"Wreck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marriage should not be delayed. He was a free man and he meant to exercise and enjoy his freedom. He had taken soundings where he had gone down on that first venture and touched nowhere any trace of the wreck; the waters of oblivion rippled listlessly ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... our ministry marked for us from the beginning; This is our gift, and our portion apart, and our godhead, Ours, ours only for ever, Darkness, robes of darkness, a robe of terror for ever! Ruin is ours, ruin and wreck; When to the home Murder hath come, Making to cease Innocent peace; Then at his beck Follow we in, Follow the sin; And ah! we hold to the end when we begin!" [Footnote: Aeschyl. Eum. 297.—Translated by Dr. Verrall ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... a motor race at Palm Beach. There was a big smash-up and a French car was wrecked. We had entered our "Model K"—the high-powered six. I thought the foreign cars had smaller and better parts than we knew anything about. After the wreck I picked up a little valve strip stem. It was very light and very strong. I asked what it was made of. Nobody knew. I gave the stem to ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... the sunny land of Provence, and was there again with one dearly loved, who was only spared to me a few short months. She died in giving thee birth, my Hubert; had she lived, I had not become the wreck I am. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... since he had left the army, roared out several songs concerning the feminine element at the sea-side, or voicing an inquiry as to a gentleman's companion on the previous night. Then, with an entire lack of appropriateness, another got up and recited "The Wreck of the Titanic" in a most touching and dramatic manner. Followed a song with ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... Assyrian Armies sacked Jerusalem. The Holy City is a mass of hovels cowering under the dominion of the Crescent; and the Holy Land is a desert. The Kings of Egypt and Assyria, who were contemporaries of Solomon, are forgotten, and their histories mere fables. The Ancient Orient is a shattered wreck, bleaching on the shores of Time. The Wolf and the Jackal howl among the ruins of Thebes and of Tyre, and the sculptured images of the Temples and Palaces of Babylon and Nineveh are dug from their ruins and carried ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God."[1] Among the obstacles which seemed very serious—and many believed they would wreck the Convention—was the question of slavery. By this time all the northern part of the country favored its abolition. Even Virginia was on that side. For practical planters like George Washington knew that it was the most costly and least productive ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... before breakfast this morning, now running clear and cool as a mountain burn. What would life be without this? Elsewhere our ale degenerates; not many honest brewers are left. Druggist's wine and the fire of the distilleries will wreck our people. Whenever you have a chance, Mr. Lashmar, speak a word for honest ale. Time enough is wasted at Westminster; they may well listen to a plea for the source of ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... London, was a Director of the East India Company, and was at one time its Chairman. In consequence of the failure of his father young Inglis set up in business on his own account in the wine trade, but this not proving successful, he retired after a short time on the money rescued from the wreck of the fortune of his father, who died soon after his failure. He resided for many years in St. John's Wood, but afterwards removed to Hampstead Heath. He died at 13 Albion Road, N.W., on the 9th of ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... gate and the lane that led into the Ciseaux field, he turned around to wave his old cap in answer to the hopeful flutter of her little white handkerchief; but when he was out of sight she went back to the carriage-house and looked at the wreck of the cushions with a sinking heart. After that second look, she was not so sure of making it all right ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... they're all poor people there, and they mayn't go out without leave, so they can't run after us to do anything to us after the pudding. No one would give them leave to go out to pursue people who had brought them pudding, and wreck vengeance on them, and at any rate we shall get rid of the conscience-pudding—it's a sort of conscience-money, you know—only it ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... places. But she offered that beautiful old place merely because it was more comfortable and luxurious. The medical corps have already ruined the interior of the house; the garden with its handsome box hedges nearly two centuries old is a wreck. She has given all the farm horses to the ambulances; all her linen to the medical director; all cattle, sheep, swine, poultry to the hospital authorities; all her cellared stores, wines, luxuries to the wounded. I repeat that she is a fine specimen of American woman—and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... "Will bring the death or misery of her son. "Jealous he might be, could he but have seen "How other lads approach'd where I have been; "But this man's voice offends his very soul, "That strange antipathy brooks no control; "And should I leave him now, or seem unkind, "The thought would surely wreck his noble mind; "To leave him thus, and in his utmost need! "Poor Alfred! then you will be blind indeed! "I will not leave him."—"Nay, child, do not rave, "What, would you be his menial, be his slave?" "Yes," she ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... this rajah's character. A vessel had been wrecked on his coast, and the crew, who had been saved with difficulty, had taken shelter in the jungle. Muda Hassim, hearing of their fate, caused them to be brought to his town of Sar[a]wak, collected as much as could be saved from the wreck, clothed the sufferers, fed them, and sent then free of expense to Singapore. Moreover, for reasons known to himself, the rajah was well disposed towards the English. These important circumstances were borne in mind ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... thing ended. Next day the debate in Convention continued. Archbishop Bernard, speaking as a Unionist, said that the proposal was a venture beset with risks, but the greatest danger of all was to do nothing. It would be a grave responsibility for Ulster to wreck the chance of a settlement. Lord Oranmore dwelt on the composition of the proposed Legislature Power was to be entrusted to a very different Parliament from that which they had feared. He and his like were to get ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... here. I have the account which was sent to me, in which the total amount of the shop account is entered to my debit (9, 13s. 4d.). The entry 'By amount from the 'Lessing' account, 6, 17s. 9d.,' which is put to my credit, means payment for lodging to workmen, and for work done by myself at the wreck of the 'Lessing' on Fair Isle. The owners or insurers, I suppose, were the employers of the men who worked at the wreck; but the money came through Mr Bruce. 'By cash, left as a deposit, 11th May 1868, 3,' was money ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... imagine the old beast?' said Dallas, pathetically, 'Can't you see him getting round the Old Man? A capital lad at heart, I am sure, distinctly a capital lad, but thoughtless and headstrong, far too thoughtless for a position so important as that of head of my House. The abandoned old wreck!' ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... George of 108 guns, sunk at Spithead 29th August 1782. This gun, a 32 pounder, part of the armament of the Royal George, was fished up from the wreck of that ship by Mr. Deans, the zealous and enterprising Diver, on the 15th November 1836, and was presented by the Master-General and Board of Ordnance to General Durham of Largo, the elder Brother of Sir Philip Charles Henderson ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... sadly. "Boats are at a disadvantage fighting batteries. The old darky was right when he preferred a train wreck to a boat wreck, 'ef the train's smashed, thar you are on the solid ground, but ef the boat blows up, whar is you?' That's sense. The boats are retiring! It's sad, but it's sense. A boat that steams away will live to fight ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with respect to the relative powers of rain, and sea-water on the land is, that the latter is by far the most efficient agent, and that its chief tendency is to widen the valleys, whilst torrents and rivers tend to deepen them and to remove the wreck of the sea's destroying action" ("Geol. Observations," pages 66, 67).) that rivers deepen and the sea widens valleys, and I am inclined largely to stick to this, adding ice to water. I am sorry to hear that Tyndall has grown dogmatic. H. Wedgwood was saying the other day that T.'s writings ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years; But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of the ages and sends it spinning back Amid the death of nations, and points a downward track, And madness is come over us and great and little wars. He has not left one valley, one isle of fresh and green Where old friends could forgather amid the howling wreck. It's vainly we are praying. We cannot, cannot check The Power who slays and puts aside ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... over near to the creek mouth, and when her anchor was again let go she swung to the stream almost parallel to the wreck of the Barang, and within a short biscuit-toss. The steam launch shot back to the cove and took up the men left there in Houten's charge; then she steamed over to the creek, landed Rolfe, Blunt, Little, and three seamen on the down-river bank of the creek, and swung back alongside ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... from a vessel would not sink—but a host of them clashing together, after a wreck—they burst open; the corn sinks, or does when saturated; the barrel ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... found on the shore, consisting of old trees and the wreck of vessels: the spot itself was well suited for the ceremony. The magnificent bay of Spezzia was on the right, and Leghorn on the left, at equal distances of about two-and-twenty miles. The headlands project boldly far into the sea; in front lie several ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... to die like men. During three days they sustained a continual attack, when, after having by incredible exertions destroyed forty of the enemy's vessels, and being themselves reduced to the state of a wreck, a second ship appeared in sight. The king perceiving this retired into the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... whom Vaughan had nothing in common. The ship on which Morgan had sailed from England, and which was cast away upon the Isle la Vache, had contained the military stores for Jamaica, most of which were lost in the wreck. Morgan, contrary to Lord Vaughan's positive and written orders, had sailed before him, and assumed the authority in Jamaica a week before the arrival of the governor at Port Royal. This the governor seems to have been unable to ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... storm had raged, nor ceased, nor paused, When, as day broke, the maid, through misty air, Espies far off a wreck amid the surf, Beating on one of those disastrous isles— Half of a vessel, half—no more; the rest ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... notion of shortening sail, I let the sheet go from my hand. There was a jerk, the crack of snapped wood, and the next flash showed me Castro emerging from the ruins of mast and sail. He uprose, hurling the wreck from him overboard, then flickered out of sight with his arm waving to the left, and I bore accordingly on the tiller. In a moment I saw him again, erect forward, with the arm pointing to the right, and I obeyed his signal. The clouds, straining with water and fire, were, indeed, lighting us on ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... directs the rolling spheres. And his care preserved Elfric for His Own wise ends, until the fight receded, leaving its traces behind it, as when the tide of ocean recedes after a storm and the beach is strewn with wreck—bodies of men, of horses, mutilated, dismembered, dead or dying, disabled or ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... breaking voice, "I was going to run afoul of you, and wreck myself with you; but this child, God bless her! she ran us both ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... pillars on which His throne stands; and these are eternal, and it never will totter nor sink, as earthly thrones must do. The very life-blood of prophecy, as of religion, is the conviction that righteousness outlasts sin, and will survive 'the wreck of matter ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Oceans, as such, is a delusion, and that the golden future which once lay ahead of Givors now lies a long way astern. Yet the town has an easy and contented look: as though it had saved enough from the wreck of its magnificent destiny to leave it still comfortably well ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... do on salt water, brother Cap, but it will hardly do on fresh. Rather than wreck my command on the Canada shore, I shall feel it a duty to take Jasper out ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... You remember when the old Hall and Company firm started business there were four of us who agreed to stick by each other through foul weather and fair till we died. One of that four broke his promise and pretty nigh wrecked us all, as he did wreck the firm. Now I am asking you two to stick by me and mine. I am trusting and believing that you are going to do it as I write this. When you read it I shan't be on hand. But, if I am where I can see and hear I shall still be ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... solitary, amid the wave, Iona mourns her pious founder's grave; Still o'er his tomb these fretted columns pay Their crumbling dust, a tribute to his clay. Frail wreck of time! so crippled with the blast, Recorder Of the present and the past, Enough can tell. These Gothic arches show The height of glory and of human woe; Alas, 'tis all which occupies the brain, The lust of power dyes the despot's chain, Here Learning cast her magic beam around Light ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... Confucius answered. But men have a saying, My only delight in being lord is that no one withstands what I say. Now if what he says is good, and no one withstands him, is not that good too? But if it is not good, and no one withstands him, might not this one saying almost wreck a kingdom? ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... such the trust that still were mine, Though stormy winds swept o'er the brine; Or though the tempest's fiery breath Roused me from sleep to wreck ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... was open to him? To have shot the commander-in-chief would have merely promoted some other infidel. The one sole revolutionary act appropriate to the exigency, was to shoot the Shah Soojah. There, and in one moment, would have gone to wreck the whole vast enterprize of the Christian dogs, their eight hundred lakhs of rupees, and their forty thousand camels. The mighty balloon would have collapsed; for the children of the Shah, it was naturally imagined by Affghans, would divide the support of their father's friends. That alone would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Southern men may make money without earning it,—that a few thousand individuals may monopolize the cotton-market of the world,—what a suppression and destruction of intelligence it perpetrates I what consuming of spiritual possibilities! what mental wreck and waste! Whites, too, suffer equally with blacks. Less oppressed, they are perhaps even more demoralized. No parallel example does the earth exhibit of the sacrifice of transcendent values for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... no god but God." Opposite in their character and mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they came from the North and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava stream; they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire; and the very center of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... of the things that happened beside her? How could she have ears for the crashing down of the pillars of the building that Martin Cosgrave had raised up in his soul? How could she have eyes for the wreck of the structure that was to go on through all the generations? What thought had she of the wiping out of a name that would have lived in the nation and continued for all time in the eternities, a tangible thing in Heaven among the Immortals when the stars had all been burned ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... of his began to fade away from him, he became queerly interested in it. He wanted particularly to go down into the deep sea again, and would spend half his time wandering about the low lying parts of London, trying to find the water-logged wreck he had seen drifting. The glare of real daylight very soon impressed him so vividly as to blot out everything of his shadowy world, but of a night time, in a darkened room, he could still see the white-splashed rocks of the island, and the clumsy penguins staggering to and fro. But even these ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... to the sides of the craft, and straining every muscle, the attempt was successful, and as the wave receded the little tender lay across a sharp piece of coral, almost a total wreck. ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... hidden us, and came on swiftly. Then the Danes saw us, and those on the fore deck shouted, and the oars plashed wildly, and many on the side next to us stopped altogether; and at the same time the steersman saw the stem of the wreck, and, as I think, lost his head between fear of it and the sudden appearance of the foe whom he thought he had escaped. The larboard oars were going yet, and the starboard had almost stopped. He paid no heed to it, and the ship swung over. Then the tide caught her bows, and ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... steamer from Melbourne takes about 48 hours, but then fast steamers are sometimes dangerous; most people have read of the terrible wrecks of the Cahors and the Lyeemoon, within a few months of each other, the two fastest steamers of the Australian Steam Navigation Co.; the latter wreck caused the loss of 70 lives. Both were the result of steering too close inland, to save an hour or two. To suspend or cancel a captain's certificate, or even to prosecute him, is a small consolation for such things as these. Moreover, when there is time to use the boats, they are too often found ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... Jones was led away, at times, by the ardour of his imagination; and the gorgeous palaces of the Mahabadian dynasty, which were built on the authority of the Desatir and the Dabistan, and thrown upward into an age anterior even to the earliest Indian civilisation, have melted away, and 'left not a wreck behind,' before the cooler and more profound investigations of Mr. Erskine[157]. Sir W. Jones was succeeded by Wilford, a man of most excursive imagination, bred in the school of Bryant, who, even if he had himself been more deeply versed in the ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... suppress a cry of angwish as he gaze a upon the wreck of so much beauty. But he gathered courage to cross the room, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... prosperous, the father drinks a little more wine, the daughters buy themselves a dress, the sons a hat; they eat a little cheese, and, occasionally, some meat. I say that these people are on the road to wreck and ruin. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... buds awake, Of nature's joy the woods partake, And bear me helpless, spent, along Where freedom lives far from the throng; Thus pours the mountain torrent wild, That stubborn rocks would check; Thus rolls the molten lava stream, Dispersing havoc dire, supreme, Enfolding, whelming all in wreck! Thus flies the pollen on the breeze To meet its floral love; The song, outgushing from the soul, Thus seeks the starry vault above. Is it a curse? There is no other life for me. 'Tis written in the book of fate: Thy race must ev'ry ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the beings in circuit with it, each one of them in contact with one of the power nodes of the machine. And if one of the nodes is unoccupied, then the machine's out of balance. It will run for a while, but eventually it will simply wreck itself. Every one of the fifteen nodes has to ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... or two officers, who had recovered all their energy at this crisis, gathered about them. The group was sufficiently large; there were about fifty men all told. A couple of hundred paces from them stood the wreck of the artillery bridge, which had broken down the day before; the major saw this, and "Let us make ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... not obtain the justice which they desired in respect to the said investigation; and that the said Portuguese returned to this city, because they did not continue their voyage, on account of the wreck of the said ship in which they were going along the said coast of Ilocos—had recourse to the royal Audiencia of these islands, where they filed a complaint against the Portuguese who was leader of the said ship, and the others. From the papers which were drawn up, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... sudden whoop from the rear, where Hanky Panky held his place. When the others managed to glance around, almost afraid that they would find him in the ditch alongside the road, with his machine a wreck, they discovered Hanky pointing wildly overhead, while at the same ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... changeless. Never more could he be anything but what he was; and change there could be none till weather and time should have done their work on him, and he be rotting on the wet earth, a shattered and worm-eaten wreck. ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... Greece and Italy, I consider Time as an Immense Ocean, in which many noble Authors are entirely swallowed up, many very much shattered and damaged, some quite disjointed and broken into pieces, while some have wholly escaped the Common Wreck; but the Number of the last ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... now acting as the captain, insists one day that his sunsight is correct, while everybody else's is wrong, and insists on the ship holding her course, which the other officers knew would lead her into danger. Of course there is a wreck. But maybe we have now told you enough, so you can read it for yourselves, or ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... editor of a local paper; a second attorney, none too well dressed, with scrubby chin and face suspiciously cloudy, with an odour of spirits and water and tobacco clinging to his rusty coat. He belongs to a disappearing type of country lawyer, and is the wreck, perhaps, of high hopes and good opportunities. Yet, wreck as he is, when he gets up at the Petty Sessions to defend some labourer, the bench of magistrates listen to his maundering argument as deferentially as if he were a ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of the fourth day, Miss Georgie woke with the vague sense that something had gone wrong. True railroader as she had come to be, she thought first that there had been a wreck, and that she was wanted at the telegraph instrument. She was up and partly dressed before the steps and the voices which had broken her sleep had ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... restoration of the boys. Their clothes were speedily dried, for the landlady had just finished baking her week's batch of bread, and half an hour in the oven completely dried the clothes. They were ready almost as soon as the meal was finished. Many questions were asked them as to the wreck, and the point at which ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... New Orleens. My head was bad—oh, very bad—an' they put me in a 'sylum an' cured me. But they took eight year' over it, an' I doubt if 'tis much of a job after all. I wasn' bad all the time, I must tell you, sir; but 'tis only lately my mem'ry would work any further back 'n the wreck o' the barque. Everything seemed to begin an' end wi' that. 'Tis about a year back that some visitors came to the 'sylum. There was a lady in the party, an' something in her face, when she spoke to me, put me in mind o' Na'mi, an' I remembered I ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his side. It was the passenger, the useless, burdensome passenger, who now held the key to the situation. He had sensed the danger in a moment, and instantly handed the skipper a large clasp-knife. With it to free the boat from the wreck was but the work ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... o'clock I heard cries of 'A turtle on the starboard bow,' 'A wreck on the starboard bow.' I rushed out to see what it was, and the men climbed into the rigging to obtain a better view of the object. It proved to be a large piece of wood, partially submerged, apparently about twenty or thirty feet long. The exposed part was covered with barnacles ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... discovered that Louis had become the owner of their possessions, by means of the will he had forged in the name of his father; and that it was he who had been unnatural enough to denounce the author of his days. With the wreck of their fortune in St. Domingo, he procured his father's release; who, being acquainted with the perversity of his younger son, addressed himself to the department to be reinstated in his property. This was opposed by Louis, who defended his title ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... splendour gave an impulse to European art. Europe entered upon the remarkable intellectual period known as Scholasticism. Besides this stimulus, it must be remembered, the scholars of Europe had at least a certain number of old Latin writers whose works had survived the general wreck ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... angle of the tumbling roof made the clean-cut garden beds doubly true. Nature had had compassion on the aged little building, however; the clustering, fragrant vines, in their hatred of nudity, had invested the prose of a wreck with the poetry of drapery. The tip-tilted settee beneath the odorous roof became, in time, our chosen seat; from that perch we could overlook the garden-walls, the beach, the curve of the shore, the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... attack? The wolverines? Shann drew his legs under him, ready to erupt into a counter-offensive. He hesitated between drawing stunner or knife. In his brush with the injured Throg at the wreck the stunner had had little impression on the enemy. And now he wondered if his blade, though it was super-steel at its toughest, could pierce any joint in the armored bodies of ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... wreck of the planting system was accompanied by a mighty upswing of Northern industry which made the old Whigs of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania stare in wonderment. The demands of the federal government for manufactured ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... similar terrible application and results. Professors encouraged, friends applauded, we wondered at and admired him. We did not envy him, however, for he became, as I commenced by saying, a pitiable wreck. Look at him as he ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... powder-magazine, fired it, and threw himself into the sea. Two decks blew up. The into the clouds, carrying with it the paymaster-general of the fleet, a large portion of treasure, and nearly two hundred men.' The ship was a wreck, but it was possible to save the rest of the crew. So Medina Sidonia sent light vessels to remove them, and wore with his flag-ship, to defend Oquendo, who had already been fastened upon by his English pursuers. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... enterprise had been, thought Belding, all that any man could ask. It was true that in the fatigue of work he had often imagined that Clark was going too fast, but always the thing had been done. Now it seemed the ironical jest of the gods that a shade too much carbon in a steel rail should wreck ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... block must be very strong, and held firmly in place, or the terrific force of the powder would blow it out, wreck the gun and kill those behind it. You see, the breech block really stands a great part of the strain. The powder is between it and the projectile, and there is a sort of warfare to see which will give way—the projectile or the block. In most cases the projectile gracefully bows, ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... his soft moods, unvexed by his conceits, Vittoria had some comfort from him of a dull kind. She heard Carlo telling his mother that he must go in the morning. Agostino replied to her quick look at him, "I stay;" and it seemed like a little saved from the wreck, for she knew that she could speak to Agostino as she could not to the countess. When his mother prepared to retire, Carlo walked over to his bride, and repeated rapidly and brightly his inquiries after friends ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a man, sat on a tall grey at the covert's edge, directly below me; and from time to time I watched him through my field-glass. He had lately recovered from a stroke of paralysis, and was (I am told) the wreck of his old self; but the old fire lived in the ashes. He sat there, tall, lean, upright as a ramrod, with his eyes turned from the covert and gazing straight in front, over his horse's ears, on the rushing Meavy. He had forgotten the hounds; his care for his guests was at an end; and I wondered ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... seen her—if you had, or have a heart to feel, nerves to wrench, a brain to rack, blood to be stung to frenzy, you would,—seeing your mother perish thus,—have thought, that to kill the man who had made such a wreck of a sweet pure life, would be a just, aye even a virtuous deed! I thought so. But my intended vengeance was frustrated—whether by the act of God, who can say? But the conduct of the man whom I am now proud to ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... a black silk bandage, which could be removed later, and in his pocket there was an address from which artificial eyes might be purchased. They would have fitted him out with eyes, in the provinces, except that such were better obtainable in Paris. Antoine looked down upon this wreck of his son that lay before him, and the wreck, not appreciating that he was a surgical triumph, kept sobbing, kept weeping out of his sightless eyes, kept jerking his four stumps in supplication, kept ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... the body—hunger, watching, Excess, or languor—oftenest death's approach— Peril, deep joy, or woe. One man shall crawl Through life, surrounded with all stirring things, Unmoved—and he goes mad; and from the wreck Of what he was, by his wild talk alone, You first collect how great a spirit he hid. Therefore set free the spirit alike in all, Discovering the true laws by which the flesh Bars in the spirit! . . . * * * * * I go to gather this The sacred ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... waters breaking into newly opened chasms, in the direction of the enemy; and they comprehended all. The frigate, unperceived by the eager pirates, had dropped down, rounded to, and sent a whole broadside directly into the uprolled hull of the devoted craft, which had been reduced to a sinking wreck by that one tremendously heavy discharge of terrible missiles. Within two minutes the lifting smoke disclosed her, reeling and lurching for the final plunge. Within one more, she rose upright, like some mortally-smitten ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... he agreed, slowly; "I am bound hand and foot. It isn't only what Alice—as a wife—claims from me. But there are Acton and Leslie; there is hardly a month that my brother doesn't propose some plan that would utterly wreck their affairs if I didn't put my foot down. They're both absolute children in money matters; Judge Lee is getting old—there's no one to take my place. Your Aunt Marianna, too; I've always managed everything for ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... curved downward in the centre, the rear cribs swung into the shallows on the opposite side of the raft-channel, there was a great straining and crashing, the men in front huddled together, watching the wreck anxiously, and the band went speedily to pieces. Soon a fringe of single planks came down stream, then cribs and pieces of cribs; half the band was drifting with the currents, and half was "hung up" on ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... cross the sea By means of a Xanthic Xebec; But, alas! he sighed for the Zuyder Zee, And feared he was in for a wreck. He tried to smile, but all in vain, Because of a Zygomatic pain; And as for singing, his cheeriest tone Reminded him of a Xylophone— Or else, when the pain would sharper grow, His notes were as keen as a Zuffolo. And so it is likely he did not find On board ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... and splinter those old birds his gods That perch upon the carven high-seat pillars, Wreck every place his shadow fell upon, Rive out his gear, drive off ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... husband for permitting me to come to a place in which I could be exposed to a public affront from his cast-off mistress, shame at the memory of the pitiful scheme for entering into his life which had fallen to such a welter of wreck ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... have been experienced by ancestors are more readily aroused in the central nervous system; when similar stimuli producing similar modes of motion affect the sense organs. But suppose there were an island inhabited only by deaf mutes, upon which a ship was wrecked, and the sole survivors of the wreck were infants who had never used the voice except for crying, would these infants acquire articulate speech and musical vocalisation? I should answer, No. They would only be able to imitate the deaf mutes in their gesture language and possibly the musical ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... days and months, brightened by smiles and tarnished by tears, dropped into the wreck-strewn, motionless ocean of the past, and in the course of human events two little boys played marbles in the tent of Isaac, and Rebekah scored the rather doubtful distinction of going on record as the first woman who ever doubled expectations ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... black or purple, but hoary with a livid foam. After describing some picturesque episodes—such as the gathering of the knights of Naples to watch the ruin of their city, the procession of court ladies headed by the queen to implore the intercession of Mary, and the wreck of a vessel freighted with convicts bound for Sicily—Petrarch concludes with a fervent prayer that he may never have to tempt the sea, of whose fury he had seen so ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... stretched stiffly within the black boards of a coffin. What he saw and what froze him with horror was the hollow temples and sallow cheeks and drooping jaws and bent back and trembling limbs of the human wreck that was ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... superior knowledge of their predecessors, and continued, in a certain way, and with a lower standard, the civilization of the Toltecs. It has been said, not without reason, that the civilization found in Mexico by the Spanish conquerors consisted, to a large extent, of "fragments from the wreck that befell the American ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... easily be a bad wreck. If the despatcher thought he would get a flash from here as soon as the Thunderbolt passed, for instance, and I was asleep when she went by, he might let something into the track ahead of her, and then there'd be a fine lot of trouble. ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... Voyage affords an account worthy of a place among the pages of either of the three great novels. The landlady, an incredibly mean and heartless shrew, inflicted daily annoyances and extortions on her wind-bound victims. The squalid building, partly constructed of wreck-wood, could scarce house the party. The food supplies, other than those the visitors brought with them, were chiefly 'rusty bacon, and worse cheese,' with very bad ale to drink. And on the first afternoon, the house was found to be so damp from recent scrubbing that ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Captain Lewis, Who calmly stood and blew his Cigar in all the hustle, And scorned the tempest's tussle, And oft we've thought thereafter How he beat the storm to laughter; For well he knew his vessel With that vain wind could wrestle; And when a wreck we thought her, And doomed ourselves to slaughter, How gayly he fought her, And through the hubbub brought her, And as the tempest caught her, Cried, "GEORGE! ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fortune had been turned over. It was at Jane Oglethorpe's. Jane and a good many of the other women have seen her from time to time abroad—stayed at her castle in Hungary during the first years of her marriage; but they drifted apart as friends do. . . . She must be a wreck, poor thing. She ran a hospital during the war and was in Buda Pesth for some time after the revolution broke out. I hope she had the girl well ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... forth the horse!" Alas! he showed Not like the one Mazeppa rode; Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky-kneed, The wreck of what was once a steed, Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints; Yet not without his knowing points. The sexton laughing in his sleeve, As if 't were all a make-believe, Led forth the horse, and ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... gentleman, I invariably found him either gorging or in the arms of Morpheus. Naturally a life of this sort makes the upper classes soft, and somewhat effeminate. They are much given to sensual pleasures, and many a man of Cho-sen is reduced to a perfect wreck when he ought to be in his prime. The habit of drinking more than is proper is really a national institution, and what with over feeding, drunkenness, and other vices it is not astounding that the upper ten do not show to great advantage. The ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... remain," she told him. "Already I'm a physical wreck, for I never get a moment's rest. The salary is attractive, but Allegheny is too much for me. She saps every ounce of vitality I have; she keeps me going every hour. And her terrific ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... most painful week I've ever had to go through in all my life," bleated Aveline. "Even if I live through it—and that's doubtful—I shall be a nervous wreck. They'll have to send me for a rest cure during the holidays. I'm not accustomed to be cross-questioned as if I were a ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... we take to conserve and strengthen the nerves of our children? Through what habits of life are we helping to wreck ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... cuts the safe literally to pieces, and its contents are at the mercy of the thieves. The whole process is noiseless and rapid, and so complete has been the destruction of some safes that even the most experienced detectives have been astounded at the sight of the wreck. Such an operation is never undertaken without a knowledge on the part of the thieves of the contents of the safe, and the chances of conducting the enterprise in safety. The Safe-blowers and bursters do nothing by chance, and their plans are so well ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... now little more than a wreck of what it once was; since the fall of the Empire it has been shamefully abused and neglected. Some agronome sent out to take charge of it by the Republic, began its destruction by cutting down acres of enormous and magnificent trees,—including a superb alley of plants,—for the purpose ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... is," said he, smiling dubiously. "'Tis four mountain rivers you'd have to cross, two of them, at least, deeper than your head, and there's the pass of Barnascorny, where you'd have to turn the side of a mountain, with a precipice hundreds of feet below you, and a wind blowing that would wreck a seventy-four! There's never a man in the barony would venture over the same path, with a storm ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... sacrificed at forced sale and with scarce a buyer. In the depreciation of values from the prices which prevailed in the early summer, the losses to the Texas drovers, caused by the panic, would amount to several million dollars. I came out of the general wreck and ruin untouched, though personally claiming no credit, as that must be given my partners. The year before, when every other drover went home prosperous and happy, I returned "broke," while ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... Indians,—in other words, were not clothed at all,—and their uncut hair streamed wildly down their backs. They brought strange tales of those among whom they had dwelt. They told of the King of Calos, on whose domains they had suffered wreck, a chief mighty in stature and in power. In one of his villages was a pit, six feet deep and as wide as a hogshead, filled with treasure gathered from Spanish wrecks on adjacent reefs and keys. The monarch was a priest, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... It is they who serve as the directors and executioners of public or private malice. Near Uzes twenty-five masked men, with guns and clubs, enter the house of a notary, fire a pistol at him, beat him, wreck the premises, and burn his registers along with the title-deeds and papers which he has in keeping for the Count de Rouvres. Seven of them are arrested, but the people are on their side, and fall on the constabulary and free them.[1124]—They are known by their acts, by their ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... we begin to talk. * * * Really, the plot is more simple than we thought. It is merely this: "The French fleet, defeated by the English, arrives off the harbor of Saint Halo. They call for pilots, but none will try to conduct the big ships through the dangerous channel, and the captains decide to wreck and burn their ships, so the English may not capture them. Just at this time a simple Breton sailor offers to pilot the vessels through, under penalty of death. The commander puts him in charge of the fleet and he takes them safely into the harbor. The English ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Mendoza was abruptly ordered by King Philip II. of Spain to surrender his post as Governor to Francisco Villagran. That fine old conquistador was now worn out in body and a wreck of his former self. The furious combats with the Araucanians broke out afresh, and continued unabated. A series of disasters shattered the spirit of Villagran, and sent him to his grave. Following this came the usual succession of Governors, and the unbroken continuance ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... Pharaoh's love. Honour! Why dost thou prate to me of honour? Like Nile in flood, my love hath burst the bulwark of my honour, and I mark not where custom set it. For all around the waters seethe and foam, and on them, like a broken lily, floats the wreck of my lost honour. Talk not to me of honour, Rei, teach me rather how I may win ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... libelling the character of a just God, these developments are making, and the veil rising, which for long years of sinful apathy has rested upon the abominations of American Slavery. Light is breaking into it's dungeons, disclosing the wreck of buried intellect—of hearts broken—of human affections outraged—of souls ruined. The world will see it as God has always seen it; and when He shall at length make inquisition for blood, and His vengeance kindle over the habitations of cruelty, with a destruction ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... have been ruled is that of government through a board of trustees, through a selected number of the big business men of the country who know a lot that the rest of us do not know, and who take it for granted that our ignorance would wreck the prosperity of the country. The idea of the Presidents we have recently had has been that they were Presidents of a National Board of Trustees. That is not my idea. I have been president of one board of trustees, and I do not care to have another on my ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... man, you don't think I'd sit here with my hands folded and let a lot of rascally mestizos wreck my ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... across the mesquite flat toward the lone Joshua-tree where I had left my horse. I held the girl's hand to help her when she stumbled, while Brower scuttled along with surprising endurance for a dope wreck. Nobody said anything, but saved ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... contradictions of all his proposals, the absolute antithesis of the pledges he had given. It is quite possible that he had not seen where he was going, but his frequent irritation was the sign of his distress. Still, in the ship-wreck of his whole programme, he had succeeded in saving one thing, the Statute of the League of Nations which was to be prefaced to all the treaties. He wanted to go back to America and meet the Senate with at least something to show as a record of the great undertaking, and he hoped ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... brought up in confused heaps near and beyond the uncovered tents. Cots had been overturned by the sudden heavy squall, blankets and equipment blown away. The cook tent was down and the contents apparently a wreck. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... minute Mary Jane stared at the wreck that had been her doll. Then she turned and ran screaming ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... sinking into forgetfulness again. "Sport... Kurort... and what of Shrek? Shrek... trek... wreck.... And where are my friends now? Do they know that we are in trouble? Lord, save... spare! ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and had hardly closed the door before the cabby had brought his whip across the flanks of the dozing horse. The animal came to life and tore down Washington Street at a pace that threatened to wreck the vehicle. The wheels skimmed sides of electric cars and brushed the noses of passing teams. A policeman shouted, but the cabby took a chance and kept on. Down Atlantic Avenue the light cab swayed from side to side, swerving to within ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... for this, O King! is sent On thee a double chastisement: Thee and thine, thy crown and realm, One last wreck shall ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... Futurist meanings Into one perfect cube, And broke itself up into facets Like a wreck in ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... in the first instance the new doctrines in England were simply an excuse for a plutocratic pillage, and that is the only truth to be told about the matter. But it was far otherwise with the individuals a generation or two after, to whom the wreck of the Armada was already a legend of national deliverance from Popery, as miraculous and almost as remote as the deliverances of which they read so realistically in the Hebrew Books now laid open to them. The august accident ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... replied Jack Witherspoon, as Clayton busied himself with the wreck and ruin. "It's not in his game to do anything but hoodwink you. What did he tell you now of this Western trip?" Clayton frankly unbosomed himself to his visitor, pacing up and down ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... and ravines are continually forming, which, when the melting process ceases, are converted into dry beds. With this rush of angry water, large rocks and masses of earth are swept from their natural seat, leaving a wreck behind that is fearfully grand to behold. The roaring of these torrents as they come leaping past and over every obstacle, resembles a low, rumbling thunder, which is reechoed through the deep forests ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... The wreck which had appeared immediately under them was forty feet away, and appeared a vague, misshapen black mass. They had been seen, for they had waved the lantern from the edge of the cliff before starting, and they had several times shouted as they descended, and as they neared the ground, they were ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... wreck, destruction, undoing, dilapidation, disorganization, perdition, ruination, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... subject for contemplation! The wreck of intellect, of genius, of humanity. Fortunate for mankind, if, under the decree of a saving and blessing Providence, there be no dark void on earth—when one bright star falls from its sphere, if there is another soon lighted to fill its place, and to shine ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... although we understand it to be in motion, we nevertheless regard as an image of repose; where, therefore, the exact degree of development is so hard to apprehend. If a single product only of Hellenic art were to be saved in the wreck of all beside, one might choose perhaps from the "beautiful multitude" of the Panathenaic frieze, that line of youths on horseback, with their level glances, their proud, patient lips, their chastened reins, their whole bodies in exquisite service. This colourless, unclassified ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... one of any party who was her friend: this strikes me with real melancholy; to see a woman of the first talents in Europe, who lived and has shone in the gay court of the gayest nation in the world, now deserted and forlorn, living in wretched lodgings, with some of the pictures and finery, the wreck of her fortunes, before her eyes, without society, without a single friend, admired—and despised: she lives literally in spite, not in pity. Her cruelty in drawing a profligate character of the Queen after her execution, in the Chevaliers du Cygne, her taking her pupils at the beginning ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... hearts are so sinful the Holy Spirit is longing to come in. He found an entrance into the heart of this poor woman whose life was a wreck with its four great failures. Every life is a failure in God's sight, but we must never despair of any one, for "with God all things are possible," and as long as life lasts there ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton |
