"Destructive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be seen that the old man Fullbil was simply aflame with a destructive reply, and even Bobbs paused under the spell of this anticipation of a gigantic answering. The literary master ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... the tension a little by playing safely through the over, and scoring a couple of twos off it. And when Ellerby not only survived the destructive de Freece's second over, but actually lifted a loose ball on to the roof of the scoring-hut, the cloud began perceptibly to lift. A no-ball in the same over sent up the first ten. Ten for two was not good; but it was considerably better than one ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Utopian condition of the world as it would be after his first suggestion had been carried into effect, and all arms, ammunition, ships of war, and all destructive ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... judgment, however, there is little or no danger of that kind: they starve patiently, sicken patiently, die patiently, not through resignation, but a diseased flaccidity of hope. If ever they should do mischief to those above them, it will probably be by the communication of some destructive pestilence; for, so the medical men affirm, they suffer all the ordinary diseases with a degree of virulence elsewhere unknown, and keep among themselves traditionary plagues that have long ceased to afflict more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... share of the loot. She's nicked up some, but that only bears evidence to what a bully good shot I am, and it won't take much to fix her up all shipshape again. Usin' high bursts shrapnel ain't very destructive. All them bumps an' scratches can be planed down. But we'll have to do some mendin' on her canvas—I'll tell the world. She's called the Reina Maria, but I'm going to run her to Panama and change her name. She'll be known as Maggie II, out of ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... periodical return, have been greatly aggravated and augmented by the terms of Her Majesty's said Most Gracious communication, which have filled the heads of divers young ladies in this Realm with certain new ideas destructive to the peace of mankind, that never entered their ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Garretse, with a visible struggle at self-control. "No human, unless he were a maniac, would have done such a wantonly destructive thing. No other animal has been here. The dog was seen entering and leaving this room. And my work of six months is not only destroyed by him, but many of the very best ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... reformation. I hope to be the last wretched female sacrificed by you to the arts of falsehood and seduction. May my unhappy story serve as a beacon to warn the American fair of the dangerous tendency and destructive consequences of associating with men of your character, of destroying their time and risking their reputation by the practice of coquetry and its attendant follies. But for these I might have been honorably connected, and capable, at this moment, of diffusing and receiving happiness. But for ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... cent. of the physical vigor of this generation, and that it goes on as the years multiply and, damaging this generation with accumulated curse, it strikes other centuries. And if it is so deleterious to the body, how much more destructive to the mind. An eminent physician, who was the superintendent of the insane asylum at Northampton, Massachusetts, says: "Fully one half the patients we get in our asylum have lost their intellect through the use of tobacco." If it is such a bad thing to injure the body, what a ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... by law, because it eats the frogs and worms that would injure the dikes. 10. It is one of the most marvelous facts in the natural world that, though hydrogen is highly inflammable, and oxygen is a supporter of combustion, both, combined, form an element, water, which is destructive to fire. 11. In your war of 1812, when your arms on shore were covered by disaster, when Winchester had been defeated, when the Army of the Northwest had surrendered, and when the gloom of despondency hung, like a cloud, over the land, who first relit the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... as well worthy of investigation as purely physical or mechanical ones, and yet we ignore them most ignominiously. We think no expense too great to test an Armstrong or a Whitworth gun; we spend thousands to ascertain how far it will carry, what destructive force it possesses, and how long it will resist explosion;—why not appoint a commission of this nature on "conjugate;" why not ascertain, if we can, what is the weak point in matrimony, and why are explosions so ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... of a destructive hurricane which visited Cuba in 1844, the supreme authority of that island issued a decree permitting the importation for the period of six months of certain building materials and provisions free of duty, but revoked it when about half the period only had elapsed, to the injury of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sword for destruction; it urges the laudable acts of humanity; it is the universal hinge on which we move; it glides the gentle stream of usefulness, it overflows the mounds of reason, and swells into a destructive flood; like the sun, in his milder rays, it animates and draws us towards perfection; but, like him, in his fiercer beams, it scorches ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... fort only conducted the English troops further into the jaws of destruction. Their advance was suddenly arrested by a sharp fire on their front, which was presently followed by a similar discharge on their rear, and then succeeded by destructive vollies from every side. In the darkness neither the position nor the numbers of the Indians could be ascertained. Dalzell was slain early, and his whole detachment was on the brink of irretrievable ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... Feb. 4.-Regrets at their absence, and anxiety for their return. Destructive tempest. The rival Opera-houses. Taylor's pamphlet against the Lord ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... of the barren fig tree is regarded by many as unique among the recorded miracles of Christ, from the fact that while all the others were wrought for relief, blessing, and beneficent purposes generally, this one appears as an act of judgment and destructive execution, Nevertheless in this miracle the Lord's purpose is not hidden; and the result, while fatal to a tree, is of lasting blessing to all who would learn and profit, by the works of God. If no more has been accomplished by the miracle than the presenting of so impressive an object lesson ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... to council, together with the cacique of Guaxocingo the ally of the republic, to whom they represented that all the attacks which they had made against us had been ineffectual, yet exceedingly destructive to them; that the strangers were hostile to their inveterate enemies the Mexicans, who had been continually at war against their republic for upwards of an hundred years, and had so hemmed them in as to deprive them of procuring cotton or salt; and therefore that it would be highly conducive to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... worlds. That a private gentleman should have such a machine at his command was not likely. Where, when, and how was it built? and how could its construction have been kept secret? Certainly a Government might possess such a destructive machine. And in these disastrous times, when the ingenuity of man has multiplied the power of weapons of war, it was possible that, without the knowledge of others, a State might try to work such a ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... new ones, demolishing old systems and substituting others, and disturbing and deranging the whole order of society as it had existed before. And it is to this new state of things, so harassing, so destructive to health and life, that the regular ministry of this country (the best qualified, most pious, most faithful, and in all respects the most worthy Christian ministry that the church has ever enjoyed in any age) are made the victims. They cannot resist ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... in this matter, also, the results are destructive and that the statements of witnesses are untrue and unreliable. I do not assert that our valuation of these statements shall be checked from all possible directions, but I do say that much of what we have considered as true depends only on illusions in the broad sense ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... but I tremble to think that the rattling of a dice-box at White's may one day or other (if my son should be a member of that noble academy) shake down all our fine oaks. It is dreadful to see, not only there, but almost in every house in the town, what devastations are made by that destructive fury, the spirit of play.' A fact stated by Walpole to Horace Mann shows the character of the company at this establishment:—'There is a man about town, Sir William Burdett, a man of very good family, but most infamous character. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... arose a grand and stately castle. Perched upon the crest of a spur where it projected from the flank of a mountain, it stood before the new-comers the centre of the whole scene, the crown and glory of it all. In the garish sunlight there might have been perceptible many and many a mark wrought by the destructive hand of time, for ages had passed since it first reared its lordly form on high. Its architecture spoke of hoar antiquity, of a time long past, when the Moor still fought around these scenes, and rushed to the fight ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... bad lot, the rats—a bad, destructive lot," said the old man solemnly. "I wonder why such vermin was made. You'd never believe the number of fish and young wild-ducks, and game of different sorts, which are eaten up every ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... growing dawn, Hollister and the logger went down through woods thick with smoke. They routed Lawanne out of his cabin, and he joined them eagerly. He had never seen a forest fire. What bore upon the woodsmen chiefly as a malignant, destructive force affected Lawanne as something that promised adventure, as a spectacle which aroused his wonder, his curious interest in vast, elemental forces unleashed. They stopped at Bland's and pressed ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... destiny. He must be the architect of his own fortune. He must demonstrate capacity and independence, because mendicancy is always destructive. The living present calls us away from the ashes of the dead and buried past. Our hopes are brighter and our ambitions higher. Let us stand on our own racial pride, and prove our claim for equality by showing the fruits ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... motion of want of confidence, as an amendment to the Address, the Ministry was defeated. Lord Salisbury resigned, and Mr. Gladstone came into office with a Cabinet in which every shade of unconstitutional opinion and every socially destructive fad were fully represented. Reeve consoled himself with the belief that such a ministry could not last. To Mr. T. Norton Longman ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... vain, to cut a way through; and their height and strength enabled them to maintain a forward movement, their opponents shrinking from the terrible blows of Roger's mace, and the no less destructive fall of Oswald's sword; but the men-at-arms behind them fared worse, having to retreat with their face to the foe; and more than one, falling over the bodies of those slain by their leaders, were stabbed before they could rise. Several times the two men turned and covered ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... laced more tightly than their descendants, and wore their dresses lower in the neck; and as for their diet, we have the testimony of another French traveller, Volney, who was in America from 1795 to 1798, that "if a premium were offered for a regimen most destructive to the teeth, the stomach, and the health in general, none could be devised more efficacious for these ends than that in use among this people." And he goes on to give particulars, showing a far worse condition in respect ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... stands on a plane of intellect where he might, under other circumstances, have met and defeated Webster. After the 7th of March, 1850, he recognized in Webster the embodiment of all that he hated. In his attacks on Webster, Emerson trembles to his inmost fibre with antagonism. He is savage, destructive, personal, ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... had never been officially related to the state, but just the same it is now being employed by the ruling class against the workers. If it is not yet as influential here as it was in Russia during the reign of the Czars—it is becoming so. Its destructive work cannot be neglected any longer. It ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... coming down the walls, so that the water from the roofs was collected and came down once in every few yards in a torrent, bursting umbrellas, and deluging cloaks and hats. The manure spread before sick men's doors to deaden the sound of wheels was washed down the street to add to the destructive qualities which already characterized the mud of Paris. An exceptionally heavy fall of snow would entirely get the better of the authorities, filling the streets from side to side with pools of ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Terrestrials dared not even guess. The crawling fortresses themselves were thrown backward violently and the very world was rocked to its core by the concussion, but that iron-driven wall held. The massive nets swayed and gave back, and tidal waves hurled their mountainously destructive masses through the Third City, but the mighty barrier remained intact. And Nerado, still attacking two of the powerful tanks with his every weapon, was still dodging those flashing balls charged with the quintessence ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... dislike them because they are destructive to Religion; and if a Minister of the Gospel was to dissuade and deter Men from Duelling he would do it in quite another Manner. By a Minister of the Gospel I don't mean a Philosophizing Divine, or a polite Preacher, but a sincere Follower of the Apostles, a down-right Christian. He would, ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... of life, many co-ordinated modifications are almost indispensable, and it may often have happened that the requisite parts did not vary in the right manner or to the right degree. Many species must have been prevented from increasing in numbers through destructive agencies, which stood in no relation to certain structures, which we imagine would have been gained through natural selection from appearing to us advantageous to the species. In this case, as the struggle for life did not depend on such structures, they could ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... the process of repair, but if the bacteria gain the upper hand in the struggle, the inflammatory reaction becomes more intense, certain of the tissue elements succumb, and the process for the time being is a destructive one. During the stage of bacterial inflammation, reparative processes are in abeyance, and it is only after the inflammation has been allayed, either by natural means or by the aid of the surgeon, ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... of brick, formed the principal labour of this month at Sydney. The shipwrights were employed in putting up the frame of a long-boat purchased of the master of the Britannia, and repairing the hoy, which had been lying for some months useless for want of repairs, having been much injured by the destructive worm that was found in ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... orange-colored, the epigastrium is tender to pressure, the urine has a yellow tinge, the pulse becomes unnaturally slow, with the least degree of mental stupor, we have reason to know, full well, that the lull of the fever is only the calm preceding a more destructive storm. The fever has subsided, only because exhausted nature could re-act no longer. It may be in a few hours, or not until twelve or twenty-four have elapsed, the pulse becomes quickened, even to the frequency of 120 to 140 in a minute, but very feeble, the extremities ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... the most important instruction. We may learn from it, that virtue is impracticable in no condition, since Epictetus could recommend himself to the regard of heaven, amidst the temptations of poverty and slavery; slavery, which has always been found so destructive to virtue, that in many languages a slave and a thief are expressed by the same word. And we may be, likewise, admonished by it, not to lay any stress on a man's outward circumstances, in making an estimate of his real value, since Epictetus the beggar, the cripple, and the slave, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... sorry," said he, gravely. "It is not well that mortals should know the future, and your imprudent act is destructive of all the plans I have had for you. You must leave us instantly, for that instrument is for the gods alone. Moreover, the knowledge of that which you ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... STATES,' 'the Union,' 'the Nation,' are supreme. The States, as States, are subordinate; as 'parts,' they are inferior to the 'whole.' The 'State rights' doctrine is wrong, disorganizing, destructive of national life, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for the young Philippine mothers and to discover a better diet for the lepers. Governor Wood added, "I want doctors, lots of them, modern equipment' and nurses to make more sanitary conditions. I also wish the diseases destructive to cattle studied." There are only 930 nurses in the islands and funds and equipment are needed badly. More doctors are needed in curing the lepers. In speaking of the present condition of the islands, he said, "The Philippines are not ready to cut ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... country after a fox, no lady with a taste for handsome furs, no boy who has read of lion and tiger hunts and has longed to emulate the doughty deeds of the hunter, can fail to be interested in an assemblage which furnishes animals at once so useful, so beautiful and so destructive. It must not be supposed from the name of this group that all its members are exclusively flesh-eaters, and indeed it will be hardly necessary to warn the reader against falling into this mistake, as there ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... species not always recoverable Van Kennan, E.A. Venezuela, a plume-hunter in wild birds' plumage from "Vermin" destructive to birds Vermont; deer killed in, deer killed in Vermont since 1897, few new laws needed in, management of deer in, protects wood-duck re-stocking, with deer Viquesnev, J.A. Virginia; deer killed in, many new laws needed ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... were doing to the peas;"[15] but luckily for the farmers these wandering flocks do not stay long, or there would be but little peas, beans, or grain left in the Islands; and the Wood Pigeons would be more destructive to the crops in Guernsey than in England, as there are not many acorns or Beech masts on which they could feed; consequently they would live almost entirely on the farmer; and to show the damage they would be capable of doing in this case, I may say that in the crops of ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... the passions, creative and destructive, it engendered, all the sentiments and follies and crimes, to say nothing of ambition and greed and the lust to kill in war—these were instincts and traits that appeared in mankind generation after generation, in every corner civilized and savage of the globe. The world ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... do much for the country as regards commercial and intellectual improvement, will prove fatal in a degree to the picturesqueness which now renders Mexico so attractive. Radical progress in one direction must needs be destructive in another, and while some of the allurements of her strong individuality will disappear, her moral and physical status will be greatly improved. Her ragged, half-naked people will don proper attire, sacrificing the ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... had no example of this preponderance of the destructive forces. We should never have believed that man's nerves could resist so great a trial. The nerves of the bravest man are tempered to face death for the space of a second, but not to live in the hourly expectation ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... now using the organic and inorganic forms of the earth in a manner so subsidiary to the might of his intellect and his will, that such obstacles as mountains and seas, which used to impede him hopelessly, now are his auxiliaries; but he does more than this: he demonstrates the destructive and annihilating sway of man over the world in the past and in the present; and, proceeding from the historic fact that the countries which in the palmy days of the Roman Empire were the granary and the wine-cellar of the world have been given over by ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... history of Rome this fire was far the most violent and destructive. Breaking out in a number of shops stored with combustible goods, and driven by the winds, it raged with the utmost fury, neither the thick walls of the houses nor the enclosures of the temples sufficing to stay its frightful progress. The form of the streets, long, ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... in our history when unbelief and skepticism was more determined in its opposition to the Christian religion than at the present. There is an incessant attempt to instill into the minds of the young principles in opposition to, and destructive of Christianity. Many have split upon the rocks of infidelity, and stranded upon the quicksands of doubt and skepticism, in spite of the fact that Christianity presented them an example, which is the light and life of men—a ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... each case the result was the same. After some preliminary skirmishing, manoeuvring, and volley firing, the British charged with the bayonet. The rawest regiments among the American militia then broke at once; the others kept pretty steady, pouring in quite a destructive fire, until the regulars had come up close to them, when they also fled. The British regulars were too heavily loaded to pursue, and, owing to their mode of attack, and the rapidity with which their opponents ran away, the loss of the latter was in each case very slight. At North ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... little scorched; and when this occurs, the man who is the interloper, will generally find a gentle consolation in his position, let its interest be ever so flaccid and unreal, and its troubles in running about, and the like, ever so considerable and time-destructive. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... is the facade! What man has stronger reason than the man who has lost his reason? It is the only outlet for aggression, a devious fulfillment, it brings psychological satisfactions which cannot be obtained in any other way—call it the self-destructive impulse if you will. I doubt if Beardsley rationalized this—but he had come to his moment, his time of assertion, his way of making fools of us all ... and my complete opinion, sir, is that his actions from beginning to end were both a ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... many limitations which arise to the modern doctrine upon the destructive agricultural consequences of the Roman corn trade. Rome may have prevented the Italian agriculture from expanding, but she could not have caused it to decline.[21] Now, let us see how far this Roman corn trade affected ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... used, and against which children of intermediate age are appointed-animals that do not threaten the life of man, but ravage the produce of his labour, varieties of the elk and deer species, and a smaller creature much akin to our rabbit, though infinitely more destructive to crops, and much more cunning in its mode of depredation. It is the first object of these appointed infants, to tame the more intelligent of such animals into respect for enclosures signalised by conspicuous landmarks, as dogs are taught to respect a larder, or even to guard the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... not to scout criticism, from which much of the highest value to faith is to come, but to steady the wavering young minister; to sustain his preaching power by helping him to a definite message, and to encourage him to a slow and guarded acceptance of critical opinions destructive of "the faith once ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... should think, that no one deserved to be thought these but himself; for he who supports his dignity, and is a friend to freedom, encroaches upon the superiority and the despotism of the tyrant: such men, therefore, they naturally hate, as destructive to their government. A tyrant also should rather admit strangers to his table and familiarity than citizens, as these are his enemies, but the others have no design against him. These and such-like are the supports of a tyranny, for it comprehends whatsoever is wicked. But all these ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... novels and dramas, etc., constitute an unhealthy medium in our centers of civilization, which overexcites and corrupts the sexual appetite. The more delicate and poisonous the perfume of this atmosphere and the more aesthetic the refinement by which it titillates the senses, the greater is its destructive action. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... coward, but he would have begged off, if he could have done so with any prospect of success; but he might as well have pleaded with the ocean to hold back its destructive waves, as with Mr. Batterman to stay his hand, before his revenge was satisfied. Another and another blow fell. The pain was so severe that the culprit could not endure it, and the quick-falling strokes soon kindled a ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... found them troublesome on the bar of the Mississippi in the heat of summer; and at the same season exceedingly annoying while navigating the Dwina on the way to Archangel. In the low lands of Java they are seen, heard, and felt to a degree destructive to comfort; and in certain localities in the West Indies are the direct cause of intense nervous excitement, loud and bitter denunciations, and fierce anathemas. But the mosquitoes that inhabit the country bordering on the mouths of the Amazon must bear away ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... fault, equally destructive of this delight, by much the same means, though it is far from owing its original to any real superiority of parts and knowledge; this is discoursing on the mysteries of a particular profession, to which all the rest of the company, except ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... ship was got underway the following morning, and brought to, with a spring on her cable, within less than a mile of the shore, when the larboard side was brought to bear nearly upon the site of the town. The object of the Commodore, in this movement, was not to open an indiscriminate or destructive fire upon the town and inhabitants of Quallah Battoo, but to show them the irresistible power of thirty-two pound shot, and to reduce the fort of Tuca de Lama, which could not be reached on account of the jungle and stream of water, on the morning ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... side slope down almost to the water's edge; the road leading to the bridge winding through a ravine, and then on the other side ascending through another ravine to the highlands. No sooner had the head of the column descended into this amphitheater of hills, than the rebels opened a destructive fire from behind defenses which they had thrown up along the hillsides. Rifle pits, and breastworks of rails and stones, concealed thousands of infantry, who, from their secure position, poured volley after volley into the advancing column; while batteries, placed upon the heights, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... the firmness of character produced by the wisdom learned from books, the attraction of fame, the multitude of splendid projects, and all the resources of your cultured and exalted intellect, to distract her mind, and turn her away, without destructive violence, from every other earthly affection? Can you not see that she will die of grief, and that you, called by your destiny to offer up bloodless sacrifices, will begin by pitilessly sacrificing ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... surface, which has often continued several days (as in 1816, at Scaccia, in Sicily, before the volcanic elevation of the island of Julia), as well as of the terrific explosions accompanied by loud noise. The focus of this destructive agent, the seat of the moving force, lies far below the earth's surface; but we know as little of the extent of this depth as we know of the chemical nature of these vapors that are so highly compressed. At the edges ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... attempted, and pausing bewildered before the questions involved in prevention. For them there has been active and unceasing work, their brooms laboring as vainly as Mrs. Partington's against the rising tide of woe and want and fruitless toil, each wave only the forerunner of mightier and more destructive ones, while the world has gone its way, casting abundant contributions toward the workers, but denying that there was need for agitation or speculation as to where or how the next crest might break. There were men and ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... destruction by a storm-tossed ark which rested on some local mountain answering to Ararat, and which was filled with the natural elements of reproduction, is found amongst the traditions of every country of the globe. In Egypt, the destructive agency drives the God into the ark—or into the fish's belly, where he is obliged to remain until the flood subsides. In other words, at the time of the destruction of the world, the creative agency is forced within the womb of Nature, there to remain ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... royal free city of Hungary, situated at the confluence of the Maros and Theiss, 118 m. SE. of Budapest, to which it ranks next in importance as a commercial and manufacturing centre; has been largely rebuilt since the terribly destructive flood of 1879, and presents a handsome ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... as the Land of Volcanoes; frequent and sometimes very destructive earthquakes and volcanic activity; extremely susceptible ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and an inner force which merges us in the Infinite. Though both are equally efficient as to the result, and both are inconsistent with individual freedom, yet real fate is only that which is external.... While destiny or fate in the sense of absolute external compulsion would certainly be destructive, not only of moral responsibility but of personality itself, yet religion or science without fate is radically unsound." Again he adds: "We cannot separate perfection and fate. Deity whose sway is not destiny is not ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... conceive imaginatively a better ordering of human society than the destructive and cruel chaos in which mankind has hitherto existed is by no means modern: it is at least as old as Plato, whose "Republic'' set the model for the Utopias of subsequent philosophers. Whoever contemplates the ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... philosophy were partly constructive, partly (and perhaps mainly) critical and destructive. On the critical side, his greatest effort was his attack upon the philosophy of Hume in two masterly Introductions to an edition of Hume's 'Works,' published in 1874-5. English philosophical thinking, ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... one victorious foe had come down to lay siege to Edelweiss, the capital. Axphain, a powerful principality in the north, had conquered Graustark in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but only after a bitter war in which starvation and famine proved far more destructive than the arms of the victors. The treaty of peace and the indemnity that fell to the lot of vanquished Graustark have been discoursed upon at length ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Beside these destructive hordes whose action during revolution is capital, there exists, as we have already remarked, the mass of the true people, which asks only the right to labour. It sometimes benefits by revolutions, but never causes ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... Queen, had, by saving her life, made England her long debtor; but Leicester had judged rightly in believing that the Queen might find the debt irksome; that her gratitude would be corroded by other destructive emotions. It was true that Angele had saved her life, but Michel had charmed her eye. He had proved himself a more gallant fighter than any in her kingdom; and had done it, as he had said, in her honour. So, as her admiration for Michel grew, her debt to Angele became burdensome; and, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Natural hazards: destructive earthquakes and cyclones; flooding and landslides common during rainy season (June ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... destructive powers, it seems probable at the first view, that interest has the strongest and most extensive influence. It is easy to conceive that opportunities to seize what has been long wanted, may excite desires almost irresistible; but surely the same eagerness cannot be kindled by an accidental power ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... monarch murderer comes in, Destructive man! whom Nature would not arm, As when in madness mischief is foreseen, We leave it weaponless for ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... and horse, and hound, and horn, Destructive sweep the field along; While, joying o'er the wasted corn, Fell Famine ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... influences are quiet; only the destructive agencies, the stormy wind, the heavy rain and hail, are noisy. Love of the deepest sort is wordless, the sunshine steals down silently, the dew falls noiselessly, and the communion of spirit with spirit is calmer and quieter than anything else in ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... not improbable, that the charge of inhumanity may be made against experiments prosecuted upon defenceless animals, with a poison so painful and destructive in its operation as tobacco; the justice of this charge is freely admitted, if such experiments be made merely for the gratification of curiosity, and not with the object and reasonable hope of making them useful to mankind, and of influencing, ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... the youth's eloquence by adding, "As well as you did the hanging over yonder bay? No, no—we can discriminate, by God's blessing, between the young of the plundering fox and the cub of a lion: both are destructive, but the one is mean and cowardly: the other—it shall be our care to train the ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... mask upon her face had turned more yellow than ever, and now looked like a coating of mud; her eyes too had become more sunken, her lips seemed to have grown thinner, and the death rattle had begun, a slow, pestilential wheezing, polluted by the cancer which was finishing its destructive work. All at once she raised her eyelids, and was seized with fear on beholding those two faces bent over her own. Could her death be near, that they should thus be gazing at her? Immense sadness showed itself in her eyes, a despairing regret of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... considerable number of the conspirators were making merry in the house of the officer, where they had taken their comrade prisoner. They immediately proceeded to this house, where they commenced a most destructive fire through the doors and windows, not taking any aim or making any discrimination between friend or foe. They then entered, killed the wounded, and took some prisoners. Unfortunately the good old host ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... people bend, introducing discord into families, restraining the energies of the fishermen, and tending to a deeply rooted aversion towards the lessees and their service, but producing systems of chicanery and deceit subversive of moral principle and destructive of all efforts in the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... lasted, Joe and his comrades remained speechless and awe-stricken. When it passed, no Indians were to be seen. So our hunters remounted their steeds, and, with feelings of gratitude to God for having delivered them alike from savage foes and from the destructive power of the whirlwind, resumed their journey ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... destroying agencies from whom proceed all the mischief done in the world. Nevertheless, they are gods, not devils, and have their worship and worshippers among those whose religious nature is more imbued with fear than with hope. The timid worshipped the deadly and destructive powers, and their prayers were deprecations. The bolder worshipped the good gods. Similarly, in Greece, the Chtonic deities had their shrines and worshippers, as had the powers of Blight, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... last resource, "do pray think of your complexion. I have finished crying; I shall give way to crying no more, because I wish to look my best to-morrow, to let him see what a charming person he has chosen to quarrel with. And my tears are not so destructive as yours, because mine arise from vexation, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... felt the dangers of Rousseau's doctrine of equality, declaring that in the end it would be destructive alike of liberty and religion, he was yet strongly imbued with the need of reconciling some of the socialists' ideals with the regard due to the principles which he respected. He was anxious to promote the study ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... boast such a lengthy bead-roll as Ireland can of names immortal in history!" But "this was for Irish consumption." And popular opinion and even critical opinion has sometimes gone far astray in its destructive tendency. There were authoritative critics who declared that Wordsworth, Shelley, and Coleridge wrote "unintelligible nonsense." George Meredith's style, especially in his poetry, was counted so bad that it—was ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... in Fort Magruder interrupted the conversation. The gunners of the battery in front of them had been driven from their pieces; but it was almost instantly manned by volunteers, and a destructive fire poured into the works. Other batteries were brought up, and the fort was soon silenced. The roar of battle sounded all along the line; the thunder of cannon and the crash of musketry reverberated through the woods and over the plain, assuring the impatient troops that they were ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... Olivia were guilty, would you have me behave to her as if I believed her to be innocent? My countenance, my voice, my principles, would revolt from such mean and pernicious hypocrisy, degrading to the individual, and destructive to society. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... general state of tribal equilibrium which had before prevailed was rudely disturbed. Tribal warfare, which hitherto had been attended with inconsiderable loss of life and slight territorial changes, was now made terribly destructive, and the territorial possessions of whole groups of tribes were augmented at the expense of those less fortunate. The horse made wanderers of many tribes which there is sufficient evidence to show were formerly nearly sedentary. Firearms enforced migration and caused wholesale ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... infantile being he had first known. She always seemed to part from him with reluctance; but it was because she had no longer any one with whom she could visit her favourite haunts, whilst her guardian was occupied in sketching or uncovering some fragment which had yet escaped the destructive hand of time. She had appealed to her parents on the subject of Vampyres, and they both, with several present, affirmed their existence, pale with horror at the very name. Soon after, Aubrey determined to proceed upon one of his excursions, which was to detain him for a few hours; when they heard ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... the kings a very agreeable state of things. I enjoy my power and state mightily. But I am not blind to the fact—my own experience teaches it—that it is a state of things corrupt and rotten to the heart—destructive everywhere of the highest form of the human character. It nurses and brings out the animal, represses and embrutes the god that is within us. It makes of man a being of violence, force, passion, and the ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... the Colonel, beginning to wax indignant, 'do they send such a museum relic here to fight a reasonably accurate and decidedly destructive mortar?' ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... The advocates of Home Rule believe that their policy would in general have an exactly contrary effect to that predicted by their opponents. In truth, every act of legislation is, before experience, amenable to such destructive criticism as these critics urge against Home Rule. I have not a doubt that they could have made out an unanswerable "case" against the Great Charter at Runnymede; and they would find it easy to prove on a priori grounds that the British Constitution is one of ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... sleeping monster I cannot tell, but it was some time before I woke up to the fact that I had come on purpose to put an end to its destructive career, and that I had a gun ready charged in ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... leaped from one half-ruined building to another. Braxton Wyatt and his band would have enough to do sheltering themselves from the fierce winter, and the settlements could rest for a while at least. Undeniably he felt exultation as he witnessed the destructive work of his hand. The border, with its constant struggle for-life and ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... charter of James to the colony of Virginia. We will not now pause to consider it minutely either for praise or for blame. With some provisions that seem to be judicious, and which afterward proved themselves to be salutary, it embraces the most destructive elements of despotism and dissension. The settlers were deprived of the meanest privilege of self-government, and were subjected to the control of a council wholly independent of their own action, and of laws proceeding directly or indirectly from the King ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... what was filling the heart and brain of each of those boys as they watched the living stream of French rapidly draw nearer the river ford commanded by that destructive German battery, and which thus far they had not been able to reach and silence with their ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... over that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim: What, have we got not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract? A new Adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is the Nineteenth, and destructive both ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... fortune to travel through this country can realize how difficult this endeavor has been and must continue to be, chiefly because of the great local complexity of the mountain system, but also because of the severely destructive storms of this region, with consequent torrential violence of the streams affected. But little money, too, can be, or has been, spent for the necessary road-work. In spite of the difficulties involved, however, a system of road-making has been ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... Voltaire, of Diderot, of D'Alembert, of Rousseau. Montesquieu, though contemporary, belongs apart from these writers. More really original, more truly philosophical, he was far less revolutionary, far less destructive, than they. Still, his influence was, on the whole, exerted in the direction, if not of infidelity, at least of religious indifferentism. The French Revolution was laid in train by the great popular ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... their destructive provinces. With a review of the theories of Tyndall, Huxley, Darwin, and ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... in it that which causes its final dissolution, and within it also the germs of a future and higher life, so civilized society carries in it the germs of its decay and dissolution, society being a natural product, as fruit is, of God's providence. Free competition is the destructive agent, or one of the most important agents in its dissolution. Observe that the power which ripens a natural fruit causes, in the end, its destruction. Observe also that free competition, which in the early stages of civilization glorifies and typifies ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... it merely as destructive of social enjoyment, that the habits of the great world are unfriendly to happiness. It is not the place for those who have warm imaginations and tender hearts. There is scarcely any circumstance in which that sphere differs more from others, than in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... once on a time, sought to destroy the Butchers, who practiced a trade destructive to their race. They assembled on a certain day to carry out their purpose, and sharpened their horns for the contest. One of them, an exceedingly old one (for many a field had he ploughed), thus spoke: "These Butchers, it is ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... the engineers from laying the pontoon bridge; conflicting orders, which delayed the movement of the troops. The 115th was among the first regiments to pass the river on the following night, and in the neighborhood of ten o'clock, with Maurice in its ranks, it entered Champigny under a destructive fire. The young man was wild with excitement; he fired so rapidly that his chassepot burned his fingers, notwithstanding the intense cold. His sole thought was to push onward, ever onward, surmounting every obstacle until they should join their brothers from the provinces over there across the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... in the presence of the awful mystery of all-destructive Nature, the difference between myself and the other living things seems trivial. In town, human society is to the fore and looms large; it is cruelly callous to the happiness and misery of other creatures as compared ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... in mystery. It is now well known that Monsieur Fouche, at the head of the police, was acquainted with this conspiracy from its first conception, and by his vigilant agents, was informed of the daily progress made in the construction of this destructive instrument, of the plan of which he had even a copy. The conspirators proceeded with perfect confidence, and as they thought with perfect security. Three days before it was quite completed, and ready for its fell purpose, from some surprise or dread ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... ships differed but slightly from that of the Greek vessels; they had turrets on the decks of their larger men-of-war, and employed a variety of destructive engines; so that in battle the soldiers on board fought much as they did when standing on the walls of a fortress. Of one thing I am sure, that no correct drawings of ancient ships have come down to us, if any such were really made; those on medals, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... the solar energy, which occurs only in the vegetable, is by a process of reduction, that is, the separation of the carbon and oxygen in carbonic acid and water. The chemical reactions which liberate energy in the body are slow; in dead matter they are rapid and violent, or explosive and destructive. It is the chemistry in the leaf of the plant that diverts or draws the solar energy into the stream of life, and how it does ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... the siren voice of the tempter, and desired to explore and explain this mystery. The forbidden fruit ever grows upon the tree beside her. Those who would be wiser than that which is written, have plucked and eaten it, and have given to others that which is so destructive. Witchcraft is a womanly profession. The heathen divinities were nearly all ministered unto by woman, and mystery was the influencing cause. We know the result in the case of Eve. It led her away from God. It caused her to listen to the enemy of her soul. Does it not become woman to ask herself, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... will, by a parity of reasoning, tend to predominate over their contemporaries, and there being (suppose) no room for more than one species such as A, the weaker variety will eventually be destroyed by the new destructive influence which is thrown into the scale, and the stronger will take its place. Surrounding conditions remaining unchanged, the new variety (which we may call B)—supposed, for argument's sake, to be the best adapted for these conditions which can be ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... continues Dr. Bose "is thus seen to be threatening the future of India, and to avert it will require the utmost effort of the people. They have not only to meet the economic crisis but also to protect the ideals of ancient Aryan civilisation from the destructive forces that are threatening it.... There is a danger of regarding the mechanical efficiency as the sole end of life; there is also the opposite danger of a life of dreaming, bereft of struggle and activity, the degenerating into parasitic ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... good, are apt to be noisier than European ones. The servants have little idea of silence over their work, and the early morning chambermaids crow to one another in a way that is very destructive of one's matutinal slumbers. Then somebody or other seems to crave ice-water at every hour of the day or night, and the tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of the ice-pitcher in the corridors becomes positively nauseous when one wants to go to sleep. The innumerable electric bells, always ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... surface of the ground. By opening their runways and placing well down in them a piece of carrot or potato in which has been placed a little strychnine we succeeded in getting rid of them entirely. Next came the woodchucks. They were very destructive with us, chewing the bark above the protectors as well as the roots. Trapping is the most successful method we have found, and by keeping a half dozen traps out all the time we held them in check. Eternal vigilance must be the motto of ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... beauty naught remained but her hair, which was still magnificent, though it was in wild disorder, and looked as if it had not been touched by a comb for weeks; and her big black eyes, which gleamed with the phosphorescent and destructive brilliancy of fever. Everything about her person bespoke terrible reverses, borne without dignity. Even if she had struggled at first, it was easy to see that she struggled no longer. Her attire—her torn and soiled silk dress, and her dirty cap—revealed thorough indolence, ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... the grandame said, Lifting her head, "I think I can hear my mother's voice Above all other noise, Saying, 'Hearken, my child! There is nothing more destructive and wild, No wild bull with his horns, No wild-briar with clutching thorns, No pig that routs in your garden-bed, No robber with ruthless tread, More reckless and rude, And wasteful of all things lovely and good, Than a child, with the face of a boy and the ways of a bear, Who doesn't care; ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... very fond of mushrooms, and where they have access to the beds are troublesome and destructive. Both the common house mouse and the white-bellied fence mouse are mushroom destroyers, but, so far, the nimble but timid field mouse (among garden, open air, and frame crops generally) has never yet troubled our mushrooms, but I can not ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... acting "unconstitutionally" whenever they choose to assert the undeniable principles of the Constitution. Thus to-day we have this paradoxical situation: that although Japanese Liberalism must from its very essence be revolutionary, i.e., destructive before it can hope to be constructive, it feigns blindness, hoping that by suasion rather than by force the principle of parliamentary government will somehow be grafted on to the body politic and the emperors, being left outside the controversy, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... exercise may secure the best results from the standpoint of health, a number of conditions should be observed: 1. It should not be excessive or carried to the point of exhaustion. Severe physical exercise is destructive to both muscular and nervous tissues. 2. It should, if possible, be of an interesting nature and taken in the open air. 3. It should be counter-active, that is, calling into play those parts of the body that have not been used during the regular work.(88) 4. It should be directed toward the weak ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... of the room; he had been caught, was twisting, in a great storm; a storm with thunder and cruel flashes of lightning; a storm hammering and hammering at him.... Must not lose his hold on—on life! He must stay fast against everything! It wasn't his hand gripping the destructive force towering above him, but a strange quality within him, at once within him and aside, burning in his heart and directing him ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... their civilization, and upon their political condition. If these be all favorable, the spirit of nationality is divine, and manifest in great and ennobling deeds and thoughts; but, if adverse, then the spirit will be destructive, and vice will be quickened into ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... type of his people. He can only wait for the change, and enable his people to conform to the new type. For this process new industries, new ways of getting a living are necessary. The teacher or pastor can do something to guide his people in the selection of constructive instead of destructive industry. ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... leading difficulties in the way of their acceptance; difficulties which would appear to be insurmountable to Professor Koelliker, inasmuch as he proposes to replace Mr. Darwin's Theory by one which he terms the "Theory of Heterogeneous Generation." We shall proceed to consider first the destructive, and secondly, the constructive portion ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... line would no doubt have been carried on; but with the retirement of the British troops, work ceased, and the great stores of material that had been gathered there remained, for years, half covered with the sand. In any other climate this would have been destructive, but in the dry air of Upper Egypt they remained almost uninjured, and proved very useful, when the work was ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... moving figures, which, seen through the binocular, proved to be animals; probably domestic animals, since they never ranged very far, and presented none of those signs of watchfulness and alarm which are peculiar to creatures not protected by man from their less destructive enemies, and taught to lay aside their dread of man himself. I had descended, then, not only into an inhabited world—not only into a world of men, who, however they might differ in outward form, must resemble in their wants, ideas, and habits, in short, in mind if ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... but more suitable for the greenhouse than the open flower-bed. They require a sandy peat and leaf-mould, and the pots to be well drained, as too much water is as destructive to them as too little. They may be had in flower from May to August by making two sowings, one in September and the other in February, and keeping them in the greenhouse. When large enough to handle, pot off into 3-in. pots, putting two ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... I rejoin, do others understand it? If, with exception of the passages already excepted, namely, the recorded words of God—concerning which no Christian can have doubt or scruple,—the tenet in this sense be inapplicable to the Scripture, destructive of its noblest purposes, and contradictory to its own express declarations,—again and again I ask:- What am I to substitute? What other sense is conceivable that does not destroy the doctrine which it professes to interpret—that does not convert it into its own negative? As if a geometrician ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
