"Ruin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an enemy. It was not likely that Indian scouts would be lying in such a place, practically hanging to the side of the cliff between the palisade and the river, but Henry was not willing to neglect any precaution. The slightest mischance would ruin all. He gave silent but devout thanks that this night of all nights should prove to ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and youth of both were spent in New York, and here both received their musical training. Their artistic history belongs to the world, and since I am, with difficulty, trying just now to talk more about opera houses and those who built them to their own ruin, than about those who sang in them, I will not pursue it. The summer of 1847 saw Palmo's little opera house deserted. In 1848 it became Burton's Theater, where, as Mr. White observes, that most humorous of comedians made for himself in a ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... by most, who do not choose to remain conveniently ignorant, that though the ruin of Jamaican planting prosperity has been accelerated by emancipation, it had been steadily going on for more than a generation previous. In 1792 the Jamaica Assembly represented to Parliament that in the twenty years previous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in silence, and as the path let us for a while, out of sight of the castle, we were able to proceed with less caution. We had nearly reached without adventure the father skirts of the wood, between which and the ruin lay an interval of open ground, when we came suddenly, at the edge of a little clearing, on an old hag; who was so intent; upon tying up faggots that she did not see us until Maignan's hand was on her shoulder. When she did, she screamed out, and escaping from him with an activity ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... industry, might make this country rich and flourishing, instead of which all our energies are being expended in killing one another. Still, we are fighting for the advantage of our children; but the ruin this war has brought upon the country cannot be repaired during ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... an impossibility for any foreign power to hold amicable relations, as it invariably acted with bad faith, and set at nought the most solemn treaties. That British property and interests were every day subjected to ruin and spoliation, and British subjects exposed to unheard-of vexations, without the slightest hope of redress being afforded, save recourse was had to force, the only argument to which the Moors were accessible. He added, that towards the end of the preceding ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... There was a recklessness in his face and demeanour which once, when it belonged to an honest man, might been attractive; and when he took off his hat and you saw the well-shaped head with its crisp curly hair, you could not help feeling that you saw the ruin of a fine fellow. ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... a something which surpasses humanity, and that if our bark is ever to outride the tempests, it will be whilst this glorious hand holds the rudder. Other pilots diminish my fear, this one makes me unconscious of it. Hitherto, when we had to build anew or repair some ruin, plaster alone was put in requisition. Now we see nothing but marble used; and, whilst the counsels are judicious and faithful, the execution is diligent and magnanimous. Wits, judgment, and courage never existed in any man to the degree that they do in him. As for interest, he knows none but ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... easiest triumphs in the field of alcoholism and a wide propagation of psychotherapeutic methods and of a thorough understanding of psychotherapy would be fully justified, even if no other field were accessible but that of the desire for alcoholic intemperance. The moral disaster and economic ruin resulting from alcoholic intemperance, the physical harm to the drinker and to his offspring is so enormous, and the temporary cure of the victim is so probable that the movement certainly deserves most serious interest. Yet I speak of temporary ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... nations. He saw Earth, like a giant porcupine, flicking thousands of atom tipped missiles into space from hundreds of submarines and secret bases—the war power of the great nations, designed for the ruin of each other, united to destroy ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... make his way by his own diligence? In saying this of him, she did not know how heavy was the accusation that she brought against him; but what woman, within her own breast, accuses the man she loves? Were he to marry Florence Burton, would he not ruin himself and probably ruin her also? But she could give him all that he wanted. Though Ongar Park to her alone was, with its rich pastures, and spreading oaks, and lowing cattle, desolate as the Dead Sea shore, for him—and for her with him—would it not be the very paradise suited ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... sick as lobely could make her. And her old love and leanin' on Royal Nelson had come back in full force. Her fancy for Jabez had been light and transitory as his sir-name. And as I see their happy means as they met, I felt that even the wreck and ruin about us wuz mebby not too dear a price to pay for their future happiness. The first thing Royal and Ury did, Josiah helpin' 'em, wuz to take out the furnace and pipes, the hull caboodle on 'em, and then went over to Jonesville ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... Friedrich's one hobby; and though Friedrich's brother Adolph had a horror of it, the feeling was not aroused by it as an artistic institution, but as an agency for the intellectual, moral and worldly ruin of young men and women. In his leisure Friedrich arranged dramatic performances and took part in them, and, as amateurs go, he appears to have been highly successful. Histrionic persons were constant guests at his house on the Bruehl—amongst them ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... now at the point of death, I find myself at last freed from the follies and prejudices which have been my ruin. The clouds roll away from my mind, and I perceive what a mad fool I have been for years. Most of all I see the madness that instigated me to turn against you, and to put against the loyal love of the best of sons ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... not do. Good DEEDS are demanded,—actions founded upon truth and justice, and in accordance with nature's irrevocable laws. We boast of our greatness, and power, and intelligence. Of what avail are all these, if they will not save us from national ruin? What boots it that a slumbering giant dreams of his strength while he is falling upon the bosom of a burning lake? The mightiest empires have sunk to oblivion. Are ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... this honest man having spread to the town from whence he had come, it touched the envious man so much to the quick that he left his own house and affairs with a resolution to ruin him. With this intent he went to the new convent of dervishes, of which his former neighbor was the head, who received him with all imaginable tokens of friendship. The envious man told him that he was come to communicate a business of importance, which he could ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... tolerated in orchards; nobody would grudge a bird one peach or cherry. But that isn't their way. They like to hop about in the tree, and take a nip out of first one, then another, and then another, till half the fruit on the tree has been bitten into and spoiled. In this way, they ruin bushels of ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... than this—the intense rivalry among railroads and railroad men, the working out of running schedules, the getting through "on time" in spite of all obstacles, and the manipulation of railroad securities by evil men who wish to rule or ruin. ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... that knowledges reduced into exact methods have a show of strength, in that each part seemeth to support and sustain the other; but this is more satisfactory than substantial, like unto buildings which stand by architecture and compaction, which are more subject to ruin than those that are built more strong in their several parts, though less compacted. But it is plain that the more you recede from your grounds, the weaker do you conclude; and as in nature, the more you remove yourself ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... was the place and scope given to his own supreme personality, his power to judge what was best and to carry it through as he could, unhampered by those popular suffrages and Parliamentary checks and privileges which he held to be mere euphemisms for ruin and mutual throat-cutting all through the British Islands in their then state of distraction; and it must therefore have been a serious consideration with him how far, in the public interests, or for his own comfort, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... drop by drop, Upon the quiet mountain top, Steals drowsily and musically Into the universal valley. The rosemary nods upon the grave; The lily lolls upon the wave; Wrapping the fog about its breast, The ruin moulders into rest; Looking like Lethe, see! the lake A conscious slumber seems to take, And would not, for the world, awake. All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies (Her casement open to the skies) Irene, with ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... death, except just after we went to Melbourne, when I heard in general terms of the ruin of the family and the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... maiden sits On the turret's highest stone, Like the gentle flower that flings its sweets O'er the ruin ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... But be ended by seeing this doom in the almost redeeming light of the fact that it would all have been because he was, comparatively, too aristocratic. Yes, a man in his station couldn't afford to carry that so far—it must sooner or later, in one way or another, spell ruin. Never mind—it was the only thing he could be. Of course he should exquisitely suffer—but when hadn't he exquisitely suffered? How was he going to get through life by any arrangement without that? No wonder such a woman as Kate Cookham had been keen to annex so rare ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... deserts and mountains, until he arrived at AEthiopia, the kingdom of King Cepheus. Here he found the country inundated with disastrous floods, towns and villages destroyed, and everywhere signs of desolation and ruin. On a projecting cliff close to the shore he beheld a lovely maiden chained to a rock. This was Andromeda, the king's daughter. Her mother Cassiopea, having boasted that her beauty surpassed that of the Nereides, the angry sea-nymphs appealed to Poseidon to avenge their wrongs, whereupon the sea-god ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... word, the flitting of a smile—she contrived to turn our heads, and torture our hearts, and lead us on to love her. She deceived us both. She buoyed us both up with hope; she maddened us with jealousy; she crushed us with despair. For my part, when I seemed to wake to a sudden sense of the ruin that was about our path and I saw how the truest friendship that ever bound two lives together was drifting on to wreck and ruin, I asked myself whether any woman in the world was worth what Mat had been to me and I to him. But this was not often. I was readier ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... the channels of intelligence will be for ever stopped, and that no prince will enter into private treaties with a monarch who is denied by the constitution of his empire, the privilege of concealing his own measures. It is evident, that our enemies may hereafter plot our ruin in full security, and that our allies will no longer treat us ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... there be any one man that loves innocent youth better than all others, I claim to be that man. To seduce one into any vicious habit when uncontaminated, is a thing I would scorn to do. And the pleasure which I feel, when I reflect upon it, of having actually saved some half dozen from ruin, is to me unspeakable. But for this I know I am never to be credited; for Mr. Green has informed us that the gambler is hardened, for he never goes to church, and if you reach him at all it must be ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... been so miserable over that lie," she went on; "but I thought if I let you have the letters it would ruin papa. I really wouldn't mind poverty myself, Mr. Gordon, but he takes such pride in success that I couldn't be the one to do it. And then, after you told me that train-robbers were hung, I had to lie to save them. I ought to have known ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... he was almost self-conscious about his honour. He would no more have asked Magdalena to release him, nor have adopted the still more contemptible method of forcing her to break the engagement, than he would have been the ruin of an ignorant girl. But he would have sacrificed every green blade in his soul to have met Helena Belmont a year ago, and would have taken the chances with defiance and the consequences without ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Will their own favourite themes and notions start, And you must hear, offend them, or depart. There comes Sir Thomas from his village-seat, Happy, he tells us, all his friends to meet; He brings the ruin'd brother of his wife, Whom he supports, and makes him sick of life; A ready witness whom he can produce Of all his deeds—a butt for his abuse; Soon as he enters, has the guests espied, Drawn to the fire, and to the glass applied - "Well, what's the subject?—what are you about? The news, I take ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... one, every leaf in the huge volume was turned, and she came to the last and read it from top to bottom—down to the finis and the urn with a weeping willow over it; when she would close the book with a sigh, lay it down on the floor, rise and walk slowly away, and leave the glorious ruin dead to me as it had so long been to every one else; knew that if I did not find her before that terrible last page was read, I should never find her at all; but have to go wandering alone all my life through those dreary galleries and corridors, with one hope only left—that ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... from rumors freed; Whose conscience is his strong retreat; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make accusers great; ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... boiling point. Boiling water would bring out a bitter flavour from the tea. Made with water just below boiling point the tea is deliciously soft, even oily, and has a flavour and aroma which cream and sugar would ruin. It is certainly refreshing, and, when drunk newly infused, relatively harmless. Bancha is made with hotter water than other tea. The handleless cups hold about half of what our teacups contain.[201] Tea is not the only plant used for making "tea." One drinks in some parts ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... soldiers, beyond the superficial comradeship arising from the perils of war and the duties of the service, the Colonel of Cuirassiers was painfully struck by seeing the Colonel of Artillery, whom he knew to be a prudent man, playing at a game which might bring him to ruin. The heaps of gold and notes piled on the fateful cards showed the frenzy of play. A circle of silent men stood round the players at the table. Now and then a few words were spoken—pass, play, I stop, a thousand Louis, taken—but, ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... Inger. "But how would you be with mine? And when I think how you sent that hare for nothing else but to ruin me altogether—oh, you're no better than a ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Trade, for Free Trade was really the right of the most powerful. English interests were furthered under the veil of the magic word Freedom, and by it German enthusiasts for liberty were enticed to bring about the ruin and exploitation ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... strip, in gymnasium and training quarters, men of good blood and upbringing, but I have never seen one who stripped to better advantage than this young sot of two-and-twenty, this young god doomed to rack and ruin in four or five short years, and to pass hence without posterity to receive the splendid heritage it was his ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... admirable but short-lived "Illuminated Magazine," and wrote for it the "Chronicles of Clovernook" and the "Chronicles of a Goosequill." It is astonishing, in looking back at Jerrold's remarkable work at this period, to think that the public reads his books no more, and prefers to ruin its literary taste on fifth-rate romances rather than on the virile ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... no attention to Cherry as he took his seat. He had eyes for nothing but the "lay-out." She clenched her hands and prayed for his ruin. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... no doubt. 'Sticking up'—wasn't that Mr. Frazer's expression?—for Bill seems to have been an expensive luxury all round. Wonder if sticking up is something they continue when they get to their regiments? Billy has two or three weeks yet in which to ruin his chances of ever reaching one, and he has exhibited astonishing aptitude for tripping ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... like here to warn any master whose eye may fall on this story not to treat any lad who is put under his care too harshly, as it is very often the means of discouraging him in the occupation he is intended to follow, and of driving him from his home, and even from his country, and to his ruin. Thus even in my case it will be seen that it was all my master's want of kindness that forced me into a very different sort of life to that which my parents intended for me; into one which, though it was not altogether so ruinous, ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... shall there be from heaven.' Says Josephus, commenting on the obstinacy of the Jews in such matters, 'when they were at any time premonished from the lips of truth itself, by prodigies and other premonitory signs of their approaching ruin, they had neither eyes nor ears nor understanding to make a right use of them, but passed them over without heeding or so much as thinking of them; as, for example, what shall we say of the comet in the form of a sword that hung over Jerusalem for a whole year together?' ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... sir. William Reilly, the Jesuit and Papist, is the cause of it, and will be the cause of my utter ruin and ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... improbable, for the Intendant's post was not his ambition, or, favourite of La Pompadour as he was, he would, desiring, have long ago achieved that end. Moreover, every evidence showed that he would gladly return to France, for his clear brain foresaw the final ruin of the colony and the triumph of the British. He had once said ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the elder, yet when Isaac died, the estate, with all its vast possibilities would have gone to ruin, had not he, Frederick, buckled down to it and put the burden on his back. Work! He remembered the enlargement of the town water-system—how he had manoeuvred and financed, persuaded small loans at ruinous interest, and laid pipe and made joints by lantern light while the workmen slept, and then ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... walls. At the center of the southerly blocks towers a gray quadrangular wall, the last of a large building. At the western terminus of the village, where the slope falls away to the valley, is a gigantic ruin. Its walls are thirty feet high and six feet thick. The roof has fallen, and the topmost layers of the bluish-gray limestone are ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... naturally shared the prevalent opinion—so often disproved—that a people resolute as he believed his own could not be conquered, especially by a commercial community—the proverbial "nation of shopkeepers." Napoleon once had believed the same, to his ruin. Commercial considerations undoubtedly weigh heavily; but happily sentiment is still stronger than the dollar. An amusing instance of the pocket influence, however, came to my knowledge at the moment. Our captain's son received notice of his appointment as lieutenant of marines, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... imagine him in Mariposa! Wouldn't he be utterly foolish there? Just imagine him meeting Jim Eliot and treating him like a druggist merely because he ran a drug store! or speaking to Jefferson Thorpe as if he were a barber simply because he shaved for money! Why, a man like that could ruin young Pupkin in Mariposa in half a day, and ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... little while? I gave it rein, for I thought that one-half of my life was to be passed in that unreal but by no means niggardly world. And I thought of everything. To change your religion would mean the ruin of your career; moreover, it is not a possibility of your character. Were it I think I should not love you so much. Nor could I bear to think of any change in you. Only it will be harder—longer." Then she stretched out her ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... Whisk. Oh, matchless excellence! and must we part? Well, if—we must—we must—and in that case The less is said the better." Puff. Heyday! here's a cut!—What, are all the mutual protestations out? Tilb. Now, pray, sir, don't interrupt us just here: you ruin our feelings. Puff. Your feelings!—but, zounds, my feelings, ma'am! Sneer. No, pray don't interrupt them. "Whisk. One last embrace. Tilb. Now,—farewell, for ever. Whisk. For ever! Tilb. ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... dressing-gowns and bedroom slippers, each seized a blanket, and all descended to the cellars with the utmost dispatch of which they were capable, while bombs came crashing through the roof, and the walls of the house tottered to ruin. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... ruins I soon discerned what had taken place. The lightning had struck it last night, and what felt to me like an earthquake was the explosion of my large cask of gunpowder. The boathouse was a complete ruin, and the ruin involved the loss of many things of great value to me, among them being my canoe, most of my lamp oil, paints, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... come back, as had thousands of others, with nothing in my hands, and only a few days' rations accorded by the enemy in my haversack; had come back to a mass of smoking debris and a wide area of ruin which opened unrecognized vistas that puzzled, dazed, ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... all the forenoon in a wide curve, northward and then westward, across the land which the long border wars had ravaged so that we saw no man save once or twice a swineherd. More than once we passed burned farmsteads, over whose piled ruin the creepers were thriving; and all the old tracks were overgrown, and had never a wheel mark on them, save ancient ruts in which the water stood, thick with the growth of duckweed, ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... land for pasture, and leave the care of his flocks and herds to clients and slaves. [Sidenote: This irregular system the germ of latifundia.] So originated those 'latifundia,' or large farms, which greatly contributed to the ruin of Rome and Italy. The tilled land grew less and with it dwindled the free population and the recruiting field for the army. Gangs of slaves became more numerous, and were treated with increased brutality; and ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... table with my friends, when I lay down in my bed, and when I rose up. There was only one thing that could make life tolerable to me; that was, to spend all the rest of it in trying to save others from the ruin I had brought on one. But how was that possible for me? I had no comfort, no strength, no wisdom in my own soul; how could I give them to others? My mind was dark, rebellious, at war with ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... of Phillips & Sampson issued the first number of the Atlantic Monthly in the cause of high-minded literature,—a cause which ultimately proved to be their ruin. Lowell accepted the position of editor, and such a periodical as it proved to be under his guidance could not have been found in England, and perhaps not in the whole of Europe; but it could not ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... force. The firmer the foundations, and the loftier the superstructure, the surer it was to be ultimately carried away, and to carry away with it all that the mere popular outburst would have spared.—The massiveness of the obstacle increased the spread of the ruin. Few Asiatic kingdoms would be overthrown with less effort, and perish with less public injury, than the monarchy of the Bourbons, if it is to fall. Yet, your monarchy is firmer. It is less a vast building than a mighty tree, not fixed on foundations which can never widen, but growing from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the wall with Undy would mean absolute ruin; he lived but on the cheekiness of his gait and habits; he had become member of Parliament, Government official, railway director, and club aristocrat, merely by dint of cheek. He had now received a great blow; ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... idea. But when both fathers had settled the matter, David had met the question squarely, and declared he would marry no woman but his cousin Lulu. It was on this subject father and son had quarrelled and parted; but for all that, James Lorimer could not see his only son taking a high road to ruin, and not make an effort to ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... fields, my Italy, Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still The more approached, and dearest were they free, Thou—Thou must wither to each tyrant's will: 70 The Goth hath been,—the German, Frank, and Hun[297] Are yet to come,—and on the imperial hill Ruin, already proud of the deeds done By the old barbarians, there awaits the new, Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue, And deepens into red the saffron ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... own work. The master's virtues and some of the disciple's faults are everywhere present, both in the subject and in the treatment. We have the same world of money and business that shows so big throughout the Comedy, an unfaithful partner and lawyer introducing ruin into the house of the widow and orphan. The practice of legal ruse and robbery—in these things Balzac had rung the changes again and again. What Becque added were sharpness of contrast, dramatic concentration, bitterer satire, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the day after the first trouble, and my wife began to go out to afternoon teas and sewing-circles and dances. The teas and dances were all right. You can't talk at either. But the sewing-circle was ruin. At this particular time the circle was engaged in making winter garments for the children of the mother of the Gracchi. I presume that as a student and as a father you realize all that this meant. You also know that a sewing-circle needs four things: first, an object; ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... bad taste, he was supposed to be influenced by motives of personal enmity. But the case was otherwise. He saw that Seneca was the favourite of the times, and, to check the torrent that threatened the ruin of all true eloquence, he exerted his best efforts to diffuse a sounder judgement. He did not wish that Seneca should be laid aside: but he could not in silence see him preferred to the writers of the Augustan ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... overthrowing the work of ten years with apparently as little consciousness of the ruin he was creating as a boar that has rooted up an ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... with it those flexible parts which formerly enabled him to cover his secret torments and insidious purposes beneath a veil of benevolence and cheerfulness. "Alas!" said I, loud enough for him to hear me, "here is a monument of ruin. Despair and mischievous passions are too deeply rooted in this heart for me to ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... maintain that he was always prosperous, but only that the facts do not warrant us in assuming that he was constantly on the verge of ruin in the years when, so far as we know, ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... up the arsenal in Berlin. This noble and handsome building, which rose in proud splendor in the midst of a populous town, was to be destroyed without reference to the fact that the blowing up of this colossal edifice would scatter death and ruin throughout unfortunate Berlin. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... foolish, my dear," answered Mr. Merrick, affectionately patting the hand she laid in his. "The doctor says poor Denton cannot recover. If you're going to take to heart all the sad incidents we encounter on this hospital ship, it will not only ruin your usefulness ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... Ruin seize thee, ruthless King! Confusion on thy banners wait! Though fann'd by conquests crimson wing, They mock the air with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... strings of the old fiddle will tighten up a good deal, if I abstain from attempting to play upon the instrument at present—but that a few jigs now will probably ruin that chance. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... Baum, who has traveled all over the southwest and visited every large ruin in the country, considers that Canon de Chelly and its branch, del Muerto, is the most interesting prehistoric locality in the United States. The Navajos, who now live in the canon, have a tradition that the people who occupied the old cliff houses were all destroyed in one day by ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... province of Cordova; near the small river Cabra, and on the Cordova-Malaga railway. Pop. (1900) 13,236. Aguilar "of the Frontier'' was so named in the middle ages from its position on the border of the Moorish territories, which were defended by the castle of Anzur, now a ruin; but the spacious squares and modern houses of the existing town retain few vestiges of Moorish dominion. The olives and white wine of Aguilar are celebrated in Spain, although the wine, which somewhat resembles sherry, is known as Montilla, from the adjacent ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the hill we were about to ascend. The ground was covered with fragments of indurated quartz (of which the whole group was composed), in parallelograms of different dimensions. The scene was like that of a city whose structures had been shaken to pieces by an earthquake—one of ruin and desolation. The faces of the hills, both here and in other parts of the group, were cracked by solar heat, and thus the rock was scaling off. We were here obliged to dismount and walk. The day being insufferably hot, it was no pleasant task to climb under such exposure ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... use your whining to me, Miss Etta,' returned the same hard, dogged voice; 'Bob must have that money. When I promised to keep your disgraceful secret,—when I stood by and helped you ruin that poor boy, and Bob cashed your cheque,—I named my price. I wanted to keep Bob out of mischief, but his bad companions were too much for him. Now are you going to get that ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... each State; but a few years' experience will correct our ideas of self-interest, and convince us that a selfishness which excludes others from a participation of benefits is, in all cases, self-ruin, and that provincial interest is inseparable from ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... spirit having become enfeebled or obscured, the people are left in darkness and given over to sin and wickedness. Moral ruin seems inevitable unless there is a divine influx, a new Avatar, or Buddha, ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... what we call a group. The first condition, then, for the study of a habit is the determination of the group which has practised it. At this point we must beware of the first impulse; it leads to a negligence which may ruin the whole ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... soppily with her hair—her own hair. The night-wind shrewdly searched her tattered garments, as if it had suspected her of smuggling. She saw crowds of determined-looking persons grimly ruining themselves in toys and confectionery for the dear ones at home, and she wished she was in a position to ruin a little—just a little. Then, as the happy throng sped by her with loads of things to make the children sick, she leaned against an iron lamp-post in front of a bake-shop and turned on the wicked envy. She thought, poor thing, she would like to be a cake—for this little girl was very hungry ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... be ashamed. The scepters of kings are broken in pieces. Jehovah is King of kings! Babylon, with all her glory, shall become a desolation. Her lofty towers shall fall, her walls shall be destroyed, her palaces shall become heaps of ruin, and her idol temples shall be ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... abandoning all discretion, appeared everywhere in public with Sainte-Croix. This behaviour, authorised as it was by the example of the highest nobility, made no impression upon the Marquis of Brinvilliers, who merrily pursued the road to ruin, without worrying about his wife's behaviour. Not so M. de Dreux d'Aubray: he had the scrupulosity of a legal dignitary. He was scandalised at his daughter's conduct, and feared a stain upon his own fair name: he procured a warrant for the arrest of Sainte-Croix wheresoever ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... was far from being the case. Oriana and the chieftainship were lost to him at present, it is true; but revenge might still be his—that prize that Satan holds out to his slaves to tempt them on to further guilt and ruin. To win that prize—and, possibly, even more than that—was worth some further effort: and deceit was no great ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great." Rev. xvi. 18. Jerusalem will be split into three parts, as a result of this earthquake. But the effect upon the nations is utter ruin,—"the cities of the nations fell." London, New York, Paris, Berlin, Chicago, every other city, collapses like a rent balloon, and the opened earth swallows up palaces and cots, men and women, and what the overwhelming and the falling shall ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... France, presented his Indian retinue to the Governor, in a complimentary harangue. Then four other boys, personating French colonists, made him four flattering addresses, in French verse. Charles Denis, dressed as a Huron, followed, bewailing the ruin of his people, and appealing to Argenson for aid. Jean Francois Bourdon, in the character of an Algonquin, next advanced on the platform, boasted his courage, and declared that he was ashamed to cry like the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... in a mixture infinitely well fitted to show forth the wonders of his infinite wisdom, have established laws consistent with the nature of free causes, but so lacking in firmness that the slightest trouble that came upon a man would overthrow them entirely, to the ruin of human freedom? A mere city governor will become an object of ridicule if he changes his regulations and orders as often as someone is pleased to murmur against him. And shall God, whose laws concern a good so universal that all of the world that is visible to us perchance ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... reform. Bistwick is classed among the unhappily married. But what Bistwick feels when he wakes up in the morning, which is the great important fact, no detached outsider conceives. The awful importance of the ruin of a life is overlooked. Men are only allowed to be happy or miserable in classes. In Gopsum Street a man murders his mistress. The important fact is that for the man the act is eternal, and that for the brief space he has to live, he is already dead. He is already in a different ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... three fine devils eating my heart— They left me, my grief! without a thing; Sickness wrought, and Love wrought, And an empty pocket, my ruin and my woe. Poverty left me without a shirt, Barefooted, barelegged, without any covering; Sickness left me with my head weak And my body miserable, an ugly thing. Love left me like a coal upon the floor, Like a half-burned sod, that is never put out, Worse than the cough, worse than the fever ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... Pope had many of his relatives or dependents around him. The clergy always wear their robes, so that the reform of the Church is manifested in their appearance. This state of things, on the other hand, has been the ruin of the artisans and merchants, since no money circulates. And while all offices and magistracies are in the hands of Milanese, grasping and illiberal persons, very few indeed can be still called ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Spinrobin had let no breath of his own terror reach her, or attempted ever to put into her calm mind the least suggestion that the experiment might fail and call down upon them the implacable and destructive forces that could ruin them body and soul forever. For this, plainly expressed, was the form in which his terror attacked him when he thought about it. Skale was tempting the Olympian ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... suffering, and the black masses of cloud gathering so menacingly in the tempestuous sky, seemed typical of the Nemesis which was overtaking the Capitalist System. That atrocious system which, having attained to the fullest measure of detestable injustice and cruelty, was now fast crumbling into ruin, inevitably doomed to be overwhelmed because it was all so wicked and abominable, inevitably doomed to sink under the blight and curse of senseless and unprofitable selfishness out of existence for ever, its memory universally execrated ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... He offered to throw up the Swift, and though this was not accepted, broke for a time all other connection with Constable—an unfortunate breach, as it helped to bring about the establishment of the Ballantyne publishing business, and so unquestionably began Scott's own ruin. It is remarkable that a similar impatience of interference afterwards broke Scott's just-begun connection with Blackwood, which, could it have lasted, would probably have saved him. For that sagacious person would certainly ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... Schomburgk has disproved the existence of Lake Parima; but it will take a long time, and more explorers than one, to prove that there are no ruins of ancient cities, such as Stephens stumbled on in Yucatan, still buried in the depths of the forest. Fifty years of ruin would suffice to wrap them in a leafy veil which would hide them from every one who did not literally run against them. Tribes would die out, or change place, as the Atures and other great nations have done in those parts, and every traditional record of them perish ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... What could be a better illustration of that MAYA, that metaphysical Delusion, in which all souls are wrapped, which leads them to impute Reality to the Phantasms, the unsubstantial objects of the senses, and lures them on to moral ruin as they wander in the waste? And accordingly, we find the poets constantly recurring to this thirst of the gazelle, as an emblem of the treacherous and bewildering fascination of the fleeting shadows ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... rust, and a ruin is come To the auld kirk bell—ance and ever it 's dumb; On the brink of the past 'tis awaiting a doom, For a wauf o' the wind may awaken its tomb, As, bearing its fragments, all dust-like, away, To blend with water, the wood and the clay, Till lost 'mid the changes of manners and men; ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... drops distil each hour, To blight, to ruin and destroy, And find with dark, insidious pow'r, The heart of woman, man ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... owing to her that I have never been obliged to have a nursemaid under my feet or tagging after the boys, to the ruin of their independence. For the first few years Effie, whose fiery locks have not yet found their affinity, helped me, but now merely sees to buttons, strings, ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... admonisheth all menne to be- ware and take heede, of cloked and fained frendship, of the wicked and vngodlie, whiche vnder a pretence and offer of frendship or of benefite, seeke the ruin, dammage, miserie or destruccion of man, toune, cite, region, ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... said Kokua. “Is it not a terrible thing to save oneself by the eternal ruin of another? It seems to me I could not laugh. I would be humbled. I would be filled with melancholy. I would pray for ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of skill upon the parity of those who are matched against each other. An ignorant person supposes that to an able disputant it must be an advantage to have a feeble opponent; whereas, on the contrary, it is ruin to him; for he can not display his own powers but through something of a corresponding power in the resistance of his antagonist. A brilliant fencer is lost and confounded in playing with a novice; and the same thing takes place in playing at ball, or battledore, or in dancing, where ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser |
