"Crumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distress In pitiable helplessness. Methinks 'tis like a ship on shore, That once defied the Atlantic's roar, And gallantly through gale and storm Hath ventured her majestic form; But now in stranded ruin laid, By winds and dashing seas decayed, Forgetful of her ocean reign, Must crumble ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... and reddened, and she saw the glow of pleasure kindle in his unclouded blue eyes. "Even rocks crumble when we put too much weight on them," he responded, "but since you have done so much for us, perhaps you may be able to convince Patty that nothing can make any difference between her and me. Won't you try to ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... loss was in the demoralization of some of the regiments engaged. They appeared to have so little cohesion that one feared all the time that they might crumble away into ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... forth the sullen summons That may be our funeral knell, Once more let us meet together, Once more see each other's face; Then, like men that need not tremble, Go to our appointed place. God, our Father, will not fail us In that last tremendous hour,— If all other bulwarks crumble, HE will be our strength and tower: Though the ramparts rock beneath us, And the walls go crashing down, Though the roar of conflagration Bellow o'er the sinking town; There is yet one place of shelter, Where ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... further to parch the land and plants. Day after day and night after night the drought gets worse. The rivers sink low; brooks run dry; the edges of the lakes become marshes. The marshes dry out to hardened mud. The dry leaves of the trees rustle and crumble. All the animals and wood creatures gather around the muddy pools that once were lakes or rivers. People begin saving water and buying it and selling it as the most precious ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... nervous excitement. The company did not seem to remember Sydney Smith's remark to the young lady next him at a dinner-party: "My dear, I see you are nervous, by your crumbling your bread as you do. I always crumble bread when I sit by a bishop, and when I sit by an archbishop I crumble bread with both hands." That evening I had the pleasure of dining with the distinguished Mr. Bryce, whose acquaintance I made in our own country, through my son, who ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... while it should be firm and preserve a certain amount of moisture, will, when cold, crumble easily when rubbed between the fingers. If, instead, it forms a close, soggy mass, it may be regarded as indigestible. This is one reason why hot, new yeast bread and biscuit are so indigestible. In demonstration ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... brought up as her nephew, though people were surprised, no doubt, that William Weir's wife should have a child, and nobody know she was expecting.—Well, with all the reports of the captain's money, none of it showed in this old place, which from that day began, as it were, to crumble away. There's been little repair done upon it since then. If it hadn't been a well-built place to begin with, it wouldn't be standing now, sir. But it's a very different place, I can tell you. Why, all behind was a garden with terraces, and ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... laid open all the slabs appeared as uninjured as if they had been put down quite recently; but after they had been exposed to the air for a few days, the slabs of the upper part of the road, to the extent of some 10 feet, which had been exposed to the heat, began to crumble away, and they have now almost disappeared, while those of the lower portion of the road, which had not been touched by the fire, have remained uninjured, and seem to be indestructible. A further proof of the terrible catastrophe is furnished ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Fortunes on earth; in the fire shall our treasure Burn in the blast; brightly shall mount, The red flame, raging and wrathfully striding 810 Over the wide world; wasted shall be the plains; The castles shall crumble; then shall climb the swift fire, The greediest of guests, grimly and ruthlessly Eat the ancient treasure that of old men possessed While still on the earth was their strength and their pride. 815 Hence I ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... property at such a crisis?" interrupted an enthusiast, in figured trowsers and a gay cravat. "Our beloved Union must and shall be preserved. The fabric that our fathers reared for us must not be allowed to crumble. We will prop it with our mangled bodies," and he brushed a speck of dust from the fine ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... dignity of second-year girls, they patronised new-comers with the best, and talked, thought, and behaved as though, deprived of their valuable support, the historical centre of Cambridge must swiftly crumble to the dust. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... republics to the continent of kingdoms, in the assurance that both the new republics and the old kingdoms, the heat of fire and the strength of iron, with the untold generations of audacious men, shall crumble to dust at the steps of his throne, and pass away, and be forgotten before his own ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... fetters of flesh, seared with a thousand scars, Shriek and struggle and beat its breast on its prison bars Thro' the night's long dark of despair till the dawning of ultimate day, Till the glow of that ultimate dawn transfigure the tortured face And the sacred fire within crumble the coarse clay clod. Till the Soul, breathed on by an unseen, unknown Grace, Stripped of its bonds of flesh, stand face to face with ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... account of the structure of its substance. He might indeed, with infinite pains, give it the form, but he could not impart to it the strength and adhesion of particles required to enable it to brave the elements, and the temple it was made to support would soon crumble into ruin." ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... into the presence of the most mighty Face he had ever looked into. It was the Face of Eternity. On its brow was written in words of blazing light the one word "Now." And as he looked into that calm, awful Face and read that word, Mr. Hardy felt his soul crumble within him. When the Face spoke it was the speech of a thousand oceans heaved by a million tempests, yet through the terror of it ran a thread of music—a still, sweet sound like everlasting love—as if angels sang somewhere a divine ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... rock of ages, Whereto the Gentiles look, and still are healed; The tree whose rootlets drink of every river, Whose boughs drop Eden fruits on seaward isles; Christ's seamless coat, rainbowed with gems and hues Of all degrees and uses, rend, and tarnish, And crumble into dust! Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas! Oh! to have prayed, and toiled—and lied—for this! For this to have crushed out the heart of youth, And sat by calm, while living bodies burned! How! Gerard; sleeping! Couldst thou not watch with me one ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... must have been placed there at some finite time. Only one source for such an object is conceivable; it must have fallen from the sky. On the same plains the stony meteorites have also fallen in hundreds and in thousands, but they crumble away in the course of time, and in any case would not arrest the attention of the traveller as the irons are likely to do. Hence it follows, that although the stony meteorites seem to fall much more frequently, yet, unless they are actually observed at the moment of descent, they ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... tripod ye would tie a lynx That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, 110 To comfort me on my entablature Whereon I am to lie till I must ask "Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude To death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone— Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat As if the corpse they keep were oozing through— And no more lapis to delight the world! Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, But in a row: and, going, turn your backs 120 —Ay, like departing altar-ministrants, And leave ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... silver clasps, he opened the volume, and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... on the lower reaches of the Cariboo Road. They are old and poor to-day, and the memory of their fortune is as a dream. Have they not lived at {50} Hope and Yale and Lytton for fifty years and seen their trail crumble into the canyon, with not a dozen pack-trains a year passing to the Upper country? John Rose, who was one of the men to find Cariboo, set out in the spring of '63 to prospect the Bear River country. He set out alone ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... and us there was interposed the stupid, sullen wall of prejudices and suspicions with which weakness naturally imagines to shelter and protect itself from force. But this wall is cracking, tottering, and beginning to crumble to ruins under the action of the soil and the atmosphere—under the influx of the sentiments awakened by this great movement of friendship on the part of the United States ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... Point early began to cave in. More than an acre slid into the water just south of the point. The main shore line began to crumble, indicating that the oncoming high water would wash more than ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... and I will crumble thee, Thou bottled spider, into thy primitive earth, Unless thou swear thy very thought's ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... which the two old fossil parties united, as they always do. Now, this new great idea, if rejected, will disintegrate these old parties; take that which is fit, proper, and deserving for its own great mission, leaving the residuum to unite, and crumble and pulverize together under the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... also gladdened Alatta, and have heard Peace lowing among the flowers. I will not desolate homes to rule over an orphaned land and a land widowed. But I will lead you against the pledged enemy of Alatta who shall crumble the towers of Zoon and hath gone far to overthrow our gods. He is the foe of Zindara and Istahn and many-citadeled Yan, Hebith and Ebnon may not overcome him nor Karida be safe against him among her bleakest mountains. He is a foe mightier than Zeenar with ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... only twenty-four, but his hair was splotched with dead gray strands; his eyes were hard and weary; his face lined with new wrinkles. Ah, well, it was war—and a losing war, he had to admit, that they fought. If a miracle didn't come, America would crumble even as old Europe had, before ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... of Christianity with a real sincerity, but with a fluctuating sense of their authority and value. Sometimes their authority seemed supreme, and then I trod on bright clouds high above the world; at other times they appeared to crumble at my touch, and then I walked in darkness. One thing I saw at intervals, and at last with complete and agonized distinctness, that however I preached these truths, they had little visible effect upon the lives of others. Those to whom I preached lived ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... Thy chastening rod, Till every idol throne Crumble to dust, and Thou, O GOD, Reign in ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... the mountains crumble, the earth finally wear away its diamond axis; but we two, we alone are immortal, ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... sureness, his brainpower was beginning to crumble away and his mind became as that of a little child. Day after day he would sit near a window, turning over the pages of one of his beloved books of fairy-tales, an infinitely moving and ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... absorbed in space, sink into relative torpor, or, as the astronomers say, die. The trees and plants diffuse their energy in the infinite, and, at length, when nothing but a shell remains, rot. Lastly, our fleshly bodies, when the union between mind and matter is dissolved, crumble into dust. When the involuntary partnership between mind and matter ceases through death, it is possible, or at least conceivable, that the impalpable soul, admitting that such a thing exists, may survive in some medium where it may be free from material shackles, but, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... the Ney of the Revolution, after all his battles, lies there, too, as though to show how nobles and commoners, lords and frontiersmen, monarchists and republicans, are equal in death—and that the last stones of old Fort Loudoun, built by Lieutenant, afterwards General, Washington, crumble into dust there, disappearing like a thousand other memorials of that noble period, and the giants who illustrated it:—this, and much more, might be said of Winchester, the old heart of the border, which felt every blow, and poured out her blood freely ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... generous to hesitate, too wise, also, for Prussian reaction is cracking and is going to crumble; even Americans of German origin would be acting against their own fatherland if they, by their sympathies, should sustain the regime of caporalism which is now ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... and trustful; a sudden shock such as makes the world crumble beneath a man's feet; a vague sense of guilt and shame, unreasonable, unmerited, unjustifiable, yet not to be put away; a blank period of humiliation; the opening of eyes in a new world; the humblest ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... coming back to his seat, "is very solid marble and much harder than ordinary stone. Yet I can crumble it easily with my fingers—a proof that I am ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... didn't know of any other way of applyin' 'em to her back, only to put 'em on it. But she insisted to the last that I didn't apply 'em right, and I didn't crumble the bread into the milk right, and the lobelia wuzn't picked right, ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time and the wind and weather should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds and to enjoy a great deal of happiness in this ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... vain thing menaced by the touch of the real? Was this contribution of the real possibly the mission of the Pococks?—had they come to make the work of observation, as HE had practised observation, crack and crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms in which honest minds could deal with him? Had they come in short to be sane where Strether was destined to feel that he ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... incessantly undermined it. This book would cover the entire period of the second century. Lastly, the fourth book would show the decisive progress which Christianity made from the time of the Syrian emperors. We should see the learned system of the Antonines crumble, the decadence of the ancient civilization become irrevocable, Christianity profit from its ruin, Syria conquer the whole West, and Jesus, in company with the gods and the deified sages of Asia, take possession of a society for which philosophy and a purely civil government no longer ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... shafts, and these were strengthened by ropes that extended to the ends of the forward axle. Harnesses had a shabby, 'fixed up' appearance, with a good deal of rope in their composition. Why they did not go to pieces or crumble to nothing, like the deacon's One Horse ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... not reply long. In the spit battery, the sand falling through between the logs, displaced by shot and shells, choked the embrasures, and blocked up the guns. In the fort, the light wooden buildings were in flames at an early hour; then the walls began to crumble before the balls which came from every quarter, front, flank, and rear; and as the guns were disabled successively, the return became feeble, until few were in condition to be fired, the central redoubt alone discharging single guns at long intervals. The Russian commander, however, made no ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... Goodrich on his other side. The hostess is a beauty, so is Idonia, so you may well imagine that Larry would have forgotten Lily's existence if she hadn't frequently reminded him of it by screaming his Christian name across banks of pansies and orchids. J. and I hoped that jerry-built betrothal might crumble in consequence, as Larry's fastidiousness is his most prominent feature. But no! it also stood; and I will tell you the reason when ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... heard the fall of something heavy and inelastic in the upper story. The whole pavilion, it was plain, had gone alight like a box of matches, and now not only flamed sky-high to land and sea, but threatened with every moment to crumble and fall in about ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must needs be an infinite atonement—save it should be an infinite atonement this corruption could not put on incorruption. Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration. And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... indeed, when delineating the character of a bishop, he expressly names this as one feature of it, "no striker." Let masters give unto their servants that which is just and equal, and all that vast system of unrequited labor would crumble into ruin. Yes, and if they once felt they had no right to the labor of their servants without pay, surely they could not think they had a right to their wives, their children, and their own bodies. Again, how can it be said Paul sanctioned slavery, when, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... thy very breath when first he saw thee intent upon this pastime, lies buried on a plain whereof the turf is red with blood. Rusty fragments of armour, once brightly burnished, lie rotting on the ground, and are as little distinguishable for his, as are the bones that crumble in ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... will keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... nothingness of a mean act. The world's esteemed immortals have survived the shadows of oblivion only because of precious deeds they wrought for fellow men. The rags of yesterday are exchanged for purple robes as the centuries pass, while the crowns of today fade and crumble into forgetfulness. No man succeeds because he becomes a king or fails ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... meeting-house was being built, and that one which had been to her all that the temple ever was to Solomon, would be left to the owls and bats—her Zion desolate. Those walls, made sacred by visions of glory and shouts of triumph, would crumble to ruin in the clinging silence. How could she but think that the influence was evil ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... upon religious subjects, which people in the south, pressed upon by northern opinion, are endeavouring to give their slaves. The kinder and the more cowardly masters are anxious to evade the charge of keeping their negroes in brutish ignorance, and so they crumble what they suppose and hope may prove a little harmless, religious enlightenment, which, mixed up with much religious authority on the subject of submission and fidelity to masters, they trust their slaves may ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... bearing forward on its bosom, apparently undisturbed, the proud camps of Whig and Tory. If Mr. Hyndman were a man of keen humour, which is far from my conception of his character, he might rest from his troubling and look on: the walls of Jericho begin already to crumble and dissolve. That great servile war, the Armageddon of money and numbers, to which we looked forward when young, becomes more and more unlikely; and we may rather look to see a peaceable and blindfold evolution, the work of dull men immersed in political tactics ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heard many miles, and from its entrails vomited forth redhot stones, with a flood of liquid fire." The crater of the extinguished volcano is still visible, though shattered and powdered down by the tread under which Alps and Appennines themselves crumble away—that of Time. The only point on which we are sceptical is the late origin of the promontory. Nothing beyond a sandhill or a heap of ashes has been produced on the face of nature since the memory of man. That a rock, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... ease forget, Building of rough and slippery stones a House, Long schemed, and falling from us, and at the last Imperfect. Knowledge not the aim, so much As pleasure in the toil that leads to knowledge, We shall build, although the house before our eyes Crumble, and we shall gladden in the toil Although it never leads to habitation— Building our goal, though ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... a mere peasant; the vine-dresser was torn from his vine, the laborer from his furrow, the mason from his scaffold, the weaver from his loom. Men accepted this mission of causing the immense public calamity to fall, morsel by morsel, upon the humblest walks of life. Detestable task! To crumble a catastrophe upon the little and on ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... this is man's only justification for considering himself above the beasts—that we can love, and communicate with, God. For where otherwise is his superiority? He builds fine buildings which crumble and decay. He digs holes in the earth to take out treasures which he has not made; and if he makes himself the very highest tower of wealth or fame, he must come down from it and be buried in the earth ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... them life and sustain them in life. And as the tree must die, or the rock fall, before a dissolution can be effected between them, so either the believer must lose his spiritual life, or the Rock must crumble, ere ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... at all it was Protestant only by the accident of its Government, that the immense majority of the people were Catholic at heart and were thirsting for a return to the fold, that on the first appearance of a Spanish army of deliverance the whole edifice which Elizabeth had raised would crumble to the ground. I suppose it is true that if the world had then been advanced to its present point of progress, if there had been then recognised a Divine right to rule in the numerical majority, even ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... shall crumble, The diadem shall wane, The tribes of earth shall humble The pride of those who reign; And War shall lay his pomp away;— The fame that heroes cherish, The glory earned in deadly fray Shall fade, decay, and perish. Honor waits, o'er all the earth, Through endless generations, The ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... yet, walls of brick and stone may crumble and split. The laws which endure come into being through the power of ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stains out of cloths, &c.—Dry fullers' earth so as to crumble it into powder, and moisten it well with lemon juice; add a quantity of pure pulverised pearl-ash, and work the whole up into a thick paste with a little water; roll it into small balls; let them completely dry in the sun, and they will be fit for use. The manner ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... Who dost, of punishment afraid, And by thy crimes a coward made, To every generous soul a curse Than Hell and all her torments worse, When crawling to thy latter end, Call on Destruction as a friend, Choosing to crumble into dust Rather than rise, though rise you must: 110 Thou hypocrite! who dost profane, And take the patriot's name in vain; Then most thy country's foe, when most Of love and loyalty you boast; Who, for the love of filthy gold, Thy friend, thy king, thy God hast sold, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... bit up,' asseverated Lance; but Fulbert growled, 'If you bother any more, I shall crumble the whole lot ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... times; they are at the mercy of any one who gives them a cold look or a harsh word. Others cling to the need of their own self-approval; they are aristocrats, firm and secure in their self-estimate. Let their self-esteem crumble, and these proud and haughty ones are humble, weak, inefficient. We fiercely resent criticism because in it is a threat to our source of energy, our very feeling of ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... appearance. It is built on the same lines. It is as it would be with some very old cathedral. As the centuries pass it must be slowly rebuilt. The floors wear out and are relaid. The roof serves its time and is replaced. The walls crumble first in one place and then another until they have been completely reconstructed. After a thousand years has passed there may be none of the original material in the building, yet its appearance is unchanged. The bodies we have today shall have passed away and will be growing in the trees and ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... evil miasma that bred corruption. She saw herself a sinner, sunk incredibly low, a woman who had worshipped Love indeed, but at a forbidden shrine, a woman moreover bereft of all things, who had seen her sacrifice crumble to ashes and had ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... generally in their struggle with the privileged classes. For he has lived peaceably with a socialist cabinet for some time. He is wise enough to realize that if the aristocracy is crumbling, the institution of royalty will crumble with aristocracy if royalty makes an ally of the nobility. So the king and the Socialists get along splendidly. Now the Socialists in Italy are of several kinds. There are the city Socialists, who ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... are the ills which cause a house to crumble far more than lack of scientific knowledge, however rude it be. [28] For if you will consider; on the one hand, there is a steady outflow [29] of expenses from the house, and, on the other, a lack of profitable works outside to meet expenses; need you ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... weighing hundreds of tons, tilted it to a dangerous angle, then dropped from beneath it. Marian's heart stopped beating as she felt the downward rush of the avalanche of ice. The next instant she felt it crumble like an egg-shell. It had broken at the point where they lay. With a warning cry of terror she sprang to her feet ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... Him we can hang. "The soul that sinneth it shall die." But if the fire is "an accident," owing to "a defective flue," if the fire-escape breaks, the stairs give away under a little extra weight, or ill-built walls crumble prematurely—who can we lay hands on? Where is the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... turkey should be roasted two hours and a half, or three hours; very slowly at first. If you wish to make plain stuffing, pound a cracker, or crumble some bread very fine, chop some raw salt pork very fine, sift some sage, (and summer-savory, or sweet-marjoram, if you have them in the house, and fancy them,) and mould them all together, seasoned with a little pepper. An egg ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... ordered, the final assault is given; and if God does not perform a real miracle to save that soul, the last walls crumble, the doors are beaten down! Then the confessor makes a triumphant entry into the place; the very heart, soul, conscience, and intelligence, ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... know, our ancient drums, hollowed sections of the coconut tree, covered one end with shark-skin. The first kaekeeke of all Hawaii Ahuna pointed out to me and told me the tale. It was manifestly most ancient. He was afraid to touch it for fear the age-rotted wood of it would crumble to dust, the ragged tatters of the shark-skin head of it still attached. 'This is the very oldest and father of all our kaekeekes,' Ahuna told me. 'Kila, the son of Moikeha, brought it back from far Raiatea in the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... the pang is brief, Do thy part, Have thy pleasure! How perplexed Grows belief! Well, this cold clay clod Was man's heart: Crumble it, and what ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... The Kirchenzeitung, of the Ohio Synod, May 12, 1917: "The great and glorious work of Dr. Krauth in the Council has been nullified. The General Synod's practise of fraternizing with the sects will prevail. What is sound and good in the Council will crumble; the proposed union is a great victory for the lax portion of the General Synod and a pitiable defeat for the Council. Indeed, we shall be told about the 'salt' that the Council may be in the new body, but that is an old, old game, which cannot ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... show this character when exposed to discerning criticism. All categories have to be shown to be so hopelessly confused and to be without any conceivable notion that though apparent before us yet they crumble into indefiniteness as ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... when the great wall that held the body of water began to crumble at the top sent a message begging the people of Johnstown for God's sake to take to the hills. He reports no ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... tongue to express itself in thankfulness, rose at last to such apprehension of Jesus, and such clinging to Him in grateful love, as availed to save 'this stranger' with a salvation that healed his spirit, and was perfected when the once leprous body was left behind, to crumble into dust. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... iron-handed and a grinding despotism! Oh, my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God- created glorious rights of Humanity, and ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... I mean. Why should she be dead, and not you or I? It was only a fortnight ago that she was here with the rest of us. What d'you believe?" she demanded of mr. Perrott. "D'you believe that things go on, that she's still somewhere—or d'you think it's simply a game—we crumble up to nothing when we die? I'm positive Rachel's ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Diane, the very suggestion became certainty: she already saw Eutacie's shallow little heart consoled and her vanity excited by these magnificent prospects, and she looked forward to the triumph of her own constancy, when Berenger should find the image so long enshrined in his heart crumble in its sacred niche. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... harm had been done by the creation of the reservoir, but that, on the contrary, it had benefited the temple. The action of the water upon the stone, they said with vehement voices, instead of loosening it and causing it to crumble untimely away, had tended to harden and consolidate it. Here I should like to lie, but I resist the temptation. Monsieur Naville has stated that possibly the English engineers have helped to prolong the lives of the buildings of Philae, and Monsieur Maspero has declared that "the state ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... cried, with a scornful laugh. "I tell you that Gian Maria will never dare so much. And if he did, are these walls that will crumble at a few cannon-shots? Assault he might attempt; but I need not tell a soldier that twenty men who are stout and resolute, as I will believe you are for all your craven words, could hold so strong a place as this ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... deep-rutted, heavy-hillocked cart-road, diverging gatelessly into various brick-fields or pieces of waste; and bordered on each side by heaps of—Hades only knows what!—mixed dust of every unclean thing that can crumble in drought, and mildew of every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp: ashes and rags, beer-bottles and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery, shreds of nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen garbage, back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... were rending, tearing, stabbing, on flank and rear. The two Dinosaurs disappeared from view. The dreadful mountain of writhing, gigantic shapes heaved convulsively for some minutes. Then the great columns that were the Dinosaurs' legs seemed to crumble beneath the weight. The awful, battling heap sagged, fell apart, and let in the glare of the sunlight upon what had been the two colossal monarchs of the early world. The dreadful, unrecognizable things still moved, still heaved ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... God and mine is dead. And Satan in his place—Satan who is The father of the gods—lures on your hearts Unto an idol in the untrodden skies, That, while ye dream oblivious in the void, The earth may crumble. Or if God there be, He is the God of dying hearts and spent— A deity of chaos, for whose ends One thing alone is mete—ruin of life, Of loathings and of longings that on earth Restlessly grapple with the powers of Hell. I know not if in regions yet unguessed Some gods may dwell, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... are ugly from the very beginning; and they will become as old-fashioned as old Buckingham House or Strawberry Hill itself, perhaps in the life-time of him who owns them; or else, like Fonthill, they will crumble about your ears, and remain as monuments of your folly rather than of your taste. But go and build as Thorpe, or Inigo Jones, or Wren used to build. Or even, if you will travel abroad for your models, take Palladio himself for your guide, or Phillbert ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... of water, and we are perfectly helpless. I was soon despatched; and my bones left to whiten on the sand. This was long ago; and, one by one, all my relics have been carried off or washed away. My jaw-bone has been used as a seat here, till it's worn out; but I couldn't crumble away till I'd told some one my story. Remember, child, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... immortal and imperishable, that they will bear the impress which we place upon them, through endless ages to come. If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it. If we rear temples, they will crumble to the dust. But, if we work on men's immortal minds—if we imbue them with high principles, with the just fear of God, and of their fellow men,—we engrave on those tablets, something which no time can efface, but which will brighten and ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... admit of the animals working in this manner. Where there are large cakes of "tosca" near the surface, as in many localities on the southern pampas, the vizcacha makes its burrow as best he can, and without the regular trenches. In earths that crumble much, sand or gravel, he also works ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... incline that became a stairwell. At the other it ended in a hole that vanished in darkness below. Light of sorts filtered in through slots and holes drilled into the thick stone wall. Everything was built of the same crumble-textured but strong rock. Brion took the stairs. After a number of blind passages and wrong turns he saw a stronger light ahead, and went on. There was food, metal, even artifacts of the unusual Disan design in the different rooms he ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... o'clock is brewed a large bowl of 'poor man's punch'—ale posset! This is the event of the night. Ale posset, or milk and ale posset as some call it, is made in this wise. Set a quart of milk on the fire. While it boils, crumble a twopenny loaf into a deep bowl, upon which pour the boiling milk. Next, set two quarts of good ale to boil, into which grate ginger and nutmeg, adding a quantity of sugar. When the ale nearly boils, add it to the milk and bread in ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... world is on my side, I have natural rights, and the law with me. I protest! The country will go to ruin if a father's rights are trampled under foot. That is easy to see. The whole world turns on fatherly love; fatherly love is the foundation of society; it will crumble into ruin when children do not love their fathers. Oh! if I could only see them, and hear them, no matter what they said; if I could simply hear their voices, it would soothe the pain. Delphine! Delphine most of all. But tell them ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... process of existence, destruction is one of the phases of creation; for the inferior must ever be giving way for the growth of the superior: the husk must crumble and decay, that the seed may germinate and appear. As the whole creation passes on towards the sonship, death must ever be doing its sacred work about the lower regions, that life may ever arise triumphant, in its ascent towards the will of ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... stood gazing at her pictures,—all would be unknown to her. And when he died in his turn, the silence and loneliness would be still greater. The things which he had been unable to tell her would die with him and they would both crumble away in the earth, strangers to each other, prolonging their grievous error in eternity, unable to approach each other, or see each other, without a saving word, condemned to the fearful, unbounded void, over whose limitless firmament ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... convent; and thou must take also a bushel of lentils[FN119] and sift and crush and cook them. Then must thou fetch water in barrels and fill the four fountains; after which thou must take three hundred and threescore and six wooden bowls and crumble the cracknels therein and pour of the lentil-pottage over each and carry every monk and patriarch his bowl." Said Ala al-Din,[FN120] "Take me back to the King and let him kill me, it were easier to me than this service." Replied the old woman, "If thou do truly and rightly ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... skipping gaily before her along the path, whistling to the birds, calling the squirrels, whispering affectionate words to the shy flowers, made her fears seem ridiculous, and her resolution wavered and threatened to crumble. There was not a shadow on Veronica's brow, not a glint of furtiveness in her eye, nowhere a hint of any secret knowledge or subdued excitement. Her eyes met Sahwah's with candid directness, her laughter was spontaneous and not forced; she was ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... mystery of humanity. Its horror was the horror that we all accept as one of the elements of life. Deterioration, however rapid, however complete, does not come upon us like a ghost in the night to puzzle us absolutely. It is not altogether out of the range of our experience. Most men have seen a man crumble gradually, through the action of some vice, as a wall crumbles through the action of time, falls into dust and decay, filters away into the weed-choked ditches of utter ruin and degradation. Most ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a small egg, roll out very thin, prick lightly all over, and bake brown—it will take about five minutes in a quick oven. Cool on cloth and keep dry. Handle delicately—if the wafers are what they should be; they break and crumble at any ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... everywhere opens laps and nooks for the reception and formation of soil. Every grain of dust that is borne through the air by the lazy breeze of summer, instead of sliding from a glassy surface, is held where it falls. The rocks themselves crumble and decompose, and turn into a fertile mold. Thus, the Coliseum is throughout crowned and draped with a covering of earth, in many places of considerable depth. Trailing plants clasp the stones ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... nothing come to you But stammering tongues that never can confess. Undaunted then in answer here I cry, 'You wanton, that control the hand of him Who masquerades as wisdom in a sky Where holy, holy, sing the cherubim, I will not pay one penny to your name Though all my body crumble into shame.' ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds and to enjoy a great deal of happiness in this bright ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... every reptile to see corruption when the soul hath gone forth from them after their death. For when the soul departeth, a man seeth corruption, and the bones of his body rot and become wholly loathsomeness, the members decay piecemeal, the bones crumble into an inert mass, the flesh turneth into foetid liquid, and he becometh a brother unto the decay which cometh upon him. And he turneth into a host of worms, and he becometh a mass of worms, and an ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... enormous effect on public opinion. Newspapers were full of the praises of women; financiers, statesmen, economists and politicians declared that without the aid of women it would be impossible to win the war. The anti-suffragism of Mr. Asquith even was beginning to crumble. In speaking of the heroic death of Edith Cavell in Belgium in October, 1915, he said: "She has taught the bravest men among us a supreme lesson of courage; yes ... and there are thousands of such women and a year ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... interrupted the girl, growing grave. "He is not a man like other men. If he asked to kiss me, I should crumble into dust, as ashes dried in the sun crumble if you touch them with a finger, and I should be as much afraid of his lips as of a lion's. Though you may laugh at it, I shall always believe that he is one of the Immortals. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... five hundred yards distant from it. The trading-house, which formed the centre of the place, was built of rough stone laid in clay, and the wall which enclosed it was of the same materials; both would crumble in an instant at the touch of a twelve-pound shot. Towards the west and south they had been protected by an outer line of earthworks, mounted with cannon, and forming an entrenched camp; while the side towards Fort Ontario was left wholly exposed, in the rash confidence that ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... grumbled the Wall, "I am not the strongest; the big grey Rat who lives in the cellar is stronger than I. When he gnaws and gnaws at me I crumble and crumble, and at last I fall; go to the Rat, ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... lost to me, Hidden in grey Eternity, I shall attain, with burning feet, To you and to the mercy-seat! The ages crumble down like dust, Dark roses, deviously thrust And scattered in sweet wine — but I, I shall lift up to you my cry, And kiss your wet lips ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... as he raised it to his lips and tried to bite off a piece, but only to break off what felt like wood, which refused to crumble ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... a generation our country, shaken to its very foundations by the great social upheavals known as revolutions, has seen its old institutions crumble to pieces and other, entirely new institutions rise in their place; it has seen theories, beliefs, and codes of ethics, theretofore looked upon as immovable, give way to different principles and methods based upon democracy and liberty, ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... inherited his passion for melody and harmony; and it was no wonder that David recognized so soon in the blind boy the spirit that made them kin. At the first stroke of David's bow, indeed, the dingy walls about them would crumble into nothingness, and together the two boys were off in a fairy world ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... moon from spacious height, And stars, may crumble into night; Why shouldst thou cease to move forever, A living ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... altar led, And called down blessings on her fair young head. The cheek is pale that with the rose could vie, There is no lustre in that rayless eye, Upon those pallid lips there is no breath, And she alas is now the bride of Death! Henceforth what soul will ever dare to trust In things that crumble at a breath to dust? And who would dream of earthly joy and bliss Taught by a lesson terrible ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... but the sea remains the same; and all our empires and literatures, arts and towns, crumble and decay, and are proved toys. Our consolation lies in our unconquerable souls, our glorious after-life beyond this world. But the sea has an immortality in the here and now. I shall never understand ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... pretend to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six hundred pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon eight, and as fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are renewed—from the sea, yes, from the sea. And all our thoughts are the thoughts of six-hundred-pounders, and all our speeches; and because we don't want to steal umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea people do want to steal them, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... that Lloyd felt something breakdown within her, something to which she could not put a name. A mysterious element of her character, hitherto rigid and intact, was beginning at last to crumble. Somewhere a breach had been opened; somewhere the barrier had been undermined. The fine steadfastness that was hers, and that she had so dearly prized, her strength in which she had gloried, her independence, her splendid arrogant self-confidence ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... embarked in certainties," replied Danglars, with the air of a mountebank sounding his own praises; "to involve me, three governments must crumble to dust." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... help to call the attention of wiser and better men than I am, to the questions which are now agitating the minds of the rising generation, and to the absolute necessity of solving them at once and earnestly, unless we would see the faith of our forefathers crumble away beneath the combined influence of new truths which are fancied to be incompatible with it, and new mistakes as to its real essence. That this can be done I believe and know: if I had not believed it, I would never have put pen to paper on ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... sea water ice to thaw partially. The brine, of lower freezing-point, flows away, leaving only fresh water ice behind. In this way blocks of sea-ice exposed to the sun's rays are relieved of their salty constituents, and crumble into pellucid gravel ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... were forcing their way out toward the Miran station on Europa, to be relayed to the headquarters on Jupiter, just as Solarian radio beams were thrusting through space toward Luna. Said the Miran messages: "Their ships no longer crumble." Said the Solarian messages: "The ships no longer ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... subordinate to both the legislative and the executive; and thus the whole power of the Government would be merged in a single department. Whenever, if ever, this shall occur, our glorious system of well-regulated self-government will crumble into ruins, to be succeeded, first by anarchy, and finally by monarchy or despotism. I am far from believing that this doctrine is the sentiment of the American people; and during the short period which remains in which ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... cities in our hands, and with an army greatly inferior in numbers and equipment to ours, the Rebels have held out so long. It is because of the sagacity, energy, and indomitable will of Jefferson Davis. Without him the Rebellion would crumble to pieces in a day; with him it may continue to be, even in disaster, a power that will tax the whole energy and resources ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various |
