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More "Disastrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hundred years ago and had continued to be still attached to the English crown, though by a very slender link, he must be very blind to what has gone on in Australia.[2] The history of emigration in Canada, of transportation in New South Wales, and of the disastrous denationalisation of the land in Victoria, are useful illustrations of the difference between the experiments of a centralised compared with a decentralised system of government. Neither Australia nor ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... case, since he inherits a warm temperament, had erectile power long before puberty, and has considerable seminal capacity. Having closely watched the effects of suppressed normal emotions and desires in youth at the time of pubescence, he maintains that such suppression is disastrous, causing unhealthy thoughts and leading to the formation of a habit of masturbation which may persist throughout life. He believes that temporary sexual intimacies between boys and girls under 20 from the period of puberty would be far less harmful ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the Imperial panegyrists of the 4th, along with Ammianus Marcellinus, who towards the close of that century connects and supplements their stories; Claudian, the poet-historian of the 5th century, whose verses throw a lurid gleam on his own disastrous age, when Roman authority in Britain was at its last gasp; and finally the British writers, Nennius and Gildas, whose "monotonous plaint" shows that authority dead and gone, with the first stirring of our new national life ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... always have remained in the place of my birth, except for family exigencies, for I had no ambitions, no special talent nor practical faculty. When I reflect on the futility of literature without genius, or the miserly rewards of scholarship, or the disastrous conclusion in a majority of business enterprises, I confess the life of a New England farmer is to be preferred. It was so ordered that opportunities, which I never could have made for myself, came to me unsought and ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... Clare on that disastrous night, and set out for Edinburgh the next morning, before the facts were commonly known—I heard not of them—and it was four months before I ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... was the worse she could hardly decide, for Dermot to miss his examination, or for herself to be sent home under the slur of such a false accusation. Both seemed equally bad, but she reasoned that the former would involve more disastrous consequences, and, therefore, was the ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... "I repent of this unseemly action; but my repentance is now unavailing, and the wound of this sorrow cannot be healed by any salve"; and this story is related in order that it may be known that many such incidents have occurred where, through the disastrous results of precipitation, men have fallen into the ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... his death is a direct deduction from other-worldliness; the dead man is supposed to want in the other world just what he wanted here. The destruction of a man's goods at his death was a great waste of capital, and it must have had a disastrous effect on the interests of the living, and must have very seriously hindered the development of civilization. With this custom we must class all the expenditure of labor and capital on graves, temples, pyramids, rites, sacrifices, and support of priests, so far as ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... in less than a minute. The negro was now roused into a condition of maniacal fury; he gnashed his teeth like a wild beast, and brandished his knife, while shouting fearful threats. The issue of the contest would probably have been disastrous, but for the opportune arrival of assistance. Hearing the tramp of horses' hoofs upon the road, the negro desisted from his attack, and sprang into the forest. A couple of horsemen turning the ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... the missionaries, during this long and disastrous period, surpassed all that the most alarmed and fertile imagination had conceived. Of the dreadful scenes at Ava, a minute account was written by Mrs. Judson to Dr. Elnathan Judson. It will be read with strong and painful interest. Fiction itself ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... (though not many) of the Chinese returned students resemble them in the belief that Western push and hustle are the most desirable things on earth. I cannot now take this view. The evils produced in China by indolence seem to me far less disastrous, from the point of view of mankind at large, than those produced throughout the world by the domineering cocksureness of Europe and America. The Great War showed that something is wrong with our civilization; experience of Russia and China has made me believe ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... he made of the existence of a tribe of female warriors, was afterwards known as the river of the Amazons. The author spread reports of another El Dorado to the north, in which the roofs of the temples were covered with gold. This report afterwards led to the disastrous expedition of Sir Walter Raleigh to Guiana. By his voyage Orellana connected the Spanish and Portuguese "spheres of influence" in the New World of Amerigo. By the year 1540 the main outlines of Central and South America and something of the interior had been made known by the ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... battle after battle for twenty years they defeated the English with slaughter. Ireland, if more and more devastated by campaigns and forays, became the grave of tens of thousands of English soldiers and scores of high reputations. Writing from Cork, the Earl of Essex, after a disastrous march through Leinster ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... prancing our way the 17th of May effectually destroyed what promised to be a bumper crop of apples and plums. The trees were for the most part past the blossoming stage, and the fruit had started to develop. Currants and grapes met the same disastrous fate. Only in favored situations, adjacent to large bodies of water, were there any apples, plums, grapes or currants ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... half-finished decanter of port. I had drawn my chair to the corner of the ample fire-place, and in a half dreamy state was reviewing the incidents of my early life, and like most men who, however young, have still to lament talents misapplied, opportunities neglected, profitless labour, and disastrous idleness. The dreary aspect of the large and ill-lighted room—the close-curtained boxes—the unsocial look of every thing and body about suited the habit of my soul, and I was on the verge of becoming excessively sentimental—the unbroken silence, where several ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... rights of the younger ones to a great extent take care of themselves and of the rights of the elder ones too. Two adult parents, in spite of a house to keep and an income to earn, can still interfere to a disastrous extent with the rights and liberties of one child. But by the time a fourth child has arrived, they are not only outnumbered two to one, but are getting tired of the thankless and mischievous job of bringing up their children in the way they ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... last night," said Rice, looking down upon the still swollen current, and then raising his eyes to Clementina. "Still more fortunate to make it where we did. I suppose it must have been the singing that lured us on to the bank,—as, you know, the sirens used to lure people,—only with less disastrous consequences." ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... had faced his troubles. Still, he thought it better to vary the theme, and related how they engaged themselves as salesmen at a department store, where Lawrence rashly undertook to serve the drugs and prescribed for confiding customers until a mistake that might have had disastrous consequences led to his being fired. Foster went with him, and they next undertook to cook, without any useful knowledge of the art, for a railroad construction gang. Their incompetence became obvious when Lawrence attempted to save labor by putting ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... once by setting a stone water-bottle to heat on my stove without unscrewing the stopper. I arrived in my tent quite late and seeing the thing on the stove quickly unscrewed it. The steam blew out with terrific force and filled the tent. A moment or two more and the bottle would have burst with disastrous consequences. When I told Stephenson of the enormity of his offence and that he might have been the cause of my death, and would have sent me to the grave covered with dishonour for having been killed by the bursting of a hot water-bottle—an ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... said, "Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of my people." This evil, like all others, when it becomes a strong habit, is well calculated to stir up anger, and wrath, and hatred; to stir up the passions, and destroy confidence, which is always and only disastrous to the social state. This growing evil needs to be checked by some means, otherwise our country will experience tumults growing out of maddened party ambition, and party interests, which will cause disaster and grief. The ballot-box needs to be guarded with wise ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... But this danger is guarded against by the habit of study, and of writing for other purposes. If a man should neglect all mental exertion, except so far as would be required in the meditation of a sermon, it would be ruinous. We witness its disastrous effects in the empty wordiness of many extemporaneous preachers. It is wrong however to argue against the practice itself, from their example; for all other modes would be equally condemned, if judged by the ill ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... Mr. Swipes! You are so disastrous at turning things. And how much did he say you was to have this time? Here's Jenny ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... to meet those charming eyes, and then to smile back at him. It would have been absurd not to smile, but the effort was disastrous; her lips quivered; the tears ran down her cheeks. She rose, trembling and aghast. 'I am very foolish. I have such a headache. Please don't pay any attention to me—it's ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... their advantage further, and burned three more first-class ships of war. The guns were heard in London, and for the first time for six hundred years, the way seemed open for the invader. The citizens of London realized the straits to which the folly of their rulers had brought them. [Footnote: Disastrous and disgraceful as was the episode, the alarm and confusion which it caused at Court seemed to Clarendon even more degrading. "All they who had most advanced the war and reproached all who had been against it, as men who had no public spirit, and were not ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... These two disastrous experiences, however, had added wariness and wisdom to the great bull's fighting rage. His wound, his momentary discomfiture, had opened his arrogant eyes to the fact that his antagonist was a dangerous one. He stood vigilant and ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... it is as disastrous to human progress to teach women to bow down to the authority of man, as divinely inspired, as it is to teach man to bow down to the authority of Kings and Popes, as divinely ordained, for in both cases we violate the fundamental idea on which a Republican ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in the second Crusade, and even in the third, so disastrous for the Christian arms, Genoa bore no part; no part, that is, in the fighting, though in the matter of commissariat and shipping she was not slow to come forward and make a fortune. And indeed, she had enough to do at home; for Pisa, no less slow to join the Crusades, became ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... the corner of a seat, his eye on Archer in the distance, and his mind wrestling with the problem. For nearly an hour he racked his brains without result, then suddenly a devastating idea flashed before his consciousness, leaving him rigid with dismay. For a moment his mind refused to accept so disastrous a possibility, but as he continued to think over it he found that one puzzling and unrelated fact after another took on a different complexion from that it had formerly borne; that, moreover, it dropped into place and became part of a ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... tersely that, owing to the non-payment by evading parents of bills long overdue and to many other depressing and unavoidable circumstances Mr. Barbour and that House of Cards, his school, had fallen to pieces. There at any rate was an end to that disastrous accumulation of brick and mortar, and the harm that, living, it had wrought upon the souls and bodies of its victims its dying could not excuse. No ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... acquaintance became intolerably oppressive; for the first time in his life he sought refuge from thought in the stimulus of drink, and dashed down neat Cognac as though it were iced Badminton, as he drove with his set off the disastrous plains of Iffesheim. He shook himself free of them as soon as he could; he felt the chatter round him insupportable; the men were thoroughly good-hearted, and though they were sharply hit by the day's issue, never even by implication hinted at owing the disaster to their faith in him, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... will never grow weary of crimes, so long as you leave them the means! You must overcome them, or be overcome by them; and whosoever sees not this is blind. Open the page of history; you will see the English sustaining for fifty years a disastrous war, in order to maintain their revolution. You will see in Holland seas of blood flowing in the war against Philip of Spain. When, in our times, the Philadelphians would be free, have we not also seen war in the two hemispheres? ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... feel a sickening melancholy if something for the ultimate good of the world were not to come from such disasters as filled Germany with grief and indignation for a whole generation; for the immediate effects of the Thirty Years' War were more disastrous than those of any war I have read of in the history of Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. In the civil wars of France and England, cities and villages were generally spared. Civilization in those countries has ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... that few disastrous fires start under conditions which prevent their control. Usually they spring from some of the many small, apparently innocent fires which burn unnoticed until wind and hot weather fan them into action. ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... young to understand its causes. And at the same time we are suffering, in our prostrate trade and almost extinguished commerce, another grievous consequence of the same dire internecine struggle. Truly ourselves and our institutions are sorely tried. A like combination of disastrous circumstances would bring about a revolution in any other country. If we go through this trial safely, we may not only feel thankful, but take some reasonable pride in the national character and in the political institutions ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... prospects for the future. My fear, on account of Manon, knew no bounds. She had already been an inmate of the Magdalen; and even if she had left it by fair means, I knew that a relapse of this nature would be attended with disastrous consequences. I wished to let her know my fears: I was apprehensive of exciting hers. I trembled for her, without daring to put her on her guard against the danger; and I embraced her tenderly, to satisfy her, at least, of my love, which was almost the only sentiment ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... it has been found that the superstitious practice, formerly mentioned,[1] of informing the bees of a death that takes place in a family, is very well known, and still prevails among the lower orders in this country. The disastrous consequence to be apprehended from noncompliance with this strange custom is not (as before stated) that the bees will desert the hive, but that they will dwindle and die. The manner of communicating the intelligence to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... did not end at that. The lubras' methods of washing had proved most disastrous to my meagre wardrobe; and the resources of the homestead were taxed to the utmost to provide sufficient patching material to keep the missus ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... think the patriarch of them all went over in the great gale of 1815; I know I used to shake the youngest of them with my hands, stout as it is now, with a trunk that would defy the bully of Crotona, or the strong man whose liaison with the Lady Delilah proved so disastrous. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... reach and we had to take the risk. When morning came the snow was falling so heavily that we could not see more than a few score yards ahead, and I decided not to strike camp. A path over the shattered floes would be hard to find, and to get the boats into a position of peril might be disastrous. Rickenson and Worsley started back for Dump Camp at 7 a.m. to get some wood and blubber for the fire, and an hour later we had hoosh, with one biscuit each. At 10 a.m. Hurley and Hudson left for the old camp in order to bring some additional dog-pemmican, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... sound, and land was eagerly purchased, even at the advanced prices; in 1840 the amounts received from land sales were three times as great as those received in 1838. But this was mostly the result of speculation, and disastrous effects soon followed; for the prices paid by the purchasers were far above the real value of the land. If a man brought a thousand pounds into the colony and paid it to the Government for a thousand acres of land, he reckoned himself to be still worth a thousand pounds, ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... fortresses of Scotland were yielded to those who asserted the liberty of their country, until the crowning mercy was gained in the celebrated field of Bannockburn, where the English sustained a defeat more disastrous than is mentioned upon any ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... deceives me), and was admonished that if, when the funeral was in action, I put my hands in my pockets, or took my eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, I was personally lost, and my family disgraced. On the eventful day, having tried to get myself into a disastrous frame of mind, and having formed a very poor opinion of myself because I couldn't cry, I repaired to Sally's. Sally was an excellent creature, and had been a good wife to old Flanders, but the moment I saw ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... ground on the highest peak known to the story-teller and his hearers. But in its early Sumerian form it is just a simple tradition of some great inundation, which overwhelmed the plain of Southern Babylonia and was peculiarly disastrous in its effects. And so its memory survived in the picture of Ziusudu's solitary coracle upon the face of the waters, which, seen through the mists of the Deluge tradition, has given us the Noah's ark of our ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... day. At six o'clock on the morning of the 10th, attack was made almost simultaneously by the two columns at the points designated. Sigel advanced to the attack with great gallantry, but soon suffered a disastrous repulse; five of his six guns were taken and ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... gold-striped, to the homely fustian,—and a rare show they made. They went fours right or fours left with a fine military jangle, and sometimes went fours right and fours left at the same time, with results disastrous to military order. Then it was good to see and hear the fat Dorn as he caracoled in a field-marshal's uniform, and barked his orders at the disordered crowd like a ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... which other noble lords took an active part. Each one strove to lay the blame upon the shoulders of their opponents—all feeling that a blunder had been committed, which was likely to lead to the most disastrous consequences. This stormy altercation, however, terminated by the house agreeing to the address of the commons by a majority of nearly four to one. The king's reply to the address was accompanied by a message ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... stolen moments and brief experiences at the expense of the whole of her reverence for religion, the whole of her faith in men's purity, was not poor Victorine's fault, only her misfortune; but the result was no less disastrous to her morals. She went out of the convent as complete a little hypocrite as ever told beads and repeated prayers. Only a certain sort of infantile superstitiousness of nature remained in her, and made ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the Liberal party, and Sir Robert Peel was in a position to carry out the measure, and it was not in accordance with the wisdom of practical politics to halt. Indeed, at this very juncture, Mr. Cobden wrote to the Premier that he had the power, and that it would be disastrous to the country for him to hesitate. Writing from Edinburgh, Lord John Russell announced his conversion to total and immediate repeal of the corn laws. Sir Robert Peel hesitated no longer, but, feeling that the crisis had arrived, determined to grapple with it. It ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... strong man. Not till he came to lie in his coffin would he show a more ghastly countenance; and trembling herself almost to the point of falling, she caught him by the arm and sought to read in his face what had happened. Something disastrous she was sure; something which he had feared and was partially prepared for, yet which in happening had crushed him. Was it a pitfall into which the poor little lady had fallen? If so—But he is speaking—mumbling low words to himself. Some ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... that wealth was being destroyed on an enormous scale, there was a very general feeling that trade was good, and large fortunes were made. At the close of the war a period of speculation and overtrading continued until it was brought to a disastrous close by the panic of 1873. Much of this speculation, however, was due to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... Lowlander by the spirit of feudal prejudice and romantic sentiment, of uncalculating devotion and loyalty to dead ideals, which burned within his heart, and were to drive him headlong on his troubled and disastrous career. A kinsman of the great Montrose and born of a line which traced its origin to Scottish kings, the child of a line of fighting cavaliers, he loathed Presbyterians, their faith and their habits together, counting ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... one bridge remained by which the army could effect its retreat. The Emperor had another constructed; and the retreat commenced, but in good order, in spite of the numerous masses which closely threatened us. This unfortunate affair was the most disastrous his Majesty had experienced during the whole campaign, since the roads leading to the capital had been left uncovered; and the prodigies of his genius and valor were unavailing against such overwhelming numbers. An instance which furnishes an excellent ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... little hope of hearing, if I return safe to New Zealand at the end of November, that this disastrous war is over. I fear that the original error has been overlaid by more recent events, forgotten amongst them. The Maori must suffer, the country must suffer. Confession of a fault in an individual is ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... willing to respect the neutrality of Belgium, so long as her opponent respects it. We knew, however, that France stood ready for invasion. France could wait, but we could not wait. A French movement upon our flank upon the lower Rhine might have been disastrous. So we were compelled to override the just protest of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments. The wrong—I speak openly—that we are committing we will endeavor to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody who is threatened as ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... knew the will of God and that he was chosen to execute it. In this stage a man becomes capable of great things in a poor cause. The world is always impressed by the confident and the courageous. No great movement, however wrong in doctrine, defective in morals, or disastrous in results, ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... in later literature; by Burke or Hamilton, the best political writers of the last century; by Tocqueville or Roscher, the most eminent of our own. But Plato and Aristotle were philosophers, studious not of unguided freedom, but of intelligent government. They saw the disastrous effects of ill-directed striving for liberty; and they resolved that it was better not to strive for it, but to be content with a strong administration, prudently adapted to make men prosperous ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... flow from ignorance are deplorable enough in the case of individuals, although, as we have seen, the disastrous consequences are limited in the case of those who live surrounded by an intelligent community. But the general ignorance of large numbers and entire classes of men, unreached by the elevating influence of the educated, acting under the unchastened stimulus of the ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... which live in the country show birth-rates of four to six children per wife.[70] But in the more highly civilized nations now, something like a half of the population lives in urban districts, and the startling extent to which these urban populations breed from the bottom involves a disastrous change in the balance of population within a few generations, unless it is in ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... was one that would be long remembered by the Rose Ranch cowpunchers, as well as by the ranch owner himself. A more disastrous stampede had seldom been ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... of this combined system of measures the country witnessed alternate seasons of temporary apparent prosperity, of sudden and disastrous commercial revulsions, of unprecedented fluctuation of prices and depression of the great interests of agriculture, navigation, and commerce, of general pecuniary suffering, and of final bankruptcy of thousands. After a severe struggle of more than a quarter of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... disdainfully on the other's mask—"whether there might not, after all, have been method in his madness. I can only say that before we had gone more than two or three blocks, a wild effort on his part to avoid a collision with an auto swinging out from a side street resulted in an even more disastrous smash with another on the other side, and I ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... own sake. It is then mere superstition;(1) and, in view of the danger of this degeneracy, many robust minds, such as the members of the Society of Friends, prefer to dispense with its aid altogether. When ritual is associated with erroneous doctrines, the results are even more disastrous, as I have indicated in "The Belief in Talismans". But when ritual is allied with, and based upon, as adequately symbolising, the high teaching of genuine religion, it may be, and, in fact, is, found very helpful by many people. As such its ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... himself, "whether he has all along had an eye to Fairclose, and whether he really did his best to dissuade my father from making that disastrous investment. At any rate, it does not make any difference to me who is there. It might have been some stranger, some manufacturing fellow; I would rather think of Mary being at the old place than a man of that sort. He would have been more likely than Brander to be hard on the tenants, ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... sense in which there is equality; here, the democratic principle is adopted and all come together as equals, and unite the rich and the poor, the high and the low, in an equal right to hate the colored man; and its operations upon the mind and character are cruel and disastrous, as it is murderous and wicked in itself. One needs to feel it, and to wither under its effects, to know it: and the colored men of the United States, wherever found, and in whatever circumstances, are living epistles, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... probably be prosperous and strong to-day. The wisdom lay in this—that here she must remain Manchu, Chinese; any attempt to become a part of this incomprehensible country, any effort to involve herself in its mysterious acts or thought, would be disastrous. She must remain calm, unassertive, let the eternal Tao take ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... inspiring promise of this flag, and in the blaze of the answering signals, the troops, with drums beating and colors flying, were to rush to the assault. Archdale's opinion, that heavy guns at the lighthouse would be disastrous to their old enemy the Island Battery, had been confirmed by two Swiss deserters, and that place was now almost untenable under a galling fire. The Circular Battery, built to protect the entrance to the city, was ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... quite seriously, "I'm only too sorry your trick should have had such a disastrous conclusion. Who shall I ask for up at the house, and what shall I do ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... became vaguely reminiscent and communicative about old, dead, forgotten grievances of the past, while Vincy, who was a little shocked at what he saw (and he always saw everything), did his very best, just saving the entertainment from being a too disastrous frost. ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... attempt to carry out the policies of Lincoln and had gone down in the strife. The Democratic Party had reached the ebb tide of its disastrous fortunes. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... recollect—he had shown great plasticity for a time. He was then in the middle of his Oxford years, and Raeburn's letters and Raeburn's influence had certainly pulled him through various scrapes that might have been disastrous. Then—a little later—he could see the shooting lodge on the moors above Loch Etive, where he and Raeburn, Lord Maxwell, Miss Raeburn, and a small party had spent the August of his twenty-first birthday. Well—that surly keeper, and his pretty wife who had been Miss ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Crocker the other day. You know, Marian, that he is one of these level-headed old fogies who think women ought to be kept in a menagerie, behind bars, to be inspected on Saturday afternoons. Now, I appeal to you if it wouldn't be disastrous to fall in love with a man of such ideas. And just to let you know what a literal old law-brief he is, when I said he had had a hat-pin sticking in him for several weeks, he nearly jumped overboard, and began ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... French painter was born at Andely, in Normandy, in 1594. He was descended from a noble family, originally of Soissons, whose fortunes had been ruined in the disastrous civil wars in the time of Charles IX. and Henry III. His father, Jean Poussin, after serving in the army of Henry IV., settled on a small paternal inheritance at Andely, where he cultivated a taste for literature and the sciences, and instructed his son ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... fist, Hogshead Geoffrey brought it down on the table with disastrous results: the ancient worm-eaten board was split from ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... always herself, poor thing. Once she was quite distinguished as a local magazine writer, but...well, you know...all people do not have the good fortune to have their genius universally recognized, and the results are sometimes disastrous. We are so proud to welcome you to-night, Miss Dwight, and—and—your charming friends. I am Jane Upton Halsey." She appeared to think no ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... leave the house, but he felt that he could not without first gaining possession of the letter. It would be impossible to bear the strain, especially with the accompaniment of the dread of its being discovered and placing information which might prove disastrous to his father in the hands ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... pause. Prudence was thinking of anything but the subject of Robb's inquiries. Alice was curious, but she forbore to question. She had heard her lover's account of his misadventure in the Alaskan hills, but she saw no connection between the hound and that disastrous affair. But the man's thoughts were hard at work. Presently he rose ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... apex-thought is brought to bear upon these moments of midnight that a strange and unutterable healing emerges from them, a shy, half-hinted whisper or something deeper than hope, a magical effluence, a "still, small voice" from beneath the disastrous eclipse, which not only "purges our passions by pity and terror" but evokes an assured horizon, beyond truth, beyond beauty, beyond goodness, where the mystery of love, in its withdrawn and secret essence, transforms all ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... and, ambitious to extend their dominion, demanded larger territory for the extension of the slave system. When this was refused, they set up an independent standard and brought on the war. The end was disastrous to the South. The capitalists were well-nigh ruined and the slaves were ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various
... "arms"—for cavalry was always called the most powerful "arm" of the service. The infantry were the feet, and the artillery the body. Now, Hood himself had no legs, and but one arm, and that one in a sling. The most terrible and disastrous blow that the South ever received was when Hon. Jefferson Davis placed General Hood in command of the Army of Tennessee. I saw, I will say, thousands of men cry like babies—regular, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... and embargoes, and commercial restrictions, still refused the protection of the national arm to commerce, and although an overweening love of peace, and a reliance upon reason as a weapon of defence against foreign aggression, eventuated in a disastrous though glorious war with the gigantic power of Britain,—the Constitution as construed by Washington, still proved an effective ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... contrast to their fatigued and disastrous indifference was the demeanour of a considerable group of demonstrators in the gallery. This body had crossed the Seine from the sacred Quarter, and, not owning a wardrobe sufficiently impressive to entitle it to ask for free ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... undergoes the weary training of many years; but she is called upon to display the somewhat more important accomplishment of bringing children into the world without an hour's educational preparation. The difficulty is, where to draw the line between this dewy, but often disastrous, ignorance and Carlotta's knowledge. I find it a most delicate and embarrassing problem. In fact, the problems connected with this young woman seem endless. Yet they do not disturb me as much as I had anticipated. I really ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Caroline would do it like a shot. She longed to pour out her heart to Geoffrey in a long, intimate letter, but she did not dare to take the risk of writing for a wider public. Things were bad enough as it was, after that disastrous sortie ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon reigned and ruled over the united kingdoms: both were patriotic, both clever, and absolutely at one in their policy. It is almost impossible to us who can look back on the long records, almost always sad and disastrous, not to doubt whether in giving a new world "to Castile and Aragon," Cristobal Colon did not impose a burden on the country of his adoption which she was unable to bear, and which became, in the hands of the successors of her muy Espanoles y muy Catolicos kings, a curse instead of a blessing. ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... rightly understand only if we have named some appropriate object in comparison. Conversely, we have to remember that everybody takes his comparison from his own experience, so that we must have had a like experience if we are to know what is compared. It is disastrous to neglect the private nature of this experience. Whoever has much to do with peasants, who like to make use of powerful comparisons, must first comprehend their essential life, if he is to understand how to reduce their comparisons to correct meanings. And if he has done so ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... flourished and multiplied under great patronage. The King's one thought about Parliament was how to get as much money out of it as he could, with as little other business as possible. Bacon's counsels were the prophecies of Cassandra in that so prosperous but so disastrous reign. All that he did was to lend the authority of his presence, in James's most intimate counsels, to policy and courses of which he saw the unwisdom and the perils. James and Buckingham made use of him when they wanted. But they would have been very different ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... pardoned. Until 1236, he remained in control of the Duchy of Brittany, but then was obliged to surrender his power to his son, and turned his turbulent activity against the infidels in Syria and Egypt, dying in 1250, on his return from Saint Louis's disastrous crusade. Pierre de Dreux was a masculine character,—a bad cleric, as his nickname Mauclerc testified, but a gentleman, a soldier, and a scholar, and, what is more to our purpose, a man of taste. He built the south porch at Chartres, apparently as a memorial of his marriage with Alix in 1212, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... that such an attitude, while highly favourable to individual vigour and independence, and not incompatible with fairly healthy social life under the conditions which prevailed at the time, became disastrous in the era of industrialism. The conditions of industrial life tore up the individual from the roots by which he normally received strength, and crowded the workers together in masses, thus generating a confusion which no ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... history of the time. The brief interval of peace and glory had passed away ere Tintoret's brush had ceased to toil. The victory of Lepanto had only gilded that disgraceful submission to the Turk which preluded the disastrous struggle in which her richest possessions were to be wrested from the Republic. The terrible plague of 1576 had carried off Titian. Twelve years after Titian Paul Veronese passed away. Tintoret, born almost at its opening, lingered till the very close of the century ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... certain: Bok's instinct and reason both failed him in this instance. He believes now that had his venture into the theatrical field been temporary or permanent, the experiment, either way, would have been disastrous. ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... by a preceding voyage, she did not seem destined to resist this latest attack. Moreover, all aid was lacking, even the rations of fresh water ran short, and from a fear of contagion, which will be readily understood, but which was none the less disastrous, the captain at first forbade the Sisters of Charity who were on board to minister to the sick. This precaution cost seven or eight of these unfortunate people their lives. At least M. Vignal and M. Lemaitre, though both suffering themselves, were able to offer to the dying ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... these very taxes, more advantages than prohibition caused them to lose. Then this fictitious system, which was to free the continent from the domination of English commerce, became patent to all eyes as nothing else but the most disastrous and false of fiscal inventions; for it was creating two monopolies in place of one— aggravating at once the condition of the French manufacturers and that of the speculators of all countries, and giving up the privilege of commercial speculation to ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... Mr. Jellicoe. It might, further, be remembered that the mummy had been delivered to the Museum some time after the missing man was last seen alive. And so suspicion might arise and be followed by disastrous investigations. But supposing it should be made to appear that John Bellingham had been seen alive more than a month after his interview with Mr. Jellicoe and some weeks after the mummy had been deposited in the Museum? Then Mr. Jellicoe would cease to be in any way ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... noun to each of the following adjectives, without repeating any word: good, great, tall, wise, strong, dark, dangerous, dismal, drowsy, twenty, true, difficult, pale, livid, ripe, delicious, stormy, rainy, convenient, heavy, disastrous, terrible, necessary. Thus—good ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... chest rising and falling with labored effort, Saint-Prosper fell back against the wall. The anti-renters quickly recovering from their surprise, gave him no time to regain his strength, and the contest promised a speedy and disastrous conclusion for the soldier, when suddenly a white figure flashed before him, confronting the tenants with pale face and shining eyes. A slender obstacle; only a girlish form, yet the fearlessness of her manner, the eloquence of her glance—for ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Sir Charles gives way too much to these people, these proud followers of the Rajah; but I think it would be disastrous and ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... flint glass, cylindrical in form, six inches in diameter and eight inches deep. It is important that a good grade of glass be used for the jar in this cell, because, on account of the nature of the electrolyte, breakage is disastrous in the effects it may produce on adjacent property. The carbon plate is rectangular in form, about four inches wide, eight and three-quarters inches long, and one-quarter inch thick. The metal terminal at the top of the carbon block is of bronze, both it and the ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... state of the weather, the condition of the vessel, and the perverseness of the lieutenant, it is of no particular advantage to us in the explanation of the wreck, for we already know the why and wherefore of the disastrous event. But Mr. Ingram does not precisely state the number of persons lost. Was ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... own rashness. My nights were sleepless, my days miserable; my soul was tortured by the desire of fame; a consciousness of innocence was a continued stimulus inciting me to end my misfortunes. Youth, inexperienced in woe and disastrous fate, beholds every evil magnified, and desponds on every new disappointment, more especially after having failed in attempting freedom. Education had taught me to despise death, and these opinions had been confirmed by my friend La Mettrie, author ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... translate the papers which Mr. Bolton found in Stokowsky's room. There is nothing in them to definitely connect him with the Russian Union of Soviet Republics, but there is little doubt in my mind that he was a Red agent and that Russia supplied the money which he spent. It would be disastrous to Russia's plans to have too close an accord between this country and the British Empire, and I have no doubt that the coming visit of Premier McDougal was the underlying cause of the attempt. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... very strange thing, but the man seems to have some odd kind of gift. Whether it be that "second sight" which we Scotch people are so prone to believe in, or some other occult form of knowledge, I know not, but nothing of a disastrous tendency ever occurs in this place but the men with whom he lives are able to quote after the event some saying of his which certainly appears to have foretold it. He gets uneasy or excited—wakes up, in fact—when death ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... volunteered for Hawaika, demanded this job after the disastrous Topaz affair when the team of Apache volunteers had been sent out too soon to counter what might have been a Red sneak settlement. Ross was still unhappy over the ensuing months when only Major Kelgarries and maybe, in a lesser part, Ross had kept Gordon Ashe in the Project at all. That ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... The disastrous consequences of such a crusade to further the cause of race suicide are very forcibly brought home to us by an article which appeared in "The Call," May 10, 1914, on "The Conscious Limitation of ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... his head at Frona, and she winked back; then they both chuckled, much like children over an escapade which looks disastrous but turns out well. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... old ladies' 'ways' were chiefly to blame for this. Their well-meant but disastrous ways of making you feel that you were doing wrong, or in the wrong, over matters the most straight-forward and natural. But I was safe under the wing of my mother, before I saw Ivan again; and—many as were the years he and I were permitted to spend together—I ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... over the heads of the old man and the young child in Welch's Court brought a period of wild prosperity to Stillwater. The breath of war blew the forges to a white heat, and the baffling problem of the mediaeval alchemists was solved. The baser metals were transmuted into gold. A disastrous, prosperous time, with the air rent periodically by the cries of newsboys as battles were fought, and by the roll of the drum in the busy streets as fresh recruits were wanted. Glory and death to the Southward, and at the ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... from many quarters, it is impossible for me to be absent from London for an indefinite time. At the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being besmirched by a blackmailer, and only I can stop a disastrous scandal. You will see how impossible it is for me to go ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... in treacherous disregard of his promise to Jones, he recounted the tale of that disastrous defeat on the beach at Galveston. When he had finished the story, which he ingeniously elaborated, Alaire was doubled over her saddle. It was the first spontaneous laugh she had had for days, and it seemed to banish her worries magically. Alaire was not of a melancholy temperament; ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... he resented the position his affairs had taken. Accustomed as he was always, to submit the whole daily course of his life to the ruling of a Higher Power, he was framed and braced as temperately for adversity as for joy,—and nothing seemed to him either fortunate or disastrous except as concerned the attitude in which the soul received the announcement of God's will. To resent affliction was, in his opinion, sinful; to accept it reverently and humbly as a means of grace, and endeavour to ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... so universal might sooner or later bring disastrous consequences on the Holy See, but they lay in the uncertain future. It was otherwise with nepotism, which threatened at one time to destroy the Papacy altogether. Of all the 'nipoti,' Cardinal Pietro Riario ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... French infantry was less trustworthy. The troops raised in Normandy, Brittany, and Languedoc were reported to be but poorly trained to military exercises; but the foot-soldiers supplied by some of the frontier provinces were sturdy and efficient, and the gallant conduct of the Gascons at the disastrous battle of St. Quentin was the subject ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... perfect order, the men waving their hats in defiance at the French, who jumped up on top of their earthworks and waved defiance back. Before retiring the British set fire to the two stranded ships. The day had been as disastrous for Wolfe as ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... months after, stirred his young blood. As an officer in the army of Brutus, he underwent the hardships of the long campaign, enriching life with new friendships formed in circumstances that have always tightened the friendly bond. He saw the disastrous day of Philippi, narrowly escaped death by shipwreck, and on his return to Italy and Rome found himself without ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... mankind, to trace the causes which led to that long and disastrous conflict, in which so many lives were sacrificed, and a people, all but a fading fragment, became extinct. Among those mentioned by the government, was the admission into the colony of Sydney blacks, and the ascendancy which ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... because he never doubts anything. Ticonderoga, which is the point really threatened, is abandoned without support to the troops of the line and their general. It would even be wished that they might meet a reverse, if the consequences to the colony would not be too disastrous." ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... command. The larger Christian bodies are separated by convictions of great importance; but a severe and honest self-examination will probably lessen the number of differences which can justify the responsibility of so disastrous a thing as separation, and then we can set afoot conferences to deal with what remain. Human temperament, upbringing, tradition, human haste and pride have much to do with the birth, stabilising and continuance of division. A rare self-abnegation in ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... bills from people for whom he had done work. He gave me money to stay a week or two at the seashore, saying that the change would do me good; and it was while I was away on this delightful holiday that an event occurred which had a most disastrous effect upon my future life. My ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... lov'd me; oft invited me; Still question'd me the story of my life, From year to year,—the battles, sieges, fortunes, That I have pass'd. I ran it through, even from my boyish days To the very moment that he bade me tell it: Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field; Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach; Of being taken by the insolent foe, And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence, And portance in my travels' history: Wherein ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of souls on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip! Disastrous absence of help! ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of the city is very great. The merchants and their assistants have a hurried manner of doing business, discernible in a moment to a stranger, which is much to be deprecated, and too often leads, as I afterwards found, to disastrous results. Business with these men is in general quite a "go-a-head" sort of affair, and not being accompanied with method, in many cases leads to an embarrassed state of circumstances. Thus it frequently happens, that on investigation, the assets of a merchant who has stopped payment and is a supposed ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... vigilance, by coaxing, and daring, and determination, I succeeded in preserving him from absolute bondage to that detestable propensity, so insidious in its advances, so inexorable in its tyranny, so disastrous in its effects. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... The most disastrous result of the whaleman's visit was not the destruction of the "house," but the disappearance of Emmeline's box. Hunt high or hunt low, it could not be found. Mr Button in his hurry must have forgotten it when he removed the things to the dinghy—at all events, it was gone. Probably one ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of that dreadful scene) EVERYTHING should stop. But I've liked you, Francie, I've believed in you, and I don't wish you to be able to say that in spite of the thunderbolt you've drawn down on us I've not treated you with tenderness. It's a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and innocent but disastrous little friend! We're hearing more of it already—the horrible Republican papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of the unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that is such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and sous-entendus to ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... lights at ten p. m.," answered Mr. Magee, "and inculcate other wholesome habits of living disastrous to the ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... secretary, calling him from the table, told him the news which he had just heard. Monsieur de Castries, containing himself with difficulty during the rest of the meal, at which was gathered a large and mixed company, drew the American gentlemen aside as soon as possible and confided to them the disastrous ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... aftermath, as was shown by the advertisements in the auction columns of the daily papers and the motley mob of hungry, perspiring dealers, pawing over the household gods; and, more disastrous still, because of its rarity, Felix's brave fight to save his father's name, the whole struggle ending in his ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... entire village to break the Sabbath? Had she not made all its children either sick or cross under the pretence of giving them a treat? On the Monday she did something else that was equally well-meaning, and yet, as I shall presently relate, of disastrous consequences: she went round the village from cottage to cottage making friends with the children's mothers and leaving behind her, wherever she went, little presents of money. She had found money so extraordinarily ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... lost patience with those staying at home depreciating the army and finding fault with General Meade. He wrote: "Frankly and bluntly, I cannot appreciate such stupidity. Why not as well ask if the sun rose this morning? That battle was the greatest of the war. It was a repulse which became a disastrous defeat to General Lee." He sarcastically invited critics, "instead of staying at home to weaken the army by finding fault, to step into the ranks and help do the 'bagging,' the 'cutting up,' and the 'routing' which they thought ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... what became of Helen, the primary cause of the Trojan war, disastrous alike to victors and vanquished? According to Virgil, [Footnote: AEneid, B. VI.] after the death of Paris she married the Trojan hero, De-iph'o-bus, and on the night after the city was taken betrayed him to Menela'us, to whom she became reconciled, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... equilibrium; one of us, walking from side to side, or from one end of the deck to the other, would very seriously incline her from the horizontal, and thus alter the direction of her flight, possibly with disastrous results; so I have devised this little apparatus to prevent all that. This pendulum, as you see, is so delicately poised that it will instantly respond to the slightest deviation from a horizontal position, and, swaying over one of these needle-points, will send an electric ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... I reentered the Bruce family, an event occurred of disastrous import to the colored people. The slave Hamlin, the first fugitive that came under the new law, was given up by the bloodhounds of the north to the bloodhounds of the south. It was the beginning of a reign of terror to the colored population. The great city rushed on in ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... followers of the Prince in the romantic attempt he made to regain the throne of his ancestors, and they took part in many of the battles that were fought to secure that object. They were both present on the field of Culloden and fought with great bravery on the fatal day that proved so disastrous to the Prince's cause, and which must have all but extinguished the most sanguine hopes of the keenest Jacobite. After the Battle of Culloden the Oliphants endured great hardships for six months while hiding among the hills of Buchan, and had many narrow escapes, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... was sending constant orders that this must be done at any risk. At the same time he was very anxious to avoid a general engagement as his army would be no match for the combined English and Burgundian forces. French historians tell us that this was the cause of that disastrous encounter which, to their great annoyance, has been called the "Battle of Spurs." They point out that the troops were not sent to fight, but only to revictual a besieged place, and that the King's orders were that, if attacked, ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... not doing badly. He was at least keeping them straight. And in the circumstances straightness was to be preferred to distance. Soon after leaving Little Hadley he had become ambitious and had used his brassey with disastrous results, slicing his fifty-third into the rough on the right of the road. It had taken him ten with the niblick to get back on to the car tracks, and this ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... and health,' she wrote; 'spend them in the service of your country. Many a brave soldier lies stiffening in his gore on the bloody field of Manassas; many as brave are writhing in agony in the hospitals that received the wounded of that disastrous day; go among them with words of comfort, and smooth the pillow of those brave defenders whose blood has been freely poured out to enable you to sleep ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... walked; but what will never fade from my recollection is the passion of his words, his wailing over our sins, his profuse tears. Lad as I was, I was wrought up to wish to join this pilgrimage, and it was with bitter tears of twofold regret that I saw my grandfather set out on that disastrous expedition, the leader of which died on the very day of its ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... be always like itself, where the stones, the ponds, the trees, always the same, seemed to cast derision upon all that changes and passes away. A renewal of intercourse under such circumstances must have been disastrous to two natures that were not of a very different stamp, and far more ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... grouped themselves about his life and combined to establish his fame. These conditions, of course, were largely the outer reflection of inner qualities, as our conditions are apt to be; still, the "lack of favoring gales" not infrequently foredooms some gallant bark to a disastrous course. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... thought it better to vary the theme, and related how they engaged themselves as salesmen at a department store, where Lawrence rashly undertook to serve the drugs and prescribed for confiding customers until a mistake that might have had disastrous consequences led to his being fired. Foster went with him, and they next undertook to cook, without any useful knowledge of the art, for a railroad construction gang. Their incompetence became obvious when Lawrence attempted to save labor by ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... teeth helplessly, torn between the desire to throttle ugly old Fitzpatrick where he sat, or to turn on his heel, and walk out without another word. He did neither. Either would have been disastrous, as he well knew. He had not come up three years with the spring brigade from the Dickey and Lake Bolsover without knowing the autocratic, almost royal, rule of old Angus. Fitzpatrick, factor at Fort ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Liao-Tung peninsula, in exchange for a compensatory increase of the war indemnity previously exacted, peace was secured. The government really acted with faultless wisdom. At this period of Japanese development a costly war with Russia could not fail to have consequences the most disastrous to industry, commerce, and finance. But the national pride has been deeply wounded, and the country can still scarcely ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... meeting of conspirators. Brown had changed the details of his former plan, and told Douglass of his determination to take Harpers Ferry. Douglass opposed the measure vehemently, pointing out its certain and disastrous failure. Brown met each argument with another, and was not to be swayed from his purpose. They spent more than a day together discussing the details of the movement. When the more practical Douglass declined to take part in Brown's attempt, the old ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... effect was almost disastrous. The expectant host had been fortifying himself rather copiously against the duties and trials of the day, and his brain was in no condition to bear any such strain as the appearance of Fiddlin' ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... ability or desire to put herself into sympathetic touch with child-life should ever be assigned to work in the juvenile department, and the assistant who avowedly dislikes children, or who "has no patience with them," will work disastrous results if allowed to serve these little ones with an unwilling spirit —she should be relegated to some department of the library to which the sunshine of childhood can never penetrate, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... like a satire on her patience to remember that Clym could hardly have reached the inn as yet. At last she went to the baby's bedside. The child was sleeping soundly; but her imagination of possibly disastrous events at her home, the predominance within her of the unseen over the seen, agitated her beyond endurance. She could not refrain from going down and opening the door. The rain still continued, the candlelight falling upon the nearest drops and making glistening darts of them as they descended ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... 1918. This last wave of propaganda includes one very interesting example. It is better known than other cases through its association with the International Red Cross at Geneva. This body represented in February, 1918, that Germany was about to use a really terrible gas which would have such disastrous effects that it was absolutely essential to make a last attempt to get both sides to abandon gas warfare. The official wire reads as follows:—"Protest of International Red Cross against the use of Poison ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... of Shuiski. An insurrection broke out in Moscow, he was forced to become a monk, and in the end was delivered to Sigismund and died in prison. Thus was Dmitri avenged. The new condition of affairs proved as disastrous to the false Dmitri. His Poles deserted him, his power vanished, and he descended to the level of a mere Cossack robber. In December, 1610, murder ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... with fear, and in many cases acted in a manner to aggravate the disease. Some of them, when they broke out, rushed from their heated wigwams and rolled themselves in the snow, which of course was most disastrous treatment, resulting in the death of numbers. Thereupon, their relatives became so terrified, that, being afraid to bury their bodies, they stripped the wigwams from around them, leaving them exposed to the devouring wolves; and then, sent word over to me, that if I desired their friends ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... us of a very disastrous accident which occurred some years ago to the Increase, to which a man named Samuel Brock belonged. A signal of distress was seen flying on board a Spanish brig in the offing, when the Increase, with a crew of ten men and a London pilot, put ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... an infinite potentiality of capacity lying latent in our Provincial Tap-rooms and the City Gin Palaces if you can but get them soundly saved, and even short of that, if you can place them in conditions where they would no longer be liable to be sucked back into their old disastrous habits, you may do great ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Poitou for the shooting season. They were to come in the first part of October, and it needed a week to put all in order at Roche-Targe. A letter from my overseer awaited me in Paris, and the letter brought disastrous news; the dogs were well, but out of the dozen hunting horses that I had there, five, during my sojourn at Baden, had fallen sick or lame, and I found myself absolutely ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... I didn't want to fall behind. I followed him boldly. My alpenstock was a great help. One wrong step would have been disastrous on the narrow paths cut into the sides of these chasms, but I walked along with a firm tread and without the slightest feeling of dizziness. Sometimes I leaped over a crevasse whose depth would have made me recoil had I been in the midst of glaciers on shore; sometimes I ventured out ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... of Charles the First were alike disastrous: the vast genius of Richelieu, at its meridian, had paled our ineffectual star! The dreadful surrender of Rochelle had sent back our army and navy baffled and disgraced; and Buckingham had timely perished, to save one more reproach, one more political crime, attached to his name. Such failures ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... excuse, explanation or regret on the crowning disaster of his life. He writes of himself in the third person. This is not the way in which modern generals write of their mishaps, but it is the Greek way. Thucydides has forgotten himself and his feelings; he sees only the disastrous day when he sailed up the Struma with his ships and found the gates of Amphipolis closed against him. He ignores himself so far that he does not call it disastrous, though disastrous it was for himself ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... I think these are right, though their opponents have ample justification in History, even the most recent, for their distrust of the liberal professions and seemings of Royalty. But were the King and all his House to abdicate and leave the country to-morrow, I believe that would be a disastrous step for Sardinia and for Human Liberty. For this kingdom is almost walled in by enemies—Austria, Tuscany, Rome (alas!) and Naples—all intensely hating it and seeking its downfall because of the Light and Hope which its policy ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... In the disastrous last years of Louis XIV, the court gave little thought to the New World; but under the regency of the Duke of Orleans interest in American affairs revived. Plans for reaching the Mer de l'Ouest, or Pacific Ocean, were laid before the Regent in 1716. It ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... and father has given her leave to speak," said Annie with determination, "because you must hear soon anyhow. There is something wrong with the bank, Mr. Carey's bank. We have all, even May, read and heard of bank failures, and have some idea how disastrous they are." ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... turn and see the sudden change of fortune which lifted the exile to a throne. The heavy cloud which had brooded so long over the doomed king broke in lightning crash on the disastrous field of Gilboa. Where is there a sadder and more solemn story of the fate of a soul which makes shipwreck "of faith and of a good conscience," than that awful page which tells how, godless, wretched, mad with despair and measureless pride, he flung himself on his bloody sword, and died a ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... defeat of the French was calculated to prove highly disastrous to Sweden, as the whole power of the Emperor might now act against them, while the number of their enemies was increased by a formidable accession. Torstensohn had, in September, 1643, suddenly left Moravia, and moved into Silesia. The cause of this ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... holding the slim, warm, ineffably feminine body in his arms was most distracting. He rather feared for himself. If such a thing were to happen,—and it might happen if the impulse seized him at the psychological moment of least resistance,—the result in all probability would be disastrous. She would turn on him like an injured animal and rend him! Alas, for that leveller called reason! It spoils many ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... season to see the battle of Perrysville. Comprehending the situation of affairs there, that there could be no movement until the entire army was re-organized under a new commander, he returned to Virginia, accompanying the army in its march from the Potomac to Fredericksburg, and witnessed that disastrous battle. A month later he was with the fleet off Charleston and saw the attack on Sumter by the Monitor, and the bombardment of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... incomprehensible. Finally, the assumption is dangerous; it draws men away from the present, disturbs their peace and enjoyment, stirs up hatred, and thus makes happiness and morality impossible. If, then, utility is the criterion of truth, theism—even in the mild form of deism—is proven erroneous by its disastrous ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... fierce!" cried the coach after a disastrous gridiron battle. "What's to be done? We're in bad shape back of ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... the war. The trump of doom seemed to have sounded at a moment when mankind was on the point of discovering the secret of immortality. The utter unpreparedness of the Allies was the dominant note of the new situation, and its manifestations were countless and disastrous. There was no adequate British expeditionary army to send on foreign service, and there existed no machinery by which such a force could quickly be got together and trained. Voluntary enlistment was a slowly ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... were seen at Venice,—that meteors appeared, that demons rode the air, that the winds and waters rose and blew down houses and swallowed ships! A thousand persons are said to have perished in the calamities which commemorated a stroke so mortally disastrous to the national grandeur. After that the Venetians humbly divided with their ancient foes the possession and maintenance of the Genoese colony of Caffa, and continued, with greatly diminished glory, their traffic in the Black Sea; till the Turks having taken Constantinople, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... atheism sat in the high places; and the "caresses of wantons and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government which had just ability enough to deceive, just religion enough to persecute." But, while Milton mourned over this disastrous change, no self-reproach mingled with his sorrow. To the last he had striven against the oppressor; and when confined to his narrow alley, a prisoner in his own mean dwelling, like another Prometheus on his rock, he still turned upon him an eye of unsubdued defiance. Who, that has ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... spirit: the spirit manifested by the clergy of England in Huxley's time against the truths of science. The clergy considered scientific truth to be disastrous to religious truth. Huxley's attitude toward the teaching of religious truth is illuminated by this quotation, which he uses to explain his own position: "I have the fullest confidence that in the reading and explaining of the Bible, what the children will be taught will be the great truths ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... one of the chiefs who took part in this disastrous battle of Louvaine and was one of the fortunate few who lived to return to their native land. Apparently it was not the last of his expeditions, his wife, Queen Thyra, taking care of the kingdom in his ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... was Mr. Jellicoe. It might, further, be remembered that the mummy had been delivered to the Museum some time after the missing man was last seen alive. And so suspicion might arise and be followed by disastrous investigations. But supposing it should be made to appear that John Bellingham had been seen alive more than a month after his interview with Mr. Jellicoe and some weeks after the mummy had been deposited in the Museum? Then Mr. Jellicoe would cease to be in any way connected ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... take the risk. When morning came the snow was falling so heavily that we could not see more than a few score yards ahead, and I decided not to strike camp. A path over the shattered floes would be hard to find, and to get the boats into a position of peril might be disastrous. Rickenson and Worsley started back for Dump Camp at 7 a.m. to get some wood and blubber for the fire, and an hour later we had hoosh, with one biscuit each. At 10 a.m. Hurley and Hudson left for the old camp ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... him in the warmest terms of praise.] had been ejected, as we have seen, by the agent of the Governor, La Barre, from the command of Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. An order from the king had reinstated him; and he no sooner heard the news of La Salle's landing on the shores of the Gulf, and of the disastrous beginnings of his colony, [Footnote: In the autumn of 1685, Tonty made a journey from the Illinois to Michillimackinac, to seek news of La Salle. He there learned, by a letter of the new Governor, Denonville, just arrived from France, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... his martial instincts had led to the Prince's obtaining for him a commission in a regiment of the guards, his first appearance in his scarlet and gold lace had produced such commotion among the court beauties as promised to lead to results almost disastrous, since he attracted attention in places too high to reach with safety. But even then his ambitions were stronger than his temptations, and he fled the latter to go to fight the Moors. On his return, more beautiful than ever, the lustre ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... front of the Haunted Bookshop was a wreck. In the pale glimmer of the lantern it was a disastrous sight. Helen groped her ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... make prints in the field, rather than run the risk of ruining them by some unlucky accident. Perhaps at the very end of the trip a quantity of undeveloped plates might be lost, and such a calamity would mean the failure of the whole journey in one of its most important particulars. Such a disastrous result was foreshadowed when a porter, loaded with my effects, clambering down the sixty-foot incline extreme low water made at Remate de Males, lost his balance in the last few feet of the descent and dropped into the water, completely ruining ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... Behzad. If the Timourid age is to be dubbed the Persian quattrocento, Mr. Ruck's man will pass muster as the counterpart of some artist older than Raphael, who worked independently of the young prodigy unaffected by his ultimately disastrous inventions. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... called "armatoli." As a matter of fact the armatole were rather the allies than the enemies of the klephts. The invader who reduces a nation to anarchy, and then suffers from the disorder he creates, always calls his opponents brigands. It is a natural consequence of such a war, but a very disastrous one, for the people who have to have recourse to these methods of defence, that the brigand acquires some measure of honourable prestige from his temporary association with patriotism and honest men. The patriot band attracts the brigand proper, who is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... hours, there had been attacks of crying and excitement, connected with the making of her will, which she had insisted on doing, being herself convinced that she would die under the knife. Medically, all such agitation was disastrous. But the only person who could calm her at these moments was Delia, whom she loved. And the girl had shewn in dealing with her a ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he said quite seriously, "I'm only too sorry your trick should have had such a disastrous conclusion. Who shall I ask for up at the house, and what shall I ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... motor—simplest thing in the world. All you have to remember is not to sneeze while you are up in the air. Sneezing is sometimes fatal. It destroys your equilibrium as nothing else does and you are liable to make a disastrous nose dive. Running an airplane is much easier than an automobile. Nerve? Not a bit of it. I tell you, Cousin Ann, when I get my flying machine I'll come get you and ride you to my place and then you will be spared the bumps of that devilish lane. Just as soon as I get it I'll ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... outranks all the others in disastrous consequences is the notion that the young people must begin where their parents left off; that the house must be, if anything, a little more elaborate. Therefore in starting life the rent is allowed to consume one ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... saying so in so many words, gave me a gonorrhoea, which lasted nine weeks and much interfered with my amours, as I naturally declined to run the risk of infecting my partner, a risk which to my certain knowledge many a young fellow has run, with disastrous consequence to the confiding woman. As it was due to my tipsy obstinacy, I could not blame the girl, but resolved never to drink too much again, a resolve which I have kept, save once, unbroken. In ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and savants were engaged in this important observation, some of the crew, forcing an entrance into the storeroom, stole a hundredweight of nails. This was a grave offence, and one which might have had disastrous results for the expedition. The market was at once glutted with that one article of traffic, and as the natives testified an immoderate desire to possess it, there was every reason to anticipate an increase in their demands. One of the thieves was detected, but only seventy ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... tyranny of man over woman has its roots, after all, in his nobler feelings; his love, his chivalry, and his desire to protect woman in the barbarous periods of pillage, lust, and war. But wherever the roots may be traced, the results at this hour are equally disastrous to woman. Her best interests and happiness do not seem to have been consulted in the arrangements made for her protection. She has been bought and sold, caressed and crucified at the will and pleasure of her master. But if a chivalrous ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... he put to shame all who entered into argument with him. (98) But his scholarship lay only on his lips, his heart was not concerned in it, and his one aim was to elicit admiration. (99) Small wonder, then, that his end was disastrous. At the time of his death he had sunk so low that he forfeited all share in the life to come. (100) Wounded vanity caused his hostility to David, who had got the better of him in a learned discussion. (101) From that moment he bent all ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... come the reactions. I can't speak of what I have been through with him. We have been together so long, I really do know him, I DO know what he is. And I feel I must say it; I feel it would be perfectly DISASTROUS for you to marry him—for you even more than for him.' Hermione lapsed into bitter reverie. 'He is so uncertain, so unstable—he wearies, and then reacts. I couldn't TELL you what his re-actions are. I couldn't ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... trembling: 'What would be the effect if our earth were to come in contact with the tail of a comet? Should we be destroyed by the collision, and our ponderous world cease to be?' But we are assured that no such disastrous results would follow. We have already passed through the tails of many comets, but we have not discovered any inconvenient change in our ordinary mode of procedure. It is probable that the comet's tail is ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... him, now and then, to go through a few figures in the printed tables, and to pick out a few results, so that I might come out pretty well on timber duty questions, and finance questions, and so on; and I should like him to get up a few little arguments about the disastrous effects of a return to cash payments and a metallic currency, with a touch now and then about the exportation of bullion, and the Emperor of Russia, and bank notes, and all that kind of thing, which it's only necessary to talk ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... is one of extremest delicacy and peril. Exposure of the secret understanding with a certain neutral Power which permits us certain temporary rights within an integral portion of its territory would be disastrous, and would undoubtedly result in an immediate invasion of this neutral (sic) country by the enemy as well as by ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... seen war, under Seckendorf, under Wallis and otherwise, in the disastrous Turk Countries; but, though willing enough, was never much of a soldier: as to Neipperg, among his own men especially, the one cry is, He ought to go about his business out of Austrian Armies, as an imbecile and even a traitor. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... even a sin to marry any one of Protestant descent, however willing he or she might have been to embrace the Romish religion. Mr. Patrick Starkey's father had been a follower of James the Second; and, during the disastrous Irish campaign of that monarch, he had fallen in love with an Irish beauty, a Miss Byrne, as zealous for her religion and for the Stuarts as himself. He had returned to Ireland after his escape to France, and married her, bearing her back to the court at ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... relieved him. When the grey dawn broke above the trees he got up stiff with cold and after eating his share of a very frugal breakfast carefully examined his rifle. Though he kept it clean of superfluous grease, there was some risk of the striker and magazine-slide freezing, and a missfire might prove disastrous. Then he glanced up between the branches and noticed the low, dingy sky, while he thought it ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... lou'd me, oft inuited me: Still question'd me the Storie of my life, From yeare to yeare: the Battaile, Sieges, Fortune, That I haue past. I ran it through, euen from my boyish daies, Toth' very moment that he bad me tell it. Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances: Of mouing Accidents by Flood and Field, Of haire-breadth scapes i'th' imminent deadly breach; Of being taken by the Insolent Foe, And sold to slauery. Of my redemption thence, And portance in my Trauellours historie. Wherein of Antars vast, and Desarts idle, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... negotiations which led to Lord Hartington's withdrawal and Mr. Gladstone's resumption of power; for in these his friend Hayward was an active go-between, removing by his tact and frankness "hitches" which might otherwise have been disastrous. He thought W. E. Forster's attack on Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy in 1882 ill-managed for his own position, his famous speech not sufficiently "clenching." Had he separated from his chief on broader grounds, ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... kissed his cheek and pressed his hand; but the terror and despair of bankruptcy were upon him. This is an awful specter, which is ever ready to appear before the man who has embarked his all in one venture. A disastrous season, two or three unlucky ventures, a succession of bad debts, and the grisly specter stands before them. He had no terror for the old man so long as he thought that Iris was safe. ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... carried the bales of cloth, boxes of beads, and coils of wire. Though they looked so formidable, Ned, after the disgraceful defeat suffered by Mohammed, did not feel that confidence which he might otherwise have experienced. To avoid the defiles which had proved so disastrous to their friends, Abdullah took a course to the northward, which, after being pursued for a couple of days, was changed to the westward. Ned looked out anxiously in the hopes of meeting a return caravan; still none appeared, and he was convinced that it would ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... his grotto, perceived the sound, and approached to the place from which it proceeded. The accent was gentle; and he feared no boisterous intrusion. The accent was tender and pathetic; and never was the breast of Madoc steeled against the voice of anguish. "Approach, my son," he cried. "What disastrous event has brought thee hither, so far from thy peaceful home, and at this still and silent hour of night? Has any lamb wandered from thy fold, and art thou come hither in pursuit of it?" Edwin was silent. His heart seemed full almost to bursting, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... fire a broadside into the unsuspecting vessel and demand immediate surrender. At times a vessel, by reason of its superiority, would succeed in outsailing the pirates, but frequently the result was most disastrous. Often a stout-hearted merchantman, seeing that capture was inevitable, would offer battle in desperation, firing volley after volley of stone shot, the pirates, stubborn, furious, tenacious, fighting ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... attacked the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when he attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had the French moved on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank march that brought salvation might have proved disastrous. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the safety of others as for his own. His magical virtue is in the strictest sense of the word contagious: his divinity is a fire, which, under proper restraints, confers endless blessings, but, if rashly touched or allowed to break bounds, burns and destroys what it touches. Hence the disastrous effects supposed to attend a breach of taboo; the offender has thrust his hand into the divine fire, which shrivels up and consumes ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... guns, for the walls were riddled with small holes and chipped with rifle fire. Then shrapnel had been brought into play, to set the houses on fire and bring the German troops out into the open. Then they had charged the Belgians across an open field and apparently with disastrous results. Part of the ground was in hay which had already been harvested and piled in stacks, the rest was in sugar beets. The Prussians had charged across the field and had come upon a sunken road into which they fell ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... intellect, the wide reading, the grave enthusiasm, which he himself possessed, the misunderstanding became complete. The discordance between the actual Victoria and this strange Divinity made in Mr. Gladstone's image produced disastrous results. Her discomfort and dislike turned at last into positive animosity, and, though her manners continued to be perfect, she never for a moment unbent; while he on his side was overcome with disappointment, perplexity, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... great a toll from our industrial and commercial population. The great men who won the Napoleonic War—after twenty-three years—had not a big army; and the consequence was that, while it was going on, British trade expanded by leaps and bounds. To-day, owing to our disastrous military policy the demands upon our tonnage were so heavy that people had to go short of sugar and tobacco. Let us conserve our resources and be ready to dictate terms when Germany has been financially ruined. When Mr. PRINGLE at last sat down after three-quarters ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... appreciate the difficulties of his task. He evinced no insight into the political complications of his time; and his total ignorance of affairs, together with his contempt for civilised life, prevented him from framing a theory of any practical utility. Indeed, the disastrous attempt of the Jacobins to apply his principles proved how valueless and impracticable most of his doctrines were. He never attempted to trace social and political evils to their causes, in order to suggest suitable modifications of existing conditions. He could ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long as we sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into European affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit. "We ought not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political interests are all in the East, and in regard to Bonaparte ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of the loser. This kind of action is therefore essentially anti-social, sears the sympathies, cultivates a hard egoism, and produces general deterioration of character and conduct." The young should specially guard against this vice, which has been a rock upon which many a promising life has made disastrous shipwreck. ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... or pasture, and it wanders whither it will over the ground. The grass hides it, and the walker, bird-student or botanist, steps splash into it without the slightest warning. This is always unpleasant, and is sometimes disastrous, as when one attempts to cross the edge of a field of some close-growing crop, and instantly sinks to the top of the ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... to secure political unification until the 1860s, thus lacking the military and imperial power of Spain, Britain, and France. The fascist dictatorship of MUSSOLINI after World War I, led to the disastrous alliance with HITLER's Germany and defeat in World War II. Italy was a founding member of the European Economic Community (EEC) and joined in the growing political and economic unification of Western Europe, including the introduction ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in the week, Major Belwether kindly suggested Klondyke for Siward's benefit, which proved more quickly disastrous to him than anything yet proposed; and he went back to Bridge, preferring rather to "carry" Agatha Caithness at intervals than crumble into bankruptcy under the sheer deadly ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... retrograde a little in the narrative, in order to show what events led to the disastrous catastrophe I have just related. Captain Reud, having been lying for many, many weeks, apparently unconscious of objects around him, one morning said, in a faint, low voice, when Dr Thompson and Mr Farmer, the first-lieutenant, were standing near him, "Send Ralph Rattlin ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... had served in preceding reigns; but they had enjoyed but little influence, and had been cast into the shade by the freedmen and favorite slaves of the Emperor. Thus we find men of the first ability occupying high posts under Nero. The framework was good. The accession of bad emperors, disastrous as it was, could not change at once the general tendency of affairs, and the principles of the government. The empire, far from being in its decay, was in the full strength of vigorous youth. Decay ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... on three occasions in turning his car and traversing the short block to the Grill the owner escaped disastrous collision with other vehicles only by the narrowest possible margin. He may have courted something of the sort. I dare say ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... footing with the white before the law, would—far from bringing blessings in their train—promote, with other evils, a pernicious development, with calamitous reaction upon him, of the aggrandizing instinct of the white, who would lure and entrap him into every kind of disastrous negotiation—its outcome, in truth, a very maelstrom of artful intrigue and shameless rapacity, looking to the absorption of the Indian's land, and of the few worldly possessions he now has. Nay, many would foresee for the Indian, through the consummation of his enfranchisement, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... Percy Edward band of pilgrims to found a "happy home" in the South Seas. They called themselves the "United Brotherhood of the South Sea Islands". In another volume, in an article describing my personal experiences of the disastrous "Nouvelle France" expedition to New Ireland,{*} I have alluded to the Percy Edward affair in these words, which I may be permitted to quote: "The Percy Edward was a wretched old tub of a brigantine (formerly a Tahiti-San Francisco mail packet). ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... numbers;—slaveholders monopolizing the offices and dictating the policy of the Government;—prostituting the strength and influence of the Nation to the support of slavery here and elsewhere;—trampling on the rights of the free States, and making the courts of the country their tools. To continue this disastrous alliance longer is madness. The trial of fifty years only proves that it is impossible for free and slave States to unite on any terms, without all becoming partners in the guilt and responsible for the sin of slavery. Why prolong the experiment? Let every honest ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... had thwarted him; famine, discontent, and disaffection were rife among his soldiers; and no small portion of the Canadian militia had dispersed from sheer starvation. In spite of all, he had trusted to hold out till the winter frosts should drive the invaders from before the town, when on that disastrous morning the news of their successful temerity fell like a cannon-shot upon his ear. Still he assumed a tone of confidence. "They have got to the weak side of us at last," he is reported to have said, "and we must crush them with our numbers." With headlong haste his troops were ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Duchy of Milan. All his subsequent troubles arose from this transaction. Charles came, conquered, and returned to France, disturbing the political equilibrium of the Italian States, and founding a disastrous precedent for future foreign interference. His successor in the French kingdom, Louis XII., believed he had a title to the Duchy of Milan through his grandmother Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. The claim was not a legal one; ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... torrent of questions. His main counsel was against a strike in the present situation. He had made himself familiar with the facts on both sides. Strikes, he argued, except in very rare cases, were demoralizing—an unhealthy, disastrous method of getting justice done. "Why, just look at that strike in Preston, England, among the cotton spinners. There were only 660 operatives, but that strike, before it ended, threw out of employment over 7,800 ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... this kind in the universities at present. Glaring faults are seen everywhere, working out their disastrous results, with no preventive method. We have orthopedic and orthopraxic institutions, and gymnastic halls to correct the defects of the body, but no attempt to recognize or correct the far more important ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... communities, of such diversified habits, interests, and domestic institutions, must be sacredly and religiously observed. Any attempt to disturb or destroy these compromises, being terms of the compact of union, can lead to none other than the most ruinous and disastrous consequences. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
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