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Disastrous   Listen
adjective
Disastrous  adj.  
1.
Full of unpropitious stellar influences; unpropitious; ill-boding. (Obs.) "The moon In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds."
2.
Attended with suffering or disaster; very unfortunate; calamitous; ill-fated; ending in utter failure or ruin; as, a disastrous day; a disastrous termination of an undertaking. "Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disastrous" Quotes from Famous Books



... side wins, the effect is very much the same,—strikes are bound to follow strikes. Warfare is so natural to men that it is difficult to declare a lasting peace. But some day the men themselves will see that strikes are far more disastrous to them than to any other class, and they will devise other ways and means; they will use the strength of their organizations to better advantage; above all, they will relegate to impotency the professional organizers and agitators who retain ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... he, with his regiment, together with Col. Morgan's celebrated rifle corps and one or two other regiments, are ordered to march to the relief of the army in Pennsylvania, under the command of Gen. Washington. This campaign in Pennsylvania was very disastrous to the American army. Being poorly clothed, and more poorly fed, they were not in condition to meet the tried veterans of the English army. It was said of this reinforcement from Gen. Gates' army, that they were men of approved courage, ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey

... was a coward, and wanted bottom, upon getting a little wind, whilst the other held him by the throat, gave three of the most ludicrous, but disastrous, howls that ever were witnessed. On his opponent letting him go, he took to his heels, but got a kick on going out that was rather calculated to accelerate his flight. Legislators, therefore, ought to know ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... there had been a disastrous fire in the house of one Roger Andrew; the dwelling, with all that it contained, was burnt to the ground. Poor Roger lost all his household stuff and furniture and much else besides; worse than all, he lost all his title deeds, the evidences and charters whereby ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... own head with his clenched fist, angrily demanding that his brain bring forth the thought that was forming slowly. The metal that could be revolved in time without producing a disastrous explosion and without requiring an impossible ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... doubt and difficulty, the two parties of the county having been considered as equally balanced, he was advised by some foolish friend, or enemy in disguise, to address them in a serious speech, the consequences were near proving disastrous to his interests. When he commenced—"Gentlemen—upon an occasion of such important difficulty"—there was for about a quarter of a minute a dead silence—that of astonishment—Topertoe, however, who had stuck fast, was obliged to commence again—-"Gentlemen—upon ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... with Elizabeth. Or, I should say, she was the bearer of those disastrous tidings which have robbed me of my peace of mind and given me ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... dated October 3, 1712. "Captain Norton, as I was informed by Mrs. Knight, sailed last week from Pasquotank in Major Reed's sloop, with 30 or 40 men, provisions, and two barrels of gunpowder and ten barrels, I think, of shot." The destination of ship, men and cargo was Bath, the scene of the most disastrous of the ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson

... to surrender on Masinissa's own terms. The men were allowed to go free, but most of them perished on the way to Carthage. Hasdrubal himself succeeded in reaching some place of safety, but the influence of his party was destroyed by the disastrous result of his enterprise, and his exiled enemies being recalled in accordance with the treaty of surrender, the opposing party were immediately restored ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... can make him rightly understand only if we have named some appropriate object in comparison. Conversely, we have to remember that everybody takes his comparison from his own experience, so that we must have had a like experience if we are to know what is compared. It is disastrous to neglect the private nature of this experience. Whoever has much to do with peasants, who like to make use of powerful comparisons, must first comprehend their essential life, if he is to understand how to reduce their comparisons to correct meanings. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... enormous hairy fist, Hogshead Geoffrey brought it down on the table with disastrous results: the ancient worm-eaten board was ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... Trollope, we know, wronged himself by the tone and manner of his reminiscences; but that tone and manner indicated an inferiority of mind, of nature. Dickens—though he died in the endeavour to increase (not for himself) an already ample fortune, disastrous influence of his time and class—wrought with an artistic ingenuousness and fervour such as Trollope could not even conceive. Methodical, of course, he was; no long work of prose fiction was ever brought into existence save by methodical labour; but we know that there was no measuring of so ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... with the white before the law, would—far from bringing blessings in their train—promote, with other evils, a pernicious development, with calamitous reaction upon him, of the aggrandizing instinct of the white, who would lure and entrap him into every kind of disastrous negotiation—its outcome, in truth, a very maelstrom of artful intrigue and shameless rapacity, looking to the absorption of the Indian's land, and of the few worldly possessions he now has. Nay, many would foresee for the Indian, through the consummation of his enfranchisement, naught ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... grinning, "but insanity's worse. Had the maddest ride of my life, Dad—my poor old Garryowen's absolutely cowed, and has no tail left to speak of!" He ducked to avoid a cushion from his sister. "It's a most disastrous experiment to keep Norah off ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... knightly his bearing was when he greeted you on your arrival. The happiness of having his beloved sister again restored his paralyzed buoyancy speedily enough, although just at present there is certainly no lack of cares pressing upon him, and notwithstanding the disastrous conditions which we found existing among the godless populace here. That this cruel responsibility, however, can mature the mind without harming the body your ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... reveries, and all the doubt, fear, and irresolution of a man who pushes metaphysics into the supernatural world. Dark prophecies accumulated omens over his head; men united in considering him born to disastrous destinies. Whenever he had sought to wrestle against hostile circumstances, some seemingly accidental cause, sudden and unforeseen, had blasted the labours of his most vigorous energy,—the fruit of his most deliberate wisdom. Thus, by degrees a gloomy and despairing cloud settled ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... escaped; but the pagan Indians, among whom the disease broke out, were wild with fear, and in many cases acted in a manner to aggravate the disease. Some of them, when they broke out, rushed from their heated wigwams and rolled themselves in the snow, which of course was most disastrous treatment, resulting in the death of numbers. Thereupon, their relatives became so terrified, that, being afraid to bury their bodies, they stripped the wigwams from around them, leaving them exposed to the devouring wolves; and then, sent word over to me, that if I desired ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... this; for it is impossible to estimate the measure of evil that may thus be brought into otherwise innocent and happy lives. The attitude of devotion and faith is natural to Humanity, while nothing can be more UNnatural and disastrous to civilization, morality and law, than deliberate and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... another proof that Tony possessed a sterling character. Since her sister's disastrous marriage she had come to look upon a taste for fishing as more or less of a moral safeguard. She had often reflected that if only Fay had not been so lukewarm with regard to the gentle craft—and so bored in a ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... just after the disastrous battle of Bull Run, when people were wild with excitement, and Hugh was thus borne with the tide, until at last he found himself enrolled as a private in a regiment of cavalry gathering in one of the Northern States. There had been an instant's hesitation, a clinging ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... different boys, where they broke back after the disastrous attempt to rush the Tahitian, soon led together. They traced it to the Berande, which the runaways had crossed with the clear intention of burying themselves in the huge mangrove swamp ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... South Australia was undertaken to test Wakefield's theory; but instead of turning their land to good account the colonists left it idle, hoping to sell at a high price. The result was disastrous. ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... meadows about our inland streams, but within sound of the breakers on the seashore, these vigorous bits of fur find bountiful living, and it is said that the mice folk inhabiting these low salt marshes always know in some mysterious way when a disastrous high tide is due, and flee in time, so that when the remorseless ripples lap higher and higher over the wide stretches of salt grass, not a mouse will be drowned. By some delicate means of perception all have been notified ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... have done all in my power to induce Leah Jacobi to break off this disastrous engagement," continued Malcolm. "I did this not only for your sake, and because you were the tool of a designing and unscrupulous man, but also for your sisters' sake. When I left her yesterday it was impossible to know ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Mrs. Ansell continued, gently scrutinizing her companion, "that I think it unwise of him to have gone; but if he stays too long Bessy may listen to bad advice—advice disastrous to her happiness." She paused, and turned her eyes meditatively toward the fire. "As far as I know," she said, with the same air of serious candour, "you are the only person ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... document. Ensal turned the manuscript over and over. In it he had cast all of his soul. Upon it he was relying for the amelioration of conditions to such an extent that his race might be saved from being goaded on to an unequal and disastrous conflict. He hoped that its efficacy would be so self-evident that Earl might stay the hand that threatened the South and the nation with another awful convulsion. No wonder that his voice was charged with deep emotion ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... daughter of a small farmer in the district, who had been emancipated by the good Governor. He was a widower, and a rough, taciturn man, but passionately devoted to Ruth, who was his only child. He had been transported for having taken part in the disastrous Irish rebellion of '98,' and his young wife had followed him to share his exile. The terrors and hardships of the long voyage out killed her, for she died almost as soon as she landed, without seeing her husband, and leaving her infant child to the kindly care of the officers of the detachment ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... Department, and for the last ten years the American Secretary to the Japanese Legation at Washington. A lover of social intercourse, Mr. Lanman has led the typical busy life of the American, untouched by the direful and disastrous ills it is supposed to bring. He is now engaged in editing fourteen of his books for reproduction in uniform style, and a new book, The Leading Men of Japan, is ready for issue." 12mo, $1.50. Boston: ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... the direct rays of the sun in a beehouse. A hive standing alone, with a free circulation of air on every side, will not be seriously injured by the sun. But when the rays are intercepted by walls or boards, in the rear and on the sides, they are very disastrous. Other hints, such as clearing off occasionally, in all seasons except in the cold of winter, the bottom board, &c., are matters upon which we need not dwell. No cultivator would think of neglecting them. Let no one be alarmed at finding dead bees ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... possible that his lordship might notice the scent of it in his breath if he took it all. They would be sure to be talking together about his little alterations; and if the bishop were to notice it, it would be disastrous. He looked at his watch. It was already almost the time that they were supposed to sit down to dinner. Oh! why did not Mr. Windle find some one and bring him release ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... objects, to extend their sway abroad and to render it more absolute at home." When they plead some other cause it is only a pretext. "The terms public good, happiness of subjects, the glory of the nation, so heavily employed in government announcements, never denote other than disastrous commands, and the people shudder beforehand when its masters allude to their paternal solicitude."—However, this fatal point once reached, "the contract with the government is dissolved; the despot is master only while remaining the most powerful, and, as soon as he can be expelled, it is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of linseed oil hot, but Miss Polson favoured chlorodyne. The conversation then turned on the deadly qualities of that drug when taken in excess, of the fatal sleep in which it lulled its victims. So disastrous were the incidents cited, that half an hour later, when, her aunt and Susan being out, Chrissie took a small bottle of chlorodyne from the mantel-piece, the boatswain implored her to try his ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... we are tempted rather to weep, when we think of the nation over whom this Ferdinand exercises his disastrous authority. Forty years will have expired this spring since the Christian peasants of Bulgaria rose in arms against the Turkish oppressor. After a year of wild mountain fighting, Russia, with fraternal ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... absent from his chair. Good, it is to read the answers he returned to rural inquirers who wished for counsel in relation to the difficulties of farm or garden. This kind of thing in a newspaper is ridiculous; in a cookery book or an article on domestic economy it is amusing; but in the pulpit it is disastrous. ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... a little in the narrative, in order to show what events led to the disastrous catastrophe I have just related. Captain Reud, having been lying for many, many weeks, apparently unconscious of objects around him, one morning said, in a faint, low voice, when Dr Thompson and Mr Farmer, the first-lieutenant, were standing near him, "Send ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... three. Add labour to your motley crew, Subtract (from life) a church or two. Produce, with geometric skill, The lines of many a promised bill. But state—the Unionists to vex— That Home Rule always equals x. Raise, in a rash, disastrous hour, Campaigning Ireland to a power. And thus, to prayers and protests deaf, Bisect ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various

... The Patriots, in bringing on a European war, had renewed the Civil War at home. Attached to the army sent against the Pretender, Wolfe (now major), fought under "Hangman Hawley," in the blundering and disastrous hustle at Falkirk, and, on a happier day, under Cumberland at Culloden. Some years afterwards he revisited the field of Culloden, and he has recorded his opinion that there also "somebody blundered," though he refrains ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... the first makes of gas should become diluted with 25 to 50 per cent. of air, any glowing body whose temperature exceeds 480 deg. C. will fire the gas; and, as in the former instance, the flame will extend all through the mass of acetylene with disastrous violence and at enormous speed unless the gas is stored in narrow pipes of extremely small diameter. Three practical lessons are to be learnt from this circumstance: first, tobacco-smoking must never be permitted in any building where an escape of raw ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... Love's overflowing cup, And work a trifle in their little way; Just tip the solar-system downside up, What is there that they can't do, who shall say? While for one glance a thousand pine away, Which certainly is most disastrous when Our span is not too long as you will say, And what of their short three score years and ten? But this may not apply to ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... St. Eustace full-back, but ere that player had put his foot twice to ground he was thrown, and the teams lined up on St. Eustace's forty-five-yard line. Then it was that the god of battle befriended Hillton; for on the next play St. Eustace made her first disastrous fumble, and Christie, Hillton's right end, darted through, seized the rolling spheroid, and started down the field. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty yards he sped, the St. Eustace backs trailing ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... Green River valley, he immediately furnished himself with the supplies; put himself at the head of the free trappers and Delawares, and set off with all speed, determined to follow hard upon the heels of Fitzpatrick and Bridger. Of the adventures of these parties among the mountains, and the disastrous effects of their competition, we shall have occasion to ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... disastrous commencement of a new career. The Niebuhrs reached Berlin in October 5, 1806, and on the 14th came the dreadful battles of Jena and Auerstadt, while Napoleon, with his conquering army, marched rapidly upon the city, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... intelligence that the figure seen was not that of a boy, but of a monkey. Search among the wreckage for human remains proved unavailing, and it is feared that a serious catastrophe has occurred. The only clue to the nationality of the vessel, which, it is only too plain, has met with a disastrous fate, are the letters "vorni" on a portion of what had evidently formed the bow of one of the life-boats. Possibly these letters are part of "Livorni," the Italian word for Leghorn, and the list of recent sailings from that port is now ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond

... I addressed the congregation to which I minister, on the importance of a strict attention to what are usually denominated little things; and remarked, that it is the want of attention to these little things, which not unfrequently throws a disastrous influence over the whole course of subsequent life. It was also further remarked, that a large proportion of the events and transactions, which go to make up the lives of most men, are, as they are usually estimated, comparatively ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott

... 1,300 waifs laid in baskets on its doorstep. She courageously mentioned the prevalence of venereal disease and spoke out against England's Contagious Diseases Acts which were repeatedly suggested for New York and Washington and which she described as licensed prostitution, men's futile and disastrous attempt ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... a worrying woman who made a list of possible unfortunate events and happenings which she felt sure would come to pass and be disastrous to her happiness and welfare. The list was lost, and to her amazement, when she recovered it, a long time afterwards, she found that not a single unfortunate prediction in the whole catalogue of disasters had ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... short journeys of discovery—discovery not only of the surrounding land but of many mistakes in sledging equipment and routine. It is amazing to one who looks back upon these first efforts of the Discovery Expedition that the results were not more disastrous than was actually the case. When one reads of dog-teams which refused to start, of pemmican which was considered to be too rich to eat, of two officers discussing the ascent of Erebus and back in one ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... there any basis for the Gaston revival other than the lately changed attitude of the railroad? In other words, if the cut rates should be withdrawn and the railroad activities cease, would there not be a second and still more disastrous collapse of the ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... Billy perfectly, though his gaze gave no admission of that. This tall young fellow with the deep-set gray eyes and the rugged chin and the straight black hair he first remembered seeing dancing that Wednesday evening with Arlee—after their own disastrous tea and its estrangement. Arlee had appeared on mystifyingly good terms with him, though he was positive from his own observations, and had corroboration from the Evershams, that she had never spoken to him until five minutes before. Then the fellow had fairly grilled the Evershams ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... have borne the heat and burden of the day from the first disastrous landing at Tanga. Always exceedingly well disciplined, they yield to none in the amount of solid unrewarded work done in ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... unenclosed lands, in houses in process of construction, and under the arches of the bridges. One of these nests, which has become famous, produced "the swallows of the bridge of Arcola." This is, moreover, the most disastrous of social symptoms. All crimes of the man begin in the vagabondage of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... proved disastrous to Claude. He had relapsed into one of those periods of self-doubt that made him hate painting, with the hatred of a lover betrayed, who overwhelms the faithless one with insults although tortured by an uncontrollable desire to worship ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... These two disastrous experiences, however, had added wariness and wisdom to the great bull's fighting rage. His wound, his momentary discomfiture, had opened his arrogant eyes to the fact that his antagonist was a dangerous one. He stood vigilant and ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... unhappily in that condition that he will make only a temporary explanation of anything, and you will not be able, if you are like the man, to understand how this island came to be what it is. You will not find it recorded in books. You will find recorded in books a jumble of tumults, disastrous ineptitudes, and all that kind of thing. But to get what you want you will have to look into side sources, and inquire ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... sharply, suspiciously,—and then asked her, if she was not aware that she was presenting him a paper completely worthless! The poor woman was mortified and astonished; and instead of returning to her husband, fled to Wilberforce, and called at our house. Knowing how disastrous to me would be her false statement, and ignorant of her state of mind, I asked her if she had come to assist Mr. Lewis by swearing against me. I saw at once, that she had not yet been informed ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... far at least as it ever studies ultimate results—constantly relies on this ill-founded belief as its justification for ignoring the warnings of those who point out the ultimately disastrous results of a systematic defiance or reversal of the great law of natural selection. This reliance finds strong support in Mr. Spencer's latest teachings, for he holds that the inheritance of the ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... negligees with big flower patterns strewn over them. They made her hair look blacker and her skin whiter by contrast. Sometimes Eugene or Adele or both would drop in and the four would play bridge. Aunt Sophy played a shrewd and canny game, Adele a rather brilliant one, Julia a wild and disastrous hand, always, and Eugene so badly that only Julia would take him on as a partner. Mrs. Baldwin never ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... his work in the mayor's office during the months he lived in Paris. Obliged to find some man who knew how to read and write for the position of assistant mayor, he knew of none and could hear of none throughout the district but Langlume, the tenant of his own flour-mill. The choice was disastrous. Not only were the interests of mayor and miller diametrically opposed, but Langlume had long hatched swindling projects with Rigou, who lent him money to carry on his business, or to acquire property. The miller had bought ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... the smallest, Lakanaii is conceded by all to be the wildest, the most wildly beautiful, and, in its size, the richest of all the islands. Its sugar tonnage per acre is the highest, its mountain beef-cattle the fattest, its rainfall the most generous without ever being disastrous. It resembles Kauai in that it is the first-formed and therefore the oldest island, so that it had had time sufficient to break down its lava rock into the richest soil, and to erode the canyons between the ancient craters until they are like Grand Canyons of the Colorado, with numberless ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... all the others in disastrous consequences is the notion that the young people must begin where their parents left off; that the house must be, if anything, a little more elaborate. Therefore in starting life the rent is allowed to consume ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... an unbroken series of victories on the Virginia battlefields, General Lee again crossed the Potomac River, and led his army into the North. He went as far as Gettysburg in Pennsylvania; but there, on the third of July, 1863, suffered a disastrous defeat, which shattered forever the Confederate dream of taking Philadelphia and dictating peace from Independence Hall. This battle of Gettysburg should have ended the war, for General Lee, on retreating southward, ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... of the papers. Their power does not, therefore, clash in the main with that of the owners, but the fact that advertisement makes a paper, has created a standard of printing and paper such that no one—save at a disastrous loss—can issue regularly to large numbers news and opinion which the large Capitalist ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... effect was almost disastrous. The expectant host had been fortifying himself rather copiously against the duties and trials of the day, and his brain was in no condition to bear any such strain as the appearance of ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... regulated by the sole consideration of easy language; hence its tendency to an arithmetic and geometry of concepts, in spite of the disastrous consequences; and thus the Eleatic paradox is no less instructive in its specious character than in the solution which ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... upon this point because the sooner we realize for ourselves and our girls that any relaxation of the marriage bond will in its disastrous consequences fall upon us, and not upon men, the better. It is the woman who first grows old and loses her personal attractions, while a man often preserves his beauty into extreme old age. It is the burdened mother of a family who cannot compete in companionship ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... characters she was insulted and outraged. As a wife, she saw her rights invaded—as a mother, the legitimacy of her son questioned—and as a queen her dignity compromised. What very inferior causes have produced disastrous effects even in private life! The only subject of astonishment which can be rationally entertained is the comparative patience with which at this period of her career she submitted to the humiliations that were ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... there must have been some general element of worth in which these characters were formed. If the recent administration of the Senate had not been glorious, still, from a Roman point of view, it had not been disastrous: the revolt of the slaves and the insurrection in Spain had been quelled; Mithridates had been conquered; the pirates, though for a time their domination accused the feebleness of the government, had at length been put down. The only great military ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... being dragged over rocks and falling down mountain sides better than the softer yew wood. His three bows were under five feet six inches in length, short for convenience and each pulled over eighty-five pounds. The country in which he worked was so rocky that it was most disastrous on arrows, and every shot that missed ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... life, so that a remembrance of me would leave you in peace. All this is so sad that I have not the courage to continue. Adieu, Clemence! Once more, one last time, I must say: I love you! and yet, I dare not. I feel unworthy to speak to you thus, for my love has become a disastrous gift. Did I not ruin you? The only word that seems to be permissible is the one that even a murderer dares to address to his God: ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... ignorance are deplorable enough in the case of individuals, although, as we have seen, the disastrous consequences are limited in the case of those who live surrounded by an intelligent community. But the general ignorance of large numbers and entire classes of men, unreached by the elevating influence of the educated, acting under ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... said our governess. "It was just one of these seemingly irresistible impulses that have so often proved disastrous for all concerned. If your father knew—" she bit off the words as though they had a pleasant, if acrid taste—"if your poor father knew of your criminal proclivities, he would be a ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... might assert itself to-day!" cried the Queen. "At any rate the power of the beaker impelled Antony to do many things. I am not vain enough to believe that it was love, that it was solely the spell of my own personality which drew him to me in that disastrous hour. That battle, that incomprehensible, disgraceful battle! You were ill, and could not see our fleet when it set sail; but even experienced spectators said that handsomer, larger vessels were never ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... also in Copperfield, he had constantly stopped at. He knew, too, the inns in the Boro'. The large legal element and its odd incidents and characters he had learned and studied during his brief apprenticeship to the Law. The interior economy of the Fleet Prison he had learned from his family's disastrous experiences; the turnkeys, and blighted inhabitants he had certainly taken from life. But he shifted the scene from the Marshalsea to the King's Bench Prison—the former place would have been too painful a reminiscence for his father. To his reporting expeditions we owe the Election scenes ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald

... terrible injustice has been done to the black soldiers in their military treatment also, it has not been only, or chiefly, under regular officers. Against the cruel fatigue duty imposed upon them last summer, in the Department of the South, for instance, must be set the more disastrous mismanagements of the Department of the Gulf,—the only place from which we now hear the old stories of disease and desertion,—all dating back to the astonishing blunder of organizing the colored regiments of half-size at the outset, with a full complement of officers. This measure, however ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... had been intended for publication in South Africa before the end of 1899, with the object of laying bare the wicked and delusive aims of the Afrikaner Bond combination, to which the Anglo-Boer war alone is attributable, and to counteract its disastrous influences so far as then still possible. But until quite lately circumstances had conspired so as to prevent the writer from leaving the Transvaal, and when he at last obtained the required passport to Lourenco Marques he was there denied a permit ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... required in working in old and soft lines,) is often greater than the original cost of the improvement. Consequently, the possibility of tile drains becoming stopped up should be fully considered at the outset, and every precaution should be taken to prevent so disastrous a result. ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring

... that time against the preponderating power of the Crown made for the welfare and peace of the country in the future. The anarchy of Stephen's reign, Henry's mastery, and Richard's might, with Hubert Walter's genius, resulted in a dangerous accumulation of power that did actually prove almost disastrous to the State. Consequently Bishop Hugh's greatest contest with the Crown demands the sympathy both of men who still dream of the spiritual city in (but unsoiled by) hands of mortals, and also of ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... command of Ricciardetto, Rinaldo's brother, was soon joined by Charlemagne and all his peerage, but experienced a disastrous rout, and the Emperor and many of his paladins were taken prisoners. Gradasso, however, did not abuse his victory; he took Charles by the hand, seated him by his side, and told him he warred only for honor. He renounced all conquests, on ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... farms, rebuilt their dwellings, cultivated their fields, and, so to speak, compelled prosperity to smile on them—and that, too, although several times the powers of Nature, in the shape of grass hoppers and disastrous floods, seemed to league with ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... conviction that this inconclusiveness had been an achievement. Confronted by a dilemma, she had chosen neither horn and assumed an attitude of inoffensive defiance. Springs in England vary greatly in their character; some are easterly and quarrelsome, some are north-westerly and wetly disastrous, a bleak invasion from the ocean; some are but the broken beginnings of what are not so much years as stretches of meteorological indecision. This particular spring was essentially a south-westerly spring, good and ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... according to a contemporary writer, wandered about for a long time in misery, some of them indeed seeking refuge with the Turks, who were still a standing menace to Imperial Christendom. The popular preachers vanished also on the suppression of the movement. The disastrous result of the Peasants' War was prejudicial even to Luther's cause in South Germany. The Catholic party reaped the advantage everywhere, evangelical preachers, even, where not insurrectionists, being persecuted. Little distinction, ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... tremendous import, and the necessary consequences of such a law. They had previously laboured to lessen the social evil by moral and spiritual means, but now they turned their whole attention to obtaining the abolition of the disastrous enactment which took that evil under its protection. They felt that the action of Government in passing that law brought the whole nation (which is responsible for its Government) under a sentence of guilt—a sentence of moral death. ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler

... passage widened. Its depth also increased. The ship no longer scraped the bottom, she no longer caromed off the sunken rocks. On the other hand, water poured into her interior with increasing force and volume, indicating a disastrous rent forward. She was sloshing along toward the centre of a basin which appeared to be half a mile wide and not more than a mile long. Directly ahead of her the hills came down to meet the water. A dark narrow cut, with towering sides, indicated ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... but one of these final and fundamental approaches to the full knowledge of a question the world has been irreparably, irretrievably and permanently robbed of the certain reply to, and left ever in the most disastrous doubt upon, this most important and necessary matter—namely, whether real existence ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... that few disastrous fires start under conditions which prevent their control. Usually they spring from some of the many small, apparently innocent fires which burn unnoticed until wind and hot weather fan them into action. It is far cheaper to put them out ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... this sudden and disastrous result, moved back with the crowds around him. Men had ceased to be brave and firm; they were fleeing in mortal terror before the victorious battalions that ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... was deprived, by this disastrous defeat, of every prospect of obtaining its necessary supplies through Lake Erie, and a speedy retreat towards the head of Lake Ontario became inevitable. Stung with grief and indignation, Tecumseh at first refused to agree to the measure, and in a council ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... hours? She saw Lizzie as a chocolate-box beauty, but redeemed from hebetude by her robust youth: able to attract Hyde by his love of luxury and to hold him by main force: uneducated, coarse, and cruel, but not weak. What a disastrous marriage! doomed from the outset, even if no Rendell had come on the scene. Isabel dismissed Rendell rather scornfully: in that night at Myrtle Villa she felt pretty sure that the duel had been fought out between husband and wife: the very staging of it, picturesque for ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... one of the poorest and least developed countries in Latin America. Following a disastrous economic crisis during the early 1980s, reforms spurred private investment, stimulated economic growth, and cut poverty rates in the 1990s. The period 2003-05 was characterized by political instability, racial tensions, and violent ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... afternoon at four of the congressional clock. The hour of four had been settled upon to diminish as much as might be, so the President said, the chances of an earthquake in the New York stock market, which closed at three. In San Francisco, which is three hours younger than New York, the winds of disastrous speculation blew a hurricane that afternoon; but no one east of the Mississippi cares what happens in San Francisco. Besides, the New ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... The Knights of Malta and the Arabs fought the Turks for many years for its possession, but the Turks have held it against all comers up to date. It was shaken down to ruins by an earthquake in 180 A.D., and this was followed by disastrous shocks ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... grant me a patent was, at that period, very disastrous. It was especially discouraging to have made a long voyage across the Atlantic in vain, incurring great expenditure and loss of time, which in their consequences also produced years of delay in the prosecution of my ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... elder church, or when Pope formulated his oft-quoted but little-followed maxim, that "the proper study of mankind is man." The present miscalled "delicacy of sentiment" is about as misplaced a condition of disastrous and misleading morality as was the out-of-place and untimely bravery of poor old Braddock when refusing Washington's advice at the Monongahela. The success and beauty of the Mosaic law is its squarely facing the conditions of actual life, and its absence from nonsense or nauseating ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... that I witnessed yesterday still holds the same disastrous influence over me. I have vainly endeavoured to think, not of Mannion's death, but of the free prospect which that death has opened to my view. Waking or sleeping, it is as if some fatality kept all my faculties ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... wearying work, toiling up the muddy Arkansas, and in the end disastrous. Occasionally, for miles at a stretch, our hearts were gladdened by a curve toward the northward, yet we drew westerly so much we became fearful lest the Jesuit had made false report on the main course of the stream. Every ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... fete to introduce the steam engine into England a most disastrous and forlorn one," remarked ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... you lie? Why did you go to the Westfall camp and attack Poynter? Why did you swear these scars came from a disastrous flight in a stolen aeroplane? Why have you been spying upon Miss Westfall when ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... blindness, the subtlety of intellect, the wide reading, the grave enthusiasm, which he himself possessed, the misunderstanding became complete. The discordance between the actual Victoria and this strange Divinity made in Mr. Gladstone's image produced disastrous results. Her discomfort and dislike turned at last into positive animosity, and, though her manners continued to be perfect, she never for a moment unbent; while he on his side was overcome ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... generally prevailed that he recognized the rights of the Infanta, and that he would labor to place her on the throne. The lords of his own party believed it; the legate reported it everywhere; the royal party regarded it as certain. During the whole course of the year 1592, this opinion gave the most disastrous assistance to the intrigues and ascendency of Philip II., and added immeasurably to the public dangers." [Poirson, Histoire du Regne d'Henri ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... in his chair and cudgelled his brains for some means of turning Ivanhoe from a disastrous failure into an apparent success, but no idea came, and throwing out his long legs and caressing ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... ambitious objects. But when the battles of Flanders began the year was getting past its middle age, and events on other fronts had upset the strategical plan of Sir Douglas Haig and our High Command. The failure and abandonment of the Nivelle offensive in the Champagne were disastrous to us. It liberated many German divisions who could be sent up to relieve exhausted divisions in Flanders. Instead of attacking the enemy when he was weakening under assaults elsewhere, we attacked him when all was quiet on the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... give the story of this disastrous war in detail; that lies in the province of history, and my story relates only to Max and Yolanda, and to the manner in which they were affected by the ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... fate that this limb of the closely pruned Wesley tree should be lopped off by the sword of war. But as Washington Flagg turned into Clinton Place, I had a misgiving. It was hardly to be expected that a person of his temperament, fresh from a four years' desperate struggle and a disastrous defeat, would refrain from expressing his views on the subject. That those views would be somewhat lurid, I was convinced by the phrases which he had dropped here and there in the course of our conversation. He was, to all intents and purposes, a Southerner. He had been a colonel in Stonewall ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... the subject of enlisting Missouri troops for an invasion of Arkansas in order to ward off any contemplated attack upon southwestern Missouri and to keep the Indians west of Arkansas in subjection.[97] On August 10 came the disastrous Federal defeat at Wilson's Creek. It was immediately subsequent to that event and in anticipation of a Kansas invasion by Price and McCulloch that Lane resolved to take ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... cause of this singular intoxication, the consequences of which might have been very disastrous? A simple blunder of Michel's, which, fortunately, Nicholl was able ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... long, most disgraceful, and perilous neglect of our serious differences with America; and which had brought us to within a hair's-breadth of a declaration of war, which, whatever might have been its issue, (possibly not difficult to have foreseen,) would have been disastrous to both countries, and to one of them utterly destructive. It is notorious that within the last eighteen or twenty months, every arrival from the west was expected to bring intelligence of the actual commencement ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... seen perched on Round Top and North Mountain, spinning clouds and flinging them to the winds. Woe betide the valley residents if they showed irreverence, for then the clouds were black and heavy, and through them she poured floods of rain and launched the lightnings, causing disastrous freshets in the streams and blasting the wigwams of the mockers. In a frolic humor she would take the form of a bear or deer and lead the Indian hunters anything but a merry dance, exposing them to tire and peril, and vanishing or assuming some ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... element, that without some such substantial and consistent resistance to innovation as is offered by the conservative well-to-do classes, social innovation and experiment would hurry the community into untenable and intolerable situations; the only possible result of which would be discontent and disastrous reaction. All this, however, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... But sigh'd for appetite in vain: His food, though dress'd a thousand ways, Had lost its late accustom'd praise; He relish'd nothing—sickly grew— Yet long'd to taste of something new. It chanced in this disastrous case, One morn betimes he join'd the chase: Swift o'er the plain the hunters fly, Each echoing out a joyous cry; A forest next before them lay; He, left behind, mistook his way, And long alone bewildered rode, He found ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park

... delegates to the South African National Convention adhered to their original proposal to abandon single-member constituencies, they would have secured for South Africa, among other invaluable benefits, complete security from the gerrymander, any possibility of which begets suspicion and reacts in a disastrous way upon political warfare. The gerrymander is nothing more or less than a fraudulent practice. But the United States is not the only country in which such practices take place. Their counter-part in Canada was described by Sir John Macdonald as "hiving the grits," and even in England, ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... first disastrous experience turn him aside from further business ventures? Not at all. Balzac was by nature dogged and persevering. Hope illuminated his calculations; he found the best of reasons to explain the failure of an edition of classic authors; but he conjured up still better ones for assailing new enterprises. ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... Room," the "The New York Stock Exchange," the "Mining Board," the now obsolete "Petroleum Board," and the "Government Board." All sorts of stocks are bought and sold in this building. "Erie" and "Pacific Mail" are the most attractive to the initiated, and the most disastrous as well. ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... entire war. They appeared at our entrenchments on Sunday morning, and finding them deserted, commenced an irregular pursuit, whereby, they received terrible volleys of musketry from ambuscaded regiments, and retired, in disorder, to the ramparts. This was the battle of "Peach Orchard," and was disastrous to the Southerners. In the afternoon, they again essayed to advance, but more cautiously. The Federals, meantime, lay in order of battle upon Savage's, Dudley's, and Crouch's farms, their right resting on the Chickahominy, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... our injustice is greater and more disastrous; for we are destroying the very sources of supply without providing for the future, using wood in large quantities where other materials would be better and cheaper. Yet we think ourselves very economical. Once it was common to enclose wood buildings ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... Taylor moved to Saltillo and then advanced on to Buena Vista, Santa Anna crossed the desert confronting the invading army, hoping no doubt to crush it and get back in time to meet General Scott in the mountain passes west of Vera Cruz. His attack on Taylor was disastrous to the Mexican army, but, notwithstanding this, he marched his army to Cerro Gordo, a distance not much short of one thousand miles by the line he had to travel, in time to intrench himself well before Scott got there. If he had been ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... Egypt, and, too, of all manner of precious stones sent by Queen Atossa, wife of Darius, when the Crotoniat Democedes, with two triremes and a trading vessel, visited Yaque before they went to survey Hellenic shores, with what disastrous result. And Olivia, standing in the queen's gown, listened without hearing one word, and turned to have her veil lifted by Antoinette and the daughter of a peer of Yaque; and she knelt before the people while the lord chief-chancellor set the crown ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... Women do not flatter women unless they have something to gain, whereas men often flatter them for the mere pleasure of seeing them smile, which is an innocent pastime in itself, though the consequences are sometimes disastrous. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... freight to all parts of the lakes; enters Chicago over its own tracks and competes aggressively with the Pennsylvania for all traffic to and from all parts of the Mississippi Valley and the West and Southwest. It is in no danger from disastrous competition in its own chosen territory, therefore, and constantly receives income of vast importance through a network of feeders which penetrate the territory of some of the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... and nothing would have induced him to go back to look for them. If his right arm was not broken, it was so injured and lamed that a long time must elapse before he could use it, and altogether his enterprise could only be regarded as a disastrous failure. ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... of facts came upon her with crushing force. It was Mrs. Hartley herself who was mainly responsible for the concealment of what had happened to Alan; and she no doubt, had done her part with the best intentions. But the result was disastrous so far as her intrigue and wishes ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... when the breeze Of summer gently blows; through day, through night, Where sink the well-known stars, and others rise Slow from the South, the victor bark shall ride. Henry! thy ardent mind first pierced the gloom Of dark disastrous ignorance, that sat Upon the Southern wave, like the deep cloud 70 That lowered upon the woody skirts, and veiled From mortal search, with umbrage ominous, Madeira's unknown isle. But look! the morn Is kindled on the shadowy offing; streaks Of clear cold light on Sagres' battlements ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... tea, and especially the dried fruits, made disastrous inroads upon it. The first words they had were over the sugar question. And it is a really serious thing when two men, wholly dependent upon each other for company, begin ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... principles: I have a profound respect for any genuine passion. We will not discuss the merits or the faults of Irene; you desire her, that suffices; you shall have her, or I will lose the little Malay I learnt in Java when I went to see those dancing-girls, whose preference has such a disastrous effect upon Europeans. Your secret police is about to be increased by a new spy; I espouse your anger, and place myself entirely at the service of your wrath. I know some of the relatives of Mlle. de Chateaudun, ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... entrance of Lancaster Sound and Pond's Bay. Facing to the south-west, from whence the worst gales of wind at this season of the year arise, it is not to be wondered at that Melville Bay has been the grave of many a goodly craft, and in one disastrous year the whaling fleet was diminished by no less than twenty-eight sail (without the loss of life, however), a blow from which it never has recovered. No good reason was adduced for taking this route, beyond the argument, founded upon ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... aside. He had heard the reports arrive of one accident after another, he saw driver after driver come in gray-lipped and savage under the strain of racing on the crowded path, and he knew what Flavia did not—that this was proving the most disastrous affair ever held on ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... narrated, sufficient in itself to confirm the superstitious ideas of the sailors for another century. His thoughts naturally reverted to the other point, in which seafaring men are equally bigoted, the disastrous consequences of "sailing on a Friday;" the origin of which superstition can easily be traced to early Catholicism, when out of respect for the day of universal redemption, they were directed by their pastors to await ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... been better, perhaps, for Nic Revel if he had not heard the result of the plan to get help from Captain Lawrence's ship and its disastrous ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn

... is quite clear to-day that, at that time and under those conditions, the establishment of a permanent and effective Confederation of Europe would have proved disastrous to the world. The Congress of Vienna was followed by further congresses in 1818, 1819, 1820, and 1822; and each succeeding conference revealed to Europe more clearly the true character of the new authority into whose hands the power was slipping. Certain very dangerous tendencies became, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... a second expedition, in 1848, Kennedy started from Moreton Bay to penetrate and explore the country of the long peninsula, which runs up northward between the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Pacific Ocean, and ends at Cape York, the northernmost point of Australia in Torres Straits. From this disastrous expedition he never returned. He was starved, ill, fatigued, hunted by remorseless aborigines for days, and finally speared to death by the natives of Cape York, when almost within sight of his goal, where a vessel was waiting to succour him and all his party. Only a black boy ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... occurred a disastrous fire which destroyed a number of the Cottonian MSS. The Beowulf MS. suffered at this time, its edges being scorched and its pages shriveled. As a result, the edges have chipped away, and some of the readings have been lost. It does not appear, however, that these losses ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker

... whose evidence it was based were, for technical reasons, not heard by the Hunter Committee. The complete surrender of civil authority into military hands first at Amritsar, and then, under orders from Simla, at Lahore and elsewhere, was, as His Majesty's Government afterwards acknowledged, a disastrous departure from the best traditions of the Indian Civil Service. But, whatever the mistakes committed by the civil authority in the Punjab or by those charged with the administration of martial law in ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... heroic struggle, so sturdily maintained during the past twenty-five years against the competitive system and its well trained hosts; the campaign, which has been marked by many mistakes, followed by frequent defeat and disastrous failure, has always proved successful as an educator, both for the toilers and the great middle classes, who sympathized with them. On the other hand, alarmed by sudden success, achieved by the disruption of long-lived business methods, and the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... previously exacted, peace was secured. The government really acted with faultless wisdom. At this period of Japanese development a costly war with Russia could not fail to have consequences the most disastrous to industry, commerce, and finance. But the national pride has been deeply wounded, and the country can ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... years of uneasy, imprudent widowhood, the widow of the great man had made a disastrous second marriage, and ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... of Bumpus got the better of his judgment, and he had endeavored to follow in the wake of the active member of the party; but always with disastrous results; so that for some time now he had taken it out in gaping, and wishing, and longing for the time to come when he could get rid of his surplus fat, so that he might be ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... 45. The disastrous nature of the perpetual feudal warfare and the necessity of some degree of peace and order, had already become apparent even as early as the eleventh century. In spite of all the turmoil, mankind was making progress. Commerce and enlightenment ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... no mention has yet been made of two Christian armies. Perhaps we should translate "the rest of the army," i.e. such part of the remnant of the Christian host as fled to Acre and shut themselves up there after the disastrous day of Hittin (23 June, 1187). Acre fell on the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... grouped in three classes called tragedies, comedies and historical plays. The tragedy is a drama in which the characters are the victims of unhappy passions, or are involved in desperate circumstances. The style is grave and dignified, the movement stately; the ending is disastrous to individuals, but illustrates the triumph of a moral principle. These rules of true tragedy are repeatedly set aside by Shakespeare, who introduces elements of buffoonery, and who contrives an ending that may stand ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... rightly considered, cannot but bring universal ruin, although it seems to menace us alone.' In his agony Ferdinand applied to Alexander VI. But the Pope looked coldly upon him, because the King of Naples, with rare perspicacity, had predicted that his elevation to the Papacy would prove disastrous to Christendom. Alexander preferred to ally himself with Venice and Milan. Upon this Ferdinand wrote as follows: 'It seems fated that the Popes should leave no peace in Italy. We are compelled to fight; but the Duke of Bari ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... mother's were positively disastrous—injuring her naturally healthy and vigorous mind by leading her to indulge in all manner of dreamy and fanciful interpretations of Scripture, which any but the most narrow literalist would feel at once to be untenable. Thus several times she expressed ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... he was not wholly checkmated. Thank heaven the bungling detective had missed the departure of Louise altogether. Charlie's arrest at this critical juncture was most unfortunate, but need not prove disastrous to his cleverly-laid plot. He decided it would be best to go ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne

... female warriors, was afterwards known as the river of the Amazons. The author spread reports of another El Dorado to the north, in which the roofs of the temples were covered with gold. This report afterwards led to the disastrous expedition of Sir Walter Raleigh to Guiana. By his voyage Orellana connected the Spanish and Portuguese "spheres of influence" in the New World of Amerigo. By the year 1540 the main outlines of Central and South America and something of the interior had been made known by the Spanish ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... succeeded; and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever. For the first time since his birth, Mr. Idle found himself confined to his bed for many weeks together, wasted and worn by a long illness, of which his own disastrous muscular exertion had been ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... the foot is more serious when made by a blunt-pointed instrument than when the point is sharp, and the nearer the injury is to the center of the foot the more liable are disastrous results to follow. Wounds in the heel and in the posterior parts of the frog are attended with but little danger, unless they are so deep as to injure the lateral cartilages, when quittor may follow. Punctured wounds ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... eyes suddenly fell upon the bed and its occupant. Both he and his companion started. But to the natural, unaffected dismay of a gentleman who had unwittingly intruded upon a lady's bedchamber, Brant's quick eye saw a more disastrous concern superadded. Colonel Lagrange was quick to recover himself, as ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... bursting with anger, in spite of the inward admonition that much that he prized was in danger, that any breach with Hylda would be disastrous. But self-will and his native arrogance overruled the monitor within, and he said: "Don't preach to me, don't play the martyr. You will do this and you will do that! You will save my honour and the family name! You will relieve Claridge Pasha, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... into the political complications of his time; and his total ignorance of affairs, together with his contempt for civilised life, prevented him from framing a theory of any practical utility. Indeed, the disastrous attempt of the Jacobins to apply his principles proved how valueless and impracticable most of his doctrines were. He never attempted to trace social and political evils to their causes, in order to suggest suitable ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... matter in what direction the results of its promulgation may appear to tend. And so far as the ruination of individual happiness is concerned, no one can have a more lively perception than myself of the possibly disastrous tendency of my work. So far as I am individually concerned, the result of this analysis has been to show that, whether I regard the problem of Theism on the lower plane of strictly relative probability, or on the higher plane of purely formal considerations, ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes

... adversary. Staying power means the ability to press the initial advantage gained until the strategic objective is achieved. On-the-ground presence, in addition to forces in theater, as demonstrated in Kuwait in 1993 and again in 1996, provided commitment and staying power to convince Iraq that it would be disastrous to consider any form of military action. The inherent staying power of land forces, wherever future tactical concepts may lead, makes them a powerful contributing partner in ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... to say as to the consequences of that," he rejoined, rising to his feet; "but they might be disastrous. Wasn't it you yourself who were telling me a few minutes ago how steely cold Miss Alice's eyes got when ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter

... (that doth scarcely pass Beyond that limit,) even to the point Whereunto ocean is restor'd, what heaven Drains from th' exhaustless store for all earth's streams, Throughout the space is virtue worried down, As 'twere a snake, by all, for mortal foe, Or through disastrous influence on the place, Or else distortion of misguided wills, That custom goads to evil: whence in those, The dwellers in that miserable vale, Nature is so transform'd, it seems as they Had shar'd of Circe's ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri



Words linked to "Disastrous" :   fateful, black, unfortunate



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