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Fatal   /fˈeɪtəl/   Listen
Fatal

adjective
1.
Bringing death.
2.
Having momentous consequences; of decisive importance.  Synonym: fateful.  "The fatal day of the election finally arrived"
3.
(of events) having extremely unfortunate or dire consequences; bringing ruin.  Synonyms: black, calamitous, disastrous, fateful.  "A calamitous defeat" , "The battle was a disastrous end to a disastrous campaign" , "Such doctrines, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory" , "It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it" , "A fateful error"
4.
Controlled or decreed by fate; predetermined.  Synonym: fateful.



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"Fatal" Quotes from Famous Books



... ought to be most relieved to be let out before Miss Maitland caught you," retorted Honor. "What an opportunity to point a moral on the fatal consequences of vanity!" Then, as Flossie flounced angrily away: "You've never thanked me for unlocking this door yet. I thought we were supposed to cultivate manners at St. Chad's. If Vivian asks where you've been, I suppose you'll ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... the law hath laid all men for dead, as they come into the world; but all men do not see themselves dead, until they see that law that struck them dead, striking in their souls, and having struck them that fatal blow. As a man that is fast asleep in a house, and that on fire about his ears, and he not knowing of it because he is asleep; even so, because poor souls are asleep in sin, though the wrath of God, the curse of his law, and the flames of hell have ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... haste to have done with all this and to start on my long and chartless journey, I had well-nigh forgotten to tell just how I killed Mr. Darrow. No hypodermic syringe had anything to do with it. The while plan came to me while reading that fatal page upon which I left my telltale thumb-signature in my search for some feasible plan of making away with my victim. I need not go into particulars, for I know perfectly well that this Maitland knows to ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... Mac-Ivor, I dare not hope it. A thousand circumstances of fatal self-indulgence have made me the creature rather of imagination than reason. Durst I but hope—could I but think that you would deign to be to me that affectionate, that condescending friend, who would strengthen me to redeem ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... of the fatal battle of Tewkesbury, the capture of the queen, and the death of the prince, was borne to Exeter by fugitives on the following day. Beyond the fact that the Earl of Devon and other nobles were known to have been killed, and Somerset with a party of knights had taken sanctuary, they ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... has met with some curious mishap which has resulted in his death. It seems impossible, going on what you tell us from the evidence you've collected, that he could ever have approached that Devil's Spout place unseen; it also seems impossible that he could have had a fatal fall over the cliffs, since his body has not been found. No—we think something befell him in the neighbourhood of Scarhaven Keep. But what? Foul play? Possibly! If it was—why? And there are three people Mr. Petherton and I would like to speak to, privately—the ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... on the morning of the fatal spindle, he had gone coursing, with this Safte and Sallow and his horse named "Twilight," and after wearying and heating himself at the sport, a little after noon, leaving his attendants, had set out to return to the palace alone. But allured by the cool seclusion ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... four or five minutes is generally fatal, but, unless you know the body has been submerged a long time, make an attempt to restore life. Don't get disheartened and give up, if you see no signs of life after a few minutes' work. Work on the body for at ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey

... and in these will be found the bickerings between the Dutch and English, which laid the foundations of these quarrels and animosities which were afterwards carried to such extreme length, and which gave a fatal blow to the English trade in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... deg. Centigrade (41 deg. F.). They are found in New England and Nova Scotia, generally with a large admixture of white blood; but there and farther north where the climate is moist as well as cold, they show a fatal tendency to pulmonary diseases. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... would not refuse if she asked them, and of course so close a scrutiny was not kept upon foreigners as upon native subjects; while, as a matter of fact, the Dowager Lady Randolph was right in her assertion that, so far as could be proved, there was nothing absolutely fatal to a woman's reputation in the history of the Contessa. Would she have the courage to dare that ordeal, or would she set up a standard of revolt, and declare herself superior to that hall-mark of fashion? She was clever enough, all the people who ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... was more fortunate and escaped the fatal ax, a number of years after all the timber around it had been chopped and cleared away. On account of its greatness, and its having so nice a body, father let it stand as monarch of the clearing. But few came into our clearing ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin

... of danger, at last moved towards the tree, several entering the wood almost together. One approached the fatal bough. Like a flash of lightning, the leopard sprang upon the unfortunate creature, and in an instant it lay dead, struck ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... their hats and cloaks, or had their clothes torn from them. Some fainted, and were borne out of the scene with infinite difficulty and danger. At last the people clamorously begged the officers to desist from throwing any more money, for fear that the most serious and fatal consequences might ensue. ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... companion lying dead with an arrow through his heart. The moccasin tracks of an Indian clearly revealed who was the murderer, and a little study showed that the Indian had swam the river, waited until the sentinel passed close by him, and had then sent the arrow true to its fatal mark. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... the politician has to deal. To disdain anything short of an organic change in thought or institution in infatuation. To be willing to make such changes too frequently, even when they are possible, is foolhardiness. That fatal French saying about small reforms being the worst enemies of great reforms is, in the sense in which it is commonly used, a formula of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... is a sensible girl. Disillusionment is always painful, but never fatal. Sooner or later the young must confront the bald facts of life, and I venture to say she will soon forget her school-girl morality. Let ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... Netley authorities, nine in ten at least ought to recover; while those casualties also include "missing," or "prisoners," of whom the Germans claim to have now more than 16,000 in their keeping. In the Boer War our "wounded" amounted to 22,829, of which only 2018 proved fatal cases; while our total casualties for over two and a-half years of warfare, including 13,250 deaths from disease—which, in every campaign, is always far more fatal than lead or steel—figured up to 52,204, ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various

... the sound narrowly, and in all its long stretch there was not a sign of friend or foe. About a mile back the fatal reef, bared by the ebbing tide, showed its line of black heads high out of the water, but of ships there was no vestige to be seen. It was long past mid-day by the sun, and he knew that he must have been unconscious for some hours. In that time, such of ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... Cheiron, the good immortal beast? That, too, is a sad story; for the heroes never saw him more. He was wounded by a poisoned arrow, at Pholoe among the hills, when Heracles opened the fatal wine-jar, which Cheiron had warned him not to touch. And the Centaurs smelt the wine, and flocked to it, and fought for it with Heracles; but he killed them all with his poisoned arrows, and Cheiron was left alone. Then Cheiron took up one of the ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... almost exact parallel may be found in the efforts and aims of Sir Walter Scott. But Shakespeare, having borne the yoke in youth, had acquired the experience and prudence necessary to steer himself past the dangers of speculation and the rashness of exceeding his assured income, which proved fatal to the ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... nonsense of his text. Probably no one could go on copying for eight hours a day unless the strain of attention to the originals were at a minimum. I conceive, therefore, that copying habits arising from a certain amount of experience at the vocation, would be utterly fatal to the employment of the exercise as a means of study. It may be valuable to such as have seldom used their pen except in original composition. Very probably, in school lessons, to write an exercise two or three times ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... grave-looking sombre man, who had crossed himself two or three times during the Neapolitan's narrative, "are you not aware of the strange reports about this person; and are you not afraid to receive from him a gift which may carry with it the most fatal consequences? Do you not know that he is said to be a sorcerer; to possess the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... go up to my chamber for fear of Brinon. By good luck, however, he was tired with waiting for me, and had gone to bed. This was some consolation, though but of short continuance. As soon as I was laid down, all the fatal consequences of my adventure presented themselves to my imagination. I could not sleep. I saw all the horrors of my misfortune, without being able to find any remedy; in vain did I rack my brain; it supplied me with no expedient. I feared nothing so much as daybreak; however, it did come, and ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... instant I was almost paralyzed. The lion meant to charge, and in one spring he could reach me. Under circumstances like those a man can think many things in little time. I knew to try to run would be fatal. I remembered how strangely lions had been known to act upon occasion. One had been frightened by an umbrella; one had been frightened by a blast from a cow-horn; another had been frightened by a native who in running from one lion ran right at the ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... he at last, in low, respectful tones, "if you grant your eyes no rest; if, instead of sleeping quietly, you pass the night pacing your room; if you continue to exhaust your eyes by constant weeping, the most fatal consequences ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... these, in close array combined, The squadrons spread their sable wings behind. Now shouts and tumults wake the tardy sun, As with the light the warriors' toils begun. Even Jove, whose thunder spoke his wrath, distill'd Red drops of blood o'er all the fatal field;(220) The woes of men unwilling to survey, And all the slaughters ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... the case and hand it back to Jeeves. But the pride of the Woosters restrained me. When we Woosters put our hands to the plough, we do not readily sheathe the sword. Besides, after that business of the mess-jacket, anything resembling weakness would have been fatal. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... from Mr. Carteret which made him feel quite guilty; there was such an implication of neglected duty in the way the old man said, "You won't do them justice—you won't do them justice." He talked for ten minutes, in his rich, simple, urbane way, about the fatal consequences of getting behind. It was his favourite doctrine that one should always be a little before, and his own eminently regular respiration seemed to illustrate the idea. A man was certainly before who had so much ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... repetition, without renewel, without refrain. But it is by an intelligible illusion that we look for a quick waxing and waning in the lives of young children—for a waxing that shall come again another time, and for a waning that shall not be final, shall not be fatal. But every winter shows us how human they are, and how they are little pilgrims and visitants among the things that look like their kin. For every winter shows them free from the east wind; more perfectly than their elders, they enclose the climate of life. And, ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell

... never yielded to this fatal mania, Pancks,' said Clennam, more in commiseration than retaliation, 'it would have been how much better for you, and how much ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... quiet aquiescence, while he kept his eyes earnestly fixed on the horizon, which the occasional brightness of the moon showed up like a line of fretted silver. Everywhere he scanned the waves for a glimpse of the fatal vessel bearing Death—and perhaps Life—on board; but over the whole expanse of the undulating hills and valleys of wild water, there was no speck of a boat to be seen save their own. They swept on and on, the wind aiding them with savage violence—when suddenly the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... individualization on one hand, and a broader community of interest on the other have come into existence, it is a matter of deliberate effort to sustain and extend them. Obviously a society to which stratification into separate classes would be fatal, must see to it that intellectual opportunities are accessible to all on equable and easy terms. A society marked off into classes need he specially attentive only to the education of its ruling elements. A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... for the future. And yet, with a smaller investment they could not perform the service, except in that dangerous, cheap, indecent way, of innumerable wants and deprivations, which the American people have begun to despise. They have had some few disasters, but none of those of a fatal character in the Pacific. The "Winfield Scott" was lost in entering the harbor of Acapulco; the "Tennessee" in entering that of San Francisco in a dense fog. The "San Francisco" was lost, as will ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... herself; how far some may be wicked enough, from hence, to suggest of the fair sex, that they have been Devils to their husbands ever since, I cannot say; I hope they will not be so unmerciful to discover truths of such fatal consequence, tho' they should come to ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... happened that she has disappeared thus for a long time, and returned again afterward. But I know that she will never come back any more, and that her part upon the earth is finished. If I wished to doubt it I could not: she took care to let me know the fatal truth through him who was the cause of her death. And what a misfortune was that! O God! the greatest misfortune of our unhappy age! Such a beautiful life was hers! so beautiful and so full of contrasts! so illustrious, so mysterious, so sad, so magnificent, so enthusiastic, so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... but which "even now," said he, "totters to its fall!" And then, having succeeded in convincing himself of Republican failure, he exultingly exclaimed: "But why enumerate? What measure of this Administration has failed to be fatal! Every step in your progress has been a mistake. I use the mildest terms ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... her wondering to the track, and pointed out the fatal quarry, but in such wise that she could not look ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... earnestness than in behalf of Coriolanus, and the popularity of his father Agrippa was not yet forgotten. The tribunes, however, went no further than a fine: though they had arraigned him for a capital offence, they imposed on him, when found guilty, a fine of two thousand asses. This proved fatal. They say that he could not submit to the disgrace, and to the anguish of mind (occasioned by it): that, in consequence, he was taken off by disease. Another senator, Sp. Servilius, being soon after arraigned, as soon as he went out of office, ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... bid Joseph open the shutters, and admit the daylight, which had been excluded for many years. They went over the rooms above stairs, and then descended the staircase, and through the lower rooms in the same manner. However, they overlooked the closet, in which the fatal secret was concealed; the door was covered with tapestry, the same as the room, and united so well that it seemed but one piece. Wenlock tauntingly desired Father Oswald to introduce them to the ghost. The father, in reply, asked them where they should find Edmund. ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... of art, this system certainly possesses very great advantages. It furnishes the novel-writer with an easy method of giving general satisfaction to all his characters, at the end of the tale, without recurring to the fatal though convenient intervention of consumption and suicide, with us the only resources, when there happens to be a heroine too many. What floods of tears would not the Chinese method have spared to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various

... articles are required the more careful should be the preparation for them, and the more moderate the temperature in the first instance. There must be at command a constant as well as sufficient temperature: when a forced crop has made some progress a check will be fatal to success. The beginner should acquire experience with Rhubarb and Sea Kale, then with Asparagus and Mushrooms and Dwarf French Beans, and so on to 'higher heights' of this branch of ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... gone, to the gallows; that the Maltese are not merely cantankerous and bigoted (Catholic) Arabs, but also sober, industrious, and economical. I have lived with all these races in their own countries and—apart from a fatal monkey-like apprehensibility which passes for intelligence but, as a matter of fact, precludes it—have found chiefly this to admire in them, that they are prolific and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... had his breakfast; in the meantime he glanced over a copy of the Despatch, where, in the account of the day's events, he found the fatal statements about the Trust Company of the Republic. It was very interesting to Montague to read these newspapers and see the picture of events which they presented to the public. They all told what they could not ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair

... never slide And fall in fatal snares, Since God, my guard and guide, Defends me from my fears: Those wakeful eyes That never sleep Shall Israel keep When ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... know almost for certain that the unmistakable symptoms of the mental condition which brought poor Andrey Antonovitch to a well-known establishment in Switzerland, where, I am told, he is now regaining his energies, were first apparent on that fatal morning. But once we admit that unmistakable signs of something were visible that morning, it may well be allowed that similar symptoms may have been evident the day before, though not so clearly. I happen to know from the most private sources (well, you may assume that Yulia Mihailovna ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... belong to heaven; and it is to that height that they must rise, it is there that in solitude and silence they must be rekindled, and enlarged, and calmed, if even activity and public spirit are not to degenerate into a fatal forgetfulness of the true purpose of your calling—a forgetfulness of the infinite tenderness and delicacy, of the unspeakable sacredness, of the mysterious issues, which belong to ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... you to get and read—you will find an account of the death of a young lady, who had chosen the world and its vanities as her idols. I was her physician. After having attended her for about a month, I perceived, one morning, that her disease must soon prove fatal. I told her that she could not live. She then exclaimed, "Doctor, can I not live a month?" I informed her that she could not. Again she exclaimed, "Can I not live two weeks?" She was told that she could not live two weeks. And such a scene of horror followed as I never before witnessed, ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder

... agitation of Aunt Jane was extreme. Was it possible that Mr. Tubbs was declaring himself in the presence of others—and was a response demanded from herself—would his sensitive nature, so lately wounded by cruel suspicion, interpret her silence as fatal to his hopes? But while she struggled between maiden shyness and the fear of crushing Mr. Tubbs the conversation ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... permeated by a strong vein of Stoicism. Carried to its logical conclusion Stoicism lays itself open to taunts such as Cicero levels at his friend Cato in the pro Murena,[189] where he delivers a humorous reductio ad absurdum of its tenets. Such a philosophy is fatal to the drama. It allows no room for human sentiment or human weakness; the most virtuous affections are chilled and robbed of their attractiveness: there are no gradations of temperament, intellect, or character: ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... the short and lawless Republic of 1848, were fresh in the minds of the people, and before they had faded there were dangerous rumours of a rising even less truly Republican in theory, and far more fatal in the practical social anarchy which must have resulted from its success. Giuseppe Mazzini had survived his arch-enemy, the great Cavour, and his ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... returned every night. Seats for the children—these puzzled me much. I was haunted by a New England vision of neat little desks and chairs, but, alas! the reality was rough plank benches without backs, and at times without legs. They had the one virtue of making naps dangerous,—possibly fatal, for the floor ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... arose. True, the balloon was rapidly approaching the surface of the lake and in a few seconds more would be within such a short distance that a leap would not be fatal. But the burning bag was coming straight down and scarcely would the man be in the water ere the fiery canvas mass would ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton

... appeared, an enlisted soldier in the First Artillery at Fort Independence. For two years "Perry" served his country in the sunlight, and Poe, under night's starry cover, roamed through skyey aisles in the service of the Muse and explored "Al Araaf," the abode of those volcanic souls that rush in fatal haste to an earthly heaven, for which they recklessly exchange the heaven of the spirit that ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... could not get up where he was to give him any aid, consequently he had to lay there in the burning sun till night, when he was brought away in safety. It was a scorching hot day and a number were sunstruck, some cases proving fatal. I was exhausted and had to lie down in the shade. It was a miserable Sunday scrape and ended like all the rest that had been started on a Sunday, disastrously. The loss ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell

... was an opportunity of interrupting him. "Have you a mother, [or any] relations that are interested in your welfare?" "Not one have I; I have buried them all." "Happy they! now I remain. Dispatch me: for the fatal moment is at hand, which an old Sabine sorceress, having shaken her divining urn, foretold when I was a boy; 'This child, neither shall cruel poison, nor the hostile sword, nor pleurisy, nor cough, nor the crippling gout destroy: a babbler shall one day demolish him; if he be wise, let him avoid ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... country almost depopulated, there being hardly any free husbandmen or shepherds, but for the most part only barbarian, imported slaves, he then first conceived the course of policy which in the sequel proved so fatal to his family. Though it is also most certain that the people themselves chiefly excited his zeal and determination in the prosecution of it, by setting up writings upon the porches, walls, and monuments, calling upon him to reinstate the poor citizens ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... thought to me that he had found these friends in captivity; that he had started on this fatal journey from so cordial a farewell. He had broken his parole for his daughter: that he should ever live to reach her sick-bed, that he could continue to endure to an end the hardships, the crushing fatigue, the savage cold, of our pilgrimage, I had early ceased to hope. I did for him what I was ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... push their favour in this world of pickings and caresses is, perhaps, the business of their lives; and their joys may lie outside. I am in despair at our persistent ignorance. I read in the lives of our companions the same processes of reason, the same antique and fatal conflicts of the right against the wrong, and of unbitted nature with too rigid custom; I see them with our weaknesses, vain, false, inconstant against appetite, and with our one stalk of virtue, devoted to the dream of an ideal; and yet, as they hurry ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... war: "The navy came out of this struggle with a vast increase of reputation. The brilliant style in which the ships had been carried into action, the steadiness and accuracy with which they had been handled, and the fatal accuracy of their fire on nearly every occasion had produced a new era in naval warfare. Most of the frigate actions had been as soon decided as circumstances would at all allow; and in no instance was it found necessary to keep up the fire of a sloop-of-war an hour, when singly engaged. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... never rallied from the defeat of January 9th. His talents were acknowledged; his courteous manners, his wide intelligence, his generous hospitality, gave him a large popularity; but his alliance with President Johnson was fatal to his political fortunes. He had placed himself in a position from which he could not with grace retreat, and to go forward in which was still further to blight his hopes of promotion in his party. It was an extremely mortifying fact to Mr. Raymond that with the power ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... been a dangerous person when in liquor, without any apparent provocation struck Domingo (one of the original seven) a violent blow.... The latter,... mad with wine, rage, and revenge, without an instant's pause drew his knife and inflicted a fatal wound upon his insulter. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... people came up to listen, even the young men and maidens,—throwing themselves on the grass, around the two disputants. Finally Lady Dunstable carried off the honours. Had she not seen Lord Beaconsfield twice during the fatal week of his last general election, when England turned against him, when his great rival triumphed, and all was lost? Had he not talked to her, as great men will talk to the young and charming women whose flatteries soften their ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... balsam. Her visits were the one great distraction in the life of my aunt Leonie, who now saw hardly anyone else, except the reverend Cure. My aunt had by degrees erased every other visitor's name from her list, because they all committed the fatal error, in her eyes, of falling into one or other of the two categories of people she most detested. One group, the worse of the two, and the one of which she rid herself first, consisted of those who advised her not to ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... moment the whole town knew about the affair. On the important day of the consecration of the minster many venerable prelates, abbots, and monks, thousands of noble knights and lords who had come as guests, and the whole population of Aix-la-Chapelle looked forward to the fatal hour with beating hearts. It was a grand procession indeed that marched on in ceremonious solemnity through the streets. The gaily coloured flags waved merrily in the air, the trumpets and clarions sounded cheerily. The nobility and clergy ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... in that fatal movement lost his balance and plunged downward. But before the water closed above his head he had had a cruel glimpse of help near him; of a flashing light—of the black hull of a tug not many yards away—of ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... there, but long enjoyed her favour, and therewith what he listed, till time and emulation, the companions of greatness, resolved of his period, and to colour him at his setting in a cloud (at Conebury) not by so violent a death, or by the fatal sentence of a judicature, as that of his father and grandfather was, but, as is supposed, by that poison which he had prepared for others, wherein they report him a rare artist. I am not bound to give credit to all vulgar relations, or the libels of his time, which ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... 1827 opened dramatically. On the 18th February Lord Liverpool, who had been Prime Minister since the assassination of Spencer Perceval in 1812, was suddenly stricken by fatal illness. On the 10th of April King George IV. found himself, much against his will, constrained to entrust the formation of a Government to George Canning. Canning was avowedly favourable to the Roman Catholic claims, and ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... them over the grants, made to Robert Cole—under which Downing had purchased—and to Thomas Read. All these parties were combined to force it south-eastwardly over the grounds of Endicott. Nathaniel Putnam was his most fatal antagonist. He was a man of remarkable energy, of consummate adroitness, and untiring resources in such a transaction; and he so managed to press in the bounds of the Bishop farm, at the north-east, as to gain a valuable ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... seeking to encourage their own troops. Despite the surprise and the attack from two sides, the men in blue sustained their courage and made a stubborn fight. Nevertheless the attack in both front and flank was fatal. Again and again they sought to hold a position, but always they were driven from it, leaving behind more dead and ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... him; for they thought his enmity with the duke was only feigned. While in this suspense, it was found that the duke, by means of a servant of Carmignuola, had caused poison to be given him in his food, which, although it was not fatal, reduced him to extremity. The truth being discovered, the Venetians laid aside their suspicion; and as the Florentines still solicited their assistance, a treaty was formed between the two powers, by which they agreed to carry ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... talk," approved Mignon. She had kept but few friends among the sophomores since that fatal practice game and she did not intend to lose Mary from her diminished circle. Besides, she was certain that the Deans, one and all, did not approve of Mary's friendship with her and it accorded her supreme ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... so might have been fatal, but Aleck had some little energy left, and, after a strangling fit of coughing, he was ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... an immediate political and practical application to all these fine ideas of the reason was fatal. Here an Englishman is in his element: on this theme we can all go on for hours. And all we are in the habit of saying on it has undoubtedly a great deal of truth. Ideas cannot be too much prized in and for themselves, cannot be too much lived with; but to transport ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... croak. No one knows better than I, the fatal necessity for any one in your position: more than that, the duty in many cases of plunging into public functions, and all the guttle, guzzle, and gammon ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... may be traced under different denominations, but more particularly by their family title. This we might expect the Greeks to have rendered Chusos, and to have named the people [Greek: Chusaioi], Chusaei. But, by a fatal misprision, they uniformly changed these terms to words more familiar to their ear, and rendered them [Greek: Chrusos], and [Greek: Chruseios], as if they had a reference to gold. I have before mentioned the various parts of the world where ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... have not grown up from childhood in the islands, but appear suddenly in that narrow horizon, life-sized apparitions. For these no bond of humanity exists, no feeling of kinship is awakened by their peril; they will assist at a shipwreck, like the fisher-folk of Lunga, as spectators, and when the fatal scene is over, and the beach strewn with dead bodies, they will fence their fields with mahogany, and, after a decent grace, sup claret to their porridge. It is not wickedness: it is scarce evil; it is only, in its highest power, the sense of isolation and the wise disinterestedness of feeble ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... arduous task. But when they arrived at the swelling, it jutted out so in their way, and was so far beyond their grasp, that the most daring lads were awed, and acknowledged the undertaking to be too hazardous: so the ravens built on, nest upon nest, in perfect security, till the fatal day arrived in which the wood was to be levelled. It was in the month of February, when these birds usually sit. The saw was applied to the butt, the wedges were inserted into the opening, the woods ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... uncertainty about the evidence of detail and of the privity of others in the designs of Lady Essex, who seems at last to have completed her work by the agency of an apothecary's assistant. He gave the fatal dose in an injection, by which Overbury was killed ten days before the Commission gave judgment in favour of the divorce. At Christmas the favourite married the divorced wife, having been created Earl of Somerset, that as his wife ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... God knows I played better than any. The audience stormed us with delight, and I do believe I was having my share of the triumph, and might have been emboldened by success to have deserved it, had not all my sham tremors been shent—in one moment—by a shaft most real and memorable, whose fatal delivery I ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... characterised not by any overflow of warlike joy or fury, but by good humour. Like the heroes of the Celtic poems, like the inhabitants of Gaul in all ages, he is prompt at repartee (argute loqui). He stumbles in stepping off the ship, which is considered by all as a bad omen: "It is a most fatal omen," we read in an ancient Scandinavian poem, "if thou stumble on thy feet when marching to battle, for evil fairies stand on either side of thee, wishing to see thee wounded."[135] It means nothing, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... future generations shall load their memories with incessant execrations. On the other hand, if we arrest the hand which would ransack our pockets, if we disarm the parricide which points the dagger to our bosoms, if we nobly defeat that fatal edict which proclaims a power to frame laws for us in all cases whatsoever, thereby entailing the endless and numberless curses of slavery upon us, our heirs, and their heirs for ever; if we successfully ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... Islands (of the Lau group), and, spreading from island to island, swept away vast numbers of the people. There are, it may be remarked, innumerable instances in history of the contact between continental and island peoples, both of them healthy at the time of contact, producing fatal epidemics among the islanders. Even among our own Hebrides the natives are said to look for an outbreak of "Strangers' Cold" after every visit of a ship. The Fijian tradition certainly dates from a few years before the beginning of ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards

... it ever happen," said Euthydemus, "that health is the cause of any ill, and sickness the cause of any good?" "This may happen," answered Socrates, "when troops are raised for any enterprise that proves fatal; when men are embarked who are destined to perish at sea; for men who are in health may be involved in these misfortunes, when they who, by reason of their infirmities, are left at home, will be exempted from the mischiefs in which the others ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon

... says her biographer, "a fine old mansion, with extensive grounds well walled in, and there she had brought exotics from the Cape, and was in a way of raising continually an increase to her collection, when, by her fatal marriage, the cruel spoiler came and threw them, like ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... pursues all others fly. He has the shape and traits of his merciless giant brother, the tiger-shark, with the added menace of a horn full of poison in the middle of his back instead of a dorsal fin; an evil, curved horn, the thrust of which can be nearly fatal to a man. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... wind that turned Drake back brought the Armada out and gave it an advantage which would have been fatal to England had the fleets been really equal, or the Spaniards in superior strength, for a week was a very short time in which to replenish the stores that Elizabeth had purposely kept so low. Drake and Howard, so the story goes, were playing a game of bowls on ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... Two people can never literally be as one. There is, perhaps, a possibility of content under peculiar circumstances, such as are seldom combined; but it is as well not to run the risk—you may make fatal mistakes. Be satisfied, my dear. Let all the single be satisfied ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... our party over the Boer War, when we were in opposition and the phrase "methods of barbarism" became famous, my personal friends were in a state of the greatest agitation. Lord Spencer, who rode with me nearly every morning, deplored the attitude which my husband had taken up. He said it would be fatal to his future, dissociating himself from the Pacifists and the Pro-Boers, and that he feared the Harcourts would never speak to us again. As I was devoted to the latter, and to their son Lulu [Footnote: The present Viscount Harcourt.] and his wife May—still ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... see the base of Etna firm I well might fear that she had fallen a prey To Earth-born Typheus, who might have arisen [15] And seized her as the fairest child of heaven, That in his dreary caverns she lies bound; It is not so: all is as safe and calm As when I left my child. Oh, fatal day! Eunoe does not return: in vain she seeks Through the black woods and down the darksome glades, And night is hiding all things from our view. I will away, and on the highest top Of snowy Etna, kindle two clear flames. Night shall not hide ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

... into the sacred mysteries, was unpardonable, and his fate could not be doubted. Indeed, the trembling priest at length admitted that he had been sacrificed in due form upon the high altar of the sun, and that he himself had beheld the fatal ceremony. Huertis, however, had implicated none of his associates, and there was yet a chance of escape. To pass the gates was impossible; but the wall might be descended in the night by ropes, and to swim the moat was easy. ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez

... sudden heart sickness drove the blood from his lips with the wrench of remembrance. It did not strengthen him to meet her, cool and royal, in filmy purple, putting out her hand with frank friendliness, and with a new quaver of interest in her voice. Those fatal magnolias: all the outside world seemed pressing nearer these two ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... with him for his attempted perversion of justice to the service of his own vile ends. The charge of having abused his trust as King's commissioner to the extent of seeking to do murder through the channels of the Tribunal was one that could not fail to have fatal results for him—as, indeed, the ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... tremble with horror when I think of what is crawling toward us, with noiseless steps; couchant, silent, treacherous, pardlike; scarce rustling the dry leaves as it moves, and yet with bloodshot, glaring eyes and tense-drawn limbs of steel, ready for the fatal spring. When comes it? To-night? To-morrow? A week ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... report of cannon, or the loudest claps of thunder could bear no more proportion than the gentle zephyrs of the evening to the most dreadful hurricane; but the shortness of its duration prevented all those fatal effects which a prolongation of it would certainly have ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... the sculptor (for his imagination was greatly excited by the idea of this wondrous chasm), "all the blood that the Romans shed, whether on battlefields, or in the Coliseum, or on the cross,—in whatever public or private murder,—ran into this fatal gulf, and formed a mighty subterranean lake of gore, right beneath our feet. The blood from the thirty wounds in Caesar's breast flowed hitherward, and that pure little rivulet from Virginia's bosom, too! Virginia, beyond ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... clasped his hands to his throat, and with his head thrown back dropped to the floor. A fatal attack of ...
— Advanced Chemistry • Jack G. Huekels

... went into hysterics, bewailing that she should have lived to see the object of her affection the victim of a malady so grievous as to require a Greek name. When she became calmer I explained to her that the malady was by no means fatal, and that it ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... until the work took the present form of an autobiography, written roughly, it is true, and put together without much method, part of it being dictated at the Riviera during the last days of the author's fatal illness. Such as it is, however, we are convinced that the many devoted friends of Hobart Pasha who now lament his death will be glad to recall in these 'Sketches' the adventures and sports which some of them shared with him, and the genial disposition ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... those new sulph-hydral anti-radiation shots. We're not too familiar with what they do, though the reports indicate the worst effect is a mild anoxemia, which generally results in something of a headache. Of course, that's if the quantity of the drug was precisely calibrated. They can be fatal," he ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond



Words linked to "Fatal" :   fateful, terminal, mortal, inevitable, decisive, lethal, deathly, deadly, nonfatal, unfortunate, calamitous



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