"Wrecking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... journals look like sporting supplements. But at last the work had told upon him. Whether it was the effort of digging into the literature of the past every week, or the strain of reading B. Henderson Asher's "Moments of Mirth" is uncertain. At any rate, his labors had ended in wrecking his health to such an extent that the doctor had ordered him three months' complete rest, in the woods or mountains, whichever he preferred; and, being a farseeing man, who went to the root of things, had absolutely declined ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... engrossed that they did not observe, backing swiftly down upon them, the wrecking train it was their purpose to block. While still in motion, the cars disgorged Captain Kelly and his company, who had been guarding the Pan Handle tracks all day, but had not yet, it seemed, earned ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... represent, and, with St. Augustin, most of them do not recognize such feelings in the "pagan savage." Moreover, while early Christianity, like all other religions, was an appeal to the broadly human feelings of mutual aid and sympathy, the Christian Church has aided the State in wrecking all standing institutions of mutual aid and support which were anterior to it, or developed outside of it; and, instead of the mutual aid which every savage considers as due to his kinsman, it has preached charity ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... finished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure layers, spirals, vortices, and readjustments for at least an hour. I pitched badly twice in an upward rush—solely due to these diabolical throw-downs—that came near to wrecking my propeller. Equatorial work at low levels is trying enough in all conscience without the added terrors of ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... What folly to interfere with a marvellous instinct which now preserves this balance intact, in favour of an untried artificial system which would probably wreck it as helplessly as the modern system of higher education for women is wrecking the maternal powers of the best class in our ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... is so sadly different from that which is spoken! The malicious demon concealed in the ink bottle delights in wrecking love. Misunderstandings and long silences follow in rapid succession, tenderness changes to coldness, and ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... empty heart is almost as severe a strain as the less poetic process of working on an empty stomach. On the morning after the failure of Esme's strategy and the wrecking of Hal's hopes, the young editor went to his office with a languid but bitter distaste for its demands. The first item in the late afternoon mail stung him to a fitter spirit, as a sharp blow will spur to ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... way and we wanted to go the other, so after nearly wrecking a couple of tugboats and a brick scow, we fixed the sail so the wind would push the boat right along. Aye, aye, captain, a fish sou'-sou' by east with the wind in his teeth! The sturdy vessel was just tearing along. ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... safe there as anywhere he can be. He can't work his boat without a crew, but if he is armed he will be able to defend himself even if he is attacked. I don't know how many boats there were at La Dorada, but I would lay my life that Purvis took the precaution of sending them adrift or wrecking them ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... check just as carefully as what they call badness; for the human constitution will not stand very much of either without serious psychological mischief, ending in insanity or crime. The fact that the insanity may be privileged, as Savonarola's was up to the point of wrecking the social life of Florence, does not alter the case. We always hesitate to treat a dangerously good man as a lunatic because he may turn out to be a prophet in the true sense: that is, a man of exceptional ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... Well, I went down. The packet lay in a hundred feet of water, and that's a wonder deep dive. I had to go down twice. The first time I couldn't find anything, though I went all through the berth-deck. I came up to the wrecking-float and reported that I had seen nothing. There were a lot of men there belonging to the wrecking gang, and some correspondents of London papers. But they would have it that she was below, and had me go down again. I did, and ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... not stop her, though they were less than half a mile away. In another minute she would have sent the Rebel vessel to the bottom of the sea, by a broadside from her heavy guns, but the Captain of the latter turned her suddenly, and ran her high up on the beach, wrecking his vessel, but saving the much more valuable cargo. Our vessel then hauled off, and as night fell, quiet was restored. At midnight two boat-loads of determined men, rowing with muffled oars moved silently out from the blockader towards the beached vessel. In their boats they had some ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... reckoning while approaching the coast in thick fog, ran his ship at full speed onto the sands of Cape Cod. He was unable to back off; a rising wind and sea threw the steamer broadside to the beach, and here she churned a hole for herself from which a wrecking tug could hardly ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... disappointed. Both King and ministers knew their business very badly; with limitations of intelligence which would have been disastrous to the conduct of a small shop, they came in this instance, as in other instances, within measurable distance of wrecking a royalty. It is probable that Franklin, shrewd, cool observer though he was, went too far when he wrote in his journal that if George the Third had had a bad private character, and John Wilkes a good one, the latter ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... him completely. Tedge's small brain had room but for one idea at a time: first his rage at the lilies, and then the wrecking of the Marie. And this man knew. He had been staring down the after-companionway. He had seen and heard. He had seen the master and crew laughing ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... extraordinary perversion set in, growing worse and worse each day, and changing Bernadette's peaceful Bethlehem into a perfect Sodom or Gomorrah. Father Sempe had ensured the triumph of his Divinity by spreading human abominations all around and wrecking thousands of souls. Gigantic buildings rose from the ground, five or six millions of francs had already been expended, everything being sacrificed to the stern determination to leave the poor parish out in the cold and keep the entire plunder for ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... father, to blast his child's happiness? Heed him not, love, but come with me. I will never let you feel a single regret. I will love you more than all their love combined. Nay, do not turn aside—you must hear me. Think what you are doing! wrecking my happiness, casting me forth, without hope, to drag out a miserable, useless existence. I may be cursed with long life. Constance, darling, come with me! With your parents it will only be a short grief—disappointed ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... if it happens to be handy; and he feeds mainly on bread, cheese, sugar and much butter, with an occasional feast of half a dozen mackerel at once, or a skate or a small conger. Singularly straightforward in all his dealings, a little of the old West-country wrecking spirit yet survives in him, and he enjoys nothing better than smuggling jetsam past the coastguards. Social position saves no one from hearing what Uncle Jake thinks. His tongue is loaded with scorn and sarcasm, but his ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... teachings were twisted out of their legitimate significance. That Christ is the supreme gift of God to men is so thoroughly built into the biblical revelation that there is no digging that idea out without wrecking the entire revelation itself. To maintain anything else would be to do violence to the entire scriptural teaching. The burden of the entire New Testament is that God ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... stoicism and bitterness in this answer, there was not deliberate cruelty. Raoul loved his lugger, next to Ghita, before all things on earth; and, in his eyes, the fault of wrecking her in a calm was to be classed among the unpardonable sins. Still, it was by no means a rare occurrence. Ships, like men, are often cast away by an excess of confidence; and our own coast, one of the safest in the known world for the prudent mariner to approach, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... things stood that Tuesday evening. The Traders' Bank had suspended payment, and John Bailey was under arrest, charged with wrecking it; Paul Armstrong lay very ill in California, and his only son had been murdered two days before. I sat dazed and bewildered. The children's money was gone: that was bad enough, though I had plenty, if they would let me share. But Gertrude's grief was beyond ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... profoundly concerned about the future of the two and one-half million Jews who are now in America, and of twice that number who may one day be here, cannot but view with the utmost anxiety the danger of wrecking what promises to become the greatest Jewish center in the history of the Jews ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... Harding had witnessed the wanton wrecking of her father's yacht, and when it was over and the crew of the brigantine had returned to their own ship she presently felt the movement of the vessel as it got under way, and soon the Lotus dropped to the stern and beyond the range of her tiny port. With a moan of hopelessness ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... defensive position which seemed to invite an attack. During the first two days of their possession of the city they were enjoying the fruits of their occupation in their own turbulent manner. Roberts' spies reported them busily engaged in sacking the Hindoo and Kuzzilbash quarters, in looting and wrecking the houses of chiefs and townsfolk who had shown friendliness to the British, and in quarrelling among themselves over the spoils. Requisitioning was in full force. The old Moulla Mushk-i-Alum was the temporary ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... might ask for. Gray wondered why he had not thought of Dietz before he came to Texas; it would have made things much easier. But the offer had come too late, it seemed to him; at this moment he could see no means of profiting by it without wrecking the flimsy house of cards he had that very day erected and exposing himself to ridicule, to obloquy as a rank four-flusher. The scarcely dry headlines of that afternoon paper ran before his eyes—"Famous Financier ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the soles of her feet gave sway over Land and Water. About the Star Stone I shall tell you later; but whilst we are speaking of the sarcophagus, mark how she guarded her secret in case of grave-wrecking or intrusion. None could open her Magic Coffer without the lamps, for we know now that ordinary light will not be effective. The great lid of the sarcophagus was not sealed down as usual, because she wished to ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... was deliverance from a cloud of unbelief which was almost wrecking a Christian life. There are some things about which we do not need to pray, as much as to take the light which God ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... girl, having received such help is saved to-day, doing well in a situation, or happily married. Should one be having an unhappy time at home, the Adjutant visited her people. Sometimes she discovered hardness of heart and cruelty wrecking the young life; sometimes fault on both sides. Then she acted as mediator and healer of the breach. She taught the girls to make and mend their clothes; when ill, she got them to a hospital. Always she made them ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... uncertainty, an uninspired certainty is wrecking to the best of human prospects. The man whose one idea is of making himself and his family materially comfortable, or even rich, may not be coming to nervous prostration, but he is courting a moral prostration that will deny him all the real riches of life and that will in the end reward him ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... gathered us together and drove us to the arena to witness the punishment of the slaves who killed the guardsman. I wish now that I had not left the arena for by this time my friends and I might have made good our escape, whereas this delay may mean the wrecking of all our plans, which depended for their consummation upon the continued sleep of the three Mahars who lay in the pit beneath the building in ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... years Sir Hiram made numerous experiments with his aeroplane, but in 1894 it broke through the upper guard rail and turned itself over among the surrounding trees, wrecking itself badly. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... this deluded mother might be shown what a terrible error she was making in bringing up her boy to be so inane and useless. He needed physical development more than any other fellow in Scranton High. Constant feeding upon lofty ideas, and never given a chance to develop his muscles, was wrecking his health. Mr. Leonard had even gone to Mrs. Jardine and entreated her to let him undertake a moderate programme of athletic exercises with Claude; but he might as well have tried to lift the high-school building as to make her change ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... wrecking crew worked on by the light of lamps, lanterns, and candles, for the inducement of double pay ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... organization and become a majority. The failure of those who represent the Party's fundamental principles to maintain control, might easily prove fatal; with the subordination of its principles the movement would disintegrate from within. In fact, the possibility of the deliberate wrecking of the Party in such circumstances, by enemies within its own ranks, has been pointed out and greatly feared by Liebknecht and other representative Socialists. This tendency, however, seems to be subsiding in those countries in which the ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... her, and when she's loaded light that hole is above water line. The wrecking vessel that goes down to salve her will have steel plates, tools and mechanics aboard, and new plates can be put in temporarily. And if that cannot be done those holes can be patched with planking ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... George. . . Wrecking—it could be managed with perfect safety, goes on Cloete—your brother would then put in his share of insurance money. Needn't tell him exactly what for. He thinks you're the smartest business man that ever lived. Make his fortune, too. . . George grips the desk with both ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... across, without the remotest possibility of meeting any other vessel, without any control of our steamer, subject to be driven in any direction. I heard the mate talking to the captain about the propriety of wrecking the vessel and saving what lives they could, although we were in sight of land. The captain said the under-tow was so great that none could be saved in that way. It is twice as great on the Pacific as the Atlantic. ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... lips as he heard the crashing sound that indicated wrecking of the plane. He turned to observe the condition in which he would find the machinery, hoping that it had been damaged beyond repair, or at least so badly damaged that its repair would be a matter of considerable ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... right of minors was as dead as that of secession. In the general maelstrom, Colonel Gordon's large estate went to pieces; but after a time, Judge Dent took lessons from his new political masters in the science of wrecking, and by degrees, as fragments and shreds stranded, he collected and secreted them. Certain mining interests were protected, and some valuable plantations in distant sugar belts, were secured. As guardian of his sister's daughter, he changed, or renewed investments in stocks which ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... shortly afterwards was given at Prague. It has not yet found its way to London. The scene is laid in Cornwall in the eighteenth century. The inhabitants of that wild coast, though fervent Methodists, live by 'wrecking,' in which they are encouraged by their minister. Thurza, the minister's faithless wife, alone protests against their cruelty and hypocrisy, and persuades her lover, a young fisherman, to light fires in order to ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... was awakened by the rush of the wind, as the storm that Max had told them would come along during the night, swooped down upon Carson to blow a few trees over, and hit the tall steeple of the Methodist church again, possibly wrecking it for the fourth time in as ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... costly business, for in each case the ray bored into the corridor and shaft walls beyond its target, wrecking much machinery, injuring the structural members of that section, penetrating apartments and taking a number of lives. Moreover, the "air balls," being destroyed, could not be subjected ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... disease. Gertrude, upon whose good sense and diplomacy he had banked so heavily, was rapidly losing that sense. So far from influencing her mother to give up the "crazy notions" which were, Daniel firmly believed, wrecking their home and happiness, she was actually encouraging and abetting ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... raced toward Bar Harbor with her shipload of non-combatants. Eighteen hundred and sixty-three men, women, and children went down with the ship. No warning had been given. No chance had been offered for women or children or neutral passengers to escape. The disaster duplicated the wrecking of the Lusitania in 1915, but it exceeded it in loss of human life. The American captain and all his men shared the fate of the passengers intrusted to ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... almost learned, before he died, to regret the anarchy of his father's reign. But his officers were nowhere harsher than in Wales, where the people, unaccustomed to a minute legality, complained that they were worse treated than Saracens or Jews. Old offences were raked up; wrecking was made punishable; the legal taxes were aggravated by customary payments; and distresses were levied on the first goods that came to hand, whether Llewelyn's own ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... disdainfully. "Excuse me, Rosalind. No woman ever had the power of wrecking my life. Indeed, I have been far more fortunate and prosperous since Lady Alice chose ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... said Glibton; "there can't be such widespread misery. Why, if there were, the people would be wrecking our houses." ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... the question how he is to learn the truth; and here the authors go very far astray. There are two, and only two, really dramatic ways in which Colonel Ford can be enlightened. Lady Fancourt must realize that Agatha is wrecking her life to keep her mother's secret, and must either herself reveal it to Colonel Ford, or must encourage and enjoin Agatha to do so. Now, the authors choose neither of these ways: the secret slips out, through a chance misunderstanding in a conversation between Sir ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... why, in the way you sailors know how to do, whether such a thing came to pass, as I suppose. You must not be stopped by the lies of anybody. Of course they will deny it, if they got some of the wrecking; or it is just possible that no one even heard of it; and yet there may be some traces. Put two and two together, my good friend, as you have the very best chance of doing; and soon you may put two to that in your ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... them, I think, Dick. He called them by name, and seemed to know all about them. I suppose men who would dare to try to do a thing like that must be old stagers. No man who was committing his first crime would try anything so fiendish as wrecking a train and taking the chance of killing a lot of innocent people, do ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... politics. This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done by one effort in all past time as, in the providence of God, it is now your high privilege to do. May the vast future not have to lament that you ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... matter, as the popular pressure upon them was too great to be resisted." This determination is rightly characterised by Mr. Farrelly, the late legal adviser to the Government of the South African Republic, as the "fiendish project of wrecking the mines and plunging into hopeless misery for years tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children." But that is not all. He has put upon record[105] the sinister fact that the man entrusted with the execution ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... have sliced off his head as easily as if it had been made of almond-paste. Master Pedro kept shouting, "Hold hard! Senor Don Quixote! can't you see they're not real Moors you're knocking down and killing and destroying, but only little pasteboard figures! Look—sinner that I am!—how you're wrecking and ruining all that I'm worth!" But in spite of this, Don Quixote did not leave off discharging a continuous rain of cuts, slashes, downstrokes, and backstrokes, and at length, in less than the space of two credos, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... other just-married girl this would have been an ordeal, a nerve-wrecking event. But you've been as cool as a fish—I've been watching you. You might have been brought up in a vice-regal lodge and hobnobbed all your life with ambassadors. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... keeping well to the eastward of it. But in avoiding Scylla they ran the risk of striking upon Charybdis; for the dangerous reefs of Eleuthera were fatal to many vessels. The chief industries of the islands before the war were the collection and exportation of sponges, corals, etc., and wrecking, to which was added, during the war, the lucrative trade of picking and stealing. The inhabitants may be classed as "amphibious," and are known among sailors by the generic name of "Conchs." The wharves ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... my report in the newspapers. I don't care much for newspaper publicity, and I do not think that my report is written in a style suitable for newspapers. The people want such a thing written with more poetry and color—gruesome, nerve-wrecking suspense, complete revenge, mountainous clouds, blue, breeze-swept sky—that is what they want. But if the publication of the report will bring you any joy, I will not be ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... saloons were crowded by those ever ready to worship at the shrine of wealth, and rank, and power. But, as the stormy days of the Revolution shed their gloom over France, and an infuriated populace were wrecking their vengeance upon the throne and the nobles, Madame du Barri, terrified by the scenes of violence daily occurring, prepared to fly from France. She invested enormous funds in England, and one dark night went out with the Duke de ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... and out rattled from its scabbard the old worthy's sword. "Come back, I say, you loafing, miching, wrecking crow-keepers; there are no pickings for you here. Brown, send those fellows back with the bayonet. None but blue-jackets allowed on the beach!" And the labourers go up ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... take a bit of help from an outsider, I think we needn't wait for the wrecking-car," he said to the dubious trainmen. "It's bad, but not so bad as it ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... are standing on the brink of despair, weak in body and weak in mind. They do not know where to turn to look for a friend—the right kind of a friend. It is a terrible thought that your own boy may be abjectly miserable in his own home because he is harboring a secret that is wrecking his health, and, though he may long for sympathy and a helping hand, neither his father nor mother have invited his confidence or spoken to him about these things. A watchful mother can usually tell when her boy becomes ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... wild affair, with unlimited quantities of champagne, loud patriotic speeches, songs and shouts of "Deutschland ueber Alles," and finally a smashing of glass, a breaking of furniture, and the customary wrecking of the premises. ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... and endeavoured to force him out of the room. Valentine, being unable to free himself from the muscular grasp of Teal, could render no assistance; but his cousin, whose blood was fairly up, struggled furiously with his two assailants. Round the room they went, like a circular storm, wrecking everything they came in contact with; music-stands went over with an appalling clatter, while the back of the solitary chair gave way with a crash as the three combatants fell against it. Suddenly a sharp voice ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... Scotland and so return to Spain. The English ships followed for a while, but were, from the shortness of the supplies which had been placed on board, forced to put into harbor; and a great storm scattering the Spanish fleet, and wrecking many, only 60 vessels, and these with their crews disabled by hardship and fatigue, ever ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... hard. But since the terms be such - No wage, or labour stained with the disgrace Of wrecking what our age cannot replace To save its tasteless soul - I'll do without your dole. ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... explanation must be found before morning, or the happiness and honour of more than one person now under this unhappy roof would be wrecked. He knew it was late—that she had been obliged to take a long and dreary ride alone, but her success with the problem which had once come near wrecking his own life had emboldened him to telephone to the office and—"But you are in ball-dress," he cried in amazement. ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... Caileach stone, on which the Commissioners for the Northern Lighthouses have stuck a bit of board about the size of a pot-lid, which, as it is known to be there, and as no one ever sees it after sunset, is really very effective, considering how little it must have cost the country, in wrecking vessels. I saw one of its victims, the sloop of an honest Methodist, in whose bottom the Caileach had knocked out a hole, repairing at Isle Ornsay; and I was told, that if I wished to see more, I had ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the acquaintance of several old salts, both white and black, one or two of whom time and their neighbours had invested with a legendary savour of the old "wrecking days," which, if rumour speaks true, are not entirely vanished from the remoter corners of the islands. But either their romantic haloes were entirely due to imaginative gossip, or they themselves were too shrewd to be drawn, for I ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... Walt, if he had known her soul! Discouraged on disaster's changeful shoal Wrecking, he rested; starved on selfish pride Long years; nor would obey love's homeward tide. And the moon hangs low ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... nurse in the dull seasons, but her real occupation in life was attending to other people's business. She had a divine meddlesomeness. She was inquisitive after the fashion of a sympathetic arch-angel. It appalled her to see people wrecking their lives by indecision, vacillation, incapacity, by poor judgment and crass stupidity. Her homely wisdom, the fruit of observant years, her native common sense, her strength and discernment were all at the service of the first comer. Responsibility, the bugbear of mankind, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... it," said Andre-Louis, wrecking his chances on an irresistible impulse to say the unexpected. But he didn't wreck them. M. des Amis burst into laughter; and having laughed his fill, confessed himself charmed by ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... including General Lewis, who surrendered, were treated with courtesy, and not one of them wounded or insulted. Their wives and children were also carefully preserved from danger until the police "reprisals" in the Thurles neighbourhood—the wrecking of villages and the savage murders of young men—ended by producing equally ruthless "reprisals" on the other side. In Dublin, since the Dublin Metropolitan Police declined to go about armed, not one of them has been ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... Herr Freudenberg deliberately, and of his own free choice, was accustomed to take huge risks. When they came he accepted them, but when they were not inevitable he as sedulously avoided them. The wrecking of Julien's apartments in the Rue de Montpelier was by far the most hazardous enterprise which had been attempted since the days of the toymaker's first secret visits to Paris. Half a dozen human beings had been done to death in a manner which invited and even challenged the attentions ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... willing discharge of the duties of life. Godless men may be scientists, philosophers, encyclopaedias of knowledge, but for want of religion, they blunder in the direction of their lives, and lack wisdom enough to keep them from wrecking ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fatal to the plan. The ZX-1 can hamper our country's operations when she strikes, but if the ZX-2 were also in action, they would be hampered much more—perhaps fatally. It iss not serious. So we go ahead. Now, Kashtanov, for the last time, the scheme of wrecking Gatun Spillway iss this: ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... seems changeless, but Change. And yet, through the creed-wrecking years, One story for ever appears; The tale of a City Supernal— The whisper of Something eternal— A passion, a hope, and a vision That peoples the silence with Powers; A fable of meadows Elysian Where Time enters not with his Hours;— Manifold are the tale's variations, Race and clime ever tinting ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... groaned. The agent called another agent, and they whispered together, and finally the first one came to me and asked pa's full name, and then the two of them got out a fountain pen, and they made out a check, and he said: "This is the first case in the history of railroad wrecking that the agent has not had the heart to try to beat the injured party down. This is certainly the most pitiful case that has ever been known, and if your father ever comes to his senses you can tell him he is welcome to ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... hapless Yoruba. Years ago, after the fashion of the Nigritia and the Monrovia, she was carelessly lost. Though anchored in a safe place, when swinging round she hit upon a rock and was incontinently ripped up; the injured compartment filled, and the skipper ran her on the beach, wrecking her according to Act of Parliament. They once managed to get her off, but she had not power to stem the seas, and there she still lies high ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... first to seek the head of the train where the wrecking timbers lay was John Eddring, who arrived on the early train from the city. By virtue of his office as agent of the personal injury department, he at once began to possess himself of such facts as might be of use later on. With face pale, but steady, he traversed the entire length of the shattered ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... Charybdis. These were well-known dangers; but, as all navigable seas have their shoals often invisible; in order to avoid the effects of these jealousies, he selected from each party, men of experience to give him the soundings, and thus prevent him from wrecking his barque on rocks and quicksands; for, without such information, there could ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... him its slave and to set him to a business which has no purpose whatever, which is as blind as the process of the universe seems to one who has no faith. This struggle for life might just as well be called a struggle for death. It is, in fact, merely a struggle between two machines intent on wrecking each other; and part of the machines are the bodies of men, which behave as if there were no souls in them, as if there were not even life, but merely energy; so that they collide and destroy each other like masses of matter ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... some passing guard, and, shouldering it, stamped solemnly after the shouting columns of halberdiers which were, by this time, parading the streets. He had, however, nothing to do with the wrecking of the statue of General Wilson, which ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... other interpretation of His person. It is clearly in its very nature capable of indefinite increase, and as containing in itself the supply of all which we need for life and blessedness, is fitted to be what nothing else can pretend to be, without wrecking the lives that are unwise enough to pursue it—the sovereign aim of a human life. In following it, and only in following it, the highest wisdom says Amen to the aspiration of the lowliest faith. 'This one thing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... centuries have strewn the beaches, and many a corpse, far from its native land, has been found, wrapped in a shroud of seaweed upon the sand, and has been lowered by alien hands into a forever unmarked grave. Quite naturally the business of "wrecking"—that is, saving the pieces—came to be the trade of a number of Cohasset citizens, and so expert did Cohasset divers and seamen become that they were in demand all over the world. One of the most interesting salvage enterprises ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... warn off prying Mexican eyes and give notice of the coming of officers. The colonel was always busy in his office at that hour, and interruptions never came. But the race did, and more than one race, too, occurring on Sundays, as Mexican races will, and well-nigh wrecking the hopes of the garrison on one occasion because of the colonel's sudden freak of holding a long mounted inspection on that day. Had he ridden Van for two hours under his heavy weight and housings that morning, all would have been lost. There ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... would say (I forgot to mention that my name is Harold Borus), "I have a pain in my neck." At her own suggestion I had taken a trip around the world. On my return she urged me to go round again. I was going round for the third time when the wrecking of the steamer had ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... easy chair, he now ruminated upon that unyielding order which was wrecking his plans, breaking the strings of his present life and overturning his future plans. His beatitude was ended. He was compelled to abandon this sheltering haven and return at full speed into the stupidity ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... present case it is the image of a ship. Tyre was the great maritime city of antiquity: its grandeur is conveyed under the image of a ship which all the nations of the known world combine to build and load; the judgment is the wrecking of this ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... like an unwearied Proteus, changing names, costumes, language, multiplying himself in many forms, scattering deceptions and lies from one end of France to the other; and finally, after so many efforts, such prodigies of calculation and activity, end by wrecking himself ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... disturbance occurred, and some were prevailed upon to come on board. Their presence forcibly reminded us of the melancholy fate of the crew of the Charles Eaton; and no doubt they had come to the southward on a wrecking expedition. They were a much finer race of men, than those met with on the shores of the continent; their voices sounded softer, and their language appeared quite different. They instantly recognized the drawing ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... division into principalities, which made it an easy prey. The Mongols, moving as one man, took one principality at a time, its nobles and citizens alone bearing arms, the peasants, by far the greater part, being utterly defenseless. After wrecking and devastating that, they passed on to the next, which, however desperately defended, met the same fate. The Grand Principality was a ruin; its fourteen towns were burned, and when, in the absence of its Grand Prince, Vladimir the capital city fell, the Princesses and all the families ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... was a great patriot, desiring nothing for himself, but seeking only the happiness of his country; a military genius, a hard man, utterly fearless—and for all that a misfortune in that he looked at the whole world through Potsdam glasses, with an altogether erroneous judgment, wrecking every attempt at peace which was not a peace by victory. Those very people who worshipped Ludendorff when he spoke of a victorious peace stone him now for that very thing; Ludendorff was exactly like the statesmen of England and France, who all rejected compromise and declared ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... Captain said. "We have a formal complaint from the main offices of Jupiter Equilateral, charging you with piracy, murder, kidnapping of a company official, and totally wrecking a company orbit ship. I don't quite see how you managed it, but we're going to ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... Chekhov has made him reproduce in his creatures of the imagination his own sufferings and fears. I think he was afraid of mental as well as physical decay, for he has studied insanity with the same assiduity as that displayed by Andreev in his nerve-wrecking ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... it from the combination of demagoguery and plutagoguery that is wrecking it," said I without heat, "and make it again an instrument of at least ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... Capitalist law against Trade Unions as conspiracies would be re-enacted within twenty-four hours and put ruthlessly into execution. Such a monstrosity as the recent coal strike, during which the coal-miners spent all their savings in damaging their neighbours and wrecking the national industries, would be impossible under Socialism. It was miserably defeated, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... the merest small change of conversation, especially if that conversation was held between Michael and his father, was sufficient to wreathe her in smiles, and she would, according to habit, break in with some wrecking remark, that entailed starting this talk all afresh. But when she left the room a glowering silence would fall; Lord Ashbridge would pick up a book or leave the room with his high-stepping walk and erect head, the ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... Westminster Hall there was a hole in the pavement six feet wide, and another in the roof. I had scarcely done examining these phenomena when another crash shook the whole building, and we found that an infernal machine had been exploded in the House of Commons, tearing the doors off their hinges, wrecking the galleries, and smashing the Treasury Bench into matchwood. The French Ambassador, M. Waddington, entered the House with me, and for a while stood silent and amazed. At length he said, "There's no other country in the world where this could happen." Certainly it must ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... floated across the room, deliberately disregarding the strategically-placed hand-grips on the walls, floor, and ceiling. It seemed aeons before he reached the narrow little control compartment, and got the ultra-wave radio into action, nearly wrecking it ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... a mind to. But Mr. Gammon had to turn him off of his section for downright disobedience of orders. Why, only yesterday he and a man named Baxter jumped on to the hand-car in the very teeth of the northern-bound mail, and came very near wrecking the train, to say nothing of ending ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... which had been sunk or wrecked in the Mississippi. Accidents of this kind were then very common in those waters, and the business bade fair to be very profitable. The enterprise succeeded better than had been expected, and the operations of the wrecking company extended from Galena, Illinois, to the Balize, and into many of the tributaries of the great river. The parties interested in the scheme realized a handsome profit on their investments. Mr. Eads was the practical man of the concern, and worked ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... The wrecking train, with a gang of men from Medicine Bend, arrived late in the afternoon, and at supper-time a courier rode in from Stanley's scouting party with despatches for General Park. Stanley reported the chase futile. As Bob Scott had predicted, the Brules had burned the ranch and craftily scattered ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... I had lingered on the thought that I should see Squillace. For Squillace (Virgil's "ship-wrecking Scylaceum") was the ancestral home of Cassiodorus, and his retreat when he became a monk; Cassiodorus, the delightful pedant, the liberal statesman and patriot, who stands upon the far limit of his old Roman world and bids a sad farewell to its ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... could hardly Believe it until they led him to a Street Lamp, and showed him their Engraved Cards and Junior Society Badges; then he Realized that they were All Right. The third Well-Bred Young Man, whose Male Parent got his Coin by wrecking a Building Association in Chicago, then announced that they were Gentlemen, and could Pay for everything they broke. Thus it will be seen that they were Rollicking College Boys ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... that showed on his twisted lips was voiced in a low, involuntary cry. Because she loved him! His hands clenched hard. Where was she? Who was it that dogged and haunted her, that was wrecking and ruining her life? God knew! And God knew, employing every resource he possessed, he had done everything he could to reach her. And all that he had accomplished had been the creation of a new character in the underworld! That was all—and yet, strangely ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the wrecking of Bonbright's domestic craft came to his father quickly, carried, as might ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... slackened the angry galloping of his thoughts. The memory of that oath he had sworn three months ago to Rosamund smote him like a physical blow. It checked his purpose, and, reflecting this, his pace fell to an amble. He shivered to think how near he had gone to wrecking all the happiness that lay ahead of him. What was a boy's whiplash, that his resentment of it; should set all his future life in jeopardy? Even though men should call him a coward for submitting to it and leaving the insult unavenged, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... who knows, this wrecking of London Bridge so many hundred years ago by Olaf, the boy viking of fifteen, may have been the origin of the old song-game dear to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... and Nicolette into another. And there arose a storm at sea which parted them. The ship in which Aucassin was went drifting over the sea till it arrived at the Castle of Beaucaire. And when the people of the country ran to the wrecking of it, they found Aucassin, and recognised him. When the men of Beaucaire saw their young lord, they made great joy of him; for Aucassin had stayed at the Castle of Torelore full three years, and his father and mother were dead. They brought him to the Castle of Beaucaire, and all ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... by wrecking All that we seek and find. Its relentless waves of years Break even the impregnable wall of memory That thought builds On the ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... girls, on your word of honor, was there ever more than one man in ten went through your hands who didn't turn out soft somewhere before you were through with him? Mawking about your 'sweet eyes' while you're wrecking your optic nerves trying to decipher the dose on a poison bottle! Mooning over your wonderful likeness to the lovely young sister they—never had! Trying to kiss your finger tips when you're struggling to brush their teeth! Teasin' you to smoke cigarettes ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... tells the exact temperature of the melted solution in the kettle; also the temperature of the furnace. There can be no variation in heat without hindering the work of casting, and perhaps wrecking the casts and wasting a quantity of material. So on that little chap over there by the ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... lose by this," said Lestrange, slipping out to relax and meditatively contemplating the alternate driver, who was standing across the camp. "Ffrench, at twelve I'll have to come in to rest some, and turn my machine over to the other man. And I won't have him wrecking it for me. I want you, as owner, to give him absolute orders to do no speeding; let him hold a fifty-two mile an hour average until I take ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... bad enough, wrecking her dearest hopes at the moment when they had seemed most secure; but taken in connection with a story related in artless innocence by her travelling companion of yesterday, Teddy Brown, to use one of that gentleman's cherished phrases, it ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... faction hasn't succeeded in wrecking the Three Bar up to date," Deane said. "It's probable they see you're ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... shocking events, that none remain unvisited by, and that bring, here the death of a husband, yonder the moral downfall of a beloved child; that lie, here in a long and serious illness, yonder in the wrecking of a warmly nursed plan;—not these undermine her (the housewife's) freshness and strength. It is the small, daily-recurring marrow and bone-gnawing cares.... How many millions of brave little house-mothers cook and scour away their vigor of life, their very ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... with care and infinite thought. He had built on a credit from the vast bank of experience, and owned in the Elysian Fields the finest machine in the world for wrecking the soul and pocket of the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... her course for a southern Yankee port. I haven't been much in them, but I think we'll stand a better chance there than in these ports where they make a speculation of wrecking, and would take a fellow's pea-jacket for salvage." "We're always better under the protection of a consul than in a British port," said the mate, coming aft to inform the skipper that they had carried away the chains of the bobstay, and ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... was time to make my position clear. 'I'm an utter duffer at sailing,' I began. 'You'll have a lot to teach me, or one of these days I shall be wrecking you. You see, there's always been a crew—'Crew!'—with sovereign contempt—'why, the whole fun of the thing is ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... The wrecking of old Dobbins' house had remained a mystery. Some thought the rope had been cut, while others were of the opinion that it had broken because of the heavy strain ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... strange car, with a well-directed shot, so damaged the machinery of their vehicle that they were compelled to obey. Their attacker then demanded all the money and articles of value they had in their possession under threat of completely wrecking their car, and after securing his booty the highwayman decamped. In consequence of the damage to their motor, it was not until late at night that they reached Plymouth, and were enabled to give particulars of the occurrence ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... ranks of the other. This, the actual conflict of war. From north to south, from east to west, through both countries whose flags were raised over the field of battle, homes not to be numbered mourned in soul-wrecking grief, for husband, father, son or brother who sank beneath the foeman's steel or yielded life within the fever tent, or who, surviving shot and malady, carries back to his loved ones a maimed or weakened body. This, the ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... getting dressed more or less on the way. The Devagas dome was solidly invested by now, its transmitters blanked out. It hadn't tried to communicate with its attackers. On their part, the Fed ships weren't pushing the attack. They were holding the point, waiting for the big, slow wrecking boats to arrive, which would very gently and delicately start uncovering and opening the dome, taking it apart, piece by piece. The hierarchy could surrender themselves and whatever they were hiding in there at any point in the process. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... Mathieu remembered that the Seguins and Santerre were inside the house, laughing at the piece, which was of so filthy a nature that the spectators at the dress rehearsal, though they were by no means over-nice in such matters, had expressed their disgust by almost wrecking the auditorium. And while the Seguins were gloating over this horror, yonder, at their house in the Avenue d'Antin, Celeste had just put the children, Gaston and Lucie, to bed, and had then hastily returned to the kitchen, where a friend, Madame Menoux, who kept a little haberdasher's ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... Cornwallis gave him the delay of a night, Washington, seeing the advantage offered by his enemy's mistake, at once changed his whole plan, and, turning in his tracks, fell upon the smaller of the two forces opposed to him, wrecking and defeating it before the outgeneraled Cornwallis could get up with the main army. Washington had thus shown the highest form of military skill, for there is nothing that requires so much judgment and knowledge, so much certainty of movement and quick decision, as to meet ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... acquaintance, and it may be in his own family or himself. And what romance can be fuller of interest than the story of this hunted handful of Protestants leaving, some of them at an hour's warning, all that was dear to them, and voluntarily wrecking themselves, as it were, on this shore, where the savage and the wolf were waiting ready to dispute possession with the feeble intruders. They came with their untrained skill to a region where trees were to be felled, wild beasts to be slain, the soil to be subdued to furnish ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... denying our meed of praise and gratitude to what ennobles it. All this portentous activity and business flows from no other fount and is fed by no other spring than the spirit which is within us, that spirit which has created that wealth, material, artistic, spiritual, which it is so busily engaged in wrecking and undoing. It is still as of old, making History, making it in the old fashion with the old ends in view and by the exercise of its old familiar powers. And if in this tragic scene or episode we cannot still read the features of Progress, our theory is a baseless dream, ...
— Progress and History • Various
... burden of the cache and the winter snow had been too much for it; the balance it had so long maintained with the forces of its environment had been overthrown; it had toppled and crashed to the ground, wrecking the cache and, in turn, overthrowing the balance with environment that the four men and eleven dogs had been maintaining. Their supply of grub was gone. The wolverines had got into the wrecked cache, and what they had not ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... moments of heightened consciousness. As if to convince herself on this point, she strove to raise her hand to open the trap in the roof of the hansom, and her fear increased on finding that she could not. To acquire the necessary strength, she reminded herself that she was wrecking her whole life for an idea, for, perhaps, nothing more than a desire to confess her sins. Again she tried to raise her hand, and she looked round, feeling that nothing short of some extraordinary accident could save ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... of the Greeks now numbered three hundred and sixty-six ships, more than half of which were Athenian. Many wished to retreat to the Isthmus of Corinth, and co-operate with the Spartans. Dissensions came near wrecking the last hopes of Greece, and Themistocles only prevailed by threatening to withdraw the Athenian ships unless a battle were at once fought. He resorted to stratagem to compel the fleet to remain together, with no outlet of escape if conquered. Aristides ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... to dignify them with handsome epithets; but while they were here I had moments of thinking they looked like a lot of whited locomotives, which had broken through from some trestle, in a recent accident, and were waiting the offices of a wrecking-train. The poetry of the man-of-war still clings to the "three-decker out of the foam" of the past; it is too soon yet for it to have cast a mischievous halo about the modern battle-ship; and I looked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... down and order for us, quick, or it'll be too late. We'll join you in a minute." The burly merchant dove for the doorway on the next stomach-wrecking lurch, and collided with the white-capped stewardess, hastening up, with anxiety in her eyes. The two officers clung to the mizzen shrouds opposite the companionway as she emerged from the broad light into the darkness of ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... of the Association was the wrecking of Irish John. He seemed homeless and aimless. The constant smiles on that remarkable face gave way to soberness profound. Old habits crept back upon him. He had a friend, one of our number, who took a kindly interest in him, but could not follow all his waywardness. He departed ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... them out and lined them up in front of the buggy. My wife quickly took the lines: I hooked the traces up, jumped in, grabbed for the lines and waved my last farewell from the road afar off. Even at that they got away from us once or twice and came very near upsetting and wrecking the buggy; but nothing serious ever happened during the winter. I had to have horses like that, for I needed their speed and their staying power, as the reader will see if he cares to follow me very ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove |
