"Destructiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "original sin" is the unscientific theory that evil came into the world with Adam and his seed. Let us ask what was the state of our globe in the pre-Adamite days, when the tyrants of the Earth, the huge Saurians and other monsters, lived in perpetual strife, in a destructiveness of which we have now only the feeblest examples? What is the actual state of the world of waters, where the only object of life is death, where the Law of murder is ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... similarly afflicted. Himself an Army surgeon, seventeen Army surgeons sat on his case in the Philippines, and, like the Australian specialists, confessed themselves beaten. In brief, I had a strong predisposition toward the tissue-destructiveness of tropical light. I was being torn to pieces by the ultra-violet rays just as many experimenters with the X-ray have ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... prey,” so called, the greatest part are extinct, or nearly so, too often from a mistaken belief in their destructiveness; whereas they are really useful allies of the farmer, if not also of the sportsman. In the cause of the latter, they, for the most part destroy (if they destroy game at all) the weakly members, so conducing towards keeping up a vigorous breed, and for the farmer they destroy smaller vermin, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... (which evinces an intimate acquaintance with human nature and much foresight) induced the attack to which allusion has been made. A single paragraph from the Rev. Mr Ashmun's account of the battle with the natives may suffice to give the reader an idea of its destructiveness: ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... engineer was found in Andrews, one of our leading stokers; and for coxswain, who better than Law, the boatswain's mate? The former of these at once directed everybody to pull the inner wood work of the launch to pieces, and, as the bump of destructiveness has its full development in the sailor phrenology, he had not long to wait for his fuel; thus they managed to reach the ship full six hours after ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... must he weep at the dulness of men's ears to that continuous strain of melody throughout it. In truth, what was sympathetic with the hour and the scene in the Heraclitean doctrine, was the boldly aggressive, the paradoxical and negative tendency there, in natural collusion, as it was, with the destructiveness of undisciplined youth; that sense of rapid dissolution, which, according to one's temperament and one's luck in things, might extinguish, or kindle all the more eagerly, an interest in the mere phenomena of existence, of one's so hasty passage ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... some be considered as an exception. In negative diseases, there is a low degree of electro-vitality. And it has been remarked by careful observers, particularly in the Orient, that cholera rages with greatest destructiveness when no special electric phenomena have for long time appeared in the atmosphere, and when the artificial electrical apparatus could be made to yield its sparks only with difficulty, or not at all. And again, after a thunderstorm, ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... following instance will show you the frightful destructiveness of the French shells. A dug-out five metres deep, surmounted by 2 metres 50 centimetres of earth and two thicknesses of heavy timber, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... probably have found the organ of destructiveness in strong development, just then, upon Edward's cranium; for he certainly manifested an impulse to break and destroy whatever chanced to be within his reach. He commenced his operations by upsetting the table, and breaking the bottles and glasses. ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... attack. Monitaya, until now a field general who strode up and down roaring commands and encouragement, suddenly cast away his regal role and, seizing a club from one of his bodyguard, hurled himself on the nearest Red Bones—a raving, ravening demon of destructiveness whose glaring eyes smote terror into those fronting him and whose weapon swung like the club of Hercules. His bowmen and blowgun men, at last out of missiles, came charging in with bare hands or weapons seized from fallen warriors. Maneuvering had ended. ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... since they see with their own eyes the results of their labor, a sense of responsibility is engendered which has a beneficial influence upon school work also. Respect for all kinds of labor and a decrease in the destructiveness so often found among boys are unmistakable effects of the arbor gardens. It is not easy work which the children perform, for spade and rake require muscular effort; but it is ennobling work, for it leads to self-respect, self-dependence, and respect for others, as well as willingness ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... thrust winding arms back into the very heart of the land, and where the land itself, delta and slope and slide-engraved declivities, was clothed with great, silent forests, upon which man, with his axes and saws, his machinery, his destructiveness in the name of industry, had as yet made little more impression than the nibbling of a single mouse on the rim ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and cool, Jean felt the uplift of his dark spirit, the acceptance of fatality, the mounting control of faculties that must wait. The little gunman seemed to have about his inert presence something that suggested a rattlesnake's inherent knowledge of its destructiveness. Jean sat down and wiped ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the party. Indeed, Lucy's interest in science was so great that she unwittingly pulled two or three extremely rare specimens to pieces while listening to these eloquent discourses, and was only made conscious of her wickedness by a laughing remark from Hector that she "must surely have the bump of destructiveness largely developed." ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... I heard of another boy who exercised the same kind of cruelty and destructiveness over another common a few miles distant. Walking across it I spied two boys among the furze bushes, and at the same moment they saw me, whereupon one ran away and the other remained standing. A nice little fellow of about eight, he looked as if he had been ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson |
