"Disaster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration Swindle. Letter from His Grace. William. Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup. Victory of outsider Throwaway recalls Derby of '92 when Capt. Marshall's dark horse Sir Hugo captured the blue ribband at long odds. New York disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... long after our establishment in the Via dei Malcontenti that a great disaster came upon Florence and its inhabitants and guests. Arno was not in the habit of following the evil example of the Tiber by treating Florence as the latter so frequently did Rome. But in the winter of the ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the West is, like the cyclone, a revolving force, but it carries with it a variety of phenomena wholly distinct from those that accompany the larger storm. Many of the effects of one tornado are wholly absent in others, and the indications that in one case have been followed by a terrible disaster are not infrequently found at other times to presage ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... ruby tint, but with the exception of her mouth all her features were, not to say more, good. As to her eyes, I should do injustice by any attempt to describe them. An object must be susceptible of calm and dispassionate contemplation if one would analyze it afterward without complete disaster. A very irresistible little piece of orientality she must indeed have been, perchance the reader will conclude. And yet, if the reader is a man and a brother—that is to say, a brother white man—I answer him he is altogether in too great a hurry. He has forgotten ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... will not think me meddlesome or impertinent. I have the matter very much at heart. It seems to lie in my path. I must see it. Surely you perceive some way of averting the disaster in it!" ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... a very unseasonable time; being afterwards himself engaged upon the same account, the horror of the former story on a sudden so strangely possessed his imagination, that he ran the same fortune the other had done; and from that time forward, the scurvy remembrance of his disaster running in his mind and tyrannising over him, he was subject to relapse into the same misfortune. He found some remedy, however, for this fancy in another fancy, by himself frankly confessing and declaring beforehand ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... book of unexampled force and in that sort must be reckoned the greatest novel of the author, who has neglected no phase of his varied scene. The torrero's mortal disaster in the arena is no more important than the action behind the scenes where the gored horses have their dangling entrails sewed up by the primitive surgery of the place and are then ridden back into the amphitheatre to suffer a second agony. No color of the dreadful picture is spared; ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... admiral. During the battle of Aboukir he was the chief of the staff, under Admiral Brueys, and saved himself by swimming, when l'Orient took fire and blew up. Bonaparte wrote to him on this occasion: "The picture you have sent me of the disaster of l'Orient, and of your own dreadful situation, is horrible; but be assured that, having such a miraculous escape, DESTINY intends you to avenge one day our navy and our friends." This note was written in August, 1798, shortly after Bonaparte ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... for Phaedria: all is hush'd: And Phanium is not to depart as yet. What more then? where will all this end at last? —Alas! you're sticking in the same mire still: You've only chang'd hands, Geta. The disaster That hung but now directly over you, Delay perhaps will bring more heavy on you. You're quite beset, unless you look about. —Now then I'll home; to lesson Phanium, That she mayn't stand in fear of Phormio, Nor dread ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... would bid th' AEolian tones prolong To mourn the jolly Day's discomfiture, And, mindful of mine own estate, among The buds and grieving trees my plaint outpour, That sweets must fade though Night will aye endure. But crafty Nature, fancy to beguile From her disaster, which, alas! is mine, Bids to the front in radiant defile A trooping host whose pomps incarnadine The faded trophies of the dying day, And, lest I fail before so brave array, She decks the quiet clouds where fancies dwell With sweet ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... sentimental reason, such as at her age might well appeal to her. A whisper had reached her to the effect that, hard and unsympathetic as her Aunt Mercy was, romance at one time had place in her life—a romance which left her the only sufferer, a romance that had spelt a life's disaster for her. To the adamantine fortune-teller was attributed a devotion so strong, so passionate in the days of her youth that her reason had been well-nigh unhinged by the hopelessness of it. The object ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... though all along they had looked for succour to come up-stream rather than down. But as the precious hours passed, a deep dejection fastened on the camp. There had been a year when, through one disaster after another, no boats had got to the Upper River. Not even the arrival from Dawson of the Montana Kid, pugilist and gambler, could raise spirits so cast down, not even though he was said to bring strange ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... foreign trade or investment in other sectors will remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, its landlocked geographic location, and its susceptibility to natural disaster. The international community's role of funding more than 60% of Nepal's development budget and more than 28% of total budgetary expenditures will likely continue as a major ingredient ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Hepburn, anything more is quite out of the question. He must move in his own sphere, you in yours. People are happier in their own sphere. To try and lift them out of it is always a mistake, and ends in disaster and defeat. Would you have liked mamma ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... of the high average intelligence of the freemen who took part. But even the Greeks ran into difficulties, and if you will read Lord Acton, possibly the greatest historical authority on the subject, you will find that pure democracy, as it is called, resulted in disaster. We now have a much more complicated government and more democracy will not supply ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... before the breezes Wouldst thou show thy strength, then teach it Both to conquer as it pleases— Both are weaker than the grave. Choose thy port, and steer to reach it! Threatening rocks? The rudder's master; Turning back is sure disaster, And its ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of the currency heretofore made by the Republican party, and the further contraction proposed by it, with a view to the forced resumption of specie payment, have already brought disaster to the business of the country, and threaten it with general bankruptcy and ruin. We demand that this policy be abandoned, and that the volume of currency be made and kept equal to the wants of trade, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... had become a familiar figure in the village life by that time. David depended on him with a sort of wistful confidence that set him to grinding his teeth occasionally in a fury at his own helplessness. And, as the extent of the disaster developed, as he saw David failing and Lucy ageing, and when in time he met Elizabeth, the feeling of ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... other ports the troops were sent up to the wavering line of battle along the Franco-Belgian frontier. They came not to win a victory but to save an army from disaster. The mass of French reserves were in Lorraine or far away to the south, and the safety of the French line on the northern front had depended upon the assumed impregnability of Namur and an equally fallacious underestimate of the number of German ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... new words by means of the suffix -ous: joy, grace, grief, glory, desire, virtue, beauty, courage, disaster, harmony. ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... Rear-Admiral a fortnight after the battle, regretting that "the services of a friend he so highly esteemed and so gallant an officer, capable of such spirited exertions, should be restrained by any disaster from the continued exertion of them." There is also on record a letter to Pasley from the Prime Minister, a model of grace and delicate feeling, in which Pitt signified that the King had conferred on him ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... in accepting any state- ments of the kind without rigid examination and proof of their being true and genuine. Other- wise the investment or purchase becomes a speculation, and, more than likely, will only end in disaster. ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... two articles, increasing the authority of the council of war, were probably insisted on, as Mr. Oppenheim has pointed out in view of Sir Edward Howard's attempts on French ports in 1512 and 1513, the last of which ended in disaster.[1] ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... was accompanied on public and even on private occasions. On August 15th, after bathing in the porphyry font in which the emperor Constantine had been baptized, he was crowned with seven crowns representing the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. His most loyal admirer prophesied disaster when the Tribune ventured on this occasion to blasphemously ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... however, on reflection, to be valid reasons still. The only way of hastening his return to England and to Miss Elmslie, who was pining for that return, was the way I had taken. It was not my fault that a disaster which no man could foresee had overthrown all his projects and all mine. But, now that the calamity had happened and was irretrievable, how, in the event of his physical recovery, was his moral malady to ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Beatrice's sole form of prayer. Steve wondered if what Mary had recently said to him could be true, at least in his own case. She had said that defeat at thirty should be an incentive—only after fifty could it be counted a definite disaster. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... of a disastrous revolution, the appearance of this fantastic personage in the capital of civilisation was at once dismal and prophetic. Unconsciously, he was the prophet of disaster. Unconsciously, he was the prelude—half-solemn, half-grotesque—of a bloody and diabolical saturnalia. History, both profane and inspired, tells us that when the Euphrates forsook its natural channel, and the hostile legions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Frederick William III., the successive defeats of her armies at Jena, Auerstaedt, and elsewhere, and the loss, by the treaty of Tilsit in 1807, of half of her territory, Prussia realized from the first decade of the Napoleonic period little save humiliation and disaster. Through the years 1807-1815, however, her lot was wonderfully improved. Upon the failure of the Russian expedition of Napoleon in 1812, Frederick William (p. 247) shook off his apprehensions and allied himself openly with the sovereigns ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... past the prairie-dog villages. The passengers chatted, dozed, played cards, read, all unconscious, with the exception of three, of the coming conflict between the good and the evil forces bearing on their fate; of the fell preparations making for their disaster; of the grim preparations making to avert such disaster; of all of which the little wires alongside of them had been talking back and forth. Watkins had telegraphed that he still saw no reason to doubt the good faith of his warning, and Sinclair had reported his receipt of authority and his ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... would have been a terrible disaster. It would not only have been the loss of a most important strategic position to us, but it would have been attended with the loss of all the artillery still left with the Army of the Cumberland and the annihilation of that army itself, either ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... her rigging's disarray Told of a worse disaster than the last; Like draggled hair dishevelled hung the stay, Drooping and beating on the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... any reasonable creature, would a demon marshal round the angel whose ruin he had vowed all the elements of disaster with more solicitude than that with which good morals conspire against the happiness of a husband? Are you not ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... overwhelming columns of infantry who were hurled by no less a renowned old Russian General than Kuropatkin, and at Malo Bereznik and Bolsheozerki, in particular, to send them reeling back in bloody disaster. They were to fight the Bolshevik to a standstill so that they ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... PILGRIM. When the disaster had happened I felt at once that it was the finger of God, and that I must suffer ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... one of the men best qualified to speak in our Army—"why use the words 'retreat' and 'disaster' at all?" They were indeed commonly used at the time both in England and abroad, and have been often used since about the fighting of the British Army last March and April. Strictly speaking, my interlocutor suggests, neither ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... conviction that we can place no secure reliance upon any apparent progress if it be not sustained by national integrity, resting upon the great truths affirmed and illustrated by divine revelation. In the midst of our sorrow for the afflicted and suffering, it has been consoling to see how promptly disaster made true neighbors of districts and cities separated widely from each other, and cheering to watch the strength of that common bond of brotherhood which unites all hearts, in all parts of this Union, when danger threatens ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... take. Birds, beasts, and especially of the carnivorous species, are most frequently the adopted sentinels; but sticks, trees, stones, &c., have been known to be selected for that responsible office. If they prove treacherous, and permit any disaster to happen to their charge, they are frequently soundly whipped, and sometimes committed ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... with anxiety, the determination to go on to victory was made stronger by the catastrophe. As the chaplain of the hospital was away at the time, I held a memorial service in the large refectory. Following upon the death of Lord Kitchener came another disaster. The Germans in the beginning of June launched a fierce attack upon the 3rd Division, causing many casualties and capturing many prisoners. General Mercer was killed, and a brigadier was wounded and taken prisoner. To make ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... only a document of historic interest, but a thrilling Ocean narrative of the greatest disaster of its kind."—The ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... brothers, the great wolf-gods of his mythology, and told them, to carry it from the shores of the sea to the Kaibab Plateau, and then to open it; but they were by no means to open the package ere their arrival, lest some great disaster should befall. The curiosity of the younger Cin-au-aev overcame him, and he untied the sack, and the people swarmed out; but the elder Cin-au-aev, the wiser god, ran back and closed the sack while ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... his plans his words were tinged with optimism and he allowed no hint of possible disaster to creep into his speech. But the girl was conscious of that hovering uncertainty, the feeling that the months of peace were but to lure her into a false sense of security and that Slade would pounce on the Three Bar from all angles ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... save the barn, so the attention of all was turned to the house and other buildings. As the wind was in their favor, no other building besides the barn was lost, and fortunately the disaster had occurred in the daytime, when the animals and chickens were out in the lot, so that the ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... I lay day-long In dumb despair, until the blessed hope Of mercy dawned again upon my soul, As gradual as the slow gold moon that mounts The airy steps of heaven. My faith arose With sure perception that disaster, wrong, And every shadow of man's destiny Are merely circumstance, and cannot touch The soul's fine essence: they exist or die Only as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... to the mad idea of Solem's being discharged. This would, to be sure, have averted a certain disaster here at the farm: but who would fetch and carry then? Paul? But I've told you he just lounges all day in his room, and has been doing so lately more than ever; the guests never see him except through an unsuccessful maneuver ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... spirit that characterises the British soldier of all ranks; that carries him unafraid and undismayed through heart-breaking campaigns; keeps him cheerful and uncomplaining in the face of flagrant mismanagement, fell-climates, disaster, and defeat. Big nights, sixty years ago, left a goodly number of men, either under the table or in a condition only a few degrees less undignified. But, in spite of the outcry against modern degeneration, these things are not so to-day; and the big nights of the Frontier Force, on the eve of active ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Earl of Tullibardine in 1606. In 1670 the title went to the Earls of Atholl. Fortune was less kind to their descendant, better known as Lord George Murray. He took the Stewart side in 1745, and entertained Prince Charles Edward at Tullibardine Castle. Exile followed the disaster which overtook his cause; the old castle, abandoned as a dwelling-place, fell into decay; and a philistine farmer carted off the last stone of it to ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... to see the children at their feast, where the little English lady Henrietta sat between her two royal cousins, looking like a rosebud, all ignorant, poor child, of the said disaster which was falling on her. Her mother was looking on, smiling in the midst of her cares to see the ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ghosts of the space they occupied, they brought a moment's distraction to a heart not happy. For how could she be happy, her lover away from her now thirty hours, without having overcome with his last kisses the feeling of disaster which had settled on her when he told her of his resolve. Her eyes had seen deeper than his; her instinct had received a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... faith, they would not flinch, They promised him, a single inch. 'We'll choke,' said they, 'the murderous glutton Who robbed of us of our Robin Mutton.' Their lives they pledged against the beast, And Willy gave them all a feast. But evil Fate, than Phoebus faster, Ere night had brought a new disaster: A wolf there came. By nature's law, The total flock were prompt to run; And yet 'twas not the wolf they saw, But shadow of him from ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... 7. Their disaster was, by this time, well known at Rome also. At first, they heard that the troops were shut up; afterwards the news of the ignominious peace caused greater affliction than had been felt for their danger. On the report of their being surrounded, a ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... both simple and complex. The female socket lacked one single turn of thread to make a perfect connection. A few hundredths of an inch separated success from disaster. ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett
... disaster. The text contains a favourite incident in folklore; the first instance, I believe, being that of Polycrates of Samos according to Herodotus (lib. iii. 41-42). The theory is supported after a fashion by experience amongst all versed in that melancholy ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... aggrandizement under successive kings extended the domain of the crown, in spite of disaster and temporary losses, until in the sixteenth century France was second to no other country in Europe for power and material resources. United under a single head, and no longer disturbed by the insubordination of the turbulent nobles, lately humbled by the craft ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the vanishing point; which stresses the control of the forces of inheritance and environment to the edge of fatalistic determinism; which leads man to regard himself as unfortunate rather than reprehensible when moral disaster overtakes him; which induces that condoning of the moral rebel which is born not of love for the sinner but of indifference to his sin; which issues in that last degeneration of self-pity in which individuals and societies alike indulge; and in that repellent sentimentality ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... rising swiftly in spirals. Both kept a keen watch, for it was at this time they stood the greatest chance of taking part in an unfortunate collision that might result in a fatal disaster. ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... returne to the thousands of his people, and comfort us according to the days wee have beene afflicted, and the yeares that wee have seene. You are going, you sat, upon the deuites, for returne of the afflicted land, (you do well to do soe,) and to try the instrumentall causes and occasions of the disaster and surpressal. Looke not too much upon second causes, the pryme and originall, and only cause, is God's just displeasure: for the causes of defeats in armys, they are harder to be found out than in any other of the actions of men, a word, a sound, the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... remembered having once classed certain temperaments as the stuff of tragedy, and others as the stuff of comedy, and of having found a greater cruelty in the sorrows which light natures undergo, as unfit and disproportionate for them. Disaster, I tacitly decided, was the fit lot of serious natures; when it befell the frivolous it was more than they ought to have been made to bear; it was not of their quality. Then by the mental zigzagging which all thinking is I thought ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... expenditures therefor. It is submitted that a corresponding responsibility and obligation rest upon it to make the adequate appropriations to render possible such administration and tolerable such exaction. Anything short of an ample provision for a specified service is necessarily fraught with disaster to the public interests and is a positive injustice to those charged with ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... to hear Coralie rehearse, and he knew more of the stage than most men of his time; several Royalist writers had promised favorable articles; Lucien had not a suspicion of the impending disaster. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... a most lamentable disaster," he said. "My valuable Missing Link is more seriously injured than I imagined, and I may lose him, which would be a heavy blow, indeed, as the College of Naturalists of London, values the beast at four ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... think of following it. Gaspare must have followed the descending road. He must be down there on that beach searching, calling his padrone's name, perhaps. She began to descend slowly, still physically distressed. True to her fixed idea that if there had been a disaster it must be connected with the sea, she walked always close to the wall, and looked always down to the sea. Within a short time, two or three minutes, she came in sight of the lakelike inlet, a miniature fiord which ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... had been attacked by the Austrians under Clairfait, and had been defeated with heavy loss; despatches had been received from their favourite general, in all the rage of failure, declaring that the sole cause of the disaster was information conveyed from the capital to the Austrian headquarters, and demanding a strict enquiry into the intrigues which had thus tarnished the colours of the Republic. No intelligence could have been more formidable to a government, which lived from day to day on the breath of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... Sigsbee, U.S.N. Sigsbee, commissioned captain in 1897, was in command of the battleship Maine when she blew up in Havana harbor in 1898. A naval court of inquiry exonerated Sigsbee, his officers, and crew from all blame for the disaster; and the temperate judicious dispatches from Sigsbee at the time did much to temper the popular demand ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... should escape by reason of superior speed, it would bring joy to the crew, but disaster to Clif, their helpless prisoner. If, on the other hand, a shot from the flagship should sink the Spanish boat, Clif perforce would share death with them. Little wonder that brave as he was, he struggled anxiously to free his arms and legs ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... into his mind as he heard the whistle of the "Lark" flying a mile a minute over the rails to what might be a horrible disaster that here was a real "thriller" exceeding the imagination of any cheap novelist, aspiring playwright or industrious scenario writer. Later when he rehearsed in his mind what happened that night, he realized that in fact truth was often stranger than ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... in the modern disaster largely arose from the facts that she thought England was simple, when England is very subtle. She thought that because our politics have become largely financial that they had become wholly financial; that because our aristocrats had become pretty cynical ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... never be guilty of applying a hard and technical criticism! He is little to be envied who reads Don Quixote's assault upon the windmills as a chapter of mad buffoonery. An ideal knight, without fear or reproach, subject to disaster and ridicule, august from his faith in God and the manly consecration of his life,—is he not rather the type of a Christian sanity? No doubt, such a character seems altogether mad to you, my friend, who pass the window as I write these words. You have huckstered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... great council, and Podesta, a Captain of the People. It seemed as though Pisa herself was about to become Guelph, or at any rate to fling out her nobles. But in many a distant colony the nobles ruled, undisturbed by the disaster at home. And then, almost before she had set her house in order, the splendid victory of Monteaperto threw the Guelphs into confusion, and the banners of Pisa once more flew wide and far. But the fatal cause of the Empire was doomed; Manfred ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... draining off the waters. He ascended the throne in 2205 B.C. His degenerate successors provoked a revolt and the introduction of a new dynasty, called the Shang dynasty, whose first Emperor, Tang (1760 B.C.), had a wise and beneficent reign. Tyranny and disaster followed under the later kings of this house; until finally Woo-Wang, the first sovereign of the Chow dynasty, acceded to the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... as a man of practical power for organising and carrying out successful schemes: such power was not much found at Oxford in those days. But his faith in his cause, as the cause of goodness and truth, was proof against mockery or suspicion or disaster. When ominous signs disturbed other people he saw none. He had an almost perverse subtlety of mind which put a favourable interpretation on what seemed most formidable. As his master drew more and more out of sympathy with the English Church, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... expected such a disaster, and was so frightened that the more he tried to recall the word "Sesame," the more confused his mind became. It was as if he had never heard the word at all. He threw down the bags in his hands, and walked wildly up and down, without a thought of ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... wide-spread nature of the disaster which was inflicted by the wreck of the Company may be formed from a rapid glance at some of the petitions for redress and relief which were presented to the House of Commons. We find among them petitions from the counties of Hertford, Dorset, Essex, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... straight, O worthy Master! Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... organization, impossibles, men uncontrolled and uncontrollable, of every nation and with every dialect of the civilized world—and of uncivilized worlds also;—the most cosmopolitan of all American towns, the one fullest of the joy of living, the one least fearful of future disaster, "serene, indifferent to fate," thus her own poets have styled her, and on no other city since the world began has fate, unmalicious, mechanical and elemental, wrought such a terrible havoc. In a day this city has vanished; the shock of a mighty earthquake ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... which ensued reached the ears of Mr Barlow, and brought him to the door. He could hardly help laughing at the rueful figure of his friend, with the water dropping from every part of his body in copious streams, and at the rage which seemed to animate him in spite of his disaster. It was with some difficulty that Tommy could compose himself enough to give Mr Barlow an account of his misfortunes, which, when he had heard, he immediately led him into the house, and advised him to undress and go to ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... was, on the whole, satisfactory. It had been feared that the force at Vihiers would march north, and join that of Berruyer; and that they would make a joint attack upon the town. The disaster that had befallen them rendered this no longer possible. There was disappointment that Saint Florent had been recaptured, but none that Quetineau had advanced without opposition to Aubiers; for the whole of the peasantry from ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... away in the County Limerick, received the letter with her early cup of tea, and, as she read it, felt her soul disquieted within her. The conjunction of the stars of Love and Politics presaged, she felt, disaster—as if the question of religion had not been complicating enough! Even had her gift of envisaging a situation by the light of reason failed her, that spiritual aneroid, which, sensitive to soul-pressure, warned her intuitively of coming joy or ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... slowness and lack of success, had been sent home in disgrace, was induced to put himself at its head. The army and navy officers of the English disagreed as to how they should meet him. The result was separation and disaster; the fleet sailed back to England and the army withdrew to Walcheren, where it was held in check while the swamp-fever devastated its ranks. About the same time a plague also broke out in the Austrian army, and, as was claimed, destroyed its efficiency. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... 'give away' their best woman friend at the smallest provocation, or without any provocation at all; will inform you, a propos of nothing, that she was jilted years ago, or that her husband married her for her money. The causes of humiliation and disaster in a woman's life seem to have no sacredness for her women friends. Yet if that same friend whom she has run down is ill, the runner down will nurse her day and ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... Louis XIV. that crowning disaster reserved for other times; in spite of all his defaults and the culpable errors of his life and reign, Providence had given this old man, overwhelmed by so many reverses and sorrows, a truly royal soul, and that regard for his own greatness which set him higher as ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... speedily dissipated. The North was indeed alike astonished and disappointed at the defeat of their army by a greatly inferior force, but instead of abandoning the struggle, they set to work to retrieve the disaster, and to place in the field a force which would, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... but the babe of a man, and may easily be husht; as to think upon some disaster, some sad misfortune, as the death of thy Father ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... revenged upon the king. With this view he invited Kaus to be his guest for a while; but Sudaveh cautioned the king not to trust to the treachery which dictated the invitation, as she apprehended from it nothing but mischief and disaster. The warning, however, was of no avail, for Kaus accepted the proffered hospitality of his new father-in-law. He accordingly proceeded with his bride and his most famous warriors to the city, where ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... apparatus for reaching wrecks. Charlie also saw the inside of a kitchen, and Will told him there was a room up stairs for the beds of the men at the station. Charlie and Tony warmed themselves at the brisk fire in the store. The man on duty there did not seem to know any thing about the disaster reported in town, but he talked with Will and Charlie about shipwrecks and storms and efforts at rescuing the wrecked. After a while, Charlie said to Will, "Let's go out and take a run along the beach, and ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... brother and the Norwegian king, both being slain in the battle which was fought at Stamford Bridge on the Derwent. Harold was forced to take his wearied army southwards immediately after the battle to meet the Frenchmen at Hastings, and the great disaster of Senlac Hill occurred on October the 14th. This stone at Kirkdale is thus concerned with momentous events in English history, for the murder of Gamal and the insurrection of Tosti may be considered two of the links in the chain of events ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... following spring at the head of a brigade. He underwent Chancellorsville, and for the Union cause it was a great misfortune that his fine brigade was taken from its place on Hooker's right before Stonewall Jackson made his charge. Had Barlow been there he might have done something to stay the disaster. At Gettysburg, however, he was in the front in command of a division. An old soldier, a lieutenant that day under Barlow, told me that he had charge of the ambulances of the division and on the march near Emmitsburg Barlow put into the ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... "It certainly results in disaster as far as I have ever known," Dr. Whitney answered. "I have never heard of two trains trying to pass each other on a single track without both ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... freak in a regular tempest—a midsummer madness of weather upheaval. It is a thunderbolt of wind, a concentration of gale, a whirling dervish of disaster—wind compactly bunched into one almighty blast—wind enough to last a regular gale for a whole day if ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Suddenly, above the disaster, above the huge pile of dead and dying, above all this unfortunate heroism, appears disgrace. The white ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the difference in social rank was a chasm which could not be bridged by the vows of marriage. It was indeed an ill-assorted and most unlucky alliance; and as might have been foreseen it ended in disaster. One morning after the customary squabbles at breakfast, my father rose from the table, quivering and pale with wrath, and proceeding to the parsonage thrashed the clergyman who had performed the marriage ceremony. The act was generally condemned ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... political history of these four years is ever truthfully written," Mr. Foley continued, "the world will be amazed at the calm indifference of the people threatened day by day with national disaster. We who have been behind the scenes have kept a stiff upper lip before the world, but I tell you frankly, Mr. Maraton, that no Cabinet who ever undertook the government of this country has gone through what we have gone through. Three times ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his way to the third-class compartment to acquaint his fellow-traveller with the extent of the disaster Abbleway hurriedly pondered the question of the woman's nationality. He had acquired a smattering of Slavonic tongues during his residence in Vienna, and felt competent to grapple ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... hold at all nor check the sideways motion under the impulse of the wind. Right across the creek we went, dragging the dogs behind, jerking them hither and thither over the glassy surface. I saw the rocks towards which we were driving, but was powerless to avert the disaster, and hung on in some hope, I suppose, of being able to minimise it, till, with a crash that broke two of the uprights and threw me so hard that I skinned my elbow and hurt my head, we were once more overturned. Never since I reached manhood, I think, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... of Spain is one to make the heart ache. Some evil influence, some malign destiny, seems ever to have brought disaster where her people looked for progress or happiness. Her golden age was just in the short epoch when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon reigned and ruled over the united kingdoms: both were patriotic, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... speak, he resolved to work it out economically, and with that end in view, devoted the first evening to a minute dissection of Crusoe's character as a man and a seaman, to the supposed fitting out and provisioning of his ship, to the imaginary cause of the disaster to the ship, which, (with Bligh, no doubt, in memory), he referred to the incompetence and wickedness of the skipper, and to the terrible incidents of the wreck, winding up with the landing of his hero, half-dead and alone, on the ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Neergard was accomplished without disaster to anybody. On his thin nose the dew glistened, and his thick fat hands were hot; but Rosamund was too bored to be rude to him, and ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... force could it be that sustained him at this moment? If not now, at least shortly, he would give orders which must result in the death of thousands; it was enough to craze a general. How could he, reputed so good, give such orders? Could any success atone for so much disaster? What could be in the mind of General Lee to make him consent to such sacrifice? It must be that he feels forced; he cannot do it willingly. Would it not be preferable to give up the contest—to yield everything, rather than ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... of the city that was. A story of Bohemian life in San Francisco, before the disaster, presented with mirror-like accuracy. Compressed into it are all the sparkle, all the gayety, all the wild, whirling life of the glad, mad, bad, and most delightful city of ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... no time to count the cost, no time to evolve a plan of escape that admitted no form of disaster. Artemisia besought him not to leave her for a moment, and accordingly he remained by her, laughing, poking fun, and making reckless gibes at her fears. Sesostris went about his simple household duties with a long face, and ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... and Queen were in despair, and the courtiers stood aghast at the terrible disaster; while the little Princess began to cry piteously, as if she knew the fate in store for her. Then the twelfth fairy ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... of multitudes of people whom a natural disaster [a short crop of cotton] denies leave to toil—who must work or starve, but who cannot work because the prime material of their work is not to be obtained in the world."—Lawson's Merchants' ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... long! And life is short and fleeting. What headaches have I felt and what heart-beating, When critical desire was strong. How hard it is the ways and means to master By which one gains each fountain head! And ere one yet has half the journey sped The poor fool dies—O sad disaster!" BROOKS' TRANSLATION OF FAUST. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... hurry, which attracted the attention of General Laveaux in his prison, and the French commissary, Polverel, on board the vessel in the roads, in which he had taken refuge from the mulattoes, and where he held himself in readiness to set sail for France, in case of any grave disaster befalling the General or the troops. From his cell, Laveaux heard in the streets the tramp of horses and of human feet; and from the deck of the Orphee, Polverel watched through his glass the bustle on ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... the Mission, he was tenderly cared for, and in a few weeks was enabled to resume those duties from which, as will be seen, not even the machinations of the Evil One could divert him. The news of his physical disaster spread over the country; and a letter to the Bishop of Guadalaxara contained a confidential and detailed account of the good Father's spiritual temptation. But in some way the story leaked out; and long after Jose was gathered to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... were seen with her, then her own disguise would probably be discovered. That above everything, would be disaster. ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... can fearlessly say there never was before. But I stand in no need of medicine. I can find my own consolation, and it consists chiefly in my being free from the mistaken notion which generally causes pain at the departure of friends. To Scipio I am convinced no evil has befallen mine is the disaster, if disaster there be; and to be severely distressed at one's own misfortunes does not show that you love your friend, ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... pacing the room once more. His rugged face, telling its story of disaster and struggle in early life, showed ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... the night, to the express train which left Melbourne at 11:45 in the evening. About a quarter past three in the morning, twenty-five minutes after leaving Castlemaine, it arrived at Camden Bridge, where the terrible disaster befell. The passengers and guards of the last and only remaining carriage at once tried to obtain help. But the telegraph, whose posts were lying on the ground, could not be worked. It was three hours before the authorities from Castlemaine reached the scene of the accident, and it ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... turn from the road so sharply that it had been impossible for his pursuer to turn quickly enough to follow him. Any attempt to do so would have resulted in disaster, and, since this was only a mock war, the driver of the other scout car was not justified in taking the chance of killing himself and his companions in the effort to make the turn. He had gone straight on, therefore, and a few rods had carried ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... the other, which they practise chiefly on swine, speedy death is almost invariably produced, the drug administered being of a highly intoxicating nature, and affecting the brain. They then apply at the house or farm where the disaster has occurred for the carcase of the animal, which is generally given them without suspicion, and then they feast on the flesh, which is not injured by the poison, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... after this disaster she was seen by one vessel, and again, the next day, December 26th, by another; but neither of them could render ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the string and pushed it back until the other end would press against the inside of the twig, and the result would be a taut, new figure in wood and string which would keep its form even when laid upon the ground. Bark made and unmade the thing a time or two, and then came great disaster. He had drawn the little stick, so held in the way we now call arrowwise, back nearly to the point where its head would come inside the bent twig and there fix itself, when the slight thing escaped his hands and ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... of miles through narrow country lanes brought us to a park gate, which was opened for us by an old lodge-keeper, whose haggard face bore the reflection of some great disaster. The avenue ran through a noble park, between lines of ancient elms, and ended in a low, widespread house, pillared in front after the fashion of Palladio. The central part was evidently of a great ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... than that she should mourn at my having returned." An exile, of which every one is more ashamed than the sufferer, is not exile at all. These two persons, who did not wish to be restored to their homes at the cost of a public disaster, but preferred that two should suffer unjustly than that all should suffer alike, are thought to have acted like good citizens; and in like manner it does not accord with the character of a grateful man, to wish that his benefactor ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... uneasiness. The capture of Duke Bernhard, the most brilliant of the German generals on the Protestant side, would be a heavy blow indeed to the cause, and leaving his supper untasted Malcolm walked up and down his cell in a fever of rage at his impotence to prevent so serious a disaster. ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... distresses of the time in the district where they were the most intense were described in a diary of 1840 by a North Carolinian, who had journeyed southwestward in the hope of collecting payment for certain debts, but whose personal chagrin was promptly eclipsed by the spectacle of general disaster. "Speculation," said he, "has been making poor men rich and rich men princes." But now "a revulsion has taken place. Mississippi is ruined. Her rich men are poor, and her poor men beggars.... We have seen hard times in North Carolina, hard times in ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... have reference to this awful experience—an experience from the effects of which his nerves never wholly recovered. His letters to Mr. Thomas Mitton and to Mrs. Hulkes (an esteemed friend and neighbour) are graphic descriptions of this disaster. But they do NOT tell of the wonderful presence of mind and energy shown by Charles Dickens when most of the terrified passengers were incapable of thought or action, or of his gentleness and goodness to the dead and dying. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... finding servants, or to tell how the winter was passed with miserable makeshifts. Alas! is it not the history of a thousand experiences? Any one who looks upon this page could match it with a tale as full of heartbreak and disaster, while I conceive that, in hastening to speak of Mrs. Johnson, I approach a subject of ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Hunter. Our disaster had come upon us so unexpectedly, and the high wind had so hurried on the flaming storm, that there seemed to be no time for a moment's thought. Driven by necessity, we plunged into the thick grass to the south; but our progress ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... for life among his fellow-countrymen, and a barren point of honour. In England, he could comfort himself by the reflection that "he had been taken while loyally doing his devoir," without any misgiving as to his conduct in the previous years, when he had prepared the disaster of Agincourt by wasteful feud. This unconsciousness of the larger interests is perhaps most happily exampled out of his own mouth. When Alencon stood accused of betraying Normandy into the hands of the English, Charles ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Tall Ed, for the first time in his life, was set afoot, and this, you must understand, is a most direful disaster in cowboy life. It means that you must begin again from the ground up, as if you were a perfectly new ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... hindermost boy of the enemy, when, not being acquainted with the miry and difficult paths of the Nor Loch, and in my eagerness taking no heed of my footing, I plunged into a quagmire, into which I sank as far as my shoulders. Our adversaries no sooner perceived this disaster, than, setting up a shout, they wheeled round and attacked us most vehemently. Had my comrades now deserted me, my life had not been worth a straw's purchase, I should either have been smothered in the quag, or, what is ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... in the Valley of the Shadow of Disunion, where abide Disruption, Dishonour, and Disaster, but that, by good hap, keeping a BRIGHT look-out, we looked before us, and saw the danger ere we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... perjurer death is not the end, but the beginning, of evils. Against the man who accepts the life of a woman given to him in trust and love, and then betrays that life to misery, all Nature arrays itself in opposition and disaster. We, as observers of the great Play of human existence, may not at once see, among the numerous shifting scenes, where the evil-doer is punished, or the good man rewarded,—but wait till the end!—till the drop-curtain falls—and ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... to send down some perplexing inquiry, and the girl felt grateful to Henry for replying on her behalf. Henry, it appeared, was to contribute to the programme at the hall, but he declined to give particulars; the disaster would, he said, be serious enough when it came. Jim Langham excused himself after dinner from joining the party on the grounds that he had to play billiards with the groom; and this reminded him of one of the groom's ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... hardships of the American army were in those dark days of the Revolution, the winter of 1777-78. Washington had suffered defeat and disaster; but he, like his faithful followers, was of the temper that could not be depressed. At Valley Forge the men built a city of wooden huts, and these afforded at least a shelter from the storms, though they were scarcely better than dungeons. Their sufferings were terrible. They ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... most marked emotional quality of this type. Nothing can be so dark that the fat person doesn't find a silver edge somewhere. So in disaster we always send for our fat friends. In the presence of an amply-proportioned individual everything looks brighter. Hope springs eternal in human breasts but the springs are stronger in the plump folks than in the ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... hold a vast territory which is absolutely closed to the Chinese on pain of death and over which they exercise no control. Several expeditions have been launched against the Lolos but all have ended in disaster. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... man turned back, without another word, springing away, over the graveled walks. Nadine's face grew ashen white, as the presage of coming disaster chilled her heart. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... may be good or ill, as chance and time may dictate, but the impelling excitement forces a choice. What if it be ill? What if to-morrow a male who is a far better complement should appear? The time is now. Nature is not neglectful, and well she knows the disaster of delay. She is prodigal of the individual and is satisfied with one match out of many mismatches, just as she is satisfied that of a million cod eggs one only should develop into a full-grown cod. And so this love of the ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... good lords; I have dreamed too much to have so little. Let us go. Panurge had no sooner done speaking than Epistemon with a loud voice said these words: It is a very ordinary and common thing amongst men to conceive, foresee, know, and presage the misfortune, bad luck, or disaster of another; but to have the understanding, providence, knowledge, and prediction of a man's own mishap is very scarce and rare to be found anywhere. This is exceeding judiciously and prudently deciphered by Aesop in his Apologues, who there affirmeth ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais |
