"Deathblow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expressions of popular opinion in their favour. If the changes which had taken place in the structure of Society would have allowed them to act regularly as an independent body upon its intrinsic resources, a deathblow was given to such expectation towards the close of the reign of Queen Anne, when twelve Peers were created in one day. This act, deservedly made one of the articles of impeachment against Lord Oxford, shewed that their sentiments, as a Body, were at the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the power of the Executive chair should take under its care the right of voting, and who should proscribe any portion of our citizens who should carry with them to the polls of election their own opinions, creeds, and doctrines. This would at once be a deathblow to our liberties, and the remedy could only be found in revolution. There can be no excuse or pretext for revolution while the ballot box is free. Our Government is not one of force, but of principle; ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... nature. Then came the flood of Greek literature which the new art of printing carried swiftly to every school in Europe, revealing a new world of poetry and philosophy. Scholars flocked to the universities, as adventurers to the new world of America, and there the old authority received a deathblow. Truth only was authority; to search for truth everywhere, as men sought for new lands and gold and the fountain of youth,—that was the new spirit which awoke in Europe with the Revival ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... too?" the parson exclaimed. The effect of this was like a deathblow. "And to think that I was as sure of Ingmar Ingmarsson as I had ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... as according to the vulgar superstition the tail of a snake that has been killed wiggles till sundown, so this book of Mallock's is merely a false show of life made by a theory that received its deathblow long since. It is the wiggling of the tail of the snake that Herbert Spencer killed thirty years ago with his little book "The Study of Sociology." The environment philosophy in one form or another has come to occupy the entire field of human thought. We now look ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... country as it passed, returning deathblow for deathblow and conflagration for conflagration, so that hearing one after another of these outrages Captain Poul demanded reinforcements from M. de Broglie and M. de ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not move! The first cut with the sword had utterly disabled it; the second was its deathblow. The arteries of the leg were divided, and the blood spouted in jets from the wounds. I wished to terminate its misery by a bullet behind the ear, but Taher Sherrif begged me not to fire, as the elephant would quickly bleed to death without pain, and an unnecessary shot might ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... He expected, as he assures us, that this candid avowal would cause him to be 'torn in pieces.' It provoked on the contrary general applause, and Owen congratulated himself rather hastily on having struck the deathblow of superstition. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... the Athenian fleet in the harbor of Syracuse was the ruin of Athens. When the news reached Greece, many of her dependencies revolted, the Peloponnesian war had broken out anew, and she had no strength left to hold her own. The deathblow was given when a Spartan admiral destroyed all that was left of the Athenian navy at AEgospotami in the year 405. Thereafter Athens was merely a conquered province, permitted to keep a fleet of only twelve ships, and watched by a garrison of ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... knew whether I felt glad or sorry at this sentence. On the one hand, it was almost a deathblow to my future advancement or employment in the service; on the other, the recommendation very much softened down the sentence, and I was quite happy to be quit of Captain Hawkins, and free to hasten to my poor sister. I bowed respectfully to the court, which immediately ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... with which the young speaker turned to account the recent trial for sedition, and death in prison, of Smith, the Demerara missionary; an event which was fatal to Slavery in the West Indies in the same degree as the execution of John Brown was its deathblow in the United States. "When this country has been endangered either by arbitrary power or popular delusion, truth has still possessed one irresistible organ, and justice one inviolable tribunal. That organ ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... day of Judgment, dies irae, fall of the curtain; goal, destination; limit, determination; expiration, expiry[obs3], extinction, extermination; death &c. 360; end of all things; finality; eschatology. break up, commencement de la fin, last stage, turning point; coup de grace, deathblow; knock-out, -blow; sockdolager* [obs3][U.S.]. V. end, close, finish, terminate, conclude, be all over; expire; die &c. 360; come-, draw- to a -close &c. n.; have run its course; run out, pass away. bring to an -end &c. n.; put an end to, make an end of; determine; get through; achieve &c. (complete) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Saadia, Bahya, Ibn Zaddik and others moved in the circle of ideas of the Mohammedan Mutakallimun, that period had long since been passed. Judah Halevi criticized the Kalam, Ibn Daud is a thorough Aristotelian, and Maimonides gave the Kalam in Jewish literature its deathblow. No Rabbanite after Maimonides would think of going back to the old arguments made popular by the Mutakallimun—the theory of atoms, of substance and accident in the Kalamistic sense of accident as a quality which needs continuous ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... one and the same book will impress different minds. That which struck the present writer most forcibly on his first perusal of the "Origin of Species" was the conviction that Teleology, as commonly understood, had received its deathblow at Mr. Darwin's hands. For the teleological argument runs thus: an organ or organism (A) is precisely fitted to perform a function or purpose (B); therefore it was specially constructed to perform that function. In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... one Ned Land, a gigantic Canadian of forty, who was considered to be the prince of harpooners. Many a whale had received its deathblow from him, and he was eager to flesh his harpoon in this redoubtable cetacean which had terrified the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... occasioned much individual hardship. But this was only the fortune of war, the necessary consequence of party ascendancy. The Restoration was much more than a triumph of the party of the royalists over that of the roundheads; it was the deathblow to national aspiration, to all those aims which raise man above himself. It destroyed and trampled under foot his ideal. The Restoration was a moral catastrophe. It was not that there wanted good men among the churchmen, men as pious and virtuous as the Puritans whom ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Green has said, an English monarch as much the creature of an act of Parliament as the pettiest taxgatherer in his realm (S497). But it was a still greater revolution in another way, since it gave a deathblow to the direct "personal monarchy," which began with the Tudors two hundred years before. It is true that in George III's reign we shall see that power temporarily revived, but we shall never hear anything more of that Divine ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... the back of a youth who, quick to see the apostles' displeasure, reaches out an arm to stay the sacrifice. His hand nearly touches the shoulder of the sturdy priest in front, who is lifting his axe to deal the deathblow to the sacrificial ox. The priest's up-raised hand is brought near the elbow of Paul, behind whom stands his fellow apostle. Thus there is a continuous chain extending across the picture to link together those who make up the plot of the story. The most attractive face ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... knowledge, is the real peril of a teacher, and which is his fatal peril—the ignorance of his own ignorance, and a consequent claim to teach where he does not know. In human schools the betrayal of that sort of ignorance is a deathblow to confidence, not only in some special utterance, but in the teacher, for it strikes at his claim not to knowledge so much as to wisdom, to balance and insight of thought. I venture to say that recent drifts of speculation shew how rapidly the conception of a fallible Christ developes ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... last passenger over the edge of the boat, when a sudden faintness, produced by the excessive heat and fatigue, overpowered him. He tottered backward and fell, striking his head violently upon some object in the bottom of the boat. It was a deathblow. ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... before, an English army had come over to Canada and conquered it. That was a deathblow to French settlements in the middle west. They dared no longer resist English colonists pushing on them from the east. All that chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie down to the Ohio—Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, Ligonier—had been given up to ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... to receive the fruits at harvest time at a much lower price than is current in the market. Surely the cura who embarks in these speculations not only fails in his most sacred duty, [103] but even gnaws at and gives a deathblow to the principal base upon which rests the prestige and veneration enjoyed by the religious of Filipinas. Nothing infuses these weak and greedy islanders with so much love, surprise, and respect as does contempt for gold and for earthly goods. The generous minister, he who gives, will ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... eighteen feet long. Its horns were thicker than an elephant's tusks curled and twisted. The King said that whoever would kill the Dun Cow should be made a knight and receive a great deal of land and money. Guy went out to meet him and after a fearful encounter was able to deal a deathblow with his battle-axe behind ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... it now struggled to get up, almost succeeding, but fell back each time. With the ardour of battle still glowing in him, Jonathan rushed forward with the axe, and finally managed to deal the moose a deathblow; with a knife they then bled it, and stood ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... of the rocky pass. Sieglinde is rushing toward them, when a sudden glare blinds her. In the light, Bruennhilde is seen hard at Siegmund's side, defending him with her shield. "Strike home, Siegmund! Trust to the victorious sword!" Siegmund raises his sword for a deathblow to Hunding, when a fiery beam drops through the storm-cloud; in the red glow of it is distinguished the form of Wotan at Hunding's side, holding his spear between the combatants. His voice is heard, terrible: "Back from the spear! To pieces, the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... was as fruitless as his threats of vengeance; a feigned submission of the conquerors completed the royal humiliation, and the barons knelt before Edward in Westminster Hall to receive a pardon which seemed the deathblow of the royal power. But if Edward was powerless to conquer the baronage he could still by evading the observance of the Ordinances throw the whole realm into confusion. The two years that follow Gaveston's death are among the darkest in our history. A terrible succession of famines intensified ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... by a too free allusion to their doings. Further, the anecdotes told of them must not be to their disadvantage in any way which would wound the susceptibilities of the living. These mortifying restrictions are, for all those who respect them, a deathblow to the most entertaining, perhaps the most instructive, part of what the memoir-writer has to tell. During the last ten years of his life the late Lord Wemyss amused himself by writing memoirs of his own distinguished activities, and on repeated occasions, when I stayed with him for a week ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... gave the deathblow to Abdel-Kadir, whom the Emperor of Morocco undertook to proclaim an outlaw. The real treaty of peace had been signed at Tangier, at Isly, and at Mogador. We had no object, once we had gained those victories, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the cattle. In his youth, he was addicted to poaching, and being, on one occasion, when in the act of roasting a chamois, surprised by four Bavarian Jaeger, he unhesitatingly dashed the melted fat of the animal into their faces, and, quick as lightning, dealt each of them a deathblow with ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... his perch the herald proclaimed that I was Phorbas, the slave of Pompeianus Falco of Carthage and Rome, who had plotted his master's death in order sooner to gain freedom from his testament, and had himself dealt Falco his deathblow. The populace jeered and booed ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... On May 16, he was commissioned major-general, and on the twenty-second was saluted as the commander of Fortress Monroe. Two days later, he gave to the country the expressive phrase "contraband of war," which proved the deathblow of American slavery. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... nothing done for the Bank, and nothing ever was done for it. When its charter expired in 1836, it got another from Pennsylvania, and kept going for some years. But Jackson had given it a deathblow. It fell into dangerous financial practices, failed, started again, failed a second time, staggered to its feet once more, and then went down in ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... Bersi; and took up his other sword, Whitting, two-handed, and smote Thorkel his deathblow. Then ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown |
