"Ruinous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been even in his family a very social man. Jokes and songs and daffing of all kinds were alien to his nature. Yet his grave and pleasant smile had been a familiar thing, and gentle words had always hitherto come readily to his lips. But after his ruinous loss, he seldom spoke unless it was to his mother. Christina he noticed not, either by word or look, and the poor girl was broken-hearted under this silent accusation. For she felt that Andrew doubted both her and Jamie, and though she was indignant ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... was no whit intimidated by the news that Mrs. Reade sowed abroad. The women exclaimed and chattered, the men gaped and shook their heads, the children hung about the ruinous gate that shut them out from the twenty-yard strip of garden which led up to Stott's cottage. Curiosity was the dominant emotion. Any excuse was good enough to make friendly overtures, but the baby ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... the nursery and fashionable boarding school. Under its influence, mothers will not trust the souls of their children to the guardianship of irreligious nurses, nor expose them to the perils of a corrupted and heartless fashion. They will deny themselves the ruinous pleasures of a gay and reckless association with the world; and with maternal solicitude, attend upon the opening of those buds of life which God has committed to them. The pious mother will wield her power over her children, by the force of this sympathy; for her's is the deepest, purest, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... compulsory education. No one can vote who cannot read and write. We believe that one man's ignorance should not countervail the just influence of another man's intelligence. Ignorance is not only ruinous to the individual, but destructive to society. It is an epidemic ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... These are the five besetting sins of a general, ruinous to the conduct of war. 14. When an army is overthrown and its leader slain, the cause will surely be found among these five dangerous faults. Let them be a ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... crushing American industries out of existence, threw vast quantities of goods into the American markets, completely swamping native productions, and making it impossible for native manufacturers to compete with the importations. It was this ruinous relapse from comparative prosperity that prompted the agitation for a protective tariff. As further evidence of British purpose to do all the damage possible to American interests, even in time of peace, it may be mentioned that when Lord Exmouth, with a powerful fleet, visited Algiers in 1816, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... lean upon the supporting barrier, and rapt children who hold by their skirts and hands. There is not the eager New England neatness about these homes; now and then they have rather a sloven air, which does not discord with their air of comfort; and very, very rarely they stagger drunkenly in a ruinous neglect. Except where a log cabin has hardily survived the pioneer period, the houses are nearly all of one pattern; their facades front the river, and low chimneys point either gable, where a half-story forms the attic of the two stories below. Gardens of pot-herbs flank them, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... preface before this sermon, he said, There are four or five things I have to tell you this night; and the 1st is, A bloody sword, a bloody sword, a bloody sword for thee, O Scotland, that shall pierce the hearts of many. 2dly, Many miles shall ye travel and see nothing but desolation and ruinous wastes in thee, O Scotland. 3dly, The fertilest places in Scotland shall be as waste as the mountains. 4thly, The women with child shall be ript up and dashed in pieces. And 5thly, Many a conventicle has God had in thee, O Scotland, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... evident, however unwilling we might have been at first to admit the conclusion, that the Fury could proceed no farther without repairs, and that the nature of those repairs would in all probability involve the disagreeable, I may say the ruinous, necessity of heaving the ship down. After rowing about three-quarters of a mile we considered ourselves fortunate in arriving at a bolder part of the beach, where three grounded masses of ice, having ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... embarrassment is unquestionably felt in the money-market, and all stock become unseasonably low for the sellers, yet is the country generally admitted to be very prosperous, and perfectly able to meet this shock without any permanent or ruinous difficulty. We shall see. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... ruinous than the big house, Pierre and Wilbur took their horses, and a series of whinnies greeted them from the stalls. To look down that line of magnificent heads raised above the partitions of the stalls was like glancing into the stud of some crowned head who made hunting ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... borders of the Persian Gulf, to the shores of the Baltic Sea; from Babylon and Palmyra, Egypt, Greece, and Italy; to Spain and Portugal, and the whole circle of the Hanseatic League, we trace the same ruinous [end of page iii] remains of ancient greatness, presenting a melancholy contrast with the poverty, indolence, and ignorance, of the present race of inhabitants, and an irresistible proof of the ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... they passed a large building, with lights still twinkling in the windows. Presently the tall Highlander stood up and sniffed. Then motioning Waverley to do as he did, he began to crawl on all fours toward a low and ruinous sheep-fold. With some difficulty Edward obeyed, and with so much care was the stalk conducted, that presently, looking over a stone wall, he could see an outpost of five or six soldiers lying round their camp-fire, while in front a sentinel paced backward and forward, regarding the heavens ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... else that is abominable; and if they used as many pipes as I do, they would know the blessing of getting them cheap, and start an associate baccy factory besides. Shall we try? But, this one little mistake excepted (though, if they repeat it, it will become a great mistake, and a wrong, and a ruinous wrong), they are much better fellows than poor I, and doing a great deal more good, and at every fresh news of their deeds I feel like Job's horse, when he scents ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... by, across the glen—a little ruinous, perhaps, but we can soon repair it. Come to the window; you can see the place from here.' He pointed out a kind of thickset tower which crowned a pretty village set in orchards. 'If you care to see it we will go there when I have ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... resisted interference with its rights on the part of the Church. The nobles were reduced to obedience by the infliction of severe punishments. The common people were kept under. But the domestic government of Richelieu made it possible for the selfish and ruinous policy of Louis XIV. to arise. The key of his foreign policy was hostility to Austria and Spain, to both branches of the Hapsburgs. Before he took active measures against them, he had to procure quiet in France, and to provide ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... of humanity we could hope that this opinion was correct; but facts of recent date compel us to believe that it is as false as it is ruinous to the best interests of our country and the souls of men. A few of these facts, gathered from unquestionable sources, and some of them related by the actors and sufferers themselves, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... South there is time to spare for sowing. Be particular to have a good seed-bed, that the plants may grow well from the first; if the early growth be starved, the plants become the victims of club and other ruinous maladies. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... popularity with the rank and file of his own party, was hopeless. I contented myself with restoring order and arousing enthusiasm in the main body of our partizans in the doubtful and uneasy states. So ruinous had been Goodrich's management that even at that comparatively simple task we should not have succeeded but for the fortunate fact that the great mass of partizans refuses to hear anything from the other side; they regard reasoning as disloyalty—which, ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... The idea that these are determinable by the tariff is the corner stone of protection in the States. The artisan has been so sedulously educated to believe that the chief object of import duties is to protect him from falling into a ruinous competition with what is called the "pauper labor of Europe," that no movement on the part of workmen in the direction of free trade is ever likely to arise in America. I am not now about to argue the question of protection, except in so far as it relates to labor; but it may be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... believe interference to be right, and so believing, they think it necessary to carry out their views at whatever cost. A remarkable instance of this was shewn by the virtuous and high-minded Duncan Forbes of Culloden. He thought the introduction of foreign commodities ruinous to the country. He considered that whatever was paid for them was so much lost to his fellow-countrymen. On this principle he waged a determined war against a foreign commodity coming into vogue in his latter days, using all his endeavours to suppress its ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... he was taken unawares, no one could be more wary or guarded when a crisis arrived whose gravity he had foreseen. In the summer of 1881 the House of Lords made some amendments to the Irish Land Bill which were deemed ruinous to the working of the measure, and therewith to the prospects of the pacification of Ireland. A conflict was expected which might have strained the fabric of the constitution. The excitement which quickly arose in Parliament spread to the ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... which the Turkish admiral now considered extremely doubtful. The siege of St. Elmo, which Mustafa had said would last at the outside for five or six days, had now been in progress for four weeks; and, although the fort was in a ruinous condition, nothing seemed capable of daunting those invincible warriors ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... devoted, that I should think in another year or so, at the rate she was going, she would have landed you in the bankruptcy court. Her books for the last ten years—I have gone through them carefully—show an expenditure that is positively ruinous. However, I think I have let her see that her housekeeping must be done upon very ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... the castle court, His charger trampling many a prickly star Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones. He looked and saw that all was ruinous. Here stood a shattered archway plumed with fern; And here had fallen a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: And high above a piece of turret stair, Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound Bare ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... was to 'do for' the Vicar, who had taken solitary possession of the Vicarage, but would soon be joined there by one or more curates. He had been inducted into the ruinous chancel of the poor old church, had paid the architect of the Rat-house fifty pounds (a sum just equalling the proceeds of the bazaar) to be rid of his plans; had brought down a first-rate architect; and in the meantime was working the little iron ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to find out when mischief was being planned. In fact, this aunt and mother, busy with her own cares, knew nothing of the possibilities for a child whose confidence and love had been won, and who, through loving counsel, had gained a knowledge of evils and their effects before he had formed ruinous habits or his mind had been polluted with false ideas. Being thus left to themselves to discern as best they could the difference between right and wrong, the boys nearly always chose the wrong; and as a result, constantly went deeper and deeper ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... spiritual gallant: "From whence come you, Mr. Smack?" says the afflicted young lady; "and what news do you bring?" Smack, nothing abashed, informed her he came from fighting with Pluck: the weapons, great cowl-staves; the scene, a ruinous bakehouse in Dame Samuel's yard. "And who got the mastery, I pray you?" said the damsel. Smack answered, he had broken Pluck's head. "I would," said the damsel, "he had broken your neck also." "Is that the thanks I am to have for ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... have referred, it is true, to high Whig authority:—"The late Lord Oxford told me," says Lord Bolingbroke, "that my Lord Somers being pressed, I know not on what occasion or by whom, on the unnecessary and ruinous continuation of the war, instead of giving reasons to show the necessity of it, contented himself to reply that he had been bred up in a hatred to France."—But no authority, however high, can promote a prejudice into a reason, or conciliate any respect for this sort of vague, traditional ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... upon her when she severed the tie which bound them, and which, after weeks of careful research, she discovered adjoined a tract owned by Ames. Pushing aside office boy, clerk, and guard, she reached the inner sanctum of the astonished financier himself and offered to sell at a ruinous figure. A few well-timed tears, an expression of angelic innocence on her beautiful face, a despairing gesture or two with her lovely arms, coupled with the audacity which she had shown in forcing an entrance into his office, effected the man's capitulation. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... could be done to stay its fury. To save the town, houses were demolished, to form wide gaps across which the flames could not reach. It was the general impression that corrugated iron was more or less fireproof. However, it burnt like cardboard. Ruinous to some as the early fires were, they benefited the general community, as more substantial buildings were erected, and ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... one must needs submit to it; if one has erred in making the oath, one would err more in not keeping it; the promise must be fulfilled, however harmful it may be to him who exacts it. It would be ruinous to you if you did not fulfil it. It seems as though the moral of these fables implies that a supreme necessity may constrain one to comply with evil. God, in truth, knows no other judge that can compel him to give what may turn to evil, he is not ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... two-and-halfs at 50-1/2-50-1/4:' and so roars on the distracting Babel till the hour for closing strikes. Much of this business is no doubt legitimate—the bona fide sale and purchase of stock by the brokers, for which they charge their clients the very moderate commission of 2s. 6d. per L.100. The ruinous gambling of the Stock-Exchange is another matter, and is chiefly carried on by 'time' bargains—a sham-business, managed in this way:—A nominally buys of B L.100,000 worth of stock in consols, to be delivered at a fixed price, say 96, on the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... commander allots shelter in the barracks at Forton, where for the present they exist on two pence a day each. Plymouth, which receives fewer of them, frowns on the newcomers as politically suspect and economically ruinous. The mayor assures Dundas that, if more priests arrive, or are sent there, they will be driven away by the townsfolk for fear of dearth of corn. In Jersey the food question eclipses all others; for 2,000 priests (so it is said) land ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Happiness." "For Right and Liberty," a poem by Matthew Hilson, is commendable in sentiment and clever in construction, but lacks perfection in several details of phraseology. In the third line of the third stanza the word ruinous must be replaced by a true dissyllable, preferably ruin'd. "For Their Country," a short story by Margaret Trafford, is vivid in plot and truly heroic in moral, but somewhat deficient in technique, particularly at the beginning. Miss Trafford should use ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... to be corrupted with money.[1] In February the lord general was afflicted[a] with an ague, so ruinous to his health, and so obstinate in its duration, that in May he obtained permission to return to England, with the power of disposing, according to his judgment, of the chief command.[2] A rapid and unexpected ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... views have undergone a change so far as to be convinced that no alteration of the Constitution in this respect is wise or expedient. The influence of an accumulating surplus upon the credit system of the country, producing dangerous extensions and ruinous contractions, fluctuations in the price of property, rash speculation, idleness, extravagance, and a deterioration of morals, have taught us the important lesson that any transient mischief which may attend the reduction of our revenue to the wants of our Government is to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... nothing which he undertook was decreed in the end to prosper: after four seasons of prosperity a change ensued: the farm was far from cheap; the gains under any lease were then so little, that the loss of a few pounds was ruinous to a farmer: bad seed and wet seasons had their usual influence: "The gloom of hermits and the moil of galley-slaves," as the poet, alluding to those days, said, were endured to no purpose; when, to crown all, a difference arose between the landlord and the tenant, as to the terms of the lease; ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of it herself. A dead weight of apprehension lay like lead in her breast. Her conscience pointed a deadly finger. First Billy Dale, now her brother, and, sandwiched in between, the loosed fire furies which were taking toll in bodily injury and ruinous loss. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... source of wealth, since the "black diamonds," concerning our available quantity of which Professor Jevons scared our fathers when some of us were agreeably younger, may be indifferent in quality or lie with such faults and in a manner so inconvenient that it can only be worked at a ruinous cost. Nevertheless, whenever the magic word "coal" is whispered the characters are thrilled, like housewives reminded by their husband that they have forgotten to order it at the "lowest summer prices." No doubt the author will say that after all coal is coal, and may be reminded of the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... them alone are to be endured, but to have them co-exist is suffered in no well- governed nation. If materials of foreign growth were at an easy rate, a high price might be the better borne in things of our own product, but to have both dear at once (and by reason of the duties laid upon them) is ruinous to the inferior rank of men, and this ought to weigh more with us, when we consider that even of the common people a subdivision is to be made, of which one part subsist from their own havings, arts, labour, and industry; and the other part subsist a ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... lasted several centuries, notwithstanding the failures, losses, and disappointments of those engaged in it. Indeed, so severe and ruinous were these, in many instances, that laws were passed to forbid the study. In Germany, many of the alchemists who had the unfortunate reputation of possessing this wonderful stone were imprisoned and furnished with apparatus till they should purchase their liberty ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... of schooling and so had he. I think by denying the youngsters books and too much knowledge, he thought to clip their wings at the start and keep them contented. In tune with the farm, I mean, and willing to stay. He'd seen enough of ruinous discontent when his sister and himself went out in the world and tried their wings. Just a fancy. I may be wrong. Well, Mr. O'Neill, I'm sorry. There's no ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... westward of the Cathedral Church. The building, with its site and garden, having been vested in the Crown, when Episcopacy was abolished, were granted in the year 1791, for the purpose of erecting an Infirmary; and the ancient but ruinous building was then removed.—(Caledonia, vol. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... Kings are passing deathward in the dark Of days that had been splendid where they went; Their crowns are captive and their courts are stark Of purples that are ruinous, now, and rent. For all that they have seen disastrous things: The shattered pomp, the split and shaken throne, They cannot quite forget the way of Kings: Gravely ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... by reminding Pierre of the ruinous attempt which he had made to improve the artistic quality of religious prints. The remains of his fortune had been lost in that attempt, and the thought made him all the more angry, in presence of the wretched productions with which the shop was crammed. Had anyone ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... there is an end to all things and the end of all my ruinous luck came at Venice. It came with Margaret Murchie; it came, I believe, at the very instant that I saw her sitting in a cafe there—saw her sitting alone, golden from head to foot, golden of hair, golden of skin, golden rays shining from her eyes, showers ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... to take time to think, to send my husband to him, to consult my friends. Told me my project was ruinous, that I would lose every dollar I put into it, and begged, entreated me to take time; but all to no purpose, when a ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... which, in consequence of the Rhamadan, was not granted him until the following evening. The consul, Captain Smyth of the navy, and Major Denham, attended. The latter represented, in the strongest terms, how greatly they were disappointed at the unexpected and ruinous delay, which they had experienced at Mourzouk, and requested a specific time being fixed for their proceeding to Bornou, stating also, that were the answer not satisfactory, he should proceed forthwith to England, and represent to the government how grievously they had been deceived. The I bashaw ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... at cross-purposes," said I. "The spirit is precisely what I came in quest of. I bought the Flying Scud at a ruinous figure, run up by Mr. Carthew through an agent; and I am, in consequence, a bankrupt. But if I have found no fortune in the wreck, I have found unmistakable evidences of foul play. Conceive my position: I am ruined through ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... leaders are flesh and blood, and some are only wood—plain wooden wood. Meantime, the story of one butchery doesn't get to the Missouri River before the story of another catches up with it. It's bad enough when it's ruinous to just my own commercial business—but in cases like this, ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... clergy follow it, chanting the office for the dead. The undertaker is a personage entirely unknown in Spain. The church takes possession of the body, and keeps it until the time of interment, and the bill of expenses for the offices which the church performs frequently amounts to a sum absolutely ruinous. There is a Spanish city of which it is recorded that no sooner has a person breathed his last sigh, than the surviving family are importuned by deputations from the different religious communities, offering their respective services to conduct the interment on the cheapest scale ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... law of the State, and which you and many of us considered, if not sacred, at least to have been permanently settled, it becomes us to be on the alert to defeat a measure, which if it should succeed, will not only be ruinous, and in the highest degree unjust to many of us who have emigrated here under the most solemn assurance that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude" should exist; but it will be of incalculable injury to the interest of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... by Gawd," roared the Captain, red in the face with rage and the strain on his muscles, "that I won't! If this ship goes back, you'll take her back yourself, with me and my mates under duress. It's ruinous to agree to such a proposition. I'd lose this ship ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... gathering a few treasured possessions. The warriors, awakening the forest echoes with their defiant war-cries, took up their position in an old fort which commanded the river. From the opposite side the Kentucky rifle-men assailed the fort, which, in its decayed and ruinous condition, offered but poor shelter. The Indians quickly evacuated it, but not before several had been killed. While the defenders were occupied by the attack from across the river, a detachment of the enemy crept round through the wood and suddenly emerged at the rear of the village. ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... inevitably and irremediably overtake him if he had the hardihood to carry out his wicked purpose against Antonio and Marianna's peace and happiness. He depicted in startling colours the folly and madness of amorous old men, who call down upon their own heads the most ruinous mischief which Heaven can inflict upon a man, since all the love which might have fallen to their share is lost, and instead hatred and contempt shoot their fatal darts at ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... of a level field to the east of the town of Nieuport in 1914 was a high square weather-beaten tower, somewhat ruinous, built of stone and brick in strata, showing the different eras of construction in the various colors of the brick work ranging from light reds to dark browns and rich blacks. This tower, half built and square topped, belonged to a structure begun in the twelfth century, half monastery, ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... appreciators of all that is ancient and picturesque in England, invariably come to a halt, holding their breath in a sudden catch of wonder, as they pass through the half-ruinous gateway which admits to the Close of Wrychester. Nowhere else in England is there a fairer prospect of old-world peace. There before their eyes, set in the centre of a great green sward, fringed by tall elms and giant beeches, rises the vast fabric of the thirteenth-century Cathedral, ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... invite Mr. Jabavu to this meeting of Natives of his town, and in fact, to treat him with the same respect as we had shown the Principal of Lovedale with such happy results; but, to our horror, we found that Mr. Jabavu was not only preaching the Backvelders' dangerous politics, that were ruinous to native interests, but that, besides their dangerous politics, he had imbibed their baser quality of ingratitude. For this man had not only enjoyed our free hospitality on three occasions, when he visited up-country, and the hospitality of our relatives at various times in other ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... the house in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, No. 37, in which most of Christopher's childhood was certainly passed. This is a house close to St. Andrew's Gate, which gate still stands in a beautiful and ruinous condition. ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... onward had suggested to John Ivy the idea of collecting her pieces also, or at any rate of making up a book of her rhymes by adding many in manuscript to the few that had seen the light, for she had been able to get no great number into print. A ruinous charge was made for costs of publication; a few reviews noticed her poor little volume; but nobody talked of it, nobody bought it, and it fell dead in a fortnight—if it had ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... bursting, from the many hundreds near Not one single scornful titter rose on thy complacent ear. Then to show thee to the ladies, with our usual want of sense We engaged the place in Park Street at a ruinous expense; Even our own three-volumed Cooper waived his old prescriptive right, And deluded Dickens figured first on that eventful night. Clusters of uncoated Yorkers, vainly striving to be cool, Saw thee ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... troubles. The financial condition which became serious in the spring and summer of 1857 was beginning to cause him alarm, and soon after the new year came in he felt obliged to talk over his affairs and to advise his wife to loan the mill company money not elsewhere to be had except at ruinous interest. She wished simply to give him the sum needed, but he said no, and made clear to her why he required help. She was pleased to be consulted, and showing, as usual, notable comprehension of the business situation, at once did as ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... first ever held in this State, called by the women of Indiana to consider the true position of woman. An excellent but short address was made by the President, Hannah Hiatt, on the importance of the movement and the ruinous consequences of dividing the interests of men and women, and making their relations antagonistic in the State, the Church, and the affairs of every-day life. Much was said against woman's taking part in government. It would degrade her to vote and hold office, and destroy her influence as ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... met under the chairmanship of their great landowners, and resolved on petitions praying "that British might be exported and that Irish wool might be excluded from England;" thereupon the Yorkshire manufacturers met and resolved that "the exportation of wool would be ruinous to the trade and manufactures of England," that the manufacturers would be obliged to leave the kingdom for want of employment, and that the importation of Irish woollen ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... Parliament-security, and was daily increased. Neither could I ever learn, whether that lord had the smallest prospect of clearing this incumbrance, or whether there were policy, negligence, or despair at the bottom of this unaccountable management. But the consequences were visible and ruinous; for by this means navy-bills grew to be forty per cent. discount, and upwards; and almost every kind of stores, bought by the navy and victualling offices, cost the government double rates, and sometimes more: so that the public ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... the grand depot of the North-West Company falling rapidly to decay, presenting in its present ruinous state but a shadow of departed greatness. It is now occupied as a petty post, a few Indians and two or three old voyageurs being the sole representatives of the crowded throngs of former times. It must have been a beautiful establishment in ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... to the half-ruinous wing already mentioned, to a small kitchen, opening under a great sloping buttress, and presented him to his wife, an English woman, some ten years younger than himself. She received him with a dignified retraction of the feelers, but the moment she understood his needs, ministered ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Ludovic's passion for herself, she had been in part quelled. She was not able now to stand up bravely before her suitor, and fight him as she had done at first with all the weapons which she had at her command. The man knew something which it was almost ruinous to her that he should know, something by which, if her aunt knew it, she would be quite ruined. How could it be that Herr Steinmarc should have learned anything of Ludovic's wild love? He had not been in the house,—he had been ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... an advantage this would be to the property, because it would leave your hands free for many improvements in which I heartily go with the progress of the age, for which, as merely tenant for life, you could not raise the money except upon ruinous terms; new cottages for labourers, new buildings for tenants, the consolidation of some old mortgages and charges on the rent-roll, etc. And allow me to add that I should like to make a large increase to the jointure of my dear mother. Vining ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pillars and sinews by which antichristianism remains; and were these dispirited, the whole building would quickly become a ruinous heap. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... height in Louisiana in 1874. Ever since 1872 the whites in that State had been chafing under republican rule. The election of Governor Kellogg was disputed, and he was accused of having plunged the State into ruinous debt. In August, 1874, a disturbance occurred which ended in the deliberate shooting of six republican officials. President Grant prepared to send military aid to the Kellogg government. Thereupon Penn, the defeated candidate for Lieutenant-governor in 1872, issued an address to the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... sell both wholesale and retail; and by this economy received considerable profit and income. Afterwards, to unite my concerns in one spot, I bought a large house, which stood on a great deal of ground, but was ruinous, pulled it down, and built that your majesty saw yesterday, which, though it makes so great an appearance, consists, for the most part, of warehouses for my business, with apartments absolutely necessary for myself ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... was caught in a trap; that the only way out was the desperate expedient of forcing a passage by a night attack, and, failing in that, he must fight a battle next day under so many disadvantages that ruinous defeat, with the probable loss of the army, was staring him in the face. It would be interesting to know what Schofield then thought about his intimate knowledge of Hood's character, and his cool calculation based thereon, for which he afterwards so unblushingly claimed ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... thinking, and after some remonstrances at second-hand which proved unavailing, his Grace resolved that this "pestilent Scotchman" must be got rid of. A bill in Chancery was filed against him on some pretext or other, with the view of putting an end to his tenancy. Years of irritating and ruinous litigation followed, the ultimate result of which was a decision in Mr. Gourlay's favour. But it was the old story of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. The protracted litigation had eaten up the substance of the successful litigant, and upon ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... we rode, with the trout flicking in and out among the horses' hoofs. The building, whatever it was, stood a hundred yards or more from the river on a little southern slope which had been once terraced carefully. Over the walls, which were ruinous, the weeds grew rankly, and among them a young tree had found a rooting. The place had been undisturbed for long years; and I thought that it seemed as if men shunned it as haunted, for of a certainty not a foot had gone within half ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... a miserable language is our English in some respects; so awkward, so incompact! Look at the phrase 'unheard of,' and compare it with the Latin 'inauditus.' What a pity we were not born Romans or Greeks, with Yankee notions! Tell your Gotham friends that if they are speaking of a ruinous brick wall, they must say dilaterated, from 'later,' a brick, and not 'dilapidated,' from 'lapis,' a stone. One might as well say a man is 'stoned' to death with brick-bats.' . . . WHAT sad and startling ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... to go through the winter? Shall us hae bread and scrape to eat?" Here, a man wonders if in the strong moorland air some slight non-incapacitating ailment will leave him: illness is inconvenient and disappointing, but not ruinous. There, Tony wonders if the exposure and continual boat-hauling are not taking too much out of him; if he is not ageing before his time; if he will not be past earning before the younger children are off his hands. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... fluttering ribbons, the grass had been closely mown, for there were to be foot-races and wrestling bouts for the amusement of the guests. Beneath a spreading tree a dozen fiddlers put their instruments in tune, while behind the open windows of a small, ruinous house, dwelt in by the sexton, a rustic choir was trying over "The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green." Young men and maidens of the meaner sort, drawn from the surrounding country, from small plantation, store and ordinary, mill and ferry, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... appeared, was a hard and haughty man, but at heart he was not all bad; when he had listened to the story of his victim's wrongs and more fully appreciated the courage, the devotion of her doughty followers, he was touched. For her sake, and theirs, he proposed a truce to this ruinous struggle. What kind of a truce? Well, he refused entirely to renounce his claim to the throne, but—they might share it. He was a handsome man and no wickeder than the general run of dukes; he would make a becoming ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the Prince Regent's side, in 1745. Golf and archery, since the Reformation at least, were the chief recreations of the students, and the archery medals bear all the noblest names of the North, including those of Argyll and the great Marquis of Montrose. Early in the present century the old ruinous college buildings of St. Salvator's ceased to be habitable, except by a ghost! There is another spectre of a noisy sort in St. Leonard's. The new buildings are mere sets of class-rooms, the students live where ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... also a manufacturer, thus belonging to the two classes for which the poet had the greatest abhorrence. But the intimacy was never for a moment shaken, and indeed in that house Mr. Wordsworth expounded the ruinous tendency of Reform and manufactures with even unusual copiousness, on account of the admiring affection with which he felt himself surrounded. The tone in which he spoke was never such as could give pain or excite antagonism; and—if I may be pardoned for descending to ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Achilles Peleus' son, the ruinous wrath that brought on the Achaians woes innumerable, and hurled down into Hades many strong souls of heroes, and gave their bodies to be a prey to dogs and all winged fowls; and so the counsel of Zeus wrought out its accomplishment from the day when first strife parted Atreides ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... pay him and have revenge if I live long enough, and I'll never rest till I do. No man ever got the best of me, and in the long run no man ever shall!" Like an Indian he bided his time, though waiting and watching with his merciless yellow eyes until the chance might come when he could deal a ruinous blow. ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... Nevertheless, in free governments, it is omnipotent; and the business of the statesman is to find the means to shape, control, and direct it. According as that is done, it is beneficial and conservative, or destructive and ruinous. The Public Opinion of the civilized world is International Law; and it is so great a force, though with no certain and fixed boundaries, that it can even constrain the victorious despot to be generous, and aid an oppressed people in its ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... gate, which is locked by the police at a certain hour every evening (I believe at ten o'clock); and any Jew found without its precincts after that time, is liable to punishment and a heavy fine. The street is narrow and dirty, the houses wretched and ruinous, and the appearance of the inhabitants squalid, filthy, and miserable—on the whole, it was a painful scene, and one I should have avoided, had I followed my own inclinations. If this specimen of the effects of superstition and ignorance was depressing, the next was not less ridiculous. We drove ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... western extremity the remains of the monastery were in a less ruinous condition than at the eastern. In certain places, where the stout old walls still stood, repairs had been made at some former time. Roofs of red tile had been laid roughly over four of the ancient cells; wooden doors had been added; and the old monastic chambers had been ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... system of long payments which exists here is a wholesome one as regards the habits of the fishermen?-I think it is most ruinous. I think I have had very good opportunities of judging of the effect of the system upon the people, being intimately acquainted with them, and having received the statements in private of a great many of them; and I cannot ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Yet the measure was popular with soldiers, and Congress was unanimously in favor of it. Great was the amazement of his fellow-members when the young member from the Nineteenth Ohio district rose in his seat and earnestly opposed it. He objected that the policy was ruinous, involving immense expense, while effecting little good. He claimed that the country had a right to the service of every one of its children at such a crisis, ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... take part; the ghost consumes only the invisible soul of the food, and it is proper that what is left should furnish refreshment for the living.[673] The funeral festivities are sometimes protracted, and become occasions of enjoyment to the circle of kinsfolk, in some cases at a ruinous expense to the family of the deceased, as is true now sometimes of Irish and other wakes. The honor of the family is involved, and this fact, together with the natural desire for pleasure, has contributed to the development ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... been reading trashy novels, I suppose; at any rate, she fell in love with her own husband. She went in daily dread that he would find it out. I argued with her, reasoned with her, entreated her to give up such ruinous folly. It was of no use. She wrote him letters—three sheets, crossed and underlined. I warned her that sooner or later he would read one of them. He did; and he never forgave her. That happy home is all broken up now—simply because ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... offer as a favor to you, not to him, to part with just a few feet in the "Golden Age," or the "Sarah Jane," or some other unknown stack of croppings, for money enough to get a "square meal" with, as the phrase went. And you were never to reveal that he had made you the offer at such a ruinous price, for it was only out of friendship for you that he was willing to make the sacrifice. Then he would fish a piece of rock out of his pocket, and after looking mysteriously around as if he feared he might be waylaid and robbed if caught with such wealth in his possession, he would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... been talking with Godfrey about the increasing poor-rate and the ruinous times, and had not heard ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... parted, the pleased look was in her eyes as they rested on trees and shrubs which lined the half ruinous stone walls on either side. "Everything seems so alive and glad this afternoon," ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... had too much good sense—in view of the very large fortune settled upon the Archduchess—to diminish it by any imprudent insistence on a claim which, extremely valuable as a ground for some advantageous compromise, could only prove ruinous if pressed to any exact recognition. The Government's advisers, therefore, approved most highly of the marriage between M. de Hausee and the Archduchess Marie-Brigitte-Henriette, and were disposed to hasten it on by every ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... Lucius, from our troups I straid, To gaze vpon a ruinous Monasterie, And as I earnestly did fixe mine eye Vpon the wasted building, suddainely I heard a childe cry vnderneath a wall: I made vnto the noyse, when soone I heard, The crying babe control'd with ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... you." Dumont never would accept a favor from any one. He regarded favors as profitable investments but ruinous debts. ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... execution within the last five years. It is much to be regretted that this project was not commenced earlier. The residence of small bands of Indians, with their own feeble and imperfect government, carried on within any organized state or territory, is ruinous. Those who argue that because of the removal of the Indians from within the jurisdiction of the states, or an organized territory, therefore they will be driven back from the country in which it is now proposed to place them, evince but a very partial and imperfect ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... frequent the house as much as his attendance rendered necessary without being pretty well aware of the spirit of the place; and while he grieved over the ruinous waste of health to which these young creatures were exposed, he was struck to the heart with horror at the idea ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... during the present century and within the memory of man that in France and Russia the welfare of the people has become the steady object of diplomacy, and this because any other object would now be ruinous. But it is chiefly in America that the most wonderful advance has been made, and it is here, and at the present moment, that the most tremendous struggle has arisen between the adherents of the old faith and the new. In the South, the old feudal ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in the army, it would be, above all, necessary that he should lay aside his name. We are in duty bound to consider the wishes of foreign governments: France is divided into so many parties, that a war could only be ruinous, and therefore your son must change ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... lamentable state of decay. It will have been, by that time, totally destroyed, at three different periods, by three successive earthquakes. Indeed, to say the truth, what little of its former self may then remain, will be found in so desolate and ruinous a state that the patriarch shall have removed his residence to Damascus. This is well. I see you profit by my advice, and are making the most of your time in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the command of Mr. John Morley and the Liberal Government, and sends its cordial greetings to the agitators all over India who are doing their utmost to awaken their countrymen of every race and creed to the ruinous effect of our rule, which, by draining away 35,000,000l. worth of produce yearly from India without return, has manufactured poverty upon a scale unprecedented in history and is converting the greatest Empire the world has ever seen into a vast pauper warren and human ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... accomplishment of these vitally important objects than the creation of an onerous national debt. Our own experience and also that of other nations have demonstrated the unavoidable and fearful rapidity with which a public debt is increased when the Government has once surrendered itself to the ruinous practice of supplying its supposed necessities by new loans. The struggle, therefore, on our part to be successful must be made at the threshold. To make our efforts effective, severe economy is necessary. This ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Notwithstanding the ruinous state of his pecuniary affairs, the resolution which the poet had formed not to avail himself of the profits of his works still continued to be held sacred by him; and the sum thus offered for the copyright of The Siege of Corinth and Parisina was, as we see, refused and left untouched ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... than that," wailed Billie. "It's—it's ruinous! I just know that Amanda Peabody will do her best to spoil the term for ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... coup d'etat. He never will submit to be impeached and removed from office unless Congress is sustained by a majority of the people so great as to frighten him into submission. Elated by a little victory, he can only be depressed by a ruinous defeat; and such a defeat it is the solemn duty of the people to prepare for him. Even into his conceited brain must be driven the idea that his contemplated enterprise is hopeless, and that, in attempting to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... no evidence of an approaching termination of the ruinous conflict which has been raging for seven years in the neighboring island of Cuba. The same disregard of the laws of civilized warfare and of the just demands of humanity which has heretofore called forth expressions of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... as much of him as of you," at last she said. "Such an engagement to you would be fraught with much misery, but to him it would be ruinous." ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... writings a selfish or base-minded man. He is at his worst and weakest in the suppressed[12] part of 'De Profundis'; but in my opinion it had better be published, for several reasons. It explains some of his personal weakness by the stifling narrowness of his daily round, ruinous to a man whose proper place was in a large public life. And its concealment is mischievous because, first, it leads people to imagine all sorts of horrors in a document which contains nothing worse ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the art should perish amongst men, which seems likely enough, so long as we live, the public may rely upon it being restored. But as to women, as to the wives of poor hard-working men, not one in fifty can boil a potato into a condition that is not ruinous to the digestion. And we have reason to know that the Chartists, on their great meditated outbreak, having hired a six-pounder from a pawnbroker, meant to give the signal for insurrection at dinner-time, because (as they truly observed) cannon-balls, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... breast of the new plantocracy, of whom the majority was of the type that then also flourished in Barbados, Jamaica, and Demerara, were nourished and kept acute in order to crush the African element. Harm was done, certainly; but not to the ruinous extent sometimes declared. It was too late for perfect success, as, according to the Negroes' own phrase, people of colour had by that time already "passed the lock-jaw"* stage (at which trifling misadventures [255] ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... breath Is breathed, when over, in shuddering death, The charger rolls, with a sickening crash, And responds no more to the spur or lash; And the gulf yawns close, sheer slope to air, Black, unavoidable, ruinous there— Then, gallant rider, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... tremendous shift in position with more consummate dexterity. Indeed, she was almost ready to take the Post's word for it that no shift at all had been made. From beginning to end the paper's unshakable loyalty to the reformatory was everywhere insisted upon; that was the strong keynote; the ruinous qualifications were slipped in, as it were, reluctantly, hard-wrung concessions to indisputable and overwhelming evidence. But there they were, scarcely noticeable to the casual reader, perhaps, but to passionate partisans sticking up like palm-trees on a plain. In a backhanded, sinuous ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Swedenborg's clairvoyant vision, from Gothenburg, of a great fire at Stockholm (dated September 1756). Kant pined to see Swedenborg himself, and waited eagerly for his book, 'Arcana Coelestia.' At last he obtained this work, at the ransom, ruinous to Kant at that time, of 7L. But he was disappointed with what he read, and in 'Traeume eines Geistersehers,' made a somewhat sarcastic attempt at ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang |
