"Calamitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentleman should own. What most terrified Pearson, who was of a timid and most delicate-minded nature, was that having the workhouse and the boot-blacking as a background, the new Mr. Temple Barholm COULDN'T know, as all this had come upon him so suddenly. And was it to be Pearson's calamitous duty to explain to him that he had NOTHING, that he apparently KNEW nothing, and that as he had no friends who knew, a mere common servant must educate him, if he did not wish to see him derided and looked down upon and actually "cut" by gentlemen that WERE gentlemen? ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... blow up, the consuming fire of intestine dissensions among us, it concerneth all her children, not only to cry out Ah! and Alas! and to "bewail with the weeping of Jazer," Isa. xvi. 9, but also to bethink themselves most seriously how to succour their dear, though distressed mother, in such a calamitous case. Our best endeavours which we are to employ for this end, next unto praying earnestly "for the peace of Jerusalem," Psal. cxxii. 6, are these: 1. So far as we have attained "to walk by the same rule, to mind the same thing," Phil. iii. 19, and to labour as much as is ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... of ascetic wealth, soon after her lord had left her, Jaratkaru went to her brother. And she told him everything that had happened. And the prince of snakes, hearing the calamitous news, spake unto his miserable sister, himself more ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... destructive wars, compelled him to recruit his forces among the tribes of the barbarians, and a change was thus made in the character and discipline of the Roman army, which in a later age produced the most calamitous consequences. The exuberant zeal, which led him to persecute the Arians and the pagans, occasioned some terrible convulsions, which distracted the empire, and were not quelled without bloodshed. He, however, preserved ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the case at the present time. Having evolved those forces out of its necessities, made them strong and permanent, society failed to impose such conditions as wise policy should have dictated, and now suffers the calamitous consequences. The tail wags the dog, instead of the dog wagging ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... ignorance and passion, for Mirabeau hit the reason of the case when he defined repudiation as taxation in its most cruel and iniquitous form. But the method of repudiation which the Democratic leaders propose to follow is of all methods the worst and most calamitous. They would make the dollar a mere form of expression by the issue of an additional billion or two of greenbacks, and then "pay off" the debt in the currency they had done all they could to render worthless. In other words they would not only swindle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... your speech is, that the abolitionists pursue their object "reckless of all consequences, however calamitous they may be;" that they have no horror of a "civil war," or "a dissolution of the Union;" that theirs is "a bloody road," and "their purpose is abolition, universal abolition, peaceably if it can, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... reflected on his fatal oath. When he reached home, his wife and children received him with all the demonstrations of perfect joy. But he, instead of returning their caresses, wept so bitterly, that his family apprehended something calamitous had befallen him. His wife enquire reason of his excessive grief and tears; "We are all overjoyed," said she, "at your return; but you alarm us by your lamentations; pray tell us the cause of your sorrow." "Alas!" replied the husband, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... The calamitous conflict is not of my seeking, my voice has been cast throughout on the side of peace. My Ministers earnestly strove to allay the causes of strife and to appease differences with which my empire was not concerned. Had I stood aside when, in defiance of pledges ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... it seemed to her that her scruple had not really counted. It might have worked, somehow, at the moment; but she could not think of it as containing all the calamitous weight of destiny. Her failure (it was so pre-eminently her failure) came of feeling and of understanding at every moment far too much. It came of having eyes at the back of your head and nerves that extended, prodigiously, beyond the confines ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... of which you had desired one, I now send it to you. I congratulate you sincerely on the prospect of your country's being freed from the menace of war, which, however just, is always expensive and calamitous, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... in the Chiputneticook country proved a very hard one—game scarce and hunting difficult; and toward the end of February the pack drew in toward the settlements, in the hope of more abundant foraging. Fate promptly favoured the move. Some sheep, and a heifer or two, were easily killed, with no calamitous result; and the authority of the leaders was somewhat discredited. Three of the young wolves even went so far as to besiege a solitary cabin, where a woman and some trembling children awaited the return of the man. For two hideous moonlit hours they prowled and howled about ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Yarold, and Thanga of Esk, their arms hung evenly all round the hall, low where a man could reach them; and in the place of honour in the midst, between the arms of Camorak and of Gadriol the Leal, hung the harp of Arleon. And of all the weapons hanging on those walls none were more calamitous to Camorak's foes than was the harp of Arleon. For to a man that goes up against a strong place on foot, pleasant indeed is the twang and jolt of some fearful engine of war that his fellow-warriors are working behind him, from which huge rocks go sighing ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... that has for millions of years separated two seas and their populations is obliterated, we have a similar occurrence of sudden and far-reaching change. The whole story of the earth is punctuated with small cataclysms. But we now come to a change so penetrating, so widespread, and so calamitous that, in spite of its slowness, we may venture to call it ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... "Vendredi-Saint," Bode sees fit to alter in a rather extraordinary way, by changing the personnel and giving it quite another introduction. He inserts here a brief account of Walter Shandy, his disappointment at Tristram's calamitous nose and Tristram's name, and his resolve to perfect his son's education; and then he makes the visit to M'lle Laborde, as narrated by Eugenius, an episode out of Walter Shandy's book, which was ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... O'Connor had announced the fact that his friend was no other than the notorious Fitzgerald, a foreboding of something calamitous had come upon me, and it now occurred to me that if any unpleasantness were to be feared as likely to result to O'Connor from their connection, I might find my attempts to extricate him much facilitated ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... He comprised, in twenty volumes, an account of all the various wars carried on in successive periods with the German tribes. Besides this, he wrote a Natural History, which extended to seven books. He fell a victim to the calamitous event which occurred in Campania. For, having the command of the fleet at Misenum, when Vesuvius was throwing up a fiery eruption, he put to sea with his gallies for the purpose of exploring the causes of the phenomenon ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... clearing of brush and drainage of marshes is more or less calamitous to all the species of birds that inhabit such places and find there winter food and shelter. Red-winged blackbirds and real estate booms can not inhabit the same swamps contemporaneously. Before the relentless march of civilization, the wild Indian, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... a long one, but it contained at least the calamitous figures that came out in the above conversation. The Colonel found himself in a rather uncomfortable place—no $1,200 salary forthcoming; and himself held responsible for half of the $9,640 due the workmen, to say nothing of being in debt to the company ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... shall be able to requite your friendship is a matter beyond my penetration. I declare, before the Searcher of all hearts, that I consider your happiness and welfare as inseparable from my own, and that no vicissitudes of fortune, however prosperous or calamitous they may be, will ever tear you from my heart. Circumstanced as I now am, words are the only proofs I can give you of my gratitude and affection. Time will prove whether they are the cant of hypocrisy or the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... I to call it a proof of God's mercy, or a visitation of his wrath, that man in certain states appears to be insensible to his extreme wretchedness, and almost affects with a depraved taste the cause of his misfortunes? The negro, who is plunged in this abyss of evils, scarcely feels his own calamitous situation. Violence made him a slave, and the habit of servitude gives him the thoughts and desires of a slave; he admires his tyrants more than he hates them, and finds his joy and his pride in the servile imitation of those who oppress him: his understanding is degraded ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... of your Edwardian poets has sung. That was a gifted generation: may it rest in peace. For I think it mostly perished in that calamitous war we had.... But your Georgians—they too are a gifted generation, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... to sketch out the work which Sir Bartle Frere had had before him, its fatal element of haste, with its calamitous failures in no way chargeable to him. 'In short, I concluded, but for the grave blunders of others you would have canonized Sir Bartle Frere instead of speaking of him as you do. He is the ablest man you ever sent to South Africa. As to his personal ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... my lord, too late to offer any thing by way of defence or vindication; nor can we expect from your lordships, in this court, but the sentence which the law requires you, as judges, to pronounce against men of our calamitous condition. But we are also persuaded, that as mere men, and out of this seat of rigorous justice, you are susceptive of the tender passions, and too humane not to commiserate the unhappy situation of those, whom the law sometimes, perhaps—exacts—from you to pronounce upon. No doubt, you distinguish ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... remaining events of this most calamitous day, I know but what all the world knows. It broke down the monarchy. It was the last struggle in which a possibility existed of saving the throne. The gentlest of the Bourbons was within sight of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... fraudulently reduced them, and the corn sold during the most calamitous period of the war was set down at so low a rate that, blindness apart, it was impossible ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... your business, and that of Belgium, to put yourselves into such a state of defence as to force him to make his spring on Italy. There he can do you little harm. But to us Frenchmen the consequences of war must be calamitous. If we fail, they are national loss and humiliation. If we succeed, ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... harvest, no sensibility to fields of clover, to green meadows, to the grateful silence of the woods, or to the voices of birds, and who pines for the unforgotten charms of city life, may mar the otherwise assured happiness of the household. One refractory inmate in ours would have been especially calamitous. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... is, at the present day, both general and violent, and threatens to extend still more widely. Even modern publications are not exempt from its calamitous influence; and when Mr. Miller, the bookseller, told me with what eagerness the large paper copies of Lord Valentia's Travels were bespoke, and Mr. Evans shewed me that every similar copy of his new edition of "Burnett's History ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... killed Marnark with some other knife somebody else made. And what's more, you can't know the results of your discoveries. All you can see is a thin film of events on the surface of an immediate situation, so you can't say whether the long-term results will be beneficial or calamitous. ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... Council will have to examine most diligently, and to determine what it is most seasonable to do, in these calamitous times, for the greatest glory of God, the integrity of faith, the splendor of Divine worship, the eternal salvation of men, the discipline of the regular and secular clergy, and their sound and solid education, the observance ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... of their distress, when the condition of the city of London was so truly calamitous, just then it pleased God, as it were, by his immediate hand, to disarm this enemy: the poison was taken out of the sting. It was wonderful. Even the physicians themselves were surprised at it. Wherever they visited, they found their patients better,—either ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... that the fulfilment of those calamitous events predicted in the Gospels may safely be referred, as it usually is, and by the best Biblical scholars, to the destruction of Jerusalem. Concerning the visions of the Apocalypse, sublime as they are, I speak ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... consider whether the bird altogether may not be little more than a fat, cheerful little stomach, in a spotted waistcoat, and with legs to it. That is the main definition of a great many birds—meant to eat all day, chiefly, grubs, or grain—not at all, unless under wintry and calamitous conditions, meant to fast painfully, or be in concern about their food. Faultless in digestion—dinner lasting all day long, with the delight of social intercourse—various chirp and chatter. Flying or fluttering ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... the consequences arising from the exclusion of woman from the possession and exercise of her natural rights and the cultivation of her mental faculties, have been calamitous to the whole human race; making her servile, dependent, unwomanly; the victim of a false gallantry on the one hand, and of tyrannous subjection on the other; obstructing her mental growth, crippling her physical ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... than to that on our element, especially as we are discouraged a little on the latter. You reproach me for not telling you more of Byng- -what can I tell you, my dear child, of a poor simpleton who behaves arrogantly and ridiculously in the most calamitous of all situations? he quarrels with the admiralty and ministry every day, though he is doing all he can to defer his trial. After he had asked for and had had granted a great number of witnesses, he demanded another large set: this has been refused him: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... some of those who have been "Authors by Profession" in one of the twofold capacities which Guthrie designed, that of writing for a minister; the other, that of writing for the bookseller, though far more honourable, is sufficiently calamitous. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... and thoroughness of treatment as to give to the whole both beauty and worth beyond the sum of these qualities exhibited in the several parts. Vigilant waiting in the Lord's cause, and the dangers of unreadiness are exemplified in the story of the virgins; diligence in work and the calamitous results of sloth are prominent features of the tale of the talents. These two phases of service are of reciprocal and complementary import; it is as necessary at times to wait as at others to work. The lapse of a long period, as while the Bridegroom ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... been the better fellow pretty certainly, as well as probably the more genuine talent, of the two) would be grossly unfair in dealing with Emile Zola. One may think his principle demonstrably wrong, and his practice for the most part a calamitous mistake. One may, while, if indeed it concerned us, clearing him of the charge of doing any moral harm—such harm would be as likely to be done by records of Bedlam, or the Lock Hospital, or a dipsomaniacs' home—put on the wrong side of his account a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... draught of an answer to the Marquis of Buckingham's letter of resignation meets entirely with my sentiments. If I thought any alteration necessary, it would be by more explicitly stating the allusion to his very commendable conduct, during my late calamitous illness, which would render the approbation in ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... Dutch war, which was declared in 1672, the object of which seems to have been the annihilation of the United Provinces as an independent state, a century sooner than Providence had decreed that calamitous event, met with great opposition in England, and every engine was put to work to satisfy the people of the truth of the Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury's averment, that the "States of Holland were England's ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... your race on mortal man bestow, Only, alas! to share in mortal woe? For ah! what is there of inferior birth, That breathes or creeps upon the dust of earth; What wretched creature of what wretched kind, Than man more weak, calamitous, and blind? A miserable race! but cease to mourn: For not by you shall Priam's son be borne High on the splendid car: one glorious prize He rashly boasts: the rest our will denies. Ourself will swiftness to your nerves impart, Ourself ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... The state of Ireland is most alarming and most anxious; altogether, there is so much inflammable matter all around us that it makes one tremble. Still, the events of Monday must have a calming and salutary effect. Lord John Russell's remarks about Europe, and the unfortunate and calamitous policy of the Government of the poor King of the French are most true. But is he not even most to be pitied for being the cause of such misery? (Though perhaps he does not attribute it to himself), for, to see all his hopes thus destroyed, his pride humbled, his children—whom ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... freely their woollens in Blackwell Hall. The charter of the ports is one hundred years older than that of London, but, notwithstanding this priority of right, the citizens of London prevailed. The result was indeed calamitous, for after the decay of the haven, the chief source of prosperity to the town of Sandwich consisted in the woollen manufactures, and as the freedom of buying and selling was now denied, the manufacturers immediately removed, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... return. The prayers and curses of the men surrounding her fell unheeded on her ears. Where was Hozier? What was he doing? Why did he not come to her? She felt a strange confidence in him. If he had not been struck down by that calamitous shell he would have saved the ship—assuredly he would have devised some means of saving their lives! Perhaps, even now, he was attempting some desperate expedient! . . . The thought nerved her for an instant. Then a rending, grinding noise ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... reunion and reconciliation with our brethren of the South. I yet hope it may be done, but I am not able to point out to you how it may be effected. Nothing short of Providence can reveal to us the issue of this great struggle. Bloody—calamitous —I fear it will be. May we so conduct it if a collision must come, that we will stand justified in the eyes of Him who knows our hearts and who will judge our every act. We must not yield to resentments, nor to the spirit of ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... unbearable thing that those others down-stairs should see him and hear him, and that she could not. Why, oh, why, had she gone to bed so early to-night of all nights? She was ready to cry with the passion of a disappointment that seemed, not a little thing, but something crushing and calamitous, a loss for which she never could be repaid. She could imagine Justin and Lois meeting the kind glances of those gray eyes, smiling when he did. He was beautiful when he smiled! She was within a few yards of him, but convention, absurd yet maddening, held ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... They sat and listened to the illustrious bard Who sang of the calamitous return Of the Greek host from Troy, at the command Of Pallas. From her chamber o'er the hall The daughter of Icarius, the sage queen Penelope, had heard the heavenly strain, And knew its theme. Down by the lofty stairs She came, but not alone; there followed her Two maidens. When the glorious ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... was deprived of this help, he had only enough will left to be obstinate against other advice. It is suggested that he had now but one motive, the desire that the struggle should break out in his successor's time rather than his own. Even this is perhaps to judge Buchanan's notorious and calamitous laches unfairly. Any action that he took must to a certain extent have been provocative, and he knew it, and he may have clung to the hope that by sheer inaction he would give time for some possible forces of reason and conciliation to work. If so, he was wrong, but similar and about ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... faced Rand with a sudden, transfiguring brightness of mien. "I thank you, Mr. Rand. Miss Dandridge is an angel, and I'm the happiest of men. Will you tell Mrs. Rand so, with my best regards?" He hesitated a moment, then went on: "No sign of rain! This weather is calamitous! I hope that Roselands has not ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... be unacceptable to them, or very remote from their wishes. A man amongst them of great authority, and certainly of great talents, speaking of a supposed alliance between Church and State, says, "Perhaps we must wait for the fall of the civil powers, before this most unnatural alliance be broken. Calamitous, no doubt, will that time be. But what convulsion in the political world ought to be a subject of lamentation, if it be attended with so desirable an effect?" You see with what a steady eye these gentlemen ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... much the same in all,—lichens, mosses, rude grasses, and other coarse cryptogamous growths,—to develop themselves; since these alone can endure the severities of season and treatment to which all that would clothe the fields of the soul must remain exposed. Meanwhile the utmost of that wicked and calamitous suppression of faculty, which constitutes the essence and makes the tragedy of human slavery, is equally effected by the inevitable isolation and wakeful trampling and consequent barrenness of savage life. Liberty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... Church, Fleet-street, for a history of that parish, Mr. Elmes, the architect, discovered a few days since, that, although the church was destroyed, the records were left uninjured. He has accordingly brought to light a series of vestry books from 1653, embracing regular accounts and entries of the calamitous fire, and the proceedings of the parish authorities during that eventful period, till the re-opening of the church for public worship; together with register books of baptisms, burials, &c. from 1587, nearly eighty years before the fire, continued without interruption ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... her plainly the whole miserable story. At first the mother was angry, but when she saw the troubled face of her boy, she relented, not wishing to add to his misery. She even smiled at the calamitous ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... depression communicated itself to the working-people, and to the peasants who had flocked in from the adjacent country, and who, all sought a guide for their opinions in the faces of the principal townsmen, also for the most part proprietors of the surrounding districts. They saw that something calamitous was on foot, and resorted accordingly to the only remedy open to the ignorant ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... 1845 the earthquake came. Newman was received into the Roman communion. Of this step Mr. Gladstone said that it has never yet been estimated at anything like the full amount of its calamitous importance. The leader who had wielded a magician's power in Oxford was followed by a host of other converts. More than once I have heard Mr. Gladstone tell the story how about this time he sought from Manning an ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... intelligence ought to teach them better, not only winking at, but actually encouraging, these premature manifestations of passion in their children. They may yet learn, by bitter experience, the folly of their course, unless they make the discovery in time to avert the calamitous results which threaten the future of their children, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... writes Scott in his Diary, "my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of all my family—all but poor Anne; an impoverished, embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone. Even her foibles were of service to me, by giving me things to think of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... dead as they stood pleading,—victims of the fearful pressure of poisonous and heated air upon the excited brain. The deaths of Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle of our present Chief Justice, and of Ezekiel Webster, the brother of our great statesman, are memorable examples of the calamitous effects of the errors dwelt upon; and yet, strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend these errors, and give the body an equal chance with the mind in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... More calamitous was a temporary reverse of fortune which Shakespeare's company, in common with the other companies of adult actors, suffered soon afterwards at the hands, not of fanatical enemies of the drama, but of playgoers ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... affairs and such an ability to cope with intricate problems as to make them efficient leaders—leaders capable of guiding aright the noble ship of state thru difficult and tortuous channels beset, on every side, by dangerous rocks and calamitous whirlpools. And among that class of efficient leaders you, young men and young women of the University of North Dakota, will soon be numbered. How shall you respond to the call of duty? Your State, by virtue of what ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... if he received a clear intelligence from different parts of the world at once that all his ships and warehouses had been destroyed by hurricanes and fire? Faith given, patience follows: and the trial is morally the same, whether the news be true or false. Remarkably enough, after the calamitous time is past, when the good man of Uz is discerned as rewarded by heaven for his patience by the double of every thing once lost—his children remain the same in number, ten. It seems to me quite possible that neither camels, &c., nor children, really had been killed. Satan might have ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... present, therefore, no change was made in the administration; but when, in the spring of the following year, Mr. Perceval was murdered, the necessity for a new arrangement which this strange and calamitous atrocity forced upon the Regent—who by this time had come into possession of his full authority—led to his making offers of the conduct of affairs to more than one prominent statesman, all of them, as ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... and Nuremberg. Forty-three days we were, day after day, traveling, almost always on foot. I had now obtained the desire of my heart. I had seen Switzerland. But still I was far from being happy. The Lord most graciously preserved us from many calamitous circumstances, which, but for His gracious providence, might have overtaken us. But I did not see His hand at that time, as I have seen it since. Sickness of one or more of us, or separation from ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... of Jena, of Wagram. Napoleon's disasters in Russia, in 1812, were imputed by his admirers to the elements; his reverses in Germany, in 1813, were attributed by them to treachery: and even those two calamitous years had been signalised by his victories at Borodino, at Lutzen, at Bautzen, at Dresden, and at Hanau. His last campaign, in the early months of 1814, was rightly cited as the most splendid exhibition of his military genius, when, with a far inferior army, he long checked ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... for the moral interest of mankind, that it were possible to obtain a minute account of the services rendered to the calamitous spirit of many a forsaken individual by the singular charity of HOWARD. What could be more instructive than to observe how his Beneficence encreased by its exertion and success; while his desire of befriending the wretched ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... Campaign, at the opening of the war, is very little realised outside France. It lasted some three weeks. It was preceded by the calamitous French reverse at Morhange, where, on August 20th, portions of the 15th and 16th Corps of the Second Army, young troops drawn from south-western France—who in subsequent actions fought with great bravery—broke in rout before a tremendous German ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... welfare. After Governor Longden came Sir Henry Turner Irving, a personage who brought to Trinidad a reputation for all the vulgar colonial prejudices which, discreditable enough in ordinary folk, are, in the Governor of a mixed community, nothing less than calamitous. More than amply did he justify the evil reports with which rumour had heralded his coming. Abler, more astute, more daring than Sir James Longden, who was, on the whole, only a constitutionally timid man, Governor Irving threw [64] himself heart and soul into the arms ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... moving army. Nevertheless he bore it well. At first he beseeched them to leave him and old Momont, among his birds and cherry trees, declaring that nothing that the blues could do to him would be to him so calamitous as his removal from the spot in which he had so long taken root. But his children soon made him understand that it was impossible that they could abandon him, a cripple as he was, unattended, and exposed to the certain fury of the republicans. He yielded, therefore, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Many of the calamitous effects of the tremendous revolution which has passed over the Southern States still remain. The immeasurable benefits which will surely follow, sooner or later, the hearty and generous acceptance of the legitimate results of that revolution have ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... picturesqueness, but that otherwise the story up to the point reached is too purely repellent. I have the sequel quite clear in my mind, and in it the mere passionate frailty of Aloyse's first love would be followed by a true and noble love, rendered calamitous by Urscelyn, who then (having become a powerful soldier of fortune) solicits the hand of Aloyse. Thus the horror which she expresses against him to her sister on the bridal morning would be fully justified. Of course, Aloyse would confess her fault to her second lover whose love ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... people how long a simoum or ghiblee would blow in The Desert, they replied, "Never violently more than a couple of days." I do not recollect it once to have continued a whole day, but light south winds have prevailed for several days. As an instance of the calamitous effects of sudden changes of weather in North Africa, I may mention that, in the Spring of 1845, when Sidi Mohammed, "Bey of the Camp" in the Regency of Tunis, was returning from the Jereed, he lost, on one ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... single-handed. Alone he had saved the situation by his very vagueness. In conjunction with herself there was no knowing what he might do, for she had resolved to exonerate him from all blame and to attribute to her own infirmities of disposition this calamitous result ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... entitled a Caution to Great Britain and her Colonies, concerning the Calamitous State of the enslaved Negroes: We the poor, oppressed, needy, and much-degraded negroes, desire to approach you with this address of thanks, with our inmost love and warmest acknowledgment; and with the deepest sense of ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... Monseigneur the Bishop of Tarbes had appealed to him for help in the erection of an hospital. From that town he proceeded to Saint-Emilion and Castel-Naudary, to aid the Society of Mutual Help in these two towns. In fact, he was never weary of well-doing. "This calamitous winter," he wrote in January, 1854, "requires all my devotion. I will obey my conscience and give myself to the help of the famished and suffering, even to the extinction of my ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... enough in detail to enable him to form anything like a tolerable judgment on the final result, as it may respect the nations in general. But, as to France, I have no doubt in saying that to her it will be calamitous. Her conduct has made it the interest of the great family of mankind to wish the downfall of her present government; because its existence is incompatible with that of all others within its reach. And, whilst I see ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... Sialkot, wrote hopefully to the Governor-General of the aspect of affairs in the Punjab. Lord Canning and his advisers, owing to these favourable reports, were on the point of sending the 84th Foot back to Burma, when news reached them from Upper India of the calamitous occurrences at Meerut ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... narrative of the calamitous expeditions of the Persians against the Scythians in ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... you can do must be little; but that little I once believed you would ever haste to do with a generous eagerness and enthusiasm, and therefore I used to contemplate your character with an enthusiastic affection. That character, high as it was, sunk in my estimation from the calamitous delay concerning the promised pension of Cowper, a delay which allowed that dear and now released sufferer to sink into utter and useless distraction before the neglected promise was fulfilled. Will you make me some amends for the affectionate concern I suffered for the diminution ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... speaking of the Emperor." The Histrio-Mastix was, in fact, so big and so complex a thicket of confusion, that it had been licensed without examination by the licenser, who perhaps trusted that the world would have as little inclination to peruse it as he had. The calamitous discovery of the sting in the tail must surely have been made by a Hebrew or an Oriental student, who mechanically looked for the commencement of the Histrio-Mastix where he would have looked for that of a Hebrew Bible. Successive licensers had given the work a sort of go-by, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the door locked, she did not go to her mirror, but to her bed, flinging herself face down, not caring how far the pillows put her hat awry. Sheer grief had followed her anger; grief for the calamitous end of her bright afternoon, grief for the "end of everything," as she thought then. Nevertheless, she gradually grew more composed, and, when her mother tapped on the door presently, let her in. Mrs. Adams looked ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... calamity was made by circumstances doubly calamitous. Though destined to survive all his brothers and sisters, Anthony was a weak, sickly child, not considered never heard the mention of his mother's name, or was the Archdeacon himself capable of showing any tenderness whatever. In place ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Maxwell land grant case, which he characterizes as a wanton and shameful surrender to the rapacity of monopolists of 1,662,764 acres of the public domain, on which hundreds of poor men had settled in good faith and made valuable improvements. It has been as calamitous to New Mexico, says the Surveyor General, as it is humiliating to the United ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... was some danger of its being knocked to pieces against the railing or upon the persons of those who stood too close to escape the whirling consequences. So unexpected had been her reception of what he considered a calamitous indiscretion that he was to be pardoned for the ebullition of relief and joy that followed. Had she drawn a revolver and fired angrily at him he could not have been more astounded. But, to actually throw a kiss to him—to meet his imprudence ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of twenty, and full of noble sentiments, rushed to the director of the police with the avowal: 'It was I who induced De-Castillia to go to Piedmont; if the journey was a crime, the fault is mine; punish me!' No error could have proved more calamitous; till that moment the Austrians were in ignorance of the Piedmontese mission; De-Castillia was arrested on some far more trifling charge. Pallavicini's generous folly was rewarded by fourteen years' imprisonment, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... had an aim in life and a leading idea. The events of the annexation crisis have proved calamitous for the policy which I followed all my life. I wished to do everything which lay within the compass of my small powers, to render my own nation happy and great in a free, powerful and generally respected Austria ... I have always resented the fact that when ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... alleviating accompaniments. I said to myself, We must die. Sooner or later, we must disappear forever from the face of the earth. Whatever be the links that hold us to life, they must be broken. This scene of existence is, in all its parts, calamitous. The greater number is oppressed with immediate evils, and those the tide of whose fortunes is full, how small is their portion of enjoyment, since they know ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... anticipation of the event are set alight throughout the city. The play naturally falls into three divisions. The first introduces the Chorus of Argive elders, Clytemnestra, and a Herald who tells of the hardships of the siege and of the calamitous return, and ends with the triumphal entrance of Agamemnon with Cassandra, and his welcome by the Queen; the second comprehends the prophecy of the frenzied Cassandra of the doom about to fall upon the house and the murder of the King; the third the conflict between the Chorus, still faithful ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... unquestionably, every reason to lament as well as blame the violence and virulence by which his associate had disgraced the contest. The effect, indeed, produced upon the public by the irreverent sallies of Burke, and by the too evident triumph, both of hate and hope, with which he regarded the calamitous situation of the King, contributed not a little to render still lower the already low temperature of popularity at which his party stood throughout the country. It seemed as if a long course of ineffectual struggle ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... the calamitous close of his aspirations from boyhood upwards to be permitted to partake in doing something for the common weal. He had still the work to perform by which posterity will best remember his name, though only a few months intervened between ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... personal inactivity. I say personal, because he had written to London to accelerate the attempt to raise a loan, and, at the suggestion of Colonel Stanhope, he addressed a letter to Mavrocordato respecting the inevitable consequences of their calamitous dissensions. The object of this letter was to induce a reconciliation between the rival factions, or to throw the odium, of having thwarted the loan, upon the Executive, and thereby to degrade the members of it in the opinion of the people. "I ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... turned out a calamitous year for the people of Ferrara, for there occurred a very tragical event in the court of their sovereign. Our annals, both printed and in manuscript, with the exception of the unpolished and negligent work of Sardi, and one ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... dignity and serenity, her pallid countenance, and the simple, pathetic words uttered by her at her arraignment, touched for the moment the hardened hearts of the imbruted spectators. Her sad fate has blinded many to the calamitous errors committed by her in ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... been handed in, having regard to the strained state of affairs in South Africa which have arisen in consequence of the differences between the Governments of South African Republic and Her Britannic Majesty, which constitute a threatening danger for bringing about hostilities, the calamitous effect of which would be incalculable for all white inhabitants of South Africa, being bound to the South African Republic by the closest bonds of blood and alliance and standing in most friendly relations towards ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... Blackwell; the other all his to me, to which I only gave negative or affirmative answers as laconically as I could, except asking him how Mrs. Logan did. He seemed disposed to be very polite, and while Dr. Blackwell and myself were conversing on the late calamitous fever, offered me an asylum at his house, if it should return or I thought myself in any danger in the city, and two or three rooms, by way of accommodation. I thanked him slightly, observing there would ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... ardour of Somerset: she did not satisfy curiosity as Somerset satisfied it; she piqued it. Poor Somerset had reached a perfectly intelligible depth—one which had a single blissful way out of it, and nine calamitous ones; but Paula remained an enigma ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... last legs, on the wane; in one's utmost need. planet-struck, devoted; born under an evil star, born with a wooden ladle in one's mouth; ill-fated, ill-starred, ill-omened. adverse, untoward; disastrous, calamitous, ruinous, dire, deplorable. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his coach was entangled as it passed along the street. His attendants left the carriage to remove the obstruction, and during the delay thus caused he was stabbed to the heart by Francis Ravaillac, a native of Angouleme. This calamitous event took place on May 14, 1610, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. The Spaniards, who had the strongest interest in the catastrophe, were supposed to have been the instigators; but the fear of implicating other powers, and plunging France into greater evils than those ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... No matter that the advanced science of his time explained rainfall, unusual heat or cold, over-fruitful or unproductive years, pestilence and sudden death, eclipses, comets and meteors,—he believed them to be the direct results of sorcery. Calamitous as the effects may have been upon other people, he had ever escaped harm from these sources. It was not strange that in time he ceased to fear miracles, and the demonstrations of Moses were not so terrifying, inasmuch as they ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Ottoman Empire should fall, would not merely be the danger that would threaten the territories of which that empire consists; it would be the danger that the fire there lit should spread to other nations, and should involve all that is most powerful and civilized in Europe in a dangerous and calamitous contest. That was the danger that was present to the minds of our fathers when they resolved to make the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire a matter of European treaty, and that is a danger which has not passed ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... the origin of the human species substituted for the first ten chapters of the book of Genesis; rights of nature for the duties and privileges of citizens; idealess facts, misnamed proofs from history, for principles and the insight derived from them': all these and other calamitous results of modern philosophy are connected with a neglect of the well-being of the people, the mistaking of a large revenue for prosperity, and the consumption of gin by paupers to the 'value of eighteen millions ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen |
