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Wreck   Listen
verb
Wreck  v. t.  (past & past part. wrecked; pres. part. wrecking)  
1.
To destroy, disable, or seriously damage, as a vessel, by driving it against the shore or on rocks, by causing it to become unseaworthy, to founder, or the like; to shipwreck. "Supposing that they saw the king's ship wrecked."
2.
To bring wreck or ruin upon by any kind of violence; to destroy, as a railroad train.
3.
To involve in a wreck; hence, to cause to suffer ruin; to balk of success, and bring disaster on. "Weak and envied, if they should conspire, They wreck themselves."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wreck" Quotes from Famous Books



... state of nerves, and the shell of the Easter egg broken and entirely eaten out. Probably a rat had got in and done it, or, more hopefully, a mink, such as used to attack eggs in the town where I was a boy. We went out and viewed the wreck, as a first step towards a better situation; and suddenly a thought struck me. 'Children,' I said, 'what did you really expect that egg to hatch, anyway?' They looked askance at one another, and ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... it will all turn out well. If I could have talked the lingo like a native, I would have been glad to have gone with you, and taken my chances. The captain saved my life in that wreck, and it would only have been right that I should risk mine for him, if there was but a shadow of chance of its being of use. But I know that, in a job of this sort, I could be of no good whatsomever, and should be getting you into trouble before we ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... been worse—for me, that is. It couldn't have been much worse for the poor devil of an Indian, could it? But I had a pretty fair idea of the country, and had only about fifty miles to walk, and a little waterproof box of grub turned up out of the wreck, so I wasn't in any danger of starving. It was lonely, though—it's lonely enough country, anyhow, and of course I couldn't help thinking about that Indian and the way big rapids roar. I couldn't sleep when night came—saw black rocks sticking up out of white water like the fangs of a mad dog. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... engineer had gathered what the man had said he got to his feet, took his midnight caller by the collar and lead him to the top of the stairs. Greene was opposed to leaving the cheerful room, so Moran was obliged to go with him to the street door. Having put the wreck out into the frosty night the engineer went back to his book. But he could not read. That awful face into which he had looked, and the black soul that he had seen as well, haunted him. He sat with his feet upon the table and smoked pipe after pipe, in a vain effort to ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman

... was a vessel hurled, A dismal wreck, upon the rockbound shoal, Around its hulk th' encircling billows curled, Now thro' its splintered deck the wavelet stole, Then, issuing forth, it gurgled through a hole Staved by the tempest's fury ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... for the War Office, where it had been taken for granted that very few, if any, officers, except perhaps a few natives of Ulster, would elect to wreck their careers, if suddenly confronted with so terrible a choice, rather than take part in operations against the Ulster Loyalists. Instructions were immediately wired to Paget in Dublin to "suspend ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... her father, but would enter into no particulars, only shook her head, and said he was not well and not like himself, and it was a great pity. She knew nothing of the wreck. 'I havenae been near it,' said she. 'What for would I go near it, Charlie lad? The poor souls are gone to their account long syne; and I would just have wished they had ta'en their ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... duty? Ah, what is my duty in this supreme trial? I can not save my life or hers from utter wreck, but I can do my duty, and I will do it, if only it is pointed out to me. Oh, sir, point it out to me!" cried the hypocrite, clasping her hands with a look of sincerity that might have deceived a ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... was lost. I lived in an eternity. I could not suggest to my host that we should depart. I could, however, decline more whisky. And I could, given the chance, discourse with gay despair concerning the miserable wreck that I should be on the morrow in consequence of this high living. I asked them how I could be expected, in such a state, to judge delicate points of expertise in earthenware. I gave them a brief sketch of my customary evening, and left them to compare ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... first lee roll, the foremast broke off almost flush with the deck and fell with a crash over the side, taking with it everything that stood but the lower main and mizzen masts, leaving the Greenock rolling a hopeless wreck on the ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson

... is proof against adversity," Madge declared, in a tragic tone; but her remark passed unheeded. The girls were already at work again, and nothing short of another wreck was likely to distract their attention. The scrape of a palette-knife, the tread of a prowler, or the shoving of a chair to one side, were the only sounds audible in the room, excepting when the occasional ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... signs of daylight Noddy was on deck endeavoring to obtain a better knowledge of the location of the wreck. It seemed to him then that the force of the gale had abated, though the sea was hardly less savage than it had been during the night. As the day dawned, he discovered the outline of some dark object, apparently half a mile distant. He watched this sombre ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic

... recall to their places.'[857] For a list of some of the disastrous alterations and demolitions inflicted upon other cathedrals, the reader may be referred to the pages of Mr. Mackenzie Walcot.[858] Wreck and ruin seems especially to have followed in the track of Wyatt, who was looked upon, nevertheless, as a principal reviver of the ancient style of architecture. If cathedrals, where it might be imagined ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... dreadful iceberg; the long winter nights when the decks are as glass, and the sailor has to climb through icicles to bend the stiff sail on the yard! Think of their courage and their kindnesses in cold, in tempest, in hunger, in wreck! "The women and children to the boats," says the captain of the "Birkenhead," and, with the troops formed on the deck, and the crew obedient to the word of glorious command, the immortal ship goes down. Read the story ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Orianda, Alupka, etc., very Edens, where on their first annexation of the Crimea the wealthy Russians sought a refuge against the horrors of their wintry climate; more recently, Imperial residences—Livadia, the darling of the late Emperor; Orianda, now a mere wreck from the recent conflagration, the seat of the Grand Duke Constantine; Alupka, the abode of Prince Woronzoff, the son of the benevolent genius of these districts, the road-maker, the patron of Yalta, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... Worcester to the Orange River, a Boer occupation of this strong position would have been a terrible menace to Capetown itself. As it is, shots are occasionally fired at trains as they run northward from Worcester, and as a few pounds of dynamite would wreck portions of the Hex River line for weeks the government patrols in this locality cannot be ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... happened. When the people assembled for the weekly meeting, there was not found in that church one whole hymn-book. Some one, apparently, had been pelting the pulpit with them. The cushions were torn; the blinds were a wreck; two stops in the harmonium were pulled out bodily. After the service the missionary was solemnly waited on by a deputation. They were closeted for an hour and a half, but no one, except themselves, ever knew what was said or done. The ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond

... presented a man whose simple faith has been the motive power of his works, to whom pain and weariness of flesh have called no stay since there was discouragement never, to whom personal danger has counted as nothing since fear is incomprehensible. "As the Lord wills, whether for wreck or service, I am about His business." On November 9th of the preceding year, the King of England gave one of his "Birthday Honors" to the same man, making him a Companion of St. ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... sustained, however, that it was of little use, and of great danger. He tried all in his power to shake the inflexibility of Stanhope, but in vain, and at last was obliged to yield as being the feebler of the two. The time lost in this dispute saved the wreck of the army which had just been defeated. What was afterwards done saved the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... by name, was "a notable good fellow, as his great read nose, full of pimples, did give testimony." Perhaps he exaggerated, or it was but one of his "merry discourses." Yet I think he told the truth in this instance. To "wreck" was the habit of the day, and by all coastal peoples the spoil of wrecks was regarded as not less their just due than was the actual food obtained by them from the sea. On our own coasts and in our islands until quite recent times ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... O my mariners! Ye shall not suffer wreck, While up to God the freedman's prayers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... This event added fuel to the already burning fire of American feeling against Spain. Public sentiment urged an immediate declaration of war. President McKinley counseled moderation. Captain Siggsbee, who survived the wreck of the Maine, published an open address in which he advised that adverse criticism be delayed until an official investigation could ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... bloom avails not in the grave, Youth's lofty mien, nor age's awful grace: Moulder unknown the monarch and the slave, Whelm'd in the enormous wreck of human race. ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... at the two dates. It was evident that somewhere between April 18th and May 5th Tom had come a cropper. With a smile, half bitter, Frederick skimmed on through the correspondence: "There's a wreck on Midway Island. A fortune in it, salvage you know. Auction in two days. Cable me four thousand." The last he examined, ran: "A deal I can swing with a little cash. It's big, I tell you. It's so big I don't dare tell you." He remembered ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... (he said so) which directed his footsteps to the churchtown in which Dr. Ravenshaw lived. It was there he discovered the connecting link in the signature of a single witness on a noble charter which granted to the monks of St. Nicholas "all wreck of sea which might happen in the Scilly Isles except whales." To the eye of Robert Turold's faith the illegible scrawl on this faded scroll formed the magic name of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... bluest billows kiss thy curving bays, Whose light infolds thy hills with golden rays, Filling with fruit each dark-leaved orange-tree, What hidden hatred hath the Earth for thee, That once again, in these dark, dreadful days, Breaks forth in trembling rage, and swiftly lays Thy beauty waste in wreck and agony! Is Nature, then, a strife of jealous powers, And man the plaything of unconscious fate? Not so, my troubled heart! God reigns above, And man is greatest in his darkest hours. Walking amid the cities desolate, Behold the Son of ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... casements; for, amidst the drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation: grass and weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen rafters. And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck? In what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower near the gates, and I asked, "Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing the shelter of his narrow ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... the river, which is but narrow, when the bow met with the same fate as the stern.... In a few moments, we came across a cascade which broke several large holes in the bottom of the canoe, and started all the bars.... The wreck becoming flat on the water, we all jumped out ... and held fast to the wreck; to which fortunate resolution we owed our safety, as we should otherwise have been dashed against the rocks by the force of the water, or driven over the cascades.... At length we most fortunately arrived in ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... wormed out of him by the merciless cross-examination of Curio and Flaccus; after the freedman had been suffered to depart with a warning and threat to his prompters, after the captured gladiators had been crucified along the roadway leading toward Rome, and the wreck left in the atrium of the villa caused by the attack had been cleared away,—after all this, then the reaction came. Drusus, indeed, found that though the sun shone bright, its brightness was not for ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... letter of hers abides, kept in contrition by the woman to whom she wrote it, and in this surely the noble soul of her mounts like a star and shines, clear above the wreck of her life. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... an attack? The wolverines? Shann drew his legs under him, ready to erupt into a counter-offensive. He hesitated between drawing stunner or knife. In his brush with the injured Throg at the wreck the stunner had had little impression on the enemy. And now he wondered if his blade, though it was super-steel at its toughest, could pierce any joint in the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... embraced; and in the silence of the factory, at rest for twenty-four hours and deathly still in all its empty buildings, the cashier explained to Frantz the state of affairs. He described Sidonie's conduct, her mad extravagance, the total wreck of the family honor. The Rislers had bought a country house at Asnieres, formerly the property of an actress, and had set up a sumptuous establishment there. They had horses and carriages, and led a luxurious, gay life. The thing ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... Africa, in the Indian Ocean just north of Madagascar Map references: Africa Area: total area: 5 km2 land area: 5 km2 comparative area: about 8.5 times the size of the Mall in Washington, DC note: includes Ile Glorieuse, Ile du Lys, Verte Rocks, Wreck Rock, and South Rock Land boundaries: 0 km Coastline: 35.2 km Maritime claims: contiguous zone: 12 nm exclusive economic zone: 200 nm territorial sea: 12 nm International disputes: claimed by Madagascar Climate: tropical Terrain: NA Natural resources: guano, coconuts Land use: arable land: 0% permanent ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... those aforesaid managers, in cold passages, on stage doorsteps, or, in desperation, under the public portico on the street; and when a hundred snubs and subterfuges would culminate in the return of his manuscript, ragged but unread: I know, and I knew then, that the wreck who would dodge me in Fleet Street, or cut me in the Strand, had taken to his glass more seriously and more steadily than a man should. But I am not sure that it matters much—much, you understand me—when that ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... human being that appetite is not the sign of health, and yielding to it the way to health. But I've made lots of people angry and have lost their trade. I had hopes of you. You were such a hopeless wreck. But no. And you ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... shovelful of red-hot cinders. The rioters stopped to take breath and look on like children at the uncertain flickering blaze, which sprang high one moment, and dropped down the next only to creep along the base of the heap of wreck, and make secure of its future work. Then the lurid blaze darted up wild, high, and irrepressible; and the men around gave a cry of fierce exultation, and in rough mirth began to try and push each other in. In one of the pauses of the rushing, roaring noise of the flames, the moaning low ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... all night long, burst over them in its fury. The lightnings blazed, the thunder rolled, and the wild wind grew to a hurricane, so fierce that the litters in which were Eddo, Pani, and Hana were torn from the grasp of the bearers and rolled upon the ground. From the wreck of them, for they were but frail things, the little grey priests emerged trembling, or rather were dragged by the hands of their giant bearers, to whom they clung as a frightened infant clings to its mother. Rachel saw them ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... troubles. There were many more rocks ahead in the stormy sea of public opinion. The peace party was always ready to lure the ship of state out of its true course by using false lights, even when certain to bring about a universal wreck in which the "pacifists" would suffer with the rest. But dissensions within the war party were worse, especially when caused by action in the field. Fremont's dismissal in November, '61, caused great dissatisfaction among three kinds of people: those who thought him a great ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... missed us and fell into the sea. The other so exactly hit the middle of the ship as to split it into pieces. The mariners and passengers were all crushed to death or fell into the sea. I myself was of the number of the latter; but, as I came up again, I fortunately caught hold of a piece of the wreck, and swimming, sometimes with one hand and sometimes with the other, but always holding fast the plank, the wind and the tide favoring me, I came to an island, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... indicates that the stretch of time covered by the piece is seventy years or more. The scenery undergoes decay, too—the decay of age assisted and perfected by a conflagration. The fine new temples and palaces of the second act are by-and-by a wreck of crumbled walls and prostrate columns, mouldy, grass-grown, and desolate; but their former selves are still recognisable in their ruins. The ageing men and the ageing scenery together convey a profound illusion of that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that forehead, and the rare sensibility of that serious mouth, when my glance, travelling downwards, fell on a narrow billet, stuck in the corner of the picture, between the frame and the canvas. Then I first asked, "Who sent this picture? Who thought of me, saved it out of the wreck of Crimsworth Hall, and now commits it to the care of its natural keeper?" I took the note from ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... spares no limb. When night comes no one can keep his corner of daylight. Are you selfish? then save others. The destruction of the vessel cannot be a matter of indifference to any passenger. There can be no wreck for some that is not wreck for all. O believe it, the abyss ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... works—not to glorify ourselves, but him who has bought us with his own most precious blood. Carry the solemn inquiry to the throne of grace, Have I passed from death unto life? for whosoever thus liveth believeth in Christ, and amidst the fatal wreck of professors, he shall ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... What did it all mean? How could he clear up the chaos which bade fair to wreck his brain. Brettison could not have returned; and yet how strange it all was! ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... he saved at the races on the Fourth of July. He went to the track the next day, and he saw the whole sum melt away, and in his vexation tried to "get back," with the usual result. He plunged desperately, and when he had reached his rooms and run over his losses, he found he was a financial wreck, and that he, as his sporting friends expressed it, "would have to smoke a pipe" for several years to come, instead of indulging in Regalias. He could not conceive how he had come to make such a fool of himself, and he wondered if he would have ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis

... Alexandria may date the rise of the Aristotelian philosophy. Translations of his works were made into Arabic, first, it is said, from Persian and Syriac translations; the former of which had been made during the sixth and seventh centuries, by the wreck of the Neoplatonist party, during their visit to the philosophic Chozroos. A century after, they filled Alexandria. After them Almansoor, Hairoun Alraschid, and their successors, who patronised the Nestorian Christians, obtained from them translations of the philosophic, ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... many to be kept on board, being then 16 men Prisoners, and now as abovesaid but 9. likewise on tuesday last they tooke a Bristol man and Cut down their Masts and Boltspritte and left them as a wreck in the sea, as also another they tooke and Cut a hole in her bottom and let her sink in the sea, and that they were Ordered by the Pyrate You took last munday[3] to Cruise in the Lattitude of the Capes till they came out to them. Sir, this ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... begun the journey when the waves swept over the raft. It was like a submerged foundation upon which their wagons stood. A landing a few miles out of The Dalles averted a total wreck, and afforded opportunity to strengthen the buoyancy of the raft with extra timber carried upon the backs of the men for ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... development, that affects, favorably or unfavorably, his sense of feeling, of thought, and of action. Every day we see people, situated in favorable material conditions, going physically and morally to wreck, simply because, beyond the narrower sphere of their own domestic or personal surroundings, unfavorable circumstances of a social nature operate upon them, and gain such overpowering ascendency that they switch them on wrong tracks. The general ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... amazement, shock, came to Keith's lips in an audible cry. He advanced a step. Yes, in that pitiable wreck of a man he recognized Peter Kirkstone, the fat creature who had stood under the picture of the Madonna that ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... beat him back, And tempests make him half a wreck, And passions strong, with dangerous tack, Retard his course, Yet Christ the pilot all will check, And quell ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte

... agreed, Should be with them a cult and creed, Simplicity a passion. They'd quickly wreck this trade of ours, Since they would scorn the use of flowers, If they could set ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various

... superstructure, 23-m. Masonry founded on the philosophy known and practiced by Solomon, 785-l. Masonry gathers the Truths of the old religions and philosophies, 275. Masonry, Great Apostle of Peace, Harmony, Good Will, Liberty,. Equality, Fraternity, 112-l. Masonry grows through the wreck of empires, 315-l. Masonry has appropriated the Solstices and Sts. John, 595-m. Masonry has become a science, 540-m. Masonry has developed the advantages to be reaped from Mysteries, 540-m. Masonry has eternal duties, 20-l. Masonry has helped cast down some ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... echoes Mr. BUMSTEAD, turning quite pale, and momentarily forgetting the snakes which he is just beginning to discover among the stones. "You're getting nervous again, poor wreck, and need some more West Indian cough-mixture.—Wait until I see for myself whether it's got ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various

... had passed, she was so far recovered as to be able to see Mr. Arnold; from whom Hugh heard, in a somewhat reproachful tone, that she was but the wreck of her former self. It was all that Hugh could do to restrain the natural outbreak of his feelings. A fortnight passed, and she saw Mrs. Elton and Lady Emily for a few moments. They would have left before, but had yielded to Mr. Arnold's entreaty, and were staying ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... and thought over these words. Oh! ethics! Oh! logic! Oh! wisdom! At his age! So they deprived him of his only remaining pleasure out of regard for his health! His health! What would he do with it, inert and trembling wreck that he was? They were taking care of his life, so they said. His life? How many days? Ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred? Why? For his own sake? Or to preserve for some time longer the spectacle of his impotent greediness ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... partition; assassination studied as a science and practiced as an art; everywhere powerful secret organizations sworn to demolish the social fabric that the slow centuries have but just erected and unmindful that themselves will perish in the wreck. No heart in Europe can beat tranquilly under clean linen. Such is the gratitude, such is the wisdom, such the virtue of "The Masses." In 1863 Alexander II of Russia freed 25,000,000 serfs. In 1879 they had killed him ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... minute Mary Jane stared at the wreck that had been her doll. Then she turned and ran screaming ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson

... the Committee to request your acceptance of the accompanying Photograph of a Lifeboat proceeding off to a wreck, as a small permanent acknowledgment of the important service you have rendered to the Lifeboat cause by your very interesting work entitled 'The Lifeboat: a Tale of our Coast ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... exclusive, hard in the security of wealth. Here she stood by a pauper's bed in the name of simple constancy, stripping herself of all earthly surplusage, exposing her deepest wound, proclaiming the bond—herself its only witness—between her and this speechless wreck, drifting out on the tide of death. She had but to let him go. It was the wild word she had spoken in the name of truth and deathless love that fired the imagination of that slow countryside. It was the touch beyond nature that ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... by all who have read this volume, I have chosen rather to give the accounts somewhat condensed which appeared in the New York Tribune at the time of the calamity. The first is from the pen of Bayard Taylor, who visited the scene on the day succeeding the wreck, and describes the appearance of the shore and the remains of the vessel. This is followed by the narrative of Mrs. Hasty, wife of the captain, herself a participant in the scene, and so overwhelmed by grief at her husband's ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... to London, wrote more novels, and saved a fortune for his descendants, who promptly spent it. Evidently it was a family trait. More and more he lived on his nerves, grew imperious, exacting, till he separated from his wife and made wreck of domestic happiness. The self-esteem of which he made comedy in his novels was for him a tragedy. Also he resumed the public readings, with their false glory and nervous wear and tear, which finally brought him ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... to wear round after me, which increased his distance at least a cable's length to leeward. A furious broadside, however, which he poured in, crippled me altogether. Every thing came running down upon the decks, and I was left a complete wreck; but I was to windward of him, and although he might sink me, he could not board or take possession until ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... camp on either side of the river without finding a trace of the hunted man. The river had been watched night and day. The net set by the Burns operatives touched every settlement and village for many miles around. And, finally, the battered and broken wreck of the lost boat had been found some two ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright

... yours," I hazarded, "and your idea was to re-equip that battered wreck at the expense of my very slightly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various

... its oars, while there fluttered in the wind the torn remnants of its banners and sails. When at length it grounded on the sands below the castle the proud bark was little better than a shattered wreck. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... will have to go," said Mr. Bland, grimly. "There has been a wreck and they have missed it. The special has obviously run off the metals without disturbing the line—how it could have done so passes my comprehension—but so it must be, and we shall have a wire from Kenyon or Barton Moss ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... exhausted from want of sleep, prostrate for hours on the pavement; the soul trembling, squeezed like a sponge in the hand, drilled, examined, ransacked even to its smallest folds; and at the end of its failure of an existence, thrown like a wreck against this rude rock, into the silence of a prison, and the dreadful ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... a fine breeze, but before the night closed in upon them the ship was fast aground upon a sandbank, off the Hujamree branch of the Indus, scarcely within sight of land. Everything was thrown overboard to lighten the ship, but in vain; she became a total wreck, and settled down to her main deck in the water. She fortunately, however, held together long enough to allow all the men to be taken on shore, which occupied three days, but with the loss of everything they had taken on board with ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth

... which Dillmann even surpasses his predecessor Knobel, is not equal to the problem presented by the Law of Holiness. He goes on, however, to an attempt to save, by modifying it, the old Strassburg view of Ezekiel's authorship; and as Kuenen justly remarks, he makes ship-wreck on Leviticus xxvi. (Theol. Tijdschr. 1882, p. 646). Cf. <next ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... the material and spiritual centers of civilization—this has been and still is the purpose of Hitler and his Italian and Japanese chessmen. They would wreck the power of the British Commonwealth and Russia and China and the Netherlands—and then combine all their forces to achieve their ultimate goal, the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... he came back, such a miserable wreck of a man, so utterly broken in every way that it would have moved a heart of stone. Inside of me is a sorrow too deep for expression, but somehow a peace also. Now I am sure that my bondage will never cease. But I couldn't refuse to take Julian back when I ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... heights above would absolutely dominate the city; its artillery could pound it to a wreck within a ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... of frontier society is its chivalry toward women, and Houston's conduct brought about his head a perfect storm of indignation. No doubt he had many enemies who welcomed the opportunity to wreck his fame, and who gladly added their voices to the uproar. From the most popular man, he became the most hated, and it would have been dangerous for him to venture back within the state's borders. Not until after his death, did his wife give any explanation ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... 1682 Pepys accompanied the Duke of York to Scotland, and narrowly escaped shipwreck by the way. Before letters could arrive in London to tell of his safety, the news came of the wreck of the "Gloucester" (the Duke's ship), and of the loss of many lives. His friends' anxiety was relieved by the arrival of a letter which Pepys wrote from Edinburgh to Hewer on May 8th, in which he detailed the particulars of the adventure. The Duke invited him to go on board the "Gloucester" ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... life-preservers, they jumped through the cabin window, Mr. Raymond having a state-room door which he had wrenched from its hinges. Mrs. Raymond clung to a floating bale of hay and was saved after an hour of peril and suffering in the icy water. Nothing was seen of Mr. Raymond after he floated away from the wreck, clinging to the door. His death was mourned by a large circle of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... dwellers of my savage town Set saddle on your steeds, and gallop down To watch the heads, and gather what is cast Alive from this Greek wreck. We shall make fast, By God's help, the blasphemers.—Send a corps Out in good boats a furlong from the shore; So we shall either snare them on the seas Or ride them down by land, and at our ease Fling them down gulfs of rock, or pale them high On stakes in ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... dusk of day, the silver light from the sea flowed in, and showed the cliffs, and the gray sand-line, and the drifts of wreck, and wrack-weed. It showed them also a troop of horsemen, waiting under a rock hard by, and ready to dash upon them. The postilions lashed towards the sea, and the horses strove in the depth of sand, and the serving-men cocked their ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... Mandhatta they would both sacrifice to the gods. Curiously Elizabeth stood in the computation a cipher; probably he would marry her, but the escapement from disaster, from wreck, would not be because of any moral sustaining from her, any invisible thread of love binding him to the daughter of the Resident. He knew that until he parted from Bootea at Mandhatta his soul would be ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... records since the Revolution, and it is notorious that Louis XV. left Secret Memoirs, written by his own hand, of what passed before this convulsion; and had not the papers of the Tuileries shared in the wreck of royalty, it would have been seen that Louis XVI. had made some progress in the memoirs of his time; and even his beautiful and unfortunate Queen had herself made extensive notes and collections for the record of her own disastrous career. Hence it must be obvious ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... deafened them as a flame and a force enswathed the sycamore tree a few yards away, blowing off its bark, scattering its branches, making it all in an instant a blackened and blasted wreck. Gladys gave a low scream of terror, fell against him, hid her face in his shoulder. She was trembling violently. He put his arm round her—if he had not supported her she would have fallen. She leaned against him, clinging to him, so that he felt the beat ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... sea boarded her forward; starting several stanchions, carrying away part of her starboard bulwark and rail, and simultaneously the foretop-gallant-mast, which snapped just above the withe. As a natural consequence, every thing was in the utmost confusion—the old hull worked in every timber. The wreck swayed to and fro, retarding the working of the vessel and endangering the lives of those who attempted to clear it from obstruction. Thus she remained for more than half an hour, nearly on her beam-ends, and at the mercy of each succeeding ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... own. A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses would die. For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness. But he would not sin. The picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience. He would resist temptation. He would not see Lord Henry any more—would not, at any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... of the ship divers were sent down. They found the lost ship resting easily in about sixty feet of water. A few days later, however, when other divers went down, the wreck was not at the place described by ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... rascal who had tried to swindle her and forced him to make restitution; what part the radio played in bringing the fellow to terms; how they detected and thwarted the plans of Buck Looker and his cronies to wreck their sets; are told in the first volume of this series entitled: "The Radio Boys' First Wireless; Or, Winning the ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman

... as to go by a map of the world made in 1796. We are coupled to the company of nations like a car in the middle of a train, only more inevitably and permanently, for we cannot uncouple; and if we tried to do so, we might not wreck the train, but we should assuredly wreck ourselves. I think the war has brought us one benefit certainly: that many young men return from Europe knowing this, who had no idea of it before they went, and who know also that ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister

... eighteen he came into the wreck of his patrimony, he at once began suit against Aphobos, one of his unfaithful guardians. He conducted his case himself. So well did he plead his cause that he received a verdict for a large amount. He seems, however, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... difference of opinion. We should have said that the two girls would have been for pushing on, and the Countess for stopping. But that plump lady had already conquered the tremors which, earlier in the day, had threatened to wreck ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... words passed his lips a tongue of flame shot to the very skies. The island seemed to rock, a fierce rush of air struck Foy and shook him from the tree. Then came a dreadful, thunderous sound, and lo! the sky was darkened with fragments of wreck, limbs of men, a grey cloud of salt and torn shreds of sail and cargo, which fell here, there, and everywhere about and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... amid the wreck of broken oars and writhing limbs, a voice is shrieking in broadest Devon to the master, who is looking ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... that, in that forlorn hour of wreck and ruin, with the night of death closing around her, she should have been granted that beautiful illusion—that the latest vision which rested upon the clouded mirror of her mind should have been the vision of her mother, and the latest emotion she should know in life ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... under a great snag, or sunken tree, with dry branches above the water. These caught the mast, while the boat swung round, broadside to the stream, and began to fill with water. Nothing saved her from total wreck, but cutting away the mast. She then drove down the stream, but left one of the unlucky half-breeds clinging to the snag, like a monkey to a pole. It was necessary to run in shore, toil up, laboriously, along the eddies and to attain some distance above the snag, when they launched ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... see, nor the other horse, nor the wagon. A clump of young trees hid the lower declivity. Lorraine did not stop to think of what she would find down there. Sliding, running, she followed the traces of the wreck to where the horse was standing. It was Caroline, looking very dejected but apparently unhurt, save for skinned patches here and there where she ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... A wreck of a tall, slender, handsome man, such a man he may have been in his prime as was Captain Blaise, but older. A sporting, reckless sort he may have been, but a man of manner and blood. Two of the crew bore him out, though ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... triumph. A peculiar end was to be reached in that narrative,—an end in which the writer had a deep personal interest. What is an opium-eater? Says a character in a recent work of fiction, of a social wreck: "If it isn't whisky with him, it's opium; if it isn't opium, it's whisky." This speech establishes the popular category in which De Quincey's habit had placed him. Our attention was to be drawn from these degrading connections. And this is done not merely by the correction of some widespread fallacies ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... little; but, being a man who thought honesty always the best policy, he replied frankly, 'I think we shall save enough out of the wreck to keep you afloat; but I think Clay's Mills ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... Down at the wreck Richard found that one of the two men, a lean, sallow- complexioned individual, had already been liberated, but the other ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer

... through halls and corridors back to the upper world, scrambling and crashing over the debris, and squeezing ourselves through the rabbit-hole by which we had entered. As we passed out of this hot, dark tomb into the brilliant sunlight and the bracing north wind, the gloomy wreck of the place was brought before the imagination with renewed force. The scattered bones, the broken statues, the dead flowers, grouped themselves in the mind into a picture of utter decay. In some of the tombs which have been opened the freshness of the objects has caused ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... and dropped Miss Amy upon her knees in the bed of the wagon. The combined mental and physical shock was too much for her; she instantly and sincerely fainted; the last thing in her ears amidst this wreck of matter being the "wheep" of a bullet and the sharp crack of ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... Samothrace to get initiated and celebrate a feast, let slip his opportunity, Mithridates being passed by with all his fleet. He, hastening into Pontus before Lucullus should come up to him, was caught in a storm, which dispersed his fleet and sunk several ships. The wreck floated on all the neighboring shore for many days after. The merchant ship, in which he himself was, could not well in that heavy swell be brought ashore by the masters for its bigness, and it being heavy with water and ready to sink, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... the young nobleman and the wife he adored are still extant, having been with the body of her beautiful baby the only things of Margaret Fuller's saved from the fatal wreck in which she and her two loved ones were lost. One of these letters will be enough to show the tenderness ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... down; the storm has come up; the sea tyrant has got hold of the solitary passenger and dandles her very roughly, singing "The Wreck of the 'Hesperus'" in a loud bass to some grand deep tune, alternating with the one hundred and third Psalm in Gaelic. The passenger holds on for dear life and wonders why the winds sing those words over ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... of war, in 1914, with all its ruthless wreck and carnage, shook the universal fabric of the sphere. Fear, fraud and famine were met together, duplicity and greed had kissed each other. Short rations and with some, starvation, were soon the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... the bombardment, the exact damage done to the forts could not be ascertained. A deserter from the garrison came to the fleet and stated that Jackson was a complete wreck, but his information was considered rather doubtful. After six days' firing, when the forts showed no disposition to surrender, and when our stock of ammunition was considerably reduced, Captain Porter submitted to the flag officer a plan for passing with the fleet between the forts. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... "only both of us have promised our folks not to travel at night-time when it can be helped. Even if the moon is bright there's always a risk about landing, because it's a tricky light at the best, and even a little mistake may wreck things. And so Frank will work in the shop tonight, and ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... king since the days of Arthur King of Great Britain."[1] Even to his own age his senile degradation pointed the moral of the triumphs of his manhood. The modern historian, who sees, beneath the superficial splendour of the days of Edward III., the misery and degradation that underlay the wreck of the dying Middle Ages, is in no danger of appraising too highly the merits of this showy and ambitious monarch. Perhaps in our own days the reaction has gone too far, and we have been taught to undervalue the splendid energy and robustness of temperament which commanded the admiration of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand, And pluck my magic garment from me. —So: [Lays down his mantle. Lie there, my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort. 25 The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch'd The very virtue of compassion in thee, I have with such provision in mine art So safely order'd, that there is no soul, No, not so much perdition as an hair 30 Betid to any creature in the vessel Which thou heard'st ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... one here. The man who saved the wreck of Braddock's army is just the one to build a nation. I nominate George Washington as the commander-in-chief ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan

... when our ship parted her timbers in a terrible storm and went ashore nigh a place called Aguamorta, away there in the West: what was the fate of the men that were aboard our ship I know not, nor knew I ever; I remember only, that, when day came, and I returned, as it were, from death to life, the wreck, having been sighted, was boarded by folk from all the country-side, intent on plunder; and I and two of my women were taken ashore, where the women were forthwith parted from me by the young men, nor did I ever learn their fate. Now hear my own. ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... was probably less in the order of Plymouth dockyard to catch the eye of the boy, always determined in its preference of purely picturesque arrangements, than might have been afforded by the meanest fishing hamlet. But a strong and lasting impression was made upon him by the wreck of the "Dutton" East Indiaman on the rocks under the citadel; the crew were saved by the personal courage and devotion of Sir Edward Pellew, afterwards Lord Exmouth. The wreck held together for many hours under the cliff, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... Skinner had made a most determined attempt to board the larger of the two vessels, but was killed by a musket-shot, and that only after thirty of the Britannia's crew had been killed and wounded, and the ship herself was but little more than a wreck, did Ohlsen, who was himself terribly wounded by a splinter in the side, haul down his flag. Then the elder of the two Frenchmen asked Robert which was the child ...
— "Old Mary" - 1901 • Louis Becke

... may see, when years may wreck my wrong, And golden hairs may change to silver wire; And those bright rays (that kindle all this fire) Shall fail in force, their power not so strong, Her beauty, now the burden of my song, Whose glorious blaze the world's eye doth admire, Must yield her praise to tyrant Time's desire; Then ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... he fears not foaming flood Who fears not steel-clad line: No warrior thou of German blood, No brother thou of mine. Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck, Her gems to deck thy hilt; And blazon honor's hapless wreck With all ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... looked a human wreck, My collar wilted at the neck, My hair awry, my features drawn With all the suffering I had borne. She looked at me and softly said, "If I were you, I'd go to bed." Hers was the bitterer part, I know; She traveled through the vale of woe, But ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest

... the servants' quarters were aroused, and Mrs. Sherman, now really alarmed, called for Walker and Alec to bring lanterns. The lawn was a wreck, strewn with leaves and fallen limbs and pieces of broken flower urns that had been overturned by the wind. The searchers stumbled over them as they waded through the wet grass, looking in every nook ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... ordered by King Philip II. of Spain to surrender his post as Governor to Francisco Villagran. That fine old conquistador was now worn out in body and a wreck of his former self. The furious combats with the Araucanians broke out afresh, and continued unabated. A series of disasters shattered the spirit of Villagran, and sent him to his grave. Following this came the usual succession of Governors, and ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... of the Earl, in directing an inquiry about the fisherman, the boy, the boat, and the wreck, seemed to connect themselves with strange figures in the past—figures which appeared before his mind's eye vague and misty, such as we are told the shadows always appear at first which are conjured up ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... house. 2. In the second-hand store. 3. The railroad wreck. 4. The beggar at the door. 5. Representative Dongan reads a letter from "The Corners." 6. A woman at the station. 7. Mrs. Humphrey's kitchen. 8. ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith

... mystery had soon died out. Only the creditors remembered. After ten years they were pleasantly reminded of the wreck of the firm of Grimes & Morrell by the receipt of their lost money, with interest compounded to date. The lawyer that had come on from the West to make the settlement for Prince Morrell bound the creditors to secrecy. The bankruptcy ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... interesting, and as she was assisted and supported by unexpected acts of kindness, and had a good adviser in one of those old Parisian lawyers who would get anybody out of the most inextricable difficulties, she managed to save something from the wreck, and to keep a small income. Then reassured and emboldened, and resting her ultimate illusions and her chimerical hopes on her daughter's radiant beauty, and preparing for that last game in which they would ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... that she didn't love you, but that would have been for my sake too; and I would have told you if I hadn't cared for you and known how you cared for me. I've saved at least the consciousness of this from the wreck." ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... was dismasted in a day or two after her departure from Charleston. She was taken in tow by the vessel of a New York merchant, and carried into the port of that city. The merchant refused any compensation from the Russian minister, although his vessel was, when she fell in with the wreck, proceeding to the Austral regions, and her putting about was greatly disadvantageous. The minister returned thanks publicly, on the part of his master, and expressed his majesty's sense of the invariable consideration and friendship with which his majesty's subjects ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... was horribly injured, and the whole room bore witness to the savage ferocity of the blow which had struck him down. Beside him lay the heavy poker, bent into a curve by the concussion. Holmes examined both it and the indescribable wreck which ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... protecting watchfulness of the sentries, which Tarzan had taught the tribe to post, had lulled them all into a sense of peaceful security based on that fallacy which has wrecked many enlightened communities in the past and will continue to wreck others in the future—that because they have not been ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... altered directly, and, helped by a favouring breeze, we ran down rapidly towards the wreck, which proved to be sending up a thin column of smoke, and soon after this ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... day my melancholy sleep Hath been so thronged with images of woe, That even now I cannot choose but weep To think this was some sad prophetic show Of future horror to befall us so, Of mortal wreck and uttermost distress, Yea, our poor empire's fall and overthrow, For this was my long vision's dreadful stress, And when I waked my ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... proud in all her canvas, graceful as a swan. Since that, there had been fire, tempest, lightning, disaster, danger, and death; her masts were tossed about on the snowy waves hundreds of miles away from her—and she, a wreck, was rolling heavily, groaning and complaining in every timber as she urged her impetuous race ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... existence;—strip us of sight, sound, touch, and all the external constitution of nature, clothe us with whatever feelings and powers, place us in whatever scenes may come—but gift us with this universal faculty, our power of knowing truth. Otherwise, with rudder lost, we are dreamers on a drifting wreck, and where were the Divine One, and this harmonious architecture of the universe, and all things trustworthy, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... desert-island book contains certain ingredients, I do not mind if other superfluous matter creeps in. Our demands—we of the elect who adore desert-islands—are simple. The castaways must build themselves a hut with the aid of a bag of nails saved from the wreck; they must catch turtles by turning them over on their backs; they must find the bread-fruit tree and have adventures with sharks. Twice they must be visited by savages. On the first occasion they are taken by surprise, but—the ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... popularity of General Jackson was adroitly used by two or three invisible wire-pullers to defeat the aspirations of these too eager candidates, and how from the general wreck of their hopes Mr. Calhoun had the dexterity to emerge Vice-President of the United States, has been related with the amplest detail, and need not be repeated here. Mr. Calhoun's position seemed then to combine all the advantages ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... Then we'll make tracks, after the spring freshet, to another place I know of where laws is stationary and folks ain't over keen, and where a handsome woman like Joyce will help. I've got money enough left from the wreck to tide us over, my ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... love-weakness and love-wrath for which they and their two pretty mates were just now so unlucky as to stand; of the awful naturalness of such things; of the butterfly beauty and wonder—nay, rather the divine possibilities of the lives such things so naturally speed to wreck; and then of Tom Moore ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable

... the dinner-hour, and she stood in her kitchen beside a pot of stew that simmered over the wreck-wood fire. ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... overrated. After a long struggle with adverse circumstances, he decided on withdrawing from the partnership before the whole of his capital was lost in a failing commercial speculation. The end of it was that he retired, with his daughter, to a small town in East Flanders; the wreck of his property having left him with an income of no more than two ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... as it ought to be until all the roads are improved. Winter-washed roads, penning young people in their own homes for many months each year and destroying so many of the innocent pleasures of youth, build towns and cities out of the wreck of country homes. Can young people who love their country and their country homes engage in a nobler crusade than a ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... any harm; and I believe you would not do him mere bodily harm; but, were things changed, so that hate-action became absolutely safe, I should have no confidence what you might not come to do. No one can tell what wreck a gust of passion upon a sea of hate may work. There are men a man might well kill, if he were anything less than ready to die for them. The difference between the man that hates and the man that kills may be nowhere but in the courage. These are grewsome ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... a little narrow creek, the bottom being miry and several feet below the surface of the ground. There upon the bank stood the two friends who had so joyously bidden us goodby only a few hours before. The cart was a wreck, with one shaft and one spindle broken. It appeared that the donkey had got mired in crossing the creek and in floundering about had twisted off the shaft and broken one of the wheels. We left them there bewailing their misfortune and blaming each other ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole

... tell him the dreadful truth that she had discovered; and then, again, it would only after all be a piece of needless cruelty. During her connection with him he had always treated her with kindness and courtesy, and often with generosity. She had nothing whatever against him, so why should she wreck the happiness of his honeymoon, and perhaps of his whole married life, by disclosing the secret that had been so strangely revealed to her? So ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... like a distant, unformed sound? All our collectors, whilst smiling in triumph over the pearls which they have brought up and borne to the shore, lament the multitude of precious things irrecoverably buried in the depths of oblivion. Where, for instance, amid the similar wreck which has befallen so many others, are now the ancient words pouring forth the dirge over the "Flowers of the Forest," or those describing the tragic horrors on the "Braes of Yarrow," or those celebrating the wondrous attractions of the "Braw Lads o' Gala Water"? We have ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... thence; the Pieta of Villeneuve, now in the Louvre; the founder's tomb; the high altar of Notre Dame at Villeneuve, and a few other relics, alone survive of its vast possessions. The scene resembles nothing so much as a city ruined by bombardment or earthquake, but how long the wreck will remain in its present picturesque and melancholy condition is difficult to forecast. The state is slowly buying out the owners, and doubtless ere many years are passed the more valuable artistic remains will have been ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... to be thinking about art is not a matter of choice. Art is imperious. As well tell an artist not to breathe as not to create. Artists will be artists; and so far as I can see the spirit has never foundered in the wreck of material things. If those ancient ministers of the devil, fire and sword, pestilence and famine, could not force men to stop creating and feeling, I do not suppose that journalists and politicians and inactive colonels and fire-eating curates will be ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... glass, nails, and the country mechanic,—of the three, the mechanic can do the largest amount of damage in a given time. His well-meant efforts may wreck you; his mistakes are sure to. The average mechanic along the route is a veritable bull in a china shop,—once inside your machine, and you are done for. He knows it all, and more too. He once lived next to a man who owned a naphtha launch; hence his expert knowledge; or he knew ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... side hideously; then by degrees they seemed to become less glazed, and a light of returning sanity entered them. They became fixed; and they were fixed upon Nayland Smith, who bending over the bed, was watching Sir Gregory (for Sir Gregory I concluded this pitiable wreck to be) with an expression upon his face compound ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... when Mrs. Watson tapped at the door and brought me some tea and toast. The cook was in bed, completely demoralized, she reported, and Liddy, brave with the daylight, was looking for footprints around the house. Mrs. Watson herself was a wreck; she was blue-white around the lips, and she had ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the most intimate friend of a man of genius or the wife of a commonplace Tisdall?" Whatever we may surmise, there is nothing to prove that she was disappointed. She was the one star which brightened Swift's storm-tossed course; it is well that she was spared seeing the wreck at the end. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... the gold-mines of Veragua, and attempted unsuccessfully to found a settlement there. As his vessels were no longer capable of standing the sea, he ran them aground on Jamaica, fastened them together, and put the wreck in a state of defence. He dispatched canoes to Hispaniola, asking Ovando to send a ship to relieve him, but many months of suffering and difficulty elapsed before ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... question of the divorce really did was to stimulate the movement by bringing into clearer view the wreck of the great Christian commonwealth of which England had till now formed a part, and the impossibility of any real exercise of a spiritual sovereignty over it by the weakened papacy, as well as by outraging the national pride through the summons ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... 7th of October Jackson himself reached the rendezvous. He was still a mere wreck, thin as a shadow, tottering with weakness, and needing to be lifted bodily to his horse. His arm was closely bound and in a sling. His wounds were so sensitive that the least jar or wrench gave him agony. His stomach was in such a state that he was in danger of dying from starvation. Several times ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... and soon after the main, carrying with it the mizzen-top-gallant-mast. We owed this to the embargo, in my judgment, the ship's rigging having got damaged lying dry so long. We were all night clearing the wreck, and the men who used the hatchets, told us that the wind would cant their tools so violently that they sometimes struck on the eyes, instead of the edge. The gale fairly seemed like a ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... amid the wave, Iona mourns her pious founder's grave; Still o'er his tomb these fretted columns pay Their crumbling dust, a tribute to his clay. Frail wreck of time! so crippled with the blast, Recorder Of the present and the past, Enough can tell. These Gothic arches show The height of glory and of human woe; Alas, 'tis all which occupies the brain, The lust of power dyes the despot's chain, Here Learning cast her magic beam around Light of fair Science, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various

... and convenient. He saw an opening big enough to squeeze through; and beyond it, beyond the wild shouting and the flares of swung lanterns, a thick wood dark beneath the paler sky. Before any one could get down to the wreck, he was out and free and away. Crouching with belly to the earth, he ran noiselessly, and gained the woods before any one knew he had escaped. Straight on he ran, watchful but swift, heading for the places where the silence lay heaviest. Within five minutes Hansen had half ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... man of "genius" as we call it; the Soul of a Man actually sent down from the skies with a God's-message to us,—this we waste away as an idle artificial firework, sent to amuse us a little, and sink it into ashes, wreck, and ineffectuality: such reception of a Great Man I do not call very perfect either! Looking into the heart of the thing, one may perhaps call that of Burns a still uglier phenomenon, betokening still sadder imperfections in mankind's ways, than ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... benevolent to themselves at the expense of the toiling nation. The Bonaparte, who here constitutes himself Chief of the Slum-Proletariat; who only here finds again in plenteous form the interests which he personally pursues; who, in this refuse, offal and wreck of all classes, recognizes the only class upon which he can depend unconditionally;—this is the real Bonaparte, the Bonaparte without qualification. An old and crafty roue, he looks upon the historic ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx



Words linked to "Wreck" :   crash, capsizing, bust up, wrecking, shipwreck, wreckage, wrecker



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