"Calamity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mumps, and withdrawn by the doctor's orders. Mrs. Milray had now not only to improvise another Spirit of Summer, but had to choose her from a group of young ladies, with the chance of alienating and embittering those who were not chosen. In her calamity she asked her husband what she should do, with but the least hope that he could tell her. But he answered promptly, "Take Clementina; I'll let you have her for the day," and then waited for the storm of her renunciations and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... evidence of a state of mind which made our separate national life inevitable. Yet to Thomas Hutchinson, a sound historian and honest man, the last Royal Governor of Massachusetts, a separate national life seemed in 1770 an unspeakable error and calamity. ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... kills himself to avoid misery, fears it, And, at the best, shows but a bastard valor. This life's a fort committed to my trust, Which I must not yield up, till it be forced: Nor will I. He's not valiant that dares die, But he that boldly bears calamity. Maid of Honor, Act ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... that she still had someone to love about her. But upstairs she found an empty room. The porter told her that M. Georges had gone out at an early hour. The room was haunted by the ghost of yet another calamity; the bed with its gnawed bedclothes bore witness to someone's anguish, and a chair which lay amid a heap of clothes on the ground looked like something dead. Georges must be at that woman's house, and so with dry eyes and feet that had ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... and then the girls knew that he really had been moved, though he hadn't shown it, and, ready to seize upon anything to love in him, they decided they loved his voice. When they had got away out of the room and stood close together in the dining-room, as if he were a calamity to be fled from, that was the only thing they could think of to ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... until his name came before them as a candidate for President of the United States on a Republican ticket. A sudden transformation then took place. It was then discovered, to their great surprise and disappointment, that he was such an unsafe and dangerous man that no greater calamity could happen to the country than his elevation to the Presidency. Nothing, therefore, must be left undone ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... and icecream is included in the daily bill of fare here, and iced water is supplied without limit, but lately the machinery has only worked in spasms, and the absence of ice is regarded as a local calamity, though the water supplied from the waterworks is both cool and pure. There are two good photographers and two booksellers. I don't think that plateglass fronts are yet to be seen. Many of the storekeepers employ native "assistants;" ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... then to moralise; not kill the bird and be compelled to spend the silver in destroying insects that the bird would have delighted to consume, and moralise upon the destructiveness of some hitherto insignificant bug or beetle, which has suddenly developed into a national calamity. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... house, and they were talking at the side door, as they had the night before, when there had been hope for her in the newness of her calamity, before she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... you well. You scorn your friends, as well as your foes. I have seen so many of you. The blessed saints guard us from the calamity of your friendship...." ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... oor moments o' sunniest cheer Calamity's aften maist cruelly near. And while the twa talked o' their puddin' divine The Boches below them were howkin' a mine. And while the twa cracked o' the feast they would hae, The fuse it wis burnin' and burnin' away. Then ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... the Church of Christ. Daniel the Prophet, speaking of the latter times of Antichrist: "Truth," saith he, "in that season shall be thrown under foot, and trodden upon in the world." And Christ saith, how the calamity and confusion of things shall be so exceeding great, "that even the chosen, if it were possible, shall be brought into error;" and how all these things shall come to pass, not amongst Gentiles and Turks, but ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... Mary did not know, but it chanced that Miss Robertson proposed it herself, having received a letter which made her eager to get home; and the brother and sister were left alone to do battle with the threatened calamity. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... is flesh; it does not obey. Yea, the nearer and more immediate the calamity, the more secure it is and the more readily it despises all faithful admonitions. Though this offense provokes the righteous, we should, notwithstanding, conclude that God does not reprove in vain the world through his Holy Spirit, nor that the Holy Spirit in the righteous ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... hath no part in Islam."' (Q.) 'What is prayer?' (A.) 'Prayer is communion between the slave and his Lord, and in it are ten virtues, to wit, (1) it illumines the heart (2) makes the face shine (3) pleases the Merciful One (4) angers Satan (5) conjures calamity (6) wards off the mischief of enemies (7) multiplies mercy (8) forfends vengeance [or punishment] (9) brings the slave nigh unto [or in favour with] his Lord and (10) restrains from lewdness and iniquity. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... Amberson Estate went into court for settlement, "there wasn't any," George Amberson said—that is, when the settlement was concluded there was no estate. "I guessed it," Amberson went on. "As an expert on prosperity, my career is disreputable, but as a prophet of calamity I deserve a testimonial banquet." He reproached himself bitterly for not having long ago discovered that his father had never given Isabel a deed to her house. "And those pigs, Sydney and Amelia!" he added, for this was another thing ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... natural selection has been crushed under the rough paw of well-meaning, idle-minded curiosity. That my Father, himself so reverent, so conservative, had by the popularity of his books acquired the direct responsibility for a calamity that he had never anticipated became clear enough to himself before many years had passed, and cost him great chagrin. No one will see again on the shore of England what I saw in my early childhood, the submarine vision of dark rocks, speckled and starred with an infinite variety of colour, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... first, under the government of Director Kieft, so much opportunity as there has since been, because the recognition of the peltries was then paid in the Fatherland, and the freemen gave nothing for excise; but after that public calamity, the rash war, was brought upon us, the recognition of the peltries began to be collected in this country, and a beer-excise was sought to be established, about which a conference was had with the Eight Men, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... have I felt the pangs Of woe severe in this calamity: And could I with my life redeem the times, The richest blood that circles round my heart, Should hastily be shed. But what avails The genuine flame and vigour of the soul, When nature's self, and all the strength of ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... race. The Arab commutes by dromedary, the Malay by raft, the Indian rajah by elephant, the African chief gets a team of his mothers-in-law to tow him to the office. But wherever you find him, the commuter is a tough and tempered soul, inured to privation and calamity. At seven-thirty in the morning he leaves his bungalow, tent, hut, palace, or kraal, and tells his wife ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the war they came near to winning it, the Germans are not now likely to win that complete victory upon which they had calculated, and which would have brought as its prize the mastery of the world. We can now form some judgment of the extent of the calamity which this would have meant for humanity. There would have remained in the world no power capable of resisting this grim and ugly tyrant-state, with its brute strength and bestial cruelty as of a gorilla in the primaeval forest, reinforced ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... by his repeated trials of invention he passed through almost every calamity to which human flesh is heir. Again and again he was thrown into prison. Repeatedly he saw starvation staring him and his gentle wife and his poor little children in the face. He was reduced many times to the very last extreme of penury. His friends sneered at ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... spilt the high-priest's blood, "The fires of Vesta be for ever dark." With words like these did troubled Venus move Each power of heaven, in vain; yet all were touch'd, And, though the stern decrees of rigid fate To break unable, tokens plain they gave, That some immense calamity was nigh. They tell, that clashing arms 'mid the black clouds, And dreadful horns and trumpets in the heavens Sounded, to warn us of the impious deed. Full of solicitude the earth beheld The pale wan image of sad Phoebus' face. Torches were often seen 'mid heaven ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... in Russia that if three lighted candles are placed upon a table some one in the room will die within a year. Everybody endeavors to avoid such a calamity. If you have two candles and order another, the servant will place the third on a side table or he will bring a fourth and make ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... great capital of Magadha, standing in all its beauty. Filled with flocks and herds and its stock of water never exhausted, and adorned also with fine mansions standing in excellent array, it is free from every kind of calamity. The five large hills of Vaihara, Varaha, Vrishava, Rishigiri, and the delightful Chaitya, all of high peaks and overgrown with tall trees of cool shade and connected with one another, seem to be jointly protecting the city of Girivraja. The breasts of the hills are concealed by forests ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sincerely. A few hours earlier the tragic end which had befallen his parrot would have presented itself to him as a calamity; now it arrived almost as a polite attention on the part of ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... things he had done, the things it had been believed by them all he would achieve. This was her Karl!—this man whose withdrawal from active participation had been told of by great scientists everywhere as a world-wide calamity. How quiet and unassuming and simple he had been about it all—he whose stepping-out had been ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... wholly deceived me. When, in this wonderful sphere, I pray in transcendent rapture - subtle, silent, deeply significant signs take place in the wonderful landscape before my eyes. A soft veil of clouds obscures the light, as a warning of danger or calamity, - a great glowing brilliance rises behind me or at my side as an encouraging greeting, - a light layer of clouds gradually evaporates and a deep, dark, boundless, ravishing azure comes to view, filling me ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... hung back, or began to stimulate one another, and to prove to each other how easy it was, by every proof but practice. "Well, then, I must do it once more," said Blyth, "for I dare not leave off at thirteen, for fear of some great calamity, such as I ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... laid on them, making them to perish childless off the face of the earth. If even you succeeded in seizing her, how would this help? She would revenge herself by standing there deaf and mute as a corpse, and would sooner be burned at the stake than speak one word that would remove this great calamity from our house." ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Post for a thousand dollars' worth of fur, and five hundred dollars is a good catch. It is terrible, but what can I do? I dare not buy their furs and sell them for my people, because the Company would blacklist the whole lot and it would be a great calamity in the end. But if I had money—if I could do ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... read to a public meeting in Nauvoo on February 7, 1844, a very long address by the prophet, setting forth his views on national politics.* He declared that "no honest man can doubt for a moment but the glory of American liberty is on the wane, and that calamity and confusion will sooner or later destroy the peace of the people," while "the motto hangs on the nation's escutcheon, 'every ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... bright Sunday mornings spent here on earth. Has a direful misfortune befallen this brother, or has a slave been set free? Let us suppose for a moment that the first has occurred. 'Vanity of vanities,' said the old preacher. 'Calamity of calamities,' says the new. That soul's probationary period is ended; his record, on which he must go, is forever made. He has been in the flesh, let us say, one, two, three or four score years; before him are the countless aeons of eternity. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... went on till twelve o'clock—dinner-time. If at any time that morning they had had the courage to speak together on the thought which was engrossing all their minds, it is possible that some means might have been found to avert the calamity that was coming towards them with swift feet. But among the uneducated—the partially educated—nay, even the weakly educated—the feeling exists which prompted the futile experiment of the well-known ostrich. They imagine that, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... leaves, since he cannot judge what others years may produce, why should he be afraid of leaving life betimes? Why should he dread an early death, of which he cannot tell whether it is an exclusion of happiness, or an interception of calamity. I despise the superstition of augury and omens, which has no ground in reason or piety; my comfort is, that I cannot fall but by the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... that the parish priest should admonish the violators of Sunday, and wish them to go to church and say their prayers, lest they bring some great calamity on themselves and neighbors. An ecclesiastical council brought forward the argument, since so widely employed, even by Protestants, that because persons had been struck by lightning while laboring on Sunday, it must be the Sabbath. "It is apparent," said the prelates, "how high the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... behaviour and prudent conduct in life, till her unfortunate acquaintance with the wicked Cranstoun, should ever be brought to a trial for her life, and that for the most desperate and bloodiest kind of murder, committed by her own hand, upon her own father? Had she listened to his admonitions this calamity never had befallen her. Learn hence the dreadful consequences of disobedience to parents; and know also that the same mischief in all probability may happen to such who obstinately disregard, neglect, ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... garden within an inner courtyard of the palace. We conversed in low tones, when we conversed at all, as the awe of the grim shadow of death crept over us. Even Woola seemed to feel the weight of the impending calamity, for he pressed close to Dejah Thoris ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I will not say any misfortune befalls his family settled in the mission, but merely any disagreeable or unforeseen accident. Natives, who were neophytes, have been known to desert for ever the Christian establishments, on account of a great drought; as if this calamity would not have reached them equally in their plantations, had they remained in ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... calamity would be better than remaining there, and it was decided to be the only course now available. Every vestige of the locker, or seats, or other appendages of the boat were swept away. The bare shell ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... such was the Surgeon's name, hastened to examine the wounded hand. The Monks surrounded the Bed, anxiously waiting for the decision: Among these the feigned Rosario appeared not the most insensible to the Friar's calamity. He gazed upon the Sufferer with inexpressible anguish; and the groans which every moment escaped from his bosom sufficiently betrayed the violence ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... days—a day which Austin had reasons for hoping would not be very remote. He would have to make Heaven knows what arrangements for Mrs. Ware and the general upkeep of the Manor House, while he was in London carrying on his profession. Decidedly, Dick had been a godsend, and his absence would be a calamity. In sending him out to Vancouver Austin had all the unalloyed, ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... the Greek convent of Jerusalem pays much more, as well to maintain its own privileges, as with a view to encroach upon those of the Latins.] so that if Spain be not speedily liberated, it is to be feared that the whole establishment of the Terra Santa must be abandoned. This would be a great calamity, for it cannot be doubted that they have done honour ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... tells us, and those very wise men, not now but long ago, have deplored the condition of human nature, esteeming life a punishment, and to be born a man the highest pitch of calamity; this, Aristotle tells us, Silenus declared when he was ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... immemorial at Chartley, closely resemble the cattle at Chillingham, but are larger, "with some small difference in the colour of the ears." "They frequently tend to become entirely black; and a singular superstition prevails in the vicinity that, when a black calf is born, some calamity impends over the noble house of Ferrers. All the black calves are destroyed." The cattle at Burton Constable in Yorkshire, now extinct, had ears, muzzle, and the tip of the tail black. Those at Gisburne, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... who and what like she might be. She suspected no harm,—for who could desire to harm her who had never injured a living being? Yet there she stood on the one side of that black door of doom, while the calamity of her life stood on the other side like a tigress ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... written of him, he is supposed to have shown himself as least worthy of his high name. Middleton, who certainly loved his hero's memory and was always anxious to do him justice, condemns him. "It cannot be denied that in this calamity of his exile he did not behave himself with that firmness which might reasonably be expected from one who had borne so glorious a part in the Republic." Morabin, the French biographer, speaks of the wailings of his grief, of its ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, the apostle hath been thought to imprecate evil on himself for the benefit of his people! All the expositors we have seen on this passage, conceive him to have wished some sore calamity to himself for the advantage of his nation! Though they have differed respecting the magnitude of the evil which he wished to suffer for ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... cat was quite unlike any ordinary cat—and cats of any kind are bad enough—and certainly he guessed that the cat under control of its master was one, and away from that questionable influence likely to be another, and very much worse, calamity. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... will get there by noon," said John, anxiously, taking the seat beside her on the crowded train. "If we missed the train at the cross-roads it would be a serious calamity. I should be obliged to send you on alone; for I must get to New York by night, as I have some very important business to transact for the plantation which must be ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... when all things were in profound silence, they came to the place where there companions lay; and here, not being sensible that they were liable to the same fate, stood over the wounded man, undoubtedly inquiring the occasion of this sad calamity; and 'tis as reasonable to suppose he told them, that it came by thunder and lightning from the gods, having never seen or heard of a gun before, in the whole course of their lives. By this time the Englishmen, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... thought only of consoling my father, and paying our debts and retrenching our expenditure by every available means; but my father was completely overwhelmed by the calamity: health, strength, and spirits sank beneath the blow, and he never wholly recovered them. In vain my mother strove to cheer him, by appealing to his piety, to his courage, to his affection for herself and us. ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... awakens our jealousy to question the veracity of the historian, and the merit of the hero. We cannot, however, refuse her judicious and important remark, that the disorders of the times were the misfortune and the glory of Alexius; and that every calamity which can afflict a declining empire was accumulated on his reign by the justice of Heaven and the vices of his predecessors."—GIBBON'S Roman Empire, vol. ix. p. 83, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... calamity and sympathize with the immediate sufferers, we have abundant reason to present to the Supreme Being our annual oblations of gratitude for a liberal participation in the ordinary blessings of His providence. To the usual subjects of gratitude I can not omit to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... subject of the new missionary enterprise into Upper Canada. (Epochs, page 305.) The result was, that in May, 1832, without notice, an intimation was received that the Rev. Robert Alder, and twelve missionaries were to be sent out to Canada. With a view to avert the calamity of again having hostile Methodist camps in every city and town in Upper Canada, Rev. John Ryerson suggested to Dr. Ryerson that the Canada Conference should endeavour to form a union with the British Conference, and thus secure harmonious action instead of discord and disunion. This ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... system are beginning to re-act upon the Christians, who are latterly kept in a constant state of alarm, fearing the number and disposition of the blacks, which threaten at no far distant period to overwhelm the south with some dreadful calamity.[12] Three incendiary fires took place at Orleans, during the month I remained in that city, by which several thousand bales of cotton were consumed. The condition of the slaves on the sugar or rice plantations, is truly wretched. They are ill-fed, ill-clad, and worked in gangs under the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... been suspected, and the kindness was certain, though some of it might be the busy activity of a not very delicate nature, eager for the importance conferred by intimacy with the subjects of a great calamity. Probably she would have been gratified by the eclat of being the beloved of the brother of the youth whose name was in every mouth, and her real goodness and benevolent heart would have committed her affections ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by two dervishes, one of whom was in himself a calamity!—one who understood the world,—a man of deep design,—and of a wit so sharp that the shaitan in person was not fit to be his father. He was tall, thin, and strong. His eyes were like live charcoal, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the inference that the treatise was written before his exile, since after it his experience of calamity would have freed him from the anticipation of further evil from the hostility of those to whom ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... The longing desire to bury her head in her pillow and "think out" her position had gone. She did not apostrophize her fate, she did not weep; few real women do in the access of calamity, or when there is anything else to be done. She felt that she knew it all; she believed she had sounded the profoundest depths of the disaster, and seemed already so old in her experience that she almost fancied she had been prepared for ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... came back to her, I noticed that, with the dropping of her hands to join the finger-tips, she had left, where that little, pressing fist had been, a blur of red on the white sweater. Over me it rushed with the force of calamity, she had been wounded when she sank down back there in the crowd. It was a shot—not a ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... them! Moreover, the ghost's gaze must now fall on nothing; that would be too appalling (without doubt I was mad). Its gaze must meet something, otherwise it would travel out into space further and further till it had left all the stars and waggled aimless in the ether. The notion of such a calamity was unbearable. Besides, I was hungry for that gaze. My eyes desired those eyes: if that glance did not press against them, they would burst from my head and roll on the floor, and I should be compelled to go down on ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... went out the moment the news of the calamity of the Swash reached their ears. Some went in quest of the doubloons of the schooner, and others to pick up any thing valuable that might be discovered in the neighborhood of the stranded brig. It may be mentioned here, that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... sensitive and tender-hearted often add to their poignancy by useless self-reproach. Frances thought the journey had, perhaps, been the cause of the child's untimely death, and lamented that she had not opposed a measure which she had undertaken solely for its benefit. The death of friends is a calamity that few have not strength enough to bear, if they do not exaggerate their sufferings, by imagining that something was done, or left undone, for which they were responsible. To this nervous state of feeling ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving. Masses! The calamity is the masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni at all. If government knew how, I should like to ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... that he was equal to the performance of all his duties. He knew that he could rely upon himself and upon his crew, and these thoughts transfigured him. The youth of yesterday was a man to-day. The spirit of a hero burned in his eyes. He rose superior to the calamity which had befallen them. His ability impressed all who approached him. Even the doctor and Mr. Bredejord submitted ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... traced the source of the Germanic migration. The potato blight that fell upon Ireland visited the Rhine Valley and Southern Germany at the same time with results as pitiful, if less extensive. The calamity inflicted by nature was followed shortly by another inflicted by the despotic conduct of German kings and princes. In 1848 there had occurred throughout Europe a popular uprising in behalf of republics and democratic government. For a time it rode ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... along and make prints in the field, rather than run the risk of ruining them by some unlucky accident. Perhaps at the very end of the trip a quantity of undeveloped plates might be lost, and such a calamity would mean the failure of the whole journey in one of its most important particulars. Such a disastrous result was foreshadowed when a porter, loaded with my effects, clambering down the sixty-foot incline extreme low water made at Remate ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... passed quietly and sadly in the parsonage. Father and Mother came out of church, before which the people of Upper Wood and Lower Wood, from Middle Lot, and the whole neighborhood round about, had assembled to talk over the calamity. ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... barracks or wandering away by twos and threes to the trader's store on the flats. The general was pacing the parade in earnest and murmured talk with the post adjutant. Bentley, the surgeon, was busy with his charges, having left Harris in a fitful, feverish doze. Not since the night of the calamity at Bennett's had the sentries reported sign of signal fire in the hills, but this night, before the last filament of gold had died at the top of the peak, Number Four had caught a glimpse of a tiny blaze afar over to the east, and instantly passed the word. Only half an hour it was observed, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... followed them in preferring the snuff-box to the pipe. Sometimes, apparently, they chewed. A World of 1754 pokes fun at the "pretty" young men who "take pains to appear manly. But alas! the methods they pursue, like most mistaken applications, rather aggravate the calamity. Their drinking and raking only makes them look like old maids. Their swearing is almost as shocking as it would be in the other sex. Their chewing tobacco not only offends, but makes us apprehensive at the same time that the poor things will be sick," as they certainly ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... Casca believe in these portents and signs, and their dignity would be much hurt if they were persuaded that the world would go on just the same if they and their family were utterly extinct, and that no eclipse would happen to portend that calamity. In Ireland, in certain great families, a Banshee, or a Benshee, for they differ who spell it, sits and wails all night when the head of the family is about to stretch his feet towards the dim portals of the dead; and in England ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... her: and you arrived like a guardian angel, my dear Madam, a positive guardian angel, I assure you, to soothe her under the pressure of calamity. But Dr. Squills and I were thinking that our amiable friend is not in such a state as renders confinement to her bed necessary. She is depressed, but this confinement perhaps adds to her depression. She should have change, fresh ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... officers, for a dirtier, more forlorn set I never saw. Not dirty either; they looked clean, considering the work they had been doing. Nobody introduced anybody else; we all felt like brothers and sisters in our common calamity. There was one handsome Kentuckian, whose name I soon found to be Talbot, who looked charmingly picturesque in his coarse cottonade pants, white shirt, straw hat, black hair, beard, and eyes, with rosy cheeks. He was a graduate of the Naval Academy some years ago. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... our prospects. If Venice and Genoa turn their victorious arms against each other, it is all over with us; we lose our glory and the command of the sea. In this calamity we shall have a consolation which we have ever had, namely, that if our enemies rejoice in our calamities, they cannot at least ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... unavoidably of a selfish nature. The danger was too instant, and of a description too horrible, to admit of any which involved a more comprehensive view of his calamity; and other reflections of a more distant kind, were at first swallowed up in the all-engrossing thought of immediate death. But as his ideas became clearer, the safety of his Countess rushed upon his mind—what might she now be suffering! and, while he was subjected to a trial so ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the Lacedaemonians to make a diversion in their favour by invading Attica: and though the Lacedaemonians were still ostensibly allied with Athens, they were base enough to comply with this request. Their treachery, however, was prevented by a terrible calamity which befel themselves. In the year B.C. 461 their capital was visited by an earthquake which laid it in ruins and killed 20,000 of the citizens. But this was only part of the calamity. The earthquake was immediately followed ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... upheld by the political."[292] In early ages this power was exercised by the temporal sovereigns; they convoked councils, punished heretics, promulgated dogmas. The Papacy afterwards arose, in evil times, and was a great calamity; but it was preferable a hundred times to the anarchy which was defended under the name ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... enjoying the sanction of their fellows without division among them. The individualistic philosophy of the more sophisticated may enable them to find satisfaction in more or less socially segregated groups under ordinary conditions, but when they face calamity, when the most fundamental and deepest issues of life are involved, then they enjoy association with those who surround them—they ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... last guest had gone, Lady Wolfer went to her own apartments. Nell stood in the center of the vast and now empty room, and looked round her absently, and with that sense of some pending calamity which we call presentiment. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... the pagan Rhadogast taken Rome, not a life would have been spared, no stone left on another. The Christian Alaric, though a Goth, respects his Christian brethren, and for their sakes you are saved. As to the gods, those daemons in whom you trust, did they always save you from calamity? How long did Hannibal insult them? Was it a goose or a god that saved the Capitol from Brennus? Where were the gods in all the defeats, some of them but recent, of the pagan emperors? It is well that the purple Babylon has fallen, the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... place we could not tell, as the darkness prevented our seeing the walls at either side. The floor was unpaved, and composed of damp earth strewed with filth. We stood for some minutes holding each other's hands, without speaking, and without moving. We felt bewildered and stupified with the calamity which had befallen us. Pedro was the ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... its condemnation, the Supreme Court of Civilization should therefore distinguish between the military caste, headed by the Kaiser and the Crown Prince, which precipitated this great calamity, and the German people. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... 4th instant. The subject to which it refers has occasioned serious reflection in my mind. If unfortunately the Indians be determined to commit acts of hostility in the spring, they are at too great a distance for us to succeed in any effort we may be disposed to make to avert so great a calamity. Therefore, the next consideration is the posture we are to assume in case of such an event; whether we are to remain in a state of strict neutrality, which doubtless the Americans will call upon us to observe, and thereby sacrifice our influence over the Indians; or, unmindful of the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... formidable as that of Cato, but in some ways the most important single event in the history of the Negro in the colonial period—was the plot in the city of New York in 1741. New York was at the time a thriving town of twelve thousand inhabitants, and the calamity that now befell it was unfortunate in every way. It was not only a Negro insurrection, though the Negro finally suffered most bitterly. It was also a strange compound of the effects of whiskey and gambling, of ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... when she received the terrible news. Of course the accident was the theme of conversation, and Rita was in deep trouble. Even Mrs. Bays was moved by the calamity that had befallen the man whose face, since his early boyhood, had been familiar in her own house. At first Rita made no effort to ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... individual happiness—the so-called saving of his own soul—becomes the aim and aspiration of his life. In one sense the Jew of Moses had no individual as apart from a national existence. The secret sin of Achan, the vaunting pride of David, call forth less individual than national calamity. ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... story is soon told. The pirates, showing their true colors, ran alongside and took possession without opposition; for the crew of the merchantman were so overwhelmed by the suddenness and appalling nature of the calamity that had befallen them that they ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... himself in Ross and Moray, besides the patrimony left him by his father, the lands of Coigeach and others, which, in lieu of the Lewis, were given him by his brother. His death was regretted as a public calamity, which was in September, 1626, in the 48th year of his age. To Sir Rory succeeded Sir John Mackenzie of Tarbat; and to him Sir George Mackenzie, of whom to write might be more honour to him than of safety to the writer as matters now stand." ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... brought about his destruction by dissolving him into his original elements of rags, snow, and dirt, for he was assigned the most prominent place near the fire, where he was exposed to a heat that he could by no means endure. However, he warded this calamity off by placing a boy between him and the fire; he shifted his position frequently, and evaded, by dexterous manoeuvres and timely remarks, the pressing invitation of his host to sit and enjoy the warmth. ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... we reach the Cabbalistic heroes of the Middle Ages. The third and the fourth have, on the other hand, had power generally in Jewish conduct. The fifth has had its influence, but only temporarily and temperately. Ascetic practices, based on national and religious calamity, have, for the most part, been prescribed only for certain dates in the calendar, but it must be confessed that an excessive addiction to fasting prevails among many Jews. But it is when we consider the first of Professor Oman's reasons for ascetic practices that we perceive ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... one leap was across the room, avoiding the table, seeking to come to close quarters with Quinnion and have the thing over and done with. In the bitterness still gnawing at his heart, he told himself again that it would be no calamity to the world if the two men who had insulted Judith Sanford ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... doubtless contain information which it might take us months to procure. Yes, I think I shall set men at work on the case to-morrow. Besides getting the papers, we will rob Shaw of his sensation. A publication of the situation just now would be a calamity." ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... your opinion; but for yours, because, as men go in this world (and women too), you will not go far wrong if you light upon so fine a fellow; and to light upon one and not perceive his merits is a calamity. In the flesh, of course, I mean; in the book the fault, of course, is with my stumbling pen. Seraphina made a mistake about her Otto; it begins to swim before me dimly that you may ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to drop the tontine like a hot chestnut, to concentrate all his forces on the leather business and the rest of his small but legitimate inheritance, was the decision of a single instant. And the next, the full extent of his calamity was suddenly disclosed to him. Declare his uncle's death? He couldn't! Since the body was lost Joseph had (in a legal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sorrow others. Disappointment or loss, shock, failure, death of loved ones, illness in ourselves or others, do not normally bring joy. A keen sense of suffering, temporarily, perhaps, of numbness; the inability to grasp the calamity; or flowing tears, an aching heart, or the stress of willed endurance, are natural, and ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... a whole tempest of trouble in their hearts. As yet they knew not the Scriptures that He must rise again from the dead; and this collapse of the cause in which they had embarked their all for time and for eternity was a bewildering calamity. They had trusted that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel, and that He would live and reign over the redeemed race forever. And there He was, perishing before their eyes in defeat and shame. Their faith was at the very last ebb. Or ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... even the human spirits into beings almost as noxious, for one or two passages appear to imply that they were afraid of ghosts, at least on one occasion it is threatened to send the dead back into the upper world, as the direst calamity that ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... no calamity the bostonians so much, and justly dread, as fire. Almost every part of the town exhibits melancholy proofs of the devastation of that destructive element. This you will not wonder at, when I inform you that three fourths of the houses are built with wood, and covered with shingles, ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... should vanish, I should shed tears more bitter than you do now. I should not enjoy another hour of pleasure, and my grey hairs would be brought with sorrow to the grave." At the mere thought of such a calamity the old man could not keep back his tears, and his words of tender solicitude made a deep ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... carelessness of what the South might do. Much that was written and much that was spoken throughout the North during that winter, both by Democrats and Republicans, would have remained unwritten and unspoken if they had realized the seriousness and magnitude of the impending calamity. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Sir,—A domestic calamity in the death of a near relation [2] has hitherto prevented my addressing you on the subject of this letter. My friend, Mr. Dallas, [3] has placed in your hands a manuscript poem written by me in Greece, which he tells me you do not object to publishing. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... declination of it, came up to the perfection in that kind), it was not in the power or wit of man to cure it of that dangerous flaw; that the nobility had frequent interest and perpetual power by their retainers and tenants to raise sedition; and (whereas the Janizaries occasion this kind of calamity no sooner than they make an end of it) to levy a lasting war, to the vast effusion of blood, and that even upon occasions wherein the people, but for their dependence upon their lords, had no concernment, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... tremendously and their blue eyes opening and shutting in unison, whilst he told them of the dreadful unnamed things that would befall them if they ventured again through that door. He impressed on them the calamity it would be to lose the privilege of holding the evergreens whilst they were being put up in the hall, and the danger of Santa Claus passing by that night without ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... their exquisite torments our courage may be quelled by the anticipation of our own. I imagine, from what I have read of the customs of this people, that we are about to witness and become participants in a ceremony undertaken to avert or remove some great calamity—a ceremony involving the sacrifice of many victims, each of whom is put to death with more refined barbarity than that dealt out to the victim preceding him. Ah! see there—a worthy victim has at last been found with which ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... confiscated! And let me tell you that Robespierre himself, Marat, and Danton did much less mischief to France than M. Necker. It was he who brought about the Revolution. You, Monsieur de Stael, did not see this; but I did. I witnessed all that passed in those days of terror and public calamity. But as long as I live those days shall never return. Your speculators trace their Utopian schemes upon paper; fools read and believe them. All are babbling about general happiness, and presently the people have not bread to eat; then comes a revolution. Such is usually the fruit of all these ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... long distances was just at that moment the most remote sensation in Stanton's sensibilities. If the railroad journey had seemed unhappily drawn out, the sleigh-ride reversed the emotion to the point of almost telescopic calamity: a stingy, transient vista of village lights; a brief, narrow, hill-bordered road that looked for all the world like the aisle of a toy-shop, flanked on either side by high-reaching shelves where miniature house-lights ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... part of it said in cold blood, years before this war, and all of it a declaration of faith now being ratified by action." It is taken word for word from the eleventh chapter of Owen Wister's remarkable work "The Pentecost of Calamity,"[A] and is the most concise statement of the Menace ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... course; and now, without open shame, they near the crown and harbour. It may be we have been struck with one of fortune's darts; we can scarce be civil, so cruelly is our spirit tossed. Yet long before we were so much as thought upon, the like calamity befel the old man or woman that now, with pleasant humour, rallies us upon our inattention, sitting composed in the holy evening of man's life, in the clear shining after rain. We grow ashamed of our distresses, new and hot and coarse, like villainous roadside brandy; ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an one to death, all the wits of Florence, as is seemly in so public a calamity, lamented severally and mutually, some in rhyme, some in prose, the ruefulness of it; and bound themselves to exalt her excellence each after the contriving of his mind: in which company I, too, must needs be; I, too, ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... But no such calamity happened, and the machine was safe in the barn in the morning when Cole overhauled the valves and fixed them. Bert and some of his chums called around after breakfast, and they talked fires and ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... to be drawn, then the loss to the Lottery, even with all deductions, would be a heavy one, and the Roman exchequer is by no means in a position to bear a heavy drain. In consequence, measures are taken to avert this calamity; each office reports daily what sums have been staked on what numbers; and, if any numbers are regarded with undue partiality, orders are issued from the head department to receive no more money on these numbers or series. ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... sat in his dining-room after supper, with a tankard of ale at his elbow. Had the "pernicious weed" been discovered at that date, he would probably also have had a pipe in his hand; but tobacco being yet a calamity of the future, ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... There were perhaps some who believed that the men upon whom the tower had fallen had deserved their fate; and this conception is the more probable if the generally accepted assumption be correct, that the calamity came upon the men while they were engaged under Roman employ in work on the aqueduct, for the construction of which Pilate had used the "corban" or sacred treasure, given by vow to ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... quality of Grand Cairo," replied the lady; "I was passing by this castle yesterday, in my way to Bagdad, and met with the black, who killed all my attendants, and brought me hither; I wish I had nothing but death to fear, but to add to my calamity, this monster would persuade me to love him, and, in case I do not yield to-morrow to his brutality, I must expect the last violence. Once more," added she, "make your escape: the black will soon return; he is gone out to pursue some travellers he espied at a distance on the plain. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... discussion of their future plans. It had been a great day for Bill. A day such as one may look forward to in long anticipatory moments of dreaming, but the ultimate realization of which often falls so desperately short of the anticipation. In the present instance, however, no such calamity had befallen. He felt that his weary journeyings, with their many discomforts and trials, had not proved vain. Many of his hopes had been ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... something which would have outraged her conception of the obligations of a hostess, or of getting away by herself without a moment's delay. She felt as though she were strangling, or that some horrible calamity threatened her. Hurrying to her own room she flung herself upon her couch and did that which Peggy Stewart was rarely known to do: buried her head in the cushions and sobbed. Not the sobs of a thwarted, peevish girl, but ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... over the mind of his quondam pupil, his accusations against Paul, as the origin of his banishment, were attended with a greater success than were the complaints of Dummie Dunnaker on a similar calamity. Paul, who, like most people who are good for nothing, had an excellent heart, was exceedingly grieved at MacGrawler's banishment on his account; and he endeavoured to atone for it by such pecuniary consolations as he was enabled to offer. These MacGrawler (purely, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... possibilities of the universe; nor does any person with any pretensions to religion disbelieve in miracles of some kind. To pray is to expect a miracle. When we pray for the recovery of a sick friend, for the gift of any blessing, or the removal of any calamity, we expect that God will do something by an act of his personal will which otherwise would not have been done—that he will suspend the ordinary relations of natural cause and effect; and this is the very idea of a miracle. The thing we pray for may be given us, and no miracle ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... doubt been informed before this of the severe calamity with which the Brook Farm Association has been visited, by the destruction of the large unitary edifice which it has been for some time erecting on its domain. Just as our last paper was going through the press, on Tuesday evening the 3d inst., the alarm of fire was given at about a quarter ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... over the Lilliputian difficulties and petty disappointments it has to encounter, gives way to all the fretfulness of grief and all the turbulence of resentment, makes a fuss about nothing because there is nothing to make a fuss about—when an impending calamity, an irretrievable loss, would instantly bring it to its recollection, and tame it in its preposterous career. A man may be in a great passion and give himself strange airs at so simple a thing as a game at ball, for instance; may rage like a wild beast, and be ready to ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... avoided; another pads his clothing lest he injure himself in falling. Many decline to share the occupations and pleasures of others through fear of possible wet feet, drafts of air, exhaustion, or other calamity. Such tendencies, though falling short of hypochondria, pave the way for it, and, in any event, gradually narrow the sphere of usefulness ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... William's career, if we may give it that name, was concerned, the calamity which had fallen upon his wife had in some strange manner explained and justified it. The younger son of a country gentleman of good family, he had, by the death of his elder brother, come into the title, the estate, and the sufficient means bequeathed ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... assistance to those of another, lest their own families and property should in the mean time be exposed by their absence to the fury of these barbarous ravagers [q]. All orders of men were involved in this calamity, and the priests and monks, who had been commonly spared in the domestic quarrels of the Heptarchy, were the chief objects on which the Danish idolators exercised their rage and animosity. Every season of the year was dangerous, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... Bernher's mind was running chiefly on the earthquake. He brought news that it had been felt at Croydon, Reigate, and nearly all over Kent; and the question on all lips was—What will come of it? For that it was a prognostic of some fearful calamity, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... Macbeth terror reaches its utmost height, in King Lear the science of compassion is exhausted. The principal characters here are not those who act, but those who suffer. We have not in this, as in most tragedies, the picture of a calamity in which the sudden blows of fate seem still to honour the head which they strike, and where the loss is always accompanied by some flattering consolation in the memory of the former possession; but a fall from the highest elevation into the deepest abyss of misery, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... on the stage about three years when for the first time in his emancipated life something like a calamity befell him. He lost Jane. Like most calamities it happened in a foolishly accidental manner. He received a letter from Jane during the last three weeks of a tour—they always kept up an affectionate but desultory correspondence—giving ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... most sacred engagements, he had attacked the helpless ally whom he was bound to defend. The Empress Queen had the faults as well as the virtues which are connected with quick sensibility and a high spirit. There was no peril which she was not ready to brave, no calamity which she was not ready to bring on her subjects, or on the whole human race, if only she might once taste the sweetness of a complete revenge. Revenge, too, presented itself to her narrow and superstitious ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... you here, too? Why are you in irons? It seems that I am destined to bring calamity upon all ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major |
