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Ruin   /rˈuən/  /rˈuɪn/   Listen
Ruin

verb
(past & past part. ruined;pres. part. ruining)
1.
Destroy completely; damage irreparably.  Synonym: destroy.  "The tears ruined her make-up"
2.
Destroy or cause to fail.
3.
Reduce to bankruptcy.  Synonyms: bankrupt, break, smash.  "The slump in the financial markets smashed him"
4.
Reduce to ruins.
5.
Deprive of virginity.  Synonym: deflower.
6.
Fall into ruin.



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"Ruin" Quotes from Famous Books



... with trembling step he passed, And gained the fearful eminence he sought; As on surrounding scenes his eye was cast, His troubled spirit racked with frenzied thought, And urged by ruin on his empire brought, He uttered curses on the pale-faced throng, With whom in vain his scattered warriors fought And on the sighing breeze that swept along, He poured the fiery words ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... at the time that the excitement over the discovery of gold on his ranch had just commenced, and adventurers were beginning to congregate in the hills and gulches from everywhere. The discovery of the precious metal on his estate was the first cause of his financial embarrassment. It was the ruin also of many other prominent men in New Mexico, who expended their entire fortune in the construction of an immense ditch, forty miles in length—from the Little Canadian or Red River—to supply the placer diggings in the Moreno valley with water, when the melted snow of Old Baldy range had ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... ago a large fragment fell from the south wing of this ruin, despite of all the attention Sir John Maywell paid to keep it up. The founder of this castle was one De Croc; hence the name Crockston, Crocston, or Cruikston. This family (says Crawfurd), failing in ane heiress, she was married to Sir Alexander Stewart of Torbolton, second son ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various

... Charles I. came to the throne the castle was already showing "gaping chinks and an aged countenance." Fairfax and his Roundheads completed the ruin. But it was not war only which left the building as we now see it. An ivy-covered gateway is all that remains. Yet from its summit one has a fine view of the surrounding country, and can readily understand of what strategical value its possession must ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw

... desperate. He was hopelessly in debt to his men for wages. That did not help discipline. His partners were not only withholding supplies, but charging up a high rate of interest on the first equipment. To turn back meant ruin. To go forward he was powerless. Leaving Jemmeraie in command, and permitting his eager son to go ahead with a few picked men to Fort Maurepas on Lake Winnipeg, De la Verendrye took a small canoe and descended with all swiftness ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... its finger. The administration can double the number of men under arms, but hesitates. What slow coaches, and what ignorance of human nature and of human events. The knowing ones, the wiseacres, will be the ruin of this country. They poison the sound reason of ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one there lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man, with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopped me one day at my door, and asked me if I was ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... this journey that I first saw a real ruin. The ruins of Calder Abbey I had never heard of; but the impression it made upon me I can never forget; partly, perhaps, that it was the first ruin upon which I ever gazed. One row of the pillars of the great aisle remains standing. The answering row is gone. Two tall arches of the body of ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen

... Mrs. Goodriche; "but tell me, have you breakfasted?" And when she heard that he had; "Come with me, kind friend," she said, "we will first look at the ruin, and then I have other things to talk to you, and to consult you about. So, Bessy, do you stay behind; you are not to make ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... stem my tears * Rivers of blood would fount and rise. How many an intimate is hard * Of heart, and pains in sorest wise! An she with me her word would keep, * Of tears and sighs I'd fain devise, But I'm forgone, rejected quite * Ruin on me hath cast her eyes. At my fell pangs fell wildlings weep * And not a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... simple lover, Siebel, is discarded, and his nosegay is thrown away at sight of the jewels with which Faust tempts her. When Valentin returns from the wars he learns of her temptation and subsequent ruin. He challenges the seducer, and in the encounter is slain by the intervention of Mephistopheles. Overcome by the horror of her situation, Marguerite becomes insane, and in her frenzy kills her child. She is thrown into prison, where Faust ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... making signals for her to keep off. But, as if unconscious of being admonished by so distinguished a major and politician, the stranger varied not a hair from her course, but bounded forward, as if determined to come athwart of the "Two Marys," to the ruin of Captain Luke Snider and his good wife. Seeing this, the major looked confusedly for a few seconds, then alighted with extraordinary agility, and retired to the cabin, saying he would get his sword and be prepared ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... Justice here knew nothing of the "law's delay;" and the fallen orators now headed our melancholy line, bound, bareheaded, half naked, and more than half dead with weariness, shame, and the sense of ruin;—there could scarcely be more in the blow which put an end to all their perturbations on this side ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... capitals are richly sculptured with sacred subjects, incidents from the Old and New Testament. In the cloister is a well, fed, I believe, originally by the old Roman aqueduct that supplied the town with pure water from the hills, but which was suffered in the Middle Ages to fall into complete ruin. This aqueduct was older than the amphitheatre, for it ran in a cut channel through the rock beneath it. One evening that I was in the cloister the aged sacristan was engaged drawing from this well and watering a little garden ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... an eye of jealousy and fear, that I would improve the opportunities I had by frequent and familiar conversation with her, to my own advantage, in working myself into her good opinion and favour, to the ruin of ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... their uninterrupted profits, which might save them from their frequent degradation in society. That act of Anne which confers on them some right of property, acknowledges that works of learned men have been carried on "too often to the ruin of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... each arm. Were we to seek to endow cavalry with the tenacity and stiffness of infantry, or to take from the mounted arm the mobility and the cult of the offensive which are the breath of its life, we should ruin not only the cavalry, but the Army besides. Those who scoff at the spirit, whether of cavalry, of artillery, or of infantry, are people who have had no practical experience of the actual training of ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm

... honored "according to Egyptian rather than Syrian rite."[49] The rigorous monotheism of the Jews, who were dispersed over the entire country, must also have acted as an active ferment of transformation.[50] But it was Babylon that retained the intellectual supremacy, even after its political ruin. The powerful sacerdotal caste ruling it did not fall with the independence of the country, and it survived the conquests of Alexander as it had previously lived through the Persian domination. The researches of Assyriologists have shown that its ancient worship persisted under the Seleucides, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... messages had been sent from Valentia, and two hundred and sixty-nine from Newfoundland. At the present time, the ten Atlantic cables now convey about ten thousand messages daily between the two continents. The losses attending the laying of the 1865 cable resulted in the financial ruin of the Atlantic company and its amalgamation with the Anglo-American. In 1866 the Great Eastern successfully laid the first cable for the new company, and with the assistance of other vessels succeeded in picking up the broken end of the 1865 cable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... were all forlorn, The town in ruin stood, The lady's velvet gown was torn, Her rings were sold ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... whose language and manners still retained enough of their early refinement to hint at the high social station that she had lost, would have been a dangerous luxury to a man of Isaac's rank at the age of twenty. But it was far more than that—it was certain ruin to him—now that his heart was opening unworthily to a new influence at that middle time of life when strong feelings of all kinds, once implanted, strike root most stubbornly in a man's moral nature. A few more stolen ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... Mike, but any change, he thought, must be for the better. He had sat staring at the ruin of the blancmange so long that it had begun to hypnotize him. Also, the move had the excellent result of eliminating the snub-nosed Edward, who was sent to bed. His last words were in the form of a question, addressed to Mike, on the subject of ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... entailed luxury, entailed conceit. A boy who inherits honor will rarely honor himself. I like the method of China, where honor ascends, but does not descend. It goes back to his parents who taught him his virtues. It can do no harm to his parents, but it can easily ruin him and his children. I regard humility as one of the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... for money from his young brother, Berkeley, whom he really loved, forced Cecil to look, for the first time, blankly in the face of ruin that awaited him. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... into the deep;' The awful depth of a world's despair; Hearts that are breaking and eyes that weep; Sorrow and ruin and death are there. And the sea is wide; And its pitiless tide Bears on its bosom away. Beauty and youth, In relentless ruth, To its dark abyss for aye. But the Master's voice comes over the sea, 'Let down your ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon

... Watson, having "been told things," then called on Mrs. James in Covent Garden. "I spoke to her," she said, "of the shocking rumour that Captain Lennox had passed a night with her there, and pointed out the unutterable ruin that would result from a continuance of such deplorable conduct. I begged her to entrust herself to the care of Mrs. Rae. My entreaties were ineffectual. She positively declared, affirming with an oath, that she would do ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... against it. But, pray remember, I accuse nobody; for as I would not make a " watery discourse," so I would not put too much vinegar into it; nor would I raise the reputation of my own art, by the diminution or ruin of another's. And so much for the prologue to ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... said to his four brother committeemen in Massey's back room, "I have not a doubt in my mind that you are all honestly convinced that Mr. Haley has stolen the coins. Otherwise you would not have made a matter public that was quite sure to ruin the ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long

... dies before the dawn!" announced the Arab prosaically, as he came towards this woman who, on the edge of a new life which might, for all she knew, bring ruin, despair, or even death in its wake, could so tranquilly talk of the risks she had already encountered in the course of the first few steps she had taken upon the path she had ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... supposed, both from her education and a knowledge of her own personal wrongs, and those which had for centuries been inflicted upon the unhappy land of her birth, she was no friend or admirer of the government or people who had wrought her so much ruin in this connection. On this head she was most inexorable, and felt that it was the duty of every true Irishman and Irishwomen in existence, to conspire, as best they could, against a power which had plunged their race and country into such frightful ruin; and ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... Imogen continued: "When she came back, I believed that it was with an impulse of penitence; with the wish, shallow though I knew that it must be in such a nature, to atone to me for the ruin that she had made in his life. I was all tenderness and sympathy for her, all a longing to help and sustain her—as you must remember. But now! It fulfils all that I had feared and suspected in her—and more than ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... remarkable scene in all Martial history, when the last representatives of the great Anarchy, squalid, miserable, degraded, and debased in form and features, as well as indicating by their dress and appearance the utter ruin of art and industry under their rule, came into the presence of the chief ruler of the rising State—surrounded by all the splendour which the "magic of property," stimulating invention and fostering science, had created—to entreat admission into the realm of restored civilisation, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... were sea-nomads who acknowledged no man as master. Rough, bold, laughing at disaster, with no patience to build or dig or plow, they landed but to ravish, steal and lay waste, and then boarded their craft, sailing away, joying in the ruin they ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... of King Menelaus of Sparta, was the most beautiful woman in the world. And from her beauty and faithlessness came the most celebrated of ancient wars, with death and disaster to numbers of famous heroes and the final ruin of the ancient city of Troy. The story of these striking events has been told only in poetry. We propose to tell it again ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... But speaking generally, there are two plain and simple standards by which to decide whether governments are good or bad. One is the population. Every country in which the population is decreasing is on its way to ruin; and the countries in which the population increases most rapidly, even were they the poorest countries in the world, are certainly the best governed. [Footnote: I only know one exception to this rule—it is China.] But this population must be the natural ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... one seen him?" called Polly, in a voice so clear and piercing that it rose above the babel of the crowd, and the groans of one or two injured people drawn out from the ruin, and lying on the bank, waiting the surgeon's arrival. "Then he must be in the car. Oh, Ben—come, we must get him out!" and she sprang back toward the ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... judicial, and military powers were concentrated in his person and wielded by his hand. No more shameful tyranny or shocking despotism was ever endured in America, than, in "the dark and awful day," as it was called, while the Special Commission of Oyer and Terminer was scattering destruction, ruin, terror, misery and death, over the country. It is a disgrace to that generation, that it was so long suffered; and, instead of trying to invent excuses, it becomes all subsequent generations to feel—as was deeply felt, by enlightened and ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... growing. His return unscathed from London, and the fierce attitude which he assumed on the instant of his reappearance in Ulster, convinced the petty leaders that to resist him longer would only ensure their ruin. O'Donel was an exile in England, and there remained unsubdued in the North only the Scottish colonies of Antrim, which were soon to follow with the rest. O'Neill lay quiet through the winter. With the spring and the fine weather, when the rivers fell and the ground dried, he roused himself ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... Britisher, had fancied that Germany was undergoing an awful process of slow death; that she was faced with economic ruin; that her trade and manufacture had been smashed, causing untold ruination and forcing famine into every home; that the German populace were being crushed under the terrors of defeat, were cursing "the Kaiser and his tyrannical militarism," and waiting ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... employers. To newly organized laborers the union appeals mainly as an instrument for striking, for threatening the employer, or for making him suffer to compel him to accede to their demands. The effectiveness of a strike lies in the loss it threatens or occasions in the stopping of machinery, the ruin of materials, the loss of custom, and the failure to complete contracts ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... How beautiful it is, and, so far as we can yet see, how practicable! The ages have waited for us, and here we are, the very first that have essayed to carry on our mortal existence in love and mutual help! Hollingsworth, I would be loath to take the ruin of this enterprise upon ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... The eye that saw only the strife, the war, the decay, the ruin, or only the glory and the tragedy, saw not all the truth. It spoke simply, though its words were grand: "My spirit is the Spirit of Time, of Eternity, of God. Man is little, vain, vaunting. Listen. To-morrow he shall ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... pulley with the rope and climbed the tree, adding a touch of artistic completeness to the ruin of his trousers by the operation. He had fastened the pulley high up the trunk before he realized how much more simple it would be to break open the chest where it lay and transport its ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... inner and essential meaning of the poem has to do not with external retribution, but with character, and the laws which determine its own proper ruin or perfection. The punishments described in the "Inferno" are accounts of the state of guilt itself, implications of the will that has chosen the part of brutishness. Sin itself is damnable and deadening, but the knowledge that the soul that sinneth shall die is the first ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... for somehow it chimed in with the thought already in his heart. Yet how should he not go to Utterbol with the Damsel abiding deliverance of him there: and yet again, if they met there and were espied on, would not that ruin everything for her as well as ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... if it was not hard that one deviation from chastity should so absolutely ruin a young woman. JOHNSON. 'Why, no, Sir; it is the great principle which she is taught. When she has given up that principle, she has given up every notion of female honour and virtue, which are all included ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Harris's stories desires to have them lightened by chapters from the hand of Artemus Ward. Yet he knows the taste and the value of humor. He was one of the few men of letters who really appreciated Oscar Wilde, though he did not rally fiercely to Wilde's side until the world deserted Oscar in his ruin. I myself was present at a curious meeting between the two, when Harris, on the eve of the Queensberry trial, prophesied to Wilde with miraculous precision exactly what immediately afterwards happened to him, and warned him ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw

... Which God in mercy long delays; Slaves yet may see their masters cowering, While whole plantations smoke and blaze! While whole plantations smoke and blaze; And we may now prevent the ruin, Ere lawless force with guilty stride Shall scatter vengeance far and wide— With untold crimes their hands imbruing. Have pity on the slave; Take courage from God's word; Pray on, pray on, all hearts resolved—these ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various

... oldest of all stories. He had heard it a hundred times before, but never had it left him quite so cold and pulseless as he was now. And yet, even as the palace of the wonderful ideal he had builded crumbled about him in ruin, there rose up out of the dust of it a thing new-born and tangible for him. Slowly his eyes turned to the beautiful head bowed in its attitude of prayer. The blood began to surge back into his heart. His hands unclenched. She had told him that he would hate her, that he would want to ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... English and French Socialists have shown long since how English legislation did all in its power to ruin the small industries, drive the peasant to poverty, and deliver over to wealthy industrial employers battalions of men, compelled to work for no matter what salary. Railway legislation did exactly the same. Strategic lines, subsidized lines, companies which received the ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... Government officials and prisoners of the Crown. But the step was a serious interference with trade—that is, the rum trade; in consequence those in "the ring" were exasperated, and its members only wanted Bligh to give them an opportunity to retaliate upon and ruin him. ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... that there was never a penny for anything but the barest of food and clothing, and sometimes not enough even for that. Well, I am quite sure that no one ever heard a word of complaint from mother's lips, and when poor father reproached himself, as he did very often, with having brought ruin on her, she'd say, 'Tom, I married you for better or worse, for richer or poorer. I didn't marry you on condition you stayed always in one place and earned so much ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... That he was now a captive at all, that he was still in Great Britain to maintain passively the struggle in which he had failed actively, was very much the Queen's doing. Again and again since the blow of Naseby, or at least since Montrose's ruin at Philiphaugh, it had been in the King's mind to abandon the struggle for the time, and withdraw to Holland, Denmark, or some other part of the Continent. That he had not, while the sea was open to him, adopted this course, was owing in part to his own irresolution, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... to speculate with other money, of which he was trustee, to fill the gap. Good-nature, imprudence, credulousness, a faulty grasp of the conditions, and not any deliberate dishonesty, have been the cause of his ruin. It is a fearful blow to him, but he is fortunate, perhaps, in being unmarried; I have urged him to try and get employment elsewhere, but he insists upon facing the situation in the place where he is known, with a fantastic idea, which is at the same time noble and chivalrous, of ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the man winced as he remembered that she had no pity for anything false or mean. He had decided only upon two things, first that he would vindicate himself in her eyes, and, since nobody else could apparently do it, pull the property that should have been hers out of the ruin it had been drifting into under her uncle's guardianship. When this had been done, and the killing of Trooper Shannon forgotten, it would be time for him to slip back into the ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... indefinite, and devoid of thought or ethical content. These are precisely its limitations, but hardly its faults, since the poet attained with marvelous art the very effects he desired. The themes of nearly all the poems are death, ruin, regret, or failure; the verse is original in form, and among the most musical in the language, full of a haunting, almost magical melody. Mystery, symbolism, shadowy suggestion, fugitive thought, elusive beauty, beings that are mere insubstantial abstractions—these are the characteristics, but ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... of the smithy was received as an inspiration. There is a great deal of pure romantic temper roused by these revivalistic outbreaks in provincial England. The idea of the moors and the old ruin as setting for a secret prayer-meeting struck the group of excited lads as singularly attractive. They parted cheerfully upon it, in ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... shall rest with her. I spare thee till she shall pronounce sentence upon thee." He had no sooner spoken than Mathison rushed in and cried that the troops had rebelled, and that John alone could stop the riot and stay the ruin. "The gates of Muenster have been thrown open, its army has marched upon us, and ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... the ruin of many military operations, were the origin of the failure of this. But even these perplexities and disappointments, great as they were, would not have defeated the expedition; or, at least, the Spaniards ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... were full of the assassin. Many things were incomprehensible in her character, unless you approached it with the right key. Young and with a fatal beauty, fantastic, audacious, a great coquette, always giving out a perfume of seduction and feminine ruin, she was one of those women who live in the atmosphere of infamous intrigue, and her last victim had been ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... completely hidden by the high wall with which the whole compound was surrounded. Through the foliage of the trees the outline of the old bungalow was faintly visible, and thither their earnest contemplation was directed. For both of them it was something more than a ruin, something more than a relic out of the tragic past. It had become, above all for the Colonel, a part of their lives, a piece of inanimate destiny to which they felt themselves tied by all the bonds of possession. It was theirs, and they ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... survey The camp deserted, where the Grecians lay: The quarters of the several chiefs they showed: Here Phoe'nix, here Achilles, made abode; Here joined the battles; there the navy rode. Part on the pile their wandering eyes employ— The pile by Pallas raised to ruin ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke

... I, of Connaught gentlemen; an extravagant landlord, reckless tenants, debt, embarrassment, despair, and ruin. Well, I walked up the deserted avenue, and very shortly found myself in front of the house. Oh, what a picture of misery, of useless expenditure, unfinished ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... accession of Charles I. was a remarkably rapid and successful one. After holding one or two livings, he was appointed Chaplain to the King and Sub-Dean of Salisbury, and in 1620 Dean of Westminster. On the fall of Bacon, in July 1621, in whose ruin he had taken a large share, he was sworn in as Lord Keeper. Lloyd observes with reference to the manner in which he fulfilled the duties of this post, that 'the lawyers despised him at first, but the judges admired him at last.' Williams ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... be too hard on you and ruin your life. Let it be a warning to you to be honest in future. I am sure Miss Gascoyne has no wish to prosecute you. I shall be obliged to let your mistress know about this, however. I gave you so good a character ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... resource now left. That, or chronic dissatisfaction continued, mutterings which grow annually louder and louder, till, in due course, and pretty swiftly in most cases, the inevitable crisis, crash, dynastic ruin. Anything worthy to be call'd statesmanship in the Old World, I should say, among the advanced students, adepts, or men of any brains, does not debate to-day whether to hold on, attempting to lean back and monarchize, or to look forward and democratize—but how, and in what ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... Prison gate, and 'his men wander about the ramparts.' Couriers gallop breathless; men wait, or seem waiting, to assassinate, to be assassinated; Battalions nigh frantic with such suspicion and uncertainty, with Vive-la-Republique and Sauve-qui-peut, rush this way and that;—Ruin and Desperation in the shape of Cobourg lying entrenched ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... into the open air he drew a deep breath. His teeth came together with a sharp snap, and his hands clenched. So it was true, then, this horrible thing, this sacrilege, this ruin, that had fallen upon his life and hers. Natas had spoken of giving her to this man as quietly as though it had been the most natural proceeding possible, an understood arrangement about which there could be no question. Well, he had sworn, and he would obey, but there would be a heavy ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... of close breeding, which is probably carried to greater extent with swine than with any other domestic animal, undoubtedly contributes to their liability to hereditary diseases, and when those possessing any such diseases are coupled, the ruin of the stock is easily and quickly effected, for as already stated, they are propagated by either parent, and always most certainly and in most aggravated form, ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... house, towards which, and especially towards one particular window, he directed many covert glances. It was a dreary, silent building, with echoing courtyards, desolated turret-chambers, and whole suites of rooms shut up and mouldering to ruin. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... three of my chillun. Yas'm, I ruin't three of 'em. I was een de country and I was gwine thoo' de orchard, and de cherries was scarce. I looked up in de man's cherry tree, and one tree was full of fruit. Dey jus' as pretty! I say: 'Jim, please sir, give ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... went by the board, carrying with its ruin and tangle of sails, spars and cordage, six of the crew into the terrible billows. As each man unlashed himself he was carried away by the sea before the eyes of the captain. The last of the crew was the ship's boy, who, just as he cast ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... of the Bible possible at all times for all. See that as soon as the child can read he has his own Bible, that it is in large, readable type, as much like any other book as possible. It is no evidence of grace to ruin the eyes over diamond-text Bibles. If possible, also provide separate books of the Bible, in modern literary form and some in the idiom ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... was, his clothes hung upon him loosely, like coverlets upon a collapsed bed; and he seemed but a distorted image of himself, as if (save for the dull and reddened eyes) he had been made of yellowish wax and had been left too long in the sun. Abject, hopeless, his attitude a confession of ruin and shame, he stood before his judges in such wretchedness that, in comparison, the figure of Happy Fear, facing the court-room through his darkest hour, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... have looked very much as they do now. Truly the magi were wise in their generation; they foresaw rightly that this pestilent application of the principles of common sense, inaugurated by Zadig, would be their ruin. ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... the paper slightly, as if to prolong the scene before him. If my uncle had been on the verge of ruin, he could not have looked ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand

... yielding to a virtuous weakness in his character, was he consigned to the ignominious durance of a prison. Was I not right, then, in saying that such is the melancholy position of our country, the most beautiful traits in our character are converted into the elements of our ruin?" ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... the country. Most of them were incredulous as to the stories of the abundance of gold in California. That gold had been discovered they did not deny; but they were of opinion that the find would be an isolated one, and that ruin would fall upon the crowds who were hastening either across the continent, or by ship via Panama, to the new Eldorado. Several of them tried to dissuade Frank from his intention of going thither, and more than ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... strain of business cares and domestic sorrow had begun to tell even upon John's perfect health and nervous system. Facing absolute ruin in the war years and surrounded by pitiable famine and death, he had kept his cheerful temper, his smiling face, his resolute, confident spirit. Now, he was singularly prosperous. The mill was busy nearly night and day, all his plans and hopes had been perfected; yet he was often either silent or ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... of retreat amidst the Malays; and at the end of ten minutes the sweeps of the prahus were in full work, and the whole party rapidly making their way up the river once more to some fresh hiding-place, from which they could issue to deal ruin and destruction wherever ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... a ruin with hot baths is generally assumed to be of the Roman city of Bath. The fact that the poet uses unusual words and unconventional lines seems to indicate that he wrote with ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... surveyed the ruin in silence, and when he spoke it was only to ask a question concerning the trajectory of the guns which had once furnished it. The Commandant walked by his side, a man torn by many emotions. For ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... his arm. Quite a lot of them clutched a bundle of umbrellas. I found myself reflecting that these were the remnants of families who had been robbed of everything that they valued in the world. Whatever they had saved from the ruin ought to represent the possession which had claimed most of their affections, and yet—! What did an alarm-clock, an empty bird-cage, a pair of patched boots, a string of sauce-pans, a bundle of ragged umbrellas signify in any life? What utter poverty, if these were the ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... think, clearly and fully establish the fact that the Republicans, a portion of them at least, instead of sending commissioners to that Conference with a view to inaugurate something that would compromise the difficulties by which we are surrounded, and save this country from ruin, have absolutely been engaged in the work of sending delegates there to prevent that commission from doing any thing. I send this paper to the desk, and ask the Secretary to ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... the king of Mekran was the king of Persia's slave, with many other hollow compliments, and that the ambassador should be made as welcome as in Persian all this only tending to allure his lordship ashore by treachery to his ruin, as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... 1608, was situated at the corner of the rue Thouret and the rue de la Grosse-Horloge, and near the tower of the belfry; the only portion of this building which remains, is that which faces the rue Thouret. This edifice having fallen into ruin, it was decided that a new town-hall should be erected. In 1757, a plan was adopted, and the monument was to be raised at the western extremity of the old market place; but after having laid out one million of francs, on the foundations alone, they became ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet

... Swedes, possessed with a boundless hatred for her stepsons Ragnar and Thorwald, and fain to entangle them in divers perils, at last made them the king's shepherds. But Swanhwid, daughter of Hadding, wished to arrest by woman's wit the ruin of natures so noble; and taking her sisters to serve as retinue, journeyed to Sweden. Seeing the said youths beset with sundry prodigies while busy watching at night over their flocks, she forbade her sisters, who desired to dismount, in a poem ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... very happy. Mr Elliot has sense to understand the value of such a woman. Your peace will not be shipwrecked as mine has been. You are safe in all worldly matters, and safe in his character. He will not be led astray; he will not be misled by others to his ruin." ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... tumbled headlong from the tower, Lannes himself being wounded, while Rimbaud's brave men, who were actually past the breach, were swept into ruin, their general killed, and the French soldiers within the breach all ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... been conspicuous in tracking the thieves. But the name that must have shone most formidably in the eyes of Tweed was that of Charles O'Conor. It stood at the head of the list like a threatening cloud in the sky, ready to bring ruin upon the Ring. The moral support of his great legal fame, affirming the validity of Andrew H. Green's possession of the comptroller's office, had intimidated O'Gorman, Tweed's corporation counsel, and shattered the plot to forcibly ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... and receive mercy. The ministry recommended the same plan to Gage, and this is what the tories call making their peace, "a peace which passeth all understanding" indeed! A peace which would be the immediate forerunner of a worse ruin than any we have yet thought of. Ye men of Pennsylvania, do reason upon these things! Were the back counties to give up their arms, they would fall an easy prey to the Indians, who are all armed: this perhaps is ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... families recently, but greatly, enriched. The Blauendorf house was older by some generations, and had become widely connected; on the other hand, their fortune in possession of the present descendant was vanishing quickly; in comparison with the entirely new edifice of the Darvids, it seemed a ruin. On these two general attention was concentrated with the greatest curiosity; for during that winter and the preceding one the most numerous anecdotes touching them were in circulation among those who frequented that ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... rising hoarse, "you would all of you laugh at that brute ruin the name and honour of a lonely girl!" He walked up and down before the group which stood huddled in the corner in abject terror, more like a wild beast than a man. "You're not fit to live! You're beasts of prey! No decent girl is safe from you!" His voice rose loud and thin ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... poor graceless mass of ruin down beside the river, and it was fenced about jealously and locked up from their invasion. After dinner Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont went for a walk in the mingled twilight and moonlight up the hill towards Chepstow. Both of them were absurdly ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... God to Moses, I declare by my power, and by my glory, that if I were to withdraw my providence from the heavens and the earth for no longer a space of time than thou hast slept, they would at once fall to ruin and confusion, like as the cup ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... debris of walls round it. Away to the left another hill ran out farther to the east, and the place he was in seemed to be a kind of cup between the spurs. Just before him was a little ruined building, with the sky seen through its rafters, for the smouldering ruin on the right gave a certain light. He wondered if the Russian firing-line ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... Cooperstown was much depressed by the ruin which fire had wrought in the village, but, before long, a new business section began slowly to rise from the ashes of the old. West of Pioneer Street, where the Eagle Tavern had narrowed the width of the main thoroughfare to the dimensions of a mere lane, the street was now made of uniform ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... deep feeling in the matter; but while she owned, with her half-sad, half-comical consciousness, that she had been tacitly claiming and expecting too much, she softly pitied herself, with a kind of impersonal compassion, as if it wore some other girl whose pretty dream had been broken. Its ruin involved the loss of another ideal; for she was aware that there had been gradually rising in her mind an image of Boston, different alike from the holy place of her childhood, the sacred city of the antislavery heroes and martyrs, and from the jesting, easy, sympathetic Boston of Mr. ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... makes for me. He's to pay my expenses and guarantee me ten thousand a year beyond that. If he doesn't pay me that much, then it's he that breaks the contract. And of course, he can't make me do anything that would ruin my voice or my health. He says he's going to work me like a dog. That's what he thinks I need. He says he can get me in with the Chicago company for their road tour before their regular season opens here. He won't ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... senior colleagues one by one passed from the world, these two actors assumed first rank in their company, and before the ruin in which the Civil War involved all theatrical enterprise, they were acknowledged to stand at the head of their profession.[12] Taylor lived through the Commonwealth, and Lowin far into the reign of Charles the Second, ultimately reaching his ninety-third year. Their last days were passed ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... the old system of milling were not then so apparent. With the settlement of Minnesota, and the development of its capacities as a wheat-growing State, a new factor in the milling problem was introduced, which for a time bid fair to ruin every miller who undertook to solve it. The wheat raised in this State was, from the climatic conditions, a spring wheat, hard in structure and having a thin, tender, and friable bran. In milling this wheat, if an attempt was made to grind ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... of the Spaniards brought their ruin along with it, for the buccaneers began to combine together for self-protection, and out of that combination arose a strange union of lawless man with lawless man, so near, so close, that it can scarce be compared to any other than that of husband and wife. When two entered ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... extinguished and not rekindled during the five unlucky days. Household goods which could no longer be of any service, dishes, household articles, etc., were broken; every one gave up all hope, and abandoned himself to despair while awaiting the expected ruin. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... him, and saw that he was disconcerted. They had no mind to ruin the enjoyment in store for them by offending their guest, so they soon resumed a fitting gravity and began to assist the youth to forget ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne

... Of God. Chapter I. God Desires And Seeks The Salvation of All Men. Section I. The reason why theologians have concluded that God designs the salvation of only a part of mankind. Section II. The attempt of Howe to reconcile the eternal ruin of a portion of mankind with the sincerity of God in his endeavours to save them. Section III. The views of Luther and Calvin respecting the sincerity of God in his endeavours to save those who will finally perish. Chapter II. Natural Evil, Or Suffering, And Especially ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists just beneath the unattainable sky: ... in which the visitor becomes sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had till then endured;" the city "crushed down in spirit by the desolation of her ruin and the hopelessness of her future;" one recalls these words when passing through the unspeakable gloom and horror and desolation and squalor of ancient Rome. In these surroundings one's cab stops at "No. 44," and ringing the bell the door is open, whether by super-normal ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... as often as it was called for by the disposition of the corrupted heart. All unfaithfulness which is known to be so, and yet is cherished, and excused to the conscience and before men, must draw after it entire ruin, in a community, not less than in an individual. As a reason for this ruin, it is very strikingly said in 2 Kings xvii. 9: "And they covered (this is the only ascertained signification of [Hebrew: Hpa]) words that were not so, over the Lord their God;" i.e., ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... complaint grew into pathos under the subliming force of her advocate's sympathy—"that she would be like a widow, and worse than a widow. I am not the man to bid you suppress your convictions because they will be your ruin, in the common sense of the ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... noticed a mile off, it would be remembered.... What matters is that people would remember it, and that would give them a clue. For this business one should be as little conspicuous as possible.... Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it's just such trifles that always ruin everything...." ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky



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