"Ruin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ——"found the ruin wrought, But, not cast down, forth from the place it flew, And with its mate fresh earth and grasses brought, And built ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... the ruin of many military operations, were the origin of the failure of this. But even these perplexities and disappointments, great as they were, would not have defeated the expedition; or, at least, the Spaniards might ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... so commonplace. I can tell it you in a few sentences. I married when I was seventeen at my father's command, to save him from ruin. My husband, like my father, was a city merchant. I did not love him, but then I did not know what love was. My girlhood was a miserable one. My father belonged to the sect of Calvinists. Our home was hideous, and we were poor. Any release from it was welcome. John ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by arts unknown An imitative dint that seemed my own; This notch, not of my doing, Misled me to my ruin. ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... To Geoffrey this meant ruin. His allowance stopped and his expectations vanished at one fell swoop. He pulled himself together, however, as a brave-hearted man does under such a shock, and going to his wife he explained to her that he must now work for his living, begging her to break down the barrier that was between ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... given up the search for the escaped spy. He feared what the fellow might yet do to weaken or utterly ruin the hopes of the American troops. Halpen was not armed, so the youth had no fear of being attacked by him; but he spent his time creeping through the brushwood up and down the lake shore, hoping to stumble upon the Yorker. He did not believe that ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... to stop a gully with," and the Sudra's sons "ordained" to be servants, no matter what their qualities of mind and soul. But the caste system is rotting down in other places and some time or other this "ordained" theory will also give way and the whole vast fabric will totter to the ruin it ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... showing all manner of illustrative and realistic faculty. The sky is most tenderly painted, and with the truest outline of cloud of all in the exhibition; and the terrific piece of gallant wrath and ruin on the extreme left, where the cuirassier is catching round the neck of his horse as he falls, and the convulsed fallen horse, seen through the smoke below, is wrought through all the truth of its frantic passions with gradations of color and shade ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... of the 'Beggar's Opera' completed the ruin of the Royal Academy of Music, but Handel, undismayed by the failure of this great scheme, and setting his enemies at defiance, went once more to Italy to collect a new company of singers, for he was determined to carry on the work himself with the fortune which his operas ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... "And that would spell ruin for all our plans, wouldn't it?" Merritt asked, not as cheerfully as he might, because he had been fearful all along that something like this might come to pass just when he had discovered the object of his long search, and before he could proceed to relieve Steven ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... Catharine, "the Prince is a licentious gallant, whose notice of me tends only to my disgrace and ruin. Can you, who seemed but now afraid that I acted imprudently in entering into an ordinary exchange of courtesies with one of my own rank, speak with patience of the sort of correspondence which the heir of Scotland dares to fix upon me? Know that it is but two nights since he, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... humiliation for Russia; an educational system rotten with official hypocrisy; a Church in which conduct counted for nothing, orthodoxy and ceremonial observance for everything; economical and financial conditions scarce recovering from the verge of ruin; and lastly, that curse of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... at the restoring of that, would indeed be a wild project: it would be to dig up foundations; to destroy at one blow all the wit, and half the learning of the kingdom; to break the entire frame and constitution of things; to ruin trade, extinguish arts and sciences, with the professors of them; in short, to turn our courts, exchanges, and shops into deserts; and would be full as absurd as the proposal of Horace, where he advises the Romans, all in a body, to leave their city, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... their threat, so long as Sylvia had not found out the whole truth. So now she had come to beg me to tell no more than I had already told. She was utterly abject about it. I had pretended to be her friend, I had won her confidence and listened to her confessions; how did I wish to ruin her utterly, to have her cast out ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... they went, with the wind whipping their faces! On, still on, to the red ruin wrought by the explosion of ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... found in the chapel of the Ursuline convent, now little more than a ruin. An exploding shell had made a deep cavity in the floor not far from the altar, and this hollow was soon shaped into the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hardship and difficulty; but he was sustained by the thought of the dreadful peril of the woman he loved, the remembrance of the sufferings of the hapless townspeople, and a consuming desire for revenge upon the man who had wrought this ruin on the shore. With the pale, beautiful face of Mercedes to lead him, and by contrast the hateful, cruel countenance of Morgan to force him, ever before his vision, the man plunged upward with unnatural strength, braving dangers, taking chances, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... repeat what I say to my own race, 'Cast down your bucket where you are.' Cast it down among 8,000,000 Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your fire-sides.... In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... this was a restraint to cowards, without which a thousand rascals who passed for honest people, but who did nothing but pillage widows and orphans and defraud their neighbors, would rush into a more honorable profession, the ocean would be covered with this canaille, and the ruin of commerce would involve that of piracy. She died in prison ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... The ruin of her life spread behind her and before her. She could not face it. The confusion of it all seemed to blind her, and the confusion was pierced by the terrible thought that on the next day but one Griggs would return again, the one being ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... office, or as good as done so. He says the man Twyning worked that. The man Twyning—that Judas Iscariot chap, you remember—is very thick with old Bright, the girl's father. Old Bright pretty naturally thinks his daughter has gone back to the man who is responsible for her ruin, and this Twyning person—who's a partner, by the way—wrote to Sabre and told him that, although he personally didn't believe it—'not for a moment, old man,' he wrote—still Sabre would appreciate the horrible scandal that ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... this, in the year 1613 matters had gone so far, that neither the ambassadors to foreign courts, nor even the troops which were maintained could be paid. In the garrison of Brill a mutiny had arisen on this account; the strongholds on the coast and the fortifications on the adjacent islands went to ruin. For this as well as for other reasons the death of the Earl of Salisbury was a misfortune. The man on whom James I next bestowed his principal confidence, Robert Carr, then Lord Rochester, later Earl of Somerset, was already condemned ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... and said nothing, and they rambled on together. In the middle of the field rose a fragment of stone wall in the form of a gable, known as Faringdon Ruin; and when they had reached it John paused and politely asked her if she were not a little tired with walking so far. No particular reply was returned by the young lady, but they both stopped, and Anne seated herself on a stone, which ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... open it with his bent wire, he felt that to adventure himself into the hall without any idea of the interior would be too dangerous. Here, as always, he was hampered by the fact that discovery would mean the ruin of ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... of anxieties that beset me, I plunged recklessly into the gayeties—nay, the excesses—of Mr. Charles Fox and his associates. I paid, in truth, a very high price for my friendship with Mr. Fox. But, since it did not quite ruin me, I look back upon it as cheaply bought. To know the man well, to be the subject of his regard, was to feel an infatuation in common with the little band of worshippers which had come with him from Eton. They remained faithful ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... on the top could see a great distance over the plains and give warning of the approach of the enemy. As the day was fine—no mist—we had a beautiful view from the top, seeing plainly the great round tower of Coucy, the finest ruin in France—the others made out quite well the towers of the Laon Cathedral, but those I couldn't distinguish, seeing merely a dark spot on the horizon which might have ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... him, and, if we lose him, there is nothing left in life, and all hope is at an end, and finis shall be printed on the first page of the book of our existence; and ruin, like a pitiless pall, shall cover what might have been a happy, possibly a grand and good, human career. We did not intend to love him,—no, no; we tried hard to hate him who stood between us and affluence and indolent ease, but he ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... with his mistress, and even proceeded so far as to assure him, according to his instructions, that an immediate interruption of all correspondence with his most powerful friends in England, and, in short, that the ruin of his interest, which was now daily increasing, would be the infallible consequence of his refusal; yet he continued inflexible, and all M'Namara's entreaties and remonstrances were ineffectual. M'Namara stayed in Paris some days ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... should not fall,' says she, 'Like dropping flowers that no man noticeth, But like a great branch of some stately tree Rent in a tempest, and flung down to death, Thick with green leafage—so that piteously Each passer by that ruin shuddereth, And saith, The gap this branch hath left is wide; The loss thereof can ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... fifteenth century in English literature is sometimes called "the age of arrest." Can you explain why? What causes account for the lack of great literature in this period? Why should the ruin of noble families at this time seriously affect our literature? Can you recall anything from the Anglo-Saxon period to justify ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... daylight or to cross the threshold beyond which life awaited him, engagements he had entered into, promises made, a wilderness of protests and summonses. The Levantine having gone to some watering-place, attended by her masseur and her negresses, absolutely indifferent to the ruin of the family,—Bompain, the man in the fez, aghast amid the constant demands for money, being utterly at a loss to know how to approach his unfortunate employer, who was always in bed and turned his face to the wall as soon as any one mentioned business to him,—the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... sure of all you say, husband?" replied Teresa. "Well, for all that, I am afraid this rank of countess for my daughter will be her ruin. You do as you like, make a duchess or a princess of her, but I can tell you it will not be with my will and consent. I was always a lover of equality, brother, and I can't bear to see people give themselves airs without any right. They called me Teresa at my baptism, a plain, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... they surrender, and not to abandon the peaceful citizens to pillage and vengeance." They declare that they might already have subdued them, and are only held back by the fear of involving in their ruin the number of innocent persons who occupy the circumjacent houses. The policy of this moderation seems doubtful, but the sincerity of the president is unimpeachable. They continue to observe upon the absurdity of this handful of men pretending to impose laws ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... end of each of them she was left standing on the platform with her eyes following the retreating train and a fear coiling tighter round her heart. She had always known, of course, that this life for which she was responsible, and by whose fate she would be judged, would blunder to ruin, and as the years went on there came intimations, faint as everything connected with Roger, but nevertheless convincing, which confirmed her dread. He was always changing his situation and moving from suburb to suburb, for he would never take a job in the city, because the noise and crowds in ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... only a few minutes before they were hovering quietly over the old ruin on the banks of the lake, and they settled down to spend the afternoon as they would have, had they been anchored in Frenchman's Bay off of Bar Harbour in the month of August on ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... have stood in greater peril. To Chamonix he must go; and to Chamonix he must take Sylvia too. For by the time when he could reach Chamonix, he might already be too late. There might be publicity, inquiries, and for Garratt Skinner ruin, and worse than ruin. Would Sylvia let her lover share the dishonor of her name? He knew very surely she would not. Therefore ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... are going to be friends, Miss Marbolt. I knew it. It was only that I feared that 'they' might ruin my chances of your approbation. You see, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... blasted the harvest, the government has admitted no delay, no indulgence for the tax; and distress bearing hard on the village, a part of its inhabitants have taken refuge in the cities; and their burdens falling on those who remained, has completed their ruin, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... disaster and death by a man whose supreme purpose was, and is to-day, revenge upon me. That man drew him to his ruin purely in search of my life." Charlotte sat with her strange in-looking, out-looking gaze holding the gaze of her questioner until for ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... morn, That day, long-wished day, Of all my life so dark, (If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn, And fates not hope betray,) Which, only white, deserves A diamond for ever should it mark. This is the morn should bring unto this grove My Love, to hear and recompense my love. Fair king, who all preserves, But show thy blushing beams, And thou two sweeter eyes Shalt see, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... and doubled till the last quick hand that finished him. He was a slim youth, with a face smooth and pale. He sat back in his chair, with his head hanging, staring with a look of stupefaction at the cards that spelled his ruin, his finish, and his exile. About him, some of the onlookers began to talk loudly to cover his confusion, and their voices seemed to restore him. He blinked and closed his mouth, and sat up. "Well," he said, then, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... enjoyed a period of prosperity because of a reputation for dairy produce; and there were half-a-dozen big farm-houses on the street, of different dates, which testified to this. There was an old timbered Grange, deserted, falling into ruin. There was a house with charming high brick gables at either end, with little battlemented crow-steps, and with graceful chimney-stacks at the top. There was another solid Georgian house, with thick white casements and moss-grown ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this; but he could feel the tremor that passed through her. "She has written," he went on, "and by this time Cedric has her letter. Miss Jacobi, if you love this poor lad, how can you have the heart to ruin him? Be generous, be merciful, and set him free!" Then she ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... most considerable relic of antiquity, considered as a ruin, is the Thermae of Caracalla. These consist of six enormous chambers, above 200 feet in height, and each enclosing a vast space like that of a field. There are in addition a number of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden and woven over by the wild growth of clinging ivy. Never was any ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... mind (so, at least, it seems to me) would sometimes revert with awe to the perils and temptations of the lonely height where he stood, to the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian,[231] in their hideous blackness and ruin; and then he wrote down for himself such a warning entry as this, significant ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... further development. It will be said: "We cannot stop it; capital must be employed; our population must be kept at work; if we hesitate a moment, other nations now hard pressing us will get ahead, and national ruin will follow." Some of this is true, some fallacious. It is undoubtedly a difficult problem which we have to solve; and I am inclined to think it is this difficulty that makes men conclude that what seems a necessary and unalterable state of things must be good-that its benefits must be greater ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... The expenditures were naturally heavy that spring; and one night, when he had nothing better to do, he figured the relative proportion to his income. The result showed that they were headed straight for financial ruin. He put in the rest of the night fearfully rolling and tossing, and reconstructing his figures that grew always worse, and next morning summoned Jean and Clara and petrified them with the announcement that the cost of living ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... section that lay between. From either side we could hear the rattle and roar of war, while the automobile picked its way through smoking ruins and tottering walls. Often the streets were blocked by mountains of debris that compelled us to go around. We were in a labyrinth of ruin, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... prejudice, and not from political difference. But the outbreak indicated, and indeed heralded, the re-forming of old party lines. The apparent unanimity only concealed a division that was already fatally developed. The party of Jefferson by its very success involved itself in ruin. Its ancient foe, the eminent and honorable party of Federalists, made but a feeble struggle in 1816, and completely disappeared from the national political field four years later, and even from State contests after the notable defeat of Harrison Gray Otis by ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... such as this to meet with harsh treatment, much less cruelty, was, if not to ruin it completely, at least to undermine all confidence. Yet this, sad to relate, was now precisely what befell. Up to this, life had been without a cloud. Of course, as in every other society, there had been the necessity of fending ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... the nations, expectation of coming change stalks abroad; the air is rife with rumours; at last there bursts out an eruption of greater or less violence—the destructive flood overleaps its barriers, and flows forth, carrying devastation and ruin in one direction of another, until its energies are exhausted, or its progress stopped by some obstacle that it cannot overcome, and it subsides reluctantly and perforce. Such a time was that on which Ramesses III. was cast. Wars threatened him on every side. On his north-eastern frontier ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... know not what sudden self-possession came over my spirit. Staggering as far aft as I could, I awaited fearlessly the ruin that was to overwhelm. Our own vessel was at length ceasing from her struggles, and sinking with her head to the sea. The shock of the descending mass struck her, consequently, in that portion of her frame which was already under water, and the inevitable ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... coming back to me?" he wrote. "How con you bear to give so much pain to everyone who loves you? Is your wonderful salary worth more to you than being here with your mother—with me? How can you say you love me—and ruin both our lives like this? I cannot come to see you—I would not come to see you—calling at the back door! Finding the girl I love in a cap and apron! Can you not see it is wrong, utterly wrong, all this mad escapade of yours? ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... in the story of these southern plants; one day's sirocco in May will turn a field, bright with the last flowers, into a brown wilderness, where the passing look sees nothing but ruin—yet in that one day the precious seed will have taken a stride in its ripening that it would have needed a month of ordinary weather to bring about; it will have drawn infinite life out of the fiery breath that made havoc with ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... easily and completely by the body, for the human organism demands its food in an organic state, that is, in the condition built up by vegetation or by animals. We may consume iron filings and remain anemic, in fact, the effect the iron medication has is to ruin the teeth, digestive organs and other parts of the body as a consequence. But if we partake of such foods as apples, cabbage, lettuce and spinach, the necessary salt ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... of her act, looking back upon it from this momentary revulsion, seemed a frightful flood, like the mouth of one of the little Eastern Shore rivers that expands to a gulf in the progress of a brook. Last night she saw in an instant the misunderstandings and ruin she could prevent by her ready decision; now she saw the misunderstandings she never could correct, the prejudices stronger than parental sympathy, the wide separation her marriage had effected between two classes of her duty—to think ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... house in Holborn—that Lord Warwick of whom I have already spoken as John Dudley, the half-brother of Lady Frances Monke. No man on earth hated Somerset more heartily than Warwick, and perhaps only one other man hated him quite as much. While they were yet debating how to ruin Somerset, a letter came in the King's name from Secretary Petre, inquiring for what cause they thus gathered together: if they wished to speak with the Protector they must come peaceably. This letter sealed the fate of the conference—and of ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... stood, while the full significance of her refusal ate slowly into his consciousness. Whatever hopes he might have had had been swept away in those few short, pithy sentences. His passion checked, the structure erected by his imagination toppled to ruin, his vanity hurt, he stood before her stripped of the veneer that had made him seem, heretofore, nearly the man ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... wallowing in the dark waters of iniquity, be happy here, then repent at last, and be happy hereafter. As they pass along in their wretched career, expecting every moment to grasp the fancied pleasure, yet the fond, anticipated phantom flies from their embrace and leaves them in the ruin of their joy. Though disappointed again and again, yet firmly believing that there is happiness in sin, they again push on, and thus far attribute their want of success to some miscalculation. Insensible ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... the service, and you are not. A young man possessing such ample means will never be fitted for the duties of a junior officer. He can do no good for himself, and is certain to do much harm to others: a continuance of his friendship would probably end in your ruin, Mr Gascoigne. You must be aware that if the greatest indulgence had not been shown to Mr Easy by his captain and first lieutenant, he never could have remained in the service so long ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... stairs ending in ruin at the fourth story—handed her carefully through the window to a small outer balustrade. As they stood together at the rail, he knew not whether to be ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... its death, the stealthy panther lures, Mocking the voice of its dam, thus he led the innocent child Through her tenderness down to ruin, he is a friend of yours, And admired by all; as you say, ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... The ruin of this countryside by railroads was discussed, not only at the "Weights and Scales," but in the hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for talk such as were rarely had through the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... with him, we met some friends of his; and, at their request, we agreed to go to the saloons of the Palais Royal. This was a desperate remedy, and by a miracle only was I saved from utter and irretrievable ruin. How many of my countrymen have fallen victims to the arts practised in that horrible school of vice, I dare not say! Happy should I be to think that the infection had not reached our own shores, and found patrons among the great men of the land. They have, however, both felt the consequences, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 'missis.' ——, think of learning to rule despotically your fellow creatures before the first lesson of self-government has been well spelt over! It makes me tremble; but I shall find a remedy, or remove myself and the child from this misery and ruin. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... flattering, Utterly departing from all propriety of demeanour, Till good men are reduced to personators of the dead [1]. The people now sigh and groan, And we dare not examine (into the causes of their trouble). The ruin and disorder are exhausting all their means of living, And we show ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... not very picturesque as a ruin. When Joshua marched around it seven times, some three thousand years ago, and blew it down with his trumpet, he did the work so well and so completely that he hardly left enough of the city to cast a shadow. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... among the trees, beside a falling brook; beyond were rough hills of pasture. I bethought me that shepherd folk were early risers, and if I were once seen skulking in that neighbourhood it might prove the ruin of my prospects; took advantage of a line of hedge, and worked myself up in its shadow till I was come under the garden wall of my friend's house. The cottage was a little quaint place of many rough-cast gables and grey roofs. It had something the air of a rambling infinitesimal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gazed dumbly at the ruin wrought. His eyes sought for some trace of the package he had done so much to bring through with safety, but which, after all, had been taken while he slept. Certainly it was an unfortunate and ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... the accomplishment of his plans. When his mother mentioned the matter to him, he gave her such a look that she did not venture to pursue it. His glance plainly signified, "Do you wish, then, to ruin me for the sake of your illegitimate offspring?" Forthwith she selfishly abandoned Antoine, for before everything else she sought her own peace and quietness. Pierre, who did not like violent measures, and who rejoiced at being able to eject his brother without a disturbance, then played ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... moment the Head Master hesitated. Into his mind there flashed the image of two notable figures—the fathers whom he had entreated to send sons to the Manor. If—if by so doing he had compassed the boys' ruin, could he ever have forgiven himself? But now, the boys themselves had justified his action; they had proved worthy of their breeding and the traditions of ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... make it not only proper, but necessary, that a young man with serious intentions shall take his sweetheart out, give her presents, send her flowers, go driving with her, and in numberless little ways incur expense. This is all very delightful for her, but to him it means ruin. And at the end he may find that she was only flirting ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... said to his four brother committeemen in Massey's back room, "I have not a doubt in my mind that you are all honestly convinced that Mr. Haley has stolen the coins. Otherwise you would not have made a matter public that was quite sure to ruin the young ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... skill of a veteran. The rebel was again obliged to change his plan of attack, and commenced by rushing furiously upon Frank, endeavoring to beat down his guard by mere strength. But this proved his ruin; for Frank met him promptly at all points, and, watching the moment when the rebel carelessly opened his guard, he sprang forward and buried his bayonet to the hilt in his breast. The thrust was mortal, and the rebel threw his arms above his head, and sank ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... first houses in Paris. Do you suppose that he would be content with that? Oh! no, of course not! Monsieur must marry. As if any one needed to marry! And, worse yet, he marries a Parisian woman, one of those frowsy-haired chits that are the ruin of an honest house, when he had at his hand a fine girl, of almost his own age, a countrywoman, used to work, and well put together, as you ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... admonished his men. "Behold," said he, "and see before you those false and scornful heathen, who have destroyed and ravished your kith and kin, your near ones and neighbours, and on your own goods and bodies have done so much mischief. Avenge now your friends and your kinsfolk; avenge the great ruin and burnings; avenge all the loss and the travail that for so long a space we have suffered at their hands. For myself this day I will avenge me for all these bitter wrongs. I will avenge the oaths these ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... like drowning; there is a feeble cry, a little ineffectual assistance from the bystanders, and then they go under. It is not a question of pinch with them; they have fallen into the gaping mouth of ruin, and it has devoured them. If we ever see them again, it is in the second generation as waiters (upon Providence), or governesses, and we say, 'Why, dear me, that was Bullion's son (or daughter), wasn't it?' using the past tense, as if they were dead. 'I remember him when he lived ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... At length he found himself among the ruins of Dacre Abbey. The silence and solemnity of the scene made him conscious, by the contrast, of his own agitated existence; the desolation of the beautiful ruin accorded with his own crushed and beautiful hopes. He sat himself at the feet of the clustered columns, and, covering his face ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... none in that sense a few moments ago, but all my theories are falling to the ground. Forbear though, Miss Bailey," he said with a sudden air of sportive mystery, "you cannot afford to ruin your chances of success for the sake of a merely ornamental gift. You play the grande dame so well, that you are sure to reap the penalty of it. Forbear, I warn you, before it is too late. I know of what I speak. I have been a gentleman ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... satisfaction of these desires the pleasure which they give. He also appointed the "evil inclination" to incite to all these bodily pleasures. Now if this "evil inclination" gets the upper hand of the reason, the result is excess and ruin. Hence the need of general abstemiousness. And the ascetic class serve the purpose of reinforcing general ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... and turned to look at the dark windows; he then took a step towards the door, as though to knock, a course which had infallibly proved our ruin; but seeing us already hurrying down the street under our double burthen, thought better or worse of it, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... to know he must die and leave her. He says if he should get well he would take her home with him, or educate her here. Oh, how awful! What can the child mean? So careful, too, of her! He says we shall ruin her health making her work so hard, and sleep in such a place. O, John! do you think he ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... patch. These signs gave us but little uneasiness, as the number of the warriors scarcely exceeded that of our own party. At noon we rested under the walls of a large fort, built in these solitudes some years since by M. St. Vrain. It was now abandoned and fast falling into ruin. The walls of unbaked bricks were cracked from top to bottom. Our horses recoiled in terror from the neglected entrance, where the heavy gates were torn from their hinges and flung down. The area within was overgrown with weeds, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... could not give so much, that we had it not, that it would ruin us; in short, all the pleas that merchants, as you knew, advance when they are chaffering with each other. But after several days, seeing that the African merchant stood quite firm and would abate nothing ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... season. Some people know not when to leave off pulling Rhubarb, but appear unwilling to cease until there is none to pull; and it is a pity this should happen, especially as after the delicate supplies of early spring are past, Rhubarb is a comparatively poor thing, and to ruin a plantation to get stalks for wine is great folly. For wine-making a special plantation should be made, from which not one stick should be taken for table use. The summer stalks will then be ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... grosser weight of authority and popular consent. The advantage of temporal prosperity had deserted the Pagan cause, and passed over to the service of Christianity. The Romans themselves, the most powerful and enlightened nation of the globe, had renounced their ancient superstition; and, if the ruin of their empire seemed to accuse the efficacy of the new faith, the disgrace was already retrieved by the conversion of the victorious Goths. The valiant and fortunate Barbarians, who subdued the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... anything for human perfectibility. Some were in Botany Bay, and others, like the indomitable Holcroft, were absorbed in the struggle to live, with the handicap of political persecution against them. Godwin, indeed, never fell into despair over the ruin of his political hopes. Like Beethoven he revered Napoleon, at all events until he assumed the title of Emperor, and would console himself with the conviction that this "auspicious and beneficent genius" had "without violence to the principles of the French Revolution ... suspended their morbid ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... and opened abysses into which the ships seemed to sink in order to be hurled up again by the next wave. The storm, with its dismal yells, attacked the masts and broke them as though they were straws, and lashed the ships, which had already left the harbor, out into the sea, to certain ruin, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... half-mad days of delirious seeking, the princeling rubbed sleeves with the scoundrel and the clod, and each man's ability was his only protection. Fortune played no favorites. The tale is told of the judge who drove home in his coach through a shallow creek. Ruin faced him for the lack of a few thousand dollars. He took out his ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... hi, ho! 'Tis a huge mistake, ye know, To let ructions and recriminations charm ye. If they don't abate their hate, they'll bring ruin on the State, Will the Ballyhooly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... large force of men driven from a very strong position, carefully prepared and defended by a vast number of guns, so quickly and easily as were the Portuguese before Oporto. The bishop, after rejecting Soult's summons and disregarding his prayers to save the city from ruin, suddenly lost heart, and after all his boasting, slipped away after dark to the Serra Convent, leaving the command to the generals of the army. The feint which Soult had made with Merle's division the night before against the Portuguese left succeeded perfectly, the Portuguese massing ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... read, this outbreak at two localities that have never done me any personal harm except a little mud-splashing. But this is a thing that has to be said now, because we are approaching a crisis when dilatory ways, muddle, and waste may utterly ruin us. This is the way things have been done in England, this is our habit of procedure, and if they are done in this way after the war this Empire ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... these low, filthy lodging houses already alluded to. From that time he became an altered man; his wife said that he lost all energy, all taste in designing, love of reading, and fondness for his family; began to frequent drinking shops, and was visibly on the road to ruin. Hearing of these lodging houses, he succeeded in renting a tenement in one of them, for the same sum which he had paid for the miserable dwelling. Under the influence of a neat, airy, pleasant, domestic home, the man's ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... out of their mouldering sepulchres and crumbling bones. O, American Nation, with your wonderful civilization of today, it is well to pause here amid the "steam shriek" career of your harried life with all its getting and spending, to contemplate the ruin of even this once ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... strength, it is true that knowledges reduced into exact methods have a show of strength, in that each part seemeth to support and sustain the other; but this is more satisfactory than substantial, like unto buildings which stand by architecture and compaction, which are more subject to ruin than those that are built more strong in their several parts, though less compacted. But it is plain that the more you recede from your grounds, the weaker do you conclude; and as in nature, the more you remove ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... upon the ball of the foot very flatly and clumsily; others come down upon the heel as though a young elephant was moving; and others, again, ruin their shoes and their appearance by walking upon the side of the foot. Many practice a stoop called the Grecian bend, and when they are thirty, will pass well, unless the face be seen, for ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... peasantry, too, had joined in the pursuit, and the wing seemed utterly ruined. To retrieve this disorder was now hopeless, for the French general had extended his line to the extraordinary length of ten miles. His baggage-train was his ruin. The whole Spanish line now advanced, shouting, and only halting at intervals to cannonade the enemy. The French returned a feeble fire, and began to retreat. But retreat was now impossible, and they must fight, or be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... everywhere in public with Sainte-Croix. This behaviour, authorised as it was by the example of the highest nobility, made no impression upon the Marquis of Brinvilliers, who merrily pursued the road to ruin, without worrying about his wife's behaviour. Not so M. de Dreux d'Aubray: he had the scrupulosity of a legal dignitary. He was scandalised at his daughter's conduct, and feared a stain upon his own fair name: he procured a warrant for the arrest of Sainte-Croix wheresoever ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... said he, "this will I reap to-morrow." And on the morrow he came with the intent to reap it, and when he came there he found nothing but the bare straw. "Oh gracious Heaven," he exclaimed, "I know that whosoever has begun my ruin is completing it, and has also ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... Noble Lord, Goe to the rude Ribs of that ancient Castle, Through Brazen Trumpet send the breath of Parle Into his ruin'd Eares, and thus deliuer: Henry Bullingbrooke vpon his knees doth kisse King Richards hand, and sends allegeance And true faith of heart to his Royall Person: hither come Euen at his feet, to lay my Armes and Power, Prouided, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... or half-protecting canvas, or open sky, shedding our own blood or stanching that of our wounded defenders, students or teachers, whatever our calling and our ability, we belong, not to ourselves, but to our imperilled country, whose danger is our calamity, whose ruin would be our enslavement, whose rescue shall be our ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a ghastly ruin; whatever is venerable or sad in its wreck being disguised by attempts to put it to present uses of the basest kind. It has been composed of arcades borne by marble shafts, and walls of brick faced with marble: but ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... been shipwrecked on the coast below Nannizabuloe and cast ashore, the one saved out of thirty. He asked to be shown a church in which to give thanks for his preservation, and the people led him to a ruin bedded in the sands. It had lain since the days of Arundel's Rebellion. The Londoner vowed to build a new church there on the towans, where the songs of prayer and praise should mingle with the voice of the waves which ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was more dreadful to her than the scaffold. All the promised fruits of the Revolution had disappeared, and desolation and crime alone were realized. The Girondists still met in Madame Roland's library to deliberate concerning measures for averting the impending ruin. All was unavailing. ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... be ruined herself or else ruin Girard, she would far sooner accept the former result. A demon, Guiol of course, tempted her in this very way, with the wondrous sublimity of such a sacrifice. God, she wrote, asked of her a bloody offering. She could tell her of saints who, being accused, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... poured into this princely receptacle, diffusing a strong odour of rum. Each chief carefully tasted the stuff, and I was pained, on gathering, from the expression of their countenances, that they obviously relished the "fire-water" which has been the ruin of so many peoples in these beautiful but benighted seas. However, there was not enough left to go round, and it was manifestly unlikely that William Bludger had succeeded in conveying larger supplies ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... up the biscuit and inserted it in the next parcel of rice and plantain stem. This was placed within the elephant's mouth. At the first crunch the animal showed evident signs of disgust, and at once spat out the whole of the contents. There lay a complete ruin of the neat package, which had been burst by the power of the great jaws; but among the scattered rice that had been ejected we perceived the biscuit which had caused the second instance of bad behaviour. So utterly disgusted was the elephant with this tiny foreign ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... new in the annals of the Carthews, and Singleton was prepared to make the most of it. It had been long his practice to prophesy for his second son a career of ruin and disgrace. There is an advantage in this artless parental habit. Doubtless the father is interested in his son; but doubtless also the prophet grows to be interested in his prophecies. If the one goes wrong, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forgot that sultry evening, with the close, noisome atmosphere of the hot mission-hall, and the confused buzzing of many voices, which after a short silence began to hum in his ears. The drunkard was still standing in the doorway, the very wreck and ruin of a man; and every detail of his loathsome, degraded appearance was burnt in on Felix's brain. He felt stupefied and bewildered—as if he had received almost a death-blow. But in his inmost soul a cry went up to heaven, "Lord, Thou ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... of them to leave!" the low, well-modulated voice he had heard before that night said. "Even if we get away with the prince, their stories would ruin us. There is no knowing how soon the gabblings of the old woman might reach the ears of ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... been long thinking the same," said Ernest. "I would do anything to serve him; and the life he is now leading is enough to ruin him in health and mind. He looks thin and ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... course," said Gallagher, "and I showed him the ruin of the little houseen, the same as you told me to. 'And was it there,' says he, 'that the great General, the immortal founder of the liberties of Bolivia, first saw the light?' 'It was,' says I. So he took a leap out of the motor-car and stood in front of the old house with his ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... regret we left the Mount of Olives for Hebron, and after three hours' journey reached Rachel's Tomb. Seeing that it was greatly out of repair and going fast to ruin, Lady Montefiore gave directions for an estimate for its restoration to be made. Half way to Hebron we rested for an hour near a fortress and a great reservoir. Our route lay through a mountainous country, little ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... not cry out, and cry, They are drunk, but not with Wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink; they are intoxicated with the deadly poyson of sin, which will, if its malignity be not by wholsom means allayed, bring Soul and Body, and Estate and Countrey, and all, to ruin ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart Republic, or in any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... nuss—hold Georgie—not know Miss Letty. Ho! Miss Letty! my hold 'art's a-busted a'most! But you's come back. T'ank do Lor'! Look 'ere, Miss Letty." (He started up, put the child down, and, with sudden energy seized the bottle of ruin by the neck.) "Look ere, yous oftin say to me afore you hoed away, 'Geo'gie, do, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... was observing, the minister of the reigning sovereign, was suddenly taken into the greatest aversion, and menaced with the ruin of his fortune, loss of liberty, loss of life even, by intrigue and personal hatred, to which the king gave too readily an attentive ear. But Heaven permits (still, however, out of consideration ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... perceives that his house is leaking, tries to remedy that by putting on new tiles, which oppose the rain and wind with new vigor and thoroughness, and keep the house free from leaks, which at the last would utterly ruin it. In the same manner, the superiors of the order, after the completion of their three years of service in the office, would beyond any doubt be tired and liable to yield more easily to any dispensation in the rigor of the observance, so that gradually the edifice would be undermined—as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... religious one; and so without reflection, the cross is torn from the high altar, and used as a military signal. Religion was employed as a pretext, in order to lead the unhappy Poles step by step into ruin; and Russia was just so employed in Turkey, when the 'heathen' undertook to disturb her in her Christian work. Rise up, therefore, orthodox nation, and fight for the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... but that some moment must arrive in which they will be enabled to produce a pretended reform and a real revolution. If ever the body of this compound Constitution of ours is subverted, either in favor of unlimited monarchy or of wild democracy, that ruin will most certainly be the result of this very sort of machinations against the House of Commons. It is not from a confidence in the views or intentions of any statesman that I think he is to be indulged in these ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lending a hand to William, and gratifying this passion of his for crushing people. An Alsatian friend of mine, who knows his Germany well, said to me the other day that, in sending their pictures for exhibition at Berlin, our painters are likely to ruin their own market. For a long time the King of Prussia has wanted to have a salon at Berlin, and he looks to French painters to give it brilliancy and to attract those foreign artists who are accustomed to French ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... however, volunteer, beginning with the aged Naismes, the Nestor of the Franks. His offer is not accepted, nor are those of Oliver, Roland, and Turpin. Roland then proposes that Ganelon shall be sent; and hence arises the Wrath of Ganelon, which was the ruin of Roland and the peers who stood by him. The warriors attack each other in speeches of Homeric fury. Charles preserves his dignity, and Ganelon departs on his mission. He deliberately sells himself, and seals the fate of the peers whom ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... her foolish high heels and her shocking openwork stockings and her negligible dress and her exposed throat and her fur stole, and she was so delicious and so absurd and so futile and so sure of her power that—that—well, you aren't going to countermand any new frock. That chit has the right to ruin me—not because of anything she's done, but because she is. I am ready to commit peccadilloes, but not crimes. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... again to consult an encyclopaedia for both date and place-name, but he remembered the one distinctly and the other vaguely after possibly thirty years. In the same way he could recall the whole plot of a play which he had not seen for half a century. Holcroft's 'Road to Ruin,' thus, was one that he once described to me. He was a master of the art, now wellnigh lost, of "capping verses"; and he had a rare knowledge of the less-known Elizabethan dramatists. In his first Charge occurs a quotation from an "old ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... the purpose of removing the pernicious advisers of the sovereign. The last was, he announced, the cause of his taking up arms, and he disclaimed any motive of ambitious turbulence for raising his standard. He said, "I am endeavoring to avert the ruin of my family, and to maintain the emperor on a throne which is placed in jeopardy by the acts of traitors. My cause ought, therefore, to be that of all those who keep the blood of the great Hong-wou, now falsely aspersed, in affectionate ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Brigades of the Division were being moved by the same means, and there is no doubt that the Auxiliary 'Bus Companies were having a pretty busy time! In the darkness the journey seemed endless. It was too bumpy to allow even a doze, sleepy as most of us felt. The whole area was a desolate ruin, but in the darkness we were, of course, able to see little or nothing of it. For something like 40 miles, the Somme area, through which we were passing, was nothing but an immense wilderness—every ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman |
