"Shattering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... materialistic philosophy has helped them to look at realities. It has engendered a fine concern about average people, about the voiceless multitudes who have been left to pass unnoticed. Not least among the blessings is a shattering of the good-and-bad-man theory: the assassination of tyrants or the adoration of saviors. A shallow and specious other-worldliness has been driven out: an other-worldliness which is really nothing but laziness about this one. And if from a speculative angle the Marxian tradition has shaded ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... indescribable fury for a full hour, the lightning incessantly flashing all round the little knoll with such dazzling brilliancy that the entire landscape, almost to its uttermost confines, was nearly as fully revealed as at noonday, while the thunder crashed and rattled and boomed with a nerve-shattering violence that effectually drowned all other sounds. And, to add still further to the weird impressiveness of the scene, the storm had scarcely been raging ten minutes when the swamp was seen to be on fire in several places immediately to leeward ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... in its inferior departments by far more careless than it is at present, and liable to thousands of interruptions and mal-practices, supporting themselves upon old traditionary usages which required at least half a century, and the shattering everywhere given to old systems by the French Revolution, together with the universal energy of mind applied to those subjects over the whole length and breadth of Christendom, to approach with any effectual reforms. Knowing this, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... seemed to be in distress for want of air. Then the loon settled upon the bottom, and with lifted beak sprang up with much force against the ice, piercing it with its dagger-like bill, but not breaking it. Down to the bottom it went again, and again hurled itself up against the ice, this time shattering it and rising to the surface, where the grebe was quick to follow. Now it looked as if the loon had gone under the ice to rescue its friend from a dangerous situation, for had not the grebe soon found the air, it must have perished, and persons who witnessed the incident interpreted it in ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... would have been spared days and weeks of uncertainty and worry. He realized now that he had never felt right, felt happy about that bill. Yet although his bonds were now to be broken, and he was to be free at last, the shattering of his fetters was not to be a pleasant process. He knew Mr. Carter too well to deceive himself into imagining that the affair would pass off lightly. Mr. Carter was a proud man. He would not like having his gift ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... was not finished. A sudden, clattering roar had come from beneath the hood, a clanking jangle which told him that his eyes had sought the oil gauge too late,—the shattering, agonizing cacophony of a broken connecting rod, the inevitable result of a missing oil supply and its consequent burnt bearing. Hopelessly, dejectedly Barry shut off the engine and pulled to one side of the road,—through ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... shattering to certain closed minds. For the coyote had not only adapted to the country of the white sands; he had evolved into something which could not be dismissed as an animal, clever and cunning, but limited to beast range. Six cubs had been brought back on the first expedition, ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... has been done successfully even in quite hard soils and it can be done if time is taken and the proper care is exercised. The conditions of successful hammer driving are: Perfect alignment of the pile with the line of stroke of the hammer; the use of a cushion cap to prevent shattering of the pile-head, and a heavy hammer with a short drop. The pile itself must have become well cured and hardened. At best, hammer driving is uncertain, however; shattered piles have frequently to be withdrawn and the builder is never sure that fractures ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... the dead might wake to hear Swelled on the night air, far and clear; Then smote the Indian tomahawk On crashing door and shattering lock; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... swung to one side. Her right forward plane crashed against the wall of ice, shattering some of the hard crystal. But on the rebound the fluttering flying machine sank lower. Jack tried to make her rise. She refused ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... can it be?" I demanded, driven by my wrongs to the cruelty of shattering his illusions. "Who ever heard of a pirate's treasure that wasn't moonshine? The moment I had read Aunt Jane's letter telling of the perfectly absurd business she was setting out on I rushed down by the first boat. Of course I meant to take her back with me, to put a stop to all this madness; ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... "Lee Hannaford." It had reference to some current dispute about the merits of a new bullet. Hannaford, writing with authority, criticised the invention; he gave particulars (the result of an experiment on an old horse) as to its mode of penetrating flesh and shattering bone; there was a gusto in his style, that of the true artist in bloodshed. Pointing out the signature to Arnold Jacks, Dr. Derwent asked in a subdued tone, as when one speaks ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... alignment of the armies given above, and as will be shown in detail later, in the recital of the actual progress of the fighting. Important as was this movement, however, it was the least of the three elements in General von Moltke's plan for the shattering of the great defense line ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... against a thwarted desire. The education that should have been spread over his whole twenty-five years, an education that would have taught him how to meet the negations of life, of duty, of pity even, burst upon him now in one shattering moment. He had broken his law, his own law; and, mercifully, his law was breaking him. When he rose to his feet as his sister came into the room, he staggered under the shock of such ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... the shrill CHEEP-CHEEP-CHEEP of the patrolman's whistle, and a shattering crash as the officer flung his body against the partition—then the bark of a revolver shot, the tinkle of breaking glass, as the man fired through the office window—and past Jimmie Dale, speeding now for the front ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... praying. Over me was the blue winter sky and the gold sun; under me the treacherous spread of the lake that was no lake, that one misstep might send me through, to God knew what hideous depth of unfrozen water, or bare, bone-shattering stone; behind me were Macartney and Macartney's men; and close up to me, nearer every second, my Paulette, my dream girl who had never been mine. There was nothing to do for both of us but to keep on crossing Lac Tremblant. Missteps might ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... the altar room of the Temple, shattering the silence. The Hirlaji turned in surprise to ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... so concerned to know! You hope I like it. Bang goes something big away Off there upstairs. The very tread of men As great as those is shattering to the frame Of such a little house. Once left alone, You and I, dear, will go with softer steps Up and down stairs and through the rooms, and none But sudden winds that snatch them from our hands Will ever ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... suavity had been to make Mary forget the position in which she now stood to Joe. Eddy had created for the moment quite an old-time atmosphere of good fellowship. She hated Joe for shattering this and reminding her that she was his employee. Her quick flush was not ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... flicker of lightning shivered across the darkness. The dead electric burners leaped into golden globes of light once more, and in the garish, shattering glare the man and woman sprang apart and stood staring at each other, trembling, with ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Whom the white man worships, and Who also works through nature, as you learned, Hokosa, when He rolled the lightning back upon your head, shattering your god and beating down ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... midst of a terrible thunder-storm—when the East and the West were answering each other with alternate flashes of forked lightning that seemed to split the black clouds with cracks of blinding blue, awful in their blasting silence—followed by great, billowy, shattering rolls of thunder, as loud as if the sky had been a huge kettledrum, on which the clubs of giant drummers were beating a terrible onset; while at sudden intervals, down came the big-dropped rain, pattering to ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... it be collectively considered in that healthy state of mind which the term moral implies." It is just that moral which the British Expeditionary Force has been proved to possess in so rich a measure, and which must belong to all good soldiers in these days of nerve-shattering war. ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... and Saul met no more, though their homes were but a few miles apart, and it must have been difficult to avoid each other. Samuel yearned over the man whom he had learned to love, and it must have been pain to him to see the shattering of the vessel which he had formed. However natural his mourning, and however indicative of his sweet nature, it was wrong, because it showed that he had not yet reconciled himself to God's purpose, though ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wanting, that even in the Empire the discipline of workday experience is already diverging from that line that once trained the German subjects into the most loyal and unrepining subservience to dynastic ambitions. Of course, just now, under the shattering impact of warlike atrocities and patriotic clamour, the workday spirit of insubordination and critical scrutiny is gone out of sight and out ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... head. There had been too much excitement for him to feel in the least like sleeping. He could not bear to think of it with the Dazzler leaping and surging along and shattering the seas into clouds of spray on her weather bow. His clothes had half dried already, and he preferred to stay on ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... these?—we who suffer so The shattering sacrifice, the huge despair, The terrors loosed like lightnings on the air, To leave all nature blackened from that curse! The big things are the enemies we know, The little things the traitors. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... to muse on vanished youth; it is bitter to lose an election or a suit. Bitter are rage suppressed, vengeance unwreaked, and prize-money kept back. Bitter are a failing crop, a glutted market, and a shattering spec. Bitter are rents in arrear and tithes in kind. Bitter are salaries reduced and perquisites destroyed. Bitter is a tax, particularly if misapplied; a rate, particularly if embezzled. Bitter is a trade too full, and bitterer still a trade ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure. The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, The hard brands shiver on the steel, The splintered spear shafts crack and fly, The horse and rider reel; They reel, they roll in clanging lists, And when the tide of combat stands, Perfume and flowers fall in showers, That lightly rain ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... quarters of the town: but on November 1st, three bombs struck the church. They were the first heavy drops of rain in a thunderstorm. The roof crashed in: and presently the pedestal of the Virgin received a shattering blow. This was on the very day when Albert discovered why for so long the church had been immune. A spy had been safely signalling from the tower, telling German gunners how and where to strike with the most damage to the town. When all the factories which gave wealth to Albert, ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... other hours than those of which she told him; extending the power of the dark horror that had gripped him when he had heard her admission with regard to the Maison Doree, and, like the obscene creatures in the 'Desolation of Nineveh,' shattering, stone by stone, the whole edifice of his past.... If, now, he turned aside whenever his memory repeated the cruel name of the Maison Doree it was because that name recalled to him, no longer, as, such ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... listening tensely. He could hear nothing. He went in, and for an instant experienced that ecstatic thrill which only comes to elderly gentlemen of solitary habit who in a house full of their juniors find themselves alone at last. Then a voice spoke, shattering his dream of solitude. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... his instinct (true, though dumb) Tells him by subtle signs No bullet loosed by me shall come Shattering earth below his tum Or whistling through ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 - 1917 Almanack • Various
... flung themselves upon the clay, while high-powered bullets plunked on either side of them or soughed overhead. The two automatics blazed in shattering chorus. The guards parted, backed up, some ran away, others fell, and Peter felt the sudden burn of screaming lead across his shoulder. He slipped another clip of cartridges into the steel butt; they leaped up and raced to the white steps. A rifle spurted ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Ypres is memorable, the silence is terrible. It is the silence of imminent and breathless things, full of strange secrets, thrilling with a fearful expectation, broken by sudden and shattering voices that speak and then are still—voices that seem to come out of the bowels of the earth near at hand and are answered by voices more distant, the vicious hiss of the shrapnel, the crisp rattle of the machine-guns, the roar of "Mother," that sounds like an invisible express train ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... stand it up again. Already before the war half of the industrial class had been out of work, the attempt to put them back into wages employment on the old lines was futile from the outset—the absolute shattering of the currency system alone would have been sufficient to prevent that, and it was necessary therefore to take over the housing, feeding, and clothing of this worldwide multitude without exacting any return in labour whatever. In a little while the mere absence of occupation ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... despair such as he had never known before. For now he had sincerely hoped for salvation, and his hope had been frustrated. He had clung to a belief that Lily's love, Lily's companionship might avail to rescue him from the phantom, or the reality, that was destroying his power, shattering his manhood. The belief was dashed from him, and he sank deeper in the sea of terror. They stayed on for a while in this Sleepy Hollow, but Maurice no longer felt its peace. Remote as it was, cloistered ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... devoted exclusively to the higher education of women. It solved in a practical way the question that had been discussed in many lands for ages: "Could women be granted equal intellectual privileges with men without shattering the social life?" Therefore, Matthew Vassar, because he was blessed with vast wealth, has taught the world the all- important fact that "ignorance is the curse of God and knowledge the wings whereby we fly to heaven," a statement as applicable to ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... examinations to try, Miss Noble?" she asked pleasantly, by way of shattering the frigid silence that had settled down on three of ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... their assumed characters, the evening meal was ushered in with a peace-shattering clamour from the drums and a raucous blare from conch-shell horns. Then the devout murderers offered up prayers of fervency to the great god, beseeching their more immediate branch of the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... the folk thickest in the rout, thither did he guide his horses with a cry, and under his axle-trees men fell prone from their chariots, and the cars were overturned with a din of shattering. But straight over the ditch, in forward flight, leaped the swift horses. And the heart of Patroklos urged him against Hector, for he was eager to smite him, but his swift steeds bore Hector forth and away. And even as beneath a ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... dawned earlier than the day. At five o'clock the noise of drum and clarion began, and the light of torches flared on the painted fronts of houses—yellow and pink and blue—in the quaint old village street. A little later a band came by with shattering brass and booming drum, and for an hour or so the whole place was in a ferment. The cavalry came clattering into the Place, the hoarse voice of Monsieur Dorn barked through the orders which had by this ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... these primitive "inferiors" had delivered the first shock, and the mind-probes of the dolphins had sent the "supermen" close to the edge of sanity. To accept an animal form as an equal had been shattering. ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... of more or less drunken and untrained young men marching into battle—muddle-headed, sentimental, dangerous and futile hobbledehoys—there will be thousands of sober men braced up to their highest possibilities, intensely doing their best; in the place of charging battalions, shattering impacts of squadrons and wide harvest-fields of death, there will be hundreds of little rifle battles fought up to the hilt, gallant dashes here, night surprises there, the sudden sinister faint gleam of nocturnal bayonets, brilliant ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Marty sighed likewise. Across in the covert of the woods someone had begun to beat a tattoo on the drum. Presently a cornet joined in, shattering the echoes with ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... their men killed or disabled, conceived a wholesome fear for such terrible arms, so intrepidly plied. They suspended the attack, and, applying their long lances after the fashion of crow-bars, succeeded, without approaching too near, in shattering the handles of the scythes. This safeguard demolished, a new attack commenced. The issue was not doubtful. While the scythes were falling under the blows of the soldiers, my mother hurriedly said a few words to Martha and Henory. The two, with a look of pride and determination ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... axe, struck but a single blow and disappeared. This blow fell upon the head of Mark Noble; it did not kill him, but left him an insane man till the day of his death, forty years afterward. A furious mob at once collected, and made an attack on the tavern, bursting in the doors and shattering every pane of glass in the windows. It was only through the intervention of Captain John Langdon, a warm and popular patriot, that the hotel was saved ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... speak for itself, but when one big gun in a sticky place fell out of alignment for an instant I saw his eyebrows contract. The artillery passed on with the same inhuman speed and silence as the Line; and the Cavalry's shattering trumpets ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... struck up the dust at my feet. Nothing was more probable than a ball through the head by ACCIDENT, which might have had the beneficial effect of ridding the traders from a spy. A boy was sitting upon the gunwale of one of the boats, when a bullet suddenly struck him in the head, shattering the skull to atoms. NO ONE HAD DONE IT. The body fell into the water, and the fragments of the skull were ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... nearer. At point-blank range the English infantrymen now opened fire. Shattering discharges were poured upon the French. The fronts of the divisions were obliterated. The men in advance who survived would have given back, but the pressure of the masses in their rear forced them ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... great bell of the city spire Is a far prouder one than such as I; And its deafening stroke, compared with mine, Is thunder compared with a sigh: But the shattering note Of his brazen throat, As it swells on the Sabbath air, Far oftener rings For other things Than a call ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... they were. I'd motored on them. Kendal looked at me as he might have looked at the survivor of a shattering experience. Then he looked at his car. He seemed to be seeing all the roads in Belgium in ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... well he remembered her as she stood there, shattering his life with her cold, light words—a tall, slim girl, in her white dinner dress! She had been very fair then, with a quantity of soft flaxen hair, which shortly after she had taken to dyeing—a thing he had always hated. She had a small, heart-shaped face, so light in colour as to suggest anaemia, ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... uselessly by, and plunged hissing into the waves. The massive solid balls of the Monitor were far more effective. Nearly every one struck the broad sides of the Merrimac, breaking her armor in several places, and shattering the wood backing behind it. Many times the Merrimac tried to ram her small antagonist, and thus to rid herself of this teasing tormentor, but the active "cheese-box" slipped agilely out of her way. The Monitor in turn tried to disable the screw of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... is the world, A voice within her will repeat my name, And she will say, "He was indeed my friend!" O, would I were a soldier, not a scholar, That the loud march, the deafening beat of drums, The shattering blast of the brass-throated trumpet, The din of arms, the onslaught and the storm, And a swift death, might make me deaf forever To the upbraidings of this ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a consummation—the marked tendency, I fear, of the day—produces, no doubt, cruel suffering. Yet, when the evil of competition passes a certain limit, must it not in time work its own cure? I suppose it will, but then through some convulsed crisis, shattering all around it like an earthquake. Meantime, for how many is life made a struggle; enjoyment and rest curtailed; labour terribly enhanced beyond almost what nature can bear I often think that this world would be the most terrible of enigmas, were it not for the firm ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... officer returned, spoke hastily to Courtenay, and then calling to the men to follow, jumped the low barricade and ran splashing out into the open hollow with the men streaming after him. A burst of rifle fire and the shattering crash of bombs met them, and continued fiercely for a few minutes after the last of the counter-attacking party had swarmed out. But the attack broke down, never reached the barricade beyond the Pan, was, in fact, cut down almost as ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... pressing it until the blade disappeared. Then feeling certain it was dead he ran to Alexis, who lay motionless on the ground. By the side of him lay the stock of the gun and a portion of the barrel; it had exploded, completely shattering the Russian's left hand. But this was not his only or even his most serious injury. The bear had struck him on the side of the head, almost tearing off a portion ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... was more than the utterance of a breaking heart. It was full of agony. But also it uttered the shattering of a structure built of false pride, of old beliefs, of bloodless standards, of ignorance of self. It betrayed the final conquest of her doubts, and out of their darkness blazed the unquenchable spirit of a woman who had found herself, her love, her salvation, her duty to ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... to know by what right the newspapers speak of the affair as "a dynamite outrage"? A very curious surmise has been put forward locally, namely, that the house had been stricken by lightning. The shattering of a building by lightning is by no means phenomenal, and the absence of all trace of any terrestrial explosive agency, gives colour to the hypothesis that the destruction was ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... the confusion of that terrible day for French Rule, the 13th September, calling to see her, finds her a corpse just ready for interment. Fortunately for the heroine, a bombshell forgotten in the yard, all at once and in the nick of time igniting, explodes, shattering the tenement in fragments. The concussion recalls Mdlle. de Rochebrune to life; a happy marriage soon after ensues. The chief character in the novel, the Intendant sails shortly after for France, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... time a series of earthquakes began. They were not severe, but were continuous. The ground cracked open in places, and some houses were overturned, but there were no wall-shattering shocks—only a continual and dreadful trembling, accompanied by awful ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... is presented to us in words, and unable to think of or understand anything without such images, it is appropriate and right that we view it literally, just as it is painted, that He descends with the banner, shattering and destroying the gates of hell; and we should put aside thoughts that are too deep and incomprehensible for us." "But we ought ... simply to fix and fasten our hearts and thoughts on the words of the Creed, which says: 'I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... spring into the mind with shattering swiftness. This was one of them. A revelation seemed to come to Colwyn as light from the sky at midnight, which, lays everything bare in ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... his 'sto' boots,'" Pocahontas explained, laughing, as she extended her hand. "Sawney's intentions were honorable enough. I shall be glad of your assistance—as usual," with a merry glance, "for these aggravating birds are shattering my ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... So far from it, he was saying to himself, "One 'ud ha' thought now she might ha' took a sort of pride in it," when the bottom of the world seemed to drop away from under his feet, and his irrelevant meditations ended in a shattering thud down on the rocky pavement a long way below. He never heard the shouts and shrieks which the incident occasioned above his head. Once only he became dimly conscious of a quivering network of prismatic flashes, which he could not see through, and a booming throb in his ears, which made him murmur ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... that call can never understand, those who have heard will forgive this feeble description of the intoxicating, soul-shattering, maddening sound. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... of shattering the foundations of romance and poetry, it must be said here once and for all that the heart has nothing whatever to do with the emotions. It is simply a pump, and a large part of its work consists in pumping blood to the brain. The greater the brain, the greater and more ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... and the one who remained proceeded to examine the wound. A terrible arquebus-shot had passed through the leg, shattering the bone: ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... were all probably being whirled round and round one of the pools they had passed, like scraps of straw, and the shattering of the raft seemed a certainty; but their big companion was a man of resource. Seating himself upon the edge of the raft as it glided evenly along, he waited with legs extended for the coming contact. His feet touched the rock, and a vigorous thrust eased their craft off, the brave ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... immovable before the enemy, whose advance had been stopped; and when encouraging his soldiers by gesture and voice, one of his aides-de-camp conjured him to dismount. When in the act of obeying, a cannon-ball struck him, shattering both his knees. Marshal Bessieres assisted his terrified officers in wrapping round him a cuirassier's cloak and getting him carried to an ambulance; but, recollecting his irritation of the evening before, he turned away his head as he grasped ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... on wave shocks, and confounds The bounding bulk whereon it bounds And breaks and shattering seaward sounds As crying of the old sea's wolves and hounds That moan and ravin and rage and wail, So steed on steed encountering sheer Shocked, and the strength of Launceor's spear Shivered on Balen's shield, and fear Bade ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... fluctuating fortunes but always with stubborn valour, clinging desperately to their positions or yielding ground to superior strength, awaiting with confidence the hour when the supreme master would strike the shattering blow that, while relieving the pressure on them, would completely change the aspect of the war. It was while pondering his masterstroke, and deliberating on the choice of the path across the Alps that was to lead to it, that Bonaparte gave his approval; while elaborating a scheme to ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... general advancement of those interests where the whole were concerned. Then, again, the vast accumulation of wealth in the Southern States, caused by the overshadowing of all other commodities of commerce—cotton—created a jealousy at the North that nothing but the prostration of the South, the shattering of her commerce, the destruction of her homes, and the freedom of her slaves, could answer. The wealth of the South had become a proverb The "Wealthy Southern Planter" had become an eyesore to the North, and to humble ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... he was astonished to find how little both money anxieties and the shattering of literary hopes distressed him. For the first, it was clear that his mother and sister could live with an adequate degree of comfort and dignity. And as for his literary hopes, he realised that the failure had been a real revelation ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... denounced the stock as a clever forgery. When the man heard that he made a snatch for the paper, missed it, and then made a break for the door. Fred darted across his path and upset him near the door. He fell heavily, striking the plate glass and shattering it. ...
— Halsey & Co. - or, The Young Bankers and Speculators • H. K. Shackleford
... of the foe could submerge a shell from one of the little motorboats struck her squarely upon the bridge, killing the captain and other officers, and shattering the conning tower. The men below no longer had a means of guiding the vessel, which drifted toward her nearest neighbor and rammed her amidships. This blow, while not necessarily fatal, threw the latter out of her stride, and being unable to tell for the moment what ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... at last with shattering blare Yelled the horns, the cymbals clashed And the thunder of the drums ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... fumbling with it, his face twitching painfully. A cold, dishonouring suspicion gripped me. The man was here to betray his flag. I glanced aloft: the British ensign flew at the peak. And as I turned my head, I felt rather than saw the flash, heard the shattering din as the puzzled American luffed up and let fly across our bows with a raking broadside. Doubtless she, too, took note of our defiant ensign, and leaped at the nearest guess that we meant to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Saracen seize his sword; His eyes he oped, and he spake one word— "Thou art not one of our band, I trow," And he clutched the horn he would ne'er forego; On the golden crest he smote him full, Shattering steel and bone and skull, Forth from his head his eyes he beat, And cast him lifeless before his feet. "Miscreant, makest thou then so free, As, right or wrong, to lay hold on me? Who hears it will deem thee a madman born; Behold the ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... Wimbush, smoking a long cigar through a tunnelled pillar of amber, trod out the shattering dance music with serene patience. Locked together, Gombauld and Anne moved with a harmoniousness that made them seem a single creature, two-headed and four-legged. Mr. Scogan, solemnly buffoonish, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... had he been wholly indifferent to her, and as philosophical and cynical as once it was his pride to think he was, she would still have remained an absorbing study. Her sudden and awful bereavement had struck her strong and exceptional spiritual nature with the shattering force of the ball that crashes through muscle, bone, and nerves. In the latter case the wound may be mortal, or it may cause weakness and deformity. The wounded spirit must survive, although the effects of the wound may ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... crooked butternut-tree, yonder a stiff black cedar: but look with a larger eye; the straight is complement to the crooked tree, color balances color, form corrects form, and the entire effect of every scene is completeness. The artist restores this harmony broken by our microscopic view. Music is a shattering and suspension of chords till we ache for their resolution; and the music of life is desire, a diminished seventh that melts the past and ruins the present to prepare a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... fire and the cross; let the companies of wild beasts; let breakings of bones, and tearing of members; let the shattering in pieces of the whole body, and all the wicked torments of the devil come upon me; only let me ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... scenes, felt most keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was the desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people dumb with horror—in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... without a peer". Tradition relates that when he was an old man all the Babylonian states rose in revolt against him and besieged Akkad. But the old warrior led forth his army against the combined forces and achieved a shattering victory. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Babington then went to his seat. He felt that his reputation as an artistic player of the game had received a shattering blow. Then there was the imposition. This in itself would have troubled him little. To be kept in on a half-holiday is annoying, but it is one of those ills which the flesh is heir to, and your true philosopher can always take his ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... were scores of uprooted trees, wrenched-off limbs, and craggy stumps, all speeding downward with great swiftness and force. The course of the boat being at right angles to these objects, must bring it in collision with some of them, at the great risk of overturning or shattering the canoe, that was not calculated to ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... of mine can give any idea of the rich grayish brown of this old tower against the pale luminous sky, or the pathetic charm of its wild bell music, shattering down through the silent watches of the night, over the sleeping town, as I have heard it, standing by some silent, dark, palace-bordered canal, watching the tall tower melting into the immensity of ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... She had told him this was killing her.... It was so easy for him to go, so hard for her to stay.... She had invested most of her capital of hopes and dreams and love in him: he was the son; he was the first man. And now he was shattering the very ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... captain could reply the enemy fired his two foremost guns, the shot from which shattering the bulwarks sent pieces of splinter flying about, one of which struck Carnegan ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... souls in hell. When the Sent of God, who knew and could accomplish all things, appeared to three of his disciples it was at eventide, at the common table of the humblest of inns; and then and there the Light broke forth, shattering Material Forms, illuminating the Spiritual Faculties, so that they saw him in his glory, and the earth lay at their feet ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... a well-known symptom of solitary confinement; it is by shattering a man's nerves all to pieces that it prepares the way for his death, which death comes sometimes in raging lunacy, of which eight men have died under Mr. Hawes's reign. Here is the list of deaths by lunacy from breach of Rule ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... been better than the way in which the rich, opulent, well-to-do classes of this country have taken the tremendous revolution in their lives and fortunes accomplished by the War? The economic and social change has been as great and almost as shattering as those wrought by any social revolution in the world's history. Yet they have hardly caused a murmur among those who have had to ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... proceeds, old Dragon," he said, puffing unsteady but solemn breaths between his words, "wrap up in lightning and thunder that we may be—may be—lieve what you say." Then he shook the iron till it gave forth a frightful shattering sound. The Grand Marshal said not a word. With three long steps he stood towering in front of the man and dealt him a side blow under the ear with his steel fist. He fell instantly, folding together like something boneless, and lay along the floor for a moment quite still, except ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... afloat for another day, and might have saved her, had it not been for the continuation of the fog. On the following night, in the midst of intense darkness, she once more struck against an iceberg, and this time the consequences were more serious. A huge fragment of ice fell upon the poop, shattering it and sweeping it overboard. In an instant all discipline was at an end. It was sauve qui peut. The crew took to the boats. One of these went down with all on board, while the others passed away into the darkness. This little handful had thrown themselves upon the ship's poop, which ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... aghast at this shattering of my vision, yet I could not be hard to her. I said nothing, but took ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... had to push aside a bough—the empty hoods, from which a bunch of brown nuts had fallen, rested against the barrel as I looked along it. I aimed at the head—knowing that it would mean instant death, and would also avoid shattering the bird at so short a range; besides which there would be fewer scattered feathers to collect and thrust out of sight into a rabbit bury. A reason why people frequently miss pheasants in cover-shooting, despite of their size, is because they ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... police, or by other means, find Frances Morley. But, having found her, what then? What claim had I upon her? What right had I to pursue her and force my presence upon her? I knew the shock she had undergone, the shattering of her belief in her father, the knowledge that she had—as she must feel—forced herself upon our kindness and charity. I knew how proud she was and how fiercely she had relented the slightest hint that she was in any way dependent upon us ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Lieutenant Immelmann make a pretty attack on an Englishman, who tried to fly away. I quickly went up to support Immelmann, but the enemy was gone by the time I got there. In the meantime, Immelmann had forced his opponent to land. He had wounded him, shattering his left arm—Immelmann had had good luck. Two days before I had flown with him in a Fokker; that is, I did the piloting and he was only learning. The day before was the first time he had made a flight alone, and was able to land only after a lot of trouble. He had never taken part in a battle ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... The shattering concussion of a shot fired within an inch or two of her ear almost stunned her. She felt the powder burning her cheek. Almost against her will her eyes flew open to see the figure in the door jerk and sag a little. Triumphant and horrible came ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... victory, even while it had dealt a final and shattering blow to Napoleon's maritime power, had not been fraught with the vast consequences which in the moment of exultation it was fondly believed had been achieved. Bonaparte's supremacy in Europe remained unshaken, and his victory of Austerlitz, following hard ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... been the subject of much elegy, in our nineteenth century, from Byron, Goethe, and other poets of less fame, not to mention many distinguished private observers,—I confess it is not very affecting to my imagination; for it seems to concern the shattering of baby-houses and crockery-shops. What flutters the church of Rome, or of England, or of Geneva, or of Boston, may yet be very far from touching any principle of faith. I think that the intellect and moral sentiment are unanimous; ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... corner of the camp where the delightful entertainments were said to be given, but the only artistes we discovered were a dozen hungry prisoners trying to coax a tune out of a rebellious mouth organ! Our belief in German statements received another shattering blow. During my twelve months in this camp I never caught a glimpse of or heard a note from an eminent German impressario or artiste of any description. All the amusements we ever obtained were due to our own ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... came rattling down among them. Still the gallant seamen persevered in the work they had undertaken, when suddenly the very air seemed to be rent in two; the masts, rigging, and deck of the Iris rose upwards in a mass of flame, shattering two gunboats which happened to be close to her, and scattering her burning fragments far and wide around her among the boats. The brave fellows in the latter, heedless of the danger, dashed on to assist the crews of the gunboats. Several people in one had been killed; but the ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... villain—it was the French gutter-snipe, Virot—paused a moment to ride up to a window of the hall and discharge his revolver through the glass. Fortunately his aim was as evil as his intent. Beyond shattering a priceless vase, ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... stamped upon it the mark of interrogation. From Wilde to Mr. Wells is the age of the question mark. In almost every writer of this period we find the same tendency of thought: the endless questioning, the shattering of conventions, the repeal of tradition, ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... calm, horrible industry. Don't imagine, however, that there is anything archaic in my find. Diabolic ingenuity in invention though as old as the world is by no means a lost art. Look at the telephones for shattering the little peace of mind given to us in this world, or at the machine guns for letting with dispatch life out of our bodies. Now-a-days any blear-eyed old witch if only strong enough to turn an insignificant little handle could lay low ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... lose! The shattering of broad sheets of ice around them was a warning of what might happen to the frail support of their chase. One thrust of the boat-hook sometimes cleft a cake that to the eye seemed stout enough to bear a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... tripping over their own enormous feet, chewing outlying portions of one another, as ill-brought-up babies chew their blankets; sitting down abruptly and unpremeditatedly, and watching with deep dubiety the departing form of their escort, as though a sudden and shattering doubt of his identity had paralysed them, until some contrary wind of doctrine blew them into action again, and they hurled themselves upon his trail, filled with the single intention to rush between his legs. Nothing ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... "I have the solution to the Jewish question. I know it sounds mad; and at the beginning I shall be called mad more than once—until the truth of what I am saying is recognized in all its shattering force." ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... moment the door swung violently open, with Merevale holding on to the handle, and following it in its course. Merevale very rarely knocked at a study door, a peculiarity of his which went far towards shattering the nervous systems of the various inmates, who never knew when it was safe to stop work and read fiction. 'Ah, Thomson,' he said, 'I was looking for you. The Headmaster wants to see you over at his House, if you are feeling ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... her one entire neuralgia. The unending use of the same muscles, the repetition of the same rhythmic series, the cranium-shattering clatter of all the riveting-guns, the anxiety to be sure of each successive rivet, quite burned her out. And she learned that the reward for this ordeal was, according to the minimum wage-scale adopted by the Emergency Fleet ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... golden bells; and Queen Elizabeth, be-ruffled and be-fardingaled, has glanced at those gable-ends east of St. Dunstan's, as she rode in her cumbrous plumed coach to thank God at St. Paul's for the scattering and shattering of the Armada. Here Cromwell, a king in all but name and twice a king by nature, received the keys of the City, as he rode to Guildhall to preside at the banquet of the obsequious Mayor. William of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sinking into the morass. From the direction of Number Six dredge another crew was heading for the Tower. But the Tower was rapidly growing shorter as the buoys that sustained it broke loose with ear-shattering crashes. ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... from change in its gaseous nucleus. If, under some condition of pressure and temperature eventually reached, the components of this suddenly entered into one of those proto-chemical combinations forming a new element, there might result an explosion capable of shattering the entire planet, and propelling its fragments in all directions with high velocities. If the hypothetical planet between Jupiter and Mars was intermediate in size as in position, it would apparently fulfil the conditions under which such a ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the only sting which he knew now; it rankled more than her sin, more than her falsehood, more than the shattering of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... year one thousand ccxxiiij, they first came into England, two [Sidenote: In the v^{th} year of K. H. the third.] years before the decease of saint Francis. In the year one thousand ccxxj, at the festival of saint Luke the Evangelist a violent wind rushed from the north, shattering houses and orchards, and the towers of churches; and there were seen fiery dragons and evil spirits [Sidenote: In the xliij^{rd} of king H. iij.] fluttering in the tempest. In the year one thousand cclviij, at Teukysbury, ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... to advance, when a spark was seen, succeeded by a terrific explosion. A shower of matter fell upon the train, shattering the windows and throwing the ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... high aloft. It was well enough known nearer the front, but the Eastern Coast Observation Force had had no need to become unduly familiar with it. With incredible swiftness the wailing rose to the shrillest of shrieks, descending as lightning might be imagined to descend. Then there was a shattering concussion. It was monstrous. It was ear-splitting. Windows crashed in the cottage and tinkled to the sandy earth outside. There was a pause of seconds' duration only, during which Sergeant Walpole stared blankly and gasped, ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... my fortress, and their guns Are shattering its walls; My army plays the cowards' part, and runs, Pierced by a thousand balls; They call for my surrender. I reply, "Give quarter ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... designated Commander in Chief of the Army in the Orient. That Gouraud would have to be relieved of his command was painfully obvious, for that gallant officer had been struck by a shell while visiting a base hospital on July 8, hopelessly shattering his right arm, which had to be amputated. As, however, the French military contingent in the ill-starred Gallipoli adventure was but a small affair, the appointment of General Sarrail to the command thereof could ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... sucked through opening seams the life-blood of his helpless craft. The game here would be to lift its victim on the back of a smooth under-roller and with mighty effort hurl it like a battering ram against the shore rocks, shattering its timbers into ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith |
