"Defeat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he had heard his friend, M. de Coralth, speak of on several occasions. "Accuse the dear marquis!" he exclaimed. "It's contemptible, outrageous. Why, only last evening he said to me, 'My good friend, Domingo's defeat cost me two thousand louis!'" M. de Valorsay had said nothing of the kind, for the very good reason that he did not even know Wilkie by sight; still, no one paid much heed to the assertion, whereat Wilkie felt vexed, and resolved to turn his ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... presence, which it braves, The tumult of the crowd cannot defeat — The frenzy of the multitude that raves In hostile bands through every square and street,— Thou'lt see thy kingdom swim in crimson waves, A purple sea of blood shall round it beat; For even already in its dismal doom All is disaster, tragedy, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... is nothing: it isn't death that can disquiet us, since we don't know what it is. What troubles me is the idea of defeat. As things are turning out, I foresee that we must give battle to London, to the provinces, to all England, and certainly in the end we can't fail ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... time had passed along its rivers in search of the fabled gold country of Manoa, whose king each morning gave himself a coating of gold dust, and was hence called El Dorado (the gilded); but all these expeditions ended in mortification and defeat. The settlements never extended beyond the sierras, or foot-hill of the Andes, which stretch only a few days' journey (in some places but a score of leagues) from the populous cities ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... post of danger dearly prized, Like the crack stations in the shooting field,— Never enough for all. They bribe and jockey,— Knife their own brothers to get near the spoil. And would they not repel a foreigner,— One they had cause to envy? Englishmen Are very unforgiving of defeat. It is your glory, the impediment: So gluttonous are soldiers of reward— So sporting-keen are Englishmen ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... Perceval have contended eagerly against the injustice of refusing moderate requests, because immoderate ones may hereafter be made? Would he not have said (and said truly), 'Leave such exorbitant attempts as these to the general indignation of the Commons, who will take care to defeat them when they do occur; but do not refuse me the Irons and the Meltings now, because I may totally lose sight ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... discourses, she craves," Merry Wives, I. 3,) which the same opponent had been the first to show not only untenable, but fatal to the authority and antiquity of the readings of that volume, he requited that opponent's defence of him by attributing his defeat on this point to an English editor, who only quoted the passage in question from "Shakespeare's Scholar," and with special mention of its authorship and its importance,[3] [Footnote 3: Rimbault's Edition of Overbury's Works, London, 1856, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... their hour of defeat imagine themselves doing the feeblest, foolishest things. As I sat there on the bench, gazing before me, I saw the whole thing—Nancy Olden, after all her bragging, her skirmishing, her hairbreadth scapes and successes, arrested in broad daylight and before witnesses for having ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... The "Cork-heeled Shoon," too, cannot be early, but ballads are subject, in oral tradition, to such modern interpolations. The verse about the ladies waiting vainly is anticipated in a popular song of the fourteenth century, on a defeat of ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... God, good Will to Man, And Peace on Earth, compos'd the plan, For which Religion first came down, And brought to Earth a heav'nly Crown. Better her Purpose to complete, And Satan's Malice to defeat, A Troop of holy Genii came, Co-workers in the glorious Scheme. To each a scroll the Goddess gave, On which these lines She did engrave: "Go, teach the sons of Men to raise Their voice unto their Maker's praise. ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... to have the head at the next place we eat," Sahwah declared, owning her defeat with as good grace as she could. And Fate winked solemnly and began to slide off ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... Stillman's defeat, as this disgraceful affair is called, put all notion of peace out of Black Hawk's mind, and he started out in earnest on the warpath. Governor Reynolds, excited by the reports of the first arrivals from the Stillman ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... matter of fact, those eight months of holding on were as great a miracle as the landing. There is a limit to the physical powers even of supermen. These men were not content with the small strip of ground that they held, and they did attack and defeat the Turks opposing them again and again, but as soon as a Turkish army was beaten there was ever another fresh one to take its place. The Turks could not attack us at one time with an army outnumbering ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... had combined in support of one of the candidates, and seeing in this, no promise of good to the community at large, he at once consulted with a few friends in the Legislature, and they resolved to defeat the railroad "ring," if possible, in caucus. Their efforts were successful and the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... next? It was useless to go back to Bangbury, useless to remain at Dibbledean. Yet the fit was on him to be moving again somewhere—better even to return to Kirk Street than to remain irresolute and inactive on the scene of his defeat. ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... indictment against Salvatori. The very language of the sentence confesses openly the partizanship of the court. I am told that, in May 1849, "The Republican hordes commanded by the adventurer Garibaldi, after the battle with" (defeat of?) "the Royal Neapolitan troops at Velletri, had occupied a precarious position in the neighbouring towns," and a good number of these troops were stationed at Valmontone, under the command of the so- called Colonel De Pasqualis; that ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... curl'd Sicambrians, routed them, and came Not off, with backward ensigns of a slave; But forward marks, wounds on my breast and face, Were meant to thee, O Caesar, and thy Rome? And have I this return! did I, for this, Perform so noble and so brave defeat On Sacrovir! O Jove, let it become me To boast my deeds, when he whom they concern, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... tortured peoples of the earth impelled by their own misery to desolate the happy peoples, a vision which grew clearer in the after years. But in that easy-going Eastern life there is a power of resistance, as everybody knows who tries to change it, which may yet defeat the ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... to the present case, the following circumstances are to be noted: First, the royal council and the men-at-arms were induced to believe and to obey; and they faced the risk of being put to shame by defeat under the leadership of a girl. Second, the people rejoice, and their pious faith seems to tend to the glory of God and the confounding of his enemies. Third, the enemy, even his princes, are in hiding and stricken with many terrors. They give way to weakness like a woman with child; they are ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... that two of the guard had gone over to the island to protect Mr. Gracewood's property. Dinner was ready, and as we were now in no haste, we sat down with the reunited family. Ella was up, and had been improving rapidly. The news of the total defeat of the Indians seemed to quiet her fears in ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... with dozens of others scattered along the line, were busy scouting the neighborhood, guarding the surveyors, the engineers, and finally the track-layers, for the jealous red men swarmed in myriads all along the way, lacking only unanimity, organization, and leadership to enable them to defeat the enterprise. And then when the whistling engines passed the forks of the Platte and began to climb up the long slope of the Rockies to Cheyenne and Sherman Pass, the trouble and disaffection spread to tribes far more ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... upon their reserve, who were every moment accumulating in immense numbers in the High-street: to this spot the townsmen, exulting in their trifling advantage, had the temerity to follow and renew the conflict, and here they sustained the most signal defeat: for the men of Christ Church, and Pembroke, and St. Mary's Hall, and Oriel, and Corpus Christi, had united their forces in the rear; while the front of the gown had fallen back upon the effective Trinitarians, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... that ships are on the sea laden with troops; and if you find it so hard to overcome the few soldiers now here, what would you do against the great armies that will pour in ere long? Why, all the efforts of the Sepoys gathered at Delhi are insufficient to defeat the four or five thousand British troops who hold their posts outside the town, waiting only till the succor arrives from England to take a terrible vengeance. Woe be then to those who have taken part against us; still more to those whose hands ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... in the region eventually resulted in an 1859 treaty in which Portugal ceded the western portion of the island. Imperial Japan occupied Portuguese Timor from 1942 to 1945, but Portugal resumed colonial authority after the Japanese defeat in World War II. East Timor declared itself independent from Portugal on 28 November 1975 and was invaded and occupied by Indonesian forces nine days later. It was incorporated into Indonesia in July 1976 as the province of Timor Timur ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... tapestry which separated his apartment from that of his friend, "Come, and doubt, if thou canst, devotion and the immortality of the soul. Compare the uneasiness and misery of thy triumph with the calmness of our defeat, the meanness of thy reign with the grandeur of our captivity, thy sanguinary vigils to the ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... to the world, and call God to witness their truth and sincerity; and invoke defeat and disgrace upon our heads, should, we ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... a stage in an ascent. To leave out one of them would defeat the journey; to achieve one of them at the wrong time and in the wrong place would have ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... and Miss Schuyler, who could find no words to reassure her, was thankful that her attention was demanded by her restive horse. The strain was telling on her, too, and, with less at stake than her companion, she was consumed by a longing to defeat the schemes of the cattle-men, who had, it seemed to her with detestable cunning, decided not to warn the station agent, and let the great train go, that they might heap the more obloquy upon their ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... intervals. At the north-east corner is Newton's Tower, better known as the Phoenix from a sculptured figure, the ensign of one of the city guilds, appearing over its door. From this tower Charles I saw the battle of Rowton Heath and the defeat of his troops during the famous siege of Chester. This was one of the most prolonged and deadly in the whole history of the Civil War. It would take many pages to describe the varied fortunes of the gallant Chester men, who were ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Lucilla knew which of the twins was Nugent, and which was Oscar. A delicious inward glow of triumph diffused itself all through me. I resisted the strong temptation that I felt to discover how Nugent bore his defeat. If I had yielded to it, he would have seen in my face that I gloried in having outwitted him. I sat down, the picture of innocence, in the nearest chair, and crossed my hands on my lap, a composed and ladylike person, ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... keep the track. At the creek, sure enough, the water was out, the bridge gone. To reach the next bridge, five miles off, a crazy cross-country drive would have been necessary; and Mahony was for giving up the job. But Doyle would not acknowledge defeat. He unharnessed the horse, set Mahony on its back, and himself holding to its tail, forced the beast, by dint of kicking and lashing, into the water; and not only got them safely across, but up the steep sticky clay of the opposite bank. It was six ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... with the Spaniard and the Creole. The editor believed that an inferior race could never exist in safety surrounded by a superior one despising them. Colonization in Africa was then urged and the efforts of the blacks to go elsewhere were characterized as doing mischief at every turn to defeat the "enlightened plan" for the amelioration ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... your Jenny geck, And answer kindness with a slight, Seem unconcerned at her neglect; For women in a man delight, But them despise who're soon defeat And with a simple face give way To a repulse: then he not blate; Push bauldly on, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... do justice to the sumptuous phraseology of the work, to its opulence of carefully selected adjective, or to the involved rhetoric which seemed to defeat and set at naught all your petty rules of syntax and prosody. Still less can I impart a notion of the exhaustive raking up of ancient examples and modern instances, mostly worn bright by familiarity ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... 12, 1827.—Friday, after the arrival of the packet bringing the account of the defeat of the Catholic Question, in the House of Commons, orders were sent to the Pigeon-House to forward 5,000,000 rounds of musket-ball cartridge to the different garrisons round the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... for the defeat was quite simple. The thief had run his cattle through the lava beds where the trail at once became difficult to follow. This delayed the pursuing party; they ran out of water, and, as there was among them not one ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... there is implied a permanence of state that is not implied in victory. Triumph, originally denoting the public rejoicing in honor of a victory, has come to signify also a peculiarly exultant, complete, and glorious victory. Compare conquer. Antonyms: defeat, destruction, disappointment, disaster, failure, frustration, miscarriage, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... Elizabeth, saying she could not bear to be the only person in England to withhold her congratulations to the king upon such an occasion, when no one owed him such obligations; but all she had to regret was that the Dutch had not fought with, not against, the English, and that the defeat had not fallen upon those who ought to be their joint enemies. She admired and pitied, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... of a neighbouring monarch, the Minstrels sought every opportunity of astirring the patriotic feelings of their countrymen, while they despised the efforts of the enemy, and anticipated in enraptured paeans their defeat. At the siege of Berwick in 1296, when Edward I. began his first expedition against Scotland, the Scottish Minstrels ridiculed the attempt of the English monarch to capture the place in some lines which have been preserved. The ballad of "Gude Wallace" has been ascribed to this age; ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... each one had to seek his own consolation if his head was bruised. Since great and productive forests constituted the chief wealth of the country, these forests were of course vigilantly watched over, less, however, by legal means than by continually renewed efforts to defeat violence and trickery ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Charles the First, Cancelled the despotism obtained for his grandfather by the Chancellor Maupeou, has exercised no tyranny, and has shown a disposition to let the constitution be amended. It did want it indeed; but I fear the present want of temper grasps at so much, that they defeat their own purposes; and where loyalty has for ages been the predominant characteristic of a nation, it cannot be eradicated at once. Pity will soften the tone of the moment; and the nobility and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... enough, the walls of cottages, some of stone, and some of turf; Mr. Palmer saw a new village already in process of construction, to take the place of that about to be destroyed! The despicable enemy had moved his camp, to pitch it under his very walls! It filled him with the rage of defeat. The poor man who scorned him was going to be too much for him! Not yet was he any nearer to being placed alone in the midst of the earth. He thought to have rid himself of all those hateful faces, full of their chiefs contempt, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... ways, subdued and sane; To hush all vulgar clamour of the street; With level calm to face alike the strain Of triumph or defeat; ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... did Mellasys Plickaman glower along the corridors of the Millard. I pitied him for his defeat too much to notice his attempts to pick a quarrel. Firm in the affection of my Saccharissa and in the confidence of her father, I waived the insults of the aggrieved and truculent cousin. He had lost the heiress. I had won her. I could afford ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... and he had not found the calm and tactful speeches he had planned before; but in spite of every one, and chiefly in spite of his own heart, he had bravely done what he had come to do. The victory was more agonising than any defeat could have been, but it ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... was nothing she hated but Radicals and reformers, for all they wanted was to bring down the respectable people, and maybe break the banks. On these principles, she had been in great fervour for Sommerset Cloudesly; and by way of testifying that his defeat had not broken her spirit, Miss Croply assembled the Priors, myself, and two or three other favoured friends, to tea and crumpets prepared by her own fair hands. These requisites were on the table, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... discarding what it would call the old shibboleths when it wrongly imagined them to be outworn. My decision to leave a party that has long ceased to deserve its honoured name was immediately due to a Liberal Paper which editorially ridiculed the Liberty League, formed for the defeat of Bolshevist propaganda, and pooh-poohed the idea of the existence of dangerous Bolshevist elements in the country. This attitude attracted me enormously; for I recalled the standpoint of the same paper in the days before the War—how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... Burgoyne, expecting that the others could be expedited before the packet sailed with the first, which, however, by some mistake, sailed without them, and the wind detained the vessel which was ordered to carry the rest. Hence came General Burgoyne's defeat, the French declaration, and the loss of thirteen colonies." What, indeed, could have been, even a priori, greater fatuity than to entrust the direction of a war to a man who years before, on the continent of Europe, had over and over again proved himself to be utterly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... touched our heads, some flowers in a bowl, the small lattice window open. Though it was hot in there, it was better far than the rooms of most families in towns, living on a wage of twice as much; for here was no sign of defeat in decency or cleanliness. In her face, as in poor Herd's, was that same strange mingling of resigned despair and almost eager appeal, so terrible to disappoint. Yet, trying not to disappoint it, one felt guilty of treachery: What was the good, the kindness, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... efficient. But it has lost its power of initiative and change; its power of adaptation is gone, and with that secular change of conditions which is the law of life, stresses must arise within and without, and bring at last either through revolution or through defeat the release of fresh poietic power. The process, of course, is not in its entirety simple; it may be masked by the fact that one department of activity may be in its poietic stage, while another is in a phase of realisation. In the United States of America, for example, during the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... numerous; seeing all writers concur in stating, every attempt by coercive means to alter the peculiar habits of this people, have had a tendency to alienate them still more from civil associations, and directly to defeat the end proposed. It is time therefore that a better and a more enlightened policy should be adopted in Europe, towards a race of human beings, under so many hereditary disadvantages as are the helpless, ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... fairest and most honourable way of doing so, I applied to you, her lawful guardian and protector; I have failed, and you have insulted and defied me. I now tell you, that I will leave NO MEANS untried to defeat your nefarious project, and, if evil or disgrace should befal you or yours in consequence, upon your own head be it. You may smile at my words, and disregard them as idle threats which I am powerless to fulfil, but remember, you have no longer a helpless girl to deal with, but ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... thinking brings us to thy snare; Where, held by thee, in slavery we stay, And throw the pleasing part of life away. But, what does most my indignation move, Discretion! thou wert ne'er a friend to Love: Thy chief delight is to defeat those arts, By which he kindles mutual flames in hearts; While the blind loitering God is at his play, Thou steal'st his golden pointed darts away: Those darts which never fail; and in their stead Convey'st malignant arrows tipt with lead: The ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... have been advanced and the acute criticisms to which they have been subjected, will almost certainly say what someone has said before, and said, perhaps, much better. The valor of ignorance will involve him in ignominious defeat. ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... his glow, The wind in fear forbears to blow; The fire restrains his wonted heat Where stand the dreaded Ravan's feet, And, necklaced with the wandering wave, The sea before him fears to rave. Kuvera's self in sad defeat Is driven from his blissful seat. We see, we feel the giant's might, And woe comes o'er us and affright. To thee, O Lord, thy suppliants pray To find some ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the Eleanor had one advantage that Gladys was not slow to recognize. The Eleanor had the inside course. In a close finish that would be very likely to spell the difference between victory and defeat, since, to reach the opening, Gladys would either have to get far enough ahead to cross the Eleanor's bows or else to cross behind her, which would entail so much loss of time that Dolly would be certain to bring her craft home a winner. ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... From his vantage point behind the conning tower of the captured U-boat Jack kept tabs on the struggle until all firing had ceased and he was sure the Germans had been completely subjugated. The cheering of his rescuers apprised him of the defeat of the enemy. Walking out on the deck of the U-boat, he pulled off his hat and welcomed his deliverers with a ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... to unite against the Huns. After their first elected king had been soundly beaten by one of his dukes, he died, and in their next choice they had the luck to light upon a leader really great. Henry the Fowler, more honorably known as Henry the City-builder,[9] taught them how to defeat their foe. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... long only as their religious tenets and the subtleties of their creed remained untouched. Then he had seen them rise and shed their blood, yet even then only with loud outcries and a promising display of enthusiasm. But their first defeat had been fatal and it had required only a small number of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a few days afterward that the Captain had planned almost exactly as it happened. Since the beginnings of unrest in Equatoria, he had transferred his banking to New York; so that in the event of defeat in war, only the lands and hacienda would revert, upon the fall of the present government. Falk could not remember (and his services dated back fifteen years, at which time he left Surrey with the Captain) when the master did not speak ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... gave way to my exertions. I dragged it downwards. Oh, heavens! were my hopes again destined to suffer defeat and mockery? ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... these suits. More than 1,100 have been commenced within the past eighteen months, and many of the others have been at issue for more than twenty-five years. These delays subject the Government to loss of evidence and prevent the preparation necessary to defeat unjust and fictitious claims, while constantly accruing interest threatens ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... and enlisted his sympathy. It had all ended right, by a place being found for the man who was out of work; and so Alec pitched the great game whereby Harmony's famous team went down to a crushing defeat. ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... precaution with which this cowardly but accomplished miscreant proceeded towards the accomplishment of his purposes, and such was his apprehension lest the premature suspicion of a single individual might by contingent treachery defeat his design, or affect his personal safety. He had made up his mind to communicate the secret of his enterprise to none until the moment of its execution; and this being accomplished, his ultimate plans were laid, as he thought, with sufficient skill to baffle pursuit and defeat either the malice ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... now resulting in the placing on the Statute Book of a Home Rule Bill, while another equally deadly agitation—in promise—was being worked up by Sir Edward Carson, the Duke of This and the Marquis of That, and a very rising politician, Mr. F.E. Smith, to defeat the operation of Home Rule for Ireland. In short, if one might believe the second-rate ministers who were not repudiated by their superiors in rank, the Vote for Women could only be wrung from the reluctance of the tyrant man, if the women made life unbearable for the male ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... the only one of all the chiefs that obeyed the call of William Thompson, who had returned to the lake district, and he was the first to announce to his tribe the defeat of the national insurrection, beaten on the plains of the lower Waikato. Of the two hundred warriors who, under his orders, hastened to the defence of the soil, one hundred and fifty were missing on his return. Allowing for a number being made prisoners by the invaders, how many ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... partially losing his identity by changing his name, made a cold, dreary impression upon him, like the thought of annihilation, and thus his purpose of remaining in Hillaton, and winning victory on the very ground of his defeat, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... egress from the station till the road was cleared. Shortly afterwards the wagons, at last let loose, came into contact with the two city filth carts, the "Powerful" and "Terrible," which were parading about the streets on their own. These exceedingly powerful ironclads completed the defeat of the mule wagons, upset finally their order of going, and the retirement was effected in detachments. The ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... His desire was to forestall any defeat of his plans by having the package out of his hands until such time as he would leave Newport. One of his valets had once been successfully bribed. But equally did he desire that the girl should have a bond of interest akin to his; through this, he knew, must lie the success of that understanding ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... human belief. The Great King (as the King of Persia was called by excellence) was, and had long been, the type of worldly power and felicity, even down to the time when Alexander crossed the Hellespont. Within four years and three months from this event, by one stupendous defeat after another, Darius had lost all his Western empire, and had become a fugitive eastward of the Caspian Gates, escaping captivity at the hands of Alexander only to perish by those of the satrap Bessus. All antecedent historical parallels—the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... dissatisfied with the world and their ancestral religion, hearts yearning for divine sympathy and love; "as many as were ordained to eternal life believed;" and these formed in every city the nucleus of a Christian church. Even at Lystra, where the defeat seemed so utter, a little group of faithful hearts gathered round the mangled body of the apostle outside the city gates; Eunice and Lois were there with tender womanly ministrations; and young Timothy, as he looked down on the pale and bleeding face, felt his heart forever knit to the hero ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... with awkward defeat on Factories Bill. Not quite certain to whom they chiefly owe it, whether to GORST or MATTHEWS. Question arose on SYDNEY BUXTON's Amendment, raising the age of child-labourers to a minimum of eleven years. Debate lasted all night; a pleasant contrast to the unreality of Irish Debate; Benches ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... raving impulse that had seized him in the presence of her shame, that clamoured to him to drag himself before her feet, to pray for pardon, to pour out words—he knew not what words, but he knew that they had been straining at his lips—to wreck his self-respect for ever, and hopelessly defeat even the crazy purpose that had almost possessed him, by drowning her wretchedness in disgust, by babbling with the tongue of infatuation to a woman with a husband not yet buried, to a woman who ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... in the midst of her new-born joy, in sight of her own native land, fought the fierce battle of the briny waves, and felt as she sat dying on the sinking wreck, that all she had striven for was in vain; how she had found that defeat, that engulping billow, had proved in the end a victory, and had placed her where she could watch over the destiny of Italia, her adopted country, and work for its regeneration, and fight for its liberty, as she could not have done had she ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... doesn't want to ... it doesn't dare to want it. What sense could there be in it? Perhaps I might prove the stronger to-day—and the next time, perhaps—but sooner or later the day must come nevertheless, when I should suffer defeat. ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... economic and national strength of the Empire. The history of Switzerland shows the high Alpine cantons always maintaining a political tug of war with the cantons of the marginal plain, and always suffering a defeat ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... determined to seek an engagement. General Garfield wrote out all the orders of that fateful day, September 19, excepting one, and that one was the blunder that lost the day. Garfield volunteered to take the news of the defeat on the right to General George H. Thomas, who held the left of the line. It was a bold ride, under constant fire, but he reached Thomas and gave the information that saved the Army of the Cumberland. For this action he was ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson
... of her words died away, maddened it would seem, by the pain of his wound, or the fear of defeat, Peter shouted out his war-cry of "A Brome! A Brome"! and, gathering himself together, sprang straight at Morella as springs a starving wolf. The blue steel flickered in the sunlight, then down it fell, and lo! half the Spaniard's helm ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... that being its very essence; but by taking refuge in the Realm of the Ideal, man anticipates his apotheosis. There he escapes from the tyranny of the flesh and the bondage of nature's law. The misery of struggle and defeat no longer vexes him. The warring forces are reconciled and he sees their conflict under the aspect of eternal beauty. Thus, like the new-born god, Alcides, taking leave of the terrestrial battle-ground, he mounts into heaven, while the nightmare ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... communing, commanding, if we are to believe Kant. It is His one certain way to affirm and corroborate Himself. Without His perpetual message to the human conscience, He does not recognizably exist; and yet more than half the time His mandate sends us to certain defeat, to certain death. It's enough to make one go in for the other side. Of course, we have to suppose that the same voice which intimates duty to us intimates ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... easily enough, and now and then there were outbursts of rollicking jocundity in spite of it The mere physical suffering of privation is not a thousandth part of its pain. The sense of loneliness, of defeat, of unmerited neglect; the blind rebellion against the inequality with which the world's chances are distributed; the impotent sense of power which finds no outlet—these are the things which make poverty bitter. But there was nothing else for ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... out that my object in wishing to go to the Legislature was to reform the judiciary, and, among other things, to remove him from the district. I canvassed the county thoroughly and was not backward in portraying him in his true colors. He and his associates spared no efforts to defeat me. Their great reliance consisted in creating the belief that I was an abolitionist. If that character could have been fastened upon me it would have been fatal to my hopes, for it was a term of great reproach. ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... ticket. The socialist mayor of this city tells me, 'The men who come to us now from towns where they have been thoroughly whipped in a strike are among our most active working socialists.' The bitterness engendered by this sense of defeat is turned to politics, as it will throughout the whole country, if organization of labor is ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... gone down to the inn, where he talked over, with two or three of his own condition and a few of the better class of farmers, the news of the day, the war with the French, the troubles in Scotland, the alarming march of the Young Pretender, and his defeat at Culloden—with no very keen interest in the result, for the Southern gentry and yeomen, unlike those in the North, had no strong leanings either way. They had a dull dislike for Hanoverian George, but no great love for the exiled Stuarts, whose patron, the King ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... same evening. Who could have imagined that Desaix's little corps, together with the few heavy cavalry commanded by General Kellerman, would, about five o'clock, have changed the fortune of the day? It cannot be denied that it was the instantaneous inspiration of Kellerman that converted a defeat into a victory, and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the shame was the sense of ignominy and defeat, the feeling of intense hatred toward the man who had told him the truth. That unholy heritage from his mother, the hot, wild, passionate blood, which had proven so fatal to the boy, welled up like a stream of fire in the man's breast and extinguished all feeling but ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... stable equilibrium. But the settlement under Elizabeth was strengthened, and the parties bound together for thirty years, by the ever-present fear of Rome. When that fear was allayed, and the menace that hung over the very existence of the nation removed by the defeat of the Armada, the differences within the Church broke out afresh, and waxed fiercer every year. Shakespeare grew to manhood during the halcyon years between the Marian persecutions and the Marprelate pamphlets—a kind of magic oasis, which gave us our English Renaissance. Milton's ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... brick fields. I leave the reader to judge whether "Te Deum" would be sung on that night. A Gazette Extraordinary was issued; and my brother had really some reason for his assertion, "that in conscience he could not think of comparing Cannae to this smashing defeat;" since at Cannae many brave men had refused to fly—the consul himself, Terentius Varro, amongst them; but, in the present rout, there was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Impersonal?... this domestic tragedy?... Yes, Claire felt that it must be, otherwise the man tramping at her side would have wrestled so passionately against fate as to have come away at least spattered with the mud of defeat. No, Stillman was not defeated, he was merely ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... recovered from their defeat by the Tartars of Timur, and became once more an active menace. With Constantinople in their power, they attacked the Venetians and compelled those wealthy traders to pay them tribute. Venice by sea and Hungary on land remained for a century the bulwarks ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... because nobody has ever made it before me; but I do take them to be of the stag kind; their legs, bodies, and necks, are exactly shaped like them, and their colour very near the same. 'Tis true they are much larger, being a great deal higher than a horse; and so swift, that, after the defeat of Peterwaradin, they far outran the swiftest horses, and brought the first news of the loss of the battle to Belgrade. They are never thoroughly tamed; the drivers take care to tie them one to another, with strong ropes, fifty in a string, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... occasion of any psychic (magnetic) failure or defeat, dedicates the whole of aroused desperation to recovery of ground, infallibly induces a stress in the etheric life around him which ultimately draws to his aid, with the onsweep of worlds, ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... very wideawake—planning a line of policy to defeat the suggested Austro-German alliance against Great Britain. Prompt measures were necessary. At eight o'clock in the morning two King's Messengers would be at Bracondale ready to take the cipher despatches—autograph instructions ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... which Thorne had received from his mother influenced his treatment of Jasper. Under ordinary circumstances he would have resented bitterly the humiliating defeat he had received at the hands of the "new boy." Now, however, he felt sure of ultimate revenge, and was willing ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... he proposed a cool drink, and described the right method of making it as distinguished from the wrong. Randal was not thirsty, and was not inclined to smoke. Would the pertinacious lawyer give way at last? In appearance, at least, he submitted to defeat. "You want something of me, my friend," he said, with a ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... admits defeat, and it would snatch at the mantle of death itself to turn him back. It would be outrageous for him to think that such a story of one teacherless evening could so suddenly come to a stop. Therefore the grandmother had to call back her story from the ever-shut chamber ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... respect: not only must she set her house in order, but she must deal with those foreign powers who do not wish her house in order, who are slily and adroitly using their enormous, subtle influence to defeat this end. During our reconstruction period in America we made mistakes; but after those mistakes we did not have to hear a chorus from European nations telling us that we were unfit to govern ourselves. Nor were we forced to have other nations trying to corrupt every honest man we wished ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... 'Ha, John!' And as his brother was slow to reply—'Has the day gone against thee? How was it? Never fear to speak, brother; thou art safe; and I know thou hast done valiantly. Valour is never lost, whether in defeat or success. Speak, John. Take it not so much ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hardly realize it at first. After many hardships, no little danger, and after an attempt on the part of their enemies to defeat them, they had at last reached their goal. Now, as Abe had said, they ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... 16th of February the Committee of Secrecy made their first report to the House. They stated that their inquiry had been attended with numerous difficulties and embarrassments; every one they had examined had endeavoured, as far as in him lay, to defeat the ends of justice. In some of the books produced before them, false and fictitious entries had been made; in others, there were entries of money with blanks for the name of the stockholders. There were frequent erasures and alterations, and in some of the books leaves were torn out. They ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... authority, which did this in the instances of Barye, of Delacroix, of Millet, of Manet, of Puvis de Chavannes, did it also for many years in the instance of M. Rodin. It owes its defeat in the contest with him—for like the recalcitrants in the other contests, M. Rodin has definitively triumphed—to the unwise attempt to define him in terms heretofore applicable enough to sculptors, but wholly inapplicable to him. It failed to see that the thing to define in his work was ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... plans seemed to be thwarted when she least expected it. For a few moments she was silent, revolving in her mind the wisdom of taking Victorine into her counsels, and confiding to her the motive she had for wishing her to be seen by Willan Blaycke. But she dreaded lest this might defeat her object by making the girl self-conscious. Jeanne was perplexed; and in her perplexity her face took on an expression as if she were grieved. Victorine, who was much dismayed by her aunt's seeming acquiescence in her refusal to ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a rapidly growing faction in favor of free-love, as well as one opposed to it, and as each party would be extremely powerful, and use every effort to defeat its opponents, there would be great ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... and form one class of the guiding lights of man. They are the stars and coruscations from that great sea of electricity, the Force inherent in the people. To strive, to brave all risks, to perish, to persevere, to be true to one's self, to grapple body to body with destiny, to surprise defeat by the little terror it inspires, now to confront unrighteous power, now to defy intoxicated triumph—these are the examples that the nations need and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... westward toward the temperate "slopes" of the mountains, Cortes had another opportunity of proving his generalship and prompt resource at a critical moment. When Agathocles, the autocratic ruler of Syracuse, sailed over to defeat the Carthaginians, the first thing he did on landing in Africa was to burn his ships, that his soldiers might have no opportunity of retreat, and no hope but in victory. Cortes now acted ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... angry, and at the same time mortified by her defeat, Mabyn found herself speechless. He did not offer to shake hands with her. He bowed to her in passing out. She made the least possible acknowledgment, and then she was alone. Of course a hearty cry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... either horrible or irreverent; but it may be, and it probably is, very ill done: what then? This is a failure; better luck next time; more power to the elbow, more discretion, more wisdom in the design, and the old defeat becomes the scene of the new victory. Concern yourself about no failure; they do not cost lives, as in engineering; they are the PIERRES PERDUES of successes. Fame is (truly) a vapour; do not think of it; if the writer means well and tries hard, no failure will injure him, whether ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moving through the long series of alarms, worn with watching and wearied with assault, unenlightened yet undismayed, even down to the dreadful shock of his sister's terror, and still showing the dogged pluck that persists in the face of defeat, I understood what Dr. Silence meant when he described him as a ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of another subject; but, in vindication of himself, he asserted, that it was not easy to find a better; and that he thought it his interest to extinguish the memory of the first tragedy, which he could only do by writing one less defective upon the same story; by which he should entirely defeat the artifice of the booksellers, who, after the death of any author of reputation, are always industrious to swell his works, by uniting his worst ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the gamut of life from highest love to direst pain—from rosy dawn to blackest night. Name if you can another woman who touched life at so many points! Home, health, wealth, strength, honors, affection, applause, motherhood, loss, danger, death, defeat, sacrifice, humiliation, illness, banishment, imprisonment, escape. Again comes hope—returning strength, wealth, recognition, fame tempered by opposition, home, a few friends, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... proceeded that glorious honor which these late warres haue laid vpon him, or what could haue bene said more of him, then of a Respondent (though neuer so valiant) in a priuate Duell: Euen, that he hath done no more then by his honor he was tied vnto. For the gaine of one towne or any small defeat giueth more renoume to the Assailant, then the defence of a countrey, or the withstanding of twentie encounters can yeeld any man who is bound by his place to guard the same: whereof as well the particulars of our age, especially in the Spaniard, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... deftly turned his hand palm downwards, and the paper-knife fell with a crash and a clatter on the floor. It was terrible to see the dumb wrath of the swathed figure at this new defeat. ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... construction and meaning, as being spoken all over New Holland, have jumped to the conclusion with, I fear, too much haste and eagerness. Besides many other insuperable difficulties, which an investigation of such a nature presents, there was one quite sufficient to defeat all attempts to fathom the subject, namely, the syntactic ignorance of the language to which the inquiry related. Indeed, to any man who knows and speaks four European languages, it will be at once apparent, that to seize upon, and note from the sound, a ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... of this defeat in her fortunes, her presence had a lovely brightness and initiative, and her inexpensive dress had a certain daintiness. She was eager for knowledge, and through all her busy weeks had paid 10 cents dues to a ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... was one of his pet failings. And had he then felt that Sedgwick had been lacking in good-will, ability, or conduct, it is strange that there should not be some apparent expression of it. It was only when he was driven to extremity in explaining the causes of his defeat, that his after-wit suggested Sedgwick as ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... which, therefore, should not have been withheld. The book, too, is much too goody-goody. There is too much preaching throughout it, and in certain parts a suddenness in the kneeling down to pray that is quite startling. This stupid sort of goodness helps much to defeat the purpose of the work. Even the strong minister, although his is not the old-fashioned way, seems to have more beef on his bones than brains in his head, or he would not answer to a desperate exclamation of Mary Smith,—"Don't ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... careful what they said, but to his relief Esther appeared not to hear. He himself was peculiarly upset by the doctor's matter-of-fact reference to the mental home, and on the spot he resolved firmly to defeat any arrangements that might be made for placing the girl where she could be kept "under observation." Yet what ought one to do? She was clearly in need of medical attention. She seemed now to be delirious, babbling incoherently, repeating in an undertone ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... at the end of the year 1899 to an enterprising young man who had founded a Franco-German review in Munich and craved his moral support. "Is it possible," he exclaimed, "that it has already come to that? Well, a nation is not conquered until it accepts defeat. Whenever France gives up she will ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon |
