"Destructive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... join with his whole heart the insurgents against the Republic, and he was fully determined to do so; he had made up his mind that it was his duty to oppose measures which he thought destructive to the happiness of his countrymen, and to make an effort to re-establish the throne; but he did not bring to the work the sanguine hope of success, the absolute pleasure in the task which animated Larochejaquelin; nor yet the sacred enthusiastic chivalry ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... I suffered a temporary access of despair. He had escaped me, and I must commence a destructive and almost endless journey across the mountainous ices of the ocean, amidst cold that few of the inhabitants could long endure and which I, the native of a genial and sunny climate, could not hope to survive. Yet ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... blood, had wished to sweep on down into the villages and carry their work through them. But he had stood firm. This was their own country where they belonged and where the railroad was the interloper. Here they were at home. Here there was a certain measure of safety for them even in the destructive and lawless work that they had begun. They had done enough. They had pushed the railroad back to the edge of the hills. They had roused the men of the hills behind them. Where he had started with his seventy-two friends, there were now three hundred well-armed men in the woods around him. Here ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... studded with islands, which afforded shelter to ships, and likewise possessed many excellent harbours; but the Liburnians, as well as most of the inhabitants of Illyria, were more eager after piracy than commerce; and, as we shall afterwards see, carried their piracies to such a daring and destructive extent, that the Romans were compelled to attack them. Their devotedness to piracy explains what to Mons. Huet appears unaccountable. He observes, that it is remarkable that neither the Dalmatians, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... the encircling darkness. From its coutenance gleamed a barbarous smile, ten times more terrific than the frown of any other being. Triumph, inhuman triumph, glistened in its eye, and, with relentless delight, it brewed the tempest, and hurled the destructive lightning. Edwin gazed upon this astonishing apparition, and knew it for a goblin of darkness. The heart of Edwin, which no human terror could appal, sunk within him; his nerves trembled, and the objects that surrounded him, swam in confusion before his eyes. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... of Persia who necessarily share most of our interest with the Greeks—we find that Persian imperial rule was no sooner established securely over the former Babylonian fief in Palestine than it began to undo the destructive work of its predecessors. Vainly expecting help from the restored Egyptian power, Jerusalem had held out against Nebuchadnezzar till 587. On its capture the dispersion of the southern Jews, which had already ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... weeks, you need lose hardly a bird. Each evening try and call them nearer and nearer home, so that you will not be troubled with their wandering to the neighbors'. As early as possible train them to roost high, so as to be out of danger at night. Bird dogs are often very destructive to turkeys, at times destroying a whole flock in a single night. Fatten with corn. The turkey crop ought to be one of the most profitable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... Ophthalmia.)—A condition in which the healthy eye becomes the seat of a destructive inflammation transferred from the other eye which has been the subject of a similar inflammation usually following a perforating injury of the eyeball. The injured eye is called the exciting eye; the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... their ships differed but slightly from that of the Greek vessels; they had turrets on the decks of their larger men-of-war, and employed a variety of destructive engines; so that in battle the soldiers on board fought much as they did when standing on the walls of a fortress. Of one thing I am sure, that no correct drawings of ancient ships have come down to us, if any such were really made; ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... amongst you all, am the most miserable, for naught was given me but odious hatred and destructive loathing. It is I, the tempest-like self, the one born in the black caves of Hell, who would ...
— The Madman • Kahlil Gibran
... the past, we may see it not merely rivaled but thrown into eclipse by the future; the burnished armour, and massive swords and maces of our old intellectual chivalry, superseded by more manageable and more destructive implements of success; and the sterner conflict followed by the more consummate triumph. Yet, when we undervalue the living ability of a nation from its quietude at the moment, we but adopt the example of every past age in succession. The last ten years of the last ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... horses for food, tore the cloth and the curtains from the carriages for coverlets, and went to sleep, instead of continuing their way and crossing quietly during the night that cruel Beresina, which an incredible fatality had already made so destructive to ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... laughing-stock of the place; her appetite had led him into outlays altogether incompatible with his income, chiefly in the matter of pastries, macaroons, fondants, ices, caramels, chocolates, jam tartlets and, above all, meringues, to which she was fabulously destructive. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... just that. I knew others thought him a genius in relation to his work. But I knew he was a genius in regard to life. I felt sure that, if he turned that intensity of his upon life instead of upon science, he would be a destructive force—a high explosive. This idea of mine was confirmed in time. It happened one evening when a number of us were over in the Scammon Garden listening to the out-of-door players. I grew tired of sitting and slipped from my seat to wander about a little in the darkness. I had reached the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... of destructive radicalism had done their legitimate work, it seemed a time for rest and patience, for administration rather than for fresh legislation and for a pause during which the principles of liberty and free exchange might have ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... a thing to take into very serious account in estimating a man's character. And yet here, right in the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive elements in human nature. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... power of the savage attack. The hitherto irresistible plane of force beat upon it; ultra-violet, infra-red, and heat rays enveloped it; there were hurled against it all the forces known to the scientific minds within that fiendishly destructive sphere. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... whence the conflagration proceeded—ran together and united their efforts in order to extinguish the flames. They brought water, and pulled down houses, with a view to prevent the further progress of that destructive element. All their exertions were fruitless. A violent wind was blowing, and, in addition to this circumstance, the principal part of the buildings in that city were constructed of wood. Its finest houses, together with their valuable ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... unfortunately the cross and the cap of liberty have quarrelled, they are always united in the feeble hatred of such silly megalomaniacs as these. They will "glorify war—the only true hygiene of the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of Anarchism, the beautiful ideas which kill, and the scorn of woman." They will "destroy museums, libraries, and fight against moralism, feminism, and all utilitarian cowardice." The proclamation ends with ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... indestructible thing. You can't count upon their emotions either of pity or fear for very long. A bomb outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond the intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be purely destructive. It must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest suspicion of any other object. You anarchists should make it clear that you are perfectly determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social creation. But how to get that appallingly absurd ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... centre of the disturbed area; while in the third class we have tectonic earthquakes, or those directly connected with the shaping of the earth's crust, which vary in strength from the weakest perceptible tremor to the most destructive and widely felt shock. Of the earthquakes described in this volume, the Ischian earthquakes belong to the second class, and all ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... sea-beasts love to haunt. Its weed-covered surface shows that the surge has not shifted it for years past. It lies on other boulders clear of sand and mud, so that there is no fear of dead sea-weed having lodged and decayed under it, destructive to animal life. We can see dark crannies and caves beneath; yet too narrow to allow the surge to wash in, and keep the surface clean. It will be a fine menagerie of Nereus, if we can ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... have at his finger's ends the whole chronique scandaleuse of the day. With such tastes, it was natural that, as the subscriptions for his Homer began to pour in, he should be anxious to move nearer the great social centre. London itself might be too exciting for his health and too destructive of literary leisure. Accordingly, in 1716, the little property at Binfield was sold, and the Pope family moved to Mawson's New Buildings, on the bank of the river at Chiswick, and "under the wing of my Lord Burlington." He seems to have been a little ashamed of the residence; the ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... thousands of years after the last vestige of the trunks that made them had vanished. Much of this ditch-writing would no doubt be quickly effaced by the flood-action of overflowing streams and rain-washing; but no inconsiderable portion would remain enduringly engraved on ridge-tops beyond such destructive action; for, where all the conditions are favorable, it is almost imperishable. Now these historic ditches and root-bowls occur in all the present sequoia groves and forests, but, as far as I have observed, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... pole, about six feet in length, having a heavy stone tied to its large end, and a loop of the shape of the letter U, or a slipping noose, made of stout cord or wire, fastened [Page 116] at the smaller end. To arrange the pieces for their destructive work, the pole should be bent down so that the loop shall fall between the arches. The "crotch stick" should then be hooked beneath the front of the arch, letting its arm point inward. After this the bait stick ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... afresh its peace and security, by a way dreadful and inhuman, it is true, but which offered nevertheless a radical and permanent cure for the evils which flow naturally from the union under one general government of two mutually invasive and destructive industrial systems, viz., by the forcible deportation of the entire black population of the South, and the introduction into their stead of an equal number of white immigrants. Such a course would have certainly achieved the unification of the sections by the extinguishment ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... some exemplary punishments, had been incorrigibly guilty of every excess. It had not only seized with violence all that its wants demanded, but destroyed in mere wantonness what did not tempt its cupidity. No vandal ferocity was ever more destructive. Those crimes, however, were not committed with impunity. Want, sickness, and an enraged peasantry, inflicted terrible reprisals, and caused daily a fearful ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... 'the particular friend of a young man not unknown to you, Miss Geddes—the friend of Darsie Latimer—and am come hither in the utmost anxiety, having understood from Provost Crosbie, that he had disappeared in the night when a destructive attack was made upon the fishing-station of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... good dancing. There was too much velvet and satin, and the dresses were too much loaded. The diamonds, though superb, were frequently ill-set. The dresses, compared with the actual fashion, were absurdly short, and the feet, naturally small, were squeezed into shoes still smaller, which is destructive to grace, whether in walking ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... his brother Jonathan, and desired him that he would imitate his brother, and that care which he took of his countrymen, for whose liberty in general he died also; and that he would not permit the nation to be without a governor, especially in those destructive circumstances wherein it now was. And where Jonathan said that he was ready to die for them, and esteemed no inferior to his brother, he was appointed to be the general of ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... human nature is inherently "bad," while true Christianity, endorsed by psychology, proclaims it inherently "good," which means that, properly guided, properly educated, it is creative and contributive rather than destructive. No more striking proof of this fact can be cited than the modern experiment in prison reform in which hardened convicts, when "given a chance," frequently become useful citizens. Unjust and unintelligent social conditions are the chief factors ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... them into captivity, whence there was no hope of redemption. Since then, thanks to the enlightened plans of Sir James Brooke, aided by the British ships of war in those seas, their depredations have been somewhat lessened; but much must be done before their destructive power is completely destroyed, and the surrounding people can enjoy to the full the blessings of unrestricted commerce. The night was sufficiently light to enable us to see a considerable distance. Our captain walked the deck with an uneasy step, his night-glass ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... sailor, half frightened at possessing so sacred an object, turned it over to the priests, who promptly enshrined it in the one Catholic church of the place. Some fifty or sixty years later, the church was burned to the ground—for both stones agree as to a destructive fire—and all was lost save the Santo Nino itself, which escaped ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... adoption of some other means absolutely necessary. The men, with whom the ordinary methods failed, belonged to the defective classes already described as mathematical dullards, deficient in self-control, and stupids. The habits of vice seem to have wrought such a destructive work upon the will-power of these men that in order to repair it some potent influence would have to be brought into operation. The conception was to entirely disengage the mind of its connection with the past and to concentrate it upon ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... to destructive earthquakes; tsunami occur along southwestern coast; deforestation seems ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... suddenly married her, exciting again the wonder of the world by his conduct, as in that proud day every nobleman felt that he was acting incongruously with the blood he had sprung from. His first wedlock was impolitic, and this unpopular; and both were hasty and self-willed, and destructive of all reputation for that dignified prudence, which his elevation to the regency of the most reflective and enlightened nation in Europe demanded for its example and its welfare. This injudicious conduct announced too much imperfection ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... will be surprised at the numbers of the little rascals, and not only that, but the field mice, the common field mouse and pine mouse run in mole holes under the ground and can smell a nut a long way off. They are extremely destructive. What percentage of pollen grains of the white oak were alive? I do not know. Enough to fertilize a number of flowers. The sooner pollen is used the better. I cannot answer the question exactly because I did not make an experiment in the laboratory to know what part of the pollen was viable. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... Was unable to give the maiden name of his earthly wife. Thought Mr. Stellato was a healing-medium of great power. Had been something of a Root-Doctor when in the body, and would gladly prescribe through that gentleman for the cure of all diseases. Considered mineral medicines destructive to the vital principle. Doctor Dastick, being a drug-doctor, would not be recognized by any medical association in the spheres. Would give any information about the fixed stars. The inhabitants of the Milky Way telegraphed to each other by means of the Detached ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... could well be spared. Indeed, the spareness of their coverings was a matter of some regret and anxiety on Percival's part. He could not conceive what they were to do if they were on the island for more than a few days; the rough work which would be probably necessary being somewhat destructive of woollen and linen garments. Jackson, with whom he ventured a joke on the subject, did not receive it in very good part. "You needn't talk as if we was to stay here for ever, Mr. Heron, sir," he murmured. "But there's always ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... nothing remarkable until we were in the latitude of the river La Plata. Here there are violent gales from the south-west, called Pomperos, which are very destructive to the shipping in the river, and are felt for many leagues at sea. They are usually preceded by lightning. The captain told the mates to keep a bright look-out, and if they saw lightning at the south-west, to take ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... perfect sanity of his mind contributed much to disturb it. He had studied medicine diligently in all its branches, but had given particular attention to the diseases of the imagination, which he watched in himself with a solicitude destructive of his own peace, and intolerable to those he trusted. Dr. Lawrence told him one day that if he would come and beat him once a week he would bear it, but to hear his complaints was more than man could support. 'Twas therefore ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... shrimps. This made them conclude that there were land shrimps, as in some places, particularly in the vineyards about Rome, there are crabs found not unlike those of the sea. Hence if locusts were not so numerous and destructive, so as to blast the hopes of harvest and to be dreaded like a plague, they might be useful as food; and we know from Scripture that St John fed upon ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... to-night is the time picked out for the destruction of the dam. The water of the Chagres River is exceptionally high, owing to the rains, and if a breach were blown in the dam now it would mean the letting loose of a destructive flood." ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... the land we made out that the people in the battery were still standing to their guns, and we momentarily expected them to open fire upon us; but they were wise enough to refrain, evidently having already had a sufficient experience of the frigate's broadsides, the destructive effects of which became distinctly visible as we ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... call of this dying century and of the new one soon to be, is a call for a new discipleship, a new following of Jesus, more like the early, simple, apostolic Christianity, when the disciples left all and literally followed the Master. Nothing but a discipleship of this kind can face the destructive selfishness of the age with any hope of overcoming it. There is a great quantity of nominal Christianity today. There is need of more of the real kind. We need revival of the Christianity of Christ. We have, unconsciously, lazily, selfishly, formally ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... childhood strong good habits to oppose the bad habits and to fight them with. An enemy must be met with his own weapons or stronger. The strongest weapons that can be given a human animal for combating the destructive forces of the struggle for existence are not good sentiments or good principles or even pious or moral practices—for, bad habits can make short work of all these—but are good habits in the practical, material matters of life. They operate automatically, they apply to all the multitude of small, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... This destructive fire occurred in the end of July, or the beginning of August, A.U.C. 816, A.D. 64. It was imputed to the Christians, and drew on them the persecutions mentioned in c. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... grass. In some places, owing to climatic conditions, moss or lichen has effaced every sign of inscription or ornament from the old stones; and there are localities which appear to be really unfortunate in their inability to resist the destructive influence of the weather upon their tombs, which, perhaps because they are of unsuitable material, go to decay in, comparatively speaking, a few years. As a rule, however, these relics of our ancestors need not and ought not to prematurely perish and disappear ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... excesses so often committed by married persons in ignorance of their ill effects. Too frequent emissions of the life-giving fluid, and too frequent excitement of the nervous system are, as we have seen, in themselves most destructive. The result is the same within the marriage bond as without it. The married man who thinks that because he is a married man he can commit no excess, however often the act of sexual congress is repeated, will suffer as certainly and as seriously as the unmarried debauchee ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... for the next month carried about an air of secrecy and an irresponsibility of action very irritating to everybody. They forgot errands, they did absent-minded, destructive things, they were much given to long consultations behind the woodshed. When they were permitted to visit Mr. Kincaid at the jail, they tried mysteriously to convey assurance of absolute secrecy, but succeeded only in appearing stupid, frivolous and unsympathetic. Nevertheless their concern ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... so increased as to afford a rational prospect of the world's conversion. While the plan of sending children home is cherished, it will seem so incompatible with a large number of laborers, that it will tend to perpetuate the destructive notion, that the nations are to be saved by the labors of merely a few hundred men. But if means are to be employed in any measure commensurate with the end in view, a few men cannot put forth the instrumentality needed to elevate all nations. To commit the work to a few is in truth ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... understand Why, sudden, from God's mighty hand Destructive bolts of power Without discrimination strike The evil and the good alike— As ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... of the guns in Fort Magruder interrupted the conversation. The gunners of the battery in front of them had been driven from their pieces; but it was almost instantly manned by volunteers, and a destructive fire poured into the works. Other batteries were brought up, and the fort was soon silenced. The roar of battle sounded all along the line; the thunder of cannon and the crash of musketry reverberated through the woods and over the plain, assuring the impatient troops that they were ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... then a colleague once stole an ode from him, escaped by taking an oath that he was innocent, and afterwards made a hit with the stolen work. So Diagoras lost his faith in the gods and wrote a treatise under the title of apopyrgizontes logoi (literally, destructive considerations) in which he attacked ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... the Pacific coast, volcanoes and destructive earthquakes in the center and south, and hurricanes on the ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... crested summits frown, 85 These rocks by custom turn to beds of down. From Art more various are the blessings sent; Wealth, commerce, honor, liberty, content. Yet these each other's power so strong contest, That either seems destructive of the rest.[10] 90 Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails And honor sinks where commerce long prevails.[11] Hence every state, to one loved blessing prone, Conforms and models life to that alone. ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... when he had done so he locked his door behind him, then loosed his hold on things material. He raged about the room like a wild animal, and vented his spite on every inanimate thing that lay within reach. His voice was strange in his own ears, as was the destructive frenzy that possessed him. In time he grew quieter, as the physical energy of this brutal impulse spent itself; but there came no surcease of his mental disquiet. As yet his mind grasped but dully the fact that she was ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... wears a ghastly monotony at all other times, and the air, so exhilarating, even at the lowest temperature, becomes an enemy to be kept out, when you know its terrible power to benumb and destroy. To the native of a warmer zone, this presence of an unseen destructive force in nature weighs like a nightmare upon the mind. The inhabitants of the North also seem to undergo a species of hibernation, as well as the animals. Nearly half their time is passed in sleep; they are silent in comparison with the natives of the other ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the public eye during recent years, its activities have not ceased. The discovery of gold in Alaska, and the extraordinary rush of population to that northern territory had the usual effect on the wild life there, and proved very destructive to the natives and to the large mammals. A few years ago it became evident that the Kadiak bear and certain newly discovered forms of wild sheep and caribou were being destroyed by wholesale, and were actually ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... the tension a little by playing safely through the over, and scoring a couple of twos off it. And when Ellerby not only survived the destructive de Freece's second over, but actually lifted a loose ball on to the roof of the scoring-hut, the cloud began perceptibly to lift. A no-ball in the same over sent up the first ten. Ten for two was not good; but it was considerably better than ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... west and from north to south, is a favourite region with me, and, I believe, with every Englishman who ever visited it. Gin and brandy have killed five-sixths of all the Europeans who have died in Batavia within the last twenty years; but with pleasure I can add, that this destructive habit has almost entirely disappeared: hence the diminished number of deaths, and the more robust and ruddy appearance of the European inhabitants. The surrounding country is both salubrious and beautiful, rising gradually as you proceed inland, ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... their diseases, bad weather and bad crops, and that he makes and supports witches. He owns a large country adjoining that of his brother, with whom he is continually at variance. His fields are unproductive; thick clouds intercept the rays of the sun, and consequently destructive frosts are frequent; game is very scarce, and not easily taken; ravenous beasts are numerous; reptiles of every poisoned tooth lie in the path of the traveller; streams are muddy, and hunger, nakedness and general ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... sincerity, high purpose, and quick response to the calls of public duty and moral sentiment. They were animated with the best intentions, not only for their respective countries, but for humanity as a whole. One and all they burned with the desire to go as far as feasible toward ending the era of destructive wars. Steady, uninterrupted, pacific development was their common ideal, and they were prepared to give up all that they reasonably could to achieve it. It is my belief, for example, that if Mr. Wilson had persisted in making his ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... corslets, haubergeons, shields, bucklers, targets, greaves, gauntlets, and spurs. Others made ready bows, slings, crossbows, pellets, catapults, migrains or fire-balls, firebrands, balists, scorpions, and other such warlike engines expugnatory and destructive to the Hellepolides. They sharpened and prepared spears, staves, pikes, brown bills, halberds, long hooks, lances, zagayes, quarterstaves, eelspears, partisans, troutstaves, clubs, battle-axes, maces, darts, dartlets, glaives, javelins, javelots, and truncheons. They set ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... do what I will with my own," was the substance of his reply; and there stands the blackened, crumbling ruin to this day, as a silent but grim reproach to the People for letting their angry passions rise to such destructive excitement on political questions. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... whole of this discussion, then, I think it appears that the influence of Science upon Natural Religion has been uniformly of a destructive character. Step by step it has driven back the apparent evidence of direct or special design in Nature, until now this evidence resides exclusively in the one great and general fact that Nature as a whole is a Cosmos. Further than this it is ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... States; tornadoes, however, do in rare instances. These extend in width not more than a few hundred yards, or even feet, and come and go within the space of one or two minutes. In power and violence, however, they are as destructive as the cyclones. In tornadoes the storm-cloud, in nearly all instances, has a rotary motion; the wind also sweeping forward progressively at the rate of from five to twenty miles an hour. Science has shown that in the latitude where these ...
— A Full Description of the Great Tornado in Chester County, Pa. • Richard Darlington
... think, a fit one for us to protest against a state of affairs thus exhibited in those parts of the Union from which these Negroes come, which is not only most barbarous toward the Negro, but is destructive to the constitutional rights of all citizens of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... cooper, that there were not above five gallons of real wine in the whole pipe, which held above a hundred, and even that had been brewed and adulterated by the merchant at Oporto. The bread I cat in London, is a deleterious paste, mixed up with chalk, alum, and bone-ashes; insipid to the taste, and destructive to the constitution. The good people are not ignorant of this adulteration — but they prefer it to wholesome bread, because it is whiter than the meal of corn: thus they sacrifice their taste and their health, and the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the ancient world, both Jews and Gentiles, we may come down, with a few brief notices in passing over the long subsequent periods, towards our own times. For any attempt to prosecute the object through the ages and regions of later heathenism, (with the infatuated Judaism still more destructive to its subjects,) would be to lose ourselves in a boundless scene of desolation, an immense amplitude of darkness, frightfully alive throughout with the activity of all ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... places through which it passes. How many delightful hamlets, pleasant villages, and even tranquil county towns, are losing their primitive characters for simplicity and contentment, by the passage of these fiery trains, that drag after them a sort of bastard elegance, a pretension that is destructive of peace of mind, and an uneasy desire in all who dwell by the way-side, to pry into the mysteries of the whole length and breadth of the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... twenty-four-pound shells from the gun, mounted en barbette, which commanded at long range both landings, were leaving behind them furrows of fire in the black gorge. The big gun was pouring a continuous stream of destructive metal upon the American boats that were attempting the passage of the river within the limited zone ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... had previously been noticed on Krakatoa must at that moment have been blown into one, and the original crater of the old volcano—said to have been about six miles in diameter—must have resumed its destructive work. All the eye-witnesses who were near the spot at the time, and sufficiently calm to take note of the terrific events of that morning, are agreed as to the splendour of the electrical phenomena displayed during this paroxysmal ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... as hurtful to their cause. The {376} famous artist Lorenzo Lotto [Sidenote: 1540] was employed to paint pictures of Luther and his wife, probably copies of Cranach. The appearance of the Socinians about 1550, and the mutual animosity of the several sects, including the Anabaptist, was destructive. Probably more fatal was the disaster of the Schmalkaldic war and the complete triumph of the emperor. The Inquisition finished the work of crushing out what remained of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of which there are two common species closely resembling each other, are often abundant and destructive on tomato foliage, particularly southward. The arsenicals will kill them, or they can be held in check by hand-picking, a little experience enabling one to detect their presence readily. Turkeys are utilized in destroying these worms ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... earnings. As yet, however, the Dutch labouring classes have not found the man who is able to organize them for this or other purposes. They have able advocates, eloquent, passionate reformers, straightforward, honest friends, but the work of these is more destructive criticism than constructive organization. Where organization exists, it is political, social, religious, but not industrial—local, but not universal, and it often has the bitter suggestion of charity. On the other hand, the poor fellows have so often been imposed upon that they ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... struggle for the murderer went on, a struggle of mind over inferior mind and matter. Arrowhead was a chief whose will had never been crossed by his own people, and to master that will by a superior will, to hold back the destructive force which, to the ignorant minds of the braves, was only a natural force of defence, meant a task needing more than authority behind it. For the very fear of that authority put in motion was an incentive to present resistance to stave off the day of trouble. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all his strength, and faintly lowered it upon the head of one of the priests—without causing him any harm. Jesus, observing this, ordered him to throw away the useless weapon, and it fell under foot with a dull thud, and so evidently had it lost its sharpness and destructive power that it did not occur to any one to pick it up. So it rolled about under foot, until several days afterwards it was found on the same spot by some children at play, who made ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... portion of human labor, in an eminent degree, to that mutability which is the general lot of human undertakings. In early times, also, the state of society operated powerfully towards the production of the same destructive effect. When even the monarch could no otherwise provide for the safety of his palace, than by encircling it with the fortifications of the castle, a life of continual alarm afforded his subjects no encouragement for the cultivation ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... symptoms are set forth both in dry and purging Hog Cholera. On the first appearance, this disease is more fatal, from the fact that nature teaches the brute, by unlearned laws, natural medical aid; but this disease is so powerful and destructive there is something more necessary than the ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... and Parliament from what had become their settled colonial policy. Ten years later, when the Lords of Trade and Plantations asked him what impediments there were to the improvement of trade in the colony, the Governor blurted out the truth with his accustomed vigor. "Mighty and destructive by that severe act of Parliament which excludes us from haveing any Commerce with any Nacon in Europe but our owne, Soe that wee cannot add to our plantacon any Comodity that growes out of itt ... ffor it is not lawfull for us to carry a ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... fifteen persons at Billerica, burning many houses. In October of the same year, they came upon Newbury, and carried off and tomahawked nine persons; all of whom perished, except a lad who survived his wounds. In 1698, they made a murderous and destructive assault upon Haverhill. The story of the capture, sufferings, and heroic achievements of Hannah Dustin, belongs to the history of this event. It stands by the side of the immortal deed of Judith, and has no other parallel in all the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... peril, braves every danger. It is for her that he subdues the elements and searches out the hidden treasures of earth; for her that he measures the stars and determines the procession of the planets, for her that he fills the world with art and luxury,—for her that he is a creative god, rather than a destructive demon. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... population. More microbes accelerate the breakdown of humus and even more plant nutrients are released as organic matter decays. And that is why holistic farmers and gardeners mistakenly criticize chemical fertilizers as being directly destructive of soil microbes. Actually, all fertilizers, chemical or organic, indirectly harm soil life, first increasing their populations to unsustainable levels that drop off markedly once enough organic matter ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... rotund bass boomed out the denial. "There are some movements that it's wisest to disregard. They'll die of themselves. Socialism is a destructive force. Why should the papers help spread it by noticing it in ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... industrial warfare to which syndicalists are pledged. Neither at Lawrence, Massachusetts, nor later at Paterson, New Jersey, did the Industrial Workers of the World, or the large bodies of strikers whom they led set any of these destructive practices in operation. ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... almost omnivorous. It eats poultry or wild fowls. It devours frogs, lizards, lame, and insects without distinction. It is fond of sweets, and is very destructive to the sugar-cane and Indian corn of the planter. When the ear of the maize is young, or, as it is termed, "in the milk," it is very sweet. Then the raccoon loves to prey upon it. Whole troops at night visit the corn-fields ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... have found the boy's accounts of such matters entirely trustworthy. It is curious, however, that the nest of a bird so common all over Alaska as the camp-robber should be so rarely found. At times they are very mischievous and destructive, and the man who builds a careless cache will often be heard denouncing them, but to my mind a bird who gives us his enlivening company throughout the dead of an Alaskan winter deserves ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... be poverty. New Zealand's economic experience has been one of uniform progress and prosperity. There is abundant and fertile land in these islands where droughts, floods, and famine years, are practically unknown. Blissards and destructive storms are mysterious terms. Fluctuations in production take place of course, but not such as to result in want, to any noticeable extent. There are no extremes of heat and cold, no extremes of drought ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... folds his arms upon the top of the wall, and, with his chin resting on them, watches. He takes no note whatever of the Minor Canon, but watches Neville, as though his eye were at the trigger of a loaded rifle, and he had covered him, and were going to fire. A sense of destructive power is so expressed in his face, that even Durdles pauses in his munching, and looks at him, with an ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... rapid and general intercourse demand their repeal or modification, is as much to be deprecated as rash innovation and unceasing experiment. Indeed it scarcely ever fails to defeat its own end, and though it may retard for a while, renders the course of reform more destructive than it otherwise would have been. True conservatism is gradualism—the movement onward by slow, cautious, and firm steps—but still movement, and that onward. The world, neither physically, intellectually, nor morally, was made to stand still. As in her daily revolutions ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... Mud Island. On the opposite shore of Jersey, at Red Bank, a fort had also been constructed which was defended with heavy artillery. In the deep channel between, or under cover of these batteries, several ranges of chevaux-de-frise had been sunk. These were so strong and heavy as to be destructive of any ship which might strike against them, and were sunk in such a depth of water as rendered it equally difficult to weigh them or cut them through; no attempt to raise them, or to open the channel in any manner, could be successful until the command of ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the woods, none the worse for his adventure. But the others were not quite satisfied with the policy of the young millionaire. They wanted to shoot whatever they could see in the nature of game, including monkeys, and he was opposed to this destructive action. Of course they could kill whatever they pleased, but the moral influence of the real leader prevailed ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... that I would resort to any falsehood or even prevarication. I merely relied upon the improbability of my being questioned close enough to necessitate my being obliged to reveal the astounding facts which made this matter a destructive one for the Pollards. And I was right in my calculations. Neither socially, nor at the formal inquiry before the coroner, was any question raised of relationship between the dead girl and the family in S——; and this fact, taken ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... might be left as self-disproved, were it not that speculators of this class are not alarmed by any amount of incongruity with established beliefs. The only efficient mode of treating systems like this of Hegel, is to show that they are self-destructive—that by their first steps they ignore that authority on which all their subsequent steps depend. If Hegel professes, as he manifestly does, to develop his scheme by reasoning—if he presents successive inferences as necessarily following from certain premises; he ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... No less destructive a flame burnt at the prisoner's heart, as, writhing on his dungeon pallet, biting his lips, digging his nails into his palms, he cursed these malignant perverters of pure Judaism, who had shamed him even before the Hollanders. He, the proud and fearless gentleman of Portugal, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... endurance. This indolent carriage and his seemingly slight build had, on more than one occasion, been disastrously misleading to importunate or beery strangers. He could, and did, fight whenever chance offered, with a cold passion, a destructive abandon, that had won him, throughout the turbulent confines of Greenstream, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the historian that the more the prodigies came the more they were believed. On a certain occasion a crowd of them was brought together: Crows built in the temple of Juno. A green tree took fire. The waters of Mantua became bloody. In one place it rained chalk in another fire. Lightning was very destructive, sinking the temple of a god or a nut-tree by the roadside indifferently. An ox spoke in Sicily. A precocious baby cried out "Io triumphe" before it was born. At Spoletum a woman became a man. An altar was seen in the heavens. A ghostly ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... life through his most enlightened Anglo-Saxon brother. Only in this way can the Negro meet the rigid requirements of the ever-advancing standard of the proud, progressive Anglo-Saxon. The dominant race is naturally the criterion. Any other alternative would be abnormal and destructive in its far-reaching results. The ruling people in this country have the prestige of centuries of culture. Had the Negro's days of enslavement been years of culture and refinement equal to that of the best people about him, present ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... inquiries made in both worlds. That a private gentleman should have such a machine at his command was not likely. Where, when, and how was it built? and how could its construction have been kept secret? Certainly a Government might possess such a destructive machine. And in these disastrous times, when the ingenuity of man has multiplied the power of weapons of war, it was possible that, without the knowledge of others, a State might try to work such a ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... infidelity and license both in speech and action, he was a deeply, seriously pious man. Such young men there are, who, like those three, walking unscathed through the furnace of fire in the faith of the Lord their God, walk through a more terribly destructive furnace—the furnace of temptation—in the same faith, and "upon their bodies the fire hath no power, neither is a hair of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... asked Larry how he came by such a continued supply of natty articles, and if they had, Larry would not have told them; for he was a very "close" man, as well as a "civil-spoken," under which character he was first introduced to the reader on the memorable night of Andy's destructive adventure in his mother's cabin. Larry Hogan was about as shrewd a fellow as any in the whole country, and while no one could exactly make out what he was, or how he made the two ends of his year meet, he knew ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... bridges, one of brass and one of wood. A big horsehair bow attached to a shaft operated by a motor was automatically sawing across the string. The note resulting was evidently higher than the range of the human ear, because no audible sound resulted. It was later estimated that the destructive note was several octaves higher than the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... the crocodile is abundant in every part of the country. This is a most destructive quadruped, accustomed to both elements, having no tongue, and moving only the upper jaw, with teeth like a comb, which obstinately fasten into everything he can reach. He propagates his species by eggs like ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... bent only on her great purposive errand whose end is the bringing forth of that Overman who shall rule the world. With her immense biologic mission, seemingly at war with her individual career, and destructive apparently of that emancipation which is the present dream of her champions, what a type, what a motive this for fiction, and in what a manifold and stimulating way is the Novel awakening to its high privilege to deal with such ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... a playground for boys of imaginative but not too destructive proclivities, such as the world hardly furnishes elsewhere. But much of my enjoyment of it I ascribe to my friend Eddy. My conversation with no person since then has rivalled the profundity and importance of my communings ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Evil effects do not always thrust themselves upon our notice in any directly pronounced way. Very often those which are most pernicious have a stealthy and unobtrusive progress, and it is only when their destructive mission is well accomplished that we become aware of their existence. There are physical, moral, and mental wrecks, the playthings of every varying circumstance that agitates the sea of life, who are ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... swollen hand, explained the reason, and showed the penmanship lesson which he had refused to copy. It is a singular fact that even at that age he already understood Americanization enough to realize that to cope successfully with any American institution, one must be constructive as well as destructive. He went to his room, brought out a specimen of Italian handwriting which he had seen in a newspaper, and explained to his father that this simpler penmanship seemed to him better for practical purposes than the curlicue fancifully embroidered Spencerian style; ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... Rio Plata seems peculiarly subject to electric phenomena. In the year 1793, one of the most destructive thunderstorms perhaps on record happened at Buenos Ayres: thirty-seven places within the city were struck by lightning, and nineteen people killed. (3/12. Azara's "Voyage" volume 1 page 36.) From facts stated in several books of travels, I am inclined to suspect that thunderstorms ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Although a very destructive and efficient bomb, the "Mills" has the confidence of the thrower, in that he knows it will not explode until released from ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... left of my regiment rested on the Maxville and Perryville road; the line extending along the crest of the hill, and the right passing somewhat behind a barn filled with hay. In this position, with the enemy's batteries pouring upon us a most destructive fire, the Third arose and delivered its first volley. For a time, I do not know how long thereafter, it seemed as if all hell had broken loose; the air was filled with hissing balls; shells were exploding continuously, and the noise of the guns was deafening; ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... and perfected a system of industry as Paraguay. But the war came, waged by the allies expressly to destroy for ever the dictatorial authority wielded by Lopez; Paraguay was invaded and overrun; and the fierce and destructive character of the contest has left shattered walls in the capital, and in the interior the blackened ruins of ranchos. These traces of the terrible conflict give a melancholy aspect to the city, and its future is further shadowed by the hopelessness of the people, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... these destructive operations of nature, the whirlwind and the whirlpool, the first whirling fancies that Christ saves from the punishment, and not from the power of sin, takes them from the gospel hope, and the second receives them into the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... remorse has driven him to such a solitude? Yet he looked simple and placid; his melancholy was subdued and calm, as if life were over for him, and he were waiting for death to come with a friend's greeting upon noiseless wings some summer night across the fen-lands in a cloud of soft destructive fever-mist. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... observe farther, that as Cleanliness renders us agreeable to others, so it makes us easie to our selves; that it is an excellent Preservative of Health; and that several Vices, destructive both to Mind and Body, are inconsistent with the Habit of it. But these Reflections I shall leave to the Leisure of my Readers, and shall observe in the Third Place, that it bears a great Analogy with Purity of Mind, and naturally inspires refined ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... maintain a number of institutions, peculiar to themselves, for the public welfare. The frequency of destructive fires causes the formation of a fire department. A police force must be organized to protect life and property. A system of sewerage is necessary to the public health. There must be gas-works or electric-light works, that the streets may be lighted, and water-works to supply water for public ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... the moral principles that are naturally allied to materialism suffer an eclipse when materialism, which is properly a primary or dogmatic philosophy, breathing courage and victory, appears as a destructive force and in the incongruous role of a critic. One dogmatism is not fit to criticise another; their conflict can end only in insults, sullenness, and an appeal to that physical drift and irrational selection which may ultimately ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... idea which seems to me of God,—Italy an angel of moral unity and of progressive civilization for the nations of Europe. Here and everywhere I have written the best I know how against the vices of materialism, of egotism, of reaction, and against the destructive tendencies which contaminate many of our party. If the people should rise in violent attack against the selfishness and bad government of their rulers, I, while rendering homage to the right of the people, shall be among the first to prevent ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the tragedy comes the farce. [The tragedy is Kant's destructive criticism of the speculative reason.] So far Immanuel Kant has been playing the relentless philosopher; he has laid siege to heaven.' Heine goes on with some violence to describe the havoc Kant has made of the orthodox belief: 'Old Lampe,[40] ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... use. From this Circumstance alone the Bottom of all Boats sent into Countrys where these worms are ought to be painted with White Lead, and the Ships supply'd with a good stock in order to give them a New Coat whenever it's necessary. By this means they would be preserved free from these destructive Vermin. The Long boat's Bottom being so much destroy'd appear'd a little extraordinary, as the Dolphin's Launch was in the Water at this very place full as long, and no such thing happened to her, as the Officers that were ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... property, or of meddling with it, illegally, in any way. Neither Spurius Cassius, nor Licinius Stolo, nor the Gracchi, nor any other Roman whose name is identified with the Agrarian legislation of his country, was a destructive, or leveller. Quite the contrary; they were all conservatives,—using that word in its best sense,—and the friends of property. The lands to which their laws applied, or were intended to apply, were public lands, answering, in some sense, to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... difficulties in the way of their acceptance; difficulties which would appear to be insurmountable to Professor Kolliker, inasmuch as he proposes to replace Mr. Darwin's Theory by one which he terms the 'Theory of Heterogeneous Generation.' We shall proceed to consider first the destructive, and secondly, the constructive portion ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley
... certainly holds good in the case of Lenau and Hoelderlin respectively. Hoelderlin, although in a visionary, idealistic way, remains, en in his Weltschmerz, altruistic and constructive. Lenau is passive, while Heine is solely egoistic and destructive. ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... "I understand it is not the work of that great and good mahn who I thought wrote it. I did not see anything immoral in it as fur as I read, but it belongs to what I consider a very dangerous class of publications. These novels and romances are awfully destructive to our youth. I should recommend you, as a young man of principle, to burn the vollum. At least I hope you will not leave it about anywhere unless it is carefully tied up. I have written upon the paper round it to warn off all the young persons ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of the room. Now, I saw that time was beginning its destructive work, even on this strange old building. That it had stood through all the years was, it seemed to me, proof that it was something different from any other house. I do not think, somehow, that I had thought of its decaying. Though, why, I could not have ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... renowned knights came from the four corners of the earth and retired down the dragon's throat one after the other. A panic arose and spread. Heroes grew cautious. The procession ceased. The dragon became more destructive than ever. The people lost all hope of succor, and fled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the poet's numbers flow Free as the light and air some years ago. 270 No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains To tax our labours, and excise our brains. Burthens like these, vile earthly buildings bear; No tribute's laid on castles in the air. Let, then, the flames of war destructive reign, And England's terrors awe imperious Spain; Let every venal clan[95] and neutral tribe Learn to receive conditions, not prescribe; Let each new year call loud for new supplies, And tax on tax with double ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... beautiful, if we will but take the trouble to look at them properly, and consider their wonderful forms and colors. To be sure, many insects to which we give the general name of bugs are quite destructive in our orchards and gardens, but, for all that, they are only eating their natural food, and although we may be very glad to get rid of our garden bugs as a body, we can have nothing to say against any particular bug. None of them are more to blame than the robins and other birds, which eat ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... he must be given the proper things to throw—small, bright-colored worsted balls, bean-bags, and other harmless objects. If he is allowed to discover the pleasure there is in smashing glass and china, he will certainly be, for a time, a very destructive little person. When later he is able to creep throw his ball and creep after it—he will amuse himself for hours at a time, and so relieve those who have patiently attended him up to this time. In general we may lay down the rule, ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... source, fellow-citizens, of much gratification if our last communications from Europe had enabled me to inform you that the belligerent nations, whose disregard of neutral rights has been so destructive to our commerce, had become awakened to the duty and true policy of revoking their unrighteous edicts. That no means might be omitted to produce this salutary effect, I lost no time in availing myself of the act authorizing a suspension, in whole ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... dressing-gown, but she even remained seated, and left him to find a chair as he could. In the view of this noted German clergyman, the principles of the wife's equality with the husband, as shown in the American home, is destructive of Christian principles.[217] ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... eye, practised in deciding upon the depths of waters, saw reason to suppose that its depth was very great. As I gazed upon it my mind indulged in strange musings. I thought of the afanc, a creature which some have supposed to be the harmless and industrious beaver, others the frightful and destructive crocodile. I wondered whether the afanc was the crocodile or the beaver, and speedily had no doubt that the name was originally ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... River is a fierce and terrible stream, too swift for navigation, turgid, and full of mud, depositing silt upon its bed until it rises above the surrounding country, when it suddenly alters its course, sweeping away villages and towns in a destructive torrent. Among most early agricultural nations, such a river would have inspired superstitious awe, and floods would have been averted by human sacrifice; in the Shu-King, however, there is little trace of superstition. ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons. (Applause.) ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... other terms. The two armies marched together, though at some distance; nor could even the approach of the parliamentary army under Cromwell, oblige the Covenanters to consult their own safety, by a close union with the royalists. When principles are so absurd and so destructive of human society, it may safely be averred, that the more sincere and the more disinterested they are, they only become the more ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law-book. I must therefore beg your honors' patience and attention to the whole range of an argument, that may perhaps appear uncommon in many things, as well as to points of learning that are more ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... that should become forfeited to the crown by this rebellion, to be applied towards defraying the extraordinary expense incurred on this occasion. The commons, in their address of thanks, declared that they would prosecute, in the most vigorous and impartial manner, the authors of those destructive councils which had drawn down such miseries upon the nation. Their resolutions were speedy, and exactly conformable to this declaration. They expelled Mr. Forster from the house. They forthwith impeached the earls of Derwentwater, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... question. That with which we have to do to-day is the energy and force developed by remembering. Like dynamite, it can be force for good or for evil. Remembering the taunts and cruelties of our enemies usually carries us into a cruel and destructive program. ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... the oldster with the silver bar and the keystone-shaped red patch on his left shoulder replied. "It is a shocking habit—destructive to the logical faculties. What seems strange to you is only so because you do not ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... one step destroys the fabric of the industrious ant, and converts a little world into chaos. No: it is not the great and rare calamities of the world, the floods which sweep away whole villages, the earthquakes which swallow up our towns, that affect me. My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature. Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself, and every object near it: so that, surrounded by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart; ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... whom I waited long The tedious hours, and ne'er indulged in song! Ye first seducers of my easy heart, Who promised knowledge ye could not impart! Ye dull deluders, Truth's destructive foes! Ye Sons of Fiction, clad in stupid prose! Ye treacherous leaders, who, yourselves in doubt, Light up false fires, and send us far about!— Still may yon spider round your pages spin, Subtle and slow, her emblematic gin! Buried in dust and lost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the joy of Belleisle; infinitely to the chagrin of her Hungarian Majesty,—who declared it a crying injustice (though I believe legally done in every point); and by and by, even made it a plea of Nullity, destructive to the Election altogether, when her Hungarian Majesty's affairs looked up again, and the world would listen to Austrian sophistries and obstinacies. This was an essential service from Kur-Sachsen. [Began, indistinctly, "in March" (1741); languid "for some ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... following the contour of the hill, rendered almost unapproachable by the felled timber that choked the ravines. Thus, while Weitzel's men could not even see their enemy, they were themselves unable to move beyond the cover of the hollows and the timber without offering an easy mark for a destructive fire of small-arms, as well as of grape, shell, shrapnel, and canister. When finally, after climbing over hills, logs, and fallen trees, and forcing the ravines filled with tangled brush and branches, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... civilisation in which a tolerable place has been but tardily provided for them. We cannot escape the conclusion that our treatment of the races we have displaced and exterminated has been as systematically and remorselessly destructive as was the spasmodic and ofttimes sportive cruelty operated by the Spaniards. The Spanish national conscience recognised the obligation of civilising and Christianising the Indians, a task which Spaniards ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt |
