instituted as a means of appeasing the wrath of heaven. The first Roman play- writer, Plautus, did not live till a hundred years after this time, and these performances were trivial imitations of Etruscan acting, which thus came to Rome ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Hire,[240] which he was to leave after his death to the knave of hearts in those packs of cards marked by the greasy fingers of many a mercenary. La Hire was nominally on the side of the Dauphin Charles, but in reality he only made war on his own account. At this time he was ravaging Bar west and south, burning churches and laying ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... his victories, but all his enemies were scattered—except Peter, who had been sedulously training his people in the military arts. On August 21, 1704, Peter captured Narva. Now he made a new alliance with Augustus. Seventy thousand Russians were soon ravaging Polish territory. Within two months, Charles and Stanislaus had cut them up in detail, or driven them over the border. Schulembourg crossed the Oder, but his battalions were shattered at Frawenstad by Reuschild. On September 1, 1706, Charles ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... thousand souls, among whom there was now not a single avowed Protestant, and whose turbulent citizens were not unaccustomed to the use of arms. He resolved, therefore, to adopt the more practicable plan of making the city feel the pressure of the war by cutting off its supplies of provisions and by ravaging the surrounding country. Thus, Paris—"the bellows by whose blasts the war was kept in flames," and "the kitchen that fed it"—would at last become weary of sustaining in idleness an insolent soldiery, and of seeing its villages given over to destruction, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... neither for revenge nor conquest; neither from pride nor passion; we are not insulting the world with our fleets and armies, nor ravaging the globe for plunder. Beneath the shade of our own vines are we attacked; in our own houses, and on our own lands, is the violence committed against us. We view our enemies in the character of Highwaymen and Housebreakers, and having no defence for ourselves in the civil law, are ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... carousing, fighting, pillaging, ravaging, destructive, and murderous instinct, so strong by nature among the Germanic tribes, and refine it and in time use it to some better purpose, and in so doing to increasingly civilize these Germanic lords and overlords, was the problem which faced the Church ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... rich mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble; and its walls are of alabaster, but worn and shattered and darkly stained with age, almost a ruin—in places the slabs of marble have fallen away altogether, and the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents: but all beautiful—the ravaging fissures fretting their way among the islands and channeled zones of the alabaster and the time stains on its translucent masses darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the color of seaweed when the sun strikes ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... sufficient activity to suit the impatience and rage of the Caeninenses. Accordingly the state of the Caeninenses by itself makes an irruption into the Roman territory. But Romulus with his army met them ravaging the country in straggling parties, and by a slight engagement convinces them, that resentment without strength is of no avail. He defeats and routs their army, pursues it when routed, kills and despoils their king in battle, and having slain their general takes the city at the ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... a permanent resident, and being capable of impartial judgment thereon, he employed himself in a profound study of finance. Emerging from this seclusion, lest he should defraud his natural element entirely, he plunged into the hot water of the revolutions then ravaging Europe. Receiving wounds, he was laid up in hospital; and being of an active turn of mind and debarred from other pursuits, he fell (like Dr. Marie Zakrzewski) to studying the cards renewed every day above the patients' ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... retreating towards his wife, 'what a demneble fierce old evil genius you are! You're enough to frighten the life and soul out of her little delicious wits—flying all at once into such a blazing, ravaging, raging passion as ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... descended upon Italy, ravaging the country as they passed over it, and sat down before Rome, not content with stripping the land, they forced their way into the catacombs, searching for treasure, and seeking also, it seems likely, for the bodies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... was ravaging the Kingdom of Damnasia, and the King, greatly concerned for the lives and limbs of his Royal subjects, promised his daughter Zodroulra to any man who would kill the animal. After some days Camaraladdin appeared before the King and ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... were ravaging Carmel, many of the Jews ran together to Antigonus, and showed themselves ready to make an incursion into the country; so he sent them before into that place called Drymus, [the woodland [18] ] to seize upon the place; whereupon ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... Choctaws to assist the Cherokees against us. And notwithstanding the present rupture with the Cherokees has cost the province, in less than nine months, near 50,000 pounds sterling, yet all our endeavours to raise a number of forces capable of preventing the Cherokees from ravaging the back settlements have proved ineffectual. This being the situation of the province when we had only the Cherokees to contend with, how deplorable then must our case be, should Colonel Montgomery depart with the King's troops under his command, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... were intruders. He resented them as he had resented in his boyhood the historical fact that, after all, an Englishman was a German—a savage who, five hundred years after the birth of Christ, had swooped upon Early Briton from his Engleland and Jutland, and ravaging with fire and sword, had conquered and made the land his possession, ravishing its very name from it and giving it his own. These people did not come with fire and sword, but with cable and telephone, and bribes of gold and fair women, but they ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Thus the route for the removal of stock was settled, until it was expected that quotas from each village would make one united common herd wending {65} its way Northward to a safer distance from the ravaging hordes! One seems to see that ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... tables and chairs and cabinets inlaid with silver and ivory. The room looked stately, but everything was deep in dust; carpets and curtains were thick with the deserted sepulchres of moths; and the air somehow suggested a tomb: Donal thought of the tombs of the kings of Egypt before ravaging conquerors broke into them, when they were yet full of all such gorgeous furniture as great kings desired, against the time when the souls should return to reanimate the bodies so carefully spiced and stored to welcome them, and the great kings would be ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... the Cannae of the Camisards. It was fought near the village of that name, not far from Ners, early in the spring of 1704. The campaign had been opened by the Florentines, who, now that they had made a desert of the Upper Cevennes, were burning and ravaging the Protestant villages of the plain. Cavalier had put himself on their track, and pursued and punished them so severely, that in their distress they called upon Montrevel to help them, informing him of the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... Highland Clans might not be heard at Charing Cross, and the barbarian rout of Caterans that formed the Prince,—I mean the Chevalier,—I mean the Pretender's Army, scattered all about the City, plundering our Chattels, and ravaging our fair English homes; although, for aught men knew, another month, nay another week, might see King George the Second toppled from his Throne, and King James the Third installed, with his Royal Highness Charles Edward Prince of Wales as Regent; although it was but a toss-up whether ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... scene of devastation scarcely paralleled in the annals of this continent. For thirty days the army employed themselves in burning and ravaging the settlements of the broken-spirited Indians. No less than fourteen of their towns were laid in ashes; their granaries were yielded to the flames, their corn-fields ravaged, while the miserable fugitives, flying from the sword, took refuge with ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... one another rapidly across England's early history. The migration of York's renowned scholar took place six years before the Viking irruptions began, and about twelve years before a heavy blow was struck at Northumbrian learning by the ravaging and destruction of the monasteries of Lindisfarne, and Wearmouth and Jarrow. After this there was but little peace for England. Kent was often attacked. In 838 the marauders fell upon East Anglia. Between 837 and 845 they made various fierce attacks ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... Clairvaux blames the bishops and even the secular princes, who through indifference or less worthy reasons fail to hunt for the foxes who are ravaging the vineyards of the Savior. But once the guilty ones have been discovered, he declares that only kindness should be used to win them back. "Let us capture them by arguments and not by force,"[1] i.e., let us first refute their errors, ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... plunder Spaniards 'beyond the line.' Lancerota, one of the Great Canaries, was reached on September 6. The islanders happened to be under the influence of a special panic. Barbary corsairs had been ravaging a neighbouring island. Next year they laid Lancerota itself waste. When Ralegh's fleet appeared it was supposed to be the Barbary squadron. Some sailors having landed, three were murdered. Ralegh showed remarkable forbearance. He would suffer no ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... day I was to leave Cedarville. Early in the morning I repaired to the "Sickle and Sheaf." The storm was over, and all was calm and silent as desolation. Hours before, the tempest had subsided; but the evidences left behind of its ravaging fury were fearful to look upon. Doors, chairs, windows, and table's were broken, and even the strong brass rod that ornamented the bar had been partially wrenched from its fastenings by strong hands, under an impulse of murder, that only lacked a weapon to execute its ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... bayonets? Nevertheless, division and subdivision, would relieve all of the burden of debt, for they would repudiate the greater part, if not the whole, of the indebtedness of both the present governments, which has been incurred in ravaging the country and cutting each other's throats. The cry will be: "We will not pay the price of blood—for the slaughter ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... name, who's been ravaging Our sanctum? There the lamp lies dashed To pieces, curtain dragged to floor, pen smashed, And on the ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... shoulders after the fashion of the time, it was as cruel, as evil, as sensuous, as ruthless, as powerful an old face as had ever looked over a bulwark at a sinking ship, or viewed with indifference the ravaging of a devoted town. Courage there was, capacity in large measure, but not one trace of human kindness. Thin, lean, hawk-like, ruthless, cunning, weather-beaten, it was sadly out of place in its brave attire in that vaulted chamber. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... been carried far up the Thames and great damage done, but as the ships of Fowey and other places were equally busy damaging French commerce and ravaging their sea-coast, no complaints could be made to France even during the very brief period when there was a truce between the two countries. Not only from across the Channel did these marauders come, but from the islands of Friesland and Zeeland, ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... thy gods! What quarrel have you against Me? 29 All you are the sinners;(164) Against Me you all have rebelled— Rede of the Lord. In vain have I smitten your sons 30 Ye(165) took not correction Your(166) sword has devoured your prophets, Like a ravaging lion. O generation—you!—look at the Word of the Lord!(167) 31 Have I been a desert to Israel, Or land of thick darkness? Why say My folk "We are off, No more to meet Thee!" Can a maiden forget her adorning, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... to the right or left, or staying to attack town, castle, or house, till we crossed the river Tyne and entered Durham. Then we began the war; burning, ravaging, and slaying. I liked it not, for although when it comes to fighting I am ready, if needs be, to bear my part, I care not to attack peaceful people. It is true that your kings have, over and over ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... will tell you. We had been ravaging the Frankish coasts, and the lad got a wound in his shoulder; we carried him home, for he had fought like a wolf, and the leeches tried to cure him, but it was all in vain; they said he would never be fit to go to battle again. Poor ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... us, chill and bleak and ravaging. The smoke from our chimneys went up in tall columns that lost themselves in the gray sky. The snow shut us in, and presently the wind lay in wait to blast us when ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... left us alone," Beric said bitterly, "if it had not been that you made yourselves scourges to the country, pillaging and ravaging the villages among the hills ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... god was gold, Once, by strange chance, found riches manifold Hid in a rocky cavern, where a band Of robbers who were ravaging the land Kept their bright spoils. Cassim had learnt the spell By which the dazzling heaps were guarded well. Two cabalistic words he speaks, and, lo! The door flies open: what a golden glow! He enters,—speaks the words of power once ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... is hardly home at Dessau, when new Pandour Tempests, tides of ravaging War, again come beating against the Giant Mountains, pouring through all passes; from utmost Jablunka, westward by Jagerndorf to Glatz, huge influx of wild riding hordes, each with some support of Austrian grenadiers, cannoniers; threatening to submerge Silesia. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... that it is easy for those who do not know what the real situation was to suppose that the French were something akin to fools. For twenty centuries the Germans had been swarming over the Rhine in preying, ravaging hordes, and France had been beating them back to save her national life. That they would swarm again, more insolent and more rapacious than ever after their triumph of 1870, was not to be doubted. Everyone in France who had the slightest knowledge of the spirit that has animated the Hohenzollern ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... that the church at least was of stone. Not a fragment of it is known to be in existence at the present day. Whatever may have been its extent, it was wholly destroyed by the Danes in 870. For four years the Danes had been ravaging the eastern part of the country, burning monasteries and slaying their inmates. In the immediate district, Crowland and Thorney, Medeshamstede (Peterborough), and Ramsey had already felt the severity of their attack; crumbling walls alone remained where their destructive ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... caused by a germ called spirocheta; the full name is spirocheta pallida—a pale, spiral-shaped germ. Though the disease has been ravaging Europe and America for centuries, the germ of it has been discovered only a few years ago, namely, in 1905, and, like the gonococcus, also by a German scientist, Fritz Schaudinn. Syphilis is a constitutional disease. In ten days to three weeks after a person has contracted syphilis, ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... quinine, aided by Tim's rugged constitution and the fact that this was his first attack of the ravaging sickness of the swamp lands, pulled him back to safety within the next two days. To safety, but not to strength. Despite his stout-hearted assertions that he was ready to hit the trail and "walk the legs off the whole danged outfit," he was obviously in no condition to stand up under ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... that evening to make his usual examination, his report was of a twofold character: the fever was still ravaging the now enfeebled constitution—the temperature, in especial, being seriously high; but the patient seemed much ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... we exaggerate the condition of the time, thinking of it as altogether given over to ravaging and devastation. Even though there were two or three expeditions and battles every year, these would only affect a small part of the whole country. Over all the rest, the tending of cattle in the glades ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... older squaws with horribly disfigured faces. I supposed it was the result of some ravaging disease, but I learned that it was the custom of this tribe, to cut off the noses of those women who were unfaithful to their lords. Poor creatures, they had my pity, for they were only children of Nature, after all, living close to the earth, close ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... disposing of anything to anybody when all had abundance. The Roman army had advanced with their cavalry and carried their incursions as far as Themiskyra and the plains on the Thermodon,[365] without doing more than wasting and ravaging the country, when the men began to blame Lucullus for peaceably gaining over all the cities, and they complained that he had not taken a single city by storm, nor given them an opportunity of enriching themselves by plunder. "Nay, even now," they said, "we are quitting Amisus,[366] a prosperous ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... to where I was before I digressed to explain to you how that frightful and incurable disease, membranous croup,[Diphtheria D.W.] was ravaging the town and driving all mothers mad with terror, I called Mrs. McWilliams's attention ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Anthophorae, these Bees, therefore, obey the egotistical law of each one for himself and do not know how to band themselves together to repel an enemy who threatens one and all. Taken singly, the Anthophora does not even know how to dash at the enemy who is ravaging her cells and drive him away with her stings; the pacific creature hastily leaves its dwelling when disturbed by undermining and escapes in a crippled state, sometimes even mortally wounded, without thinking of making use of its venomous sting, except ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Napoleon and Marie Louise to their carriage, went back to the house, then a hideous scene of destruction. A storm had arisen, and a violent wind had spread the ravaging flames in every direction. The Queen of Westphalia had fainted and had been rescued by Count Metternich; the Queen of Naples, Prince Eugene, and his wife, who was in a delicate condition, had remained on the platform. The Queen tried to escape by the main door, by which the Emperor and ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... the men who know nothing about the effect of opium to do all the talking about the harmlessness of this pernicious drug; but they should come through this once fair land of Yuen-nan and see everywhere—not in isolated districts, but everywhere—the ravaging effects in the poverty and dwarfed constitutions of the people before they advocate the continuance of the opium trade. I have seen men transformed to beasts through its use; I have seen more suicides from the effect of opium since I have been ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... and even for two or three in succession—poor little Clarissa, whom she knew to be so unprotected, so exposed to evil influences. She had been too much absorbed in her own greedy bliss to be more than intermittently aware of the child; but now, she felt, no sorrow however ravaging, no happiness however absorbing, would ever again ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton |
