"Direful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the heaven to-night, Weirdly and black, as though from guilty deeds,— From some sad shipwreck, it has taken flight, Leaving the drowning in their direful plight— Leaving the drown'd low waving ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... same, Orestes slew: his slaying is atoned. Therefore I pray you, not upon this land Shoot forth the dart of vengeance; be appeased, Nor blast the land with blight, nor loose thereon Drops of eternal venom, direful darts Wasting and ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... passive; a mean worm, organized to feel sensations of pain, but having no emotion of resentment? Did you imagine that there was no danger in inflicting on me pains, however great; miseries, however direful? Do you believe me impotent, imbecile, and idiot-like, with no understanding to contrive my escape and thy ruin, and no energy to perpetrate it? I will tell the end of thy infernal works. The country, in justice, shall hear me. I would that I had the language ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... the Aurora joined the Toulon fleet. When she was first seen it was imagined by those on board of the other ships that she had been in action, but they soon learnt that the conflict had been against more direful weapons than any yet invented by mortal hands. Captain Wilson waited upon the Admiral, and of course received immediate orders to repair to port and refit. In a few hours the Aurora had shaped her course for Malta, and by sunset the Toulon ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... women who had been suffered to remain on deck was close enough to overhear the direful news. Her hands to ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... emphasis on the harder teaching of the Christian belief. Whether unpopular with the people or not, this teaching may be unpopular with the preachers. We do not speak of these unpleasant things, for why be singular in direful prophecy? Of some preachers, to summarise, we will say that their need is a recovery of the sense of sin; of others that a deepened consciousness of every man's power to triumph over his inherited tendencies, ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... fade away: Emblazoned in the sacred Hall of Fame, They shall remain till dawns that direful Day, The valid seal beneath thy sacred name. Deft Tanner, artist, ever blazing flame, With Pickens, Bruce and Locke of classic dell, Old Truth and Harper, Yates and Ruffin came, And Walker, Terrell, Williams, known so well Long ere Marie had taught ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... bubbles can show you, will force a way through a basin full, and the same thing would happen if there should chance to be a backward current of air through these pipes, with this difference, that while the soap bubbles are harmless beauties, these may be filled with the germs of direful diseases. Still another danger to which this light water-seal is exposed is that a downward rush of water may cause a vacuum in the small pipes, somewhat as the exhaust steam operates the air-brakes, and empty the trap, leaving merely an open crooked pipe. Both these ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... In the direful disaster that swept over the beautiful city of Halifax, the Mayor of that city stated: "I do not know what I should have done the first two or three days following the explosion, when everyone was panic- stricken without the ready, intelligent, ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... surprise. Then when he began his memorable march through the very heart of Georgia—Hood with a great army in his rear, in his front the sea—the South stood stupified and bewildered at this stupendous undertaking. It was thought by the army and the people that some direful blow would be struck Sherman when he was well under way in Georgia, and when too far from his base in the rear, and not far enough advanced to reach the fleet that was to ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... loose. Evelyn burst into uncontrollable sobs, Fanny toppled over in blissful unconsciousness, Cherry, beside herself with grief, tore down the street to break the direful news to those at home; and the boys danced and pranced in their terror, as they screamed, "She's dead, she's dead! Peace ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... themselves at some period. Many believe and stoutly maintain that they "never had emissions or seminal disease, and it didn't hurt them." But it did, and it is just now that they begin to feel it. It is true they escaped the more acute and direful effects, but it told on them in after years. There are many thousands to-day who are just now feeling the effects of early vices, now almost forgotten. They can be restored to natural power by proper treatment, but they rarely are, because but few of them believe that early ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... what has now been stated should be urged by the enemies of Christianity, as if its influence on the mind were not benignant, let it be remembered, that Johnson's temperament was melancholy, of which such direful apprehensions of futurity are often a common effect. We shall presently see that when he approached nearer to his aweful change, his mind became tranquil, and he exhibited as much fortitude as becomes a ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Department, and for the last ten years the American Secretary to the Japanese Legation at Washington. A lover of social intercourse, Mr. Lanman has led the typical busy life of the American, untouched by the direful and disastrous ills it is supposed to bring. He is now engaged in editing fourteen of his books for reproduction in uniform style, and a new book, The Leading Men of Japan, is ready for issue." 12mo, $1.50. Boston: D. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... effect of the proximity of a comet to our earth have proceeded on erroneous principles,—over-rating the quantity of matter in comets, and losing sight of their great velocity when in this part of the system. For a comet to produce any direful effect, it ought to contain not merely a considerable quantity of matter, but also ought to be vertical and stationary to the earth's surface for several hours; instead of which, we have sufficient reason to believe that though vast in volume, comets contain but little matter ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... sound heard in the quiet room; but since its utterance the relative positions of the two individuals sitting opposite each other had changed. Wilford regarding Helen as an obstacle in his path, and Helen regarding him as a tyrant contemplating some direful harm against ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... those who, stiff and mangled, Paid, upon that bloody field, Direful, cringing, awe-struck homage To the sword our heroes yield; And who felt, by fiery trial, That the men who will be free. Though in conflict baffled often, Ever will ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... period within the field of local government. It must suffice to mention but the principal steps by which the local governing system has been brought to its present high degree of democracy and effectiveness. Among the subjects to which the first reformed parliament addressed its attention was the direful condition into which had fallen the relief of the poor, and the initial stage of local government regeneration was marked by the adoption of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, abolishing outdoor relief for the able-bodied, providing for the regrouping of parishes ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... language of common life, in which this drama commences, with the direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the opening of Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar;—there is no poetic description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker to another of what both had immediately before their senses—(such ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... astonished at the wishful, hungry look in the blue eyes before her. "Yes, a little," she said lightly; "for I hate the very word. But, if it must be spoken, it should always be short and staccato. Instead, he sat here, and we talked about Fate and wounds and all sorts of direful things." She shook herself and shivered slightly. Then she sat down in the chair which Weldon had just left vacant. "It is bad manners to have nerves, Captain Frazer. Forgive me first, and then tell me something altogether flippant, ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... shield-hedge. Ye have the graves Under the stone-slopes, and likewise the places And the number of winters in writings set down." Judas replied (great sorrow he bore): 655 "That work of war, we, lady mine, Through direful need remember well, And that tumult of war in writing set down, The bearing of nations, but this one never By any man's mouth have we heard 660 Made known to men except here now." The noble queen gave answer to him: "Thou resistest too much both truth and right Of the tree ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... Jane, and moved on to a farm six miles from Dumfries. He had become a lion, and the tables of the neighboring gentry were soon open to him, as the houses of the great had been in Edinburgh. Those were the days of conviviality, and Burns took his part in the hilarity of the table, soon with very direful consequences to himself and his family. He made many resolutions of amendment; but temperance was a very rare virtue in those days, and Burns, who could not bear it, was expected to drink just as much as those who could bear ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... appointed for the beginning of this direful programme was the day when the senators and the troops should assemble to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas. The soldiers, who knew nothing of the plot, were incited to refuse to take the oath on the ground that Constantine's resignation ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... continued Cedric, pursuing with animation his tale, though it interested not the listener, "retreated, to carry to Tosti and his ally the ominous answer of his injured brother. It was then that the distant towers of York, and the bloody streams of the Derwent, [26] beheld that direful conflict, in which, after displaying the most undaunted valour, the King of Norway, and Tosti, both fell, with ten thousand of their bravest followers. Who would have thought that upon the proud day when this battle was won, the very gale which waved the Saxon banners in triumph, was ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... proclamation. One by one the windows in the public square were lighted up from within. The citizens of Boulogne wanted to think over the strange events which had occurred without their knowledge, yet which were apparently to have such direful or ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... 1856, that Governor Geary and his party landed at Leavenworth. Even on his approach he had already been compelled to note and verify the evidences of civil war. He had met Governor Shannon fleeing from the Territory, who drew for him a direful picture of the official inheritance to which he had come. While this interview took place, during the landing of the boat at Glasgow, a company of sixty Missouri Border Ruffians was embarking, with wagons, arms, and cannon, and with the open declaration that they were bound for Kansas ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... dwell on thoughts of peace and beauty. In its language, as in its action, the drama is full of tumult and storm. Whenever the Witches are present we see and hear a thunder-storm: when they are absent we hear of ship-wrecking storms and direful thunders; of tempests that blow down trees and churches, castles, palaces and pyramids; of the frightful hurricane of the night when Duncan was murdered; of the blast on which pity rides like a new-born babe, or on which Heaven's ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... can regard war as anything but a direful necessity arising out of our present conditions; only the thoughtless and those who batten upon such disasters can rejoice in the idea of what I have heard ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... looked as if he wished very much to retort in kind. The glare he gave his visitor prophesied direful things. But he did not retort; nor, to her surprise, did he raise his voice or order her off the premises. Instead his tone, when he spoke again, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... knight, who had once known the old Leicester family; but bade him mention the circumstance to no one. He feared, however, that the caution came too late, since Dame Idonea was not only an inveterate gossip, but was likely to hold in direful suspicion any one who had been inquired for by ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conciseness itself compared with this new code of morals. It was thought by many, that the labors of the commissioners would not come to an end till long after the race for whose benefit it was designed had ceased to exist. Afraid, apparently, of such a direful contingency, they had published, about three years before, the first part, in seventy-five folio volumes, containing limitations, illustrative cases, exceptions, and modifications, in relation to that very obscure general maxim, 'Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you.' ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... the Piper of Hamelin, well known in the version of Robert Browning, leads to the same conclusion. In 1284 the good people of Hamelin could obtain no rest, night or day, by reason of the direful host of rats which infested their town. One day came a strange man in a bunting-suit, and offered for five hundred guilders to rid the town of the vermin. The people agreed: whereupon the man took out a pipe ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... To approach the questions which inevitably arise between them solely from the standpoint which treats each side in the mass as the enemy of the other side in the mass is both wicked and foolish. In the past the most direful among the influences which have brought about the downfall of republics has ever been the growth of the class spirit, the growth of the spirit which tends to make a man subordinate the welfare of the public as a whole ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... in the world's history that was when the ladies had no nerves! Alas! I was born too late instead of too early, as the complaint of some is. I am cursed with nerves, and, as a consequence, am ever and anon distressed with nervous fears of some direful calamity or painful affliction. I am a simpleton for this, I know; but then, how can I help it? I try to be a woman of sense, but my nerves are too delicately strung. Reason is not sufficient to subdue the fears of impending evil that too ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... wrath of Peleus' son, the direful spring Of all the Grecian woes, O goddess, sing; That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign The souls of mighty ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... his sword-belt which he had doffed for the night. Springing on his horse, he met some of the runaways, whom he forced back, hoping by their means to stem the main torrent. But, lo! in the very height of the panic, appeared another and more direful intruder—an avenue of fire seemed to extend from the walls to their own trench. It appeared as though the enemy had by some unaccountable means formed in a double line from the fortress, illuminated rank and file as if by magic—flinging their torches by one ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... spake: "I am the ploughman Rick, That ne'er harmed man or woman, maid or chick! But here in direful dungeon doomed be I, Yet cannot tell the wherefore ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... world, their glorified spirits will see the great white throne, and hear the voice proceeding from it, saying, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you; while from that throne the direful thunderbolts will be hurled upon the despisers of divine grace, and they will hurry into irretrievable misery. The safety of the Christian entirely depends upon his being found 'looking unto Jesus': his ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the wild bursts of cheering given out again and again by the rescued men, wounded (who were many) and sound (who were very few), to those who had succoured them in their direful time of need—shouts that were echoed and re-echoed by the wearied and weather-worn comrades warmly shaking hands and almost ready to embrace old friends—there were other meetings and heart-stirring incidents. Not the least interesting was that in which the commanding officers of the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... sacrifice everything but its existence to the demolition of this bloody god, is of itself an evidence of the purity of our civilization. We have not been dead to the principles of truth and justice involved in this question; we have been but biding our time, plainly seeing and carefully noting the direful effects of slavery upon our social organization, and 'heaping up wrath against the day of wrath.' And now, with the blessing of God upon our efforts, the present war will not cease until the death blow is given to the accursed institution with all its attendant ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the outside of the excited group glowering upon the ugly suitor. Cooler heads had relegated him to this place of security during the diplomatic contest. The sheik's threats of vengeance were direful. He swore by somebody's beard that he would bring ten thousand men to establish his claim by force. His intense desire to fight for her then and there was quelled by Captain Perry's detachment of six lusty sailors, whose big bare fists were shaken vigorously ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... the good of killing a man for his religion?" I thanked the Prince for his noble feelings of tolerance, and left him and his clown to their tête-� -tête. Khanouhen is one of the few of those strong-minded and right-thinking men, who see the utter folly and direful mischief of forging a creed for the consciences of his fellows. Had he been a Christian prince of the times of Charles V., he would not, like that celebrated monarch, have passed all his life in binding the religious opinions of men in fetters, and then at the end of his ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... queen of wisdom, Thy praise I sing! Steadfast, all holy, sure ward of our city, Triton-born rule whom High Zeus doth bring Forth from his forehead. Thou springest forth valiant; The clangour swells far as thy direful arms ring. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... and neck with if not in advance of the other fellows. The promised spurt, however, had not been made. Instead he had drifted along, studying only enough to keep his head above water and putting all his zeal into tennis or baseball until the present climax with its direful calamity ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... hate you, and try to make others do like- wise, so taking a dose of error big enough apparently to neutralize your Truth, else he will doubtingly await the result; during which interim, by constant combat and [15] direful struggles, you get the victory and Truth heals him of the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... union of the two kinds of force now specified, was essential to the liberation of the world from that odious but scientific oppression, by which it had been so long held in misery, and which was repeatedly found, by very direful experience, to be too strong for either of them separately. It was not till the enthusiastic indignation of vulgar minds, and the cordial ferocity of some of the rudest of the allied tribes, had been amalgamated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... direful forebodings Aun' Jinkey declared loudly: "I doan know what he be. He ain' say not'n ter me ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... of 1801 he is under the "fearful slavery," as he was to call it, of opium. "My sole sensuality," he says of this time, "was not to be in pain." In a terrible letter addressed to Joseph Cottle in 1814 he declares that he was "seduced to the accursed habit ignorantly"; and he describes "the direful moment, when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such a dreadful falling abroad, as it were, of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness, and incipient bewilderment ... for my case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement, an utter ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... list gives a few—and only a few—of the direful results to which this widespread superstition led. The instances are chiefly taken from Dr. Reville's History of the Devil, and Haydn's well-known ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... through deep snow, in midsummer, to reach Rich Bar. The revivifying effect of mountain atmosphere. Arrival of twenty-nine physicians in less than three weeks. The author's purpose to leave San Francisco and join her husband at the mines. Direful predictions and disapprobation of friends. Indelicacy of her position among an almost exclusively male population. Indians, ennui, cold. Leaves for Marysville. Scanty fare on way. Meets husband. Falls ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... of the picture. I should have hesitated to draw at such full length and in such lugubrious detail the direful possibilities and injurious effects of adenoids if its only result could have been to arouse apprehensions which ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... chattering, running, and sleeping; that they became unfaithful, for they withheld in this way from their masters what they had lent and sold to them—time. But as every disloyalty punished itself, so this also caused very direful consequences; for betrayal of the master was betrayal of oneself. Every action tended imperceptibly to form a habit which we could never get rid of. When a maid-servant or a man-servant had for years done as little ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... more than we knew then of the direful influence of that party cry, "The spoils to the victors." It has made our elections scrambles for office, and our parties "rings." Mr. Whipple portrayed the consequences which we are now feeling, and powerfully urged that his State, small though it was, should do its ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Virginia have ever had any thing to do with rendering their assent to the making of this new State within the territorial limits of that ancient Commonwealth." He declared this to be "a dangerous precedent which overthrows the Constitution and may be fraught with direful consequences." "Out of the one hundred and sixty counties that compose the State of Virginia," he continued, "less than one-fourth have assumed to act for the entire State; and even within the boundaries of the new ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... have been handed down from earliest times; and when one of those mysterious visitors, travelling from out the depths of space, became visible in our skies, it was regarded with apprehension and dread as betokening the occurrence of calamities and direful events among the nations ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... heart of duty, Worden, So helped you that in fame you dwell; You bore the first iron battle's burden Sealed as in a diving-bell. Alcides, groping into haunted hell To bring forth King Admetus' bride, Braved naught more vaguely direful and untried. What poet shall uplift his charm, Bold Sailor, to your height of daring, And interblend therewith the calm, And build a goodly ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... with him. Still he was sure to play the money-diggers some slippery trick. Some had succeeded so far as to touch the iron chest which contained the treasure, when some baffling circumstance was sure to take place. Either the earth would fall in and fill up the pit or some direful noise or apparition would throw the party into a panic and frighten them from the place; and sometimes the devil himself would appear and bear off the prize from their very grasp; and if they visited the place on the next day, not a trace ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather's direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... The direful practice of spirit-drinking seems to have arrived at its acme in the metropolis. Splendid mansions rear their dazzling heads at almost every turning; and it appears as if Circe had fixed her abode in these superb haunts. Happy are those who, like Ulysses of old, will not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... ah no, it is repentant tears, By those let fall who make their direful flight, And drop by drop the anguish of their fears Comes down around us all the ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... with a clearness of articulation and fidelity really wonderful for a bird. What exclamations! what turning-up of eyes! I was stifled with caresses, intoxicated with praises, and crammed with sweetmeats. The moral agent grew pale with jealousy, when Doctor Direful was announced. He rushed into the room like a whirlwind, but stood aghast at beholding the devout crowd that encircled me. Instead of the usual apophthegms, and serious discourse, he heard nothing but "Pretty Poll," "Scratch a poll," "What a dear bird," &c. The malicious moral agent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... ye not yon footsteps dread That shook the hall with thundering tread? With eager haste, The fellows past. Each intent on direful work. High lifts the mighty blade and points ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... the subject of this sketch, is a native of the State of Florida. He was born of slave parents, just in time to be spared the horrible experiences of that slave system which swept over this country with such direful results. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... left in his charge the only manly thing to do, he argued, was to go directly to Mr. Crowninshield and himself acquaint him with the direful tidings. It would be cowardly to shunt this wretched task off on somebody else. It was his duty and his alone. Nevertheless, as he stood for a moment summoning his courage, he would have given all he possessed to escape the interview ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... opposed to any exercise by her of direct influence, has some bad qualities which a better system of education might diminish. The simple historical record shows that in what Bacon calls the 'insanity of states,' her influence has generally been direful. From Catherine de Medicis in the struggle of the League, down to Louise Michel, in the recent catastrophe at Paris—from the tricoteuses of the first French Revolution to the petroleuses of the last, woman has seemed to aggravate rather than soothe popular fury. Nor is the ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... wonderfully abound with painful descriptions of the compromises, uncleannesses, and afflictions inseparably connected with existence. Volumes would be required to furnish an adequate representation of the vivid and inexhaustible amplification with which they set forth the direful disgusts and loathsome terrors associated with the series of ideas expressed by the words conception, birth, life, death, hell, and regeneration. The fifth chapter in the sixth book of the Vishnu Purana affords a good specimen of these details; ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... company rush back, and find the walls embellished by a series of little shelves, about a foot wide, each furnished with a mattress and bedding, and hooked to the ceiling by a very suspiciously slender cord. Direful are the ruminations and exclamations of inexperienced travellers, particularly young ones, as they eye these very equivocal accommodations. "What, sleep up there! I won't sleep on one of those top shelves, I ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... the names of those who fell on this fatal day. First, Jemmy Tweedle felt on his hinder head the direful bone. Him the pleasant banks of sweetly-winding Stour had nourished, where he first learnt the vocal art, with which, wandering up and down at wakes and fairs, he cheered the rural nymphs and swains, when upon the green they interweaved the sprightly dance; while ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... locusts had taken his departure eastward early in the morning; the myriads of locusts followed, so that in a quarter of an hour not one was to be seen. The depredations of these devouring insects was too soon felt, and a direful scarcity ensued. The poor would go out a locusting, as they termed it: the bushes were covered; they took their (haik) garment, and threw it over them, and then collected them in a sack. In half an hour they would collect a bushel. These they would take home, and boil a quarter ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... he lightly knocked off with his little finger the ash from his cigar-end. This was a serious, a direful business; but he had no intention to let the Greek see that his words had any alarming or disturbing effect upon him, so he ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... the time or the skill necessary to adjust a cold shoe to the hoof so that it will fit, as we say, "air-tight." Though the opponents of hot fitting draw a lurid picture of the direful consequences of applying a hot shoe to the hoof, it is only the abuse of the practice that is to be condemned. If a heavy shoe at a yellow heat be held tightly pressed against a hoof which has been pared too thin, till ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... But the direful words were never spoken, for she was in his arms again—close in his arms; and, as he kissed her with a delicious sensation that it was all too good to be true, he ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... been sent ashore for rice, some silly tongue, loosened by wine, in the head of a sailor who had cloves to sell, babbled the perilous secret of Magellan and the Moluccas. The thirteen were at once arrested, and a boat called upon the Victoria, with direful threats, to surrender; but she quickly stretched every inch of her canvas and got away. This was on the 18th of July, and eight weeks of ocean remained. At last, on the 6th of September—the thirtieth anniversary of the day when Columbus weighed anchor ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... member of the family unvisited by the ghost was the Rev. Samuel, and upon learning that he had heard none of the direful sounds his wife and children made up their minds that his death was imminent; for a local superstition had it that in all such cases of haunting the person undisturbed is marked for an early demise. But the worthy clergyman continued hale and ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... flames, or, if you choose it, in the Adriatic. Nor Cybele, nor Apollo, the dweller in the shrines, so shakes the breast of his priests; Bacchus does not do it equally, nor do the Corybantes so redouble their strokes on the sharp-sounding cymbals, as direful anger; which neither the Noric sword can deter, nor the shipwrecking sea, nor dreadful fire, not Jupiter himself rushing down with awful crash. It is reported that Prometheus was obliged to add to that original clay [with which ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... side of the road at present. This is lined with shops, varying in quality and increasing in size towards the Marble Arch. There are no buildings of importance. The road ends in Oxford Street, the ancient Tyburn Road, a name associated with the direful ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... comprehended in that single word. What mind is there that does not shrink from its direful effects? Unless the image of God is obliterated from the soul, all men cherish the love of Liberty. The nice discerning political economist does not regard the sacred right, more than the untutored African who roams in the wilds of Congo. Nor has the one more right to the full enjoyment of ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... called him to order in view of the king's message. "Amid a deadly stillness" Eliot sat down and burst into tears. For a moment the House was overcome with despair. Deprived of all constitutional methods of redress, they suddenly saw yawning before them the direful alternative—slavery or civil war. Since the day of Bosworth a hundred and fifty years had passed without fighting worthy of mention on English soil, such an era of peace as had hardly ever before been seen on the earth; now half the nation was to be pitted against ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... From a road to the west of the one he was on, a cloud of dust was rising. His guide told him that this road intersected the one he was on but a short distance ahead. His advance came dashing back, saying there was a large body of Federal troops in his front. From the rear came the direful tidings that Shackelford was near. Morgan saw, and his lip quivered. "It is no use," he ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... find a language in your eye more certain than your lip—murder—midnight murder is its direful theme. Thou wretched man! rather for thee than for myself I kneel. Pause, Longueville! raise but thine eye to yon clear world, thick-sown with shining wonders—think, that throughout the boundless beauteous space, an omnipresent, and all-conscious spirit is; think, that within his awful ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... very large puma, which immediately fled, roaring loudly. When severely wounded and driven into a corner, this animal frequently commences a combat of despair, and sometimes kills the hunter. The puma measures in length about four feet, and in height more than two feet. More direful than any of the felines mentioned above is the sanguinary ounce,[81] which possesses vast strength, and is of a most savage disposition. Though the favorite haunts of this animal are the expansive Pajonales, yet he frequently takes up his abode in the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... rumor were busy in exaggerating the miraculous escape of Elizabeth; and a report was generally credited, that Mohegan had actually perished in the flames. This belief became confirmed, and was indeed rendered probable, when the direful intelligence reached the village that Jotham Riddel, the miner, was found in his hole, nearly dead with suffocation, and burnt to such a degree that no hopes ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... mealy-mouthed—that impression, indeed, it took no great cleverness to gather—but the dilemma lay between one's sense of the brutality and cynicism of the usual utterances of the Turkish party and one's perception of the direful ills which Russian conquest was so liberally scattering abroad. The brutality of the Turkish tone, as I sometimes caught an echo of it in the talk of chance interlocutors, was not such as to quicken that race-feeling to which I just now alluded. English society is a tremendously comfortable affair, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... stars adverse? or what else hath fall'n?" And others said, wailing for friends and goods:— "Who was that woman, with mad eyes, that came Into our camp, ill-favored, hardly cast In mortal mould? By her, be sure, was wrought This direful sorcery. Demon or witch, Yakshi or Rakshasi, or gliding ghost, Or something frightful, was she. Hers this deed Of midnight murders; doubt there can be none. Ah, if we could espy that hateful one, The ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... comment, I took the wrapper, which was too handsome to trust to an inexperienced hand, like Mrs. Mitchell very well knew I was, and washed it, with the same direful results as chronicled before. But I could not help it, as heaven is my witness. I was entirely and hopelessly ignorant! But of course my mistress would not believe it, and declared over and over again, that I did it on purpose to provoke her and show my defiance of her wishes. In ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... that the ceremonial of triumph might be ended by leading us thrice around the sacrificial stone. And in truth I dreaded less the fate which this leading us about the altar of sacrifice implied was in store for us than I did the close association, made necessary by the ceremony, with the direful stench which that ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... moment too comes Nerina, one of the 'messengers' of the piece, with the news that Silvia has been slain while pursuing a wolf in the forest. Thereupon Aminta, with a last reproach to Dafne for having prevented him from putting an end to his miserable life before being the recipient of such direful news, rushes off the scene at a pace to mock pursuit. In the next act, however, Silvia reappears and narrates her escape. Here we arrive at the dramatic climax of the play. Dafne expresses her fear that the false report of Silvia's death may indeed prove the death of Aminta. The nymph ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... DIP was plac'd ... A pudding-sauce well-known of yore, When folks were frugal, though not poor; An olio mixt of sweet and sour. Soon as this touch'd his laughing lip, That unmixt Nectar us'd to sip, He rose, and with a threat'ning frown Of direful Anger[11], dash'd it down, And swore, departing in a huff, I'll make your lives like ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... estimated that four-fifths of those who were swept away by the late direful visitation of CHOLERA, were such as had been addicted to the use of intoxicating drink. Dr. Bronson, of Albany, who spent some time in Canada, and whose professional character and standing give great weight to his opinions, says, "Intemperance of any species, but particularly ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... were, you will suppose, employed in discussing their gravities and secrets of state: no such thing; that whisper from Lord Quintown, the handsome nobleman, to Mr. St. George, is no hoarded and valuable information which would rejoice the heart of the editor of an Opposition paper, no direful murmur, "perplexing monarchs with the dread of change;" it is only a recent piece of scandal, touching the virtue of a lady of the court, which (albeit the sage listener seems to pay so devout an attention to the news) is far more interesting to the gallant ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... franchise from seventeen to twenty-one years, and yet a large majority of the men voted to grant it perpetually. Women do not love their families because compelled to do so by statute, or cling to their homes because there is no place for them outside. This same direful prediction was made at every advanced step, but, although the entire status of women has been changed, and they are largely engaged in the public work of every community, they are better and happier wives, mothers and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... punishment for a self-inflicted wrong it was John Yule. A punishment as subtle as the sin; for in the children growing up about him every relinquished hope, neglected gift, lost aspiration, seemed to live again; yet on each and all was set the direful stamp of imperfection, which made them visible illustrations of the great law broken in ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... oft to Paradise returned, For fierce within her, bitter hatred burned, And better, dearer, seemed revenge than aught She else desired. The coppice oft she sought, Much hoping direful evil might be wrought Upon the love that bloomed in Eden. Wide Oft strayed fair Eve; the little maid, beside, Plucking the lotus; or by sedgy moats, From ribbed papyrus broad, frail fairy boats Deft fashioning. Or Adam, watching, smiled, With flowery wreaths engarlanding the child. And ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... fact that at the time of the tragedy the child was wearing the coat—afterward found hanging loose, without a rent or a blemish, on the tree in the valley—should be fully exploited. If it were indeed a direful instance of murder and abduction, as the sheriff now believed, he wished the miscreants to rest unwitting of the activity of the officers ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... fear. This fear takes two main forms. First, the worry over the life situation in general, that is to say, fear concerning business; fear concerning the health and prosperity of the household; fear that magnifies anything that has even the faintest possibility of being direful into something that is almost sure to happen and be disastrous. This constant worry over the possibilities of the future is both a cause of neurasthenia and a symptom, in that once a neurasthenic state is established, the liability to worry ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... something and another something else. It was all very entertaining, in spite of the conditions that made the stories possible. But what amused her most of all were the wild guesses as to her present whereabouts. There was a direful unanimity of opinion that she was groveling in her priceless wedding-gown on the floor of some dark, filthy cellar. The papers vividly painted her as haggard, faint, despairing of succor, beating her breast and tearing her beautiful hair in the confines ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... foul poisonous vapours were the cause Of five score agonising deaths, within The space of a few hours, from wilful sin. Many such instances of equal weight, I might from various other sources state, To show what misery and direful woe, From breaking nature's laws is sure to flow; Whilst in the keeping of them, blessings pure Flow in rewards continual and sure. Then, seeing we have so much in our power, Let us like the wise bees improve each hour, Learn of so-called ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... right hand has saved him and his holy arm. The Lord has made known his salvation; he has revealed his righteousness in the presence of the nations. We may now appropriately respond to the inspired command to sing a new song, inasmuch as after such direful spectacles and narrations we now have the happiness to see and celebrate what many holy men before us and the martyrs for God desired to see on earth, and did not see, and to hear, and have not heard. But advancing more rapidly they attained far superior ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... is at the seventh gate Is thine own brother; hear his direful prayers, His imprecations on our commonwealth. He prays that he may mount our battlements, Be there proclaimed our king, shout victory, Meet thee, and slay thee, and insult thee slain, Or, living, drive thee forth a banished man, Disgracing thee as thou hast him ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... eyes, and the little space between was for both as an open grave filled with dead things—hopes, ambitions, future days and months and years—days and months and years when they should be for ever mindful of his crime! For henceforth they were to dwell in the chill of this direful shadow that would tower above all the concerns of life whether great or small; that would add despair to every sorrow, and take the very soul ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... ascendency, because the best men were to some extent partakers of it. Columbus was eager to make his great discovery pay well, to preserve the means of continued exploration. In one hand he lifted high the banner of possession with its promise of a cross, which direful irony fulfilled; with the other he kept feeding the ravenous nation with gold, to preserve its sympathy and admiration, that the supply of men and vessels should not fail. Las Casas himself, a just and noble man, the first advocate of the natural rights of men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Then crams salt leaven on his crooked knife: The beast long struggled, as being like to prove 610 An awkward sacrifice; but by the horns The quick priest pulled him on his knees, and slew him. No vein sprung out, but from the yawning gash, Instead of red blood, wallow'd venomous gore. These direful signs made Arruns stand amazed, And searching farther for the gods' displeasure, The very colour scared him; a dead blackness Ran through the blood, that turned it all to jelly, And stained the bowels with dark loathsome spots; The liver swelled with filth; and every vein 620 Did threaten ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... hominy, sticky and dripping. Swiftly corking the jug, he lifted it out of the carryall, together with the oilcloth strip, and deftly stood both against a fence by the roadside. Flint watched him with admiration. He felt himself supremely helpless in the presence of the direful calamity. How was he ever to get these bundles into condition to be put back into the wagon? How cleanse the oilcloth ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... relief of the half-choked Albinia, little Mary Ferrars, with whom her cousin had been carrying on a direful warfare all day, fitted on the cap, shook her head gravely at him, and after an appealing look of indignation, first at his mamma, then at her own, was overheard confiding to Nora Nugent that Maurice was a very naughty boy—she was sorry to say, a ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... A direful thought struck me. I dashed up-stairs and into my room. Yes, he DID mean my trunk. I could see nothing funny about it—quite the contrary. The bond of sympathy between my nephew and myself was suddenly broken. Looking at the matter ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by the pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema, [10] which enumerates the seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and devotes the guilty teachers, and their unhappy sectaries, to the eternal society of the devil and his angels. According to the emergencies of the church and state, a friendly correspondence was some times resumed; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... surest pledge of peace between Catholicism and Protestantism. The political expediency of such a step appeared the more evident and the more urgent in proportion as the religious war had become more direful and the desire for peace more general. Charles IX. embraced the idea passionately. At the outset he encountered an obstacle. The young Duke of Guise had already paid court to Marguerite, and had obtained such marked favor with her that the ambassador of Spain ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to the party, always faithful but never seen, since the encampment at Maniri: every camping-ground since that particular bivouac they faithfully described. They were, of course, in particular and direful need of sirutas and bambas (knives and hatchets), but their fears of the tasa-tasa, or guns, was still stronger than their desires, and their courage had not, until they saw the strangers domiciled as guests in their own habitations, attained the firmness and consistency ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... present situation could suggest. The phantoms of night in rapid succession pressed upon her bewildered imagination: she saw her venerable father borne down under the pressure of grief, wringing his withered hands in agony, and pronouncing a direful malediction on his ungrateful child. She heard that thrilling voice, broken by age, and quivering with emotion, and on his countenance she beheld the workings of despair. Fitfully she awoke, and struggled hard to chase away the heart-rending vision, and then she sunk again ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... aspect," exclaimed Donatello, "to know that she is but a jointed figure! When my eyes first fell upon her, I thought her arms moved, as if beckoning me to help her in some direful peril." ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... into a disjointed checking off of the particulars—his potato cooling in mid-air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for it occasionally; but always bringing up suddenly against a new and still more direful performance of my hero. At last he looked his stunned and rigid comrade impressively in the face, and said, with an expression of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it was Mars, but my eldest daughter, a better astronomer than I, said it was neither the time nor place for it to be visible. The air was still, and the dismal barking of the ban-dogs conjured up the most direful portents. All my neighbors supposed it to be a signal from Sheridan to Grant, and that the city would certainly be attacked before morning. It was only a camp signal of one of our own detachments awaiting the approach ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Talbot came into the room. The three men knew that she brought momentous, perchance direful, intelligence. She was deathly pale. Her eyes were unnaturally brilliant, her mouth set ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... change in the looks of these men, since last they parted, was a type of the famine and desolation of the land; and they now began to indulge the horrible presentiment that they would all starve together, or be reduced to the direful alternative of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... out of the yards with some difficulty. They had a spiked switch to look out for, and a missile from an old building smashed the headlight glass. At the limits a man tossed a folded paper into the locomotive cab. It was a poor scrawl containing direful threats to ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... partial strangulation,—well, say I again, in spite of all this, Dog is prime company. Intimately associated as I have been from earliest boyhood with many excellent fellows of the family, from social communion with which I am at present debarred only by the direful necessity of dwelling in lodgings,—a necessity which, if distasteful to Man, to Dog, oh, how fatal!—bound, I may say, as I was for years, not by straps and chains only, but by ties of confident friendship also, to canine comrades possessing the purest elements of worth and humor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... scrambled bravely through, and appeared much sobered by the exercise. Sally had departed to sit under a vine and fig-tree of her own, so Di had undisputed sway; but if dish-pans and dusters had tongues, direful would have been the history of that crusade against frost and fire, indolence and inexperience. But they were dumb, and Di scorned to complain, though her struggles were pathetic to behold, and her sisters went through a series of messes equal to a course of "Prince Benreddin's" peppery ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... lighting. In consequence, many ingenious devices for lighting were evolved. For example, in England in the seventeenth century man was already burrowing into the earth for coal and of course encountered coal-gases. These inflammable gases were first known for the direful effects which they so often produced rather than for their useful qualities. Although they were known to miners long before they received scientific attention, the earliest account of them in the Transactions of the Royal Society was presented in the year 1667. A description ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... in unceasing and violent motion. No artificial means appears sufficient to sustain life while a person is exposed to their chilling atmosphere; the strongest spirits have no effect—and, indeed, increase the direful consequences. They are usually long deep valleys, so shut in by neighbouring heights that scarcely a single ray of the sun sheds its genial influence through them. If a person attempts to remain in them unsheltered at night, death will certainly overtake him. ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... a distressing scene is here before us? America, I start at your situation! These direful effects of slavery demand your most serious attention. What! shall a people who flew to arms with the valor of Roman citizens when encroachments were made upon their liberties by the invasion of foreign powers, now basely descend ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when the noon of ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... Tuscan poet and wondered if it were possible that his bitter experience had called forth that direful inscription— ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour |
