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noun
Wreck  n.  (Written also wrack)  
1.
The destruction or injury of a vessel by being cast on shore, or on rocks, or by being disabled or sunk by the force of winds or waves; shipwreck. "Hard and obstinate As is a rock amidst the raging floods, 'Gainst which a ship, of succor desolate, Doth suffer wreck, both of herself and goods."
2.
Destruction or injury of anything, especially by violence; ruin; as, the wreck of a railroad train. "The wreck of matter and the crush of worlds." "Its intellectual life was thus able to go on amidst the wreck of its political life."
3.
The ruins of a ship stranded; a ship dashed against rocks or land, and broken, or otherwise rendered useless, by violence and fracture; as, they burned the wreck.
4.
The remain of anything ruined or fatally injured. "To the fair haven of my native home, The wreck of what I was, fatigued I come."
5.
(Law) Goods, etc., which, after a shipwreck, are cast upon the land by the sea.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wreck" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Yellow!"—that is to say, the Elcuanam word for that suddenly unpopular color. He began to feel bitterly toward Big Flower, the cause, it seemed, of so much trouble, and even toward his departed parent, whose name, so long after his death, was such very bad medicine as to wreck his son's ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase

... our faith. His very intellect, his reason,—God's most precious gift,—a gift dearer than life,—perished in the great endeavor to harmonize the works and word of the Eternal. A most inscrutable event, that such an intellect should have been suffered to go to wreck through too eager a prosecution of such a work. But amid the mystery, which we cannot penetrate, our love, and our veneration, and our gratitude, toward that so highly gifted and truly Christian man shall only grow ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... found a small opening and peered out. Help had come from the city now and he saw a line of stretcher bearers moving away from the wreck. His spirits rose as he identified three of the casualties. McKee, Talbott, Katal'halee. Were any or all of them dead? He had no way of knowing. But at least they appeared to be past caring about the four ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis

... upon the slippery deck— Men roll off from the blood-drenched wreck; Dead bodies float down with the stream, And from the shores witch-ravens scream. The cold blue river now runs red With the warm blood of warriors dead, And stains the waves in Karmt Sound With the last ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... had better get all the sleep I could. I found my dear one, oh, so thin and pale and weak-looking. All the resolution has gone out of his dear eyes, and that quiet dignity which I told you was in his face has vanished. He is only a wreck of himself, and he does not remember anything that has happened to him for a long time past. At least, he wants me to believe so, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... for tears; there are some sorrows that cannot be counted out in drops; a flood comes, a great freshet rises in the soul, and whirls spirit, mind, and body on, on, until the Mighty Hand comes down and lifts the poor wreck out of the flood, and dries it in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... bereft, with hope and creed o'erthrown In woe that will not weep; My reeling spirit ere from sense set free Is loosed from mooring, beaten to and fro, And in the throbbing, quick'ning flesh I know The lone desertion of the Shoreless Sea. O Brotherhood! O hope so high, so fair, That would the wreck of this sad world repair Had ye but stood! Can God forget? This Khalsa of his own supreme decree Vanquished, debased, in loss of liberty Has lost its own mysterious entity. And yet, and yet, A strange persuasion fills my breast ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... premature decay yet more evident, by that still and melancholy light: all ruins gain dignity by the moon. This was a ruin nobler than that which painters place on their canvas,—the ruin, not of stone and brick, but of humanity and spirit; the wreck of man prematurely old, not stricken by great sorrow, not bowed by great toil, but fretted and mined away by small pleasures and poor excitements,—small and poor, but daily, hourly, momently at their gnome-like work. Something of the gravity and the true lesson ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and a spring morning, and all was astir downstairs; lay sisters were gathering the broken glass into baskets, the portress was clearing away the wreck of broken panes from the outer hall, and the nun who had charge of the chapel was preparing the altar for matins. No one was surprised to see the Mother Superior in the cloister so early, for she was often ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... there. If I had properly valued my life, I should have been there. But it seemed so inconceivable that things should have reached a worse pass than when I crossed the frontier! It seemed so incredible that I should not be able to preserve any wreck of my property for my children, that I have lingered on, staying month after month, till now I cannot get away. I have had a dreadful life of it. I had better have been anywhere else. Why, even Therese," he continued, pointing over his shoulder towards the couch, "Therese, who would ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... were some who made for themselves a better future than the sword could have ever made. A feeble remnant, extricating themselves from the wreck and ruin of their party, and having been taught of God in his severest school, pious Calixtines, too, that were little content with the Compacts of Basel, a few stray Waldensians mingling with them, all these, drawing together in an evil time, refashioned and reconstituted themselves in humblest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... at a motor race at Palm Beach. There was a big smash-up and a French car was wrecked. We had entered our "Model K"—the high-powered six. I thought the foreign cars had smaller and better parts than we knew anything about. After the wreck I picked up a little valve strip stem. It was very light and very strong. I asked what it was made of. Nobody knew. I gave the stem to ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... sharing in the life about me, and only thinking at odd intervals of that occult science which had once fascinated my whole being. I had learnt enough of the paths I had begun to tread to know that they were beyond all expression difficult and dangerous, that to persevere meant in all probability the wreck of a life, and that they lead to regions so terrible that the mind of man shrinks appalled at the very thought. Moreover, the quiet and the peace I had enjoyed since my marriage had wiled me away to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... little before ten o'clock. The streets were crowded with people and there were throngs surrounding each of the places where bombs had been dropped. Towards the Pall Mall Arch the people were standing in thousands, trying to get near the wreck of the huge Zeppelin, which completely blocked all the traffic through St. James's Park. Thomson paused for a moment at the top of Trafalgar Square and looked around him. The words of the newspaper were indeed true. London had her ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... he was lodging; a farm-house in Langdale, with a steep, stony lane leading up to it: this lane was entered by a gate out of the main road, and by the gate were a few bushes—thorns; but of them the leaves had fallen, and they offered no concealment: an old wreck of a yew-tree grew among them, however, and underneath that Susan cowered down, shrouding her face, of which the colour might betray her, with a corner of her shawl. Long did she wait; cold and cramped she ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell

... was filled with people, carriages, bicycles. A stream of carts and horse-back riders was headed for the Driving Club, where there was tennis and the new game of golf. But Sommers turned his horse into the disfigured Midway, where the Wreck of the Fair began. He came out, finally, on a broad stretch of sandy field, south of the desolate ruins of the Fair itself. The horse picked his way daintily among the debris of staff and wood that lay scattered about ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... a Spanish ship named the Jesu Maria, but now in possession of Captain Shelvocke, who had now only forty of his men remaining, all the rest being dead or dispersed. He said that he had lost the Speedwell at the island of Juan Fernandez, where he staid five months, and built a bark out of the wreck of the Speedwell. Putting to sea in this bark, he had coasted along Chili and Peru, meeting several ships, but could not take any, till at length he captured the Jesu Maria at Pisco near Lima. Shelvocke's people differed much in their stories, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... diver was engaged off the coast near Gibraltar in the search for the whereabouts of a recent wreck, he discovered at the bottom from eighty to one hundred large guns, mostly 24- and 32-pounders, and two big anchors. As no appliance for raising them was at hand, they were not brought up, and their nationality has not been ascertained. It is supposed that they belonged to ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... quietly, "I don't have any fears for him. He has too good a mother to make a wreck of ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... may be overdone. One may be too gentle. Love may hold others back from duty, and thus may wreck destinies. We need to guard against meddling with God's discipline, softening the experience that he means to be hard, sheltering our friend from the wind that he intends to blow chillingly. All summer ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... attic in terror. He persuaded her to come down, assuring her it was the most unsafe place; but she insisted upon stopping to collect some bags of old pieces, that nobody would think of saving from the general wreck, she said, unless she did. Alas! this was the result of fireworks on Fourth of July! As they came downstairs they heard the voices of all the company declaring there was no fire; the danger was past. It was long before Mrs. Peterkin could believe it. They told her the ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale

... connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... of the brig was swept continually by the tremendous swell, and the men were driven into the foretop cross-trees, where they rigged a tent for shelter and gathered what few stores were left them from the wreck. A dozen wretched souls lay in their stormy nest for three whole days in silence and despair. By this time their scanty stores were exhausted, and not a drop of water remained: then their tongues were loosened, and they railed at the Almighty. Some wept like children, some cursed their fate: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... bitter, infinitely sad, the three men as if at that moment actually standing in the bar-room of Caraher's roadside saloon, contemplated the slow sinking, the inevitable collapse and submerging of one of their companions, the wreck of a career, the ruin of an individual; an honest man, strong, fearless, upright, struck down by a colossal power, perverted by an evil influence, go reeling to ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... now acting as the captain, insists one day that his sunsight is correct, while everybody else's is wrong, and insists on the ship holding her course, which the other officers knew would lead her into danger. Of course there is a wreck. But maybe we have now told you enough, so you can read it for ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... cometh up as a flower every day, fresh, ingenious and inviting. Sin is not at all dangerous to society; it is the sinner that does all the mischief. Sin has no arms to thrust into the public treasury and the private; no hands with which to cut a throat; no tongue to wreck a reputation withal. I would no more attack it than I would attack an isosceles triangle, a vacuum, or Hume's "phantasm floating in a void." My chosen enemy must be something that has a skin for my switch, a head for my ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... at it or not. What cottage this time? The soft lap-lap of the water goes on, and the tedious cask gets nearer: it will slide by the counter. You have a curious interest in that. No: it grates under the bow; it—Thunder and wreck and ruin! Has the bay burst open and swallowed us? The huge, invulnerable iron monster—not invulnerable after all—has met its master in the idle cask. It is blind, imprisoned Samson pulling down the pillars of the temple. The tough iron plates at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... of torture. write, to make letters. wrack, a sea-plant. wright, a workman. rap, to strike. roe, eggs of a fish. wrap, to roll together. row, to impel with oars. reck, to heed; to care. rose, a flower. wreck, destruction. rows, does row. rice, a kind of grain. roes, plural of roe. rise, increase; ascent. sees, beholds. rite, a ceremony. seas, large bodies of water. right, not wrong. seize, to ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... his head. He looked to be near weeping. His companion's sympathetic tone was almost too much for his whisky-laden heart. But Lablache had not come here to discuss Horrocks, or, for that matter, to sympathize with the gray-headed wreck of manhood before him. He wished to find out first of all if anybody was about whom his plans concerned, and then to force his proposition upon his old companion. He carefully led the rancher to talk ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... so that she was tempted to sell her person. Even scraps thrown to the dog she was hunger-bitten enough to aim for. Poor thing, was there anything in the future for her? Had not hunger and cruelty and prostitution done their work, and left her an entire wreck for life? It seems not. Freedom came, and with it dawned a new era upon that poor, overshadowed, and sin-darkened life. Freedom brought opportunity for work and wages combined. She went to work, and got ten dollars a month. She has contrived ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... but the experience of twelve years had proved that this was not calculated to prevent the numerous wrecks on the islands of Sanday and Stronsay. In 1796, when the engineer was on his annual visit, he was struck at seeing the wreck of three homeward-bound ships upon the island of Sanday, though situate only about eight miles southward of the lighthouse of North Ronaldsay. In the three following years no fewer than eight ships were wrecked upon the same fatal island. It was therefore resolved, in 1801, ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton

... see their two dear young ones united? They began with suitable age, money, good temper, and parents' blessings. It is not the first time that, with all these excellent helps to prosperity and happiness, a marriage has turned out unfortunately—a pretty, tight ship gone to wreck that set forth on its voyage with cheers from the shore, and every prospect of fair wind and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... I can (strangely enough) still recall this feeling by a mental effort—this meeting the Horror for the first time! My father remembered, and had been in the first steamboat which was a success on the Delaware. I saw its wreck in after years at Hoboken. The earlier boat made by John Fitch is still preserved ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... it safe to draw any conclusion from wreck cases in England, which are mixed up with questions of prescription and other rights. But the precise point seems to have been adjudicated here. For it has been held that, if a stick of timber comes ashore on a man's land, he thereby acquires a "right ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... Director of the East India Company, and was at one time its Chairman. In consequence of the failure of his father young Inglis set up in business on his own account in the wine trade, but this not proving successful, he retired after a short time on the money rescued from the wreck of the fortune of his father, who died soon after his failure. He resided for many years in St. John's Wood, but afterwards removed to Hampstead Heath. He died at 13 Albion Road, N.W., on the ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... sinking of the ship divers were sent down. They found the lost ship resting easily in about sixty feet of water. A few days later, however, when other divers went down, the wreck was not at the place ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... not one at all inclined to fret or borrow trouble. This disposition to take the world easy often irritated my aunt, and she sometimes went so far as to say, "if she didn't stir up Nathan now and then, every thing would go to wreck and ruin about the place." Mindful of Uncle Nathan's advice I did my best to please my aunt, and endeavoured to win her affection by many little offices of kindness, as often as I had opportunity, but for some time my attempts to ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell

... thing, but ye ken she is a wee bit daft, puir lassie!" cried Madge Wildfire, smirking and bowing, to catch the eye of Jeanie Deans, who, leaning on the arm of her betrothed, Reuben Butler, stood gazing with tearful eyes upon that wreck of hope and love exhibited in the person of the ill-fated ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... but most he walks The door-yard for a deck, An' scans the boat a-goin' out Till she becomes a speck, Then turns away, his face as wet As if she were a wreck. ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... rising up around her, the rending and crashing sound of her stout timbers telling them too plainly of her fate. Not till they had got some distance did the fugitives venture to stop and watch what was going forward. The masts were seen to totter, and large fragments of wreck were thrown on either side over the surface. The captain, as he saw the destruction of his vessel, wrung his hands with despair, while dismay was depicted on the countenances of his crew. So sudden had been the nip, that except the clothes on their ...
— Archibald Hughson - An Arctic Story • W.H.G. Kingston

... had collided with something floating awash, say a water-logged wreck, you were ordered by your captain to go forward and ascertain if there was any damage done. Did you think it likely from the force of the blow?' asked the assessor sitting to the left. He had a thin horseshoe beard, salient cheek-bones, and ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... beat him back, And tempests make him half a wreck, And passions strong, with dangerous tack, Retard his course, Yet Christ the pilot all will check, ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte

... tributary streams, had raised the river to an unusual height. The yellow torrent rushed along its channel, bearing on its surface logs, boards, and the debris of fences, shanties, and lumber-yards. A steamboat, forced by the rapid current against the stone landing, had been stove, and lay a wreck on the bottom, with the water rising rapidly around it. A horse had been left, fastened on the boat, and it looked as if he would be drowned. Booth was on the landing, and he took from his pocket twenty dollars, and offered it to any one who would get to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... John. To tell you the plain truth, I am shocked at the change drink has wrought in your appearance. You are fast becoming a wreck, I should say; and I don't want a wreck of a ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... suffrage, effort was made to introduce in the act of 1907 a provision for the conferring of a second vote upon all voters above the age of thirty-five. By the Emperor and ministry it was urged, however, that the injection of such a modification would wreck the measure, and when the lower chamber tacitly pledged itself to enact a law designed to prevent the "swamping" of the peers by Imperial appointment at the behest of a parliamentary majority, the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... residence at Valladolid, embarked at Seville, in the autumn of 1540, and, after a tedious voyage across the Atlantic, he traversed the Isthmus, and, encountering a succession of tempests on the Pacific, that had nearly sent his frail bark to the bottom, put in with her, a mere wreck, at the northerly port of Buenaventura. *22 The affairs of the country were in a state to require ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... there were three young stockbrokers (Messrs. Dale, Spiggot, and Dale, of Threadneedle Street, indeed), who, having had dealings with the old man, and kindnesses from him in days when he was kind to everybody with whom he dealt, sent this little spar out of the wreck with their love to good Mrs. Sedley; and with respect to the piano, as it had been Amelia's, and as she might miss it and want one now, and as Captain William Dobbin could no more play upon it than he could dance on the tight rope, it is probable that he ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Hall was the biggest and most pretentious building in Freekirk Head. It was of two stories height, and on its gray-painted front bore the three great gilt links of the society. To one side of it stood a wreck of a former factory, and behind it was ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... is the Damster. To him it falls to conserve the waters at a proper level. At his dam, generally below a lake, the logs collect and lie crowded. The river, with its obstacles of rock and rapid, would anticipate wreck for these timbers of future ships. Therefore, when the spring drive is ready, and the head-driver is armed with his jackboots and his iron-pointed sceptre, the damster opens his sluices and lets another river flow through atop of the rock-shattered river below. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... members of the Society reach Manila, having been saved from a ship-wreck—through the intercession, as is devoutly believed, of our Blessed Father Ignatius. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... later 'Lindy wakened to find a broad ribbon of sunshine across the floor of the cabin. Her husband had not come home at all the night before. She shivered with self-pity and dressed slowly. Already she knew that her life had gone to wreck, that it would be impossible to live with Dave ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... throughout the greater part of every night, for the first three days of the battle of the Aisne, September 13, 14, and 15, 1914, the bombardment of Soissons was continual, and, in addition to being a wreck, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... the rope between his teeth. It was obvious that the rescuers were working from a point well overhanging the recess into which the Andromeda had driven her bows, and there might still be the utmost difficulty in throwing a rope accurately from the rock to the wreck. As a matter of fact, no less than six previous attempts had been made, and the success of the seventh was due solely to a favorable gust of wind hurtling into the cleft at the very instant it was needed. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... few, whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness, Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess; The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain The shore to which their shiver'd ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... vulnerable places, surmounted by an extravagant collar and a Paris hat. The dress was of artistic intention, inexpensively carried out, the hat had an accomplished chic; it had fallen to her in the wreck and ruin of a too ambitious draper of Coolgardie. As a matter of fact it was the only one she had. The wide sleeves ended a little below the elbow, and she carried in compensation a pair of long suede gloves, a compromise which only occasionally discovered itself buttonless, and a most expensive ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... persuaded himself that the ancient activities and energies of the country were sapped by long habits of indolence, and by a morbid plethora of enjoyment in every class. Courage, and the old fiery spirit of the people, had gone to wreck with the physical qualities which had sustained them. Even the faults of the public mind had given way under its new complexion of character; ambition and civil dissension were extinct. It was questionable whether a good hearty assault and battery, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... cleared up and the guilty parties brought to justice, and he was becoming more and more afraid that she would keep her word. In vain he implored her to consider the living rather than the dead, and not to wreck his life and her own for what, after all, was ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... remember that one wrong may sometimes make two right! As it is, you will let your abominable pride—yes, pride! wreck and ruin two lives. Bah!" cried the Duchess very fiercely as she rose and turned to the door, "I've no patience ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... you'd not call him that if you could see the wreck, the broken and despairing wreck, that six weeks of the Chateau Larouge, six weeks of that horrible 'Red Crawl' have ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... age of eighteen he came into the wreck of his patrimony, he at once began suit against Aphobos, one of his unfaithful guardians. He conducted his case himself. So well did he plead his cause that he received a verdict for a large amount. He seems, however, owing ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... was not that her mind was clouded—only that it was immersed, absorbed, in that dread mystery of disproportionate anguish which a capricious fate had laid on it.... And what if she recovered, as they called it? If the flood-tide of pain should ebb, leaving her stranded, a helpless wreck on the desert shores of inactivity? What would life be to Bessy without movement? Thought would never set her blood flowing—motion, in her, could only take the form of the physical processes. Her love for Amherst was dead—even if it flickered into ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... Chief! The pity of it!—For he Lay on his unlamented bier; his life Wreck'd on that futile strife To wed things alien by heaven's decree, Sword-sway with liberty:— Coercing, not protecting;—for the Cause Smiting with iron heel on England's laws: —Intolerant tolerance! Soul that could not trust Its finer instincts; ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... Scarcely had one scarred victim of London's unkindness passed through before the bell would ring; the office boy, who, in the intervals of frowning sternly on the throng, as much as to say that he would stand no nonsense, would cry, "Next!" and another dull-eyed wreck would drift through, to be followed a moment later by yet another. The one fact at present ascertainable concerning the unknown searcher for reckless young men of good appearance was that he appeared to be possessed of considerable decision of character, a man who did not take long to make ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... San Francisco that is known as the Barbary Coast. It is that part which strangers will do well to avoid, for it is the haunt of the worst portion of the population. Here floats many a hopeless wreck, in the shape of a young man, who has yielded to the seductions of drink and the gaming table—who has lost all hope and ambition, and is fast ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... palace, under which a mine was laid to the centre of the carriage-way, it being proposed to kill the czar when out driving. If his carriage should take another route and follow the street leading from the Catharine Canal, it was arranged to wreck it with bombs flung by hand. The death of the czar was the sole thing in view. The conspirators seemed willing freely to sacrifice their own lives to that object. As regards the mine, it was so heavily charged with dynamite that its ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Salvador—Holy Saviour. The charm of climate and of landscape enchanted all, and fear and despondency gave way to delight and joy and the most extravagant anticipations. The subsequent history of this first voyage, the wreck of the admiral's flag-ship Santa Maria, the base desertion of Pinzon, and his baffled attempt to forestall Columbus in the credit of the discovery, the triumphal honors paid to the successful admiral, and the pope's bull conferring upon Spain all lands west of a meridian one hundred leagues from ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... this mountain, which is the eastern metropolis of Jain worship, as Mount Aboo is the western (where are their libraries and most splendid temples). The origin of the Jain sect is obscure, though its rise appears to correspond with the wreck of Boodhism throughout India in the eleventh century. The Jains form in some sort a transition-sect between Boodhists and Hindoos, differing from the former in acknowledging castes, and from both in their worship of Paras-nath's foot, instead of that of Munja-gosha of the Boodhs, or ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... Martyr Prince, of the Port of Great Grimsby, whereof one Thomas Wells, gent., under God, was master, was, by stress of weather, wrecked and cast away on the shores of this island, called by its gentile inhabitants by the name of Boo Parry. In which wreck, as it befell, Thomas Wells, gent., and his equipment were, by divine disposition, killed and drowned, save and except three mariners, whereof I am one, who in God's good providence swam safely through an exceeding great flood of waves and landed at last on this island. There my two companions, ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... position you cannot occupy," he said. "You have the perfect gift in private life, and you have a public gift. You have a genius for ruling. Say, my dear, don't wreck it all. I know you are not for me, but there are better men in the country than I am. Hartzman will be a great man one day—he wants you. Young Tilden wants you; he has millions, and he will never disgrace them or you, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... her limbs, she found her hands touch only the yawning jaws of monsters. Scylla remained rooted to the spot. Her temper grew as ugly as her form, and she took pleasure in devouring hapless mariners who came within her grasp. Thus she destroyed six of the companions of Ulysses, and tried to wreck the ships of Aeneas, till at last she was turned into a rock, and as such still continues to be ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... Eagle," the old courtier announced to his child. "Louis XVII, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, survives in this wreck. How he escaped from prison we do not know. Why he is here unrecognized in England, where his claim to the throne was duly acknowledged on the death of his father, we do not know. But we who have often seen the royal child cannot fail to identify him; ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... against the strong sea, and several times the small boat was almost sunk. But at last it reached the wreck, and William Darling managed to land upon the rock, and with great care and skill helped the half-frozen people into the small boat. Then they were taken to the lighthouse, where Grace warmed and fed them, until ...
— True Stories of Wonderful Deeds - Pictures and Stories for Little Folk • Anonymous

... with the idea of infinite goodness? 'God knows very well that an immortal soul cannot suffer from mortal accident.' With similar faith there came to me tranquil restoration. The deluge of passion rolled back, and from the wreck of my Eden arose a new and more spiritual creation. But forgetfulness was never possible. In the maddening turbulence of my grief and the ghastly stillness of its reaction, the lovely spirit which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... broken—his person wasted to a shadow. He plucks flowers and weeds, and weaves chaplets of them, or sails yellow leaves and bits of bark on the stream, rejoicing in their safety, or weeping at their wreck. The very memory half unmans me. By Heaven! the first tears I have shed since boyhood rushed scalding into my eyes when I ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... rear end of the freight, including the caboose, after it. Before the dazed train-hands could realize what was happening, the heavy locomotive of a west-bound freight that was passing the east-bound train at that moment crashed into the wreck. It struck a tank-car filled with oil. Like a flash of lightning a vast column of fire shot high in the air and billows of flame were roaring in every direction. These leaped from one to another of the derailed cars, until ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... nor less than a menace to society. Here was an estimable young man, obviously the sort of young man who would always have to be assisted through life by his relatives, and she had deliberately egged him on to wreck his prospects. She blushed hotly as she remembered that mad wireless she had sent ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... courage, O my mariners! Ye shall not suffer wreck, While up to God the freedman's prayers Are rising ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... youngest, hardly more than boy, Hurt in that night of sudden ruin and wreck, Lay lingering out a three-years' death-in-life. They could not leave him. After he was gone, The two remaining found a fallen stem; And Enoch's comrade, careless of himself, Fire-hollowing this in Indian fashion, fell Sun-stricken, and ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... Admonition of John Calvin to J. Westphal, who, if he does not obey (obtemperet) must thenceforth be held in the manner as Paul commands us to hold obstinate heretics; in this writing the vain censures of the Magdeburgians and others, by which they endeavored to wreck heaven and earth, are also refuted" 1557. Here Calvin plainly reveals his Zwinglianism and says: "This is the summary of our doctrine, that the flesh of Christ is a vivifying bread because it truly nourishes and feeds our souls ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... that there was a man among them who did not realize his moral wreck and ruin. He had met poor, half witted wretches who knew it. He believed he could enter into their minds and feel the truth of all their lives—the hardened outlaw, coarse, ignorant, bestial, who murdered as Bill Black had murdered, who stole for the sake of stealing, ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... she'd have come down to see. All the explanation she volunteered to herself was that he didn't matter. It didn't matter, this was to say, if he did perceive that she had been crying for days and days and looked an utter wreck. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... trap-door in the heavens had been suddenly closed. The wind had gone when the rain came, so that the moment the downfall was over the whole affair was ended. It had not occupied the space of more than four minutes, but it had managed to make as complete a wreck of the sleeping arrangements in the pine grove as if it had ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... Bob to Jerry and Ned, between whom he stood as they marched across the parade ground. "If this keeps up much longer I'm going to be a wreck!" ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young

... my views and actions. And then I found myself confronted by such hardness in the woman whom I had spoilt by my leniency, that it was out of the question to expect her to acknowledge the injustice done to myself. Suffice it to say that the wreck of my married life had contributed not inconsiderably to the ruin of my position in Dresden, and to the careless manner in which I treated it, for instead of finding help, strength, and consolation at ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... I am with you I am so happy I can't be serious. When I am not with you, it is so serious that I am utterly and completely wretched. You say my love offends you, bores you! I am sorry, but what, in heaven's name, do you think your not loving me is doing to me? I am a wreck! I am a ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... said, "this and my pistols were the only things I saved from the wreck of the Zodiac and the Frenchman; for I hold that no soldier should part with his sword till the last extremity. An old friend, too, and served with me right through the campaigns in the Peninsula, till the crowning ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... the trapper lived on, a senile wreck, ever brooding on defeat, then breaking into fierce invective. Misery had isolated him from his kind; the grand monsieur was the recluse of Tadousac. One day he disappeared from his lonely cabin and no one knew ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley

... does not permit the uniform movement which may insure safety. Thus, if the city of Washington should ever be violently shaken, the great obelisk, notwithstanding that it is five hundred feet high, may survive a disturbance which would wreck the lower and more massive edifices ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... of his house was a grim, heartbreaking picture; a Frenchman of Lorraine repairing the wreck of his house had the light of hard-won victory, of confidence, of sacrifice made to a great purpose, of freedom secure for future generations, in his eyes. The difference was this: The Germans were still in Belgium; they were out of French ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... the time! We are five hundred; they are two. They are ours. These oppressors, who have for years ground our faces to the dust, are trembling before us. Let us strike—strike! We rush, five hundred of us; we smash and wreck. Then we are masters, not ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... position by the ingenious kindness of my neighbor. Madame de Malouet is one of those rare old women whom superior strength of mind or great purity of soul has preserved against despair at the fatal hour of the fortieth year, and who have saved from the wreck of their youth a single waif, itself a supreme charm, grace. Small, frail, her face pale and withered from the effects of habitual suffering, she justifies exactly her husband's expression: "She is a breath, a breath that exhales intelligence ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... corn lost from a vessel would not sink—but a host of them clashing together, after a wreck—they burst open; the corn sinks, or does when saturated; the barrel ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... her, he assailed by it and making the best way he could. Certainly the wind was taking her part and his, when in another moment her skirt whipped against him and he saw her face glimmer out. A mere wreck of lines and shadows it seemed in the livid light, with suddenly perceiving eyes and lips that cried his name. She had on a hat and a cloak, but carried no umbrella, and her hands were bare and wet. Pitifully the storm blew her into his arms, a tossed and straying thing that could not speak ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... treacherous face. For the rest, the sun was sinking low Like a great golden globe, into the sea; Above the rock a bird was flying In dizzy circles, with shrill cries, And on a plank floated from some wreck, With shreds of musty seaweed Clinging to it yet, a woman sat Holding a child within her arms; A sweet-faced woman—looking out to sea With dark, patient eyes, and singing to the child, And this the song ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley

... in Martinique had, without doubt, been confiscated—and then, how could we claim this property? For all resource there remained to us a ring which I wore on my finger at the time of the ship-wreck; we intrusted it to the tenants of this farm, who had received us, to sell the diamond at Abbeville; they got for it about four thousand livres—that was all our store. My health was so affected ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... of Lambert's countenance. Alas! he was wrinkled, white-headed, his eyes dull and lifeless as those of the blind. His features seemed all drawn upwards to the top of his head. I made several attempts to talk to him, but he did not hear me. He was a wreck snatched from the grave, a conquest of life from death—or ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... wager a milliard of francs,' he muttered. With absolute pathos he related to Mr. Powys the aberrations of the divinely-gifted voice, the wreck which Vittoria strove to become, and from which he alone was striving to rescue her. He used abundant illustrations, coarse and quaint, and was half hysterical; flashing a white fist and thumping the long projection of his knee with a wolfish aspect. His grotesque sincerity was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... sped, yet nought had happened to signify that things would shape the course by me so ardently desired; that the means would be afforded me of mending my miserable ways, and repairing the wreck my life had suffered on the shoals of Fate. True, I had been housed and fed, and the comforts of indolence had been mine; but, for the rest, I was still clothed in the livery of folly which I had worn on my arrival, and, wherever I might roam, there followed ever at my heels a crowd of underlings, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... ancestry was steeped in liberty of action rose to a fury at this unwarrantable interference of war with the lives of men—a fury maddened by his feeling of utter impotence. Was it possible, he argued, that a group of men drunk with pomp and lust of conquest could wreck the whole fabric of civilisation? What of science and education? Had they risen only to be the playthings of madmen? What kind of a world was it ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... humble, and have kept everything. When I returned to my little garret, I was delighted to see again my modest furniture, my pretty pink chintz curtains, my thin blue carpet, my little ebony shelves, and then all the precious objects I had saved from the wreck; my father's old easy-chair, my mother's work-table, and all of our family portraits, concealed, like proud intruders, in one corner of the room, where haughty marshals, worthy prelates, coquettish marquises, venerable abbesses, sprightly pages and gloomy cavaliers all jostled ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... boy has done more in this short summer for his fellow-men and for his God than I have done in my whole forty years of life! Oh, what a life mine has been!—all a wreck, a failure, a miserable waste! And he? Why, in this short summer-time, and on this barren Rock, he has made his very life a blessing to every one upon it. I suppose those dirty, ignorant fishermen bless the day that brought him here. And I? O Heaven! what a ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord

... wouldn't come back; so I left him surrounded by the wreck of his former smartiness and went home. At the door where the treasures had been massed not a solitary thing was left but a plush holder for a whisk broom, with hand-painted pansies on the front; and I decided I could live without that. Tim Mahoney was there, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... Emancipation Proclamation put an end forever to slavery in America. When the builders of our Government met in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, slavery was a problem which more than once threatened to wreck the scheme for an indissoluble union of the States. But it was compromised under a suggestion implied in the Constitution itself, that slavery should not be checked in the States in which it existed until 1808. In the meantime the entire labor system of the South was built ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church

... it by towing each log around the reef by canoes. The logs are very heavy, each one is worth between eighty and one hundred dollars, but the risk meant such a reward, in case of success, that they went at it. Of course the real danger is around the wreck. Once free from that point and the remainder of the voyage would be only subject to ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope

... &c.," for upwards of 80,000 officers and men. This fact it suited his convenience to overlook. Now, of this number of men it is not perhaps too much to assume, that more than one-half consists of the noble wreck and remainder of those magnificent armies led to victory by the illustrious Wellington, but certainly not in the colonies, and the present cost of half-pay and invaliding not therefore chargeable to colonial ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... come so far to find out—that Rose was safe in the house of a Whig Laird, an old friend of her father's, and that the Bailie, who had early left the army of the Prince, was trying his best to save something out of the wreck ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... All Americans are; they don't know any better," fumed his uncle. "Forget her, John; think of Molly. I tell you the child loves you. Don't wreck her happiness for the sake of ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln



Words linked to "Wreck" :   declination, wrecking, ruin, destroy, decline, accident, bust up, wreckage, wrecker, capsizing, crash, ship, shipwreck



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