"Collapse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gave no indication of the basis on which criticism itself is to rest. And perhaps that is where and why I come in. I have been watching to-night with curiosity, and I must confess with a little amusement, one building after another laboriously raised by each speaker in turn, only to collapse ignominiously at the first touch administered by his successor. And why? For the ancient reason, that the structures were built upon the sand. Well, I have raised no building myself to speak of. But I am one of an ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... equal misery. Employment is more fixed and stationary for the employed and the employers. There is no foreign trade or home consumption to occasion great and sudden activity and expansion in manufactures, and equally great and sudden stagnation and collapse."—P. 394. ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... in their master's dominions. The king's court begins to rule the land; and proud of its young strength it enters the lists against Boniface VIII, the great prophet of the Church Universal, who proclaimed that every human creature was subject to the Roman pontiff. The collapse of Boniface at Anagni in 1303 is the traditional date of the final defeat of the mediaeval papacy. Everywhere, indeed, the tide seemed on the turn at the close of the thirteenth century. The Crusades ended with the fall ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... began to walk up and down the room, frowning and biting his lips. From time to time he glanced at Beaumont-Greene. Seeing his utter collapse, he rang the bell, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Going upstairs deprived her of breath; carrying a loaded tea-tray produced a long and alarming stitch in the side. The last time she ever filled the coal-scuttle she was discovered sitting beside it on the floor in a state of collapse. ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... intellectual abasement. The hatred and scorn were fanned by a tribe of scribblers, who heaped distortion on the history and practices of the Jewish people. On the other hand, the proselytes to Judaism, "the fearers of God," who accepted part of its teaching—and in the utter collapse of pagan religion and morality they were many—desired to know something of the past grandeur of the nation, and doubtless were anxious to justify themselves to those who regarded their adoption of Jewish customs ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... that they had made a great mistake, and was about to show them out, when, wonderful to relate, all at once a great change came over his beautiful countenance, and he stood rooted to the spot, cringing, confused, crimson to the roots of his raven ringlets. His sudden collapse had been caused by the sight of a pair of cold, keen grey eyes, with an expression almost ferocious in them, fixed on his face. They belonged to an elderly man with a short grizzly beard and podgy nose; a short, square, ugly ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... an able man, but he was a complete stranger to the local conditions of the constituency. The villagers of Badsey especially, as well as of other adjoining parishes, were just beginning to retrieve their position, threatened by the collapse of corn-growing and consequent unemployment, by the adoption of market-gardening and fruit-growing. The land, run down and full of weeds and rubbish, had been cut up into allotments and offered to them as tenants, their only choice lying between years of hard work in redeeming ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... social order resembling sometimes a drunken orgy of demons, and sometimes a Spartan convent; all aimed at replacing the real human being, slowly formed by his past with an improvised robot, who, through its own debility, will collapse when the external and mechanical force that keeps it up will ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... two grains in solution were given without any effect being produced. The post-mortem appearances observed were, absence of all traces of inflammation, collapse of the lungs, and distension of the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... sudden and extensive accession of business in the coffin-making way; and the result of the close questions put to him was the discovery of the whole affair. It need hardly be added that an immediate and complete collapse took place in Mr. Cleave's business, so far as his Police Gazette was concerned. Not another number of the publication ever made its appearance, while the coffin-trade of the 'undertaker' all at once returned to its ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... feeling of a great solitude around me," he continued. "Is it, perhaps, because I am the only man with a definite idea in his head, in the complete collapse of every resolve, intention, and hope about me? But the solitude is also very real. All the engineers are out, and have been for two days, looking after the property of the National Central Railway, of that great Costaguana undertaking which is to put money into ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Chafi Three said. "Creatures who collapse with terror at the mere projection of a Zid can be of ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... no longer refused. Her spirit, which had flashed up for a moment, seemed to collapse, and without another word of remonstrance she meekly suffered herself to be guided to a private room, where she was ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... collapse of the king's cause at the death of Charles I, Prince Rupert, with his small fleet of royal vessels, was driven about from one part of the world to another. In 1562 he sought refuge in the Gambia River,[1] where he listened ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... Jacob Montefiore, died at the age of eighty-three, and his sons went into business with a certain Cartoni of Lisina. They appear at first to have met with success, but the sudden death of the head of the firm caused the collapse of ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... excused himself to the ladies and accompanied me in the carriage. The ride was long, so we visited in a friendly way, but finally he, too, remarked that the driver was going out of his way, and after protesting considerably, I informed him of his true status. He did not quite collapse. I assured him his years would earn him a gentleman's treatment. He was soon landed ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... no longer looking for a New York gunman, I suppose you have plenty of plainclothesmen at your disposal?" Dundee asked, and was instantly sorry he had reminded his former chief of the collapse of his cherished and ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... One of the first headings his eye fell upon was: 'Rumoured Collapse of a Public Company. Disappearance of the Secretary.' He showed it to Adela, and they read together. She saw that the finger with which he followed the lines quivered like a leaf. It was announced in a brief paragraph that the Secretary ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... people on the eve of the notorious Beilis affair which was staged by the Russian government for the purpose of discrediting the Jews and of justifying the Russian governmental anti-Jewish policy before the world. After the collapse of the Beilis prosecution, which involved the absurd charge of ritual murder, Lutostansky approached several prominent wealthy Jews with an offer to retract his new charges against the Jews, provided they would pay him a certain amount of money for his book. The Jews ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... stay any longer on the scene of his collapse and defeat, and went towards the Palais Royal. He did not know the topography of his quarter yet, and was obliged to ask his way. Then he went to Very's and ordered dinner by way of an initiation into the pleasures of Paris, and a solace for his discouragement. A bottle of Bordeaux, oysters ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... saying anything, no matter what, to dissipate the reactionary collapse into which he feared the girl ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... forwarded along with his railway pass, so comprehensive were the details of the Prussian military organisation. This latter so thoroughly embraced the entire country after the absorption of the lesser states on the collapse of Koniggratz, that each separate individual could be moved at any given moment to a certain defined point; while the instructions for his guidance were so complete and perfect, that they could not fail ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a Boston merchant, afterwards the editor of The Schoolmate, became the secretary and editor. He continued to edit the Gazette until November, 1865; but Mr. M.T. Rice was made secretary in 1863. At the end of 1865, when the society was in a condition of almost complete collapse, Rev. Thomas J. Mumford became the secretary, and the editor of the Gazette for one year. He restored confidence in the society, and made the paper a success. During the war the paper was published monthly for the sake of economy; but with the first ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... the poor mare. At any moment now her sudden collapse after a stumble might be expected. On the other hand, the farm-house, winning-post of the race, loomed up clearly, and, luckily, the road improved a little by becoming harder and descending gradually. On one side rose a willow coppice, in the trailing ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... cut off too many beeves and came near drowning two fine ones. The animals in question were large and strong, but had stood for nearly an hour on a slippery ledge, frequently being crowded into the water, and were on the verge of collapse from nervous exhaustion. They were trembling like leaves when we pushed them off. Runt Pickett was detailed to look especially after those two, and the little rascal nursed and toyed and played with them like a circus rider. They struggled constantly for the inshore, but ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... the triumph of the imperial militants would involve the disruption of the concert of the nations, the abrogation of International Law (laboriously instituted through three centuries of painful effort) and the collapse of the democratic order; and felt, finally, that upon British intervention depended the very existence of the British Empire with all that it means of good to one-fifth part of the human race. Over against this group of convictions I was confronted on the other ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... strange, new world into which he had been so roughly hustled, amongst a horde of alarming and painful occurrences, he had discovered nothing so disconcerting as that sudden giving of the knees, that rising of the floor to meet you, the collapse, the pain, and above all the disgrace. Moreover, let him fail now, and it meant, in short,—banishment—banishment and then darkness. There were risks. It was the most perilous thing that, in this new country, he had yet attempted, but ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... time to reflect upon its origin, to investigate its source. He had to steel his nerves to face it because he dared not do otherwise. But its sudden effect on the nerve centres of his brain, previously strained almost to the breaking point, must have brought him to the verge of a subsequent collapse. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... on the point of collapse; desperately she clung to her remnant of composure. Hardly conscious of her action, she tore open the outer envelope, and read the brief statement that the letter inclosed had been sent to her, care of the Department of State. With some stirring of curiosity not unmixed with dread, she examined ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... it be due to the action of others. People, carts, cattle, and dogs on the road are liable to such unexpected movements, that the real danger of the cyclist comes from the outside; to danger from absolute collapse, due to a hidden flaw in the materials employed, every one is liable, but, the bicyclist more remotely than the tricyclist, owing to the greater simplicity of his machine. The bicyclist, though he has further to fall in case of an accident from any of these causes, is in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... collapse of the Empire is tremendous. I have no pity for the melodramatic villain who ends as he began, in causeless and wanton blood." Lord Coleridge, Life, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... Blake by another deserter just as bad as him, was staking the other two, for he had money in plenty until after I had done with him. What my life's been out here you know well enough; same as it was in New Orleans—all luck and plenty at first, then all a collapse. I'm ruined now. When I had hundreds and thousands I helped everybody who wanted it. There are men in Yuma and Tucson now whom I set on their pins, and they give me the cold shoulder. All that offer to the major was a bluff. They've got all ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... rapidity, and often half a dozen lifts of wet sand have to be made before he is captured. There is no time to be lost. In quite twenty-five per cent. of the chases the yabbies get away through flooding and collapse of the hole." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... three elder inmates, mother, grandmother and tutor. When the fictionally inevitable happens and an Eve breaks into this protected Eden there follow some boy-and-girl love-scenes that may perhaps remind you—and what praise could be higher?—of the collapse of another system on the meeting of Richard and Lucy. I will not anticipate the end of a sympathetically told story, which I myself should have enjoyed even more but for Mr. MARSHALL'S habit (hinted at above) of following real life somewhat too closely in the matter of non-progressive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... refused to accept the unhappy Selina's theory that her revelation had in any way induced Clark's sudden collapse. Both he and the coroner afterwards, who found the immediate cause to be heart-failure, held that such a supposition was unwarranted by facts. They asserted that a long day's journey, a hurried drive, and then an exhausting dance, were sufficient for such a result upon ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... myth is a reality," he said gravely. Craven stood rigidly still, and it seemed to him that his heart stopped beating. "I know my wife is delicate, that her lungs are not strong, but what is the cause of this sudden—collapse?" he said slowly, his voice shaking painfully. For a moment the other hesitated and shrugged in evident embarrassment. "There are a variety of causes—I find it somewhat difficult to ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... the farmyard. He was there. Cousin Tom Stallybrass, who had been managing the farm ever since Grandfather's death, had come out and was talking to him, and from his gestures was evidently telling him of the recent collapse of the dairy wall, but he was not interested, for he did not point his stick at it, and in him almost every mental movement was immediately followed by some physical sign. There was something else ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... to talk with us, and show their friendliness, but mother would only answer in monosyllables and commanded the children to do the same. We were an utterly desolate, frightened group as darkness fell over us. I was busy helping the children get to bed, and then I found mother in such a state of collapse that I could think of nothing but comforting and ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... straight drama, and the first great success of his career was as Baron Chevrial in "A Parisian Romance," a part which was given him after other actors had refused to take it, and in which he created a real sensation. His reputation was secure after that, and grew steadily until the swift and complete collapse from over-work, which ended his life at ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... wings is to enter a new state of existence. The apparent loss of weight; the ability to attain full speed in a few seconds, and to stop suddenly in a headlong rush without fear of collapse; the power to steer instantly in any direction by merely changing the angle of the body; the altered and enormous view of the green world below—looking down upon forests, seas and clouds; the easy voluptuous rhythm of rising and falling in long, swinging undulations; ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... They will be branded outlaws, radicals, agnostics, impossible, crazy. They will be lucky to be out of jail most of the time. They will work by trial and study, gaining wisdom by their errors, as Sidney Webb and the Fabians did. In the end, after a long time, parts of the social sham will collapse, as it did in England, and small promises ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... me without my noticing him. I was so petrified by what he had said. I was in such a state of collapse that in less than an hour all the liquids in my body must have escaped. I, a common soldier in the army of a petty sovereign like the duke, who only existed by the horrible traffic in human flesh which he carried on after the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... children. I was fairly at ease with a single companion. My self-consciousness was something more painful to me than I can convey in words. At home I wept in my room and cursed myself for a baby. I little realized the cause of my nervous collapse. Yet I had too robust a frame not to be able to sleep and to play hard. The sympathetic pleasure which I had found in swinging my girl-cousin to and fro I now doubled by letting a 7-year-old boy ride cock-horse on my feet. I experienced an erection during the process, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... buries itself at the foot of the plant, at no great depth. Working with its head and rump, it forces back the earth and makes itself a round recess, the size of a pea. To turn the cell into a hollow pill which will not be liable to collapse, all that remains for it to do is to drench the wall with a glue which soon sets ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... city concert-room. Each whispered the stranger,—one the left ear, one the right. Each thrust into his hand a printed paper. As the door closed on them the Comedian let fall the papers: his arm drooped to his side; his whole frame seemed to collapse. Hartopp took him by the hand, and led him gently to his own armchair beside the table. The Comedian dropped on the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is taught which is liberal, and at the same time useful to mankind? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical literature within proper bounds as a steady and invariable appeal to these tests in our appreciation of all human knowledge. The puffed-up pedant would collapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses and the rememberer of words would soon assume that station which is the lot of those who go up unbidden to the ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... were very much like those of malignant fever, such as distress about the region of the heart, difficulty of breathing, collapse of all the vital powers, threatening immediate death. From these first symptoms the child rallied, but his entire organism had been profoundly affected by the venom circulating through it. His constitution has never thrown off ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... became known, Winter wanted Furneaux, but his colleague was not in the house. The telephone having broken down, owing to the collapse of a standard, and the necessity of subduing the fire having put a stop to any immediate search being made in the park, Winter thought that the pair of them would be better employed if they transferred their energies to ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... general hatred of talking of his private affairs (a reluctance in which he and Peter were well matched); and the other a truth involving more of a confession—the subtle truth that the most definite and even most soothing result of the collapse of his engagement was, as happened, an unprecedented consciousness of freedom. Nick's observation was of a different sort from his cousin's; he noted much less the signs of the hour and kept throughout a looser register of life; nevertheless, just as one of our young men had during ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... away. It's nicer when you're here.... [Pause] I keep on waiting for something to happen, as if the house is going to collapse over our heads. ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... themselves of intercourse with the families of their employers to instruct them in the dogmas of their religion. The greatest success that has attended the efforts of the priests in converting others, has been during the prevalence of the cholera, and especially after collapse and insensibility had seized the person! We know of more than 60 Roman Catholics who have been converted to the faith of Christ and joined Christian churches within 3 or 4 years ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... brooding. She was only distantly conscious of his final collapse. She said, suddenly, bluntly: "Let's go away together. If we could only die while we are still together and have ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... Caroline did little but fight and make up for months, until even Caroline was convinced that one of the two must leave Prague, at least for a period of probation. It was Carl who left, and in a condition of almost complete spiritual collapse. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... being bumped over a rough road in an old broken-down stagecoach, required but the sight of his nephew to cause an explosion. He had not closed his eyes during the entire night, and like his sister, Mrs. Forest, was in a state of collapse. His usually florid complexion had turned to a brilliant crimson, giving him the appearance of ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... apparent physical collapse on his part, no fainting nor attack of vertigo, nothing to help him out in the eyes of that wondering, startled company of observers. He had been able to direct his assistants how to hold the operation ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... thought he was going to collapse, so great was the relief and the slackening of tension. He did laugh out, but caught himself ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... here with the downfall of Foxy, but, my dear Ned, I have to record a sadder and more humiliating downfall than that—the abject and utter collapse of my noble self. I have once more played the fool, and played into the hands of the devil, mine own familiar and ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... leg and making its amputation necessary. There being but one other man in the rough camp who had ever seen a knife used—and he but a student—the wounded surgeon had directed the amputation himself, even to the tying of the arteries and the bandages and splints. Only then did he collapse. The hero—and he was a hero to every one who knew of his coolness and pluck, in spite of his recognized weakness—had returned to his father's house on Kennedy Square on crutches, there to consult ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... families of the Western Isles and Argyle. And in his independent stand at this important period in the history of Scotland will be found the true grounds of the local rancour which afterwards prevailed between Mackenzie and the Island Lord, and which only terminated in the collapse of the Earls of Ross and the Lords of the Isles, upon the ruins of which, as a reward for proved loyalty to the reigning monarch, and as the result of the characteristic prudence of the race of MacKenneth, the House of Kintail ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... face to face with the real Madame Desvarennes; and no politeness held good on her part when it was a question of business. From his first words, she had found a weak point in the plan, and had attacked him with such plainness that the financier, seeing his enterprise collapse at the sound of the mistress's voice-like the walls of Jericho at the sound of the Jewish trumpets—had beaten a retreat, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... an almost physical collapse; neither he nor Henry Houghton had reckoned on maternal love. Mr. Houghton had implied that Lily's kind did not have maternal love. "She'll leave it on a convenient doorstep—unless she's a white blackbird," Henry Houghton had said. Maurice, too, had taken for granted Lily's eagerness to get rid ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... good repair, for in another letter he happens to tell his man of business that shops (tabernae) belonging to him were tumbling down and unoccupied. It is more than likely that many of the insulae were badly built by speculators, and liable to collapse. The following passage from Plutarch's Life of Crassus suggests this, though, if Plutarch is right, Crassus did not build himself, but let or sold his sites and builders to others: "Observing (in Sulla's time) the accidents ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... concealed within the orchard than the two scouts rushed to the car, lifted the bar and swung back the door. There lay their new comrade, helplessly trussed and gagged, faint and weary with the close confinement, almost ready to collapse. ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... 628.](dated February 15, 1865) the nature of the latter's statements and criticisms, he notified the Richmond government as well as Hood that he should demand that the latter be brought before a court-martial; [Footnote: Id., p. 637.] but it was then April, on the very eve of the collapse of the Confederacy, and the discussion was left for continuance in the private writings of the parties and their friends. Johnston affirmed that in the only instances in the campaign in which it could be said that a favorable opportunity for battle ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Market at 7-1/2. (Groans.) But he hoped for better times. ("Oh! oh!") But, come what would, he would hold fast by his principles, which were, "No Compromise, No Meeting Halfway, No Arbitration, No Concession!" Men might starve, Trade collapse, the Country come to ruin, the Company disappear in Bankruptcy, but he cared not. The Directors had put their foot down, and, whether right or wrong, whatever happened, there they meant, with a good down-right national and pig-headed obstinacy, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... of the debacle," said Vane to Ernshaw when they met in the Den after they had had their wash; "there's the hearthrug—yes, and there's the same spirit-case. It is a curious thing, Ernshaw, but since then, or rather, since that other ghastly collapse at Oxford, I've lectured in club rooms reeking with alcohol; I've gone with you as you know where everyone was sodden with the gin and stank of it, and even into bars where you could smell nothing but liquor and unwashed humanity, and yet that ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... night until the dust was laid to the dust, Mary slept well; and through the days she had great composure; but, when the funeral was over, came a collapse and a change. The moment it became necessary to look on the world as unchanged, and resume former relations with it, then, first, a fuller sense of her lonely desolation declared itself. When she said good night to Beenie, and went ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... owner supposed. Much of the exhaustion which Sterne had attributed to the violence of his literary emotions was no doubt due to the rapid decline of bodily powers which, unknown to him, were already within a few months of their final collapse. He did not set out for London on the 20th of December, as he had promised himself, for on that day he was only just recovering from "an attack of fever and bleeding at the lungs," which had confined him to ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... chair with an air of nervous collapse, and did not say anything. Westover saw her watching the young couples who passed in and out of the room where the dancing was, or found corners on sofas, or window-seats, or sheltered spaces beside ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... this, the first day of his great calamity. Until this moment he had been too absorbed in dwelling upon the moral and social consequences of his crime, to realize how utterly worn out he was; but all his physical strength appeared to collapse in an instant. ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... sound, and Charles was also a wise and good man, what caused the rebellion? A perfect man driving a perfect engine should surely not have run it off the rails. The royalist ought to seek to prove that Charles was a fool and a knave, to account for the collapse of royalty; and the case against royalty is all the stronger, if you could show that Charles, in spite of impeccable virtue, was forced by his position to end on the scaffold. Choose between him and the system which he applied. So Catholics and conservatives ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Commissioner withdrew the support of his hand from his reclining head with a suddenness that, considering his languid attitude, seemed to menace his whole person with collapse. But, on the contrary, he sat up, extremely alert, behind the great writing-table on which his hand had fallen with the sound of a ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... it is never wise to disturb a sleepwalker, there being a risk that the sleepwalker, if aroused too suddenly, may suffer collapse from fright. ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... occasion, when left far behind, that one of the ungainly legs found its way into a badger hole. The collapse was harder and more complete than usual, and the little sufferer would have died there had he not been found by Dave and Irene in the course of their rides. Dave, after a moment's examination, drew his revolver, but Irene pled for the life ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... but her hand trembled, her limbs were weak under her weight with the collapse of all her hopes, as she untied and mounted her horse. The ruin of her foundations left her in a daze, to which the surging, throbbing of a sense of deep, humiliating, shameful wrong, added the obscuration of senses, the confusion of understanding. She rode to the top of the hill, ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... strength to that joint. And I must tell you to put these squares cross-wise with the grain, as I have seen joints in violins give way, and the bits prove a mockery, as they were placed with the grain, or lengthwise—that is to say, they offered no resistance when the collapse came, but quickly yielded and split as would have done a layer of a turnip! Surely, men must be artists indeed, not to forecast such a likelihood arising ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... sense that their union was necessary created the Byzantine despotism. The divines of the Empire who could not fancy Christianity flourishing beyond its borders, insisted that the State is not in the Church, but the Church in the State. This doctrine had scarcely been uttered when the rapid collapse of the Western Empire opened a wider horizon; and Salvianus, a priest at Marseilles, proclaimed that the social virtues, which were decaying amid the civilised Romans, existed in greater purity and promise among the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... confer on her old pupil. At the door he was told by a weeping, terrified maid that she was very ill with cholera, and that no hope was given. He tried to send up a message, but she was in a state of collapse and insensible; and when he inquired the next morning, the gentle ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... palace, all the courtiers shook and trembled with fear down to the very scullion, and the King and Queen were in such a state of nervous collapse that they hid themselves in a far-away turret. Grannonia alone kept her presence of mind, and although both her father and mother implored her to fly for her life, she wouldn't move a step, saying, 'I'm certainly not going ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... the blood before it can be eliminated from the system. This could readily be accomplished by adding ten to fifteen minims of Fowler's solution to the compound spirit of ammonia, to be given every quarter of an hour in aerated or soda-water, until the vomiting and the more urgent symptoms of collapse have subsided, subsequently repeating the dose at longer intervals until reaction had become fully established, and the patient ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... minutes, forgot everything else in his efforts to restore to consciousness his unexpected visitor. He rebuilt the fire, heated some water upon his spirit lamp, and forced some hot drink between the lips of the woman who was now almost in a state of collapse. Then he wrapped her round in his own ulster and drew her closer to the fire. He tried during those few moments to put away the memory of all that she had told him. Gradually she began to recover. She opened her eyes and drew a little sigh. She made no effort at speech, however. ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... loaded up with reams of Erie stock at high costs, and the load was a severe strain on him. He dared not sell for fear of causing a financial collapse. Drew had taken away about seven million dollars of his money and an artificial stringency had been created in Wall Street by this exodus of most of its available cash. But Vanderbilt weathered the storm and, as his generally optimistic ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... manufacturers to satisfy their customers. It is easy to see that prosperity of this kind must very soon find its limit.... When a further fall in the assignats took place this prosperity would necessarily collapse, and be succeeded by a crisis all the more destructive the more deeply men had engaged in speculation under the influence of the first favorable ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... "mugging" type, who had come off with flying colours in an elementary examination, showed signs of uneasiness as the advanced one approached. "Stick an observation into him," said Huxley. It was stuck, and acted like a stiletto, a jump into the air and utter collapse being the result. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... number were unwounded, but had reached such a state of nervous collapse that they could not endure life in the trenches a minute longer, and had therefore, perforce, been sent to the rear. I could not ascertain just how such cases were handled at the front for the French were reluctant to discuss the matter. Certain it is that the instances must have been numerous, ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... fragments of this debate, which may well have been one of the most notable in history, indicate the care with which the members had studied governments of ancient and modern times. There were many points of difference, but chief of them, which nearly resulted in the collapse of the convention, was the inevitable difficulty which always arises in the formation of a league of States or an association of nations between the great and the ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... will be screaming for release. The sense of impotence is stifling, and I felt as if I were buried in some landslip instead of lying under the open sky, with the night wind fanning my face. I was in the second stage of panic, which is next door to collapse. I tried to cry, but could only raise a squeak like a bat. A wheel started to run round in my head, and, when I looked at the moon, I saw that it was rotating in time. Things were very bad with me. It was 'Mwanga who saved me from lunacy. He had been ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... back and forth until baffled away by the open area across the Plaza, where one large structure had already been destroyed. Three others were slated for collapse today. ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... together. Now a thousand are turned off at once by machinery, out of green wood, and, with their backs glued on, are hurried off to their evil fate,—destined to drop in pieces if they happen to stand near the fireplace, and liable to collapse under the weight of a heavy man. Some of us still preserve, as heirlooms, old tables and bedsteads of Cromwellian times: in the twenty-first century what will have become of our ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... sooner or later; for, as a travelling medical man had once observed, the consumptive who did not get well in the eucalyptus-scented air of inland Australia deserved to die, if only for the perversity of refusing Nature's kindliest aid! A ruptured blood-vessel certainly assisted in the collapse of Godson, but it was not even that ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... playing at cards, but at its close the extravagances and fits of passion begin; she torments her husband, her children, her servants, to such a point that they do not know which way to turn." Her will brooked no opposition. When forced to leave the Tuileries after the collapse of her little bubble of political power, she deliberately broke every article of value in her apartments, consigning mirrors, vases, statues, porcelains alike to a common ruin, that no one else might enjoy them after her. This fiery scion of a powerful family, who had inherited its pride, its ambition, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... but she interrupted me with an "Oh, I see," and her voice sounded weary. To think was patently an effort. She was clearly on the verge of physical collapse. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... him in the dead silence—dead save for the lingering of the echo's ghost—stood the woman, her hands clutched to her thin bosom, her eyes stunned and dilated, her body wavering on legs about to buckle in collapse. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... a system of social relations based upon land. It grew out of the chaos which came upon Europe in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire. The fall of Roman power flattened the whole political structure of Western Europe, and nothing arose to take its place. Every lord or princeling was left to depend for defence upon the strength ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... traversed by it in several places. If the bullet be small and, by chance, surgically clean, it is possible that the openings may tightly close up behind it so that no leakage takes place into the general peritoneal cavity. If increasing collapse suggests that serious bleeding is occurring within the abdomen, the cavity is opened forthwith and a thorough exploration made. When it is uncettain lf the bowel has been traversed or not, it is well ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... leader of a district with a few scattered farms claiming independence, before all were united under one government. There was constant war with natives on the border, no means of collecting taxes or providing for public works, and by the year 1877 it seemed as though the State must collapse and the Transvaal be overrun by its enemies. The Boers were defeated by Sekukuni, chief of the Bapedi; they had an open dispute with Cetewayo about territory which they had annexed from his country, and he was ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... time, to my great exaltation of spirits there had succeeded an equally dismal depression. It was my turn now to weep, and I dimly remember any Father coming into the room, and my being carried up to bed, in a state of collapse and fatigue, by the silent and ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... is all against him; he must be confounded till he forget his right hand from his left, till his mind be turned into chaos, and his heart into water; and then let him give his evidence. What will fall from his lips when in this wretched collapse must be of special value, for the best talents of practised forensic heroes are daily used to bring it about; and no member of the Humane Society interferes to protect the wretch. Some sorts of torture are, as it were, tacitly allowed even ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... by the capture of Buonaparte's capital the object of the War was attained. The political divisions which had their roots in Paris came into active operation, and an enormous split left the power of the Emperor to collapse of itself. Nevertheless the point of view from which we must look at all this is, that through these causes the forces and defensive means of Buonaparte were suddenly very much diminished, the superiority of the Allies, therefore, just ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... German trade has survived the shocks of the first year of war better than the most convinced optimist could have hoped, and better than the organisation of other belligerents. All fears of immediate inevitable industrial collapse which haunted us at the beginning of the war have been dissipated. Instead of this we meet in all industrial circles with the consciousness [often much exaggerated] that "We ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... mother, Gerutha, and his uncle-father, Fengo. He daily pierces their hearts with needles after a bad old-fashioned mediaeval formula of witchcraft. But it avails naught. With a fine touch he seeks for his revenge by having enacted before their Majesties of Denmark his own play. They incontinently collapse in mortal nausea, for they are ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... out of harness, and had no longer the stimulus of the daily demand and habit of work, the collapse was such that I thought I was dying. I gave my share of the paper to Durand, to do as he pleased with, and went off to North Conway, in the mountains of New Hampshire, to paint one more picture before I died. I chose a brook ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... faltered poor Mrs. Sturgis, quite ready to collapse again. "Good-by, Kirk—my precious, precious baby! How ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... Wondering about Mr. Zanti, thinking that the boarding-house would be gloomy now after Mrs. Lazarus' death, recalling, above all, to himself every slightest incident of his meeting with Miss Rossiter, Peter, crossing Oxford Street, flung his broad body against a fat and soft one. There was nearly a collapse. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Pinotem in the Museum of Gizeh show that the best traditions of the art were yet in force at Thebes in the time of the Twenty-first Dynasty. Under the succeeding dynasties, that art fell into rapid decadence, and during some centuries the drawings continue to be coarse and valueless. The collapse of the Persian rule produced a period of Renaissance. Tombs of the Greek time have yielded papyri with vignettes carefully executed in a dry and minute style which offers a singular contrast to the breadth and boldness of the Pharaonic ages. The broad-tipped reed-pen ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... already quoted, a fair critic, though Spanish in his leanings, enumerates among the circumstances most creditable to the direction of the war by the Navy Department the perception that "blockade must inevitably cause collapse, given the conditions of insurrection and of exhaustion already ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... mere pricking with a hypodermic needle of a patient with this disease. As the result of a visit from a friend, the pulse-rate of a victim of this disease may increase twenty beats and his temperature rise markedly. I have seen the mere suggestion of an operation produce collapse. As the brain is thus remarkably sensitized in Graves' disease, we find that in these patients laughter, crying, emotional disturbances, and surgical shock are produced ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... the way into the house. Sloane, near collapse, clung to one of Judge Wilton's broad shoulders. It was young Webster who, as the little procession passed the hatrack in the front hall, caught up a raincoat and threw it over the ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... tension breaking up in him, his fists slackened, he was unable to move. He stood there looking at her, helpless in his vague collapse. For the moment she had become unreal to him. Then he saw her come to him, curiously direct and as if without movement, in a sudden flow. She put her ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... worse toward morning, and though the disease had only attacked him at sunset the night before, so rapid and terrible were its onslaughts that by the time the sun rose a complete physical collapse had occurred. His pulse had fallen below normal, and his skin assumed a strange yellow hue, the color of a lemon, and in these signs and the constant hiccough which convulsed the death-stricken frame Pilchard guessed properly what the termination must be. The end would ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... lumber buyer had seen no weapon drawn. That had been the instinctive legerdemain of mountain quickness, which even drink had not blunted. As he wrenched Bud back, the wounded figure stood for a moment swaying on legs that slowly and grotesquely buckled into collapse at the knees until Aaron McGivins crumpled down ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... reputation of the Congress reached its high water mark early in 1778, after the capture of Burgoyne's army and the making of the alliance with France. After that time, with the weary prolonging of the war, the increase of the public debt, and the collapse of the paper currency, its reputation steadily declined. There was also much work to be done in reorganizing the state governments, and this kept at home in the state legislatures many of the ablest men who would otherwise have been sent to the Congress. ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... buoyant spirit of playfulness—that was my ordinary mood until my great trouble befell—had been revived by the absurdity of the situation. But his departure left me rather depressed, for his visit marked the final collapse of my scheme. Even if the criminal classes had been willing to continue the supply of anthropological material, my methods could not have been carried out under the watchful and disapproving ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence. There can BE no difference any- where that doesn't MAKE a difference elsewhere—no difference in abstract truth that doesn't ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... in spite of blowing, the tube begins to collapse, I suspend operations, reheat the tube a little farther on, and so proceed. If by any chance any reader knows a good laboratory method of performing this operation, I hope he will communicate it to me. After all, the difficulty chiefly arises from laboratory heating appliances being ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... sound of laughter, looked up and nearly fell backwards, that is, metaphorically, for the chair prevented such a physical collapse. ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... thought holds to an entirely contrary opinion. The whole trouble, they say, comes from the sad collapse of Germany. These unhappy people, having been too busy for four years in destroying valuable property in France and Belgium to pay attention to their home affairs, now find themselves collapsed: it is our first ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... a dusky rugged plateau, which falls with a gentle gradient to the floor, and is traversed by three or four parallel shallow valleys running towards the S. I can recall no lunar formation which presents an appearance at all like this: one is impressed with the idea that it has resulted from the collapse of the upper portion of the wall, and the flow of some viscous material over the wreck and down the inner slope. The difference between the reflective power of this matter, whatever may be its nature, and the broad bright declivities of the inner slopes, are beautifully displayed at ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... be no doubt of it!" wailed Odalite, throwing her arms over the table and dropping her head upon it in a sudden collapse of despair. ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... descend the grand staircase between two rows of beefeaters reclining drowsily at their ease. Fast asleep, some of 'em, after too much beef. Imagine myself a prisoner, in disguise of course, escaping from the Tower in the olden time. Then, fearing the collapse of another buckle or button, or the sudden "giving" of a seam, I steal cautiously past the Guards—then past serried ranks of soldiers under the colonnade—then—once more in the street of Bow, and I am free! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... more than a stone's-throw from the theater to the rabbit warren in West Forty-sixth Street, but Martin gave a shout at a prowling taxi. Not even policemen and newspaper boys and street cleaners must see this girl as she was then, in a collapse of smashed hopes, sobbing dreadfully, completely broken down. It wasn't fair. In all that city of courageous under-dogs and fate-fighters, there was not one who pretended to careless contentment with a chin so high as Tootles. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... it is blown about the fields and woods, and with every tumble it makes it scatters some of its spores. It may take years to accomplish this perfectly. The species of the Lycoperdon do not leave their moorings naturally; their spores are dispersed through an apical mouth by a collapse of the walls of the peridium, after the fashion of a bellows, by which spores are driven out to the pleasure of the wind. In Bovista the threads are free or separate from the peridium, but in Lycoperdon they arise from the peridium and ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... Irish leader. We have bravery and reckless courage, but we have none of the stubborn obstinacy of your Scottish folk. Were the flag raised the people would flock to it, and would fight desperately; but if they lost, there would be utter and complete collapse. The fortitude to support repeated defeats, to struggle on when the prospect seems darkest, does not belong ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... been unable to do anything. His hands were more than full, his life in danger; but in the instant that he had secured his own safety, he heard the cry of "Baas! Baas!" Then he saw the levelled rifle fall from the hands of the Boer who had aimed at Byng, and its owner collapse in a heap. As Rudyard fell beneath the clubbed rifle he heard the cry, "Baas! Baas!" again, and saw an unkempt figure darting among the rocks. His own pistol brought down the old Boer who had felled Byng, and then he realized who it was had cried ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... one plane that did not swerve as it burst through the Austrian line of small planes, and darted toward the first dirigible. Straight on it rushed, absolutely reckless, and crashed into the first giant balloon, head-on-collapse the great forward gas chamber, setting it on fire, exploding it, blowing all the mighty war balloon ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... was longer in coming, because the prior collapse did not come to him at once. The excitement of perpetual expectation—the preparing for some catastrophe, which he felt sure was to follow, and the incessant labor entailed by his wide enquiries, in which he had no confidant but Mr. Mearns, the clerk, and him he trusted as little as possible, ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... beginning to feel that the end of the century is an end of faith, and are not able to discern in the darkness of the time any morning star. As one distinguished author has said: "This is not a time of the eclipse of faith, but a time of the collapse of faith." It was much the same in the times of Thyatira. There was the same luxury and self-indulgence in the Roman world, the same social restlessness, the same intellectual despondency. Now, ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... first cause. Thus it is that the first cause of motion is derived from that which is in its nature self-moving; but this can neither be born nor die. Were it to die, the whole heaven would of necessity collapse, and all nature would stand still, nor could it find any force which could be set in movement anew from a primitive impulse. [Footnote: From a first cause; the first cause, by hypothesis, ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... still preserve indications of having been begun during the twelfth century as part of the original building scheme. It is probable, for reasons that will appear later, that the two towers of the west front did not collapse at the time of the second fire, although it would seem from the Chronicle of Dunstable that their stability may have been impaired in some measure, since the sole cause for this fall of towers is given in the words "impetu venti ceciderunt duae turres Cicestriae." [5] But ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... demand is made that they shall forego all the benefits of governmental regard; but they can not fail to be admonished of their duty, as well as their enlightened self-interest and safety, when they are reminded of the fact that financial panic and collapse, to which the present condition tends, afford no greater shelter or protection to our manufactures than to other important enterprises. Opportunity for safe, careful, and deliberate reform is now offered; and none of us should ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... difficulty in persuading Claude to go. When Jernington had departed Claude felt as if a strong prop had suddenly been knocked from under him, as if he might collapse. He could not work. Yet he felt as if in the little house which had seen his work he could ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... bed! I might have known as much! It used to collapse with me regularly when I was nursing Mabel with scarlet-fever!" she cried impatiently. "Now we shall have to begin from the beginning, and make it up again. How tiresome of you, Arthur, to ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... for several years, Mr. Parkinson himself disappearing from the scene, and his Woodhall property passing into other hands—the ancestors of the present owners of the estate. As the result of this collapse, other portions of Mr. Parkinson’s property in the neighbourhood also changed hands. Mr. Ostler, who has been already mentioned, had advanced to him large sums of money, and in lieu of repayment he acquired the “Forest,” ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... overview: After the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989-91, Romania was left with an obsolete industrial base and a pattern of industrial capacity wholly unsuited to its needs. In February 1997, Romania embarked on a comprehensive macroeconomic stabilization and structural reform program, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... but upon a basis of—We promise to pay! It was a sad application of the high-sounding doctrines of the Message,—a dreadful descent for a pure hard-money government,—and a lamentable conversion of the pompous swagger of October into the shivering collapse of January! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... balls. Our very shops and counting-houses must resemble the palaces of the Venetian nobility, and our dwellings be more royally arrayed than the dwellings of the mightiest monarchs. When the time comes—as come it will—for paying for all this glorious frippery, we collapse, we wither, we fleet, we sink into the sand.—A third Diogenes, of a more practical turn of mind, vociferates, that the whole thing comes from the want of a high protective tariff. These subtle and malignant foreigners, who are so jealous of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various |
