"Disastrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... master? And, besides, in what situation were the inhabitants of the corral themselves? Cyrus Harding and his companions had left on the 11th of November, and it was now the 29th. It was, therefore, nineteen days since Neb had had other news than that brought by Top—disastrous news: Ayrton disappeared, Herbert severely wounded, the engineer, reporter, and sailor, as it were, imprisoned ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... from your carriage, and wheel you in glory through the streets as they used to do in olden times as tribute to their great favorites. I haven't seen a New York paper since I came West. I hope you have put Enid away. What is the use wearing yourself out playing a disastrous role while forced to rehearse a new one? My longing to see you is so great that the sight of your picture on my desk is a sweet torture. Write me ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... ignorantly gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the individual cause. In that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter between Ahab and the whale had hitherto been popularly regarded. And as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale, by chance caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing they had every one ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... there should exist so general a confusion of thought upon this subject, for it may be asserted without fear of contradiction that there is hardly any form of immorality now rife which produces more disastrous effects upon those who give themselves up to it, and upon society in general, than the so-called science of those who know that they know too well to be able to know truly. With very clever people—the people who know that they know—it is much as with the ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... had it not been for two disasters which overtook the Liberals: The publication of Blake's letter and the revelation of the rascalities of the Mercier regime. Perhaps of the two blows, that delivered by Blake was the more disastrous. The letter was the message of an oracle. It required an interpretation which the oracle refused to supply; and in its absence the people regarded it as implying a belief by Blake that annexation was the logical sequel to the Liberal policy of unrestricted reciprocity. The result was seen ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... charger, riding solemnly towards the troop, dressed in full uniform, the same which he had worn down from town, with the exception, perhaps, of some trifling change, which might have been rendered necessary by the disastrous fright he had received upon the road. Some admired the dress, some pitied the loss sustained by the poor captain, but myself, and many of those who surrounded me, though we felt the deep disgrace which had befallen our commander, could ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... garments of the exiles, shone the jewels and cloth-of-gold that decked the persons of the more prosperous foreigners, Ferri, Count of Vaudemonte, Margaret's brother, the Duke of Calabria, and the powerful form of Sir Pierre de Breze, who had accompanied Margaret in her last disastrous campaigns, with all the devotion of a chevalier for the lofty lady adored in secret. [See, for the chivalrous devotion of this knight (Seneschal of Normandy) to Margaret, Miss ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... weathers this reef-strewn passage is full of peril, and a dense fog enveloped the fleet on that disastrous August evening. Although advised to anchor until the fog should lift, the Admiral scoffed at fear. Driven by a whistling wind, the ships of the line leaped forward, shaping a course north-north-west, until suddenly the sound of breakers burst ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... bull, a successful and experienced captain, yet a complete failure as a King. A mere child in mundane matters, he ever acted in a worldly sense as he should have avoided acting, and hence, after a short and disastrous reign, he also was killed. His two sons, Hasan and Husayn, inherited all the defects and few of the merits of their sire: Hasan was a pauvre diable, whose chief characteristic was addiction to marriage, and by poetical justice one ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... "God, what I've been through! It came near preventing us from discovering that you're not a grand lady but a human being." His mood veered, and it was he that was gay and she glum; for he suddenly seized her and subjected her to one of those tumultuous ordeals so disastrous to toilette and to dignity and to her sense of personal rights. Not that she altogether disliked; she never had altogether disliked, had found a certain thrill in his rude riotousness. Still, she preferred the other Joshua Craig, HER Joshua, who wished to receive as well as to give. And ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... of the "fun" they had under Miss Seabury's easy-going rule, attempted to repeat their performances of the previous term. But the very first "spitball" which spattered upon the blackboard proved a disastrous ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a fearful mystery; but understood, she is a simple and beautiful piece of mechanism; and the earthquake may not be more disastrous than the flood or the avalanche when science and experience have taught men to avoid the localities of danger, and to watch the hour of its approach, that ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... Apollo at Tolosa (Toulouse), which had joined the Cimbri. In 105, Caepio suffered a crushing defeat from the Cimbri at Arausio (Orange) on the Rhone, which was looked upon as a punishment for his sacrilege; hence the proverb Aurum Tolosanum habet, of an act involving disastrous consequences. In the same year he was deprived of his proconsulship and his property confiscated; subsequently (the chronology is obscure, see Mommsen, History of Rome, bk. iv. ch. 5) he was expelled from the senate, accused ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the expenditure of the large sums entrusted to a public body. Sometimes there are even, one learns, indications of that good-humoured and not ill-meant laxity in expending public money which has had such disastrous results in America, and which lends itself so easily to exploitation by those in whom the habit of giving and taking personal favours has hardened into systematic fraud. When one of the West Ham Guardians, two years ago, committed suicide on being charged ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... all mean that we are never to have innocent indulgences: I do mean that the declining of them occasionally for the purpose of self-discipline is a most wholesome practice. How frequently it is desirable must be determined by the individual circumstances. It is utterly disastrous to permit a child to have everything it wants because there is sufficient money to spend, to permit it to run to soda fountains or go to the picture houses as it desires. Any sane person recognises that; but does the same person recognise ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... is the anguish and remorse I feel at the abominable falsehood by which I escaped these easily deluded pirates, that I would go to their simple-minded chief this very night and confess all, did I not fear that the consequences would be most disastrous to myself. At what time does your expedition march against these scoundrels? FREDERIC: At eleven, and before midnight I hope to have atoned for my involuntary association with the pestilent scourges by sweeping them from the face ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... turn from the naval progress of France to her recent colonial enterprises, we shall find fresh evidence that she has resumed that contest which came to so disastrous a close fifty years ago. The old dream of colonial empire has come back again. This was inevitable. A great nation like France cannot always drink the cup of humiliation. With an ambition no less high and arrogant than that which pervades the British mind, she would plant far and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... professional duties, he became ardently devoted to literary pursuits. Besides conducting several local periodicals, he contributed to some of the more important serials. During the year 1826, which proved so disastrous to the manufacturing interests in Paisley, he devised a scheme for the relief of the unemployed, and his services were appropriately acknowledged by the magistrates. He afterwards sought the general ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... quarters, after the festivity, with this officer, and his telling me, in strict confidence, with eager anticipation, of a sortie that was to be made on the morrow, with the object of obtaining possession of the Boer gun at Game Tree Fort, the fire from which had lately been very disastrous to life and property in the town. He was fated in this very action to meet his death, and afterwards I vividly recalled our conversation, and reflected how bitterly disappointed he would have been had anything occurred ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... made up her mind and father has given her leave to speak," said Annie with determination, "because you must hear soon anyhow. There is something wrong with the bank, Mr. Carey's bank. We have all, even May, read and heard of bank failures, and have some idea how disastrous ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... as it were, in sight of the present time. The year 1873, though it was a disastrous one to art interests generally, by reason of the panic, was one of uninterrupted success for Madam Urso. She took a brief rest during the summer near New York, but during the remainder of the time gave an uninterrupted succession of concerts ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... previously exacted, peace was secured. The government really acted with faultless wisdom. At this period of Japanese development a costly war with Russia could not fail to have consequences the most disastrous to industry, commerce, and finance. But the national pride has been deeply wounded, and the country can still scarcely ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... resist the call for men in the army. Learning that the Second New York (Harris's Light) Cavalry was without a chaplain, I obtained the appointment to that position. General Kilpatrick was then lieutenant-colonel, and in command of the regiment. In December, 1862, I witnessed the bloody and disastrous battle of Fredericksburg, and can never forget the experiences of that useless tragedy. I was conscious of a sensation which struck me as too profound to be merely awe. Early in the morning we crossed the Rappahannock on a pontoon bridge and marched up the hill to an open ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... to settle first, my lord," says Lord Mohun. Whereupon Harry Esmond, filled with alarm for the consequences to which this disastrous dispute might lead, broke out into the most vehement expostulations with his patron and his adversary. "Gracious Heavens!" he said, "my lord, are you going to draw a sword upon your friend in your own house? Can you doubt the honour of a lady who is as pure as Heaven, and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the principal agricultural settlements were on the banks of the rivers Hawkesbury and Nepean, and the settlers were just suffering from one of the most disastrous floods that have occurred in a country where floods are more severe than in most others. There was very little money in the colony, and the settlers carried on a legitimate system of barter by which they exchanged with each other their grain and herds. But the floods, of course, threw this system ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... itself seems never to die but annually to renew its youth, the Algonkins called it "grandfather" and "king of snakes;" they feared to injure it; they believed it could grant prosperous breezes, or raise disastrous tempests; crowned with the lunar crescent it was the constant symbol of life in their picture writing; and in the meda signs the mythical grandmother of mankind me suk kum me go kwa was indifferently represented by an old woman or a serpent.[120-1] ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... road to Mayo, we were often upon ground rendered memorable, not only by historical events, but more recently by the disastrous scenes of the rebellion, by its horrors or its calamities. On reaching Westport House, we found ourselves in situations and a neighborhood which had become the very centre of the final military operations, those which succeeded to the main rebellion; and which, to the people of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the explosion was seen, and the blazing fragments of the once magnificent Kent were instantly hurried, like so many rockets, high into the air;[11] leaving, in the comparative darkness that succeeded, the deathful scene of that disastrous day floating before the ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... his legs bend with their load, Though his feet they seem so small That you cannot help forebode Some disastrous episode In that noisy hall, Neither threatening bump nor fall Little All-Aloney fears, But with sweet bravado steers Whither ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... by the lightning striking an oil-tank, have been known since the discovery of petroleum; but none had ever been so disastrous as the one of which the reader has had but an ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... Riczi; and since a chronicler that would tempt fortune should never stretch the fabric of his wares too thin (unlike Sir Hengist), I merely tell you these two dwelt together at Montbrison for a decade: and the Vicomte swore at his nephew and predicted this or that disastrous destination as often as Antoine declined to marry the latest of his uncle's candidates,—in whom the Vicomte was of ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... that led out of the salt sea, were taboo. "Taboo," as word or sound, had no place in Jerry's vocabulary. But its definition, or significance, was there in the quickest part of his consciousness. He possessed a dim, vague, imperative knowingness that it was not merely not good, but supremely disastrous, leading to the mistily glimpsed sense of utter endingness for a dog, for any dog, to go into the water where slipped and slid and noiselessly paddled, sometimes on top, sometimes emerging from the depths, great scaly monsters, ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... I would rather not have even Julius; for I could not trust him. He is not amenable to discipline, and it is quite on the cards that at a critical moment he might take it into his head to do the wrong thing, with disastrous consequences ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... was not less disastrous. Rody Duncan's sudden withdrawal from the robbery surprised him very much. On seriously and closely reconsidering the circumstances, it looked suspicious, and ere a single hour had passed, Donnel felt and impression that, on that business at least, Rody had betrayed him. Acting upon this conviction.—for ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... fire, as it was supposed by some boys playing with matches at the back side of the building, which set fire to some shavings under the floor. It seemed impossible to put it out and it proved to be the most disastrous fire that ever occurred in a country town. There were seven or eight buildings destroyed, together with all the machinery for making clocks, which was very costly and extensive. There were somewhere between fifty and seventy-five thousand ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... Teetum contingent by the appearance and manners of the several members —even Oliver's reputation was ruined—was equally disastrous. It was, perhaps, best voiced by the druggist groom, when he informed Mrs. Van T. from behind his lemon-colored glove—that "if that was the gang he had heard so much of, he didn't want no more ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... without the experience of several shocks in different parts of the island. The northern part is exempt from them.[D] Those which take place in the west, around the shores of the great bay upon which Port-au-Prince is situated, are severe, and sometimes very disastrous. At mid-day the wind falls instantly, there is a dead calm on land and sea, the heat is consequently more intense, and the atmosphere suffocating; then the vibrations occur, after which the wind begins to blow again. Sometimes, at an interval of ten or twelve hours, there is a supplementary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... civilized man the Bill was bound to be a failure. It was necessary not only to have legislation theoretically just, but also practically right and good. But there were many who felt that so far from the effect of that Bill being good it would be disastrous to a very large extent. The great sin which they had been committing was that they had always been legislating ahead of the people, and there had not been sufficient preparation for the changes which were ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... proposition means, the arguer must weigh each word, carefully noting its meaning and its significance in the proposition. To neglect a single word is disastrous. An intercollegiate debate was once lost because the affirmative side did not take into consideration the words "present tendency" in the proposition, "Resolved, That the present tendency of labor unions is detrimental to the prosperity of the United States." The negative ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... was somewhere made in dating the arrival of the March King and his splendid instrumentalists, who came while yet the Boston Symphonists were playing in Festival Hall. As a result the finest of bands was placed in competition with the finest of orchestras. But nothing disastrous happened. Those who desired, to the number of fifteen thousand, heard Sousa at his opening concert in the Court of the Universe; those who desired heard Dr. Muck's instrumentalists, to the seating capacity ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... the asset of self-respect, there was too much money invested in the lands, plant, and buildings, in the streams, lakes, hatcheries, and forests of the Siowitha. The enormously wealthy seldom stand long upon dignity if that dignity is going to be very expensive. Only the poor can afford disastrous self-respect. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... to recognize in any way his employer's secret intentions. But fortunately for us, this man Holmes is just one of those singularly meddlesome people whose curiosity grows with every attempt at repression; and when, coincident with that disastrous happening at the museum, all these loverlike attentions ceased and no calls were made and no presents sent, and gloom instead of cheer marked his employer's manner, he made up his mind to sacrifice ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... industrial society such as ours the strike, the lockout, and the boycott are as much out of place and as disastrous in their results as is war or armed revolution in the domain of politics. The same disposition to reasonableness, to conciliation, to recognition of the other side's point of view, the same provision of fair and recognized tribunals and processes, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... in kindling fires at their camp, to ignite the grass around them. Great caution should be taken to guard against the occurrence of such accidents, as they might prove exceedingly disastrous. We were very near having our entire train of wagons and supplies destroyed, upon one occasion, by the carelessness of one of our party in setting fire to the grass, and it was only by the most strenuous and ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... Lopez, and the effects of the disastrous war with Brazil and the Argentine Republic, have almost extirpated every Paraguayan (of the old stock) with the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... refined wit which since hath acted a disastrous part on the public stage, and of late sat in his father's room as Lord Chancellor; those that lived in his age, and from whence I have taken this little model of him, give him a lively character, and they decipher him to be another Solon, and the Simon of those times, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... their task. With a firm reliance upon the efficacy of the steel-spring armour, the Director-in-chief felt no fear of the enemy's shot and shell; but he was not at all willing that his vessel should be rammed, for the consequences would probably be disastrous. Accordingly he did not wait for the approach of the two vessels, but steering seaward, he signalled for the ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... than to show marked favour to practical engineers and mechanicians. Moreover he started an aeronautical society, which made Bridgeford furious; but so far, I am afraid it has done us no good, for the first ascent was disastrous, involving the death of the poor fellow who made it, and since then no one has ventured to ascend. I am afraid we do ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... of Fairfax, and seeing the number and resolution of the troops, he hoped that a victory might be gained which would terminate for good and all this disastrous conflict. The ground round Naseby is chiefly moorland. The king's army was drawn up a mile from Market Harborough. Prince Rupert commanded the left wing, Sir Marmaduke Langdale the right, Lord Ashley the main body. Fairfax commanded the center of the Roundheads, with General ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the spot which the troops in general would have approved of as the scene of operations, for the disastrous expedition to Walcheren was still fresh in mens' minds. They would, moreover, have preferred a campaign in which they would have fought without being compelled to act with a foreign army, and would have had all the honor and glory to themselves. Still ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... little and heard him talking at large thought him something of a crack-brain. The odd thing was that, with all his peculiarities, he had many of the characteristics of a sound man of business; indeed, had it been otherwise, the balance-sheets of the refinery must long ago have shown a disastrous deficit. As Warburton knew, things had been managed with no little prudence and sagacity; what he did not so clearly understand was that Sherwood had simply adhered to the traditions of the firm, following very exactly the path marked out for him by his father and his uncle, both ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... directed. But the unit of society in a republic is the individual, and not the race, the failure to recognize this fact being the fundamental error which has beclouded the whole discussion. The effect of disfranchisement upon the individual is scarcely less disastrous. I do not speak of the moral effect of injustice upon those who suffer from it; I refer rather to the practical consequences which may be appreciated by any mind. No country is free in which the way upward is not open for every man to try, and for every properly ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... revolutionists were not proof against all caution, I should recommend it to their consideration, that no persons were ever known in history, either sacred or profane, to vex the sepulchre, and by their sorceries to call up the prophetic dead, with any other event than the prediction of their own disastrous fate.—"Leave me, oh, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... brought upon Prussia the defeats of Jena and Auerstadt, is abolished; the great simplicity of the scheme, and its practical spirit, are the best antidotes against the prevalence of the old-fashioned notions which have proved so disastrous. You have performed a great work, Scharnhorst, and Prussia must thank you for it as long ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... distant. After a period of great and disastrous activity, the sleepy indifference of 1830 is again settling upon Rome, the race for imaginary wealth is over, time is a drug in the market, money is scarce, dwellings are plentiful, the streets are quiet by day and night, and only those who still have something to lose or ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... And that an Austral Pindar daring soar, Where not the Theban eagle reach'd before. And, O Britannia! shouldst thou cease to ride Despotic Empress of old Ocean's tide; — Should thy tamed Lion — spent his former might, — No longer roar the terror of the fight; — Should e'er arrive that dark disastrous hour, When bow'd by luxury, thou yield'st to pow'r; — When thou, no longer freest of the free, To some proud victor bend'st the vanquish'd knee; — May all thy glories in another sphere Relume, and shine more brightly still than here; May this, thy last-born infant, then arise, To glad ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... curse and cure of drunkenness. How much better not to come under the terrible curse! How much better to run no risks where the malady is so disastrous, and ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... superiority then let us salute Mr Jack Johnson as Zarathustra, the superman. But in their one special and characteristic task they failed lamentably. Instead of conquest and consolidation they gave us mere invasion and disturbance. The disastrous role played by them has been unfolded by many interpreters of history, by none with a more vivid accuracy than we find in ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... arresting them with the utmost energy and decision. It was bitter to quit Armine and all his joys, but in truth the arrival of his family was very doubtful: and, until the confession of his real situation was made, every day might bring some disastrous discovery. Some ominous clouds in the horizon formed a capital excuse for hurrying Henrietta off to Ducie. They quitted Armine at an unusually early hour. As they drove along, Ferdinand revolved in his mind the adventure of the ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... will of God and that he was chosen to execute it. In this stage a man becomes capable of great things in a poor cause. The world is always impressed by the confident and the courageous. No great movement, however wrong in doctrine, defective in morals, or disastrous in results, has ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... both of them into his tales alive. But when he came from the Pacific to the Atlantic and tried to do Newport life from study- conscious observation—his failure was absolutely monumental. Newport is a disastrous place for the ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... after the disastrous building incident Sir Walter appeared one day with surprising news indeed. Sir Stephen Giffard, the elder brother, was about to marry and come to live in the old Norman chateau. The new chatelaine was a rich widow of Louvain. Sir Stephen ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Pilgrim, and had laid up no mean sum of money. True to his resolution, he was going to England to find his mother, and he entered into the comparative advantages of taking his money home in gold or in bills,—a matter of some moment, as this was in the disastrous financial year of 1837. He seemed to have his ideas well arranged, but I took him to a leading banker, whose advice he followed; and, declining my invitation to go up and show himself to my friends, he was off for New York that afternoon, to sail the next day for Liverpool. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... came up the cement path to the house, was a figure of the new era which was in time to be so disastrous to stiff hats and skirted coats; and his appearance afforded a debonair contrast to that of the queer-looking duck capering: at the Amberson Ball in an old dress coat, and chugging up National Avenue through the snow in his nightmare of a sewing-machine. Eugene, this afternoon, was ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... ought without hesitation to be made the common property of all men, no matter in what direction the results of its promulgation may appear to tend. And so far as the ruination of individual happiness is concerned, no one can have a more lively perception than myself of the possibly disastrous tendency of my work. So far as I am individually concerned, the result of this analysis has been to show that, whether I regard the problem of Theism on the lower plane of strictly relative probability, or on the higher plane of purely formal considerations, ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... is selected and the process repeats; this practice is sustainable while population levels are low and time is permitted for regrowth of natural vegetation; conversely, where these conditions do not exist, the practice can have disastrous consequences for the environment . soil degradation - damage to the land's productive capacity because of poor agricultural practices such as the excessive use of pesticides or fertilizers, soil compaction from heavy equipment, or erosion of ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... experience of his host. He was afraid, as most Englishmen are, of arguing that the British determination to ignore vice, however disastrous in practice, is a system infinitely nobler in conception than the acquiescence which admits for the evil its right to exist, and places it among ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Exploit—suggested or not by that prior one of Karl Gustav on the ice—is still a thing to be remembered by Hohenzollerns and Prussians. The Swedes were beaten here, on Friedrich Wilhelm's rapid arrival; were driven into disastrous rapid retreat Northward; which they executed, in hunger and cold; fighting continually, like Northern bears, under the grim sky; Friedrich Wilhelm sticking to their skirts,—holding by their tail, like an angry ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... which was apparently a very urgent one, for, without another word to Everard and Lilias, he took hat and coat, hurried from the house, mounted his motor-cycle, and was gone. He left utter consternation behind him. The two young people, returning to the study, tried to face the disastrous news. He had indeed told them no details, but the main outline was quite sufficient. They could scarcely accustom themselves to believe it for ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... of the Old School in the imputation of Adam's sin thus: It was not the personal guilt of Adam which was imputed to his descendants, but "certain disastrous consequences." They, as well as he, became "subject to temporal and eternal death." The next consequence of Adam's sin we must give in Professor Lawrence's own language, in order not to misrepresent him. "The first evil disposition which ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... renewal of the Commercial Treaty. The knowledge that Russia would refuse either to prolong that one-sided arrangement or to make another like it, and that the consequences of this refusal would be disastrous to Germany's economic and financial position, stimulated German statesmen to bring matters to a head before Russia could back her recalcitrance with a reorganized army, and was one of the contributory ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269, passim.—Minutes of the meeting of the Municipality of Montlhery, February 28, 1792: "We cannot enter into fuller details without exposing ourselves to extremities which would be only disastrous to us."—Letter of the justice of the peace of the canton, February 25: "Public outcry teaches me that if I issue writs of arrest against those who massacred ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... principles, we poured the same sort of ferocious contempt that we are apt now spasmodically to pour upon those who, sixty years later, would prevent our drifting in the same blind fashion into a war just as futile and bound to be infinitely more disastrous—a war embodying the same "principles" supported by just the same theories and just the same arguments which led us into ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... One hundred thousand crowns had been promised the imperial troops, but the money was not paid; and secret negotiations had been going on with France. In spite of all, Charles had won, and he was naturally not disposed to divide the spoils. England's policy since 1521 had been disastrous to herself, to Wolsey, to the Papacy, and even to Christendom. For the falling out of Christian princes seemed to the Turk to afford an excellent opportunity for the faithful to come by his own. After an heroic defence by ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... factors in the main issue; unimportant genii that, let out of their bottle, swell immeasurably. The consequences of the fire, small as it was, seemed never-ending. The defective bars had proved a disastrous supply for the machine, in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... political unification until the 1860s, thus lacking the military and imperial power of Spain, Britain, and France. The fascist dictatorship of MUSSOLINI after World War I, led to the disastrous alliance with HITLER's Germany and defeat in World War II. Italy was a founding member of the European Economic Community (EEC) and joined in the growing political and economic unification of Western Europe, including the introduction ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of whom that nice Madame Wachner had spoken with such scorn as a confirmed gambler, was "making up" to Sylvia? It was a monstrous idea—but Chester, being a solicitor, knew only too well that in the matter of marriage the most monstrous and disastrous things are not only always possible but sometimes probable. Chester believed that all Frenchmen regard marriage as a matter of business. To such a man as this Count, Mrs. Bailey's fortune would ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Kieft and the disastrous results of the Indian war he had aroused led at last to his removal, and in May, 1647, a new director-general arrived, Petrus Stuyvesant, who had made a good record as governor of Curacao in the West Indies. ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... infidelity, has subsequently been pardoned to my husband. His sufferings during the Hundred Days made to pardon his adhesion to him who was Emperor. My husband is now an old man. He was of the disastrous campaign of Moscow, as one of the chamberlains of Napoleon. Withdrawn from the world, he gives his time to his feeble health—to his ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... also have been made to explore the Niger, and open up commerce with the teeming population on its banks. One of the first, sent out a few years after the return of the Landers, proved most disastrous, the greater number of officers and men having ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... officers composed largely of temporarily promoted noncoms. If this was typical of Baron Haer's total force, then Balt Haer had been correct; unconditional surrender was to be considered, no matter how disastrous to ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Commission. As we have seen, it means that sex must be confined to procreation by a healthy, intelligent and strictly monogamous couple. All other sexual expression would come under the ban of disapproval. I am sure I do the Commission no injustice. Now this limited conception of sex has had a disastrous effect: it has forced the Commission to ignore the sexual impulse in discussing a sexual problem. Any modification of the relationship of men and women was immediately put out of consideration. Such suggestions ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... mentioned them. He forgot nothing. He had drawn on the flagstones a map of Samavia which Marco saw was actually correct, and he had made a rough sketch of Melzarr and the battle which had had such disastrous results. ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a suitable noun to each of the following adjectives, without repeating any word: good, great, tall, wise, strong, dark, dangerous, dismal, drowsy, twenty, true, difficult, pale, livid, ripe, delicious, stormy, rainy, convenient, heavy, disastrous, terrible, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... We shall leave out of the question what he did to get to Moscow, and whether in his advance he did not miss many opportunities of bringing the Emperor Alexander to peace; we shall also exclude all consideration of the disastrous circumstances which attended his retreat, and which perhaps had their origin in the general conduct of the campaign. Still the question remains the same, for however much more brilliant the course of the campaign up to Moscow might have been, still there was always an uncertainty ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... about? If Mary had been taught the laws of health, and obeyed them, it would have been worth infinitely more to her than all she has got at your famous boarding-school, Ignorance of these laws is culpable in the mothers—disastrous, fatal to the daughters. It is a disgrace to our people. The young women now coming on, will be as nervous, as weak, as wretched, as their unhappy mothers—languishing embodiments of diseases—mementos of doctors and pill-boxes, dragging out life in air-tight rooms, religiously struggling ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... Was launched into eternity Was hanged Disastrous conflagration Great fire Called into requisition the services Sent for the doctor of the family physician Was accorded an ovation Was applauded Palatial mansion Comfortable house Acute auricular perceptions Sharp ears A disciple ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... ridiculous way as though he were almost responsible for her plight himself. Perhaps he had done wrong to wait so long. Yet, even his quick eyesight had failed to discover the knockout drops or powder which the wily Shepard had slipped into that disastrous glass of beer. Maybe his interference would have saved her from this unconscious stupor, indeed, he felt morally certain that it would; but Bob knew in his heart that the clever tricksters would have turned the tables on him effectively, and undoubtedly in the end would have won their point ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... them has been so disastrous. They were women of intelligence previous to this, one of them quite markedly so, but from that day they have given evidence of mental weakness which can only be attributed to their continual brooding over this mysterious ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... pioneer Abraham Lincoln soon came to a disastrous close. He had settled in Jefferson County, on the land he had bought from the Government, and cleared a small farm in the forest. [Footnote: Lyman C. Draper, of the Wisconsin Historical Society, has kindly furnished us with a MS account of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... England colleges; manufacturing interests were in their infancy, and had not, as yet, excited Southern jealousy. Commercial prosperity in New England was the main object desired, although the war with Great Britain had proved disastrous to it. Political influence seemed to centre in the Southern States. These States had furnished four presidents out of five. The great West had not arisen in its might; it had no great cities: but Charleston and Boston were centres of culture and wealth, and on good terms with each ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... Bay. To the north of this arm rises a hilly district, in the centre of which stands Nanking. The greater part of this vast plain descends very gently towards the sea, and is generally below the level of the Yellow river, hence the disastrous inundations which so often accompany the rise of that river. Owing to the great quantity of soil which is brought down by the waters of the Yellow river, and to the absence of oceanic currents, this delta is rapidly increasing and the adjoining seas are as rapidly becoming ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... forest, chanced to come upon a cave where dwelt some maidens whom he knew not; but they proved to be the same who had once given him the invulnerable coat. Asked by them wherefore he had come thither, he related the disastrous issue of the war. So he began to bewail the ill luck of his failures and his dismal misfortunes, condemning their breach of faith, and lamenting that it had not turned out for him as they had promised him. But the maidens said that though ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... a joke, and they laughed aloud. At this point Flossy caught Dr. Dennis' distressed face turned that way. It was not reassuring; he evidently expected disastrous times in that corner. Flossy ignored the discourteous treatment of her "good-morning," ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... the keeper that it was; and the young man then determined upon a bold stroke for the attainment of his end, forgetting that the worst of bold strokes is the disastrous consequences ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... newspapers had made a certain amount of talk about the forthcoming piece, and the story of the quarrel between the composer and the singer appeared in due course. A certain conductor was adventurous enough to play the piece at a Sunday afternoon concert. His good fortune was disastrous for Christophe. The David was played—and hissed. All the singer's friends had passed the word to teach the insolent musician a lesson: and the outside public, who had been bored by the symphonic poem, added their voices to the verdict of the critics. To crown his misfortunes, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... in Germany Imperia Impotency in popular estimation Impurity, disastrous results of teaching feminine early Christian views of India, story of The Betrothed of sacred prostitution in Individualism and Socialism Infantile mortality in relation to suckling by mother in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that disembogue into the Polar Sea: the Mackenzie, Coppermine, Back or Great Fish. The first of these explorers was Samuel Hearne who, in 1771, followed the Coppermine to the Frozen Ocean. For the northern natives their first contact with white explorers was a disastrous one, for at Bloody Falls on the Coppermine Hearne's Indians set upon the only band of Eskimo they saw and almost exterminated them. Sir John Franklin in 1820 was more happy. He says, "The Eskimo danced and tossed their hands in the air to signify their desire for peace; they exhibited no hostile ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... catch at some previous event, from which I might trace up the thread of existence to the present moment. By degrees I called to mind the fairy pinnace, my daring embarkation, my adventurous voyage, and my disastrous shipwreck. Beyond that, all was chaos. How came I here? What unknown region had I landed upon? The people that inhabited it must be gentle and amiable, and of elegant tastes, for they loved downy beds, fragrant flowers, and ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... my class, so I did not allow my Elsie, my darling, my pet, to associate with them more than could be helped, save with Madame Boisson, who was a kind, good-natured sort of woman, though decidedly vulgar. Oh dear me! It was a thousand pities we ever started on that disastrous voyage. It was unlucky from ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... proven that furnishings and color produce either desirable or disastrous effects upon the sensitive minds of children. As all children's rooms are usually a combination of bedroom, play room, and study, it is well to keep in mind colors, design, arrangement, and practicality for ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... superintending the securing of the guns—a task which needed to be done very carefully and thoroughly; for now that the ship had been brought to the wind she was rolling and pitching most furiously, and if one of our long 24-pounders should chance to strike adrift, the consequences might very easily be disastrous. I delivered the Captain's message, and then followed the first lieutenant on deck, where he joined the skipper and the master, who were already standing at the capstan, with the chart spread open before them on ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... marriage high as the firmament over common occurrences, black as Erebus to confound; it involved the wreck of expectations, disastrous eclipse of a sovereign luminary in the splendour of his rise, Phaethon's descent to the Shades through a smoking and a crackling world. Asserted here, verified there, the rumour gathered volume, and from a serpent of vapour resolved to sturdy concrete before it was tangible. Contradiction ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was not ordered to Africa until after the first disastrous attempt upon Constantine. It fell to our lot to assist in retrieving the honour of our army in the more successful expedition which took place, as you of course are aware, about three months ago. I will not detain you with our embarkation or ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... I answered. "That is a highly important letter. If it isn't found the consequences may be disastrous." ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... In such disastrous circumstances as I have been attempting to describe, it was beautiful to observe what a mysterious efficacy still asserted itself in character. A woman, evidently poor as the poorest of her neighbors, would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... would be seen burning brightly, and raging furiously across the wide Atlantic. The proceedings in America were but as yet, in truth, the warnings of a terrible commotion—the first intimations of an irruption, more frightful in its nature, and more disastrous in its consequences, than the bursting forth of the fire-streaming bowels of Mounts AEtna and Vesuvius, or the devastations of an earthquake. For the storms of human passion, when they burst forth in war and bloodshed, are more desolating ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Germany are simply distracting. There are shops in Dresden where no woman who appreciates bags, satchels, card-cases, photograph-frames, book-covers, and purses could refrain from buying without disastrous results. I remember my first pilgrimage through the streets of Dresden. Between the porcelains and toilet sets, the Madonnas, the belts, and card-cases, I nearly lost my mind. The modest prices of the coveted articles were each time a separate shock of joy. If these sturdy Germans had wished ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... Renaissance. When he was dying, Julius said that the masses are impressed not by what they know, but by what they see. He transmitted to his successors the conception of a Church to be the radiant centre of religion and of art for mankind; and we shall see that this was, after all, a disastrous legacy. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... troubles. Still, he thought it better to vary the theme, and related how they engaged themselves as salesmen at a department store, where Lawrence rashly undertook to serve the drugs and prescribed for confiding customers until a mistake that might have had disastrous consequences led to his being fired. Foster went with him, and they next undertook to cook, without any useful knowledge of the art, for a railroad construction gang. Their incompetence became obvious when Lawrence attempted to save labor by putting a ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... Many similar cases have come out in the courts; however, the girls in most instances were not favored by the same good fortune which blessed the little girl from Elgin, and the outcome was much more disastrous. This is an illustration of the ease with which panderers make use of love as a means of securing girls for ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... robes, how is a man to comport himself in the Land of the Blest who is compelled to carry his head under his arm, or who is split from crown to midriff by an outlandish weapon that falls irresistible as the wrath of Allah! Again and again they threw themselves with disastrous bravery against the invading horde, and after each encounter they came back with lessened ranks and a more chastened spirit than when they had set forth. When at last, another counsel of war was held, the young men kept silence ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... fame. He became second mate in the ship 'Britannia', a vessel trading in the Levant. This vessel was shipwrecked off Cape Colonna, exactly in the manner described in the poem, which is just a coloured photograph of the adventures, difficulties, dangers, and disastrous result of the voyage. In 1751 we find him living in Edinburgh, and publishing his first poem. This was an elegy on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. It was followed by other pieces, which appeared ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... generation—in a cycle of years. The religious belief of the connoisseur extended to the devout conception that her voice was a spiritual endowment, the casting of which priceless jewel into the bloody ditch of patriots was far more tragic and lamentable than any disastrous concourse of dedicated lives. He shook the lobby with his tread, thinking of the great night this might have been but for Vittoria's madness. The overture was coming to an end. By tightening his arms across his chest he gained some outward composure, and fixed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her beauty with a violent but licentious passion, which he had it in his power at that moment to gratify, and this idea agitated the wretched Theodora with the most dismal apprehensions. While she sat pondering on her disastrous fate, and vainly devising means to avert its danger, she was surprised by the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... not doing badly. He was at least keeping them straight. And in the circumstances straightness was to be preferred to distance. Soon after leaving Little Hadley he had become ambitious and had used his brassey with disastrous results, slicing his fifty-third into the rough on the right of the road. It had taken him ten with the niblick to get back on to the car tracks, and this ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... this is seen in bare hillsides, washed by mountain torrents which are causing disastrous floods on the lowlands, filling up the streams, and carrying away much of the most fertile soil of some of the southeastern states, and in the drying up ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... ix. 14, while Gilgal is a reminder of the duty of formally commemorating the beneficent providences of life (iii., iv.). The story of Achan reveals the national bearings of individual conduct and the large and disastrous consequences of individual sin. The valedictory addresses of Joshua are touched by a fine sense of the importance of a grateful and uncompromising fidelity to God. But perhaps the greatest thing in the book is the vision of ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... life, under the direction of a fairly creditable Karma, will go on always without meeting sooner or later with the ideas that occult study implants. So that the occultist does not threaten those who turn aside from his teachings with any consequences that must necessarily be disastrous. ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... of it. Although dramatic in form the poem is not continuously, directly, and compactly dramatic in movement. It cannot be converted into a play without being radically changed in structure and in the form of its diction. More disastrous still, in the eyes of those votaries, it cannot be and it never has been converted into a play without a considerable sacrifice of its contents, its comprehensive scope, its poetry, and its ethical significance. In the poem it is the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... these eruptions were disastrous. The whole island was strown with volcanic ashes, which, where they did not smother the grass outright, gave it a poisonous taint. The cattle that ate of it were attacked by a murrain, of which great numbers died. The ice and ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... brewing in that direction, the elements of which the Chevalier de Lorraine, in the midst of the different groups, was analyzing with delight, contributing to the weaker, and acting, according to his own wicked designs, in such a manner with regard to the stronger, as to produce the most disastrous consequences possible. As Anne of Austria had herself said, the presence of the king gave a solemn and serious character to the event. Indeed, in the year 1662, the dissatisfaction of Monsieur with Madame, and the king's intervention ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was speedily cleared; and the Prince Giacomo, with many words of thanks to his young and unknown deliverers, hurried from the spot which had so nearly proved disastrous to him. ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... encouraging result as she had anticipated had hitherto followed the appearance of Alban Morris at Monksmoor. He had clumsily allowed Mirabel to improve his position—while he had himself lost ground—in Emily's estimation. If this first disastrous consequence of the meeting between the two men was permitted to repeat itself on future occasions, Emily and Mirabel would be brought more closely together, and Alban himself would be the unhappy cause of it. Francine rose, on the Sunday ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... year at college Ogilvy's father, a well-known railroad magnate, had come a disastrous cropper in the stock market, thus throwing Buck upon his own resources and cutting short his college career—which was probably the very best thing that could happen to his father's son. For a brief period—perhaps five minutes—Buck had staggered under the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... children of the air. Wailing their King in the winds' track they sped. As when a hunter mid the forest-brakes Is by a boar or grim-jawed lion slain, And now his sorrowing friends take up the corse, And bear it heavy-hearted; and the hounds Follow low-whimpering, pining for their lord In that disastrous hunting lost; so they Left far behind that stricken field of blood, And fast they ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... Burns over the passion-swept sea of life that lay before him? The migration to Irvine was to him the descent to Avernus, from which he never afterwards, in the actual conduct of life, however often in his hours of inspiration, escaped to breathe again the pure upper air. This brief but disastrous Irvine sojourn was brought to a sudden close. Burns was robbed by his partner in trade, his flax-dressing shop was burnt to the ground by fire during the carousal of a New Year's morning, and himself, impaired in purse, in spirits, and in ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... from hers, the face of America will be but a copy of that of the continent of Europe. It will present liberty everywhere crushed between standing armies and perpetual taxes. The fortunes of disunited America will be even more disastrous than those of Europe. The sources of evil in the latter are confined to her own limits. No superior powers of another quarter of the globe intrigue among her rival nations, inflame their mutual animosities, and render them the instruments ...
— The Federalist Papers
... prosperous town in Brittany, capital of the department of Ille-et-Vilaine, situated at the junction of the Ille and the Vilaine; consists of a high and low town, separated by the river Vilaine, mostly rebuilt since the disastrous fire in 1720; has handsome buildings, a cathedral, &c.; is the seat of an archbishop, a military centre, and manufactures sail-cloth, linen, shoes, hats, &c.; where the court-martial was held which condemned Captain Dreyfus on a second ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... assigned the wife in the home had a most disastrous effect upon Greek morals. She could exert no such elevating or refining influence as she casts over the modern home. The men were led to seek social and intellectual sympathy and companionship outside ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... preparations alone and the wars inevitably growing from them must infallibly destroy us. We cannot but see that all the means of escape invented by men from these evils are found and must be found to be ineffectual, and that the disastrous position of the nations arming themselves against each other cannot but go on advancing continually. And therefore the words of Jesus refer to us and our time more than to any time or ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy |
