"Dire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... implements, and the savage actions of cruelty, address themselves to the latent barbarism which lies as the lowest stratum of our many piled nature, and receive the savage response at the moment we blush for humanity. These dire images of the murderer's story were stronger than those of the Bernards—even of those lovely faces on the wall—and as the candle burned down, and the red wick grew up, I read and read on, how the cruel fiend did destroy while she fawned upon her victim; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... astonishment was unbounded. I, perhaps I only, completely relished all her reasonings, and I thought her perfectly justified in replying to the pathetic mournings over departed liberty, "Et vous comptez pour rien la liberte de dire tout cela, et meme devant les domestiques!" She concluded by heartily wishing us a little taste of real adversity to cure us of our plethora of ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... everything comfortable in the way of furniture; all her clothing but one respectable suit for the street, and the only thing remaining, that pointed to the history of better days, was a pair of gold eye-glasses, given her by her dying mother. Within a few months her dire necessity had often pointed to the glasses; but she could not see without them, nor could she sell the gold frames unless she had means to have the glass set in commoner ones. Moreover, the harpies who feed and thrive on the miseries ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... side of the river to fall back upon, since the Maid's counsel of destruction had not been followed. But once dislodged from the south bank, and Orleans would lie open to the support of her friends in the south, and the position of the English army would be one of dire peril. For now the French were no more cowed by craven fear of the power of their enemies. They had found them capable of defeat and overthrow; the spell was broken. And it was the ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... shouts of the most enthusiastic greeting fell upon their ears. When the names of Vergniaud, Brissot, and others of the leading Girondists were mentioned, clinched fists, brandished daggers, and angry menaces declared that those who refused to obey the wishes of the people should encounter dire revenge. The very sentinels placed to guard the deputies encouraged the mob to insult and violence. The lobbies were filled with the most sanguinary ruffians of Paris. The interior of the hall was dimly lighted. A chandelier, suspended from the center of the ceiling, illuminated ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... race! Then, as if at that signal, the clouds began to muster in ominous blackness; the deceitful sunlight disappeared; the rain came down for the day—a steady, noiseless, malicious rain, that at once forbade all hope of clear weather. Dire was the discomfiture of the poor ladies of Looe. They ran hither and thither for shelter, in lank wet muslin and under dripping parasols, displaying, in the lamentable emergency of the moment, all sorts of interior contrivances for expanding around them the exterior magnificence ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... at each other in despair, and it was terrible to each, in this dire emergency, to meet only the beautiful eyes of perfect strangers, instead of the merry, friendly, commonplace, twinkling, jolly little eyes of its ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... prevailing prejudice which condemns immorality more harshly when the results are evident. Arson and theft form only 2%. Such cases are however possible. A young girl, whom my father had under observation in prison, seeing her family in dire poverty, committed arson in order to get the ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... or camp, or menial berths on a railroad, while at least one victim, too cowardly to leave the field, had haunted the lunch counters, hotel lobbies, and race-tracks for months, preying on friends and acquaintances alike until dire poverty forced him into crime, and a stone cell and a steel grille ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Halifax!" shouted Anderson, but his heart was cold. Something told him that Harry Squires was right. He drove home in a state of dire uncertainty and distress. Somehow, his ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... language of more than one gentleman at the opening of this contest,—"that he was willing to try the war for a year or two, and, if it did not succeed, then to vote for peace." As if war was a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic! As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear in her hand and her Gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves where it found a nation. It is never to be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... arrival in May, 1622, "without a bite of bread," of sixty-seven other persons, sent out on his own account under a grant from the Council for New England, by Thomas Weston, one of the partners, plunged them into dire distress, from which they were happily saved by a ship-captain, John Huddleston, from the colony on James River, who shared his supplies with them, and thus enabled them to "make shift till corn was ripe again." Weston's emigrants were a loose ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... the scene was something quite unutterable. The firing party marched off and drew up in the courtyard of the prison. I told them how deeply all ranks felt the occasion, and that nothing but the dire necessity of guarding the lives of the men in the front line from the panic and rout that might result, through the failure of one individual, compelled the taking of such measures of punishment. A young lad in the firing ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... alone, entirely alone, here in the orangery whither she had taken her dead child the night before. Archie, seeing that he could not persuade her immediately to leave the cheerless spot, spoke of other things. He was voluble about the cause of the fire, hinting at a dire "anarchistic" plot of some discharged workingmen. There was much talk in their neighborhood at this time of the efforts of "anarchists" to destroy rich people's property by incendiary fires. Adelle, with her face turned to the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... who would be foremost To lead such dire attack? But those behind cried "Forward!" And those before cried "Back!" And backward now and forward Wavers the deep array; And on the tossing sea of steel To and fro the standards reel; And the victorious ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... can tell one where to search then, and where to dredge, I hope. I have set my heart on a fortnight's work here, and have been dreaming at night, like a child before a Twelfth-night party, of all sorts of impossible hydras, gorgons and chimaeras dire, fished up ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... wireless installation, and he very shrewdly suspected that that meant something much more serious and important than "Sparks" swapping good-nights with some other operator—that, in short, it meant nothing less than that most urgent of all wireless calls, the S.O.S. of a ship in dire distress summoning other ships to her aid. Further than that, although the work of preparing the boats for lowering was proceeding in a perfectly quiet and orderly manner, Dick was conscious, even above the roar of escaping steam, of a strenuous ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... crush in the outset any disposition to oppose his will, grew violent and threatened his daughter with dire punishment if she were ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... gods and heroes, there would surely creep into their hearts a shadow—the thought that whatever the years of their lives, and whatever the generous deeds, there would for them, as women, be no escape at the last from the dire mists of Hela, the fogland beyond the grave for all such as die not in battle; no escape for them from Hela, and no place for ever for them or for their kind among the glory-crowned, sword-shriven heroes of ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... First of all came in the tea-things—for at Dr. West's the dinner-hour was early—and, next, two young ladies, bearing a great resemblance to each other. It would give them dire offence not to call them young. They were really not very much past thirty, but they were of that class of women who age rapidly; their hair was sadly thin, some of their teeth had gone, and they had thin, flushed faces and large twisted noses; but their blue eyes had a good-natured look in ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and overcome by the passion of love, was a thing so strange, so at conflict with her fixed ideas, as to be all but incredible. In her aunt's presence, she scarcely reflected upon it; she saw only a woman bound to her by natural affection, who had fallen into dire misfortune and wretchedness. Little by little the story grew upon her understanding; the words in which it had been disclosed came back to her, and with a new significance, a pathos hitherto unfelt. She remembered that Olga's mother ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... porphyry, had little of its original surface left; it was a face which had been the plaything of strange fires or pestilences, that had moulded to whatever shape they chose his originally supple skin, and left it pitted, puckered, and seamed like a dried water-course. But though dire catastrophes or the treacherous airs of remote climates had done their worst upon his exterior, they seemed to have affected him but little within, to judge from a certain robustness which showed itself in his manner ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... expected that this act will pass without censure from those who had not an opportunity of knowing and feeling the dire necessity out of which it originated. The laws, however severe in their provision, have never been sufficient to correct a vice which must be established by positive proof, and cannot, like others, be shown from circumstantial testimony. It is practised, too, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... victim's dread; No hand was moved, no word was said, Till thus the Abbot's doom was given, Raising his sightless balls to heaven:- "Sister, let thy sorrows cease; Sinful brother, part in peace!" From that dire dungeon, place of doom, Of execution too, and tomb, Paced forth the judges three, Sorrow it were, and shame, to tell The butcher-work that there befell, When they had glided from the cell Of sin ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... (kililoch, singular - kilil) and 2 self-governing administrations* (astedaderoch, singular - astedader); Adis Abeba* (Addis Ababa), Afar, Amara (Amhara), Binshangul Gumuz, Dire Dawa*, Gambela Hizboch (Gambela Peoples), Hareri Hizb (Harari People), Oromiya (Oromia), Sumale (Somali), Tigray, Ye Debub Biheroch Bihereseboch na Hizboch (Southern ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... To take part in this sport, to get to the river, to plunge into its cooling depths, "Al-f-u-r-d" had a soul-yearning, even more powerful than that of the old well. But he had been sworn, bribed, placed upon his honor and threatened with dire tortures, should he even venture nearer the river than ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... omen, why croak you forth such dire intelligence?" I asked, as he threw off his snow-covered coat, and prepared to join me in my meal with a look which made me fear there were not many more such ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... Independence a fact; there is a glorious band who are fighting for human rights, but the government, with Lincoln at its head, has not a heart-throb for the slave. I want the South to do her own work of emancipation. She would do it only from dire necessity, but the North will do it from no higher motive, and the South will feel less exasperation if she ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... which it wallows. They forget that by its brutal insistence upon physical needs it often preserves from madness, and timely arrests him who goes like a sleep-walker upon the verge of the abyss. Weariness and hunger are like brakes upon the car; they stop the dire momentum of grief, and insure that if misery will again drive us furiously, she must lash winded steeds anew. But what force should stay a disembodied sorrow, which unbreathed by period or alternation of despair, should be rapt onward in the whirlwind and the hurricane, gathering eternally a fresh ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... the athlete rose superior to the persecutions of his torturers, and to save further trouble he was barbarously murdered in his bed on the night of September 21. Piercing shrieks from the interior of the castle told the peasantry that some dire deed was being perpetrated within its gloomy walls. Next day it was announced that the lord Edward had died a natural death, and his corpse was exposed to the public view that suspicion might be averted. He was buried with the state that became a crowned king ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... of every one who had realized God to help all mankind to the same realization. The proposal of Lady Sunderbund had fallen in with that idea. He had been steeling himself to a prospect of struggle and dire poverty, but her prompt loyalty had come as an immense relief to his anxiety for his wife and family. When he had talked to Eleanor upon the beach at Hunstanton it had seemed to him that his course was manifest, perhaps a little severe but by no means impossible. They had sat together in the sunshine, ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... himself. At his right a pretty girl chatted fluently of this, that, and another "series"; and at his left a severe-faced woman with glasses discoursed on the great responsibility of selecting reading for the young, and uttered fearsome prophecies of the dire evil that was sure to ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... aside with the master to discuss the matter, and the ladies went into the drawing-room, the new room opening on the lawn, under a verandah, with French windows. It was full of furniture in the most dire confusion. Mrs. Robert Brownlow wanted to clear off at once the desks and other things that seemed school-room properties, saying that a little room downstairs ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thousand they would ever need such things around Bloomsbury, though there was Lake Sunrise to be reckoned with; but just then it struck the boy that every well equipped aeroplane ought always to carry a couple of rubber rings along, which, in moments of dire necessity could be blown full of air, and would serve to sustain wrecked aviators until ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... artist, was at that time the eccentric and elegant lion of society in Baltimore. "Jack Randolph" had recently sat to him for his portrait. "By the bye [the letter continues] that little 'hydra and chimera dire,' Jarvis, is in prodigious circulation at Baltimore. The gentlemen have all voted him a rare wag and most brilliant wit; and the ladies pronounce him one of the queerest, ugliest, most agreeable little creatures in the world. The consequence is there is not a ball, tea-party, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... le plus profond hommage Voulez-vous qu'infide le on change de langage Vous seule captive mon esprit ou mon coeur Que je puisse dans vos bras seuls gouter le bonheur; Je voudrais, mais en vain, que mon coeur en delire Couche ou ce papier n'oserait vous dire. Avec soin, de ces vers lisez leur premiers mots, Vous verrez quel remede il ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... his matrimonial sufferings, at the most cruel moments of his existence, he still found time to write and warmly recommend to his publisher works written by Hunt and Coleridge, who afterward rewarded all his kindness with the most dire ingratitude. And after praising them greatly, he adds, speaking of one of his own works, "And now let us come to the last, my own, of which I am ashamed to speak after the others. Publish it or not, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... unhappier childhood than Anthony Trollope. Born in London on April 24, 1815, his home was made sordid by his father's misfortunes, and at Harrow and Winchester, where he was for nearly eleven years, his mean appearance subjected him to many dire humiliations. A final catastrophe in the fortunes of the elder Trollope drove the family to Belgium, where Anthony for a time acted as usher in a school at Brussels. But at the age of nineteen a Post-office appointment brought ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... as the consequence of such conduct the destruction of his intelligence. The destruction of intelligence is followed by heedlessness that is at once destructive of both Virtue and Wealth. From such heedlessness proceed dire atheism and systematic wickedness of conduct. If the king does not restrain those wicked men of sinful conduct, all good subjects then live in fear of him like the inmate of a room within which a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... The dire lack of labor for copra-making, tree-planting, or any form of profitable activity is lamented by all white men in these depopulated islands. Average wages were sixty cents a day, but even a dollar failed to bring adequate relief. The Marquesan detests labor, which to him has ever ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... condition of telegraph rivalry drifted on from bad to worse until 1854, when, from dire necessity of self-preservation, a few of the more prudent and far-sighted proprietors of telegraph property were induced to combine their interests with some of their competitors and thus avoid the ruinous policy which had been so rapidly exhausting ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... of the invaders managed to knock aside a board and get his head in full view. I shivered with terror, but Tempe now grasped the state of the case, and, being "to the manner born," leaped forward to execute dire vengeance on the unfortunate hog. Seizing a burning stick from the fire, she rushed upon the intruder, who had gotten wedged so that advance or retreat was alike impossible. Her angry cries, and the piercing squeals of the hog, roused all in ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... mind, I think you will more readily realize the moral impossibility of our assent, save under the impulse of a last dire necessity, to a Disunion Peace, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the war. Seeing that the Italian Government and the C.N.I. had shown themselves so powerless, were France and England going to turn the poet out? But Mr. Lloyd George was more fortunate than Disraeli, whose error in the question of Bosnia and Herzegovina had had such dire results; on February 13, a very firm note was issued by President Wilson, which compelled France and Great Britain to withdraw from the position they had taken up. Wilson would have nothing to do with the notorious ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... is the most and the best that the present discussion can possibly hope to accomplish. Very many, perhaps most, teachers in the traditional school do their teaching with reference to the next examination. They remind their pupils daily of the on-coming examination and remind them of the dire consequences following their failure to attain the passing grade of seventy. They ask what answer the pupil would give to a certain question if it should appear in the examination. If they can somehow get their pupils to surmount that barrier of seventy at promotion time, they seem quite willing ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... Wise (1364-1380), undertook to restore prosperity to the French kingdom. He reformed the coin, the debasement of which was a dire grievance to the burghers. Against the free lances in the service of Charles of Navarre, the king sent bands of mercenary soldiers under Du Guesclin, a valiant gentleman of Brittany, who became one of the principal heroes of the time. The war lasted for a year, and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Boy tries to forget—The Boy's daily practice of half an hour on the piano borrowed by The Boy's mother from Mrs. Bates for that dire purpose. Mrs. Bates's piano is almost the only unpleasant thing associated with Red Hook in all The Boy's experience of that happy village. It was pretty hard on The Boy, because, in The Boy's mind, Red Hook should have been a place of unbroken delights. ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... Utterly vanquished by the dire result of his apparently inhuman thoughtlessness, Alfred glanced at Aggie, uncertain as to how to ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... Then, in his dire need, a cunning, artful idea occurred to the tailor, and he exclaimed, "Look! there come the huntsmen!" and as the wolf turned round in alarm, the tailor leaped on to his back, and held his hands tightly over ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... captives tous les suffrages, Tes talens sont cheris des dieux; Puisse ton nom, dans tous les ages, S'immortaliser avec eux! D'Apollon recois cette lyre, Pour chanter au sacre vallon; Dans tes mains meme on pourra dire, C'est toujours cette d'Apollon!"] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Where the lay of the land is such that water readily runs off, or the soil is of a character that permits rapid absorption, throwing slops on the ground around the house may not constitute a danger to the inmates, but nothing is more certain than that the old fashioned privy is a dire menace to the health of ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... accompanied by the inevitable entourage, some of us gathered around his motor-car which was covered with dust. While one or two were chatting with the chauffeur one of the party slipped a letter, pointing out our dire straits and describing how famished we were, beneath the ambassador's seat, and in such a manner as to compel his attention upon re-entering the automobile. Another prisoner, with his finger, scrawled ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... better arm and shoulder showing bare With each; and on the neck of each, draped fair A scarf of saffron, patched; and, 'twixt the eyes, In saffron stamped, the Name of mysteries OM; and the Swastika, with secrets rife How man may 'scape the dire ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... again would I risk the ordeal of a surprise stocktaking; never again would I risk a combat with a ledger-fortified sergeant; never again would I risk any attempt at the tortuous in my dealings with the classifications of the eighty-one items on the tear-off leaf of that dire volume, the ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... Indian Pundits, or the more chaotic clouds of thy German philosophies—in none of them wilt thou ever find this divine thought, an end of destructions—a perpetual end. Cycles of ruin and renovation, and of renovation and ruin, vast cycles, if you will, but evermore ending in dire catastrophies to gods and men—an everlasting succession of death and destructions—is the fearful vista which all the religions of man, and thine own irreligion, present to thy terrified vision. But thou wast created in the image of the living God, and durst not ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... curtain of vindicative fire, and see what this pain of loss is like; I say, what it is like, for it fortunately surpasses human imagination to conceive its dire reality. Suppose that we could see the huge planets and the ponderous stars whirling their terrific masses with awful, and if it might be so, clamorous velocity, and thundering through the fields of unresisting space with furious gigantic momentum, such as the mighty avalanche most feebly ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... His threat was dire enough, for such was his size and strength that he held the colored man nearly nine feet from the ground, and a fall from that distance would seriously jar Eradicate, if it did nothing else. The colored man's eyes opened wide as he heard what Koku ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... Nelia Crele believe that she was in jeopardy from man; but it was a little hurricane, or, as the river people call them, cyclones, that menaced. Dire as was the confusion and imminent as was the peril, Nelia felt a sense of relief from what would have been harder to bear—an attack by men. She had searched the map for information, but it was the river which inspired her to understand that the hurricane was her deliverance ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... was the representative of the lucky English Burrells and the Welsh Gwydyrs, one of whom had married a Maid of Honour to Catharine of Aragon, and come to grief, because, unlike her royal mistress, she and her husband adopted the Protestant religion, and fell into dire disgrace in the reign of Bloody Mary. The Drummonds. like the Murrays and unlike the Campbells, had been staunch Jacobites. The mother of the first and last Duke of Perth caused the old castle to be blown up after ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Saint Siege une Rose d'Or du poids de deux onces Romaines. Elle l'envoyera toute faite, ou en envoyera la matiere preparee, de telle sorte qu'elle soit rendue au Pape huit jours auparavant qu'il la porte, c'est-a-dire, le Dimanche de Careme, ou l'on chante a l'Introite, 'Oculi mei semper ad Dominum;' afin qu'il puisse benir au Dimanche 'Laetare,' qui est le quatrieme du Careme. Telle est l'origine de la Rose d'Or, que le ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... convey a correct idea of the dire effects of this failure to my reader will be to detail several conversations that took place in regard to it ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... general fight, in which every man attacked his neighbor. Such scenes were the most bloody, and therefore the most exciting. A conflict of this kind would always destroy the greatest number in the shortest time. The arena presented a scene of dire confusion. Five hundred armed men in the prime of life and strength all struggled confusedly together. Sometimes they would all be interlocked in one dense mass; at other times they would violently separate into widely ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... "Oh, dire tragedy!" And he stretched himself out on the turf with his arms above his head—"But what does it matter! Give me your news, silly child! What did the 'little wonderful ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... end Mrs. Lister recovered, owing her life entirely to the fortunate circumstance that at the moment of losing consciousness she had apparently been able to project a visual phantasm of herself before the window of our tea-room. She was a friend of my mother's, and no doubt in her dire extremity had longed for her company. This longing in Mrs. Lister, in some way unknown to us, probably produced the appearance which startled my mother and led to her prompt appearance on the scene ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... Troy has felt The dire effects of her proud tyrant's guilt;— An Umpire partial and unjust, And a lewd woman's impious lust, Lay heavy on her head, and sunk her to the ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... mad Englishman, to be sure! When people, driven by dire necessity, had their heart in their mouth at the very notion of encountering that rough sea, here was a person who thought of crossing and returning for no reason on earth—a trifling compliment to ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... direful lamentations, And what revelations dire, Ceaseless from their lips would echo, Tossed ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... would, hasten as she would, she could not outstrip him nor escape from him. Then, when came the time for transformation, when the woman's form made no longer a shield against a man's hand, he could slay or be slain to save Sweyn. He had struck his dear brother in dire extremity, but he could not, though reason ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... But when he arrived at that dread place, his sense suddenly seemed to return. He looked hastily round the throng that swayed and murmured below, and a faint flush rose to his cheek: he cast his eyes impatiently above, and breathed hard and convulsively. The dire preparations were made, completed; but the prisoner drew back for an instant—was it from mortal fear? He motioned to the Clergyman to approach, as if about to whisper some last request in his ear. The clergyman bowed his head,—there was a minute's awful pause—Aram seemed to ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and relevant, but it must in some degree be a specialized memory. It must minister to the particular needs and requirements of its owner. Small consolation to you if you are a Latin teacher, and are able to call up the binomial theorem or the date of the fall of Constantinople when you are in dire need of a conjugation or a declension which eludes you. It is much better for the merchant and politician to have a good memory for names and faces than to be able to repeat the succession of English monarchs ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... wrong one in his haste, and as he opened the door he saw a comical vision of a stout little old gentleman huddling into the farther corner in the most dire consternation. ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... certain, and it consummated in a kindred mind. The deepest expression of human feeling, the agony of the dire distress and conflict of life, the calm majesty of faith which enables the soul to overcome every obstacle, its pathetic appeal to God for rest and comfort, the strength of victory, are possible in music, are expressed in music as no other art can express ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Naval Tactics, quotes Tromp's formation as a typical method of retreat; but his account is vitiated by what seems a curious mistake. He says: 'Il rangea son armee en demi-lune et il mit son convoi au milieu: c'est a dire que son vaisseau faisait au vent l'angle obtus de la demi-lune, et les autres s'etendoient de part (sic) et d'autre sur les deux lignes du plus- pres pour former les faces de la demi-lune qui couvroient le convoi. Ce fut en cet ordre ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... presidente discovered my intention, he insisted upon supplying a mounted and armed escort, and at the same time gave me a general letter to the eleven towns, in which strict orders were given that my wishes should be respected, and dire threats made in case any one should show me aught but the greatest consideration. Ignacio accompanied me. Riding through the towns, we passed far enough beyond Huancito to see the most remote of the eleven ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... awe of him) she grew familiarised to his peculiar cast of character and thought, so the more she began to distrust her father's assertion, that he had insisted on her hand as a price—a bargain—an equivalent for the sacrifice of a dire revenge. And with this thought came another. Was she worthy of this man?—was she not deceiving him? Ought she not to say, at least, that she had known a previous attachment, however determined she might ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bloodshed. Most of them, no doubt, do regret the terrible deeds committed by mobs on helpless and innocent people, but it is a question as to whether or not they would be suffered by public sentiment to "cry aloud" against them. It takes moral courage to face any evil, but it must be faced or dire consequences will follow of its own breeding. Our last word then, is an appeal to our BROTHERS IN WHITE, in the pulpit, that they should rally the people together for justice and; condemn mob violence. The Negroes do not ask social equality, but ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... knew his employer well enough to be positive that nothing short of an act of God would prevent his doing what he had planned to do. I was also aware of the fact that the sending apparatus of the Toreador's wireless equipment was sealed, and that it would only be used in event of dire necessity. There was, therefore, nothing to do but ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... greyhounds used to be a popular sport in South Africa, but when my husband and I were in Kimberley in 1892, Mr. Fenn was establishing a pack of foxhounds. I fear the Jameson Raid and its dire results have sadly disturbed the harmony ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... was Caesar's intention to give the broken enemy no chance of rallying. In spite of the dire fatigue of his men (who had now been without sleep for two nights, and spent the two succeeding days in hard rowing and hard fighting), he sent forward the least exhausted to press the pursuit. But before the columns thus detailed had got out of sight a message from the camp at Richborough ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... dire distress were we, Under a giant's fierce command; But gained our lives and liberty, ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... it is the essence of Theism to attribute to Him, and which alone could render Him an object of religion, or even of interest, to mankind." Sometimes in accents of wistful {90} wonder, sometimes in tones of revolt and defiant unbelief, the question is asked:—Why does God allow dire calamity, painful disease, earthquakes and shipwrecks, and accidents of the mine? Why does He permit war, or vivisection, or poverty, or vice—in fact any of "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... would not please the Prince. His fate is black. Yesterday I thrice sought his fortune on the burned shoulder blades and with the entrails of sheep and each time came to the same dire result, the same ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... obvious a preliminary might be taken for granted. But alas, even slight acquaintance with the average story-teller proves the dire necessity of the admonition. The halting tongue, the slip in name or incident, the turning back to forge an omitted link in the chain, the repetition, the general weakness of statement consequent on imperfect grasp: these are common features of the stories ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... Dean Tower bowed, murmured some words of loyalty and devotion, and then took his leave. He went the longest way home, avoiding all frequented ways near which Basil might be lurking. Loyalty and treason, lodged in his heart, fought a dire fight, and, thanks to the vision of a pretty face, treason ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Mrs. Birtwell could let him go away in this condition. They felt too deeply their responsibility in the case, and felt also that One who cares for all, even the lowliest and most abandoned, had led him thither in his dire extremity. ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... of that dire Sunday morning differs from that of other assaults only in harrowing details, and the extremity of the pitilessness and ferocity manifested by the conquerors. Charles had previously spared churches, and protected the ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... became necessary to purchase some more fishing-hooks at the grocer's shop, it was their own small store of wealth they had to look to; and so it came about that a penny was something to be seriously considered. When Rob MacNicol had to impose a fine of one penny, he knew it was a dire punishment; and if there was any alternative, the fine was rarely paid. The fund, therefore, which he had started for the purchase of an old and disused set of bagpipes, and which was to be made ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... it; but what word that ever fell from human lips has a meaning full of such intensity of horror as this little word? At its sound there rises up a grim vision of "confused noise and garments rolled in blood." April 12, 1861, cannon fired by traitor hands, boomed out over Charleston harbor. The dire sound that shook the air that Spring morning did not die away in reverberating echoes from sea to shore, from island to headland. It rolled on through all the land, over mountain and valley, moaning in every home, at ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... was lost, her husband cruelly slain, and all her days were filled with grief. But worse befell her, for on a certain day the Saracens came suddenly and took Horn prisoner and carried him away. Godhild escaped, and in her dire distress fled alone to a distant cave, and there lay hid, worshipping her God in secret, and praying that He would save ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... horse jumped as if he had been shot; and the realization darted upon me that here was where the certain something began. Spot—the mustang had one black spot in his pure white—snorted like I imagined a blooded horse might, under dire insult. Jones's bay had gotten about a hundred paces the start. I lived to learn that Spot hated to be left behind; moreover, he would not be left behind; he was the swiftest horse on the range, and proud of the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... pooh-pooh: Although our threats you now pooh-pooh, A dire revenge will fall on you. A dire revenge will fall on you, If you besiege Should he besiege Our high prestige— Your high prestige— (The word "prestige" is French). The ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... he said, "there has been dire devastation here. Perhaps inside things may look better. Come, take my hand and don't be afraid. The floor is level and your eyes will soon get accustomed to ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... privations from cold and hunger, being insufficiently clad and most insufficiently fed. Upon his release after the Armistice, he was examined by a British doctor, who told him, to his amazement, that every trace of his dire disease had vanished, nor were the most eminent specialists of Harley Street subsequently able to distinguish the faintest lingering signs of tuberculosis. He was completely cured, or rather by his strong willpower ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... done her best. But, throughout the whole of the journey to the Strand, her mind was occupied with dire possibilities. It almost alarmed her, this too keen interest which she found herself taking in the fortunes ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... what he could of the old man. Of Jane he only said that she had hitherto lived with the Hewetts' landlady, and was now going to be removed by her grandfather, having just got through an illness. Dire visions of infection at once assailed Mrs. Byass; impossible to admit under the same roof with her baby a person who had just been ill. This scruple was, however, overcome; the two rooms at the top of the ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... likewise to get two ladders ready for carrying water to the roof, and provided nine wine casks filled with tempered clay, ready for daubing up the doors of the gadonge, [godown or fire-proof warehouse,] if need should require in consequence of a conflagration, from which dire necessity may God defend us. All night long, three or four men ran continually backwards and forwards in the streets, calling out for every one to have a care of fire, and making so horrible a noise, that it was both strange and fearful ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... void of Rest, Moulded the brittle Clay in Jest. At last a Fancy very odd Took me, this was the Land of Nod; Planted at first, when Vagrant Cain, His Brother had unjustly slain; Then Conscious of the Crime he'd done From Vengeance dire, he hither run, And in a hut supinely dwelt, The first in Furs and Sot-weed dealt. And ever since his Time, the Place, Has harbour'd a detested Race; Who when they cou'd not live at Home, For refuge to these Worlds did roam; In hopes by Flight they might prevent, ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... of Arestino remained alone to brood over his plans of vengeance. It was horrible—horrible to behold that aged and venerable man, trembling as he was on the verge of eternity, now meditating schemes of dark and dire revenge. But his wrongs were great—wrongs which, though common enough in that voluptuous Italian clime, and especially in that age and city of licentiousness and debauchery, were not the less sure to be followed by a ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... destiny, and then began to cast up all the perfections of good Janet, the more perfect and beautiful these seeming in proportion as he felt the fear of her reappearance, perhaps next time, in place of making his breakfast, to run away with him to the dire place of four letters. All her peculiarities were now virtues—nay, the very things which had appeared to him the most indefensible took on the aspect of angelic endowments. While her careful housewifery was all intended for his bodily ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... strings, the nails, the spools, the wires, and the pulleys, in private they did not hesitate to denounce derisively the scientist's contrivances and assert that some fine day the house on the bluff would come to dire disaster. ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... calculated the probable amount of the expense he would incur by cutting his throat; and now the temptation to destroy him, or to cast him loose upon the world, rushed upon his mind with tenfold force. He was roused from a meditation on these dire imaginings by the sudden appearance of two figures at a turn of the lane. It was Mr. Wardle, and his faithful attendant, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... by dusky cypresses, honeycombed with tombs, and adorned with urns and other sepulchral monuments, surrounds the church. This is a public cemetery, laid out toward the end of the eighteenth century, and fearfully filled in three weeks by the dire pestilence which devastated Sicily in 1837. On the Tuesday following Easter, at the hour of vespers, religion and custom drew crowds of people to this cheerful plain, then carpeted with the flowers of spring. Citizens, wending their way toward the church, divided into numerous ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Monsieur, looking at the card. "Ah, c'est impossible, ma chere," continued he, laughing. "Madame Turnbull se trompait; elle voudrait dire ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dust and all sorts of loose rubbish; tearing out the pages of Bibles and hymn-books to light their pipes, and getting drunk out of the chalice? You would be honestly shocked at such profanity. Nay, even in the dire exigencies of war we do not think better of the Germans for having stabled their horses in one of the French churches and left their broken beer-bottles on the high altar and the refuse of a stable strewn up and ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... bidding him waste no time, but hurry back and tell the sheriff that the Danes would be ashore in half an hour. I spoke as I was wont to speak when I was a thane, forgetting in the dire need of the moment that I was an outlaw now, and the man was ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... miserable chauffeur. Morally, he had given the only possible answer that left open a way of escape, and he had formed a sufficiently shrewd estimate of the relations between his master and the remarkably good-looking young lady whom the said master was serving with exemplary diligence to fear dire consequences to himself if he became the direct cause of a broken idyl. The position was even worse if he fell back on an artistic lie. The Earl was a dour person where servants were concerned, and Salome did not demand John the Baptist's head ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... open violence. They always demand more tribute than they expect to get, and generally use threats as a means of extortion. One of their chiefs, the Lion-Claw, was very troublesome, sending back the presents which had been made him, and threatening dire vengeance if his demands were not complied with. Further on, Monkey's-Tail, another chief, demanded more tribute; but Speke sent word that he should smell his powder if he came for it; and, exhibiting the marksmanship of his men, Monkey's-Tail thought ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... household supplies, &c., became due: these proved to the deluded settler, that, though he had flocks and herds, he had no money, nor could any be got, except at a sacrifice. To a man, they had to sell off and return to their estates, where dire necessity has since compelled them to remain, and where, I hope, renewed prosperity and common sense will induce them ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... and country. Each successive campaign in India, from the first Afghan War to the latest expedition across the Afridi frontier, has furnished the Anglo-Indian writer with a new series of striking incidents that can be used for his heroic deeds and dire catastrophes, for new landscapes and figures, all of them bearing the very form and stamp of impressive reality. If he is artist enough to avoid abusing these advantages, if he is neither an extravagant colourist nor a mere copyist or compiler, he has this ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... gravely, "she is one of us." Then, taking Ramona's hand in both of her own for farewell, she repeated, in a tone as of dire prophecy, "One of us, Alessandro! one of us!" And as she gazed after their retreating forms, almost immediately swallowed and lost in the darkness, she repeated the words again to herself,—"One of us! one of us! Sorrow came to me; she rides ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... name to hide a profound ignorance; no such disease exists or ever did exist. Gale itself is a sufficiently tangible reality, to be sure, but it is a purely local disease of the skin, due to a perfectly definite cause, and the dire internal conditions formerly ascribed to it have really no causal connection with it whatever. This definite cause, as every one nowadays knows, is nothing more or less than a microscopic insect which has found lodgment on the skin, and has burrowed and made itself at home there. Kill ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... at the top of the church was empty throughout Easter Sunday. A heavy gloom reigned at the Vicarage. Avery and the children were in dire disgrace, and Mrs. Lorimer, spent most of the day in tears. She could not agree with the Vicar that they were directly responsible for the Squire's death. Dr. Tudor had been very emphatic in assuring them that what had happened had been the ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... by the banisters, only falling against them, and making them crack from top to bottom once, before he reached the drawing-room landing. He ascended the second flight of stairs without casualties of any kind, until he got to the top step, close by his father's bed-room door. Here, by a dire fatality, the stifled hiccups burst beyond all control; and distinctly asserted themselves by one convulsive yelp, which betrayed Zack into a start of horror. The start shook his candlestick: the extinguisher, which lay loose in it, dropped out, hopped playfully down the stone ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... dire things if he refused to obey, he had been compelled to go up in company with the man who was now their prisoner, a Spaniard, who had once sailed in a balloon and knew something about that type of aviation, though having much ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... prophesying at random. Here is our old guidebook. The road is all mapped out, the way surveyed, by which we march to ruin. All the dire calamities of Greece may be traced to this ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... this wise did Master Jack Cockrell set out to bear a message from comrades in dire distress. Moreover, in his hands were the lives of Joe Hawkridge and those other marooned seamen, as he had every reason to believe. It was a grave responsibility to be thrust upon a raw lad in his teens who had been so carefully nurtured ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... every department of the mediaeval hell. And, as if still further to mark the continuity of thought, here in Orcagna's frescoes at Santa Maria Novella you have every horror of the heathen religion incongruously mingled with every horror of the Christian—gorgons and harpies and chimaeras dire are tormenting the wicked under the eyes of the Madonna; centaurs are shooting and prodding them before the God of Love from the torrid banks of fiery lakes; furies with snaky heads are directing their punishments; Minos and AEacus are superintending their tasks; ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... In its dire distress and need the Papacy has resorted, as a forlorn hope, to the controversial tract system. As an abstract matter this is only fair play. The Pope has had so many millions of tracts published against ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... author to pieces. Not that the act itself was so exorbitant, or of a complexion different from what they themselves would have applauded upon another occasion in a Brutus or an Appius,—but, for want of attending to Antonio's words, which palpably led to the expectation of no less dire an event, instead of being seduced by his manner, which seemed to promise a sleep of a less alarming nature than it was his cue to inflict upon Elvira, they found themselves betrayed into an accompliceship of murder, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... New England in their cars, the motor girls had a strange experience with the gypsies, as set forth in the fourth volume. Cora was in dire straits for a time, but with her usual good luck, and her good sense, she finally turned the situation to the advantage of ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... for company, and daily realising the company and comfort those posts and wires can be. Here at least is something in touch with the world something vibrating with the lives and actions of men, and an ever-present friend in dire necessity. With those wires above him, any day a traveller can cry for help to the Territory, if he call while he yet has strength to climb one of those friendly posts and cut that quivering wire—for help that will come speedily, for the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... would be spared familiar knowledge that such a method of earning money is open to them. I have personally known several instances in which young girls have begun street solicitation through sheer imitation. A young Polish woman found herself in dire straits after the death of her mother. Her only friends in America had moved to New York, she was in debt for her mother's funeral, and as it was the slack season of the miserable sweat-shop sewing she had been doing, ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... questioning I gathered at last that the whole tribe were frightened by a mysterious light waving and flickering from the top of the little mountain that overlooked Wrangell; and they wished me to pray to the white man's God and avert dire calamity. ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... cry of dire alarm was heard, the trampling of an immense body of horse followed—a rush into the hall already filled with smoke—loud outcries and shrieks ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... the low words, and he shivered again a little. He could never grow used to the taking of human life, even in dire necessity. He knew that Willet had spoken the truth, and that the red sharpshooter would fire only one more shot. Soon he had the proof. The second flash came from the same point. Again the bullet glanced among the rocks, but, before the report of the rifle died, another ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... not only did not light but employed all her energies and efforts to extinguish, abhorring to see the death of so many nobles and landed gentlemen. And without that and her commiseration, those who bore against her a mortal enmity would have found themselves in dire straits, themselves laid beneath the sod, and their party not flourishing as it now is. All this must be imputed to her goodness of heart, of which we now stand in sore need—so everybody agrees and the poor people cry: "We no longer have the Queen Mother to make peace for us!" ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... It is a dire calamity that this class of writers have taken hold of the subject of slavery. It is a misfortune that slavery should be presented in a fictitious garb. I fear the consequences. It portends no good to the nation. Slavery is among us, it is ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... had not said something dreadful to encourage him. Without a word she got up, gazed at him a moment with eyes dark from pain, shivered, and slipped away. She went straight to Winton. From her face, all closed up, tightened lips, and the familiar little droop at their corners, he knew something dire had happened, and his eyes boded ill for the person who had hurt her; but she would say nothing except that she was tired and wanted to go home. And so, with the little faithful governess, who, having been silent perforce ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... market-place and forum, counting-house and farm—keeping time to the chime of the music of the Union—marched father, husband and son; into office, store and farm, called there by no ambitious desire to wander out of their sphere, but by the same dire military necessity that called our men to the front stepped orphaned daughter and widowed wife. Anna Dickinson captured the lyceum and platform. The almost classic scene of "Corinne at the Capitol" is not ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... to consider principles of the first magnitude and which may result in the shedding of innocent blood. One of the objects of this meeting is to prevent so dire a calamity. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... heaven, what all this means!' exclaimed Maitland, turning a look of eager inquiry on Mooanam, who stood with characteristic silence and apparent composure, waiting the proper moment to speak. 'Tell me,' cried the distracted father again, 'what dire ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... not thought I could be so tortured in my mind as I was by the dread that she should notice the dire coincidence. ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... helped him swim Than ever in his life he swam before. Delphis passed by Amyntas; Hipparchus was o'ertaken, Cuffed, ducked and shaken; In vain he clung about his angry foe; Held under he perforce let go: I, fearing for his life, set up a whoop To bring cause and effect to thy son's mind, And in dire rage's room his sense returned. He towed Hipparchus back like one he'd saved From drowning, laid him out upon that ledge Where late Amyntas stood, where now he kneeled Shivering, alarmed and mute. Delphis next set the drowned man's ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... have likewise outlived the very laws; so, if this union do pass, as I have no reason to doubt but it will, I may justly affirm I have outlived all the laws, and the very constitution of England: I, therefore, pray to God to avert the dire effects which may probably ensue from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... seek to rescue his prisoner. But Siegfried brandished his good sword Balmung, and with his own strong right hand slaughtered the thirty warriors, all save one. Him the Prince spared that he might carry the dire tidings of the capture of King Ludegast to ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... and mentally exhausted when I was assailed by the black, foul fiend of alcohol, I fell, and fell a second time. I resolved, yea, took an oath the most solemn, that rather than again be overtaken by a disaster so dire, I would have myself entombed within an asylum for the insane. Here at last, I was placed, and here I intend to remain until nature shall restore to my body sufficient strength to resist, with God's help, the next and every attack of my enemy. As God is my witness, I had rather remain ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... necessaries. In these modern days, when distinguished artists make princely fortunes by the exercise of their musical gifts, it is not easy to believe that Mozart, recognized as the greatest pianoforte player and composer of his time by all of musical Germany, could suffer such dire extremes of want as to be obliged more than once to beg for a dinner. In 1791 he composed the score of the "Magic Flute" at the request of Schikaneder, a Viennese manager, who had written the text from a fairy tale, the fantastic elements of which are peculiarly ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... were a menace of known calibre. With whatever shrinkings and dire misgivings, P. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... 186—-today is washing day and i had to lug about a million pales of water for old mis Dire, Sams mother whitch comes over mondays. her hands is all sriveled up they has been in hot water so mutch. mother she sed that was the reason when i asted her and father he laffed and sed he had been in hot water all his life and he wasent sriveled a bit. mother she laffed ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... large Earth too narrovv grovvne, Such slaughters, such dire tragedies to ovvne? Large Kingdomes there, brought under thrall With Tumult, stagger, and for feare doe fall; Where in one Ruine wee may see The dying people all o'rewhelmed lye. The silent dust remaines, to let The weary Pilgrim this Inscription ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... breathless. And then he took out the bright little coin; surely Honnor Cunyngham could not object to his wearing it, seeing that it had proved itself such a potent charm? He rejoiced that he had not been frightened off his expedition by tales of its monotonous sufferings and dire fatigues. This was something better than arranging an out-of-door performance for a parcel of amateurs! Stiff and sore he was, his clothes were mostly soaked and caked with mire, and he did not know what he had not done to his ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... place of his own; he grows to regard all officers as his enemies instead of his friends; he is taken into court, where the most well-meaning judge lectures him about his duties to his parents and threatens him with the dire evils that the future holds in store for him, unless he reforms. If he is released, nothing is done by society to give him a better environment where he can succeed. He is turned out with his old comrades and into his old life, and ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... the fact that hardly a trace of the belief appears in the Psalms, they illustrated it in the great illuminated psalters from which the noblest part of the service was sung before the high altar. The service books showed every form of agonizing petition for delivery from this dire influence, and every form of exorcism ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... placed the letter in her hand, which, after perusing, she handed to my father. The natural temper of my father was rash and impulsive, and the contents of that letter exasperated him beyond control. He used many bitter words, and threatened dire vengeance upon young Almont, should he ever again enter our dwelling. My mother begged of him to desist, saying that if he were indeed guilty, as the letter proved him to be, his sin would certainly ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... bitterly disappointed that he could not bring his force in time to share in the attack upon the hateful Hojo capital. He prayed to the Sea-god to withdraw the sea and allow him to pass with his troops. Then he flung his sword into the waves in token of his earnestness and of the dire necessity in which he found himself. Thereupon the tide retreated and left a space of a mile and a half, along which ...
— Japan • David Murray
... risk." Everything which we have looked upon as fixed and stable quakes as if from mighty hidden forces. The whole world stands irresolute and amazed. The steady-going habits and occupations of peace cease or are perilously threatened, and no one can be sure of escaping from some of the dire effects of the catastrophe. ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... a time of dire peril, and no one realized it more than did the oldest Rover boy. He attempted to retreat, but to do so in snowshoes was too much for him, and over he went on his side in a deep bank of snow, almost ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... fated to become a victim of the chaparral. The possibility was remote; death at this moment seemed as far off as ever—if anything it was too far off. No, she would find the water-hole somehow; or the unexpected would happen, as it always did when one was in dire straits. She was too young and too strong to die yet. Death was not so easily won ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... is so sudden and so dire, that I can scarcely credit it! Are we then truly in danger of becoming prisoners to barbarians? Is Eve Effingham, the beautiful, innocent, good, angelic daughter of my cousin, to be their victim!—perhaps the inmate ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... it might have remained fast, so strong was our artificial buttress, but as the foundation wore away the rock heeled over to one side a little; this deranged the direct action of the buttresses, and in an instant they flew aside. The rock was hurled over, and the whole of our dam was dashed in dire confusion into the bed of the stream. It was this choking of the natural channel which sent the great flood over our lawn, and, as we have seen, created such a hubbub in ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... boundaries and posting a police watch before them. Others have the well-being of Russia at heart; they understand that the sufferings and the despair of her six millions of Jews are a source of dire evils and that the emancipation of this hard-working and highly gifted population will bring about the material prosperity, the general progress, and the powerful strengthening of Russia. Other countries again, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... quite surprised you ask it, When you know physicians say That for spreading dire contagion Kissing is the ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles |
