"Famine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is, out of all proportion, continuing to extend her tentacles wherever there is a chance of seizing something. To this cause of weakness must be added others: the need of money for her gigantic enterprises; the famine, now become endemic, by which her European provinces are ravaged, depopulated and reduced to the greatest misery. She is profiting now by her experiences after the Crimean War. As long as she remains inactive, the influence she exercises on general politics by her mere extent, and the mysterious ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... girl at an inn and bring her to us as a miracle, feel how standards alter. J'ai vu mieux que ca, mon cher. However, I accept everything to-day, as you know; when once one has lost one's enthusiasm everything's the same and one might as well perish by the sword as by famine." ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... faces Look into the lighted hall, And wasted hands are extended To catch the crumbs that fall. For within there is light and plenty, And odors fill the air; But without there is cold and darkness, And hunger and despair. And there, in the camp of famine, In wind and cold and rain, Christ, the great Lord of the Army, ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... or Northfolke (as other haue) wife of earle Rafe, being, fled into the citie of Norwich, was besieged in the same by the kings power, which pressed the citie so sore, as it was forced for verie famine to yeld; but yet by composition; namelie, that such as were besieged within, should depart the realme, as persons abiured and banished the land for euer. [Sidenote: Polydor. Hen. Hunt. Simon Dun. Matth. Paris.] This was the end ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (1 of 12) - William the Conqueror • Raphael Holinshed
... returned, those on board were horrified at the wild and haggard faces of their comrades, so wasted were they by hunger and disease; but they soon revived, and, embarking once more, they joyfully left behind them the dismal scene of so much suffering, which they had named the Port of Famine. After a short run to the southward they again landed, and found another Indian settlement. The inhabitants fled, and the Spaniards secured a good store of maize and other food, and gold ornaments of considerable value; but they ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... valor, and will give children to be their princes and babes to rule over them." Four plagues God has named in Scripture, Ezekiel xiv. The first and slightest, which also David chose, is pestilence, the second is famine, the third is war, the fourth is all manner of evil beasts, such as lions, wolves, serpents, dragons; these are the wicked rulers. For where these are, the land is destroyed, not only in body and property, as in the others, but also ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... the body of a large and coarse-featured man, but wasted and shrunk as if by famine to a very skeleton. The hands and legs were cramped up, and the trunk bowed together, as if the man had died of cold or famine. Yeo drew back the clothes from the thin bosom, while the girl screamed and wept, but made no ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... is much relished by the natives. Now that so much has failed to yield seed, being indeed just in flower, the stalks are chewed as if sugar-cane, and the people are fat thereon; but the hungry time is in store when these stalles are all done. They make the best provision in their power against famine by planting beans and maize in moist spots. The common native pumpkin forms a bastard sort in the same way, but that is considered ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... made her pity Fanny for the number of years that must pass before Stephana could give her the supreme blessing of a son-in-law. Fanny, on her side, had sufficient present blessing in collecting her brood around her, after the long famine she had suffered, and regretted only that this month had rendered Stephana's babyhood more perceptibly a matter of the past; and that, in the distance, school days were advancing towards Conrade, though it was at least a comfort that his diphtheria had secured him at home for another half year, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now in a state of famine. No books and no news from England for this two months. I am thinking of visiting a circulating library from sheer dulness. If I had more time I should get melancholy. No one can prize activity more than I do. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... temptations try, And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly! For him no wretches born to work and weep Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep; No surly porter stands in guilty state To spurn imploring famine from his gate: But on he moves to meet his latter end, Angels around befriending virtue's friend; Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay, Whilst resignation gently slopes the way; And all his prospects brightening ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and the powers of darkness. By leading Eve astray, Satan brought sin and death upon mankind. As the gods of the heathen, the demons are the founders and maintainers of idolatry; as the "powers of the air" they afflict mankind with pestilence and famine; as "unclean spirits" they cause disease of ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... boxes, and bales of goods floated on the water around us. Fritz and I managed to secure a couple of hogsheads, so as to tow them alongside. With the prospect of famine before us, it was desirable to lay hold of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... felt then hard put to it, whether, despite my famine, I could eat food in such a place and from such hands. But I persuaded myself, if I was to die so soon, I might as well meet death with a full stomach ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... would be the carnage! England would be at once bankrupt; all papers, records, and accounts would from that moment be lost. Government being unable to collect the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the hand of violence and rapine would go uncontrolled. In every large town famine would be proclaimed, pestilence and death following in its train." {240a} Great allowance should be made for a first work, and I admit that much interesting matter is found in Mr. Darwin's journal; still, it was hardly to be expected that ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O'Connell's time. I remember the famine in '46. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... what straits the brethren are in by this blockade and siege?" He pointed seaward and landward. "And that, should help come not, a deadlier enemy than the Sarrasin himself will strive with us—the famine with the sword. Thou ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... and nothing in his appearance indicated his mental sufferings; and indeed they must needs have been intense to be evident to the public. The roads were strewn with men and horses slain by fatigue or famine; and men as they passed turned their eyes aside. As for the horses they were a prize for our ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... feast in days of famine for those who have the inner eyes for the riches of life. You always can find in this world what your heart is looking for. But you cannot satisfy your heart on everything you may chance to find, and until the heart ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... little or no innovating genius, no trade devices, no assumption, no faculty for advertisement, no progressiveness, and no "racket." He had the tolerant good-humor of the Southwestern pioneer, to whom cyclones, famine, drought, floods, pestilence, and savages were things to be accepted, and whom disaster, if it did not stimulate, certainly did not appall. He received the insults, complaints, and criticisms of hurried and hungry passengers, the comments and threats of the Stage Company as he had ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... of life.... Last summer, the peasants of divers villages, in the Government of Lublin, were constantly obliged to submit to examination, and to appear before the courts. It was, in consequence, impossible for them to cultivate their fields; and, hence, they have been reduced almost to a state of famine. (Signed.) MARSHALL JEWELL." ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... possible to exaggerate the wretched state of the sister isle, where fires of recent hate were still smouldering, and where the poor inhabitants, guilty and guiltless, were daily living on the verge of famine, over which they were soon to be driven. Their ill condition much aggravated by the intemperate habits to which despairing men so easily fall a prey. The expenditure of Ireland on proof spirits alone had in the year 1829 attained ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... in this remarkable text describes a terrible famine which took place in the reign of Tcheser, a king of the IIIrd Dynasty, and lasted for seven years. Insufficient Nile-floods were, of course, the physical cause of the famine, but the legend shows that the "low Niles" were brought about by the neglect of the Egyptians ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Charity, the general friend," may become the general enemy, unless she consults her head as well as her heart. Whilst she pleases herself with the idea that she daily feeds hundreds of the poor, she is perhaps preparing want and famine for thousands. Whilst she delights herself with the anticipation of gratitude for her bounties, she is often exciting only unreasonable expectations, inducing habits of dependence, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... In municipal and university work he has taken a useful and creditable share. We find him organising effort not for political ends alone, but for various forms of public and social service. He has come forward and done valuable work in relieving famine and distress by floods, in keeping order at fairs, in helping pilgrims, and in promoting co-operative credit. Although his ventures in the fields of commerce have not been always fortunate, he is beginning to turn his attention more to the improvement of agriculture and industry. ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... Catholic who had been brought into the parish by the priest. No evil certainly was known of her, but then nothing was known of her; and the Quins were a very cautious people where religion was called in question. In the days of the famine Father Marty and the Earl and the Protestant vicar had worked together in the good cause;—but those days were now gone by, and the strange intimacy had soon died away. The Earl when he met the priest ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... as himself, and whose vanity is to recount the names of men, who might drop into nothing, and leave no vacuity.... The weather is a nobler and more interesting subject; it is the present state of the skies and of the earth, on which plenty and famine are suspended, on which millions depend for the necessaries of life.' 'Garrick complained that when he went to read before the court, not a look or a murmur testified approbation; there was a profound stillness—every one ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... from the Serawani mountains, in a sterile and bare district. This town owes its existence to the constant supply of water it derives from the Beli, an inestimable advantage in a country constantly exposed to drought, scarcity, and famine. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... would be difficult to carry it by a direct assault. On the other hand, it was not well supplied with water or provisions, and the numerous multitude which had crowded into it, would, as Hubba thought, be speedily compelled to surrender by thirst and famine, if he were simply to wait a short time, till their scanty stock of food was consumed. Perhaps the raven did not flutter her wings when Hubba approached the castle, but by her apparent lifelessness portended calamity if ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... skilful manoeuvres, he suddenly appeared in the immediate neighbourhood of the town. The English were forced to make a treaty with him on his own terms. The news sent the company's stock down 60 per cent. The same year the crops failed in Bengal, and in 1770 there was a grievous famine which is said to have carried off a third of the inhabitants. Yet in spite of the decreasing revenue and the heavy debts of the company, the proprietors were receiving dividends of 12 ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... people have that all the children in the United States have an elementary schooling is erroneous. This is not a treatise on education, and elsewhere the statistics of length of schooling per year for the different parts of the country and of dearth of school seats in cities and famine of teachers everywhere must be considered. From the side of the family, however, the claim must be made that equal rights in some accepted minimum of school training, and that determined in quantity and quality of teaching by those who know what education means, should be ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... is rather documentary than literary. It contains several graphic scenes descriptive of the great Irish famine. Trollope observed carefully, and on the whole impartially, though his powers of discrimination were not quite fine enough to make him an ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... what had been an interval of weary famine to all but these two, host and hostess appeared, the lady as usual, picturesque, though in the old black silk, with a Roman sash tied transversely, and holly in her hair; and gaily shaking hands— "That's right, Lady Rosamond; so ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Also a holograph sonnet on the monastery by Bryant. Elsewhere are various curiosities—dolls dressed in national costumes, medals, Egyptian relics, and so forth. In one case is some manna which actually fell from the skies in Armenia during a famine in 1833. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... food of the slaves of Brazil, as it used to be of those in our own Southern States, and is very largely consumed in Mexico and Peru. It was used very little in Europe until the Irish famine in 1847; since then, it has become a staple food ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... ought to warn all who rely on their own evidence to their own success. He was not, properly speaking, insane; he only spoke his mind more freely than many others of his class. The poor fellow died in the Cork union, during the famine. He had lived a happy life, contemplating his own perfections, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... supply the want of bread, if the inhabitants cultivated them more diligently: but the easier mode of providing fish in super-abundance as winter food, has induced them to neglect the labour of raising potatoes, although they have known years when the fishery has barely protected them from famine. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... the first shock, it springs up in his bosom, and flourishes there for a brief space, until it droops beneath the blight of disappointment and neglect. How soon have those same eyes, deeply sunken in the head, glared from faces wasted with famine, and sallow from confinement, in days when it was no figure of speech to say that debtors rotted in prison, with no hope of release, and no prospect of liberty! The atrocity in its full extent no longer exists, but there is enough of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... civilised that harshness and discord are permitted to prevail. Henry Ellis, in the narrative of his experiences in Hudson's Bay in the eighteenth century, tells how a party of Eskimo—a people peculiarly tender to their children—came to the English settlement, told heart-brokenly of hardship and famine so severe that one of the children had been eaten. The English only laughed and the indignant Eskimo went on their way. What savages anywhere in the world would have laughed? I recall seeing, years ago, a ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... this idol in time of mortality, pestilence or much sickness, both men and women, and brought many offerings. They said that at mid-day a fire descended and consumed the sacrifice in the sight of all. After this the priests replied to their inquiries about the sickness, famine or pestilence, and thus they learned their fate; although it often turned out quite the contrary of what he predicted." (Historia de Yucatan, Lib. IV, ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... heard Waithman's answer, which I was laughing at most heartily. I knew that Mr. Waithman would not have joined me in any measure, even if it had been to save the City of London from an earthquake, or its citizens from the greatest of all calamities, a famine; but at the first view of the thing, I did not perceive how this amendment was calculated to injure or cut the throat of Mr. Waithman. The dread of this mighty sacrifice did not, however, deter me from doing my duty. The vote of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... to the Christians on the banks of the Nile, and with his own hand killed the monk Gabriel, then an old man. Reinforced by Gideon and Judith, king and queen of the Samen Jews, and aided by a violent famine which prostrated what had escaped the spear, he perpetrated every manner of atrocity, captured and burned Axum, destroyed the princes of the royal blood on the mountain of Amba Geshe [14], and slew in A.D. 1540, David, third of his name ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... positions as strong as that at Colenso, the Boers will probably be baulked of their prey, the garrison of Ladysmith. Sir George White has with him the flower of the British Army, and he does not mean to be reduced by degrees to the extremity of famine and helplessness. During Sir Redvers Buller's attack the Ladysmith's force will not be idle, but will attack the Boers who are investing the place. Signals must have been prearranged between the two commanders, and it can hardly be doubted that if and when Sir George White should ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... Paris, beholding it abandoned to extreme want, bordering on famine; agitated by fear, torn by faction. Parisians and Frondeurs as they were, the two friends expected to find the same misery, the same fears, the same intrigue in the enemy's camp; but what was their surprise, ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and the extinction, not simply of the previously ruling species, but of most of the forms that are at all closely related to it. Sometimes, indeed, as in the case of the extinct giants of South America, they vanished without any considerable rivals, victims of pestilence, famine, or, it may be, of that cumulative inefficiency that comes of a too undisputed life. So that the analogy of geology, at anyrate, is against this too acceptable view of man's certain tenure of the earth for the next ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... 1578, however, Ypres fell into the hands of the Protestants, and became their headquarters in West Flanders. Five years later Alexander of Parma besieged it. The siege lasted until April of the following year, when the Protestants, worn out by famine, capitulated, and the town was occupied by the Spaniards, who 'resorted to instant measures for cleansing a place which had been so long in the hands of the infidels, and, as the first step towards this purification, the bodies ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... admitting the general correctness of the free-trader's statements as to the prosperous condition of the country, they call attention to the fact that directly after the enactment of the tariff of 1846 the great famine occurred in Ireland, followed in the ensuing years by short crops in Europe. The prosperity which came to the American agriculturist was therefore from causes beyond the sea and not at home,—causes which were transient, indeed almost accidental. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... is more frequently known, was very desirous to persevere in the Fabian policy till the ten days had expired, after which he knew that Hannibal must be reduced to extreme distress, and might have to surrender at once to save his army from actual famine. In fact, it was said that the troops were on such short allowance as to produce great discontent, and that a large body of Spaniards were preparing to desert and go over together to the ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... appearances among men, of the most holy gods of whatever land he had come from. And the captain answered that he came from fair Belzoond, and worshipped gods that were the least and humblest, who seldom sent the famine or the thunder, and were easily appeased with little battles. And I told how I came from Ireland, which is of Europe, whereat the captain and all the sailors laughed, for they said, "There are no such places in all the land ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... massacre began; O'er fields and orchards, and o'er woodland crests, The ceaseless fusillade of terror ran. Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on their breasts, Or wounded crept away from sight of man, While the young died of famine in their nests; A slaughter to be told in groans, not words, The very St. Bartholomew ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... summer of 1917 he related to me some instances of the rapidly increasing food trouble in England, and was genuinely surprised when I replied that, though I was convinced that the U-boats were causing great distress, there was no question of a famine. I told the Emperor that the great problem was whether the U-boats would actually interfere with the transport of American troops, as the German military authorities asserted, or not, but counselled him not to accept as very serious facts a few ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... THE LITTLE LOAF. 1. Once when there was a famine, a rich baker sent for twenty of the poorest children in the town, and said to them, "In this basket there is a loaf for each of you. Take it, and come back to me every day at this hour till God sends us better ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... world knows, came true forty years after in that horrible siege of Jerusalem, which the Jews brought on themselves entirely by their own folly, and pride, and wicked lawlessness. In that siege, by famine and pestilence, by the Romans' swords, by crucifixion, and by each other's hands (for the different factions were murdering each other wholesale up to the very day Jerusalem was taken), thousands of Jews perished horribly, and the rest were sold as slaves over the face of the whole ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... fill to her double. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... covered with the flotilla of the Turks. The wall in many places was broken down, and at other points in the wall they had obtained a foothold, and the crescent was proudly unfurled to the breeze. The feeble garrison, worn out with toil and perishing with famine, were in the last stages of despair. Hunniades came down upon the Turkish flotilla like an inundation; both parties fought with almost unprecedented ferocity, but the Christians drove every thing before them, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... migrant(s)/1,000 population note: repatriation of Ethiopians who fled to Sudan for refuge from war and famine in earlier years is expected to continue for several years; some Sudanese and Somali refugees, who fled to Ethiopia from the fighting or famine in their own countries, continue to return to their ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... channeling resources away from welfare programs in order to increase investment and strengthen incentives to seek employment. The addition of more than 80 million people each year to an already overcrowded globe is exacerbating the problems of pollution, desertification, underemployment, epidemics, and famine. Because of their own internal problems, the industrialized countries have inadequate resources to deal effectively with the poorer areas of the world, which, at least from the economic point of view, are becoming further marginalized. In 1998, ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... poverty thou didst preach, enamoured vassal of Banks! Thou hast seen the weak crushed beneath the press of profit; thou hast heard the death rattle of the timid, paralyzed by famine, of women disembowelled for a bit of bread, and thou hast caused the Chancery of thy Simoniacs, thy commercial representatives, thy Popes, to answer by dilatory excuses and evasive promises, sacristy Shyster, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... centuries A.D., Iceland boasts the world's oldest functioning legislative assembly, the Althing, established in 930. Independent for over 300 years, Iceland was subsequently ruled by Norway and Denmark. Fallout from the Askja volcano of 1875 devastated the Icelandic economy and caused widespread famine. Over the next quarter century, 20% of the island's population emigrated, mostly to Canada and the US. Limited home rule from Denmark was granted in 1874 and complete independence attained in 1944. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... at this period so difficult for him from the failure of his book, the various public questions of the dissenting sects, of the American alliance, of the Samara famine, of exhibitions, and of spiritualism, were definitely replaced in public interest by the Slavonic question, which had hitherto rather languidly interested society, and Sergey Ivanovitch, who had been one ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... "everybody you meet is so important." Everybody is also so gloomy. It will come to war again, is the opinion of all the well informed—and before that to many bankruptcies; and after that, as usual, to famine. Here, under the microscope, we can ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forward straight Sweepeth, strikes the reef below; He who fears and lightens weight, Casting forth, in measured throw, From the wealth his hand hath got ... His whole ship shall founder not, With abundance overfraught, Nor deep seas above him flow. —Lo, when famine stalketh near, One good gift of Zeus again From the furrows of one year Endeth quick the ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... tank is mentioned as then existing near the residence of Kuweni; but it was only to be used as a bath. (Ib. c. vii. p. 48.) The Rajaratnacari also mentions that, in the fabulous age of the second Buddha, of the present Kalpa, there was a famine in Ceylon, which dried up the cisterns and fountains of the inland. But there is no evidence of the existence of systematic tillage anterior to the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... a sort of men, whose coining heads Are mints of all new fashions, that have done More hurt to the kingdom, by superfluous bravery, Which the foolish gentry imitate, than a war Or a long famine. All the treasure by This foul excess is got into the merchants', Embroiderers', silkmen's, jewellers', tailors' hands, And the third part of the land too! the nobility ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... No shoots grew up as the spring went by. In summer there was no waving greenness in the fields. Autumn came, and there was no grain for the reaping. Then the men, not knowing what had happened, went to King Athamas and told him that there would be famine in the land. ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... with fire and famine Gathers—I can hear its cries— And the years of might and Mammon Perish in a world's demise; When the strength of man is shattered, And the powers of earth are scattered, From beneath the ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... day, a more bulged-out- with-starvation day, a more unprogressive day for every undertaking, I never did see! Such a famine feast as my inside is having! Devil take the parasitical profession! How the young fellows nowadays do sheer ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... the 20th of July, the enemy, after exploding a mine, attempted to storm the defences, but were driven back, after a desperate struggle which lasted four hours. Day and night a murderous fire was kept up on the garrison, who were already suffering dreadfully from sickness, while famine stared them in the face. On the 10th of August, the enemy attempted another assault, after, as before, springing a mine. On the 18th, a similar attempt was made. On this occasion three officers were blown ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... land 12%; permanent crops 1%; meadows and pastures 41%; forest and woodland 24%; other 22%; includes irrigated NEGL% Environment: geologically active Great Rift Valley susceptible to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions; deforestation; overgrazing; soil erosion; desertification; frequent droughts; famine Note: strategic geopolitical position along world's busiest shipping lanes and close to ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... gather, and departs—sending a small detachment of troops to pacify the district of Butuan. Going to Cavite, Ribera finds there a deputation from Sulu, who bring a little tribute saying that their people have been harassed by famine ever since Figueroa came, a year before, to demand tribute from them. Finding upon investigation that this story is true, he gives back their tributes, receiving instead a cannon which they had taken from a wrecked Portuguese galley. Ribera then ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... lower animals, is so strong that parents always drive away their young so soon as they become capable of feeding, and fending for themselves; because, if they did not adopt stern measures of this sort, famine and disease would be the result, owing to overcrowding. On the whole, this banishment is not so hard as it looks, the young having no sentiment for the place of their birth, and being probably more capable of migrating ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... years came, and sheaves and shocks of corn were brought in to the barns; all the abundance of fruits was laid in every town. There was so great plenty of wheat that it might be compared to the gravel of the sea, and the plenty thereof exceedeth measure. Joseph had two sons by his wife ere the famine and hunger came, which Asenath the priest's daughter brought forth, of whom he called the name of the first Manasseh, saying: God hath made me to forget all my labors, and the house of my father hath forgotten me. He called the name of the second son Ephraim, saying: God hath made me to grow in the ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... "This noble abbey was more celebrated for its charitable deeds than any other of that order in Wales. And as a reward for that abundant charity which the monastery had always, in times of need, exercised towards strangers and the poor, in a season of approaching famine their corn and provisions were divinely increased, like the widow's cruse of oil." Two centuries later we find the Pope bearing witness to the well-known and universal hospitality of the Abbey of Margam. It was placed on the main road between Bristol and Ireland, at a distance from other ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... there dwelt near a large wood a poor wood cutter, with his wife, and two children by his former marriage, a little boy called Hansel, and a girl named Grethel. He had little enough to break or bite; and once, when there was a great famine in the land, he could hardly procure even his daily bread; and as he lay thinking in his bed one night, he sighed, and said to his wife, "What will become of us? How can we feed our children, when we have no more than we can ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... and trouble on all the Island. Scarce a cabin in the queer straggling villages but had desolation sitting by its hearth. It was only a few weeks ago that the hooker had capsized crossing to Westport, and the famine that is always stalking ghost-like in Achill was forgotten in the contemplation of new graves. The Island was full of widows and orphans and bereaved old people; there was scarce a window sill in Achill by which the banshee had ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... And there came prophets in the land again, crying repentance unto them—that they must prepare the way of the Lord or there should come a curse upon the face of the land; yea, even there should be a great famine, in which they should be destroyed if ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... elegant fugitives, who ran away in a yacht, and lived in a style worthy of a planter's mansion. No doubt he thought their experience was poetical and pretty, compared with his own, for his flight had been a death struggle with famine and flood, with man ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... constituting him Governor-General over all New England, made his settlement at Weston's old place at Wessagusset. Here he built houses and stored his goods and began the founding of Weymouth, the second permanent habitation in New England and the first on Massachusetts Bay. Unfortunately, famine, that arch-enemy of all the early settlers, fell upon his company, his father's resources in England proved inadequate, and he and others were obliged to return. Of those that remained a few stayed at Wessagusset; one of the clergymen, William ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... it was for these he was pleading. The speaker was interrupted repeatedly, but he kept his place and continued to talk until the mob became silent and listened out of mere curiosity. "You can never hold an army of hungry men together," said the speaker; "you can't fight gold with a famine. The company, we are told, has already lost a million dollars. What of it? You forget that it has been making millions annually for the past ten years. What have we been making? Lots of money, I'll admit, but none of it has been saved. The company is rich, the brotherhoods are bankrupt. ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... the Var thus stayed the waves of Austrian success, Massena, in the fortifications of Genoa, sustained a blockade of sixty, and a siege of forty days, against an army five times as large as his own; and when forced to yield to the stern demands of famine, he almost dictated to the enemy the terms of the treaty. These two defences held in check the elite of the Austrian forces, while the French reserve crossed the Alps, seized the important points ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... forty feet each way. The baobabs were also particularly conspicuous on this scene, no other kind of tree being visible in the cultivated parts. These had probably been left for two reasons: first, want of proper axes for felling trees of such enormous growth; secondly, because during a famine the fruit of the baobab furnishes a flour which, in the absence of anything better, is said to be ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... flattened close to its neck and a devil of hate came up in its eyes, but it stood quiet, while Nash went about at a judicious distance and examined all the vital points. The hoofs were sound, the backbone prominent, but not a high ridge from famine or much hard riding, and the indomitable hate in the eyes of the mustang ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... itself, and waited; waited with the patience of nature; waited a month whilst, with the paralysis of business now complete, the skeleton hand of famine took a firmer grip of Paris; waited a month whilst Privilege gradually assembled an army in Versailles to intimidate it—an army of fifteen regiments, nine of which were Swiss and German—and mounted a park of artillery ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... things were not the most useful. It was necessary to take a level which would be above the heads of the wealthy. And he represented them as gorging themselves with crimes under their gilded ceilings; while the poor, writhing in their garrets with famine, cultivated every virtue. The applause became so vehement that he interrupted his discourse. For several minutes he remained with his eyes closed, his head thrown back, and, as it were, lulling himself to sleep over the fury which ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... filled with his evil gifts, and one with blessings. To whomsoever Zeus whose joy is in the lightning dealeth a mingled lot, that man chanceth now upon ill and now again on good, but to whom he giveth but of the bad kind, him he bringeth to scorn, and evil famine chaseth him over the goodly earth, and he is a wanderer honoured of neither gods nor men." [Footnote: Il. xxiv. 527—Translated ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... confronted with what is equivalent to an embarrassment of riches on the one hand, and a famine of intelligent help on ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... that he was to be sent South immediately: he received the news very stolidly, and betrayed no impatience during the interval that elapsed before the exchange-steamer could be got ready. Truth to say, it is rather an equivocal advantage—to be turned loose in a city where famine-prices prevail, utterly penniless. But, if my mate did not exult in his prospects, neither did he in any way despond. He "supposed he'd get along somehow;" indeed, he had plenty of a very useful ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... afterwards. Tom was at first utterly astonished, and almost shocked, at the sort of way in which Arthur read the book and talked about the men and women whose lives were there told. The first night they happened to fall on the chapters about the famine in Egypt, and Arthur began talking about Joseph as if he were a living statesman—just as he might have talked about Lord Grey and the Reform Bill, only that they were much more living realities to him. The book was to him, Tom saw, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... eyes lit. "How many times have I not said the good days would come back, monsieur? All the years can never be famine years, and we will have our hotel in the Rue de Bourgogne again, and twenty gentlemen at our heels when we go to the Louvre; and if money is needed ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... so if you saw the poor wretches on his property," said Harold. "The hovels in the Alfy Valley were palaces compared with the cabins. Such misery I never saw. They say it is better since the famine. What must it have been then? And he thinking only how much his agent could ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... both at Athlone in the year of the great famine. He was an officer in a regiment quartered there. I was a novice of the choir in the Order of Charity. We met in scenes sanctified by religion. Oh, mother, the famine was sore, and he was kind to the famished ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... of the following year, 1885, came what was known as the "Texas Famine." Thousands of miles of wild land, forming the Pan Handle, had been suddenly opened by the building of a Southern Railroad. In the speculative anxiety of the Road to people its newly acquired territory, unwarranted inducements of climatic advantages had been unscrupulously ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... visible at the Baltimore and Ohio road and there is now no fear of a food famine in Johnstown, though of course everybody will have to rough it for weeks. What is needed most in this line are cooking utensils. Johnstown people want stoves, kettles, pans, knives and forks. All ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... wear. After awhile Mucius Scaevola gave them two civic cards; and often tidings necessary for the priest's safety came to them in roundabout ways. Warnings and advice reached them so opportunely that they could only have been sent by some person in the possession of state secrets. And, at a time when famine threatened Paris, invisible hands brought rations of "white bread" for the proscribed women in the wretched garret. Still they fancied that Citizen Mucius Scaevola was only the mysterious instrument of a kindness always ingenious, and ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... if told of any other than this wonderful labyrinth of climates. The openings for commercial improvement are not less splendid. It is a fact infamous to the Ceylonese, that an island, which might easily support twenty millions of people, has been liable to famine, not unfrequently, with a population of fifteen hundred thousand. This has already ceased to be a possibility: is that a blessing of British rule? Not only many new varieties of rice have been introduced, and are now being introduced, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the Buddhist sutra,[FN177] which details the advent of a merciful Buddha named Maitreya in the remote future. At that time, it says, there will be no steep hills, no filthy places, no epidemic, no famine, no earthquake, no storm, no war, no revolution, no bloodshed, no cruelty, and no suffering; the roads will be paved smoothly, grass and trees always blooming, birds ever singing, men contented and happy; all sentient beings will worship the Buddha of Mercy, accept His doctrine, and attain to Enlightenment. ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... be slain, as also his brothers and sisters. And he paid no heed to the affairs of State, but gave all into the hand of the Second, now the Principal Bonze. And the laws ceased to be observed, and rebellions broke out in the provinces, and enemies invaded the country, and there was famine in the land. ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Eighty thousand men had gone to California in search of gold. Telegraphs and railroads were being rapidly constructed, thus bringing widely separated localities into close communication. The unsettled condition of Europe and the famine in Ireland had turned toward America that tremendous tide of immigration which this year had risen to 300,000. The admission of Texas into the Union had precipitated the full force of the slavery question. Old parties were disintegrating and sectional ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... abounded in such men; but many kinds of evil men swarmed in, by whom, in the long process of time, the aforesaid kingdom, at one time through the disturbances of civil war, and again through deadly pestilence, and finally through the various butcheries of men, and mighty famine—Alas! the pity of it!—has now been so shaken that scarcely can a sufficient number of sound justices be found in modern times, nor can others succeed, without great difficulty and personal peril, in acquiring ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... summer season, he was seized with a mortal distemper, which put an end to his life and his rash enterprise [g]. His army, under the command of his son, Conrade, reached Palestine; but was so diminished by fatigue, famine, maladies, and the sword, that it scarcely amounted to eight thousand men; and was unable to make any progress against the great power, valour, and conduct of Saladin. These reiterated calamities attending the crusades had taught the Kings of France and England ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... World Bank, and individual donor nations. In late 2000, Malawi was approved for relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) program. In November 2002 the World Bank approved a $50 million drought recovery package, which is to be used for famine relief. The government faces strong challenges, e.g., to fully develop a market economy, to improve educational facilities, to face up to environmental problems, to deal with the rapidly growing problem of HIV/AIDS, and to satisfy foreign donors that fiscal discipline is ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Catholics should read this prayer to Christ Our Lord upon the Cross with due devotion. Thus they will be immune from storms and pestilence, famine, ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... less reason to insist upon this very matter-of-fact rendering of the "windows of heaven," that in two out of the three connections in which it occurs, the expression is certainly used metaphorically. On the occasion of the famine in the city of ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... famine and want came upon them, as 134 often happens to a people not yet well settled in a country. Their princes and the leaders who ruled them in place of kings, that is Fritigern, Alatheus and Safrac, began to lament the plight of their army and begged Lupicinus and Maximus, ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... of meat. The world is facing a meat famine. The famine was on the way before the war began but it has approached with tremendous speed this last year. Every cow killed and eaten means not only so much less meat available but so much less of an adequate ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... throes of famine. Even the sparrows on the roofs and the rats in the sewers were growing scarce. People were eating ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... close and constant contact with the poor, as we have been doing for the last eight or nine years, to blink the fact, that destitution of a most painful character exists, to a very serious extent, even when harvests are favorable and the country is not desolated by the scourge of famine. ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker |
