"Plague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what gets me! Here you love Paul, and yet you plague him and cuss him out as if you hated him. I simply can't understand why it is that the more some folks love people, the harder they try to ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... consider your duty would be, (1) were the country invaded, (2) were London in the hands of the mob, (3) were your neighbourhood visited by fire, and decimated by the plague. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... was first published at the close of 1668; and the writing of it, Dryden tells us, in a dedication, many years afterwards, to the Earl of Dorset, "served as an amusement to me in the country, when the violence of the last plague had driven me from the town. Seeing, then, our theatres shut up, I was engaged in these kind of thoughts with the same delight with which men think upon their absent mistresses." It is in the form of dialogue; under the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... lived to become the great Erasmus, was already winning a famous name at school, when Margaret was stricken with the plague and died. A fortnight later and Clement left his vicarage and entered the Dominican convent to end life as he began it. A few days later and he, too, was dead, and the convent counted him ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... of the common money-getters and traffickers, who do nothing but eat and spin: and who gain habitually by the distress or foolishness of others (as you see the butchers have been gaining out of the panic at the cattle plague, among the poor),—so they are made to eat the dark leaves, and spin, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of the epidemic was so rapid that many left the town and took lodgings in the villages and farms. Mr. Maumbry's house was close to the most infected street, and he himself was occupied morn, noon, and night in endeavours to stamp out the plague and in alleviating the sufferings of the victims. So, as a matter of ordinary precaution, he decided to isolate his wife somewhere away ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... "Plague take that gong! how it does belabor and thrash one's tympanum!" said the judge irritably, as he slowly arose ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Lincoln was to be the next president of the United States, he was at once beset by two pests: the office-seekers, and the men who either warned him to fear assassination or anonymously threatened him with it. Of the two, the office-seekers annoyed him by far the more; they came like the plague of locusts, and devoured his time and his patience. His contempt and disgust towards them were unutterable; he said that the one purpose in life with at least one half of the nation seemed to be that they should live comfortably at the expense of the other half. But it was ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... used to do. We'll crop the ears of those who preach dissent, And at the stake teach wretches to repent. Clad cap-a-pie in mail we'll face our foes, And arm our British soldiery with bows. Dirt and disease shall rule us as of yore, The Plague's grim spectre stalk from shore to shore. Proceed, brave BALFOUR, whom no flouts appal, Collect stupidities and do them all. Uneducate our men, unplough our land, Bid heathen temples rise on every hand; Unmake our progress and revoke our laws, Or stuff them full of all their banished ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... and pirouettes? We have noticed that my brother comes to the theatre only when Tullia dances there; he applauds the steps of this creature, and then goes out. Two ballet-girls in a family are, I fancy, more destructive than the plague. My second brother is with his regiment, and I have not yet seen him. Thus it comes about that I have to act as the Antigone of His Majesty's ambassador. Perhaps I may get married in Spain, and perhaps my father's idea is a marriage there without dowry, after the pattern of yours with ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... proceed with the inventory of Sergeant Beresford's equipment as a future husband. Fond, but, alas! fickle. A family black sheep, or if not black, at least striped. Likely not to plague you long, if he's sent on many more jobs like the last. Said to be good-tempered, but not docile. Kind, as men go, but a ne'er-do-well, a prodigal, a waster. Something whispers in my ear that he'll make a better friend than ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... Gregory passed over, chanting litanies, at the head of the whole populace, who formed one vast penitential procession, and saw the avenging angel alight on the mausoleum of Adrian and sheath his sword in sign that the plague was stayed; or to that terrible day when the ferocious mercenaries of the Constable de Bourbon and the wretched inhabitants given over to sack and slaughter swarmed across together, butchering and butchered, while the troops in the castle hurled down what was left of its classic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... "May the plague fall upon him! may he go to a thousand crosses! Do you not see? He is escaping. He has made for the passes and slain his prisoners, that they may not hamper his march. Who knows but that by now he is on the road to Rome? Gods! This was Hostilius' ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... plague that shadowed five counties the way you'd see a black cloud sailing down the sky of a June day. Nary a village but paid its toll in death and doom. One of the first I was, and one of the worst. Wirra, the weeks I lay on the sill of death's door,—the ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Europe), I will regard the whole story as being true, as I am not in a position to disprove it. I am deeply grieved to have injured an innocent man who has never done me any ill, and I will willingly pay the penalty by giving him a sum which will be more than sufficient to cure him of the plague with which I infected him. I beg that you will give him the twenty-five louis I am sending you; they will serve to restore him to health, and to make him forget the bitterness of the pleasure I am so sorry to have procured for him. And now are you sufficiently generous ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... taking her hand and leading her slowly along with him to the drawing-room. His mother was there, and when she came to kiss him, he said: "What a plague I am!" ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... "Mr. Councillor," he replied, "as to our defensive measures, we have passed the point of diminishing returns. We have more knowledge now than we are capable of employing against the plague. Had we not neglected the physical sciences as we have for the last two centuries, we might have developed adequate measures before we had been so far reduced in numbers and area as to be unable to produce and employ the new weapons our laboratories have belatedly developed. Now we ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... character and readier villany. The trick has been adopted; the favourite has grown fast. He has become the Vice. Compared with him the rest of the Vices appear foolish fellows whom it is his delight to plague and lead astray. So supreme is he in wickedness that he has even been given the Devil himself as his godfather, uncle, playmate. It is his duty to keep alive the natural wickedness in man, to set snares ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... crumbled beneath the shock; the moribund life which it was pursuing to imbecility and foulness, was extinguished. For another reason, the end of the universe seemed near; such cities as had been forgotten by Attila were decimated by famine and plague. The Latin language in its turn, seemed to sink under the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... little teacher reading so readily; and her mother would often scold when she saw Hepsa with a book in her hand, declaring it was foolish nonsense; but, as time went on, and the first difficulties were overcome, and her mother began to find Hepsa growing very gentle, and Tom had less occasion to plague his sister, they all felt that the books Hepsa had studied, and the little girl who came so often to see her, were kind friends, and love began to bind them all together. Hepsa no longer wore torn clothes; ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... who gibber at us, as idiots in their asylums, as that unfortunate simpleton, the Emperor Claudius;—murderous criminals who glower and scowl upon us, as those two monsters of iniquity, Tiberius and Nero;—pimps and parasites beyond number, who so plague us with their perpetual presence, that the revolted soul at length wonders how so many such beings can be acting together, and be so degenerate, when Nature might have designed most, if not all, of them, for greater and more salutary purposes. While Bracciolini does not, in ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... sprightly wit, His glee, his humour, and his happy mind Entitle him to fair esteem. Allowed. But then, his self-sufficiency;—his shape So like a frame, whereon to hang a suit Of dandy clothes;—his small straight back and arms, His thick bluff ankles, and his supple knees, Plague on't!—'Tis wrong—I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... the burden of their thoughts, from Dante to Savonarola. Even the gay and licentious Boccaccio gives a keener edge to his stories by putting them in the mouths of a party of people who had taken refuge in a country-house from the danger of death by plague. It was to this inherited sentiment, this practical decision that to be preoccupied with the thought of death was in itself dignifying, and a note of high quality, that the seriousness of the great Florentines of the fifteenth ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... if evil fortune had unhorsed me it had yet left me endurance to continue the combat on foot. My second failure was more final and disastrous than the first discomfiture in earlier life, but now the plague of pessimism was stayed by a greater recuperative power. Those long hours of the long eastern day, spent under the verandah with books of many ages and languages, had not been altogether fruitless; they had helped to mature a wider and ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... slave; On whom Death and the Fatal Sisters wait With naked swords and scarlet liveries; Before whom, mounted on a lion's back, Rhamnusia bears a helmet full of blood, And strows the way with brains of slaughter'd men; By whose proud side the ugly Furies run, Hearkening when he shall bid them plague the world; Over whose zenith, cloth'd in windy air, And eagle's wings join'd [151] to her feather'd breast, Fame hovereth, sounding of [152] her golden trump, That to the adverse poles of that straight ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... with all the sympathy due to his unmerited misfortunes, and put him in possession of this remnant of his inheritance. Thenceforward the son of Concini remained in Italy until the year 1631, when he fell a victim to the plague.[314] ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... in a landscape with an angel who looks at his plague-sore, whilst the dog the bread in his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dynasties which go on, from one generation to another, contributing men to the public service—the I.C.S., the Army, the Forest Service, the Indian Police. Wherever there's a bit of a scrap, whether it's Dacoits or Pathans, wherever there's a catastrophe which wants tidying up, whether it's plague, or famine, or earthquake, there you will find one of Peter's family in the midst of it. One of his uncles, who is a Major in the R.F.A., saved a battery at X—— Y——. Another is the chief of the most mysterious of our public services—a man who speaks little and listens a great deal, who ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... are equally appropriate to this beautiful city. There is hardly another city on earth where more races and religions blend. And its streets are made exceedingly picturesque by the many costumes of its polyglot population. Before the arrival of the plague, some eight years ago, Bombay was perhaps the most populous city in India. But this fell scourge has decimated its population and has robbed it of much ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... believe themselves free and happy. Luther: "The Scriptures set before us a man who is not only bound, wretched, captive, sick, dead, but who (through the operation of Satan, his prince) adds this plague of blindness to his other plagues, that he believes himself to be free, happy, unfettered, strong, healthy, alive. For Satan knows that, if man were to realize his own misery, he would not be able to retain any one in ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... to Prince Fire-fade. The Sea-king also gave him two jewels. One was called the tide-flowing jewel, and the other was called the tide-ebbing jewel. And he said then to the Prince: "Go home now to your own land, and take back the fish-hook to your brother. In this way you shall plague him. If he plant rice-fields in the upland, make you your rice-fields in the valley; and if he make rice-fields in the valley, do you make your rice-fields in the upland. I will rule the water so that it may do good to you, but harm to him. If Prince Fire-flash should be angry with you for ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... sack or two has been imported to make the semblance of a garden; such gardens as bloom in cities on the window-sill. Insect life is sometimes dense; a cloud o' mosquitoes, and, what is far worse, a plague of flies blackening our food, has sometimes driven us from a meal on Apemama; and even in Fakarava the mosquitoes were a pest. The land crab may be seen scuttling to his hole, and at night the rats besiege the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in?" he murmured, "I am here on a fool's errand, after all. But why not enter? If this old beggar is so destitute, I can leave her something to buy a loaf; but what business is it of mine? A plague on it all! What do I here—why are you here, Mark Stillinghast?" Then he opened the door very softly, and, as he did so, he heard these words repeated in a clear, sweet voice,—"For what shall it profit a man, if he gains ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... of the glaciers,—Hayes has proved that the glacier of Friar John moves at the rate of about thirty-three yards annually;—to the bad policy of the mother country, which prevented the recruiting of the colonies; to the black plague, which decimated the population of Greenland from 1347 to 1351; lastly, to the depredations of the pirates, who ravaged these already enfeebled countries in 1418, and in whom some have thought they recognized certain inhabitants ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... melancholy, but upon this occasion I must take leave to put you in mind that a running horse does require more attendance than a coach-horse. Nature has made some difference twixt you and me. Fash. Yes—she has made you older.—[Aside.] Plague take her. Lord Fop. That is not all, Tam. Fash. Why, what is there else? Lord Fop. [Looks first on himself and then on his brother.] Ask the ladies. Fash. Why, thou essence-bottle, thou musk-cat! dost thou then think thou hast any advantage over me but what ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... these, there is little more distinction between the faculties than the traditionary ideal, handed down through a long sequence of students, and getting rounder and more featureless at each successive session. The plague of uniformity has descended on the College. Students (and indeed all sorts and conditions of men) now require their faculty and character hung round their neck on a placard, like the scenes in Shakespeare's theatre. And in the midst of all this ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... guy's religion are often considered to be examples. This usage is given point by the historical fact that 'joiner' ideologies like Naziism or various forms of millennarian Christianity have exhibited plague-like cycles of exponential growth followed by ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... he, drawing me forcibly from the mournful place. "You must confide in my mother, Gabriella. A dark secret is a plague spot in the heart. Confide in my mother. It is due to her maternal love and guardianship. And beware of believing that any thing independent of yourself can alienate her affections. Can you walk? If it were not for leaving you alone, I would go ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... of Bavaria, during his stay at Paris, instead of visiting his nephews and nieces, passed all his time, by day and by night, with the Duchess and her daughters. As to me, he fled me as he would fly the plague, and never spoke to me but in the company of M. de Torcy. The Duchess had three of the handsomest daughters in the world: the one called Mademoiselle de Clermont is extremely beautiful; but I think her sister, the Princesse de Conti, more amiable. The Duchess can drink ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... he seemed not to hear; but at last he looked into my face balefully, as if he wished to convey the plague to me. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... of Mulligan's—him that was killed off the colt at Mossgiel— and that same winter the pleuro broke out in my lot, and they went like rotten sheep till fourteen were gone; and then, of course, the plague was stopped. Not having any use for Mulligan's wagon, I swapped her for a new thirty-by-twenty-four wool-rag, and a Wagga pot, good for eight or ten mile on a still night; and, within a month, Ramsay's ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... that he jammed a fin in his haste to escape from his cubby, but I see him often, and always with that sideways gait. I hope he is cured forever of making of himself a pester and a plague. ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... hunters, set out to join Franklin, and the "misery"—there is no other name for it—which the party endured, not from cold but from the mosquitoes, must be read about in detail to be even partially appreciated. This is a fearful plague of the northern regions just as Nature is beginning to clothe herself anew in green, and the white mantle of winter has disappeared in those places where snow ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... after which he prepared a feast, and invited them all to partake. But no sooner were the covers removed then a swarm of rats, attracted by the scent of the good things, came and devoured all the victuals before their very faces. This, the governor told them, was no unusual thing, for rats were the plague of his land, and he would give any price to know of a means to be rid of them. Then one of the sailors bethought him of Dick Whittington's cat—who had already distinguished herself on shipboard by her industry in her ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Paul, a peasant full of faith, as square on his feet as he was tall, a sacerdotal of whose ignorance in matters of the world and of literature enlivened the conversation by guileless amazement and unexpected questions. They came to talking of one of the plague spots of social life, of which we were just now speaking—adultery. My uncle remarked on the contradiction which the legislators of the Code, still feeling the blows of the revolutionary storm, had established between civil and religious ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... arrived in Venice that city was the most important typographical centre of Europe; the commerce in books extended through the Levant, Germany, and France, and the philosopher hoped that here he might find some means of subsistence. The plague at that time was devastating Venice, and in less than one year had claimed forty-two thousand victims; but Bruno felt no fear, and he took a lodging in that part of Venice called the Frezzeria, and was ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... of "the greatest monsters of iniquity" embarking in a staunch and strong ship, and escaping drowning "in circumstances exactly similar to those which would send the missionaries to the bottom." Thus, again, he speaks of plague, fever, and ague, as resulting from the neglect of "organic laws," and as resulting from it so necessarily that they could be averted neither by Providence nor by Prayer; and he illustrates his views by the mental distress of the wife of Ebenezer Erskine, and the recorded experience ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... his line of thought and there was a short pause. "You would hardly think to look at it," the old man went on at last, "that that cushion has stood between me and all the trials and persecutions incidental to bazaars for nearly half a century. Perhaps the plague is not quite so bad as it was in the old days when I was in my first City parish, but I must say they were particularly active last summer. They have taken to holding them outside now, with Chinese lanterns, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... this I approved too, for I don't much mind about book-learning myself; and I even thought it would have been as well if the girl had not learnt to read; but that she did learn, and was always fond of, and I'm sure it was more plague than use too to her grandmother, for she was as particular about the books that the girl was to read as about all the rest. She went farther than all that, sir, for she never would let the girl speak to a man—not a man ever entered the doors of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... unfortunate citizens, who had hardly recovered, ere the Duke d'Alencon arrived before the walls with his troops, bent upon mischief. The few people remaining after his onslaught died like flies during the plague which broke out the following year, and the town ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... the richest and most fashionable ladies of the district, touched by Vincent's words and example, gave themselves up entirely to the service of the poor, traveling about the country nursing the sick, and even risking their lives in the care of the plague-stricken. They were the forerunners of those "Sisters of Charity" who were in after years to carry help and comfort among the ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... power; but once at the river, he tugs amain at a mussel shell till he has it afloat; then, leaping in, he paddles out with a strong grass blade till he comes to the spot where the sturgeon swims, though the watersprites plague him and toss his boat, and the fish and the leeches bunt and drag; but, suddenly, the sturgeon shoots from the water, and ere the arch of mist that he tracks through the air has vanished, the sprite has caught a drop of the spray in a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... letting it down before sunset, great care is required to prevent even one or two of the tormentors from stealing in beneath, their insatiable thirst for blood, and pungent sting, making these enough to spoil all comfort. In the forest the plague is much worse; but the forest-mosquito belongs to a different species from that of the town, being much larger, and having transparent wings; it is a little cloud that one carries about one's person every step on a woodland ramble, and their hum is so loud that ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... wells for water, Aaron stretched forth his rod over the river again, and frogs came up from it, and spread over all the land and filled the houses of the people. This also the magicians did, but so great was the plague ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... said shamelessly, "you'll forgive me if in public, at least, I forswear your company? You're plague-spotted, Captain Percy, and your friends may wish you well, but they must stay at home and burn juniper before their ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Budvar, the cave Borza-vara, near the castle of Dame Rapson; another haunt of the fairies is the cave near Almas, and the cold wind known as the "Nemere" is said to blow when the fairy in Almas cave feels cold. On one occasion the plague was raging in this neighbourhood; the people ascribed it to the cold blast emanating from the cave; so they hung shirts before the mouth of the cave ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... LORD CH. A plague on this vagary, I'm in a nice quandary! Of hasty tone With dames unknown I ought to be more chary; It seems that she's a fairy From Andersen's library, And I took her for The proprietor Of a ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... cats supersedes that of one's neighbor, the progress of experimental physiology and pathology will, indubitably, in course of time, place medicine and hygiene upon a rational basis. Two centuries ago England was devastated by the plague; cleanliness and common sense were enough to free us from its ravages. One century since, small-pox was almost as great a scourge; science, though working empirically, and almost in the dark, has reduced that evil to relative insignificance. At the present ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... like a spirit in the body, but a spirit of uncleanness and of sordid gain. If they hated the Gentile, they could love his vices notwithstanding. If the old missionary zeal of Israel was extinct, they could still purvey impostures for the world. Jewish superstitions were the plague of distant Spain, the despair of Chrysostom at Antioch. Thus the lower moral tone of Arianism and especially its denial of the Lord's divinity were enough to secure it a fair amount of Jewish support as against the Nicenes. At Alexandria, for example, ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... long trodden with the tyrant's foot, there is a resurrectionary spirit moving thy people, which will lift thee again to the high pinnacle from which thou wast thrust, purified and reinvigorated for a career of brighter glory than thou hast yet known—when the men who plague you now shall be driven from your State, and the sons of your soil, in the vigor of their souls, undefiled and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... for him to blind himself to the attitude of the family towards him during the past three days. Hope and Hubert were scrupulously polite, with a frigid, remote courtesy which was worse than open hostility; Phebe avoided him as if he had the plague; and Allyn showed a marked inclination to converse about the present state of affairs which was scarcely soothing to Billy's irritated nerves. After the first day, he had remained most of the time in his own room, whither Theodora followed him ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... think to have troubled you with the plague and postage of a double letter this time, but I have just read in an Italian paper, 'That Lord Byron has a tragedy coming out,' &c. &c. &c. and that the Courier and Morning Chronicle, &c. &c. are pulling one another to pieces ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... the degree of risk: very high food or waterborne diseases: bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever vectorborne diseases: malaria, plague, and African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) are high risks in some locations water contact disease: ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... stable-door. His spaniel had been watching for his return, and ran out, barking joyously, and leaping upon him. He was irritated at being thus disturbed in his calculating reverie, and struck the faithful brute with his heavy whip, driving it yelping away. "Go, stupid cur, you plague me with your fondness," cried he, as he struck at the dog again. Alas for the fair girl who filled this bad man's thoughts, and who thought but of him that night! down in his cold heart she may not find one solitary gem of tenderness or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... chamber and a bed with curtains, and fed with red wine and white meat. And Donald was sae vexed about it, that when he was stout and weel, he even sent him free home, and said he would be pleased with onything they would like to gie him for the plague and trouble which he had about Gilliewhackit to an unkenn'd degree. And I cannot tell you precisely how they sorted; but they agreed sae right that Donald was invited to dance at the wedding in his Highland trews, and they said that there was never sae meikle siller clinked in his purse ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... feel it. That's one thing about painting, it keeps you young. Titian lived to ninety-nine, and had to have plague to kill him off. Do you know, the first time I ever saw you I thought of a picture ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... from China eleven or twelve vessels with but little merchandise, because, as they say, there have been many wars and a severe plague. It has been reported that a ship from Panama or Piru, prepared to lay out a large sum of money, has arrived at Macan, which is on the river of Canton. As I have stated in previous communications, if it is permitted to carry on trade between Piru ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... 1. They write from Italy, that the Plague is no longer observ'd at Marseilles, Aix, & several other Places; and that at Toulon it is very much decreas'd: But alas! how should it be otherwise, when the Distemper hath hardly any Objects left to work upon? At Arles it is likewise abated, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... to Belford.—His acknowledged vanity. Accounts for his plausible behaviour, and specious promises and proposals. Apprehensive of the correspondence between Miss Howe and Clarissa. Loves to plague him with ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... sullen rather than wicked. On the whole, I think she did, for as she was about to ascend the stairs, with the sullen look deepening or changing into a sort of gloomy apprehension, she hesitated, glanced behind her, and finally, with a muttered "Plague take the young one," turned back, and, catching him by the arm of his tattered dress, landed him on the topmost step, in a mud-puddle! but she did it because she remembered that he would be very likely to climb into the tub ...
— Three People • Pansy
... locusts were a plague, as in the days of King Pharaoh, sent by God, and the country would assuredly be loaded with shame and obloquy if it tried to raise its hand against the mighty hand of ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the morrow when the priests entered the sanctuary, they found the statue of their god prostrate in front of it, his fish-like body overthrown, and his head and hands scattered on the floor;* at the same time a plague of malignant tumours broke out among the people, and thousands of mice overran their houses. The inhabitants of Ashdod made haste to transfer it on to Ekron: it thus went the round of the five cities, its arrival being in each case accompanied by the same disasters. The soothsayers, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... strongly imbued with a hatred of heresy, to laugh to scorn their bribes and their Bibles. Not a man, or, if there is, let him go out from amongst us, in order that we may know him—that we may avoid his outgoings and his incomings—that we may flee from him as a pestilence—a plague—a famine. No, there is none here so base and unprincipled as all that—and I here prophesy that from this day forth, this Reformation has got its death-blow—and that time will prove it. Now, remember, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... bills of mortality now in existence date back to the time of Henry VIII, when the clerks were required to furnish information with regard to the deaths caused by plague, as well as those resulting from other causes. The returns of the victims of plague are occasionally very large. In 1562, 20,372 persons died, of which number 17,404 died from the plague. The burial grounds of ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... off; while he himself Rush'd 'mid the throng on foot, and met his doom. Hector's quick glance athwart the files beheld, And to the rescue, with a shout, he sprang, The Trojan columns following; not unmov'd The valiant Diomed his coming saw, And thus bespoke Ulysses at his side: "On us this plague, this mighty Hector, falls: Yet stand we firm, and boldly meet the shock." He said, and, poising, hurl'd his pond'rous spear, And not in vain; on Hector's head it struck His helmet's crest, but, brass encount'ring brass, Himself it reach'd not; for the visor'd helm, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... tears proved the sincerity of her affection. I was very much affected at it, and thought I loved her as my true mother. How, then, should I leave her now, being so far advanced in age? The maid, who till then had been my plague, took an inconceivable friendship for me. She praised me everywhere, extolling my virtue to the highest and served me with extraordinary respect. She begged pardon for all that she had made me suffer, and died of ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... eat them for me; for he himself must have put them there. What! I dare offer to defile your helmet! you must know who dared to do it! As sure as I am alive, sir, I have got my enchanters too, that owe me a grudge, and plague me as a limb of your worship; and I warrant have put that nasty stuff there on purpose to set you against me, and make you fall foul on my bones. But I hope they have missed their aim this time, i' troth! My master is a wise ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... Charlotte gave me that was the cause of it; but I will think of her no more. Will you forgive me?" added she, wiping off the tears she had let fall on William's hand. "I confess that I sometimes love to plague you; but keep your peaches, for I cannot think ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... themselves, who were the descendants of those who had once inhabited Kor and the country round it, as far as the sea-coast and for hundreds of miles inland, having been a mighty people in their day before a great plague destroyed them. ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... they turn against their employers, like the army of Carthage; or be overpowered and dispersed by a stroke of fortune; the multitude of a cowardly and undisciplined people must, upon such an emergence; receive a foreign or a domestic enemy, as they would a plague or an earthquake, with hopeless amazement and terror, and by their numbers, only swell the triumphs, and enrich the spoil of ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... of it, Sir Richard," he said persuasively. "Then I swear I won't plague you any more for a ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... come to ransom her, he had been insulted and driven away by the king. Chryses had prayed to Apollo for revenge, and the god had sent upon the Greeks a pestilence which was slaying so many thousands that a meeting was called to consult upon what to do to check the plague and conciliate the god. ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... there is no sin which we commit but will assuredly return upon our own heads. The Israelites in the Old Testament saw the hand of God thus visiting their sins upon them in many ways. They thought of Him as smiting them for their sins with consumption or with fever, with plague or mildew, or the sword of the oppressor. These are not our expectations. We have learnt that it is not with such visitations that God punishes us for our sinful indulgence or neglect, but that He does it with a punishment which may be less ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... morning until fower a clock in the after noone by five preachers, vidz. Mr. Hollinghedge, Vicar of Horncastell, Mr. Turner of Edlington, Mr. Downes of Lusbye, Mr. Philipe of Solmonbye, Mr. Tanzey of Hagworthingha', occasioned by a generall and most feareful plague yt yere in sundrie places of this land, but especially upon the Cytie of London. p'r ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... Edward Doyle's new play is the Florence of 1400; the atmosphere that of a plague stricken city in a time when man was helpless, authorities hopeless, social life in shreds and patches. The plot of the play founded on this state of affairs is rich in incident, varied and sufficiently complex in color, passion and character to furnish ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... insult. You would wish to be proud of your daughters, and not to blush for them; then seek for them an interest and an occupation which shall raise them above the flirt, the manoeuvrer, the mischief-making tale-bearer. Keep your girls' minds narrow and fettered; they will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace to you. Cultivate them—give them scope and work; they will be your gayest companions in health, your tenderest nurses in sickness, your most faithful prop ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... heard from Diotima of Mantineia (compare 1 Alcibiades), a woman wise in this and in many other kinds of knowledge, who in the days of old, when the Athenians offered sacrifice before the coming of the plague, delayed the disease ten years. She was my instructress in the art of love, and I shall repeat to you what she said to me, beginning with the admissions made by Agathon, which are nearly if not quite the same which I made ...
— Symposium • Plato
... and valued friend. She was about 12, with the wit, the quickness, the sense of 20, and I had almost said the size, for so large a proportion of flesh, blood, and bones rarely fall to the lot of male or female at that age. She was alternately the soul of fun and merriment or the plague and torment of every one about her. She had the judgment of mature age and the nonsense of the greatest baby in her. The mother alone obtained unlimited obedience from her. I am afraid I have discovered the "unruly ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... plague her. (The women return to their work.) It is the way with maids, the nearer they are to mothering the less they wish ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... house, had been joined finally by England, Holland, Spain, and even Portugal and Tuscany, these all being impelled, not by the personal feeling which actuated Austria, but by alarm for their own safety. This revolutionary movement was a moral and political plague spot which must be stamped out, or there would be anarchy in ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... economy, in the long run. These are the Early Malcolm—it's a turnip that can't be produced except in just one orchard, and the supply never is up to the demand. Take some more water, Washington—you can't drink too much water with fruit—all the doctors say that. The plague can't come where this ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... the growing of grain on a large scale, because the government makes its purchases according to prices of its own choosing. The forced purchases by the government are a greater evil for Turkey than her losses by fire and the plague combined. They not only undermine prosperity, but they also cause its springs to dry up. As a result the government must buy its grain in Odessa, while endless stretches of fertile land, under a most benignant sky and at only an hour's distance from a city ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... feel afterwards; and I might perhaps regret when it was too late, not having done everything which a physician of Dr Hume's eminence deemed advisable. He said that Sir William would not be at ease at any rate, and it would scarcely plague him; the fomentation would be pleasant to him, and I might take the blister off in six ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... days. I'll be back again, to plague you, by the end of next week. Don't you want me ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... raised a chapel in place of the one which had been profaned, and called it Santa Croce a Monte Mario. It was held in great veneration by the Romans, who made pilgrimages to it in times of public calamities, such as the famous plague (contagio-moria) of Alexander VII. I well remember this interesting little church, before its disappearance in 1880. Its pavement, according to the practice of the time, was inlaid with inscriptions from the catacombs, whole or in fragments, twenty-four ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... Corners, proper, and I used to trudge back and forth every day for the mail, and for provisions. And part of the time I went to school. The teacher was a nice young girl, but we boys led her a dance! How we did plague her!" and Bill ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... "Novum Organum;" and the line indicated was exactly what we now find was laid down of old with such precision in Scripture. "To deify error and to adore vain things," said the great philosopher, "may be well accounted the plague of the understanding. Some modern men, guilty of much levity, have so indulged this vanity, that they have essayed to find natural philosophy in the first chapter of Genesis, the Book of Job, and other places of holy writ, seeking ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... soul, or any soul at all!" he said. For a few moments he sat despondently. Suddenly he jumped to his feet, with his eyes blazing and all the signs of intense cerebral excitement. "To hell with you and your souls!" he shouted. "Why do you plague me about souls? Haven't I got enough to worry, and pain, to distract me already, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... "If I am a chatterbox, you are about the greatest preacher, with the most long-winded sermons, that ever entered a house. You are a perfect plague to me, and that is ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... the cabin once occupied by the liner's former skipper. His loneliness increased. He began to feel those daunting self-doubts such as plague the most unselfish and conscientious people. His actions to date, of course, did not trouble him. Today's actions were the ones which bothered his conscience. He felt that they were not quite adequate. The balance left in the lawyer's hands would not be nearly enough to cover a certain deficit ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... infected the whole of his soul and body (Psa 51:5; Acts 8:23). This he sees, this he understands; every professor sees not this, because the blessing of a broken heart is not bestowed on every one. David says, 'There is no soundness in my flesh'; and Solomon suggest that a plague or running sore is in the very heart. But every one perceives not this (Psa 38:3; 1 Kings 8:38). He saith again, that his 'wounds stank, and were corrupted': that his 'sore ran, and ceased not' (Psa 38:5, 77:2). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... people in the verandah of a magistrate's court, would you?—the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! and loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences; as though, forsooth, I had no confidences to make to myself, as though—God help me!—I didn't have enough confidential information ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... she had said to Mrs. Forrester, "with you I am never pursued and never bored." Where Mrs. Forrester evaded and relegated bores, Madame von Marwitz sombrely and helplessly hated them. "What can I do?" she said. "If no one will protect me I am delivered to them. It is a plague of locusts. They devour me. Oh their letters! Oh their flowers! Oh their love and their stupidity! No, the earth ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... course of things, epidemics are special in their operation. Those which attack humanity spare the animals, and those which attack the animals spare the vegetables. A horse was never inflicted with smallpox, nor a man with the cattle-plague, nor do sheep suffer from the potato-rot. But here all the laws of nature seemed to be overturned. Not only were the character, temperament, and ideas of the townsfolk changed, but the domestic animals—dogs and cats, horses and cows, asses ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... the terrors of the Black Plagues, the devastation, greater and more frightful than war, which centuries ago swept over Europe and Asia time and again, scarcely leaving enough of the living to bury the dead. Cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague, with terrifying suddenness fell upon a world of ignorance, and each in turn humbled humanity to the dust before its invisible enemies. Even within our own recollection, the germ of influenza, gaining a foothold inside ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... want to go with you. You want me no more. I can't afford to give you boats.... Come, don't plague me any more with your toy," she said, pushing it away, and then in a moment of convulsive passion she threw the boat across the room. It struck the opposite wall, its mast was broken, and the sails and cords made a tangled little heap. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... abstain from having children, or, if there is a want of offspring, special care may be taken to obtain them; or if the number of citizens becomes excessive, we may send away the surplus to found a colony. If, on the other hand, a war or plague diminishes the number of inhabitants, new citizens must be introduced; and these ought not, if possible, to be men of low birth or inferior training; but even God, it is said, ...
— Laws • Plato
... fire, in fact, everything went against me; and not from any mismanagement of my own. I looked round for help, but—what do you think?—nobody would help me. Somehow or other it had got abroad that I was in difficulties, and everybody seemed disposed to avoid me, as if I had got the plague. Those who were always offering me help when I wanted none, now, when they thought me in trouble, talked of arresting me. Yes, two particular friends of mine, who had always been offering me their purses when my own was stuffed full, now talked of arresting me, though I only owed ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... complained bitterly concerning the plague of mosquitoes. An aged negro who listened respectfully explained a method by which the pests might be endured. But this was in ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... on which the fair was held in this secluded spot was in the year 1625, when the plague raged at Tavistock; and there is a part of the ground, situated amidst a line of pillars marking a stone avenue—a characteristic feature of the ancient aboriginal worship—which is to this day pointed out and called by the name of the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... confess that I can make nothing of him. I shall never be surprised to hear anything in connexion with him. I recommend you to avoid him like the plague. He can be no one's friend. As an acquaintance he is treacherous and insincere; as an enemy, I can well imagine that he would be as merciless as ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... this same wholesome self-distrust is needful for us all, because all transgression is yielding to temptations that assail all men. Here are one hundred men in a plague-stricken city; they have all got to draw their water from the same well. If five or six of them died of cholera it would be very foolish of the other ninety-five to say, 'There is no chance of our being touched.' We all live in the same atmosphere; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... had got so far in his oath, one of the young maidens, who had listened to him with wrapt attention, cried out, "Well, if that is not what you may call an oath! it is enough to melt the heart of a stone. Plague take me if you shall swear any more for me; for after such an oath as that you might enter the very cave of Cabra." So saying, she caught hold of him by the breeches, and drew him within the door, where the rest immediately ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the boys tried to plague him, or to twit him for being a Corsican, the boy was ready ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... describes and accounts for certain natural phenomena—thunderstorms, tempests, volcanoes, earthquakes, and the like. It concludes with a theory of disease, illustrated by a fine description of the plague at Athens. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... became noisome pests, flying into the candles, and dashing into people's faces; but may be blasted and destroyed by gunpowder discharged into their crevices and crannies. In families, at such times, they are, like Pharaoh's plague of frogs, ' in their bed-chambers, and upon their beds, and in their ovens, and in their kneading-troughs.' * Their shrilling noise is occasioned by a brisk attrition of their wings. Cats catch hearth- crickets, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Moist with the dew which falls from thy sad eyes, Nor imitate distraction's frantic tricks, And chace cold lifeless reason from her throne? I am the fatal cause of all this sorrow, The spring of ills,—to know me is unhappiness;— And mis'ry, like a hateful plague, pursues My wearied steps, and blasts the ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey |
