"Ruin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had been sent by the Institute to take his first lessons in archaeology and photography, having arrived, we went to Candia to select our site. We decided on attacking a ruin on the acropolis of Gnossus, already partially exposed by the searches of local diggers for antiques. It had a curiously labyrinthine appearance, and on the stones I found and described the first ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... allies of the other citizens; hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, they will pass their whole life in much greater terror of internal than of external enemies, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State, will be at hand. For all which reasons may we not say that thus shall our State be ordered, and that these shall be the regulations appointed by us for guardians concerning their houses and ...
— The Republic • Plato
... difficult to understand how men like the Marquis of Hastings and Lord William Bentinck could have been guilty of such barbarous stupidity. But the fact is beyond doubt, and numberless officials of less exalted rank must share the disgrace of the ruin and spoliation, which, both at Agra and Delhi, have destroyed two noble palaces, and left but a few disconnected fragments. Fergusson's indignant protests (History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, ed. 1910, vol. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... poets take Grief and pain to build their song, Even so for every soul, Whatsoe'er its lot may be,— Building, as the heavens roll, Something large and strong and free,— Things that hurt and things that mar Shape the man for perfect praise, Shock and strain and ruin are Friendlier ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... and ruin; swaying walls, heaps of fallen masonry, chevaux-de-frises of bristling gas and water-pipes, broken and protruding. A little way down, to the left, sheets of flame, golden in the gray daylight, were pouring from the face ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... face had not relaxed in sleep; but somehow it made the helplessness more marked. It would not have troubled one to see a weak or an ordinary face under such conditions; but this purposeful, masterful man, lying before us wrapped in impenetrable sleep, had all the pathos of a great ruin. The sight was not a new one to us; but I could see that Miss Trelawny, like myself, was moved afresh by it in the presence of the stranger. Mr. Corbeck's face grew stern. All the pity died away; and in its stead came ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... and weak in my limbs, and so soon grow tired and fatigued to a degree painful to me, that although my mind seems as well as ever, yet I am sure that I cannot long do my duty, and there is nothing I dread so much as sitting upon a great seat of justice as a kind of ruin, and in a state of decay. In my seventy-fourth year, I am not sure that avarice may not lay hold of me, and tempt me to stay where I am, until I feel or am made to feel, by being told that I have stayed too long; and that peevishness too, an attendant upon old age, may not put ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... attractions of Toronto and Niagara. No English establishment on the continent was of such ill omen to the French. It not only robbed them of the fur-trade, by which they lived, but threatened them with military and political, no less than commercial, ruin. They were in constant dread lest ships of war should be built here, strong enough to command Lake Ontario, thus separating Canada from Louisiana, and cutting New France asunder. To meet this danger, they soon after built at Fort ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... fact, (for a palpable fact it is,) that some form of such democratizing is about the only resource now left. That, or chronic dissatisfaction continued, mutterings which grow annually louder and louder, till, in due course, and pretty swiftly in most cases, the inevitable crisis, crash, dynastic ruin. Anything worthy to be call'd statesmanship in the Old World, I should say, among the advanced students, adepts, or men of any brains, does not debate to-day whether to hold on, attempting to lean back and monarchize, or to look ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... piece of shrapnel. M. Bredin was incapable of jumping, but he uttered a howl and his vast body quivered like a stricken jelly. A second roll, whizzing by, slapped against the wall. A moment later a cream-bun burst in sticky ruin on ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... expressing her desire to understand what she had read in the newspapers since her arrival; but Miss Bennett was not sure that there was anything that "could exactly be called politics" in Canada, except that there was a Liberal party who "wanted to ruin the country ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... the spirit having become enfeebled or obscured, the people are left in darkness and given over to sin and wickedness. Moral ruin seems inevitable unless there is a divine influx, a new Avatar, or Buddha, or ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... helping to maintain that contract and now the Federals had broken the Constitution, and their own high ground was swept from beneath their feet. They protested as bitterly as their foes, be it said, against the Federals breaking up political conventions with bayonets and against the ruin of innocent citizens for the crimes of guerillas, for whose acts nobody was responsible, but all to no avail. The terrorism only grew ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... not provoke Rama, for I know his strength! Is there a person who is capable of withstanding the impetus of his arrows? That great man hath been the cause of my assuming my present ascetic life. What evil-minded creature hath put thee up to this course calculated to bring ruin and destruction on thee?" To this Ravana indignantly replied, reproaching him thus, "If thou dost not obey my orders, thou shall surely die at my hands." Maricha then thought within himself, "When death is inevitable, I shall do his biddings; for it is better to die at the hands of one that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... spend thirty thousand francs on an altar baldachin, and ruin themselves for music, and they have to have gas in their churches, and Lord knows what all besides, but when you mention bells they shrug their shoulders. Do you know, M. Durtal, there are only two ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... million dollars. Phelps and Gorman immediately proceeded to Canandaigua and obtained the Indian title to one third of the tract. A land-office was opened in that village, the first of its kind in America. But the sales, although rapid, prevented the ruin neither of the purchasers nor of Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution, who came forward to help them. The Holland Land Company profited by these misfortunes. The rich valleys of the Genesee and its tributaries more than made good its promises ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... he had felt the change in his position; glimmerings of its importance had appeared in his notes; his mind had fought against it as a corruption, lest it ruin the career which he had ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... your Father's Disposal, who seeing so many Examples in this leud Age, of the ruin of whole Families by imprudent Marriages, provided ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... terrible—terrible for you; but loss of money is not ruin. You have health and strength and youth to sustain you, and though the cloud has been dark, it will have a ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... intense rivalry among railroads and railroad men, the working out of running schedules, the getting through "on time" in spite of all obstacles, and the manipulation of railroad securities by evil men who wish to rule or ruin. ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... be extinguished. For three days it raged, spreading in all directions, till the whole town was a sheet of flames. Not until there was nothing left to burn did the flames subside. Norfolk was a complete ruin. Its six thousand inhabitants, men, women, and children, were forced to flee from their burning homes and seek what scant refuge they could find in that chill winter season. Dunmore even landed his troops to fire on the place. Then, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of the two to the possibility of bias; because in the former the injury which an individual could sustain from an unjust verdict could only amount to L50, and in the latter it might extend to L3000, and consequently occasion his utter ruin. I limit the injustice which might arise from the very improper constitution of this court to the above sum; because, although it is competent, as I have before stated, to take cognizance of all ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... (sperm or spawn) of the salted Faskh (fish) and the Br (mugil cephalus) a salt-water fish caught in the Nile and considered fair eating. Some write Butrgh from the old Egyptian town Burt, now a ruin between Tinnis ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... stricken gaze fastened upon a new car of his which had become to all intents and purposes practically two-thirds of a car. The remnant stood at the curbing, where his service car, having towed it in, had left it as though the night foreman had been unwilling to give so complete a ruin storage space within the garage. Alongside the wreckage was Red Hoss, endeavoring more or less unsuccessfully to make himself small and inconspicuous. Upon ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... against aggressions from without we believe all who dwell within the borders of the land will find their best guarantee for peace, and in peace the best safeguard they and their children can possess to enable them to pass their lives in happiness and prosperity, and escape the misery and ruin which ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... your hat upon your head, man?" said she, in her masculine tone. "You have been almost the ruin of my poor uniform-habit; but I've escaped rather better than you have. Don't stand there in the middle of the circle, or you'll have an arrow in your eye ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... long till it got around that Henry WALKED. That old garden was HA'NTED. He was heard there at nights, moaning and crying. Old Tom and his wife got out—went out West and never came back. The place got such a bad name nobody'd buy or rent it. That's why it's all gone to ruin. That was thirty years ago, but Henry Warren's ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Mr Lathrope, the lugsail swinging aside and enabling him and the others to see into the boat clearly, a thing which had been previously impossible from the boat's coming up end on. "They air a ruin lot, mister! Of all the starved, God-forsaken critturs as I've ever seed ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... expanding soul. For him no more, beneath their furious gods, Old ocean crimsons and Olympus nods, Uprooted mountains sweep the dark profound, Or Titans groan beneath the rending ground, No more his clangor maddens up the mind To crush, to conquer and enslave mankind, To build on ruin'd realms the shrines of fame, And load his numbers with a tyrant's name. Far nobler objects animate his tongue, And give new energies to epic song; To moral charms he bids the world attend, Fraternal ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... the burning question for the proprietors was this: would their editor, their great, their unique and lonely editor, be prepared to go with them? Or would he (and with him his brilliant and enthusiastic staff) insist on standing by the principles that had been the glory of the paper and its ruin? Mr. Jewdwine had shown himself fairly amenable so far, but would he be any use to them when it really ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Arnold, "it was my duty, and I glorify God for having made it easy for me. Rothenwald is now only a smoking ruin. It was pillaged, then burnt. O, my poor soldiers, how deluded they have been! O, how far are they still from comprehending that religion of Jesus ...
— Theobald, The Iron-Hearted - Love to Enemies • Anonymous
... behold that also was ripe. "Verily," said he, "this will I reap to-morrow. And on the morrow he came with the intent to reap it, and when he came there he found nothing but the bare straw. "Oh, gracious Heaven," he exclaimed, "I know that whosoever has begun my ruin is completing it, and has also ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... Powestik—the worst we had yet come to, full of boulders and sharp rocks, with a strong current. Very dexterous management was required here on the part of steersman and bowman; a snapt line or a moment's neglect, and a swing to broadside would have followed, and spelled ruin. ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... The Army will now go to rack and ruin. I am a plain citizen of the United States. I expect to ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... in dazed admiration. "Then," I went on, "there are the retail merchants of Fredonia. Has it ever occurred to them, in their excitement in favor of this road, that it'll ruin them? Where will the shopping be done if the women can get to Chicago in two ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... other was his punishment because he would not abide in them; for in the former state there would have been no death nor sin nor sinful will, in the latter there was both death and sin and every desire to transgress, and a general tendency to ruin and a condition helpless to render possible a rise after the Fall. But that middle state from which actual death or sin was absent, but the power for both remained, is situate between the ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... a terrible ruin here and there," said the captain, as Jack handed him the glass to try; "but changes take place quickly out here, and the sun's hard at work already repairing damages. Those heaps will soon rot away, and fresh growth cover the bare patches. It's bad enough, but an eruption from the mountain there ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... without delay, and at the same time took up his abode amongst them, "to keep them," he said, "if possible, from indulging in the detestable vice of drunkenness, which, if not put a stop to, will eventually destroy themselves, and involve the mining association in ruin." To add to his troubles, the captain of the miners displayed a very hostile and insubordinate spirit, quarrelled and fought with the men, and was insolent to the engineer himself. The captain and his gang, being Cornish men, told Robert to his face, that because he was a North-country man, and ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... gold began, leading to the unsettling of legitimate trade and to greater variations in prices; (4) the existence of depreciated paper later gave rise to all the dishonest schemes for paying the coin obligations of the United States in cheap issues, to the ruin of its credit and honor; and (5) it has practically become a settled part of our circulation, and ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... day by day the ocean-going vessels of Germany's mercantile marine were being transferred to the British flag. The great oversea carrying trade, whose growth had been the pride of Germany, was absolutely and wholly destroyed during that half-year. The destruction of her export trade spelt ruin for Germany's most important industries; but it was the cutting off of her imports which finally robbed even the German Emperor of the power to shut his eyes any longer to the fact that his Empire had in reality ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... I would say, Amuba, it will be far better for you to acquiesce in the public choice than to struggle against it. A lad like you would have no prospect of success against a victorious general, the choice of the people, and you would only bring ruin and death upon yourself and your ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... graveyards—they seem to be a New England specialty—ancient and modern. Among the old burial-places the one attached to St. John's Church is perhaps the most interesting. It has not been permitted to fall into ruin, like the old cemetery at the Point of Graves. When a headstone here topples over it is kindly lifted up and set on its pins again, and encouraged to do its duty. If it utterly refuses, and is not shamming decrepitude, ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... truth in that report, Then have we reached the limit, viz.:— The ruin of that manly sport Which made our country what it is; The ravages we soon restore By conies wrought or hoofs of mutton, But centuries must pass before A turnip-patch is fit ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... the jury for the crown. He said in a few words, that no one could be more concerned than he was for the distressing scene which they had just witnessed. But it was the necessary consequence of great crimes to bring distress and ruin upon all connected with the perpetrators. He briefly reviewed the proof, in which he showed that all the circumstances of the case concurred with those required by the act under which the unfortunate ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... lowering, Which God in mercy long delays; Slaves yet may see their masters cowering, While whole plantations smoke and blaze! While whole plantations smoke and blaze! And we may now prevent the ruin, Ere lawless force with guilty stride Shall scatter vengeance far and wide— With untold crimes their hands embruing. Have pity on the slave; Take courage from God's word; Pray, on, pray on, all hearts resolved—these captives shall ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... hurt the nation; and they must try to develop the same virtues that the nation most needs. To be helpless, self-indulgent, or wasteful, will turn the boy into a mighty poor kind of a man, just as the indulgence in such vices by the men of a nation means the ruin of the nation. Let the boy stand stoutly against his enemies both from without and from within, let him show courage in confronting fearlessly one set of enemies, and in controlling and mastering the others. ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... everybody, and never tells the same lie correctly twice running (laughter); when he cudgels his brains how he may make mischief between friends (cheers from the 'Firm'), and get the credit of being the only friend of the very fellows he tries to ruin; then, I say, it's no wonder if Mansfield, and you, and everybody has a spite against him. I don't say much for the Templetonian that hasn't. I don't mean the spite which would lead any one to ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... he is? He told me to tell anybody who come along that he was out. I didn't know you was cops. Oh, I hope there ain't nothin' goin' to ruin the reputation of this place! There ain't a woman in town who runs a decenter place ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... servant who had limped into the hall and stood waiting for his notice. He was the ruin of a man, physically powerful but as a tree wrecked by storm and grown strong again in spite of its mutilation. Pestilence in years long past had attacked him and had left him dumb, distorted of feature, wry-necked and stiffened in the right leg and arm. His left arm, forced to double duty, ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... for them both together; saying he should manage the affairs as he pleased, should have the supreme power, and govern the young man who was only desirous of name and glory. And Caesar himself confessed, that in fear of ruin, and in danger of being deserted, he had seasonably made use of Cicero's ambition, persuading him to stand with him, and to accept the offer of his aid ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... all emotion, how could she live on the cold, pure heights? Yet she owed something intangible and inscrutable to herself. Was it the thing that woman lacked physically, yet contained hidden in her soul? An element of eternal spirit to rise! Because of heartbreak and ruin and irreparable loss must she fall? Was loss of love and husband and children only a test? The present hour would be swallowed in the sum of life's trials. She could not go back. She would not go down. There was wrenched from her ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... two children the years that slipped so smoothly over the Perdu were full of interest. They met often. In the spring, when the Perdu was sullen and unresponsive, and when the soggy meadows showed but a tinge of green through the brown ruin of the winter's frosts, there was yet the grove to visit. Here Reuben would make deep incisions in the bark of the white birches, and gather tiny cupfuls of the faint-flavored sap, which, to the children's ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... visits Boston, 49; on committee to supervise military expenditure in Pennsylvania, 50; disapproves of Braddock's expedition, 51; acts in behalf of the Assembly, 52; arranges for transportation for the expedition, 53; obliged to give bonds to owners, 54; in danger of ruin owing to failure of expedition and losses of wagons and horses, 54; escapes with slight losses, 54; reputed to have made money, 55; builds forts on frontier, 56; increased popularity, 56; scheme for settling barrier colonies west ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... of introducing living creatures,—and even then only the hardier kinds of actinias, mollusks, and crabs. All delicate animals must be intrusted one by one to their new home, and carefully watched for deaths and decay, which, whether arising from dead plants or animals, ruin everything very quickly, unless they be promptly removed. For sulphuretted hydrogen, even in very minute quantities, is sure death to all these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... "specially" gone away for it. Well, Mr. Rhodes, felt safe and we, too, had felt safe until the sad event of Saturday rather neutralised the confidence inspired by the shrewd, but human, millionaire. There was a minority, indeed, who could not logically look for aught but ruin and disaster as a sequence to the shock of Saturday. "Look at the narrow escapes so many had," the minority argued. There were plenty of stories. Legends of hairbreadth escapes were legion. They were well told by fluent liars, by ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... his sword and coat of mail, began to climb the mountain. Half way up it seemed to him as if a hand from behind was pulling him back, and turning he fancied he beheld his mother and heard her say, 'My son, seek not after vain shadows, which yet may be your ruin. Strive not against the will of Odin, nor against the Norns.' The words caused Slagfid to pause for a moment, then the figure of Swanvite danced before him and beckoned to him again, and his mother was forgotten. ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... would take his chance in the game with any other man as long as she was not promised. But there was no use in spoiling everything by being too precipitate. The captain of the Seamew might be simple, but he was not the man to ruin a thing through impulsiveness. That exhibition in the restaurant ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... of business cares and domestic sorrow had begun to tell even upon John's perfect health and nervous system. Facing absolute ruin in the war years and surrounded by pitiable famine and death, he had kept his cheerful temper, his smiling face, his resolute, confident spirit. Now, he was singularly prosperous. The mill was busy nearly night and day, all ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... out that Ham Spink and Carl Dudder blew up the old boathouse, jest to ruin your things. There was a lively row, but Mr. Spink an' Mr. Rudder settled the bill—to keep Ham and Carl ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... followed one of the Grecian heroes, Ulysses, in his wanderings on his return home from Troy, and now we propose to share the fortunes of the remnant of the conquered people, under their chief Aeneas, in their search for a new home, after the ruin of their native city. On that fatal night when the wooden horse disgorged its contents of armed men, and the capture and conflagration of the city were the result, Aeneas made his escape from the scene of destruction, with his father, and his wife, and young son. The ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... and a dozen young slaves were ready to swing little 'missis.' ——, think of learning to rule despotically your fellow creatures before the first lesson of self-government has been well spelt over! It makes me tremble; but I shall find a remedy, or remove myself and the child from this misery and ruin. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... took the place of woodland and ravine, and indicated his approach to civilization. Then a church steeple came in sight, and he knew that he had reached home. In a few moments he was clattering down the single narrow street that lost itself in a chaotic ruin of races, ditches, and tailings at the foot of the hill, and dismounted before the gilded windows of the "Magnolia" saloon. Passing through the long barroom, he pushed open a green-baize door, entered a dark passage, opened another door with a passkey, and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... plays the piano, her adorer stands there, one moment an exanimate statue, the next a disembodied spirit,—while the listening zephyrs murmur more softly in reverence. In a 'Reproach to Laura' she is taxed with being the ruin of her lover's ambition. Because of her the 'giant has shriveled to a dwarf'. She has 'blown away the mountains', that he had 'rolled up' to the sunny heights of glory. In another poem, 'Mystery of Reminiscence', we hear of a cosmic golden age in which Laura, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... his kindness grow every day more fond, I did not suffer any suspicion to enter my thoughts. At last the wretch took advantage of the familiarity which he enjoyed as my relation, and the submission which he exacted as my benefactor, to complete the ruin of an orphan, whom his own promises had made indigent, whom his indulgence had melted, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... in a short, stabbing sigh. He was realising more keenly every day how difficult it was to bring up young girls without a mother's tender care. Hilary, with the strain of hardness and self-seeking which would ruin her disposition unless it were checked in time; beautiful Lettice, longing for love and admiration, and so fatally susceptible to a few flattering words; Norah, with her exceptional talents, and daring, fearless spirit—how was he to ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... conscious of no other desire left in life. She had gone without speaking; abruptly a chasm had been cut in his course, down which the tide of his being plunged in disorder; fell upon rocks; flung itself to destruction. The distress had an effect of physical ruin and disaster. He trembled; he was white; he felt exhausted, as if by a great physical effort. He sank at last into a chair standing opposite her empty one, and marked, mechanically, with his eye upon the clock, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... in place of the superb building she saw only an appalling ruin—in place of the magnificent trees and rare flowers which surrounded it, only briers and thorns, nettles and thistles, could be seen. Terrified and most desolate, she tried to force her way in the midst of the ruins, to seek some knowledge ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... guest; and more rarely, the Chevalier would turn his horse's head in the direction of Bellaise, and the three gentlemen would be received in the unpartitioned parlour, and there treated to such lemon cakes as had been the ruin of La Sablerie; but in general the castle and the convent had little intercourse, or only just enough to whet the appetite of the prisoners for ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chance he would stand in a show-down. Whoever had heard the mess and canteen gossip knew that Jenkins' career had been one long string of miracles by which he had attained promotion without in any way deserving it, and a parallel series of even greater ones by which he had saved himself from ruin by contriving to ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... bookselling speculations. The publisher, far from drinking his wine out of the skull of his author, is in danger of having neither wine nor ordinary cup, and is forced into the most reckless charlatanerie to save himself from utter ruin and complete loss of the generous fluid. Internally, "Fantine" comes before us as an attempt both to include and to supersede the Christian religion. Wilkinson, in a preface to one of his books, stated that he thought that "Christendom was not the error of which Chapmandom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... veered about the ruin and thundered on down to the foot of the hill, Jim Boone threw up his hand for a signal and brought his stallion to a halt on back-braced, ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... a helpless ruin, long abandoned. Not an iota of the roof remained. The sheds for the horses had dropped to the earth; but the walls of the house still remained standing, in part, with the empty windows looking out with a mocking promise ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... countenance which at once told you he was not one at all inclined to fret or borrow trouble. This disposition to take the world easy often irritated my aunt, and she sometimes went so far as to say, "if she didn't stir up Nathan now and then, every thing would go to wreck and ruin about the place." Mindful of Uncle Nathan's advice I did my best to please my aunt, and endeavoured to win her affection by many little offices of kindness, as often as I had opportunity, but for ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... Father gave the bridegroom a yoke of oxen, and mother gave the bride a lot of household linen, and I believe they're as happy as the day is long. Jacobs makes his wife comb her hair, and he waits on the old man as if he was his son, and he is improving the farm that was going to rack and ruin, and I hear he is going to ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... could distinguish nearly every sound of fear known to man: not merely noises of battle tremendous,—of interminable volleying,—of immeasurable charging,—but the roaring of beasts, the crackling and hissing of fire, the rumbling of earthquake, the thunder of ruin, and, above all these, a clamor continual as of shrieks and smothered shoutings,—the Voices that are said to be the voices of the drowned., Awfulness supreme of tumult,—combining all imaginable echoings of fury ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... birds of God," he said to himself, "we hover about a whole wood of the trees of life, venturing only here and there a peck, as if their fruit might be poison, and the design of our creation was our ruin! we shake our wise, owl-feathered heads, and declare they cannot be the trees of life: that were too good to be true! Ten times more consistent are they who deny there is a God at all, than they who believe in a middling kind of God—except indeed that they ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... over it an immense cairn, or pile of stones, on the summit of which they put the assassin to death. Superstition guarded the spot; and for many a year this memorial of Edris remained unviolated, although the lodge had gone to ruin, and its ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... contributing to periodicals. "'What is more potent than fire!' said he, in his gloomiest tone. 'Even thought, invisible and incorporeal as it is, cannot escape it.... All that I had accomplished, all that I planned for future years, has perished by one common ruin, and left only this heap of embers! The deed has been my fate. And what remains? A weary and aimless life; a long repentance of this hour; and at last an obscure grave, where they will bury and forget me!'" There is also an allusion to ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... slaughter, His princes and his peers to servitude, His subjects to oppression and contempt, And his whole kingdom into desolation. Touching our person, seek we no revenge;(C) But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,[12] Whose ruin you three sought, that to her laws We do deliver you. Get you, therefore, hence, Poor miserable wretches, to your death: The taste whereof, Heaven of its mercy give you Patience to endure, and true repentance Of all your dear offences![13]—Bear ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... eyes on the speaker's face with a displeased expression, and after a moment the man turned pale and began to tremble, for he saw that he had given grave offence, and to rouse the anger of a hunchback, especially in the morning, might bring accident, ruin, and perhaps sudden death before sunset. He shook all over, and the blue eyes never winked, and seemed to grow more and more angry till they positively blazed with wrath, and, at last, the fellow uttered a cry of abject fright and turned and ran up the dirty street at the top of his speed. But Cucurullo ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... tremble. The concussion overturned several other masses, which had been in the same nicely-balanced condition, some near at hand, others out of sight, though within earshot, and, for a moment, the travellers felt as if the surrounding pack were disrupting everywhere and falling into utter ruin, but in a few seconds the sounds ceased, and ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... she laughed grimly—"but I want more! For Britta has been caught by his daughter's evil spell. Britta is mine, and I must have her back. Understand me well!—do what you have to do without delay! Surely it is an easy thing to ruin a woman!" ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... interests and talents and passions, the more was the straight-forward earnestness of the school our blessing; and all that beautified and enriched our youth, and gave to it freshness and liveliness, would have turned out to be our ruin, if our elders had taken it seriously, and had formed a life's program out of petty caprices and ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... to revive their past so as to love each other, they had constantly to be reassembling the pieces so as to keep their love from dying through staleness, as if they were undergoing, in darkness and in dust, in an icy ebbing away, the ruin of old age, the impress ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... many great bowlders. And on the far side of the valley lay what appeared to be a mighty city, its great walls, its lofty spires, its turrets, minarets, and domes showing red and yellow in the sunlight. Tarzan was yet too far away to note the marks of ruin—to him it appeared a wonderful city of magnificent beauty, and in imagination he peopled its broad avenues and its huge temples with a throng of happy, ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... knowest Mimmer, And scarce canst think he'd breathe the words of falsehood)— "The year when Norway's desert hills shall echo The half-god's wasted love-caus'd lamentations, When he's rejected by a prophet's daughter, That year shall see the spear which holds his ruin, Shall see the gods in grief, and Odin weeping." Hear that and quake! And fly, and spare thy father! If not, dote on and die, for that's ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... triumphs gild the Roman name; Stripped of the dazzling glare around them cast, Shrinks at their crimes humanity aghast; With equal claim to honor's glorious meed. See Attila his course of havoc lead! O'er Asia's realms, in one vast ruin hurled. See furious Zingis' bloody flag unfurled. On base far different from the conqueror's claim Rests the unsullied column of thy fame; His on the woes of millions proudly based, With blood cemented and with tears defaced; Thine on a nation's welfare fixed sublime, By freedom ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... a sign to the attendant, who came to the door while Louis was packing his little trunk. He learned then that the child had been expelled. The step was serious; it would distress the entire family, and perhaps ruin his young ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... writer, consequently, before reaching the public, must previously undergo the scrutiny of the printer and bookseller, who, both responsible, sworn and patented, will take good care not to risk their patent, the loss of their daily bread, ruin, and, besides this, a fine and imprisonment.—In the second place, the printer, the bookseller and the author are obliged to place the manuscript or, by way of toleration, the work as it goes through the press, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... as though he had put his thoughts into words, the girl who loved him knew that his mind was back in the peaceful manor between the hills, foreseeing its desecration by barbarian hands, foretasting the ruin of those who looked to him for protection. From the twilight of the balcony, she stretched out her arms to him in a passion of yearning pity, and all of selfishness that had been in her grief faded from it utterly, as her heart sent ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... so commonplace. I can tell it you in a few sentences. I married when I was seventeen at my father's command, to save him from ruin. My husband, like my father, was a city merchant. I did not love him, but then I did not know what love was. My girlhood was a miserable one. My father belonged to the sect of Calvinists. Our home ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was nothing left of the straggling settlement to recall its former aspect. The site of Harkutt's old store and dwelling was lost and forgotten in the new mill and granary that rose along the banks of the creek. Decay leaves ruin and traces for the memory to linger over; prosperity is unrelenting in its complete and smiling ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... the flood will teach us how to look at the many terrible accidents, as we foolishly call them, which happen still upon this earth. There are floods still, here and there, earthquakes, fires, fearful disasters, like that great colliery disaster of last year, which bring death, misery and ruin to thousands. The Bible tells us what to think of them, when it tells us of ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... state-room. If he only touched the spring, we about the locality here would be knocked into little bits in less time than it will take you to think about it. Indeed the whole of this side of the hill would become an instantaneous ruin without the sign of a human ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... the subtle Mephistopheles succeeds in engaging the young girl's affection. Her simple lover, Siebel, is discarded, and his nosegay is thrown away at sight of the jewels with which Faust tempts her. When Valentin returns from the wars he learns of her temptation and subsequent ruin. He challenges the seducer, and in the encounter is slain by the intervention of Mephistopheles. Overcome by the horror of her situation, Marguerite becomes insane, and in her frenzy kills her child. She is thrown ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... was the very point suggested last night by his inner sanity, the use that might be made of Winny. Winny's innocent presence in his house might ruin his case if it were known. What was worse, far worse, it would ruin Winny. Whatever he did he must ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Fritz's interest, mind. You are a young man like himself, he will be disposed to listen to you. Do all you can to back his father's influence, and cure him of his infatuation. I tell you plainly, his marriage would be his ruin!" ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... rapid and successful one. After holding one or two livings, he was appointed Chaplain to the King and Sub-Dean of Salisbury, and in 1620 Dean of Westminster. On the fall of Bacon, in July 1621, in whose ruin he had taken a large share, he was sworn in as Lord Keeper. Lloyd observes with reference to the manner in which he fulfilled the duties of this post, that 'the lawyers despised him at first, but the judges admired him at last.' Williams was also ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... am sorry that the world should be so much imposed upon by the dreams of a false prophet, as to imagine the Millennium is at hand. O Grub Street! thou fruitful nursery of towering geniuses! How do I lament thy downfall? Thy ruin could never be meditated by any who meant well to English liberty. No modern lyceum will ever equal thy glory: whether in soft pastorals thou didst sing the flames of pampered apprentices and coy cook maids; or mournful ditties of departing lovers; ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... Kenton, I ask no questions. I do not want to bring anyone into trouble, and you are a hard-working, honest lad by what they tell me, who have a brother fighting in the good Cause and have suffered from the lawless malignants yourself. Was it not the Prince's troopers that wrought this ruin?" pointing towards the blackened gable, "and shot down your father? Aye! The more shame you should hold with them! I wish you no harm I say, nor the blinded folk who must have abused your simplicity: but I am a justice of the peace, and I will not have laws broken on my land. ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stolidity became sullenness. A slow ferocity burned within him; embers of a rage which no brooding ever quenched slumbered red in his brain until his endless meditation became a monomania. And his monomania was the ruin of this woman who had taken from him in the very moment of consummation all that he had ever really loved in the world—a thin, awkward, freckled, red-haired country girl, in whom, for the first and only time in all his life, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... to shun. He pressed his finger on his lip, and drew the child along by narrow courts and winding ways, nor did he seem at ease until they had left it far behind, often casting a backward look towards it, murmuring that ruin and self-murder were crouching in every street, and would follow if they scented them; and that they could not fly ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Marconi was dismissed and returned at once to Europe, never to be heard again in New York; Campanini, who had been the most popular tenor with New Yorkers since the palmy days of Brignoli, took his part; the prices of admission were reduced. All to no avail; ruin had overtaken the manager, and the eighth performance was the last. It was truly pitiable. Signor Campanini deserved better for his bold embarkation in a noble enterprise; but reasons for the failure were easily ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... King's person, during the whole course of the war between his Majesty and his Parliament. Our author was in attendance upon the King when the court resided at Oxford, and was created doctor of the civil laws 1642;[1] and upon the ruin of the King's affairs, he suffered for his attachment to him, and compounded with the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... dashing forward with the rest of us to find out the cause of the delay. 'We must on at any cost! A halt now will ruin our camisado.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... way has the word inundation been abused. This word is generally taken in a bad sense; and it is certainly of frequent occurrence for inundations to ruin fields and sweep away harvests. But if, as is the case in the inundations of the Nile, they were to leave upon the soil a superior value to that which they carried away, we ought, like the Egyptians, to bless and deify them. Would it not be well, before declaiming against the inundations ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... taken that sword—the sword you had always been urging me to take—the sword you unsheathed and laid on my bed that I might be tempted to take it—why I cannot understand, for I never did you a wrong to my poor knowledge. I fell into your snare, and you made use of the fact you had achieved to ruin my character, and drive me from the house in which I was foolish enough to regard myself as conferring favours rather than receiving them. You have caused me to be branded as a thief for taking—at your suggestion—that which was and still ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... of Wen and Wu[181] has not fallen into ruin. It lives in men: the big in big men, the small in small men. In none of them is the Way of Wen and Wu missing. How should the Master not learn it? What need had he ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... serpents or insects, foretells you will be pursued by envy and ruin. To see bronze metals, denotes your fortune will be uncertain ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... indirectly to the ruin of the order of the Templars. The record is one of the dark episodes of history, encompassed with contradictions, full of surprises, painful to contemplate, whatever view may ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... ruin what it bends, It makes amends To the frail downy clocks, Telling their seed a secret that unlocks ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... should know that Christian Europe and America trade upon the bodies, the hearts and the hopes of millions of wretched women, victims of ignorance and of poverty, and that the centres, of Christian civilization are seething cauldrons of immorality, dissipation and disease, which spread ruin and despair in the shadow of the loftiest cathedrals ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Papers are expensive in use and may ruin your prints. There is practical economy and ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... And meet no opposition in their way, Cut a safe passage through the flattering Sea: But when a Storm the bounding Vessel throws, It does each way with equal rage oppose; For when the Seas are mad, could that be calm Like me, it wou'd be ruin'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... tell me whether you can hereafter love, honor, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you can not do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your delay bringing ruin upon your posterity. Your future connection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honor, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... be a disposition and intent on the watch for an opportunity to do harm. But this is altogether foreign to envy.[767] For those who envy their relations and friends would not wish them to come to ruin, or fall into calamity, but are only annoyed at their prosperity; and would hinder, if they could, their glory and renown, but they would not bring upon them irremediable misfortunes: they are content to remove, as in the case of a lofty house, what ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... heating weak brains, stimulating rash ambitions, raising inordinate expectations of which the disappointment is bitterly resented. That these effects are well known even in Europe may be read in a remarkable French novel published not long ago, "Les Deracines," which, describes the road to ruin taken by poor collegians who had been uprooted from the soil of their humble village. And in Asia the disease is necessarily much more virulent, because the transition has been more sudden, and the contrast between old ideas of life and new aspirations is far sharper. From ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... off the point, with battleships in front and rear, and a line of frigates curving towards the rocky peninsula of Quebec. Then came a line of buoys beyond these, with manned boats moored alongside to protect the fleet from fire rafts, which once already the enemy had unavailingly sent down to ruin ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... luxury and feasting, the veteran troops of Cyrus were marching silently under the dripping walls, down the bed of the lowered Euphrates, so that that which had been the very passageway of Babylon's wealth became the pathway of her ruin. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... festivities. They are a time of rejoicing, but there is no rejoicing so keen as that of a ruined debtor, who has succeeded by shrewd devices in avoiding the most relentless of his creditors and has thus postponed his ruin for at least another ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... inevitably followed by misery, suffering, shame, and self-contempt beyond all power of words to express; and he had the resolution and strength to pull himself together and become once more a man, in the best and highest sense of the term, before it was too late and mental, moral, and physical ruin, complete and irretrievable, had overtaken him. He had the joy of seeing his father's belief and pride in him fully restored, and of making that father's declining years easy, pleasant, and happy. Now he reigns in that father's stead, honoured, ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... from the Rue des Ballets into the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, one almost immediately encounters a repulsive ruin. There stood on that spot, in the last century, a house of which only the back wall now remains, a regular wall of masonry, which rises to the height of the third story between the adjoining buildings. This ruin can be recognized ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... thousand slaves worked in the factory and she would as soon have eaten with beasts without plate or spoon, as have shared a meal with them. At one time, when every thing in their house seemed going to ruin, it was her own father who had suggested the papyrus factory to her attention, by telling her, with indignation, that the daughter of an impoverished citizen had degraded herself and her whole class by devoting herself to working in the papyrus factory to earn money. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it is now carried on between nations produce less misery and ruin than formerly, we are indebted perhaps to Christianity for the change more than to any other cause. Viewed therefore even in its relation to this subject, it appears to have been of advantage to the world. It hath humanised the conduct ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... rather, to make—that you do not let all the efforts we have made in your behalf be in vain. Can you not calmly and gradually receive the whole truth? There must be no more relapses, or they will end in black ruin to us all. Now that you can think for yourself, your slightest wish shall be my law. ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... nameless; I paid rather less than one shilling. The poor thing tells me that some cruel person bought it five years ago—an imported piece, with two pseudo-bulbs. They still remain, towering like columns of old-world glory above an area of shapeless ruin. To speak in mere prose—though really the conceit is not extravagant—these fine bulbs, grown in their native land, of course, measure eight inches high by three-quarters of an inch diameter. In the first season, that ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... before my mind. It was here alone that the recluses from the neighbouring Grange met the sainted sisterhood, and mingled with them the prayers and tears of penitence. Otherwise they dwelt apart, each in diligent privacy, intent on their works of education or of charity. All the ruin and decay and somewhat dreary sadness of the scene could not weaken my sense of the beautiful life of thought and faith and hope and love that had once breathed there; and never before had I felt so deeply the enduring reality of the spiritual heroism and self-sacrifice, the glory ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... been built for canvas and oil-lamps, and this new thingumajig that kept her nose snoring at eight knots when normally she was able to boil along at ten, and these unblinking things they called lamps (that neither smoked nor smelled), irked and threatened to ruin her temper. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... no further than the surface. Every person, who is accustomed to drawing in perspective, sees external nature, when he pleases, merely as a picture: this habit contributes much to form a taste for the fine arts; it may, however, be carried to excess. There are improvers who prefer the most dreary ruin to an elegant and convenient mansion, and who prefer a blasted stump to the glorious ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... a moment's warning. The remainder of the party landed without delay. The reflections of Major Barton at this interesting moment, were of a nature the most painful. The lapse of a few hours would place him in a situation in the highest degree gratifying to his ambition, or overwhelm him in the ruin in which his rashness would involve him. In the solemn silence of night, and on the shores of the enemy, he paused a moment to consider a plan which had been projected and matured amidst the bustle of a camp and in a place of ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... ruin my ship and spoil the whole trip," cried the old scientist. "Oh, why did I ever go to ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... no doubt in her mind as to why she was here. She was dangerous to the doctor; she possessed information which would ruin him. He had overheard her conversation on the telephone; more than that he had probably received and opened the chemist's report when it came to the villa. Without doubt he had had something of this sort in mind when he came and suggested ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... he heard me tell Dowley I should have Dickon, the boss mason, and Smug, the boss wheelwright, out there, too, the coal-dust on his face turned to chalk, and he lost his grip. But I knew what was the matter with him; it was the expense. He saw ruin before him; he judged that his financial days were numbered. However, on our way to invite the others, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... your uncle die in the wars of Italy; I witnessed your father's death at the battle of Minden; and I will not be accessory to the ruin of the only remaining ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... upon the peaceful exertions of his talents; to the mechanic, who depended upon his weekly wages; to the annuitant and small proprietor, who depended upon their half-yearly and quarterly incomes—revolution, or even agitation, would bring greater ruin than could come upon their lordships, even by the confiscation of their estates. Lord Wynford, in opposing the bill, said that those who were voting for the second reading, in the hope of introducing amendments in committee, were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that, speaking of second causes, had most of the people that travelled done so, the plague had not been carried into so many country towns and houses as it was, to the great damage, and indeed to the ruin, ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... and wisdom, and a loss in her as of gentleness outgrown and timidity overcome, dazzled him for a moment—caused a revulsion in him which he half recognized as the beginning of a dangerous passion. His former love for her suddenly appeared boyish and unreal to him; and this ruin of a once cherished illusion cost him a pang. Meanwhile, there she was, holding out her hand and smiling with a cool confidence in the success of her advance that would have been impossible to ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... wooden bridge on the south country road, was too brackish to freeze easily; and the ice, being pervaded with weeds, was not much relished by the public. So the wooden ice-house, innocent of paint, and toned by the weather to a soft, sad-coloured gray, stood like an improvised ruin among the pine-trees ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... might remind the elderly citizen of that period before the last war with England, when Salem was a port by itself; not scorned, as she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin, while their ventures go to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New York or Boston. On some such morning, when three or four vessels happen to have arrived at once,—usually from Africa or South America,—or ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ruin'd— To all I said he found a contradiction, And my denials did but more inflame him; I told him of the Vows I'ad made to Curtius, But he reply'd that Curtius was a Subject. But sure at last I'd won upon his Goodness, Had ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... A mighty figure of ruin he was, as he swept along, emptying the clouds as he passed. His face was covered with a veil like the night, his hair was loaded with showers, and his wings and his cloak were dripping wet. The gods of the ocean and the river gods all helped him in his work; till, in a short time the ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... men praised him: most of all Extolled him Calchas, that such marvellous guile He put into the Achaeans' hearts, to be For them assurance of triumph, but for Troy Ruin; and to those battle-lords he cried: "Let your hearts seek none other stratagem, Friends; to war-strong Odysseus' rede give ear. His wise thought shall not miss accomplishment. Yea, our desire even now ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... evidence. No student can be expected to come forward as a witness when he knows that he would be hooted from among his fellows for doing so, and any rising medical man would only achieve professional ruin by following a similar course. The result is that, although hundreds of such abuses are being constantly perpetrated among us, the public knows no more about them than what the distant echo reflected from some handbook of the laboratory affords. I venture to record a little ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... magazines for her to edit them gratis; one long letter from a young girl inconsolable because her favourite hero died, and 'would dear Mrs Bhaer rewrite the tale, and make it end good?' another from an irate boy denied an autograph, who darkly foretold financial ruin and loss of favour if she did not send him and all other fellows who asked autographs, photographs, and auto-biographical sketches; a minister wished to know her religion; and an undecided maiden asked which of her two lovers she should marry. These samples will suffice ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... to surrender?" cried Mr Frewen. "Harkye, my lads, below there; don't let this madman lead you on to your ruin. Will you surrender?" ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... more fastidious form, was exhibited to a traveller by a Scottish peasant:—An English artist travelling professionally through Scotland, had occasion to remain over Sunday in a small town in the north. To while away the time, he walked out a short way in the environs, where the picturesque ruin of a castle met his eye. He asked a countryman who was passing to be so good as tell him the name of the castle. The reply was somewhat startling—"It's no the day to be ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... moment, telling those who implored him to retract while it was still time that they did not know France, that he did, that it was essentially Royalist, and all resistance would be over in a day or two, till the whole ruin burst on him at once, when he became like a man awakened from a dream, utterly confounded with the magnitude of the calamity and as pusillanimous and miserable as he had before been blind and confident. It ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... killed, or worse; and the first man never knows what he has accomplished. That sort of thing is happening all the time, somewhere or other. As a rule, too, the victim is a long way a better man than the original sinner who brought the ruin on him. Week days, we go to see him and, so far as our priestly vocabularies will allow, we help him to swear at the fate that has bowled him over. Nevertheless, on Sunday morning, we haul out our sanctity and our surplices, put them ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Kiskoi, wholly inhabited by Christians, as all the peasants of Bulgaria are. Their houses are nothing but little huts, raised of dirt baked in the sun; and they leave them and fly into the mountains, some months before the march of the Turkish army, who would else entirely ruin them, by driving away their whole flocks. This precaution Secures them in a sort of plenty; for such vast tracts of land lying in common, they have the liberty of sowing what they please, and are generally very industrious husbandmen. ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... rosewater in it. The child may not appreciate what is done for him, may not be particularly grateful, may have disagreeable faults, and continue to have them after much pains on your part to eradicate them,—and yet it is a fact, that to redeem one human being from destitution and ruin, even in some homely every-day course of ministrations, is one of the best possible tonics and alteratives to a sick and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... them had they heard no roar but the river's, whose winter flood it had been safer to breast; no roar but ocean's, whose stormiest waves it had been safer to ride, than encounter the flood of city temptations, which has wrecked their virtue and swept them into ruin." ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... edifice in the United States. Just when and how it was built baffles human curiosity. Whether it was erected for a temple, a palace, or a town hall, cannot be ascertained. The settlement or city surrounding the ruin must have occupied a radius of quite ten miles, judging from the ruins and pieces of broken pottery within that space. An irrigating canal formerly ran from the Gila River to the city or settlement, for domestic uses and ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... she replied; "I know them to my cost. They are ruin to water-melons, riot on peaches, and revenge to anyone who interferes with them. A few weeks ago, they frightened Mrs. Lane and her sister almost into a fainting-fit. You know that high board fence below here? Well! one evening the B. B.'s happened to find out that ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... "what threatened your ruin has turned out to your advantage. Next year you will see everything green and fresh as before: and, as Martin says, you have to thank the fire for clearing away more land for you than a whole regiment of soldiers could have done in two ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... mirror, he was sure that no human eye could fail at first glance to detect the difference between himself and the former purposes of these stockings. Fold, wrinkle, and void shrieked their history with a hundred tongues, invoking earthquake, eclipse, and blue ruin. The frantic youth's final submission was obtained only after a painful telephonic conversation between himself and his father, the latter having been called up and upon, by the exhausted Mrs. Schofield, to ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... fighting' that would not let him sleep. He sat up fully dressed. The one thing present to his mind was the thought that, if anything whatever should happen to the Dictator—and the more the night grew later, the more the possibility seemed to enlarge upon him—the ruin of all Soame Rivers's career seemed certain. Inquiry would assuredly be made into the exact hour when the telegram was sent from the Foreign Office and when it was received at Sir Rupert Langley's, and it would be ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... from a burning house had fallen into the street, and, burning there, had left a smoldering bed of embers, in which the fire was still remaining. William, excited with the feeling of exultation and victory, was riding unguardedly on through the scene of ruin he had made, issuing orders, and shouting in a frantic manner as he went, when he was suddenly stopped by a violent recoil of his horse from the burning embers, on which he had stepped, and which had been concealed from view by the ashes which covered them. William, unwieldy and comparatively ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... before the Franco-Prussian War, when Germany, the world must admit, proved that it was not decadent. Yet every page of it is a Jeremiad, an exhortation to his countryfolk to stop short on the road to ruin. He does not see that the whole nation is slowly and patiently girding its loins for that mighty effort; he believes it is blind, weak, and flighty. If he had lived in England, and a little later, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... here the lynx and red couguar choose their cunning convert; here the racoon rambles over his beaten track; the sly opossum crawls warily along the log, or goes to sleep among the tangle of dry rhizomes; while the gaunt brown wolf may be often heard howling amidst the ruin, or in hoarse bark ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Crass sat down dejectedly on the bottom step of the stairs, overwhelmed with the ruin of his hopes and expectations. He tried to comfort himself with the reflection that all hope was not lost, because he would have to come to the house again on Monday and Tuesday to fix the venetian blinds; but all the same he could not help thinking that it was only a very faint hope, for he felt ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... and strength which a man throws into his works. Thucydides and Xenophon would not deny that poets like Sophocles and Horace have had at least as much influence on the world as they themselves." When the French invasion threatened the ruin of Germany and the downfall of the German sovereigns, Dalberg writes again, in 1796, with perfect serenity: "True courage must never fail! The friends of virtue and truth ought now to act and speak all the more vigorously ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller |
