Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Shambles" Quotes from Famous Books



... in his flesh, while above-head the carrion birds wheeled, waiting their meal; hours of unceasing, unsparing slaughter, when the word was given to slay and yield no mercy, where in the great, vaulted, cavernous gloom of rent rocks, the doomed were hemmed as close as sheep in shambles. Hours, in the warm flush of an African dawn, when the arbiter of the duel was the sole judge allowed or comprehended by the tigers of the tricolor, and to aim a dead shot or to receive one was the only alternative left, as the challenging eyes of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... declarations of war which followed with a series of thunder-claps heralding a universal tempest. Was it true then that Germany had a deadly enmity against us, and warlike ambitions which would make a shambles of Europe? Or was it still only newspaper talk, to provide sensations for the breakfast table? How could they tell, these plain, ignorant men who had ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... all,' he continued, speaking from the pigs' point of view, 'it is better to live on bran and escape the shambles... ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... prompts his passionate desire for cleanliness and brightness, of the home and of the body. He has a violent dislike of stuffy air and smelly substances. He regularly takes a roundabout way to avoid a malodorous lane; he loathes shambles and fishmongers' shops. Fetors spread infection, he thinks. Erasmus had, earlier than most people, antiseptic ideas about the danger of infection in the foul air of crowded inns, in the breath of confessants, in baptismal water. Throw aside common ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... do. It was another and more fragrant one that sweetened the grim winter vigil in the North, when every smudge of smoke on the horizon might have been the herald of Armageddon. They were yet to see men die by scores in the shambles of a wrecked battery, by hundreds on the shell-torn decks of a ship that sank, fighting gallantly to the last. And the recollection of what I am about to relate doubtless supplied sufficient ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... up in the slow wind and moves along the backs of the crawling cattle. In the worst of times one in three will pine and fall out by the way. In the defiles of Red Rock, the sheep piled up a stinking lane; it was the sun smiting by day. To these shambles came buzzards, vultures, and coyotes from all the country round, so that on the Tejon, the Ceriso, and the Little Antelope there were not scavengers enough to keep the country clean. All that summer the dead mummified in the open or dropped slowly back to earth in the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... over with honey and covered him with down, clapped a chain about his neck and a mask on his face; then giving him a great staff in on hand and in the other two great dogs which he had fetched from the shambles he despatched one to the Rialto to make public proclamation that whoso would see the angel Gabriel should repair to St. Mark's Place; and this was Venetian loyalty! This done, after a while, he brought him forth ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... had come upon a space of open ground near the centre of the camp, doubtless the spot reserved for a market; but what meat was it that cumbered the shambles, without buyer or seller? Piled in ghastly heaps, or covering the ground two and three deep, lay a fresh-reaped harvest of corpses, stripped, distorted, gleaming in the moonlight. Could it be that the camp had been taken? But these were no African dead, nor yet was ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... courage to attend it, or inclination to witness any man's sorrows but his own. He met the wedding party by accident, and was heard to exclaim with a sigh, as they flaunted past him in gay exuberance of spirits—"Ah, poor Neal! he is going like one of her father's cattle to the shambles! Woe is me for having suggested matrimony to the tailor! He will not long-be under the necessity of saying that he 'is blue-moulded for want of a beating.' The butcheress will fell him like a Kerry ox, and I may have his blood to answer ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... of great darkness over them, No cloud of fire to guide and cover them, Beasts for the shambles, tremulous with dread, They crouch on alien soil ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... the British consul. "They stole her back, gentlemen, and when Captain O'Hara found her rolling helplessly and boarded her, she was a shambles. Dead men tell no tales, Mr. Ricks—yet it was impossible for any fair-minded man to doubt the testimony of the dead men aboard your Narcissus! Her killed, wounded and prisoners formed a perfect alibi. In the meantime, ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... a shambles, the floor spotted with blood, the table overturned and broken, a blanket over one of the windows torn down, a smashed chair in one corner. The detective who had been shot was still lying in front of the door, "Red" lay motionless, a ghastly cut over his eye, and Hobart, ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish

... little gray broncho to pick her own dainty way out of the shambles about her feet. Then, once free from the litter of men and horses, he turned her head to the spot where, he had been told, his squadron were gathering together their diminished forces. As he rode slowly ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... even ventured out in the broad daylight and swarmed over the walls and ceiling by hundreds. My cell-mate was wise in the ways of the beasts. Like Childe Roland, dauntless the slug-horn to his lips he bore. Never was there such a battle. It lasted for hours. It was shambles. And when the last survivors fled to their brick-and-mortar fastnesses, our work was only half done. We chewed mouthfuls of our bread until it was reduced to the consistency of putty. When a fleeing belligerent escaped into a crevice between ...
— The Road • Jack London

... doubtless follow fast. Sad, robbed of merits, drug the cup And drink the poisoned mixture up, Or share the exiled Rama's lot, Or seek some land that knows her not. No reason, but a false pretence Drove Rama, Sita, Lakshman hence, And we to Bharat have been given Like cattle to the shambles driven." ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... Unless his early sports are quite forgot, And from his youngest recollection show The house fell down some forty years ago. And then—a case of adverse claim to meet, Show how the land lay open to the street; And there the children held their harmless rambles, Till Robert Woolwich built his odious shambles, And never did the playmates fear a shock, From anything so ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various

... thousands of years woman has been carefully drilled to believe that she is an emotional creature. If a dozen people conspire to tell a man that he is looking badly, it is not unlikely that he will feel ill. Certainly Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton exhibited no lack of firmness on the shambles of battlefields; and there are few men living who cannot recall instances of women who have, in the face of disaster and evil fortune, shown a steady perseverance and will-power in earning a living for themselves and their children that men have ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... greatest asset was the purpose which had driven him forth among them. They had robbed and killed and fled with the aimlessness of common murderers, but here was one with a definite plan, to leave the whole State a smoking shambles. They submitted their lives and fortunes to the ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... had done this work, and redded up the boat, I looked rather anxiously at Santa, who had been watching me: for I feared the effect this scene of shambles might have upon her. She sat, with Farrell's head resting against her knee, and still gazed unmoved. . . . Then I knew why. She had passed beyond these vain phenomena. Her eyes saw them and saw them not. . ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... would plenteous harvest yield, But all the crops are rotting in the sun. Where are the reapers? On some battlefield They fight for nought and die there, one by one! God's comfort be upon them where they lie, Sheep to war's shambles driven—who knows why? Death and destruction walk by day, by night, Men's blood is spilt and sacrificed in vain, While women wait for tidings of the fight Who may not even sepulchre their slain! They say "God's in His Heaven"—but, instead, 'Twould seem He is asleep—or, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... the 8-oz. rocket, however, reached an elevation which commanded the acoustic shadow, and yielded loud reports. When both were in view the rockets were still superior to the gun. On the 6th of August, at St. Ann's, the 4-oz. and 8-oz. rockets proved superior to the syren. On the Shambles Light-vessel, when a pressure of 13 lbs. was employed to sound the syren, the rockets proved greatly superior to that instrument. Proceeding along the sea margin at Flamboro' Head, Mr. Edwards states that at a distance of 1.25 mile, with the 18-pounder previously used ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... ten o'clock in the morning. The town was stormed through the Hagenauer Thor by the Bavarians. After that we still held the Geisberg and the Chateau. You should have seen it when we left it. I'll say it was a butcher's shambles. I'd say more if Mademoiselle de Nesville were not here." He was trying hard to bear up—to speak lightly of the frightful calamity that had overwhelmed General Abel Douay ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... vengeance that comes after lingering years! Ye quenched the voice of my singer?—hark, in your dying ears, The song of the conflagration! Ye left me a widow alone? —Behold, the whole of your race consumes, sinew and bone And torturing flesh together: man, mother, and maid Heaped in a common shambles; and already, borne by the trade, The smoke of your dissolution darkens ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... spoken of—has been arraigned, condemned and executed. The aristocrats are in full emigratory flight across the frontiers—those that have not been rent by the vassals they had brought to bay, the people they had outraged. The Lilies of France lie trampled under foot in the shambles they have made of that fair land, whilst overhead the tricolour—that symbol of the new trinity, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—is flaunted in ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... spake: "O Lord of the world, for twenty years I dwelt in the house of Laban, and when I left it, I met with Esau, who sought to murder my children, and I risked my life for theirs. And now they are delivered into the hands of their enemies, like sheep led to the shambles, after I coddled them like fledglings breaking forth from their shells, after I suffered anguish for their sake all the days of my life. Let that plead with Thee, and have Thou pity ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... range," volunteered the Lieutenant, loss of blood and reaction from excitement loosening his tongue. "They outed five guns complete with detachments by direct hits. Here we are, sir," and he paused near a demolished gun emplacement. The ground about was a shambles. ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... the finest shambles in Europe, lies between Leadenhall Street and Fenchurch Street. Of the three courts or yards which it consists of, the first is that at the north-east corner of Gracechurch Street, and opens into Leadenhall Street. This court or yard contains in length from north to south 164 feet, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... sex, and her unborn children? It's been my sole study. How could you fancy I spoke hastily, or without due consideration on such a subject? Would you have me like the blind girls who go unknowing to the altar, as sheep go to the shambles? Could you suspect me of such carelessness?—such culpable thoughtlessness?—you, to whom I have spoken of ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... equality of woman with man. Yet it is claimed that women owe their advancement to the Bible. It would be quite as true to say that they owe their improved condition to the almanac or to the vernal equinox. Under Bible influence woman has been burned as a witch, sold in the shambles, reduced to a drudge and a pauper, and silenced and subjected before her ecclesiastical and marital law-givers. "She was first in the transgression, therefore keep her in subjection." These words of Paul have filled our whole civilization ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... go over into that shambles—if I want to?" With this Kathryn sprang to her feet. "Well, thanks! I do not want to. I'm not the kind of girl who takes her dissipation that way. If I ever let go, I'll take my medicine and not expect to be shielded ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... with savage irony, said that an outlaw had no business within the walls, and he would not come in till the sentence had been formally rescinded by a meeting of the people in the Forum. But the gates, when once he had passed them, were closed, and for five days and five nights Rome became a shambles. Appian says that Marius and Cinna had both sworn to spare the life of Octavius. But Marius was never a liar, and the story is false on the face of it; for just before this Appian relates how, when Cinna had promised to be merciful, Marius would make no ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... when they arrived at the playground, which lay north of the covered Meat Market or Shambles, "it looks as if they hadn't been able to make a start yet at the Blood Tub." His tone was marked by a calm, grand disdain, as of one ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... for their milk, still remained; but a few were killed from day to day, and distributed in minute proportions, hardly sufficient to support life among the famishing population. Starving wretches swarmed daily around the shambles where these cattle were slaughtered, contending for any morsel which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran along the pavement; while the hides, chopped and boiled, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... the fact that her Fifth Act had been a veritable shambles—broke up in laughter. She ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... are the ways in which the Tempter works. But is there nothing but this to explain the power which evil has upon men, in the midst of the great city? These manifold allurements, these haunts of infamy and shambles of destruction—I see them standing upon strange foundations. I see them propped by these very influences to which I have alluded; influences of social condition and individual example. They would not be so formidable, they would ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... end of September. At this period, Major Hanger commanded, Colonel Tarleton being ill. In the centre of Charlotte, intersecting the two principal streets, stood a large brick building, the upper part being the court-house, and the under part, the market house. Behind the shambles, a few Americans on horse-back had placed themselves. The Legion was ordered to drive them off; but, upon receiving a fire from behind the stalls, this corps fell back. Lord Cornwallis rode up in person, and made use of these words: 'Legion, remember you have everything to lose, but ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... tell you also that the people of that country eat their meat raw, whether it be of mutton, beef, buffalo, poultry, or any other kind. Thus the poor people will go to the shambles, and take the raw liver as it comes from the carcase and cut it small, and put it in a sauce of garlic and spices, and so eat it; and other meat in like manner, raw, just as we eat meat that is ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... said the charitable mediator, "and especially on you, Master Lambourne! What the fiend lie you here for, fighting on the floor like two butchers' curs in the kennel of the shambles?" ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... repeatedly reduced, and at the opening of the fifteenth century, three families, the Legoix, the St. Yons, and the Thiberts, had exercised absolute mastery in the market district, which in turn exercised mastery over nearly the whole city. "One Caboche, a flayer of beasts in the shambles of Hotel-Dieu, and Master John de Troyes, a surgeon with a talent for speaking, were their most active associates. Their company consisted of 'prentice-butchers, medical students, skinners, tailors, and every kind of lewd fellows. When anybody caused their displeasure they ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... to clear the shambles every man of the ten thousand who had fallen was dead—save two. The salvage corps walked in a muck of blood. They slipped and stumbled and fell in its festering pools. The flies and vultures were busy. Dead horses, dead men, ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... termination will probably not grieve that it is left unfinished. The whole contains about 1300 lines in stanzas of ten, describing archery fights and heroic duels that are rather tedious by their similarity, and offensive from the smell of the shambles; and which any quick-witted stripling with the knack of rhyming might perhaps have done as well, and less coarsely, after reading Chapman's or Ogilby's Homer, or the fighting scenes in Spenser, the Border Ballads, &c. But even this composition is not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... regular graduates in their new profession, so deftly did they manage their baskets, and so jauntily carry their bags. Their instructor furthermore informed them of the different places at which they were to make their appearance daily: in the morning at the shambles, and at the market of St. Salvador; on fast-days at the fish-market; every afternoon on the quay, and on Thursdays ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... was made with dash and courage. For four hours the battle raged with fury. The shattered regiments that had been surprised and crushed the day before, yielded at one time before the onslaughts of the Confederates. By noon Beauregard had sent into the shambles his last brigade and reserves and shortly afterwards gave his first order ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... ewe lamb were being led away from peaceful flowery pastures, from the sweet sanctity of the cloistral fold, out through thorny devious paths where Temptations prowl wolf-fanged, or into fierce conflicts that end in the social shambles, those bloodless abattoirs where malice mangles humanity. How many verdure-veiled, rose-garlanded pitfalls yawned in that treacherous future now stretching before her like summer air, here all gold and blue, yonder with purple ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... soon as she reached the side of the Juno she was hove to, and a boat was sent off at once. An officer stepped on board. He was horrified at the scene of carnage which presented itself. The ship aloft was a wreck, the decks were a perfect shambles, wounded and dying men lay around in every position. The masts were gone, the ship was full of shot-holes, the water was rushing and gurgling in through the shot-holes below the waterline, flames were ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... deflowering onslaught alleys cries labyrinth mattress sobs ploughing desert bed precision telemetre monoplane cackling theatre applause monoplane equals balcony rose wheel drum trepan gad-fly rout arabs oxen blood-colour shambles ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... England, he had learnt to kill his game clean, were it beast or bird. In thought, he had always loathed the trade of a butcher, and had certainly never guessed that soldiering could be—as here in San Sebastian he had seen it—more bestial than the shambles. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... yourselves have welcomed that law. No longer shall the blood of victims flow to Jal beneath the white rays of the moon while the chant of his servants goes up to heaven. Nay, henceforth this holy place must be a shambles for the kine. So be it, my children; in my old age I hear the gods speaking in an altered voice and I obey them. It is nothing to me who am about to die, yet I tell you that rather would I myself be stretched upon the ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... could do to straddle the blamed thing, and then it was only with the help of a wounded Samoan who took his hand. The Kanaka, dizzily seen through a kind of mist, was no other than Tua; together, like men in a dream, they searched for Fetuao's body; and dragging it out of the shambles where it lay, they tried to clean away the blood with wisps of grass. Jack was sitting with the girl's head in his lap when he began to sway unsteadily backward and forward, feeling strangely sleepy and cold. He moaned. ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... how few they were who made the last attempt to stay the dreadful Monday-morning spectacles of men and women strung up in a row for crimes as different in their degree as our whole social scheme is different in its component parts, which, within some fifteen years or so, made human shambles ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens

... mystery; but the sum would get itself done with the figures now on the slate. On little Aggie's slate the figures were yet to be written; which sufficiently accounted for the difference of the two surfaces. Both the girls struck him as lambs with the great shambles of life in their future; but while one, with its neck in a pink ribbon, had no consciousness but that of being fed from the hand with the small sweet biscuit of unobjectionable knowledge, the other struggled with instincts and forebodings, with the suspicion of its ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... years—I was on my road to Smithfield. Smithfield? Yes; even so. All known and respectable publishers having declined any connexion with the work, the writers had facetiously resorted to this aceldama, or slaughtering quarter of London—to these vast shambles, as typical, I suppose, of their own slaughtering spirit. On my road to Smithfield, I could not but pause for one moment to reflect on the pure defecated malice which must have prompted an attack upon myself. Retaliation or retort it could not pretend to be. To most literary ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... tell the young lady as I never went for to hurt her, and what the genlmn ses," nods and shambles and shivers and smears and blinks, and half-laughs and half-cries a farewell to the woman, and takes his creeping way ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... portion of a carefully prepared plan goes as it was intended to go, the rest of the plan must necessarily move with equal success along its appointed lines. Though Maleotti was as sure as if he had seen it of our slaughter in the forest shambles, there came no moment in that journey of ours through the darkness of the wood when Messer Griffo, drawing his sword, thundered an appointed order, and forces of destruction were let loose upon the Company of Death. On the contrary, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... a flash, and sped up the decks—with not one second to spare. The upper deck was a shambles. I scrambled up the bulwark straight in front and sprang out as far as I could. Before I struck the water I heard the roar of a mighty explosion behind, and dived to avoid the after effects. When I came up, the sea all round ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... best of us are monsters of iniquity and egoism, cruelty and corruption; and our planet (a very heaven for warmth and brilliancy and beauty, in spite of earthquakes and cyclones and tornadoes) is a very hell through the creatures that people it—a shambles, a place of torture, a grotesque ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... deck was a shambles as the Commander made the rounds of his ship; yet those wounded and dying raised themselves to cheer as he made his tour. The crew of the howitzer which was mounted forward had all been killed; a second crew was destroyed likewise; and ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... have horrid circumstances; the first, having been debauched by her uncle; the other had so tender a parent, that his whole concern while he was expiring, and knew her for his murderess, was to save her life. It is shocking to think what a shambles this country is grown! Seventeen were executed this morning, after having murdered the turnkey on Friday night, and almost forced open Newgate. One is forced to travel, even at noon, as if one ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... wilt do mine errand, and return hither when it is done, thou shalt see Saxon flesh cheap as ever was hog's in the shambles of Sheffield. And, hark thee! thou seemest to be a jolly confessor—come hither after the onslaught and thou shalt have as much good wine as would drench ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... It was still early, a lovely autumn morning, the mountains rising in all their impressive majesty, but for a time all our powers of admiration and enjoyment were suddenly marred by the sight of meek sheep led to the shambles at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... judged the outcome of the fight. The boat was little better than a shambles with the havoc that had been wrought there when Yancy and Carrington dropped over its side to the raft. Cavendish followed them, whooping his triumph as ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... went. A sheep that goes to the shambles of its own accord deserves to be butchered, and I was walking into ambush. But still I whistled. I whistled the same tune again and again, and I did it with great lung power. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... the City—there are fifty-three streets. In St. James of the Shambles, fifty-five streets. In St. Oportune, thirty-four streets. In the quarter of the Louvre, twenty-five streets. In the Palace Royal, or St. Honorius, forty-nine streets. In Mont. Martyr, forty-one streets. In St. Eustace, twenty-nine streets. In the Halles, twenty-seven ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... Brummel of that coterie which laid the foundation of prosperity on the Rand; and his house was a marvel of order and crude elegance—save when he had his roulette and poker parties, and then it was the shambles of murdered niceties. Once or twice a week his friends met here; and it was not mendaciously said that small fortunes were lost and won ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... most credulous crossed the river in a boat. As each successive party landed, their hands were bound fast at their backs; and thus, except a few who were set apart, they were all driven towards the fort, like cattle to the shambles, with curses and scurrilous abuse. Then, at sound of drums and trumpets, the Spaniards fell upon them, striking them down with swords, pikes, and halberds. Ribaut vainly called on the Adelantado to remember his oath. By his order, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... the High-street, 'till we meet the East end of New street. We shall penetrate rather farther into Moor-street, none into Park-street, take in Digbeth, Deritend, Edgbaston-street, as being the road to Dudley, Bromsgrove, and the whole West of England; Spiceal-street, the Shambles, a larger part of Bell street, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... horrified manner, let him run on. The hospital porter and another man turned down the corners of the cloth, and stepped aside. The Chief Inspector's eyes searched the gruesome detail of that heap of mixed things, which seemed to have been collected in shambles ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... garden trees; all else was quiet, as if men were not waking to slay each other and pass unconfessed to their account. There came on me a great sickness of war. Yesterday the boulevard of Les Augustins, when the fight was over, had been a shambles; white bodies that had been stripped of their armour lay here and there like sheep on a hillside, and were now smirched with dust, a thing unseemly. I put it to myself that I was engaged, if ever man was, in a righteous quarrel, fighting against cruel oppression; and I was under the protection ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... love of man. You have the mania of loving, more common than it is suspected, especially by those who would have us believe that good society is a fold where snowy lambs are led about from the cradle to the butcher's shambles, by pastors carrying crooks decked with sky blue ribbons. The feeling is a craving in you—an involuntary and invincible instinct which was to have its inevitable end. You turned from a man who sincerely loved you to make a conquest of another ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... more ghastly sight than that which my eyes then rested upon I never saw. The gate-way of the Citadel was a very shambles. Piles of dead men lay all around me; and the prodigious number of the enemy lying slain there testified with a mute eloquence to the desperate fashion in which our handful of men had fought. Over the rough pavement, down the slope towards the lake, there flowed a stream ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... of woodland. The sun was too hot to permit of the excursion Dick suggested, and late in the afternoon the wheezy ferry carried them down the lake-like stream. On every hand there were signs of peace—not a fort, not a breastwork gave token that this was in a few months to be the shambles of mighty armies, the anchorage of that new wonder, the iron battle-ship; the scene of McClellan's miraculous victory at Malvern, of Grant's slaughtering grapplings with rebellion at bay, of Butler's comic joustings, and the last desperate ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... and the thick smoke hanging over the altar tell that the rite is complete. What a scene it must have been when, as on some great occasions, hundreds of burnt offerings were offered in succession! The place and the attendants would look to us liker shambles and butchers ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... Roman World, and then of the Saracens, and since, of the Turks, were such woes as men had never seen before. The Infandous Blindness and Vileness which then came upon mankind, and the Monstrous Croisadoes which thereupon carried the Roman World by Millions together unto the Shambles; were also such woes as had never yet had a Parallel. And yet these were some of the things here intended, when it was said, Wo! For the Devil is come down in great Wrath, having ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... for example, the peasantry are cattle; in time of peace crushed with forced labour, feudal burdens, and imposts of all kinds; in time of war driven, in unwilling masses, half-armed and helpless, to the shambles. Aristocratic luxury, gambling, profligate wars—Jacques Bonhomme pays for them all. At Crecy and Poictiers, the lords are taken prisoners; have to provide heavy ransoms, which, being debts of honour, like gambling debts, are more binding than ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... from the farmhouse eaves The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day, Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves Limp with the heat—a league of rutty way— Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves— Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain, In thirsty meadow or on burning ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... tried to escape, before being driven into the gorge, by a road leading to the north, but were bombed back again into the shambles. Mad with terror, some of the Turks tried to scramble up the steep hills, others made an attempt to descend into the deep gorge; anywhere to escape from the awful hail of bombs and bullets. For four hours the slaughter continued, and when "Cease fire" ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... all mankind, The thickening darkness surged, and close at hand Those first fierce cloudy fringes of the storm, The Armada sails, gathered their might; and Spain Crouched close behind them with her screaming fires And steaming shambles, Spain, the hell-hag, crouched, Still grasping with red hand the cross of Christ By its great hilt, pointing it like a dagger, Spear-head of the ultimate darkness, at the throat Of England. Under Philip's ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... archaeology, and was enthusiastic in finding relics of the olden time. He took me into a great many private houses. I visited every church, and indeed saw far more than do the great majority of even the most inquiring visitors. The Shambles was then and is still perhaps one of the most curious specimens of a small mediaeval street in the world. I felt as if I could pass a life in the museum and churches, and I did, in fact, years after, remain ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... come down. Whole row's over. You can't get a dub in the Valley to open his mouth. Same old gag we've used for the last ten years, 'heavily armed band of masked men,' 'scene like a butcher's shambles,' and that guy of a sheriff 'scouring the hills for the miscreants.' I'll bet he's under his ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... guns, the Epervier. In this instance the behavior of the American vessel and her crew was supremely excellent and not a flaw could be found. They hulled the British brig forty-five times and made a shambles of her deck and did it with the ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... I may do better," answered the Fleming. "But would your reverence have me dally until the question amongst the garrison be, whether a plump priest or a fat Fleming will be the better flesh to furnish their shambles?" ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... with a sword, and descended in his shirt into the street. The chance was a good one, and the mob were made aware of it, for catching the wolfish dog in the high noon and carnival of his bloody revels—in the very centre of his own shambles. For a moment the mob was self-baffled by its own numbers and its own fury. But even that fury felt the call for self-control. It was evident that the massy street-door must be driven in, since there was no ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... saw Claude beginning to advance. What was he to do? The perspiration burst out on him. He turned this way and that, now casting wild eyes at the whirling current below, now piteous eyes—the eyes of a calf on its way to the shambles, and as little regarded—on the thin stream of passers. How could they go on their way and leave him to the mercies ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... an altar there, with an everlasting fire burning on it; but why should that altar, and all the ground around be crusted and black with blood; why should that dark place be like a charnel house or a butcher's shambles; why, from all the trees around, should there be hanging the rotting carcases, not of goats and horses merely, but of MEN, sacrificed to Thor and Odin, the thunder and the wind? Why that butchery, why those works of darkness in the dark places ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... wreck, with the iron planted immovably in his soul; but Jeremy Garnet, the Author, should turn out such a novel of gloom, that strong critics would weep, and the public jostle for copies till Mudie's doorway became a shambles. ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... I simply love the flints, don't you, Jill? Personally, my doctor bled me just before I came away. But don't let me stop you others. Lead on, brother—lead the way to the shambles!" ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... Right or wrong, it was done. The shrieks and curses had died away, and the Fort del Oro was a red shambles, which the soldiers were trying to cover from the sight of heaven and earth, by dragging the bodies into the ditch, and covering them with the ruins of the rampart; while the Irish, who had beheld from the woods that awful warning, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... noting, as I went, the evidences which met me on every hand of the protracted, stubborn implacability of the attack, and the resolute, unyielding character of the defence. The savages had indeed succeeded, but at what a cost! As I made my way up through that shambles of a wrecked garden I acquired a new impression of the invincible courage of the South African native which I have never ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... and is not obeyed by giving up the murderer to the gallows and the public executioner. Moreover, the same series of precepts prescribes an abstinence from the natural juices of animal food, which would require an entire revolution in our shambles, kitchens, and tables. If these precepts were Divine commandments for men of all times, they should be obeyed in full; but there is the grossest inconsistency and absurdity in holding only a portion of one of them sacred, and ignoring all ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... the mandril-like jaw, the misshapen ear, I see not merely a lifelike portrait of a Hun but a composite photograph of all Huns, something which should hang in every house in the kingdom until the terms of such a peace have been imposed which will make the shambles in Belgium, Poland, and Serbia an eternal nightmare of the past, never to be repeated in the future. And over the anaemic hearts of the Trevelyans, the Ramsay MacDonalds, the Arthur Ponsonbys, who dare to prattle of a peace that shall not humiliate Germany, I would have this cartoon tattooed, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... a dog—a huge sandy mastiff, with hanging jaws, wet with foam, a great square head, and broad noiseless feet. It shambles nearer, appearing so suddenly out of the gloom that it seems to materialise before her vision. It watches her as if about to spring; she cannot remember it is ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... those crushed against the wall hurtled forward, driving the others; men were lifted and hurled at us; others gripped at our feet; by sheer force of numbers they swept us backward. It was hand to hand, neither side having time to reload their weapons. The smoke rose, permitting a view of the shambles. There was a tangle of arms, a jumble of faces. They were maddened beasts, desperate, revengeful. Hands clutched at us, gun butts were thrust into our faces, the crush too dense to permit of their being swung overhead. My Dragoons had their sabres out, and stood ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish

... concurrence of power and success with justice and prudence, public actions do not attain their proper, great, and noble character. For as Hippomachus the wrestling-master affirmed, he could distinguish his scholars at a distance. though they were but carrying meat from the shambles, so it is very probable that the principles of those who have had the same good education should appear with a resemblance in all their actions, creating in them a certain harmony and proportion, at ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... of a place was that court where Daniel was? Half shambles and half pigsty. Luxury, sensuality, lust, self-seeking, idolatry, ruthless cruelty, and the like were the environment of this man. And in the middle of these there grew up that fair flower of a character, pure and stainless, by the acknowledgment ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... relates the circumstance, he exposes the "atrocious conduct" of the English at the surrender of Toulon. The cruelty of these barbarians not being sufficiently gratified by dispatching the patriots the shortest way, they hung up many of them by their chins on hooks at the shambles, and left them to die at their leisure.—See "Mitraillades, Fusillades," a recriminating pamphlet, addressed by Tallien to Collot d'Herbois.—The title alludes to ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... had been shattered into a million fragments and the inner fortification toppled over, the precious press had miraculously escaped injury. But in a strewn circle, outside, lay rent corpses, and the wounded pitifully striving to crawl from that shambles. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... was certainly very different from the city of to-day, which is mainly of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries where it is not quite modern. Then each family had its tower, from which it fought or out of which it issued, making the streets a shambles as it followed the enemy home or sought him out. The ordinary citizen must have had an anxious time of it with these bands of idle cut-throats at large. But by the close of the twelfth century the towers, at any rate, had been destroyed ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... with a cry of death, Blow over the western bay: The sunshine is gone from the desolate girl, And before is the doomster-day, And the saw-dust red with the heart's-blood shed In the shambles ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... the other has conducted you hither, and that your best hope of peace, safety, and happiness, is to be gone, with the least possible delay, from a place which is always a sty for swine, and often a shambles." So saying, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... with silver locks Will lift his weary face to say: 'War was a fiend who stopped our clocks Although we met him grim and gay.' And then he'll speak of Haig's last drive, Marvelling that any came alive Out of the shambles that men built And smashed, to cleanse the world of guilt. But the boys, with grin and sidelong glance, Will think, 'Poor grandad's day is done.' And dream of those who fought in France And lived in time to share ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... had become a shambles, though here and there were little knots of Christaudins fighting for their lives. Again and again I strove to cut a way through, but it was impossible. For a moment, however, we found a breathing space. For one little moment ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by "baseness", by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornaments, dug from among the damps and ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson

... there no relief? That ruthless thief and murderer fell, Who to his shambles beareth down All, all we ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... providing it be done with decorum and with a proper respect for the opinions of their adversaries? Why then do we or they employ, through the press and in rhetorical bombast, opprobrious epithets, fit only for the pot-house or the shambles? Shall we men and citizens, each of us a pillar upholding the crowning dome of our nationality, be taught, like vexed and querulous children, the impotence of personal abuse? Why seek to lay upon the head of this Cabinet officer or that, this Senator or that, the responsibility of temporary military ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the cruelty with which they were often treated. An accidental murmur, a cough, a sneeze, was punished with rods. Mute, motionless, fasting, the slaves had to stand by while their masters supped; A brutal and stupid barbarity often turned a house into the shambles of an executioner, sounding with scourges, chains, and yells.[20] One evening the Emperor Augustus was supping at the house of Vedius Pollio, when one of the slaves, who was carrying a crystal goblet, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... recommended him to a painter in search of a model for the Good Shepherd of traditional art. In eliminating undesirable specimens from the flock, Snarley was as ruthless as Nature; and when the butcher's man drove them off to the shambles he would watch their departure without a qualm. It was certainly said that he would never slaughter a sheep with his own hands, not even when death was merciful; on the other hand, he would sternly execute, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... some two miles from the top of the snow divide which fills the Gateway we camped, thankful to rest, but more thankful still that we need drive those weary ponies no more. Their rest was near. It was a horrid business, and the place was known as Shambles Camp. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... can have place; to burn up the juices of the system in the fires of lust is madness and wanton folly, but it can be done. To divert the currents of life and energy from blood and brain, from memory and muscle, in order to secrete it for the shambles of prostitution, is death to true manhood; but remember, it can be done! The generous liquid life may inspire the brain and blood with noble impulse and vital force, or it may be sinned away and drained out of the system until the jaded brain, the faded cheek, the enervated ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... virtue. Now at opposed Abydos naught was heard 90 But bleating flocks, and many a bellowing herd, Slain for the nuptials; cracks of falling woods; Blows of broad axes; pourings out of floods. The guilty Hellespont was mix'd and stained With bloody torrents[118] that the shambles rained; Not arguments of feast, but shows that bled, Foretelling that red night that followed. More blood was spilt, more honours were addrest, Than could have graced any happy feast; Rich banquets, triumphs, every pomp employs 100 His sumptuous hand; no miser's ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... my usual rambles, Passing along Whitechapel's ancient shambles, Where meat was hung in many a joint and quarter, I had to halt awhile, like other folks, To let a killing butcher coax A score of lambs and fatted sheep to slaughter. A sturdy man he looke'd to fell an ox, Bull-fronted, ruddy, with a formal streak Of well-greased ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... lamentably neglected a great duty of his place. It must have been remarked with astonishment, as a matter almost inexplicable, how it has arisen that so many gallant men, at the head of every regiment, should have suffered themselves to be slaughtered like sheep in a butcher's shambles. Surely five-and-twenty or thirty men, in youthful vigour, many of them capital shots, could easily have shot down 150 of the cowardly sepoys. So much work they could have finished with their revolvers. More than one amongst the ladies, in this hideous struggle, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... the Market Place, between Scotch Street amid English Street, were half a hundred men and boys in blouses, seated on the overhanging roof of the wooden shambles. They were shouting sorry jests at half a dozen hoydenish women who looked out of the windows of a building raised on pillars over a well, known ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... great sparks flew up, and the sails fell over the burning wreck, and at that a million more sparks flew up, and the ground was strewn with burning wood and men. I prayed God forgive me, and kneeling with my back to that fiery shambles, I saw lights on the road; a welcome sight. It was a company coming towards me, and scarce two furlongs off. I hobbled towards them. Ere I had gone far I heard a swift step behind me. I turned. One had escaped; how escaped, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... first to hand, intending to make short work of it. This is their peace budget, and as to war, they have some rude notions on that subject, too;—some dim impression that nature intended them for some other ends than to be sold in the shambles, as the purchase of some lordly chieftain's title. There's an incipient statesmanship struggling there in that rude mass, though it does not as yet get fairly expressed. It will take the tribuneship and the refinements ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... regular shambles. Ken was amazed at the ruin wrought by the one small bomb. Three men lay dead in the bottom. One had his head almost blown off. Fortunately, perhaps, Ken had no time to dwell on such horrors. With all possible speed he got the remaining bomb out, and with a handkerchief ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges

... thought of this from Henry's heart, To make a shambles of the parliament-house! Cousin of Exeter, frowns, words, and threats Shall be the war ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... sign of coming up any more; they had seen enough of that narrow way and of the red swordsman who awaited them in the doorway round the corner. Indeed it was a bad place for attackers, since they could not shoot with arquebuses or arrows, but must pass in to be slaughtered like sheep at the shambles in the dim room beyond. So, being cautious men who loved their lives, they took a ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... He, of course, wished to win the victory with the least possible loss to himself, and acted accordingly. His conduct in the action itself could not be improved upon.] The carnage on board the Essex had now made her decks look like shambles. One gun was manned three times, fifteen men being slam at it; its captain alone escaped without a wound. There were but one or two instances of flinching; the wounded, many of whom were killed by flying splinters while under the hands of the doctors, cheered on their comrades, and ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... that their wounds can't be dressed. They are all patient, as usual, only the groans are heartbreaking sometimes. We are arranging to have soup given to them, and a number of ambulance men arrived who will remove them to hospital ships and trains. But the goods-shed is a shambles, and let ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... not wish to appear over-bloodthirsty, or to pretend for one moment that war is a gigantic and continuous shambles. It is not. But the essence of war is man power, and the points are scored by putting men out of action, without being put out of action yourself. The idea may not be nice—but war is not nice: ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... I was at that day was to lay in a good stock of hemp, and afterwards, as my family had eaten no flesh meat a long time, I went to the shambles, and bought something ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... blowing sacrifice to those great twin idols of fleshy lust, Tallow and Lard. If, therefore, a stock-raiser has not decided to drive his Shorthorn cow or Southdown ewe immediately from the Fair-grounds to the butcher's shambles, he runs an imminent risk of losing entirely the use and value of the animal. So great is this risk, that much of the stock that would be most useful for exhibition is withheld, and can only be ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... determined at all hazards to force a passage across the sierra in the face of the enemy. "Better lose our lives," said the grand master of St. James, addressing his men, "in cutting a way through the foe, than be butchered without resistance, like cattle in the shambles." [27] ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... Puxieux of my early friends of the Saxon Army Corps. Since in the battle of the previous day some 32,000 men had fallen killed or wounded within a comparatively small area, it may be imagined—or rather, without having seen the horror of carnage it cannot be imagined—how shambles-like was the aspect of this Aceldama. Scrambling up through the Bois la Dame with intent to obtain a wider view from the plateau above it, I found in a farmyard in the hamlet of Mariaville a number ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... mechanically and without resistance. The executioner's assistants seized upon them, dragging them into an open space, as if, instead of human beings, they had been merely dumb animals, awaiting slaughter in a butcher's shambles. The sans-culottes cheered; the tricoteuses, seated in knots, clapped their hands wildly in savage joy, delighted that more blood was speedily to be spilled. It was an appalling ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet









Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |