"Plague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would get on tolerably well, if there were no women in it. They plague the life out of one. You've made me forget, amongst you—poor old Job Haughton that I ought to have gone to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... not God's name in vain, or He will plague thee. Beware of His wrath, and live well in thy vocation. What is the good of swearing? It kindles God's wrath against thee. God's law forbids swearing, and so does ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... these disagreeable encounters in the plague- stricken capital of the world to inquire the fate of my Dresden companions, for some of those with whom I was intimate had also reached Paris, when I called on Desplechins, who had painted the scenery for Tannhauser. I found Semper there, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... it not, Monsieur?" quoth Sir Percy lightly. "By my faith! I'll not plague you with formalities.... We'll fight with our coats on if it be cold, in our shirtsleeves if it be sultry.... I'll not demand either green socks or scarlet ornaments. I'll even try and be serious for the space of two minutes, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... subject.] 'The affinities of kings ought to keep their subjects from the plague of war. We are grieved to hear of the paltry causes which are giving rise to rumours of war between you and our son Alaric, rumours which gladden the hearts of the enemies of both of you. Let me say with all frankness, but with all affection, just what I think: "It is the act of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... deutsche Bibliothek[74] alone seems to grasp the full significance of the satire. "We acknowledge gladly," says the reviewer, "that the author has with accuracy noted and defined the rise, development, ever-increasing contagion and plague-like prevalence of this moral pestilence; ... that the author has penetrated deep into the knowledge of this disease and its causes." He wishes for an engraving of the Sterne hobby-horse cavalcade described in the first ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... thinking about the time out near Jupiter when Willy had rigged up a still and brewed some powerful concoction. He had insisted that we all sample it, and everyone had, just to please Willy (they thought!) and had all gotten roaring drunk. And had safely passed through one of those plague areas that come up once in a century out of who knows where to decimate any population that happens to ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... century, both forms were in common use, in the sense now given them, as may be seen in the writings of Robert of Gloucester; though some writers of a much later date—or, at any rate, one, the celebrated Gawin Douglas, a Scottish bishop, who died of the plague in London, in 1522—constantly wrote ane for both an and ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... bearing in an unconscious hand the cup of defilement, was not strikingly singular either in physical or mental attraction. She was now seven-and-twenty. Small-pox, the terrible plague of the country, had pitted her face and given a yellowish tinge to her complexion; her features were clumsy and her brow low; she was short-sighted, and in old age at any rate was afflicted by an excessive squint. This homeliness was redeemed by a gentle ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... remedy he brought was a strong-smelling oil, called in those days "rock oil"—a crude petroleum. When all cracks in the bed and near wall were treated with this, it greatly mitigated, if it did not quite end, the nuisance of the "plague that ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... justification for this statement. We are told repeatedly therein that the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel or against this or that individual, and that the whole community had in consequence to humble itself before Him in order to avert plague, or pestilence, or some other form of general calamity. Not only was Jehovah thought of as a kind of larger man who was at once protector and tyrant to his people, he was but the God of Israel in contradistinction to the gods of other nations, one God out of many. It ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... this measure on the economic well-being of an enormous part of the Russian people." From this point of view the referee finds that it would be dangerous to let the Jews pass beyond the Pale, since "the plague, which has thus far been restricted to the Western provinces, will then ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... Satanas! and a plague on all lovers who ramble about at night, drinking the elements, instead of sleeping quietly in their beds. Every dead man to his cemetery, say I; and every friar to his monastery. Now, here's my master, Victorian, yesterday a cow-keeper, and to-day ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to brave the perils of smallpox, leprosy, or plague at Miss Warren's side, until Bernie informed him that the very idea was shocking, whereupon he dragged himself away with the accusation that all his heart ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... children died within one week. Still she stood by her post. Often, she said, those who were well and happy when they retired, ere daylight came were in the grave, for they were buried the same hour they died. Night after night she prayed to God in the dark, and at length the fury of the plague was abated. ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... halting place. The intermitted exercise of its power brings no sense of security to its subjects, for they can never know what more they will be called to endure when its red right hand is armed to plague them again. Nor is it possible to conjecture how or where power, unrestrained by law, may seek its next victims. The States that are still free may be enslaved at any moment; for if the Constitution does not protect all, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... dark air with odors hung heavy and rich, Like a soul that grows faint with desire. 'Twas the place In which she so lately had sat face to face, With her husband,—and her, the pale stranger detested Whose presence her heart like a plague had infested. The whole spot with evil remembrance was haunted. Through the darkness there rose on the heart which it daunted, Each dreary detail of that desolate day, So full, and yet so incomplete. Far away The acacias ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... which prevailed brought one plague upon us. We suffered from a pestilence of flies which under the circumstances was not surprising, everything being conducive to their propagation. They swarmed around us in thick black clouds. They recalled the British housefly, only ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... answers to 1906 deaths per year, and that is nearly the tenth part of the total and annual loss of Paris. The preservation of this hospital in the site it now occupies, and on its present plan, therefore produces the same effect as a sort of plague which ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... scoffing Goliahs as they are, that there are young Davids in our land! O, bring their counsels to nought! Scatter their fleets by thy tempests at sea, and destroy their armies on land! Sweep them off by bullet and plague! and—and"—suddenly checking himself, he meekly added, "and save their souls; and this, Lord, is all that in conscience I can ask for ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... can come from that. Paper is now so cheap that you need not rub out mistakes, but paper and pencil can never surely ground one in "the science of numbers and the art of computing by them." What is written is written, and returns to plague the memory, but if you made a mistake on the slate, you could spit on it and rub it out with your sleeve and leave no trace of the error, either on the writing surface or the tables of the memory. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... with strange notions. This aspect of the work led the rabbis of Palestine and Babylon in later days, when the spread of Hellenized Judaism was fraught with misery to the race, to regard it as an awful calamity, and to recount a tale of a plague of darkness which fell upon Palestine for three days when it was made;[22] and they observed a fast day in place of the old Alexandrian feast on the anniversary of its completion. They felt as the old Italian proverb has it, Traduttori, traditori! ("Translators are traitors!"). ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... found, a few hundred thousand, perhaps, their carcasses festering in the houses and in the deserted streets, and piled high on the abandoned death-waggons. But for the rest he would have had to seek along the highways and byways of the Empire. And not all would he have found fleeing from plague-stricken Peking, for behind them, by hundreds of thousands of unburied corpses by the wayside, he could have marked their flight. And as it was with Peking, so it was with all the cities, towns, and villages of the Empire. The plague smote them all. Nor was it one ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... the musk-rat is a terrible plague, as he perfumes everything that he passes over, rendering fruit, cake, bread, etc., perfectly uneatable, and even flavoring bottled wine by running over the bottles. This, however, requires a little explanation, although it is the popular belief that ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... As it is too long to be inserted here entire, we must be satisfied with a sketch of it. Jelitza, the beloved sister of nine brothers, is married to a Ban on the other side of the sea. She departs reluctantly, and is consoled only by the promise of her brothers to visit her frequently. But "the plague of the Lord" destroys them all; and Jelitza, unvisited and apparently neglected by her brothers, pines away and sighs so bitterly from morning to evening, that the Lord in heaven takes pity on her. He summons two of his ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... first visit to the Record Office in the Tower, to collect materials for his work of "THE ORDER OF THE GARTER." In May following, Hollar accompanied the author to Windsor, to take views of the castle. In the winter of 1665, Ashmole composed a "good part of the work at Roe-Barnes (the plague increasing)." In May, 1672, a copy of it was presented to King Charles II.: and in June, the following year, Ashmole received "his privy-seal for 400l. out of the custom of paper, which the king ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... that the children were a plague sometimes. They never could have enough of me—being a hundred to one, you might say—but I had more than enough of them; and yet was not contented. For they had so many ways of talking, and of tugging at my hair, and of sitting upon my neck (not ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... many. Some people seem so farr from being pleased with the news of the K——'s comeing, that they are visiblie sorry for it; and I wish to God these people had never been with us for they will be our undoing! and what a plague brought them out, since they could not hold it out for so short a time? I shall be blamed, I know, over all Europe for what I am entirely innocent of. It will be my own ruin beside, but if that could advance the K——'s affairs I am contented. In time I shall be justified when ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... continence. Give what Thou enjoinest, and enjoin what Thou wilt. Thou knowest on this matter the groans of my heart, and the floods of mine eyes. For I cannot learn how far I am more cleansed from this plague, and I much fear my secret sins, which Thine eyes know, mine do not. For in other kinds of temptations I have some sort of means of examining myself; in this, scarce any. For, in refraining my mind from the pleasures of the flesh and idle curiosity, I see how much I have ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... thing is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.—Guard against ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... occurs in Sichumovi. A kiva, abandoned for a long time after the smallpox plague, was taken possession of by an individual, who repaired it and renamed it Kevinyap tshomo—Oak Mound. He made his friends its members, but he called the kiva his own. He also says that his eldest sister's son ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... proved a plague to the whole world, Jack had his individual portion of it, when he was summoned to box the compass by his worthy uncle Sir Theophilus Blazers; who in the course of six months discovered that he could not make his ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... on. Mr. Weeks, with his assistant, then examined each body of water in which mosquito larvae had been found, with a view to devising the best means of preventing the further breeding of mosquitoes in these plague spots. Finally, a report was prepared, together with a map on which was located ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... liveth I will not receive A gift from thee, my son! Give all to Him Whose mercy hath redeemed thee from thy plague. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Termed Oestros- fierce it is, and harshly hums, Driving whole herds in terror through the groves, Till heaven is madded by their bellowing din, And Tanager's dry bed and forest-banks. With this same scourge did Juno wreak of old The terrors of her wrath, a plague devised Against the heifer sprung from Inachus. From this too thou, since in the noontide heats 'Tis most persistent, fend thy teeming herds, And feed them when the sun is newly risen, Or the first stars are ushering in the ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... declare I cannot say that I am sorry, for he has led me such a life about this 'Crystal Palace,' that, what with the illness of my missus, and the noise of the children, added to my usual work, I'm driven almost wild. I wonder who would ever have the plague of them—not I, if I could ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... announced his intention of providing for him, left him 10,000l. in his will, and revoked the bequest in a codicil. Thus unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself, he procured a situation in a public office. The young clerks below him, died off as if there were a plague among them; but the old fellows over his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting, lived on and on, as if they were immortal. He speculated and lost. He speculated again and won—but never got his money. His talents were great; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... which does not seem to have so reasonable a cause, is the changing house once a year. On the 1st of May the city of New York has the appearance of sending off a population flying from the plague, or of a town which had surrendered on condition of carrying away all their goods and chattels. Rich furniture and ragged furniture, carts, waggons, and drays, ropes, canvas, and straw, packers, porters, and draymen, white, yellow, and black, occupy the streets from east to west, from north ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... the trail now also began to have their effect. A plague of green-headed flies and flying ants assailed them by day, and at night the mosquitoes made an affliction well-nigh insufferable. The women and children could not sleep, the horses groaned all night under ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... may be mentioned of the black rivers; that is, that mosquitoes—the plague of tropical America—are not found on their banks. This is not only a curious, but an important fact, and might be sufficient to determine any one on the choice of a settlement. You may deem a mosquito a very small thing, and its presence a trifling annoyance. Let me tell you that settlements ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... secondary causes in this particular sphere of etiology, then why does Dr. Meigs take such pains to reason so extensively about the laws of contagion, which, on that supposition, have no more to do with this case than with the plague which destroyed the people after David had numbered them? Above all, what becomes of the theological aspect of the question, when he asserts that a practitioner was "only unlucky in meeting with the epidemic cases?" (Op. cit. p. 633.) We do not deny that the God of battles ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Terran Federation. We will not attempt to force every planetary government into a common pattern, or dictate the ways in which they govern themselves. We will foster in every way peaceful trade and communication. But we will not again permit the plague of competing sovereignties, the condition under which war is inevitable. The first attempt to set up such a sovereignty in competition with the Empire will be crushed mercilessly, and no planet inhabited by any sapient race ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... short-sightedness of even pious Christians. It is easy to imagine the exclamations of a reflecting character when hearing of the marvelous escapes of this wicked youth. 'Dark providences! the good and benevolent are snatched away; but such a plague as this has his life preserved to pester us still. Short-sighted mortal, "shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"' No life in the British empire was so precious in the sight and gracious purposes of God, as that of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Glad, that I know the hinderer of my loue; Sad, that I fear she hates me whome I loue; Glad, that I know on whome to be reueng'd; Sad, that sheele flie me if I take reuenge. Yet must I take reuenge or dye my-selfe; For loue resisted growes impatient. I think Horatio be my destind plague: First, in his hand he brandished a sword, And with that sword he fiercely waged warre, And in that warre he gaue me dangerous wounds, And by those wounds he forced me to yeeld, And by my yeelding I became his slaue; Now, in his mouth he carries ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... die to plague me," said the Prime Minister, with the air of one on whom the universe weighs heavy. "There never ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... boys are a bad lot!" Mr. Watson burst forth again. "They've been the plague of Glenoro school ever since Donald started—— By Jove!" He started up suddenly, his face aglow, "I have it! Don can make young Neil do anything. We'll get him to order the young rascal back and to bring the others with ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... fortieth year of "the plague." Seven months after her death her husband paid her memory the compliment of taking a second wife, thus leaving us to assume that the first venture was a happy one, otherwise he would not have been in such haste ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... it to be," said Mrs. Jekyll, more than ever Southampton in her plague veil and single eyeglass, "just to break the aloofness of your ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... evening before, the council of priests had resolved that, on account of the rage of the merciless pestilence, the temple should not be adorned nor the procession be marshalled. In the afternoon many whose houses had been visited by the plague had remained absent, and now while he, the astrologer, had been watching the course of the stars, the pest had made its way into this sanctuary, else why had it been forsaken by the watchers and the other astrologers who had entered with him at sunset, and whose duty it was to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I can safely assume that the danger of future warfare is forever banished. The balance of power is no longer a factor. The balance of Nature has been partially restored. And only one problem remains to plague mankind." ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... Nor indeed was the East the only quarter which this plague affected with its various disasters. For the Isaurians also, a people who were accustomed to frequent alternations of peace, and of turbulence which threw everything into confusion with sudden outbreaks—impunity having fostered their growing audacity and encouraged ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... any sense in it, or any interest? A language with such cruel superfluities as a middle voice and a dual; a language whose verbs were so fantastically irregular, looked like a barbaric survival, a mere plague and torment. So one thought till Homer was opened before us. Elsewhere I have tried to describe the vivid delight of first reading Homer, delight, by the way, which St. Augustine failed to appreciate. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Battery was left to the emigrants and to the bummers. Dirt was carted and dumped here by the load, all sorts of trash was thrown here, and loafers and drunken wretches laid themselves out on the benches and on the grass to sleep in the sun, when the weather was mild enough. It became a plague spot, retaining as the only vestige of its former beauty, its grand old trees, which were once ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... but that fight he would not. His conduct, however, very clearly showed—brave, and honest, and generous, and kind-hearted as he was, a man to be esteemed and loved—that he feared man, and what man might say, more than God, and how God would judge. Numbers act thus; but numbers perish of a plague. That there are ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... well, keep handsome establishments, and good wines. The Sardanapalian motto, "Laugh, sing, dance, and be merry," seems to be universally adopted in this "City of the Plague." The planters' and merchants' villas immediately in the vicinity are extremely tasteful, and are surrounded by large parterres filled with plantain, banana, palm, orange, and rose trees. On the whole, were it not for its unhealthiness, Orleans would be a most desirable residence, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... has galloped off for a doctor!" said Semyon, shrinking from the cold. "But looking for a good doctor is like chasing the wind in the fields or catching the devil by the tail, plague take your soul! What a queer chap, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of our national thinking, weakening us in the face of danger, by trying to set our own people to fighting among themselves. Such tactics are what have helped to plunge Europe into war. We must combat them, as we would the plague, if American integrity and American security are to be preserved. We cannot afford to face the future as a ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... in the year 1551, in a city of Savoy, a man who was a monstrous curser and swearer, and though he was often admonished and blamed for it, yet would he by no means mend his manners. At length a great plague happening in the city, he withdrew himself [with his wife and a kinswoman] into a garden, where being again admonished to give over his wickedness, he hardened his heart more, swearing, blaspheming God, and giving ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the Great (590-604). Others, following a venerable tradition, say that the three first lines were the composition of angels, and the fourth, Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia, was added by Pope Gregory. The legend tells us that when in the year 596 Rome was desolated by the plague, Pope Gregory the Great exhorted his people to penance and prayer, and carrying in his hands the picture of the Blessed Virgin, said to be painted by St. Luke, he led them in procession to the church, Afa Coeli, on Easter morn. When the procession ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... in defending with equal readiness the pro and the contra of a question. I know of no greater misjudgment, no greater prejudice, no greater blindness, than parents show in their eagerness to dedicate their sons to the law. The chief and the most terrible plague of Spain is the crowd of our young lawyers, for whose existence a fabulous number of lawsuits are necessary. Lawsuits multiply in proportion to the demand. And even thus, numbers are left without employment, and, as a jurisconsult cannot put his hand to the plough or seat himself at the ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... They were with a man under suspicion, and orders were that none should hold converse with him before the general examined into it. A plague on't!" ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... say? But do not imagine from this that there are many of these, for the Chinese have been for days avoiding the Legation quarter as if it were plague-stricken, and sounds that were so roaring a few weeks ago are now daily becoming more and more scarce. A blight is settling on us, for we are accursed by the whole population of North China, and who knows what will be the fate of those seen ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... every thing performed decently and properly, and put myself to expence enough, God knows! And how do you think the Lady repays me for my kindness? Why truly by refusing to sleep quietly in her comfortable deal Coffin, as a peaceable well-disposed Spirit ought to do, and coming to plague me, who never wish to set eyes on her again. Forsooth, it well becomes her to go racketing about my House at midnight, popping into her Daughter's room through the Keyhole, and frightening the poor Child out of her wits! Though She be a Ghost, She might be more civil than to bolt ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... against their employers, like the army of Carthage; or be overpowered and dispersed by a stroke of fortune; the multitude of a cowardly and undisciplined people must, upon such an emergence; receive a foreign or a domestic enemy, as they would a plague or an earthquake, with hopeless amazement and terror, and by their numbers, only swell the triumphs, and enrich the spoil of ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... rush violently and precipitately on their object, they lose all regard to decorum. The moments of profit are precious; never are men so wicked as during a general mortality. It was so in the great plague at Athens, every symptom of which (and this its worst amongst the rest) is so finely related by a great historian of antiquity. It was so in the plague of London in 1665. It appears in soldiers, sailors, &c. Whoever would contrive to render the life of man much shorter than it is, would, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... world Shall race like emulous Gods. A greater God Served by our sires, a God unknown to Rome, Above that shining level sits, high-towered: Millions of Spirits wing His flaming light, And fiery winds among His tresses play: When comes that hour which judges Gods and men, That God shall plague the Gods that filched His name, And cleanse the Peoples. When ye hear, my sons, That God uprising in His judgment robes And see their dreadful crimson in the West, Then know ye that the knell of Rome is nigh; Then stand, and listen! ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... by the speed of the Divine favour, let our affection continue before the Lord, let not prayer for our brothers and sisters cease before the mercy of the Father" (Ep. lvii. ad Cornel.). And in the days of the plague at Carthage, A. D. 252, he comforts his fellow citizens reminding them of "the large number of dear ones, parents, brothers, children, a goodly and numerous crowd longing for us and while their own immortality is assured still longing for ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... is successful, then we mean to repeat it from South America to England. It is therefore most important that news of the epidemic does not reach the ears of the Allies. You will point out that to the Minister Protopopoff. When the plague breaks out the censorship ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... with an idea like that. No one had ever said any such a thing. Indeed, the convict was entirely inferential, and had no foundation except in the fact that the old woman's son had been born at Macquarie Harbour. Uncle Mo's impression that Van Diemen's Land was a sort of plague-spot on the planet—the bacilli of the plague being convicted criminals—was no doubt too well grounded. But it was only a hearsay of youth, and even elderly men may now fail to grasp the way folk spoke and thought of those remote horrors, the Penal Settlements, in the early days of last century—a ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... walls, Where brays the pertinacious party ass. Here sleep more gently on the spirit lies Than where the SPEAKER tells the Noes and Ayes. The wave-wash brings sweet sleep down, from the summer skies, Here laps the azure deep, And through the weed the small crabs creep, And safe from prigs who plague and nymphs who peep, Sagacious Punch reclines and woos ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... bless God for it. We have all gotten safe to Nova Scotia, but do not like it at all, and a great many besides us, and are coming back to England again, all that can get back. We do not like the country, not never shall. The mosquitos are a terrible plague in this country. You may think that mosquitos cannot hurt, but if you do you are mistaken, for they will swell you legs and hands so that some persons are both blind and lame for some days. They grow worse ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... a good book on wasps which says they are our chief protectors against flies. In Cumberland the wet cold spring is so bad for the wasps that I partly think this may be so, and the terrible plague of flies in August might perhaps be checked by our teaching our little Agneses to keep wasps' nests instead ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... naval battle with the Dutch; the fire of London; and the ravages of the plague. The detail with which these are described, and the frequent felicity of expression, are the chief charm of the poem. In the refreshingly simple diary of Pepy's, we find this jotting under date of 3d February, 1666-7: "Annus Mirabilis. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... or suspect, an accusation which, to be effective, does not need proof or the production of the accuser. With that lack of confidence in the future, that uncertainty of reaping the reward of labor, as in a city stricken with the plague, everybody yields to fate, shuts himself in his house or goes about amusing himself in the attempt to spend the few days that remain to him in the least ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... I think I can afford to omit the string of quotations concerning Damascus, which is celebrated with an equal extravagance. Ibn Batuta gives a very careful account of the great mosque, including its priests and scholars. During his stay the plague raged with such violence that the deaths at one time amounted to two thousand a day. He relates one circumstance which shows that even religious intolerance vanished in times of distress. 'All the inhabitants ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... Him as a constellation. He could create a constellation with a thought; but He has been all the measureless ages, and He has never acquired those qualities that we have named—pity and mercy and morality. He goes on destroying a whole island of people with an earthquake, or a whole cityful with a plague, when we punish a man in the electric chair for merely killing the poorest of our race. The human being needs to revise his ideas again about God. Most of the scientists have done it already; but most of them don't dare to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... "Plague on the kite!" he said; "surely she is bewitched! And if her master is, as they say, a wizard, that ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... is sometimes mute at the end of a word, in imitation of the French, as prorogue, synagogue, plague, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... master," returned the valet, "but be pleased to consider that this is not our only danger, for I trow we are now in the mountains of Alpujarras, where those accursed and rebellious Moors hold dominion. A plague on the infidel dogs! Are they not continually on the watch to spring upon straggling and unwary Christians, and ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... cattle in St Domingo, for a period of several months. The plentiful use of sugar in diet is one of the best preventatives that ever has been discovered, of the diseases which are produced by worms. The plague has never been known in this country, where sugar composes a material part of the diet of the inhabitants." Dr Mosely, in his Treatise on Sugar, speaks equally confidently of the nutritious and beneficial effects of this substance. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... diphtheria appeared in England in 1858 he was sent to investigate the disease at the different points of outbreak, and in subsequent years he carried out a number of similar inquiries, e.g. into the cattle plague and into cholera in 1866. He became first principal of the Brown Institution at Lambeth in 1871, and in 1874 was appointed Jodrell professor of physiology at University College, London, retaining that post till 1882. When the Waynflete chair of physiology ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... alas! was not enough for Mrs. Hawkins, who was full of ambitions, which had a bad manner, a plague of shyness, and a narrow income, were perpetually thwarting. As soon as the ten minutes were over, and Mrs. Watton, who was nothing if not political, and saw no occasion to make a stranger of the vicar's wife, had plunged into the evening ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pillow and chief reposal . . . An idle dog will be mangy; and how shall an idle person escape? Idleness of the mind is much worse than that of the body; wit, without employment, is a disease—the rust of the soul, a plague, a hell itself. As in a standing pool, worms and filthy creepers increase, so do evil and corrupt thoughts in an idle person; the soul is contaminated . . . Thus much I dare boldly say: he or she that is idle, be they of what condition they will, never so ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... creatin' such a Gyarden of Eden, don't forget to thank him on youh bended knees for not putting anything oveh yondeh in ouh home lot to tempt these house-buildin', money-makin', schemin' Yankees that are swarming again oveh the land like anotheh plague ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... and at sunset the mists stole silently over them again. But all day and all night the sickly stench of vegetation, putrefying in the steam of those forests from age to age, pervaded the ship as with the breath of plague. ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... to him by his cousin, Sir Rufus Hockin, had long been far more plague than profit to that idle baronet. Sir Rufus hated all exertion, yet could not comfortably put up with the only alternative—extortion. Having no knowledge of his cousin Nick (except that he was indefatigable), and knowing his own son to be ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... born at Stratford, on the Avon, April 23, 1564, and was baptized on the 26th. Two months after his birth the plague swept over the pleasant village, carrying off a large part of the inhabitants. The danger that hung over the marvellous infant passed away, and he grew up healthy and strong. His mother, Mary Arden, inherited ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... now seemed changed it was from that simple and familiar cause instinctively understood by mothers,—trouble!—the most ancient plague of all and the only malady which ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... being able to escape into the sea in any considerable quantity, owing to the narrowness of the entrance, there accumulate, filling the whole atmosphere with these same outrageous scents, on which account the town is a famous lodging-house of the plague. The ship in which we embarked was bound for a place in Italy called Naples, where we were to stay some time. The voyage was rather a lazy one, the ship not being moved by steam; for at the time of which I am speaking, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... glad enough to wash my hands on't," said Israel. "I shall hanker arter the critter some, but he's a-gettin' too big to be handy; 'n' it's one comfort abaout critters, you ken get rid on 'em somehaow when they're more plague than profit. But folks has got to be let alone, excep' the Lord takes 'em; an' He don't allers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... they all are indeed, incomprehensibly wasting their time still in looking at nothing! Yes," continued Monsieur Justin, lifting his eyes wearily, and staring hard, first up the river at Rouen, then down the river at the setting sun; "yes, plague take them! looking at nothing, absolutely and positively ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... foreshore, and Fergus with him? LAVARCHAM — despairingly. — I'm late so with my warnings, for Fergus'd talk the moon over to take a new path in the sky. (With reproach.) You'll not stop him this day, and isn't it a strange story you were a plague and torment, since you were that height, to those did hang their lifetimes on your voice. (Overcome with trouble; gather- ing her cloak about her.) Don't think bad of my crying. I'm not the like of many and I'd see a score of naked corpses and not heed them at all, but ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... and Lady Russell saw it; but it had been no unhappiness to sour his mind, nor (she began pretty soon to suspect) to prevent his thinking of a second choice. Her satisfaction in Mr Elliot outweighed all the plague ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... under the title of Naenia. Some of his Biographers (Mrs. Cooper and Winstanley) say that he died of the plague as he was going on an embassy to the Emperor Charles V. but Wood asserts, that he was only sent to Falmo by the King to meet the Spanish ambassador on the road, and conduct him to the court, which it seems demanded very great expedition; that by over-fatiguing ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... we came to the valley of the Little Colorado, south of where Winslow now is, we built houses and lived there; and then we crossed to the northern side of the valley and built houses at Homolobi. This was a good place for a time, but a plague of flies came and bit the suckling children, causing many of them to die, so we left there and traveled ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... unimaginative to attempt to construct a new faith out of the ruins of the old, is practically certain. His lack of faith, in the broader sense of the word, will incapacitate him for high seriousness (which he will regard as "bad form"), and a fortiori for enthusiasm (which he will shun like the plague), and will therefore predispose him to frivolity. Being fully persuaded, owing to his lack of imaginative sympathy, that his own outlook on life is alone compatible with mental sanity, and yet being too clear-sighted ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... attributed to the malignancy of sea demons, and by way of propitiation, and inducement to these plague spirits to hurry off with their epidemic, offerings placed on raftlets are launched in ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... around. So the peasants and their families crowded around the chateau to see the children. They brought them wreaths of flowers and other votive offerings. They sang songs to serenade them, and they built bonfires around the walls of the chateau at night, to drive away the infection of the plague, which was then prevailing in some parts of the country, and was exciting ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... to plague me, which is impertinent, because I do not know you well enough—I have not known you above half an hour. I shall tell ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... Crotonians, furious because the old fox had lived so long and so sumptuously at the public expense, had put him to death in the Massilian manner. That you may comprehend what this means, know that) whenever the Massilians were ravaged by the plague, one of the poor would offer himself to be fed for a whole year upon choice food at public charge; after which, decked out with olive branches and sacred vestments, he was led out through the entire city, loaded ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... first place, the pestilential disease, or plague, seized upon the city, and ate up all the flour and prime of their youth and strength. Upon occasion of which the people, distempered and afflicted in their souls, as well as in their bodies, were utterly enraged ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... formed the Hygeian court. A fitting preparation was necessary, so the captains began to debate upon the various pretensions of the beautiful Phrynes of Cork—the three medical men, whether the plague was contagious or infectious, or both—or neither. At the precise moment when Captain Reud was maintaining the superiority of the attractions of a blonde Daphne against the assertions of a champion of a dark Phyllis, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... his index finger and pointed it straight at the planet Hell. Instantly the sky darkened, the air vibrated with the rushing sound of many forms. A moment later he was surrounded by a regiment of abbreviated demons—a flock as thick as a grasshopper plague, twisted, grinning, leering, hideous. He raised his finger again and they leaped to the roofs of the mission, wrenched the tiles from their place and sent them clattering to the pavement. They danced and wrestled on ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... my Aunt Agatha's philosophy of life, she having always rather given me to understand that it is the presence in it of chappies like me that makes London more or less of a plague spot; ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... way," Jer. xxxii. 39; Ezek. xi. 19. It is observed, that for this very end of uniformity, the heathens also did erect temples, that they might all worship the same idol-god in the same manner. The plague of the Christian church hitherto hath been temple against temple, and altar against altar, "But thou, O Lord, how long?" Psal. ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... of no importance to me. But"—her voice cut like finely tempered steel—"don't goad me too far. Don't forget that I know you for what you are—a moral plague—creeping like a pestilence among people who are not familiar with your face. I know, and you know that I know you are in no position, Dr. Harpe, to point a finger at the commonest women ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... Virginia cried, "you know that nobody could foretell the coming of the plague. We were as well off as hundreds of other settlers this dry summer ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... diseases: typhoid fever, malaria, trypanosomiasis, plague, schistosomiasis overall degree of risk: ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... there appeared, at the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits, whereof some waxed of the bigness of a common apple, others like unto an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils. From these two parts the aforesaid death-bearing plague-boils proceeded, in brief space, to appear and come indifferently in every part of the body; wherefrom, after awhile, the fashion of the contagion began to change into black or livid blotches, which showed themselves in many ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... would so beguile away all repugnance and counteraction, that the rest of the customs and institutes would readily admit the contamination, and become assimilated in evil; as the Mohamedans have no care to avoid contact with their neighbors who are ill of the plague, since the plague has the warrant of heaven. Wherever, therefore, in the imperfect notices afforded us of ancient nations, we find any one virulent iniquity holding an authorized place in custom or religion, we may confidently make a very large inference, though record ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... asks me to give him my place. When we were hunting yesterday, and the stag turned upon me, he came between and thrust his knife into the brute, which else might have put an end to my hunting forever and a day: so you see I can't refuse him. Plague take it all! and ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... that makes it to be so full of evil and misery. To whom Theophilus turned and replied: Covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath are the four elements of self. And hence it is that the whole life of self can be nothing else but a plague and torment of covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath, all of which is precisely sinful nature, self, or hell. Whilst man lives, indeed, among the vanities of time, his covetousness, his envy, his pride, and his wrath, may be in a tolerable state, and may help him to a mixture ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... "Plague on it, I am at a loss to know. In all our present company there's not a wit worth listening to, nor a woman with sufficient vice or virtue to make her interesting. I feel like turning saint for the sake ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... she stands by with averted eyes. It is with unconscious sarcasm that Apollonius exclaims on the same page where all these details of "romantic love on the higher side" are being unfolded: "Accursed Eros, the world's most direful plague." ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to sleeping on ground that had been insufficiently rolled. Also that they had been heard to smack their lips and speak darkly of featherbeds. Respected neighbour of gloomy disposition said that if Pharaoh were still alive he could suggest an eleventh plague to him beside which frogs and flies were ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... replied the man in green. "What a plague would they have?" What have we to do with their Archipelagos of Italy and Germany? Haven't we heaths and commons and high-ways on our own little island? Aye, and stout fellows to pad the hoof over them too? Come, sir, my service to you—I agree ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... always have the Reformers been fortunate in their takings off—many have lingered out lengthening, living deaths in walled-up cells. The Bastile, Chillon, London Tower, that prison joined to a palace by the Bridge of Sighs, and all other such plague-spots of blood are haunted by the ghosts of infamy. Before the memory of all those who wrote immortal books behind grated bars we ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... the other hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, when breathing forth supplications, as if in some representative character for the whole human race prostrate before God, places such a death in the very van of horrors. "From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death,—Good Lord, deliver us." Sudden death is here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of calamities; it is the last of curses; and yet, by the noblest of Romans, it was treated as the first ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... dreaded disease. And, to tell the exact truth, it often did, and the treatment proved more efficacious than some of the present-day Bible study methods, where mere knowledge is attempted. The mistake was the misunderstanding (for misunderstanding it was, and not a desire to merely plague the boy) of the fact that boys were developing creatures, spiritually as well as physically, and that Bible study could be made pleasant as well as profitable. It was a mistake due to a purely mature point of view and a failure to know that the boy mind needed different treatment from that ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... orders carried out when strong men were no longer sickening and dying within two revolutions of the hands of the church clock will surprise no one who has had to do with local sanitary officers. They are like the children of Israel, and will only do their duty under the pressure of a plague. The people themselves are more like the Egyptians. Plagues won't convince them. A mother with all her own and her neighbors' children sickening about her would walk miles in a burst shoe to fetch the doctor ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 'Tis no plague-spotted hand.— Oh, I was born a princess, even as thou. For me the path of life stretched smooth and straight As now for thee; blindly thereon I fared, Content, where all seemed right.—Ah, happy days! For I was born a princess, even as thou. And as thou ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Holt are celebrated. In the first half of the 19th century the condition of agriculture in Cheshire was notoriously backward; and in 1865-1866 the county suffered with especial severity from a visitation of cattle plague. The total loss of stock amounted to more than 66,000 head, and it was necessary to obtain from the Treasury a loan of L270,000 on the security of the county rate, for purposes of relief and compensation. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... providing, as He ever does, for the human race, has raised up this pious, faithful, and zealous sovereign, and He has called together unto Himself from all parts the chief rulers of the priesthood, so that, with the grace of Christ, our common Lord, inspiring us, we may cast off every plague of falsehood from the sheep of Christ and feed them with the tender leaves of truth. And this we have done, with unanimous consent driving away erroneous doctrine and renewing the unerring faith of the Fathers, publishing ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... no fiscal measures, however wise, could at once alleviate it. The potato famine held on its dreadful way, and the darkest moment of Irish history seemed reached in the year when one hundred and seventy thousand persons perished in that island by hunger or hunger-bred fever. The new plague affected Great Britain also; but its suffering was completely overshadowed by the enormous bulk of Irish woe, which the utmost lavishness of charity seemed scarcely to lessen. That there should be turbulence and even violence accompanying all this wretchedness was no ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... Mossy-Face. Also you don't deserve even this much, as I have received no correspondence, books, or pork-pies from you for over a week. In ten minutes' time I shall be employed on the nightly slaughter of the spiders, earwigs, and moths that plague my tent. ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, the precursor, and cause as he thought it, of the great plague. He found that the old planetary tables were as much as a month in error in fixing this event, and even the Copernican tables were several days out; so he formed the resolve to devote his life to improving astronomical ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... bad delivery, and some of them said if they knew I was to preach again they would not enter the chapel. Whether this was all on account of my manner I don't know; but the truth which I uttered seemed to plague very much the person who supplies the missionaries with wagons and oxen. (They were bad ones.) My subject was the necessity of adopting the benevolent spirit of the Son of God, and abandoning the selfishness of the world.' Each student at Ongar had also to conduct family worship in rotation. I ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie |
