"Calamitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the conquered, than is involved in that between the States which compose the two sections of the Union. The condition of the weaker, should it sink from a state of independence and equality to one of dependence and subjection, would be more calamitous than ever before befell a civilized people. It is vain to think that, with such consequences before them, they will not resist; especially, when resistance may save them, and cannot render their condition worse. That this will take place, unless the stronger section desists from its course, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... itself with our commercial existence so closely, as to require the most sagacious policy to eradicate it; at the same time it was the highest consideration for our magnanimity to interfere for that being whose thraldom and calamitous state had so long contributed to our wealth and commercial prosperity, before ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... now calamitous and forlorn. Confiding in the acquisition of my aunt's patrimony, I had made no other provision for the future; I hated manual labour, or any task of which the object was gain. To be guided in my choice of occupations ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... vestments of the Wu-ist priests are endowed with magical properties which are considered to enable the wearer to control the order of the world, to avert unseasonable and calamitous events, such as drought, untimely and superabundant rainfall, and eclipses. These powers are conferred by the decoration upon the dress. Upon the back of the chief vestment the representation of a range of mountains ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... to inquire what turn the Jews themselves give to this prophecy.* There is good proof that the ancient Rabbins explained it of their expected Messiah: but their modern expositors concur, I think, in representing it as a description of the calamitous state, and intended restoration, of the Jewish people, who are here, as they say, exhibited under the character of a single person. I have not discovered that their exposition rests upon any critical arguments, or upon these in any other than ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... against hope to avert the calamities of war and to effect a reunion and reconciliation with our brethren in the South. I yet hope it may be done, but I am not able to point out how it may be. Nothing short of Providence can reveal to us the issues of this great struggle. Bloody—calamitous—I fear it will be. May we so conduct it, if a collision must come, that we will stand justified in the eyes of Him who knows our hearts, and who will justify our every act. We must not yield to resentments, nor to the spirit of vengeance, much less to the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... outwitted by the Oriental—it was the second time for me, too; it would be calamitous to lose Burke. The day dragged along, and when each succeeding minute brought no news of him my anxiety increased by leaps and bounds. Before nightfall, every available man in the department was scouring ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Rothschild was a leader among trading reynards. His doleful whisper spread as the plague—poisoning faith everywhere. The funds tumbled like an aerolite. Public and private opinion wilted before the simoon of calamitous report. It was 'Black Friday' anticipated in Lombard Street. The crafty Israelite bought, through his secret agents, all the consols, bills, and notes, for which ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... plug-ugly," Sarah sneered, after she had exhausted herself of all calamitous forecasts of her own future and the future of her children in the absence of Saxon's weekly four dollars and a half. "I don't know what your mother'd thought if she lived to see the day when you took up with ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... barrier also the flood is rapidly rising—the flood of increased knowledge and new thought; and this barrier also, though honeycombed and in many places thin, creates a danger—danger of a sudden breaking away, distressing and calamitous, sweeping before it not only out worn creeds and noxious dogmas, but cherished principles and ideals, and even wrenching out most precious religious and moral foundations of the whole ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... of Beerbhoom the state of affairs was, perhaps, most calamitous. In 1776, four acres out of every seven remained untilled. Though in earlier times this district had been a favourite highway for armies, by the year 1780 it had become an almost impassable jungle. A small company of Sepoys, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... man, and an object of determined revenge, to all who had shared in the conflict. The spot where it took place was named the First Encounter, in memory of the event, and long retained that name: and the consequences of this first combat proved to be equally calamitous to the savages, and to their more civilized foes, for many ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... his calamitous partner had gone, he made an indifferent lunch on the cold meat he found in Mrs. Hopper's precincts, and then decided that he had better take a walk; to sit still and brood was the worst possible way ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... at Kadesh. After about thirty-eight years had elapsed (Dt. 2:14), and the period of wandering was nearly at an end, Israel is again found at Kadesh (Num. 20:11) on the borders of Edom where the spies had been sent out and they made their calamitous blunder. Here at this time happened three important events; (1) Miriam died and was buried, (2) Moses smote the rock and brought forth water, but because he smote it instead of speaking to it Jehovah was angry ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... matter must have been always under the view of thinkers for the public, whether they act in office or not. Amongst events, even the late calamitous events were in the book of contingency. Of course they must have been in design, at least, provided for. A plan which takes in as many as possible of the states concerned will rather tend to facilitate and simplify a rational scheme for preserving ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... returned by the way of Constance, Ulm, and Nuremberg. Forty-three days we were, day after day, traveling, almost always on foot. I had now obtained the desire of my heart. I had seen Switzerland. But still I was far from being happy. The Lord most graciously preserved us from many calamitous circumstances, which, but for His gracious providence, might have overtaken us. But I did not see His hand at that time, as I have seen it since. Sickness of one or more of us, or separation from one ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... gave to our commandant the letters of M. de Bienville, in which he informed him that the Spaniards had sent out a detachment from New Mexico to go to the Missouris and to establish a post in that country.... The success of this expedition was very calamitous to the Spaniards. Their caravan was composed of fifteen hundred people, men, women and soldiers, having with them a Jacobin for a chaplain, and bringing also a great number of horses and cattle, according to the custom of that nation to forget nothing that might be necessary for a settlement. ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... despatched, Percival with difficulty refrained from following him. Mrs. Weston's solicitude as she hovered between the telephone-booth and the desk was infectious, and he found himself pacing from entrance to entrance, imagining the most calamitous causes for the delay. ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... at the ripe age of eighty-five. His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey, six peers bearing the pall. These things are to be mentioned to the credit of the time and the country; for after we have seen the calamitous spectacle of the way Tycho and Kepler and Galileo were treated by their ungrateful and unworthy countries, it is pleasant to reflect that England, with all its mistakes, yet recognized her great man when she received ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... feeling of another man! Algernon deduced this reply accurately from his own experience, and whether it can be said by other "undined" mortals, does not matter in the least. But we have nothing to do with the constitutionally luckless: the calamitous history of a simple empty stomach is enough. Here the tragedy is palpable. Indeed, too sadly so, and I dare apply but a flash of the microscope to the rageing dilemmas of this animalcule. Five and twenty minutes had signalled their departure from the hour of seven, when Algernon pronounced ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "forty-five." To leap forward and catch him in my arms was the work of an instant. On each of these occasions, after setting him upright, I used to give him a tender hug, to indicate my regret at having been so inattentive, and my sympathy with him in his calamitous circumstances. ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... fight her battle single-handed. Alone he had saved the situation by his very vagueness. In conjunction with herself there was no knowing what he might do, for she had resolved to exonerate him from all blame and to attribute to her own infirmities of disposition this calamitous result of ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... This calamitous event was more than the feeble frame of Anastasia could endure. She rapidly failed, and on the 7th of August, 1560, she expired. The grief of Ivan was heartrending, and never was national affliction ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... (or rather of Edmond de Goncourt, for Jules seems to have been the better fellow pretty certainly, as well as probably the more genuine talent, of the two) would be grossly unfair in dealing with Emile Zola. One may think his principle demonstrably wrong, and his practice for the most part a calamitous mistake. One may, while, if indeed it concerned us, clearing him of the charge of doing any moral harm—such harm would be as likely to be done by records of Bedlam, or the Lock Hospital, or a dipsomaniacs' home—put on the wrong side of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... and the name of Grogan Morgan has become a household word through this county as one of the best landlords in Ireland. He never broke down a rooftree during or since the terrible famine. Under his fostering care they have all tided over the calamitous time, and are happy and prosperous in their homes. He did not think his estate overcrowded, nor did he avail himself of the mysterious destruction of the fruits of the earth, to clear off beings made in God's image, and to drive them to the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... need here of revolution, of what the French call une jaquerie, of arming the populace for the purpose of violently ejecting the great land-owners. No Irishman has ever stood for so calamitous a remedy. The aid of the Internationalists will certainly never be called in by the true children of Erin for any purpose whatever. It seems that the great and holy Pontiff, Pius IX., made this remark to the Prince of Wales, at their last interview at the Vatican, and, according to the report, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... oath. When he reached home, his wife and children received him with all the demonstrations of perfect joy. But he, instead of returning their caresses, wept so bitterly, that his family apprehended something calamitous had befallen him. His wife enquire reason of his excessive grief and tears; "We are all overjoyed," said she, "at your return; but you alarm us by your lamentations; pray tell us the cause of your sorrow." "Alas!" replied the husband, "I have but a year to live." He ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... child. In the dim light he could not see her face distinctly; even the form was shadowy. But again he was reminded of Tirzah, and a sudden tenderness fell upon him—just so the lost sister stood with him on the house-top the calamitous morning of the accident to Gratus. Poor Tirzah! Where was she now? Esther had the benefit of the feeling evoked. If not his sister, he could never look upon her as his servant; and that she was his servant in fact would ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Egypt, where the sultan resided. Near Mansourah, the Crusaders became perplexed by the intricacy of the canals, and a hasty dash across one of these, made by the king's brother, the Count of Artois, with 2,000 men, led to a calamitous result. Mansourah was apparently deserted, and the count's troops, who preceded their comrades at some distance, commenced pillaging the houses. The inhabitants, who were only concealed, showered down stones from the roofs; and at the same moment, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... The city filled 'em with awe and they made no pretense to the contrary. About all they did that day was to buy picture cards and a few drinks. They was afraid to wander very far from the hotel for fear they'd get run over or arrested or fall into the new subway or something calamitous like that. Of course New York was looking as usual, the streets being full of tired voters tearing up the car-tracks and digging first-line trenches and ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... generally the lowest, and the natives, unable to keep their bargains without considerable injury or endangering the subsistence of their numerous families, implore the favor of the magistrate, petitioning him to lay their calamitous situation before the superior government, in order to have the payment of their tribute in kind remitted, and offering to pay it in money. This is the precise moment when, as his own profits depend on the misery of the province under his command, he endeavors to misuse the accidental power ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... century, and rendered her the curse of her dependencies, can in part be ascribed to the enthusiasm aroused in previous generations by the heroic conflict with advancing Islam, is a thesis capable of demonstration. Yet none the less is it true that her action at that period was calamitous to herself and little short of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the lot of this tender part of our species be much softened. By varying, too, the articles of culture, we multiply the chances for making something, and disarm the seasons in a proportionable degree, of their calamitous effects. ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... effect of the late events on the active part of the population of France, cannot be accurately judged of in the present moment of irritation and disorder; but whatever government that country may ultimately assume, it may surely be hoped that their experience of unsuccessful and calamitous war has been sufficient to incline them to peace; that they will learn to measure their national glory by a better standard than mere victory or noise; that they will reflect on the true objects, both of political and military institutions, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... anti-democratic element, we find it plotting the overthrow of democratic government. In its efforts to denationalize republican government in America, it has not scrupled to seek aid from, and alliance with, the haters of republican institutions every where. Under such calamitous teachings as it has inflicted, can we longer conclude that it can, from its aptitudes and nature, be converted into an element of national strength? There is a South, and a great South, and would continue to be, were there not a negro or slaveholder sojourning ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... contrived against him. His acts have been relegated to a side channel of history. Yet for Englishmen his figure keeps its prominence and radiance. It is the more conspicuous for the poverty of the period in which a large and calamitous part of his career was spent. As the student plods along one of the dreariest wastes of the national annals, his name gleams across the tedious page. When from time to time he flits over the stage, the quagmire of Court intrigues and jobbing ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... During those calamitous decades another great evil emerged as a result of the Union. Many bad things have been said against the Irish land laws, and many of them are justified. But the Irish land laws in their old working ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... man as a veritable gold-mine, in that he had discovered one of the richest diggings in the country. To quarrel with him therefore would be calamitous: to pay him was impossible, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... outbreak of the present war in Europe, the calamitous effect of which we view with grave concern, we on our part have entertained hopes of preserving the peace of the Far East by the maintenance of strict neutrality, but the action of Germany has at length compelled Great Britain, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... former, is written in verse, and only contains a description of two adventures that happened in the voyage, one of which proved extremely calamitous to those concerned in it, among whom was the author. From the title or preamble, we learn that the adventurers in this voyage were Sir William Gerard, Sir William Chester, Sir Thomas Lodge, Benjamin Gonson, William Winter, Lionel ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... North of Europe an equally successful and, in some respects, an independent movement in favour of true representation has taken place. In an excellent little pamphlet, published at Helsingfors,[6] it is stated that during those calamitous years between the coup d'etat of 1899 and the restoration of the constitution in 1906, there arose in Finland the conviction that only a democratic reform of its political institutions would afford a sufficient guarantee for the maintenance of its internal independence. The fruits ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... friend Shenstone, perhaps more feelingly, commemorated her virtues and her tastes. Such, indeed, was the friendly intercourse between Shenstone and Utrecia, that in Elegy XVIII., written long after her death, she still lingered in his reminiscences. Composing this Elegy on the calamitous close of Somerville's life, a brother bard, and victim to narrow circumstances, and which he probably contemplated as an image of his own, Shenstone tenderly recollects that he used to read Somerville's poems ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the calamitous Red River expedition, boat-load after boat-load of the wounded were sent up to Vicksburg. As soon as they touched the shore, our friend and her companions met the poor fellows stretched upon the decks and ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Nottingham, where the family was then located, suffered heavily, a large proportion of its poorer classes being reduced to the verge of starvation. My father, who had invested the entire savings of his lifetime in small house property, was seriously affected by these calamitous circumstances; in ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... cutting of forests, clearing of brush and drainage of marshes is more or less calamitous to all the species of birds that inhabit such places and find there winter food and shelter. Red-winged blackbirds and real estate booms can not inhabit the same swamps contemporaneously. Before the relentless march of civilization, the wild Indian, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... thought an assistant necessary, and appointed Mr. Price. His health then returned gradually, and he performed his duty till (1712) he was seized by a fever of such violence and continuance, that from the feebleness which it brought upon him he never perfectly recovered. This calamitous state made the compassion of his friends necessary, and drew upon him the attention of Sir Thomas Abney, who received him into his house, where, with a constancy of friendship and uniformity of conduct not often to be found, he was treated for thirty-six years with all the kindness that friendship ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... a sensation than a thought, and may be compared to that of a convicted cashier beset by recollections of the bank he had pillaged—there are some thoughts to which one closes the mind. George had seen Eugene only once since their calamitous encounter. They had passed on opposite sides of the street, downtown; each had been aware of the other, and each had been aware that the other was aware of him, and yet each kept his eyes straight forward, and neither had shown ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... no blame to Raymond still felt it unfortunate, even calamitous, that he should not have learned how to get on with a young wife. But there were those that did blame him—blamed him for an unbending, self-satisfied prig who would have driven almost any spirited young woman ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... an expression which might be called terrific. He started up hastily, walkt several times up and down the room, then sat down again sighing, and began in a bitter tone: "So! this is it! You are in love! Is it not so? I am doomed again to hear this ill-omened, this calamitous word! I am doomed to witness this frenzy, this dark, heart-rending, heart-sickening absurdity, even in you, in a man of your sense! And all, all that one might otherwise esteem, and look upon as reasonable, is swallowed up in this whirlpool, in which horrour, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... such follies are often more calamitous than the ambition of kings; and that intolerance and bigotry have been infinitely greater curses to mankind than ignorance and error. Better any error than persecution! Better any opinion than the thumb-screw, the rack, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... loss, and before they have become in a manner either reconciled to it, or indifferent to their fate, they roam in an inquiring manner, in and out of the hive, and over its outside as well as inside, and plainly manifest that something calamitous has befallen them. Often those that return from the fields, instead of entering the hive with that dispatchful haste so characteristic of a bee returning well stored to a prosperous home, linger about the ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... The calamitous effects of the system had reached the humblest concerns of human life. Provisions had risen to an enormous price; paper money was refused at all the shops; the people had not wherewithal to buy bread. It had been found absolutely indispensable to relax a little from the suspension ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... it in a chapter by itself. Put in a sentence it is this: Only real love offers a basis for a happy marriage, and real love is something more than physical attraction. If all young men and women knew that and would be strong enough to act upon it, there would be very few calamitous marriages in the future. ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... would ever haste to do with a generous eagerness and enthusiasm, and therefore I used to contemplate your character with an enthusiastic affection. That character, high as it was, sunk in my estimation from the calamitous delay concerning the promised pension of Cowper, a delay which allowed that dear and now released sufferer to sink into utter and useless distraction before the neglected promise was fulfilled. Will you make ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... their distress, when the condition of the city of London was so truly calamitous, just then it pleased God, as it were, by his immediate hand, to disarm this enemy: the poison was taken out of the sting. It was wonderful. Even the physicians themselves were surprised at it. Wherever they visited, they found ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... in riches—who can daily throw away a large sum upon the merest toy—the cruel disappointment, the bitter agony of this poor mother's heart, when she received this calamitous news, in the midst of her starving children. For the last nine weeks they had lived upon a scanty supply of potatoes; they had not tasted raised bread or animal food ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... wipe the day of LEXINGTON, Thus soil'd, quite from our soldiers' memories. This reinforcement, which with us have fail'd, In many a transport, from Britannia's shores, Will give new vigour to the Royal Arms, And crush rebellion, in its infancy. Let's on, and from this siege, calamitous, Assert our liberty; nay, rather die, Transfix'd in battle, by their bayonets, Than thus remain, the scoff and ridicule Of gibing wits, and paltry gazetteers, On this, their madding continent, who cry, Where is the British valour: ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... event are set alight throughout the city. The play naturally falls into three divisions. The first introduces the Chorus of Argive elders, Clytemnestra, and a Herald who tells of the hardships of the siege and of the calamitous return, and ends with the triumphal entrance of Agamemnon with Cassandra, and his welcome by the Queen; the second comprehends the prophecy of the frenzied Cassandra of the doom about to fall upon the house and the murder ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... with her. Mrs. Bunce had not heard of the tragedy, but she had at once perceived from the barrister's manner that there was some serious matter forward,—some matter that was probably not only serious, but also calamitous. The expression of her countenance announced as much to the two men, and the countenance of Mr. Low when he followed her into the room told the same story still more plainly. "Is anything the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... well said of Carlisle, that each fresh instance of prodigality in Fox "affected his generous heart with anxiety for the character, the health, and the happiness of his friend before he found time to compute and lament its calamitous influence on his own fortunes."(119) Selwyn's solicitude for the welfare of his friend urged him, as we see in the following letter, to something like impatient expostulation on his forbearance and ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... Ch'eng Tzu, Chu Tzu and Chang Tzu were ordained to see light in an auspicious era. Whereas Ch'i Yu, Kung Kung, Chieh Wang, Chou Wang, Shih Huang, Wang Mang, Tsao Ts'ao, Wen Wen, An Hu-shan, Ch'in Kuei and others were one and all destined to come into the world during a calamitous age. Those endowed with extreme benevolence set the world in order; those possessed of extreme maliciousness turn the world into disorder. Purity, intelligence, spirituality and subtlety constitute the vital spirit of right which pervades heaven and earth, and the persons ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... often in and out of the queen's rooms that no one could enter them but by order. The same etiquette is observed when the princes are with the queen as when the king is there-no interruption whatever is made. I now, therefore, lost my only consolation at this calamitous time, that of attending my ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... lord, too late to offer any thing by way of defence or vindication; nor can we expect from your lordships, in this court, but the sentence which the law requires you, as judges, to pronounce against men of our calamitous condition. But we are also persuaded, that as mere men, and out of this seat of rigorous justice, you are susceptive of the tender passions, and too humane not to commiserate the unhappy situation of those, whom the law sometimes, perhaps—exacts—from you to pronounce upon. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Many of the calamitous efforts of the tremendous revolution which has passed over the Southern States still remain. The immeasurable benefits which will surely follow, sooner or later, the hearty and generous acceptance of the legitimate results of that revolution ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... with this farewell: "Go in peace, gallant warrior, you who with expert hand have guided the destinies of this country in such calamitous times! Go in peace to breathe the balmy breezes of Manzanares! [73] We shall remain here like faithful sentinels to venerate your memory, to admire your wise dispositions, to avenge the infamous attempt upon your splendid gift, which we will recover even if we have to dry up the seas! ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... say personal, because he had written to London to accelerate the attempt to raise a loan, and, at the suggestion of Colonel Stanhope, he addressed a letter to Mavrocordato respecting the inevitable consequences of their calamitous dissensions. The object of this letter was to induce a reconciliation between the rival factions, or to throw the odium, of having thwarted the loan, upon the Executive, and thereby to degrade the members of it in the opinion ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... be exhibited. Stuyvesant then went in person to the meeting. "Such a course," said he, "would be disapproved of in the Fatherland—it would discourage the people." All his efforts, however, were in vain; and the director, protesting that he should not be held answerable for the "calamitous consequences," was obliged to yield to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Lord Percival had declared he did not understand I.O.U.'s in an affair of that kind. He had always thought that gentlemen did not play for stakes which they could not pay at once. This was not said to Gerald himself;—or the result would have been calamitous. Nidderdale was the go-between, and at last arranged it,—not however till he had pointed out that Percival, having won so large a sum of money from a lad under twenty-one years of age, was very lucky in receiving ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... is much matter giving an insight into the extraordinary and calamitous foreign ignorance about present-day China, an ignorance which is just as marked among those resident in the country as among those who have never visited it. The whole of the material grouped in this novel fashion should not fail to bring ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... while a Scotch battalion even took five. This sort of thing usually proves disastrous, as most of our own big guns are out of sight of their objective, and fire entirely by range, and in this case the guns were trained on the third trench while this battalion rushed through to the fifth, with calamitous results. This battalion—either Royal Scots, Scotch Fusiliers, or K.O.S.B.'s I forget which—had lost all its officers, but, with no one to lead them, they dashed on, greatly to the admiration of all onlookers. ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... 1799, when Finow, a Friendly Island chief, acquired the supreme power in that most interesting group of islands, after a bloody and calamitous civil war, in which his enemies were completely overpowered, the barbarian forced a number of the vanquished to embark in their canoes and put to sea; and during the revolution that issued in the subversion of paganism in Otaheite, the rebel chiefs threatened to treat the English ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... parents, whose intelligence ought to teach them better, not only winking at, but actually encouraging, these premature manifestations of passion in their children. They may yet learn, by bitter experience, the folly of their course, unless they make the discovery in time to avert the calamitous results which threaten the future of their children, by ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... with suspicion. It definitely committed him to a mode of life which he had always regarded as degrading both to the man and the woman and as certain of a calamitous ending. So he made excuses for delay, fully intending never to yield. But although Alice did not speak of her plan again, he found himself more and more attracted by it, caught himself speculating about various apartments he happened ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... in their mother's new-spilt gore Red-garmented and ghastly, from the door They reel.... O horrible! Was it agony Like this, she boded in her last wild cry? There lives no seed of man calamitous, Nor hath lived, like ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... pleading,—victims of the fearful pressure of poisonous and heated air upon the excited brain. The deaths of Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle of our present Chief Justice, and of Ezekiel Webster, the brother of our great statesman, are memorable examples of the calamitous effects of the errors dwelt upon; and yet, strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend these errors, and give the body an equal chance with the mind in the pressure of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... forth in a little Book called the Christian Hero, [1] that the appearing to be otherwise is not only pardonable but necessary. Every one knows the hurry of Conclusions that are made in contempt of a Person that appears to be calamitous, which makes it very excusable to prepare ones self for the Company of those that are of a superior Quality and Fortune, by appearing to be in a better Condition than one is, so far as such Appearance shall not ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... chromo-lithographs, books of etchings, photographs, &c. Dr. F.A. Leo, of Berlin, sent a splendid copy of his valuable fac-simile of "Four Chapters of North's Plutarch," illustrating Shakespeare's Roman plays, to replace his former gift-volume lost in the calamitous fire. The volume is one of twenty-four copies, and the learned Professor added a printed dedication as a record of the fire and the loss. Dr. Delius, of Bonn, Herr Wilhelm Oechelhaueser, of Dessau, and other German Shakespeare ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... a natural system of diet we should require no spices from India; no wines from Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira; none of those multitudinous articles of luxury, for which every corner of the globe is rifled, and which are the causes of so much individual rivalship, such calamitous and sanguinary national disputes. In the history of modern times, the avarice of commercial monopoly, no less than the ambition of weak and wicked chiefs, seems to have fomented the universal discord, to have added stubbornness to the mistakes of cabinets, and indocility to the infatuation ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... meaning of this speech might have seemed to others, the squire only laughed at the effeminate appetite of the speaker, and inclined to think him an excellent fellow for jesting so good-humouredly on his own physical infirmity. But Lucy had the tact of her sex, and, taking pity on the earl's calamitous situation, though she certainly never guessed at its extent, entered with so much grace and ease into the conversation which he sought to establish between them, that Mauleverer's gentleman, who had hitherto been pushed ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... maintained that 'mercy was totally abolished by French maxims; for, if all men are equal, mercy is no more.' Piozzi's Synonymy, i. 370. Johnson, in 1740, described slavery as 'the most calamitous estate in human life,' a state 'which has always been found so destructive to virtue, that in many languages a slave and a thief are expressed by the same word.' Works, v. 265-6. Nineteen years later he wrote of the discoveries of the ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... long one, but it contained at least the calamitous figures that came out in the above conversation. The Colonel found himself in a rather uncomfortable place—no $1,200 salary forthcoming; and himself held responsible for half of the $9,640 due the workmen, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... sketch out the work which Sir Bartle Frere had had before him, its fatal element of haste, with its calamitous failures in no way chargeable to him. 'In short, I concluded, but for the grave blunders of others you would have canonized Sir Bartle Frere instead of speaking of him as you do. He is the ablest man you ever sent to South Africa. As to his personal character, I do not know a finer or manlier ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... sufficing pleasure about those few minutes, singularly soothing, though the interim had no relation to actual living, except in the fact that one anxiety had been lifted. While the expectant birth of the child had been to her, as it is to almost every woman, a separate and distinct calamitous illness to which she looked forward as one might look forward to being taken with typhoid or diphtheria, he considered it as a manifestation of nature, not in itself dangerous, and her fear that of a child, to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... Lord," replied Jaquez, trembling, "I was going to tell your Highness, that since the calamitous misfortune of my young Lord, God rest his precious soul! not one of us your Highness's faithful servants—indeed we are, my Lord, though poor men—I say, not one of us has dared to set a foot about the castle, but two ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... Monkhouse the midshipman, another midshipman, the old jolly sailmaker and his assistant, the ship's cook, the corporal of the marines, two of the carpenter's crew, and nine seamen. In all, the loss amounted to three and twenty persons, besides the seven who died at Batavia. It is probable that these calamitous events, which could not fail of making a powerful impression on the mind of Lieutenant Cook, might give occasion to his turning his thoughts more zealously to those methods of preserving the health of seamen, which he afterwards pursued ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... and there burst upon him a perception of the results to which he was being committed by this calamitous reading. And also simultaneous the outbreak of the class into cachinnations of delight, severely repressed by the ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... two fell into a dispute as to what was the medium of communication in the great lady's salon. However, all the colleagues agreed in considering that Wohlfart had taken an exceedingly bold and mysterious step, and one pregnant with calamitous consequences. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... up arms in his Majesty's service, and, relying on the justice of their cause and the support of their Sovereign and the British nation, they have persevered with unabated zeal through all the vicissitudes of a calamitous and unfortunate war.... That whatever stipulations may be made at the peace for the restoration of the property of the Loyalists and permission for them to return home, yet, should the American Provinces be severed from the British Empire, it will be impossible for those ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... as he was then usually styled, had drawn from that prince sharp remonstrances to the Catholic sovereigns against their persecutions of the Moslems, accompanied by menaces of strict retaliation on the Christians in his dominions. In order to avert such calamitous consequences, Peter Martyr was sent as ambassador to Egypt. He left Granada in August, 1501, proceeded to Venice, and embarked there for Alexandria, which place he reached in December. Though cautioned on his ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... the outcome of certain laws of evolution and thereby having an historic necessity. This, however, does not mean that man's scientific labours, carried out under the historically given restrictions, great and successful as these labours were and are, have not led to calamitous effects such as we found indicated by Professor Carrel. The sciences of matter have led man into a country that is not his, and the world which he has created by means of scientific research is not only one in which he is a stranger ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... invading Parthia would have been even more calamitous to an assailant but for one weak point in the military system of the Parthians. They were excessively unwilling to venture near an enemy at night, and as a general rule abstained from all military movements during the hours ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... at this incident, and had the prospect of dangerous intrigues, or even of a war, which, whether successful or not, must be extremely calamitous and disagreeable to him, he received intelligence of new misfortunes, which must have affected him in the most sensible manner. Queen Eleanor, who had disgusted her first husband by her gallantries, was no less offensive to her second by her jealousy; ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... to afflicting thoughts, he remained for a while in that state of silent uncertainty which follows the receipt of calamitous news. The servant having finished his report had joined his three companions, and Don Mariano ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... read much. Give it up altogether. The conversation of a woman like Theodora is worth all the libraries in the world. If it were only for her sake, I should wish to save you, but I wish to do it for your own. Yes, profit by the vast though calamitous experience which you have gained in a short time. We may know a great deal about our bodies, we can know very little ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... of New Hampshire and other Northern States.) There has been great maladministration; public funds have been wasted (that means public funds have been embezzled, appropriated by these governments that are sucking the blood, the life blood, from a people already impoverished by four years of calamitous war); public lands have been wasted, public credit impaired.' Now, fellow citizens, that is the testimony of one of the most uncompromising Republicans ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... and the hope of an acquittal seemed to be gradually abandoned in the expressive gloom of the spectators. The prisoner at the bar, too, seemed more dejected than I had presumed from his former intrepidity; and the few glances which I could suffer myself to give to a being in his calamitous condition, showed me a frequent writhing of the lip, a clenching of the teeth, and a nervous contraction of the features, which looked like despair. At length the counsel for the defence rose. It was the first instance of my seeing the memorable Curran engaged in his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... everything which they do not understand: the foolish vanity of being thought singular; ignorance, which boldly repudiates what it knows nothing of; keeping company with libertines; a conformity of feeling with heretics, and the spirit of the world, which is the enemy of all piety. Such calamitous causes give room to fear ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... any one point on which to rest for comfort, the idea of Charles Lindsay attachment to Grace Davoren would come over her, only to supersede one misery by introducing another. In this wretched state she was when the calamitous circumstances, which we are ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... importance,—the very words and gestures and action. Would she not fly into his arms, or at least expect that he should open his own? That must be avoided. There must be no embracing. And then he must at once proceed to explain all the evils of this calamitous passion;—how he was the husband of another wife; how she was the wife of another husband; how they were bound by honour, by religion, and equally by prudence to remember the obligations they had incurred. He must beg her to be silent ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... selves, had the courage to bring him forward on the military turf and run him for the generalissimoship against the great Washington. But though they were not able to prosper him in this mad attempt, yet they so far succeeded as to get him the command of the army of Carolina, where his short and calamitous career soon caused every good patriot to thank God for continuing to his servant Washington, the ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... edifice is very fine. The audience was small; the sermon tolerable. Troubles, the preacher said, were sent to discipline us. The army was of God; they should, therefore, submit to it, not as slaves, but as Christians, just as they submitted to other distasteful and calamitous dispensations. ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... that the fulfilment of those calamitous events predicted in the Gospels may safely be referred, as it usually is, and by the best Biblical scholars, to the destruction of Jerusalem. Concerning the visions of the Apocalypse, sublime as they are, I speak with less hesitation, and dismiss them from my ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... by the current of the Tiber. [Footnote: That this was a terrible defeat is proved by the fact that the sixteenth of July was afterward held unlucky (ater, black), and no business was transacted on it. Ovid mentions it as "the day to which calamitous Allia gives a name in the calendar," and on which "tearful Allia was stained with the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Manchester. They had no sooner stated their errand than Mr. Huskisson, angrily throwing down his pen, in very few words refused their request, winding up his reply with these memorable words—remarkable not only for the fallacy of his then opinions, but also in connection with the calamitous event of the next day—"Gentlemen, I supported the scheme of the railway between Liverpool and Manchester as an experiment, but as long as I have the honour to hold a seat in parliament, I will never consent to ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... with several of our worthiest Countrymen, to have assisted so great and so successful an Undertaking. When Men see they have it in their Power, if they will join together, to deliver their Country from all its calamitous Distresses; and to be themselves the Sources of infinite Blessings to Millions yet unborn, their Hands rebell against their Hearts, and even Misers learn to be bounteous. I am not ignorant, how much Men are under the Influence ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... "The calamitous conflict is not of my seeking. My voice has been cast throughout on the side of peace. My ministers earnestly strove to allay the causes of the strife and to appease differences with which my empire was ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... of exported coal have since the beginning of this year been withheld. England is presumably desirous of saving the French and Italians the further distress of reading for the future in black and white the calamitous decline in their coal supply. The serious nature of this decline, even up to the end of 1916, may be seen from the ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... of course, when all this nonsense about "the act of God" will disappear. But it will only dissappear because real belief in God is dying. While men are sincere Theists they cannot help seeing God in the unexpected and the calamitous. That is how theology began, and that is how it must continue while it has a spark of vitality. But theology declines as knowledge increases. Our dread of the unknown diminishes as we gain command over the forces of nature; that is, our dread of the unknown diminishes as we turn it ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Secretary's friends are hinting that affairs will go amiss now, as if he would have prevented any disaster! Who gave up Norfolk? That was a calamitous blunder! Letters from North Carolina are distressing enough. They say, but for the influence of Gov. Vance, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... had lived, he knew nothing of the gossip at one time threatening her with banishment from polite circles. An honest man, and taking for granted the honesty of his kinsfolk, he put entire faith in Hugh's story, despatched to him by letter a few days after the calamitous event at Wimbledon. On arriving in London, the good Major was pleased, touched, flattered by the very warm welcome with which his sister-in-law received him. Hitherto they had seen hardly anything of each other; but since the disaster their correspondence had been frequent, and Sibyl's letters were ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... Copeland handed over to him. He could read the words, he could see the signatures, but they seemed unable to impart any clear-cut message to his brain. His dazed eyes wandered over the newspaper clippings which Copeland thrust into his unsteady fingers. There, too, was the same calamitous proclamation, as final as though he had been reading it on a tombstone. Binhart was dead! Here were the proofs of it; here was an authentic copy of the death certificate, the reports of the police verification; here in his hands were ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... sheep, and 24,332 pigs, when the disease was worse than it has ever been in England. Since then, though there have been occasional outbreaks, it has much abated. Another dread scourge of cattle, pleuro-pneumonia, was at its worst in 1872, a most calamitous year in this respect, when 7,983 cattle were attacked. In 1890 the Board of Agriculture assumed powers with respect to it under the Diseases of Animals Act of that year, and their consequent action has been attended with great success in getting ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... to get to a certain Embassy in London no one can foretell the calamitous results. It might even result in another war, if not now certainly later. It was, I should explain, of a private and confidential nature, and ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... children of man! whose life is a span, Protracted with sorrow from day to day; Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous, Sickly, calamitous creatures of clay! Attend to the words of the sovereign birds, Immortal, illustrious lords of the air, Who survey from on high, with a merciful eye, Your struggles of misery, labor, and care. Whence you may learn and clearly discern Such truths as attract your ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... called a pious fraud, might, at least under particular circumstances, be productive of some good. But the fraud being once established, could not afterwards be explained; for it is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous necessity of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... back over my previous adventures, I had been no better than a mad young fool, following after a will-o'-the-wisp to my own hurt and destruction. And though I cannot say that that ill-starred and calamitous love of mine for Marian, which had haunted me since I first saw her in the tavern of the "Three-decker" at Yarmouth, was abated at this time, yet I think I did now begin to perceive how evil an influence ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward |
