"Calamitous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Societies also met, and discussed the probability of little Ruth Lynn's being thrown upon their generosity. They finally decided that, in case of any such calamitous ending to the madness of Clemence Graystone, the child should be turned over to the proper authorities of the village, and they would wash their hands of ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... air upon the excited brain. The deaths of Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle of our present Chief Justice, and of Ezekiel Webster, the brother of our great statesman, are memorable examples of the calamitous effects of the errors dwelt upon; and yet, strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend these errors, and give the body an equal chance with the mind in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... do, with humble resignation to the will of Divine Providence in this calamitous dispensation, I shall ever cherish his memory ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... are employed by the Third International. It is necessary, in appealing to a prosperous country, to lay stress on hope rather than despair, and to show how the transition can be effected without a calamitous loss of prosperity. All this requires less violence and subversiveness, more patience and constructive propaganda, less appeal to the armed might of a ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... himself why a little more or less should signify. Besides, with the intention he had had he must know. Kate's move, if he didn't know, might simply disconcert him; and of being disconcerted his horror was by this time fairly superstitious. "I hope you don't allude to events at all calamitous." ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... be content without going on great excursions which fatigue and do me harm (or else worry me with problems;)—I am content here with the roadside hedges and streams; and this contentment is the great thing for health,—and there is hardly anything to annoy me of absurd or calamitous human doing; but still this ancient cottage life—very rude and miserable enough in its torpor—but clean, and calm, not a vile cholera and plague of bestirred pollution, like back streets in London. There is also much more real and deep beauty than I expected to find, in some of the minor ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... such follies are often more calamitous than the ambition of kings; and that intolerance and bigotry have been infinitely greater curses to mankind than ignorance and error. Better any error than persecution! Better any opinion than ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... The calamitous effects of the system had reached the humblest concerns of human life. Provisions had risen to an enormous price; paper money was refused at all the shops; the people had not wherewithal to buy bread. It had been found absolutely indispensable to relax a little ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... little more than a child. In the dim light he could not see her face distinctly; even the form was shadowy. But again he was reminded of Tirzah, and a sudden tenderness fell upon him—just so the lost sister stood with him on the house-top the calamitous morning of the accident to Gratus. Poor Tirzah! Where was she now? Esther had the benefit of the feeling evoked. If not his sister, he could never look upon her as his servant; and that she was his servant in fact would make him always the more considerate ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... have pondered the success of such a manoeuvre as she lay alone absorbed in her interminable games of patience (and though it must have plunged her in despair from the first moment of its realisation, from the first of those little unforeseen facts, the first word of calamitous news, whose accents can never afterwards be expunged from the memory, everything that bears upon it the imprint of actual, physical death, so terribly different from the logical abstraction of its possibility) she would fall ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... errand than Mr. Huskisson, angrily throwing down his pen, in very few words refused their request, winding up his reply with these memorable words—remarkable not only for the fallacy of his then opinions, but also in connection with the calamitous event of the next day—"Gentlemen, I supported the scheme of the railway between Liverpool and Manchester as an experiment, but as long as I have the honour to hold a seat in parliament, I will never consent to see England gridironed by railways!" What ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... of distress, from a too crowded and in all respects disagreeable and unwholesome situation, on board the Prison-ships, and from the want of food and other necessaries. The picture given us of their sufferings is truly calamitous and deplorable. If just, it is the obvious interest of both parties, omitting the plea of humanity, that the causes should be without delay inquired into and removed; and if false, it is equally desirable that effectual measures should be taken to obviate ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... relations of the United States, the president said: "While many of the nations of Europe, with their American dependencies, have been involved in a contest unusually bloody, exhausting, and calamitous, in which the evils of foreign war have been aggravated by domestic convulsion and insurrection, in which many of the arts most useful to society have been exposed to discouragement and decay; ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... after him, it may well be said, 'the third part of the stars of heaven.' This alarm I naturally and freely expressed to the man upon whom I most relied, your father. On the occasion to which I refer he replied to me with some admission that they were calamitous; 'but,' he said, 'pray remember an important compensation, in the influence which the English mind will bring to bear upon the Church of Rome itself. Should there be in this country any considerable ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... to follow in his steps. But military men are never deterred from dangerous undertakings by the disasters which others have encountered in attempting them before. In fact, perhaps Pyrrhus was the more eager to try his fortune in this field on account of the calamitous result of his uncle's campaign. He was unwilling that his kingdom of Epirus should rest under the discredit of a defeat, and he was fired with a special ambition to show that he could overcome and triumph where others had been ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... well liked in Pampanga. The father-provincial thought that father Fray Agustin de Mejia [38] was needed for the government of the province, for he was of Manila, and had maintained that convent with great devotion and punctuality, and no one had been lacking in anything—and that in times so calamitous as his own. During that time the ships from Espana failed us for two years, and during all that period he had so great courage that he did splendid things in the convent of Manila, both for the church and for the house. The ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... replied that if not, it would be calamitous. In which she spoke sincerely. For although now the ruler, and, if the truth were known, the somewhat despotic ruler of Tallyn, in her husband's lifetime she had known ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... haste to do with a generous eagerness and enthusiasm, and therefore I used to contemplate your character with an enthusiastic affection. That character, high as it was, sunk in my estimation from the calamitous delay concerning the promised pension of Cowper, a delay which allowed that dear and now released sufferer to sink into utter and useless distraction before the neglected promise was fulfilled. Will you make me some amends for the affectionate concern I suffered for ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... imperial state, Great without vice, that oft attends the great; Nor from the sire art thou, the son, declin'd; Then hear my words, and grace them in thy mind! Of all that breathes, or grovelling creeps on earth, Most man in vain! calamitous by birth: To-day, with power elate, in strength he blooms; The haughty creature on that power presumes: Anon from Heaven a sad reverse he feels: Untaught to bear, 'gainst Heaven the wretch rebels. For man is changeful, as his bliss or woe! Too high when prosperous, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... while Constantinople itself had been captured by the forces of the Fourth Crusade and made the seat of a Latin kingdom. Consequently, it is not surprising to find that the Chora, like other churches of the ravaged city, was in a deplorable condition at the close of those calamitous days. Nothing seemed to have been done for the repair of the church immediately upon the recovery of the capital in 1261. The ruin which the Latin occupants of Constantinople left behind them was too great to be removed at once. The first reference to the Chora at ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... breath; afterwards, to breathe on the diseased eyes; and, next, to spit on them. The woman then took both my hands, and pressing them to his stomach, held them there for some time, while she related some calamitous history of her family; pointing sometimes to her husband, sometimes to a frightful cripple belonging to the family, and sometimes to her child. I purchased all the fish they had, consisting of very fine salmon, salmon-trout, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... read to your Lordships a part of Mr. Holt's evidence, by which it is proved that Mr. Hastings was duly advertised of all these miserable and calamitous circumstances. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... state of Ireland is most alarming and most anxious; altogether, there is so much inflammable matter all around us that it makes one tremble. Still, the events of Monday must have a calming and salutary effect. Lord John Russell's remarks about Europe, and the unfortunate and calamitous policy of the Government of the poor King of the French are most true. But is he not even most to be pitied for being the cause of such misery? (Though perhaps he does not attribute it to himself), for, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... part be ascribed to the enthusiasm aroused in previous generations by the heroic conflict with advancing Islam, is a thesis capable of demonstration. Yet none the less is it true that her action at that period was calamitous to herself and little short of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the ordinary rates affixed by law, which are generally the lowest, and the natives, unable to keep their bargains without considerable injury or endangering the subsistence of their numerous families, implore the favor of the magistrate, petitioning him to lay their calamitous situation before the superior government, in order to have the payment of their tribute in kind remitted, and offering to pay it in money. This is the precise moment when, as his own profits depend on the misery of the province ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... must be speaking of the Emperor." The Histrio-Mastix was, in fact, so big and so complex a thicket of confusion, that it had been licensed without examination by the licenser, who perhaps trusted that the world would have as little inclination to peruse it as he had. The calamitous discovery of the sting in the tail must surely have been made by a Hebrew or an Oriental student, who mechanically looked for the commencement of the Histrio-Mastix where he would have looked for that of a Hebrew Bible. Successive licensers had given the work a sort of go-by, but, reversing the order ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... reached France of the evacuation of New York, the loss of Fort Washington, the calamitous retreat through New Jersey, and other disasters of the campaign of 1776. The friends of America in France were in despair. The tidings, bad in themselves, were greatly exaggerated in the British gazettes. The plan of sending an armed vessel with munitions was abandoned. The cause, always ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... urn, her friend Shenstone, perhaps more feelingly, commemorated her virtues and her tastes. Such, indeed, was the friendly intercourse between Shenstone and Utrecia, that in Elegy XVIII., written long after her death, she still lingered in his reminiscences. Composing this Elegy on the calamitous close of Somerville's life, a brother bard, and victim to narrow circumstances, and which he probably contemplated as an image of his own, Shenstone tenderly recollects that he used to read Somerville's ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... person!" exclaimed my aunt. "See from what calamitous evils I have snatched you, dear Peregrine. Come, let us be going. I have William with your mare, but seeing you cannot ride as you are, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the Continent than to that on our element, especially as we are discouraged a little on the latter. You reproach me for not telling you more of Byng- -what can I tell you, my dear child, of a poor simpleton who behaves arrogantly and ridiculously in the most calamitous of all situations? he quarrels with the admiralty and ministry every day, though he is doing all he can to defer his trial. After he had asked for and had had granted a great number of witnesses, he demanded another large set: this has been refused him: he is under close confinement, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... hundred pages of his letters. They will no doubt some day be published, but I am not even referring to them in these records, which I think had best come to the reader with an old man's falterings and uncertainties. With his frequent absences and my own abroad, and the intrusion of calamitous cares, the rich tide of his letters was more and more interrupted. At times it almost ceased, and then it would come again, a torrent. In the very last weeks of his life he burst forth, and, though ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was not a long one, but it contained at least the calamitous figures that came out in the above conversation. The Colonel found himself in a rather uncomfortable place—no $1,200 salary forthcoming; and himself held responsible for half of the $9,640 due the workmen, to say nothing of being in debt to the company to the extent of nearly ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... More calamitous still for the accusers of Chase was the way in which, when the evidence began to come in, the case against him started crumpling at the corners. Lewis, who had been Fries's attorney and whose testimony they had chiefly relied upon to prove the judge's unfairness on ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... toward the end of February the pack drew in toward the settlements, in the hope of more abundant foraging. Fate promptly favoured the move. Some sheep, and a heifer or two, were easily killed, with no calamitous result; and the authority of the leaders was somewhat discredited. Three of the young wolves even went so far as to besiege a solitary cabin, where a woman and some trembling children awaited the return of the man. For two hideous moonlit hours they prowled and howled about ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... glories of his German campaigns, the triumphs of Ulm, of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Wagram. Napoleon's disasters in Russia, in 1812, were imputed by his admirers to the elements; his reverses in Germany, in 1813, were attributed by them to treachery: and even those two calamitous years had been signalised by his victories at Borodino, at Lutzen, at Bautzen, at Dresden, and at Hanau. His last campaign, in the early months of 1814, was rightly cited as the most splendid exhibition of his military genius, when, with a far inferior army, he long checked ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... rocking dolorously back and forth upon the porch reviewed the calamitous possibilities of ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... he had to deal with several calamitous occurrences. After the great fire in Yedo, he contributed 160,000 ryo for the relief of the sufferers; he rebuilt Yedo Castle, and he reconstructed the Imperial palace of Kyoto twice. In the Empo era (1673-1680), the country was visited by repeated famines, which had the effect ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... cruelties which were common in the new settlements, and were calamitous realities previous to that, propitious event; slumbered in the minds that had been constantly agitated by them, and were only roused occasionally, to become the fearful topic of ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... it seemed to her that her scruple had not really counted. It might have worked, somehow, at the moment; but she could not think of it as containing all the calamitous weight of destiny. Her failure (it was so pre-eminently her failure) came of feeling and of understanding at every moment far too much. It came of having eyes at the back of your head and nerves that extended, prodigiously, beyond the confines of your body. It was as ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... words for an occasion of such importance,—the very words and gestures and action. Would she not fly into his arms, or at least expect that he should open his own? That must be avoided. There must be no embracing. And then he must at once proceed to explain all the evils of this calamitous passion;—how he was the husband of another wife; how she was the wife of another husband; how they were bound by honour, by religion, and equally by prudence to remember the obligations they had incurred. He must beg her to be silent while he said all ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... sanitary arrangements is, that a disproportionate number of sickly and helpless persons of all ages, but chiefly children, are thrown upon the state to be provided for. If this were to occur in a small community it would be fatal. In a great state it is not more felt than a calamitous war, or an adverse commercial treaty. But it requires a continued attention as great as that which those more noisy calamities are able to ensure for themselves while ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... with suspicion. It definitely committed him to a mode of life which he had always regarded as degrading both to the man and the woman and as certain of a calamitous ending. So he made excuses for delay, fully intending never to yield. But although Alice did not speak of her plan again, he found himself more and more attracted by it, caught himself speculating about various apartments he happened to see as he went about the streets. She ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... occurred to me without any of its usual and alleviating accompaniments. I said to myself, We must die. Sooner or later, we must disappear forever from the face of the earth. Whatever be the links that hold us to life, they must be broken. This scene of existence is, in all its parts, calamitous. The greater number is oppressed with immediate evils, and those the tide of whose fortunes is full, how small is their portion of enjoyment, since they know that it ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... daughter's face, he may have been touched to a deeper chord than usual at the sight of her strange and growing resemblance to his dead Tatiana. Did she too possess—as her mother had possessed—the sweet but calamitous gift of loving? He himself had not been the object of his wife's supreme devotion. Before the child's birth she had given him an emerald ring which, she declared, was all that she valued on earth. It was no ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... actually encouraging, these premature manifestations of passion in their children. They may yet learn, by bitter experience, the folly of their course, unless they make the discovery in time to avert the calamitous results which threaten the future of their children, by ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... while La Salle was getting succour for his company on the Illinois, a letter arrived from Tonty telling him of the mutiny of the garrison and the wilful destruction of Fort Crevecoeur with all it held. The calamitous news would have killed the spirit of any one less courageous than La Salle; but the bold explorer, whose whole life was a long grapple with adversity, prepared with all haste to return to the rescue ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... a clear intelligence from different parts of the world at once that all his ships and warehouses had been destroyed by hurricanes and fire? Faith given, patience follows: and the trial is morally the same, whether the news be true or false. Remarkably enough, after the calamitous time is past, when the good man of Uz is discerned as rewarded by heaven for his patience by the double of every thing once lost—his children remain the same in number, ten. It seems to me quite ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... people's sins; but I guess I've got some sense of honor left. I've never stolen any money. I did run off with another man's wife, and I got my pay for that. That was in the ardor of youth, Waterman; it was a calamitous mistake. Nobody knows it better than I do. I got my punishment. I don't wish the woman any harm; she's a brazen one, and don't ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... walked Florentine streets arm-in-arm with Vespasiano, thrilled Aeneas Sylvius, then Pope, with a Latin oration, and returned to his own country with many books, some of which he intended to give to Oxford University—one of the best deeds of his unhappy and calamitous life.[1] While in Italy, William Grey, who sat under Guarino, and made Niccolo Perotti, well known as a grammarian, free of his princely establishment, was conspicuously industrious in accumulating books. If he could not obtain them in any ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... get tired of doing her hymns and proclaiming the authorship, unless persuaded by a Bylaw, with a penalty attached. The idea could of course occur to her wise head, for she would know that a seven-stanza break might well be a calamitous strain upon a soloist, and that he might therefore avoid it if unwatched. He could not curtail it, for the whole of anything that Mrs. Eddy does is sacred, and cannot ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... little Book called the Christian Hero, [1] that the appearing to be otherwise is not only pardonable but necessary. Every one knows the hurry of Conclusions that are made in contempt of a Person that appears to be calamitous, which makes it very excusable to prepare ones self for the Company of those that are of a superior Quality and Fortune, by appearing to be in a better Condition than one is, so far as such Appearance shall not make us really ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... be accurately judged of in the present moment of irritation and disorder; but whatever government that country may ultimately assume, it may surely be hoped that their experience of unsuccessful and calamitous war has been sufficient to incline them to peace; that they will learn to measure their national glory by a better standard than mere victory or noise; that they will reflect on the true objects, both of political and military institutions, and acknowledge the happiness of the people they govern ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... glad to say, escaped from those dreadful islands three years later, and reached England in safety. And so I come to the end of this tale of a very strange and calamitous voyage, brought about mainly through the obstinacy of ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... selfishness and stupidity which constitutes English policy, in this regard, from the Union to the triumph of the Land League. Let him study it at large in Davitt's "Fall of Feudalism." We are not concerned here to revive that calamitous pageant. Our interest is of another kind, namely to signalise the malign influence introduced into the agrarian struggle by government from Westminster as against government from Dublin. Even had Grattan's Parliament remained, ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... the general odium against his administration. The public burdens, increased by his profuse liberality, and felt more heavy on a disordered kingdom, became another ground of complaint: and the uncontrolled animosity of parties, joined to the multiplicity of taxes, rendered peace more calamitous than any open state of foreign or ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... slavery in Texas." He believed that England was "too sagacious not to see what a fatal blow abolition in Texas would give to slavery in the United States." Then, contemplating the effect of the general abolition of slavery, he declared that "to this continent it would be calamitous beyond description." It would "destroy in a great measure the cultivation and production of the great tropical staples, amounting annually in value to nearly $300,000,000." It is a suggestive commentary on Mr. Calhoun's evil foreboding, that the great tropical ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... midshipman, the old jolly sailmaker and his assistant, the ship's cook, the corporal of the marines, two of the carpenter's crew, and nine seamen. In all, the loss amounted to three and twenty persons, besides the seven who died at Batavia. It is probable that these calamitous events, which could not fail of making a powerful impression on the mind of Lieutenant Cook, might give occasion to his turning his thoughts more zealously to those methods of preserving the health of seamen, which he afterwards pursued with ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... but only Simon Laidlaw's, with his timber caps and luggies; and the talk was, that meal would be half-a-crown the peck. The grief, however, of the business wasna visible till the Saturday—the wonted day for the poor to seek their meat—when the swarm of beggars that came forth was a sight truly calamitous. Many a decent auld woman that had patiently eiked out the slender thread of a weary life with her wheel, in privacy, her scant and want known only to her Maker, was seen going from door to door with the salt tear in her e'e, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... knowledge of all fruit. Miserable in his affections, barren in his intellect; clinging to solitude, yet accursed in it; dreading as a danger the fame he had once coveted; obscure in spite of learning, hopeless in spite of love, fruitless and joyless in his life, calamitous and shameful in his end,—surely such is no palliative of crime, no dalliance and toying with the grimness of evil! And surely to any ordinary comprehension and candid mind such is the moral conveyed by the fiction of 'Eugene Aram.'"—[A word ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... document were to get to a certain Embassy in London no one can foretell the calamitous results. It might even result in another war, if not now certainly later. It was, I should explain, of a private and confidential nature, ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... ideas separating the impressions from each other, and preventing their opposition. Thus when a man is afflicted for the loss of a law-suit, and joyful for the birth of a son, the mind running from the agreeable to the calamitous object, with whatever celerity it may perform this motion, can scarcely temper the one affection with the other, and remain betwixt them in a ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... to come up and take her punishment. She sounded the possible, she compared the degrees of the probable; feeling however that as a cloistered girl she was poorly equipped for speculation. She tried to imagine the calamitous things young men might do, and could only feel that such things would naturally be connected either with borrowed money or with bad women. She became conscious that after all she knew almost nothing about either of those interests. The worst woman she knew was Mrs. Churchley ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... is this: whether Kansas shall be a conservative, constitutional, Democratic, and ultimately free-State, or whether it shall be a Republican and abolition State; and that the course pursued by me is the only one which will prevent the last most calamitous result, which, in my opinion, would soon seal the fate of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... the whole country began to steam like a caldron. A cart, too, succeeded now and then in struggling up with a load of fresh provisions; reviving a few sinking spirits for a time, and almost making the owner's fortune; but, at the best, it was a drearily calamitous season,—one which caused many a sick heart to hate the sight and name of gold, and many a digger to resolve to quit the land, and all its treasures, at the ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... blizzards in Canada, and I presume every settler is liable to them. In your case your loss, being partly covered by insurance, will not, Mr. Linton assures me, be crushing, although it seems to me very severe. To have your initial endeavours, too, handicapped by so calamitous an occurrence would ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... he reached home, his wife and children received him with all the demonstrations of perfect joy. But he, instead of returning their caresses, wept so bitterly, that his family apprehended something calamitous had befallen him. His wife enquire reason of his excessive grief and tears; "We are all overjoyed," said she, "at your return; but you alarm us by your lamentations; pray tell us the cause of your sorrow." "Alas!" ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... to the sturdy good health of our people, the invasion by this enemy of mankind—and a terrible enemy the smallpox then was—did not prove directly calamitous. The baby was the only one seriously sick, and she made a rapid recovery, as indeed did all the others who were attacked. There were not more than a dozen cases from first to last and not one suffered much more than inconvenience, and not one had a pit or ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... war and to effect a reunion and reconciliation with our brethren in the South. I yet hope it may be done, but I am not able to point out how it may be. Nothing short of Providence can reveal to us the issues of this great struggle. Bloody—calamitous—I fear it will be. May we so conduct it, if a collision must come, that we will stand justified in the eyes of Him who knows our hearts, and who will justify our every act. We must not yield to resentments, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... has become a household word through this county as one of the best landlords in Ireland. He never broke down a rooftree during or since the terrible famine. Under his fostering care they have all tided over the calamitous time, and are happy and prosperous in their homes. He did not think his estate overcrowded, nor did he avail himself of the mysterious destruction of the fruits of the earth, to clear off beings made in God's image, and to drive them to the poorhouse, the fever-shed, or the emigrant ship, to ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... They sat and listened to the illustrious bard Who sang of the calamitous return Of the Greek host from Troy, at the command Of Pallas. From her chamber o'er the hall The daughter of Icarius, the sage queen Penelope, had heard the heavenly strain, And knew its theme. Down by the lofty stairs She came, but not alone; there followed her Two maidens. When the glorious lady ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... still more calamitous to human liberty, was a wicked confederacy, between the two systems of tyranny above described.—It seems to have been even stipulated between them, that the temporal grandees should contribute every thing in their power to maintain the ascendency of the priesthood; ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... of the Bibliomania is, at the present day, both general and violent, and threatens to extend still more widely. Even modern publications are not exempt from its calamitous influence; and when Mr. Miller, the bookseller, told me with what eagerness the large paper copies of Lord Valentia's Travels were bespoke, and Mr. Evans shewed me that every similar copy of his new edition of "Burnett's History of his own Times" was disposed of, I could not help elevating ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... following the mission to Venango (1754) Colonel Washington was sent in command of a small force in the same direction; but by reason of the greatly superior strength of the enemy, the expedition resulted in a calamitous retreat. By a singular coincidence, the compulsory evacuation of the English stronghold—"Fort Necessity," as it was called—occurred on the Fourth of July, 1754—a date afterward made forever glorious in great measure by the inestimable services of the young commander of this earlier and ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... of an answer to the Marquis of Buckingham's letter of resignation meets entirely with my sentiments. If I thought any alteration necessary, it would be by more explicitly stating the allusion to his very commendable conduct, during my late calamitous illness, which would render the approbation in ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... frontier of Beerbhoom the state of affairs was, perhaps, most calamitous. In 1776, four acres out of every seven remained untilled. Though in earlier times this district had been a favourite highway for armies, by the year 1780 it had become an almost impassable jungle. A small company of Sepoys, which in that year ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... progress, and insulted by the preference of strangers to all the offices of the country, that the feelings of the people should ponder upon change. Nothing could be more impolitic than this careless insult, and nothing more calamitous in its consequences. The intelligent lawyer, the enterprising merchant, the hardy soldier, and America had them all, grew bitter against the country of their ancestors. It would scarcely be believed, that the Episcopal Church was almost wholly abandoned to weakness, poverty, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... not understand I.O.U.'s in an affair of that kind. He had always thought that gentlemen did not play for stakes which they could not pay at once. This was not said to Gerald himself;—or the result would have been calamitous. Nidderdale was the go-between, and at last arranged it,—not however till he had pointed out that Percival, having won so large a sum of money from a lad under twenty-one years of age, was very lucky in receiving substantial security ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... distinguishing him by particular favors and bounties. Malcolm, by his whole conduct, never seemed intent upon coming to extremities with William: he was satisfied with keeping this great warrior in some awe, without bringing things to a decision, that might involve his kingdom in the same calamitous fate that had oppressed England; whilst his wisdom enabled him to reap advantages from the fortunes of the conquered, in drawing so many useful people into his dominions, and from the policy of the Conqueror, in imitating those feudal regulations ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Many of the calamitous effects of the tremendous revolution which has passed over the Southern States still remain. The immeasurable benefits which will surely follow, sooner or later, the hearty and generous acceptance of the legitimate results of that revolution have ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... the church. What is meant by the proposition as generally used is, that the State is politically an aggregate of families and not of individuals. This is entirely untrue, and if true the fact would be calamitous. Civil government is supposed to have had its origin in family government, the patriarch becoming chief of a tribe which was substantially the outgrowth and expansion of a single family; but if a nation was to be formed of such tribes it would be essential to its peace and prosperity ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... calamitous meetings at the Opera House continued; and not only continued, but grew in interest and importance, and sapped of their congregations churches where the Gospel was preached with that sweet monotonous tranquillity and that impenetrable profundity which stir up such ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... lost his breath and there burst upon him a perception of the results to which he was being committed by this calamitous reading. And also simultaneous the outbreak of the class into cachinnations of delight, severely repressed by the perplexed but indignant ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... of reconciliation to Sully, when his coach was entangled as it passed along the street. His attendants left the carriage to remove the obstruction, and during the delay thus caused he was stabbed to the heart by Francis Ravaillac, a native of Angouleme. This calamitous event took place on May 14, 1610, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. The Spaniards, who had the strongest interest in the catastrophe, were supposed to have been the instigators; but the fear of implicating other powers, and plunging ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... control, in the license of rapine and murder: the crowd of slaves and plebeians, who were unconcerned in the event, could only gain by the indiscriminate pillage; and the face of the city exhibited the strange contrast of stern cruelty and dissolute intemperance. [110] Forty days after this calamitous event, the subject, not of glory, but of guilt, Italy was delivered, by a painful disease, from the tyrant Ricimer, who bequeathed the command of his army to his nephew Gundobald, one of the princes ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... catalogues, chromo-lithographs, books of etchings, photographs, &c. Dr. F.A. Leo, of Berlin, sent a splendid copy of his valuable fac-simile of "Four Chapters of North's Plutarch," illustrating Shakespeare's Roman plays, to replace his former gift-volume lost in the calamitous fire. The volume is one of twenty-four copies, and the learned Professor added a printed dedication as a record of the fire and the loss. Dr. Delius, of Bonn, Herr Wilhelm Oechelhaueser, of Dessau, and other German Shakespeare authors sent copies of their works. Mr. J. Payne ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... any particular plans, regulations, or instrumental expedients, in promotion of the system of operations hopefully begun, for raising these classes from their degradation. His part has been to make such a prominent representation of the calamitous effects of their ignorance, as shall prove it an aggravated national guilt to allow another generation to grow up to the same condition as the present and the past. In the course of attempting this, occasions have been seized of exposing the absurdity of those who are hostile to the mental ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... sketch out the work which Sir Bartle Frere had had before him, its fatal element of haste, with its calamitous failures in no way chargeable to him. 'In short, I concluded, but for the grave blunders of others you would have canonized Sir Bartle Frere instead of speaking of him as you do. He is the ablest man you ever sent to South Africa. As to his personal character, ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... depression communicated itself to the working-people, and to the peasants who had flocked in from the adjacent country, and who, all sought a guide for their opinions in the faces of the principal townsmen, also for the most part proprietors of the surrounding districts. They saw that something calamitous was on foot, and resorted accordingly to the only remedy open to the ignorant and the ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... had an aim in life and a leading idea. The events of the annexation crisis have proved calamitous for the policy which I followed all my life. I wished to do everything which lay within the compass of my small powers, to render my own nation happy and great in a free, powerful and generally respected Austria ... I have always resented the fact ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... you must be aware, the recent tragedy, so awful in circumstance, and nationally so calamitous, has, as it well might, inflamed the sensibilities of men and women who esteem their loyalty only a little less sacred ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... description of the hurried advance upon Dargo, and of the Russian retreat after capturing it, has all the tragic interest of a situation where heroic valour strives vainly against calamitous misfortune, and brave men, caught in a well-laid snare, tear their way out of it with the energy of despair. The six barriers of twisted branches were attacked and carried without serious loss, though at one point, where the path along the hill-top was narrowest, the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... great, fall at once when they use mercenary armies; and although it is a less instant form of error (because involving no national taint of cowardice), it is yet an error no less ultimately fatal—it is the error especially of modern times, of which we cannot yet know all the calamitous consequences—to take away the best blood and strength of the nation, all the soul-substance of it that is brave, and careless of reward, and scornful of pain, and faithful in trust; and to cast that into steel, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... After long wanderings, and bitter disappointments, and protracted hopes, the heroes return to their homes—such as war had spared—to recount their adventures and sufferings, and reconstruct their shattered States, and mend their broken fortunes—a type of war in all the ages, calamitous even to conquerors. The wanderings of Ulysses have a peculiar fascination, since they form the subject of the Odyssey, one of the noblest poems of antiquity. Nor are the adventures of AEneas scarcely less interesting, as presented by Virgil, who traces the first Settlement of Latium ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... in Washington watched the weary days go by, while they waited for Pete and covered his name with reproaches because of his calamitous procrastinations. Meantime, Sally Sellers, who was as practical and democratic as the Lady Gwendolen Sellers was romantic and aristocratic, was leading a life of intense interest and activity and getting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience, suddenly ceased to be incredible; there were earthquakes of unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred with a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great droughts in sundry places and consequent famines, and that most calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came upon them with the late war, which was begun by the Athenians and Peloponnesians by the dissolution of the thirty years' truce made after the conquest of Euboea. To the question why they broke the treaty, I answer ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... world was fast coming to a finis; the ends of the earth appearing to have combined in a great Popish plot of villany. Every man that had a heart to feel, must have trembled amid these threatening, judgment-like, and calamitous events. As for my own part, the depravity of the nations, which most of these scenes showed me, I must say, fell heavily upon my spirit; and I could not help thinking of the old cities of the plain, over the house-tops of which, for their heinous sins and iniquitous ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... city of America, shall we have a scene like this repeated—the grandest procession ever seen on this continent, spontaneously evoked to celebrate the foulest crime on record. If any feeling of gratulation could arise in so calamitous a time, it would be, that so soon after this appalling calamity the nation calmly and collectedly rallied about its succeeding rulers, and showed in the same moment its regret for the past and its resolution ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... come here on this evening to annoy Captain Stewart in some fashion. As he put it to himself, she probably meant to "make a row," and he would not have been in the least surprised if she had made it in the beginning, upon her very dramatic entrance. Nothing more calamitous than that had occurred to him. But when he saw the woman's face turned a little away and gazing fixedly at Captain Stewart, he began to be aware that there was tragedy very near him—or all ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... days of October. Finally, at risk of giving offence and jeopardising his career, he begged Napoleon, for the sake of France and his own reputation, not to undertake this dangerous expedition, the calamitous outcome of which he now predicted. Having listened quietly to M. de Ponthon, the Emperor dismissed him without making any comment. For some days he appeared withdrawn and contemplative, and the rumour spread that the undertaking was off, but then M. Maret, Duc de Bassano, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... you can't know the results of your discoveries. All you can see is a thin film of events on the surface of an immediate situation, so you can't say whether the long-term results will be beneficial or calamitous. ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... hope to avert the calamities of war and to effect a reunion and reconciliation with our brethren of the South. I yet hope it may be done, but I am not able to point out to you how it may be effected. Nothing short of Providence can reveal to us the issue of this great struggle. Bloody—calamitous —I fear it will be. May we so conduct it if a collision must come, that we will stand justified in the eyes of Him who knows our hearts and who will judge our every act. We must not yield to resentments, nor to the spirit of vengeance, much less ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... history, and imagined that this was the first time any such thing had happened. But, in truth, it was in a similar manner that Andriscus of Adramyttium, a man of the very lowest class, assuming the name of Philip, added a third calamitous war to the previous Macedonian wars. Again, while the emperor Macrinus was at Antioch, it was then that Antoninus Heliogabalus issued forth from Emessa. Thus also Alexander, and his mother Mamaea, were put to death by the unexpected enterprise of Maximinus. And in Africa the elder Gordian was raised ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... home several days, and still there was no news. Was it possible, she asked herself, that this unknown traveller, and his calamitous fate, should pass on into perfect oblivion and leave matters as they were before? For a cloud would hang over her and her children as long as Roland was the object of pursuit. While he was a fugitive criminal, of interest to the police officers ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... recent date. They had found a delightful means of evasion, which for a time worked well, but the bottom has been knocked out of it, and their legal knowledge has proved of no avail. To pay rent whenever a seizure was effected was voted a bore, a calamitous abandonment of principle, and a loss of money which might be better applied. So that when MacAdam made his latest seizures, say on the land of Brown and Jones, these out-manoeuvred tenants brought forward ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... far more important than is the school; the latter might be abolished and some other form of education adopted by society without calamitous results; but if the home were suddenly abolished, it is probable that civilization itself would be shaken to its center, if not destroyed. The home, therefore, ought to be better prepared and equipped to fulfill its function than is the school; but not ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... such as this. Mere truth-telling had never seemed to her a weighty matter of the law. And she was now grown expert in lies. But Tarrant's message disturbed her gravely. Something unforeseen must have happened—something, perhaps, calamitous. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... been proved before more than one Committee that the taxes imposed upon the people of India were onerous to the last degree. These subjects were discussed in 1853, at which time, in my opinion, the change now proposed ought to have been effected. Subsequently the calamitous events of 1857 and 1858 occurred; and the nation came at once to the conclusion—a conclusion which I think no disinterested person could resist—that it was impossible that India and its vast population ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... lord, too late to offer any thing by way of defence or vindication; nor can we expect from your lordships, in this court, but the sentence which the law requires you, as judges, to pronounce against men of our calamitous condition. But we are also persuaded, that as mere men, and out of this seat of rigorous justice, you are susceptive of the tender passions, and too humane not to commiserate the unhappy situation of those, whom the law sometimes, perhaps—exacts—from you to pronounce upon. No doubt, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... a distance, by the course of the fleet, of nearly 625 miles, Nearchus was so much favoured by the winds and by the straightness of the coast, that his progress was sometimes nearly 60 miles a day. In every other respect, however, this portion of the voyage was very unfortunate and calamitous. Alexander, aware that on this coast, which furnished nothing but fish, his fleet would be in distress for provisions, and that this distress would be greatly augmented by the scarcity of water which also prevailed here, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... arrived at Rome from Africa, the senate was assembled at the temple of Bellona; when Lucius Veturius Philo stated, to the great joy of the senate, that a battle had been fought with Hannibal, which was decisive of the fate of the Carthaginians, and that a period was at length put to that calamitous war. He added what formed a small accession to their successes, that Vermina, the son of Syphax, had been vanquished. He was then ordered to go forth to the public assembly, and impart the joyful tidings to the people. Then, a thanksgiving having been ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... other prisoners, the Flemish Batard [Footnote: A half-breed Mohawk leader.] and two Oneida chiefs, to go and inform their respective tribes that he would give them four months to send hostages and make peace; otherwise he would lead against them another expedition more calamitous for their country than the first one. At length, in the month of July of the following year, ambassadors of the Iroquois nations arrived at Quebec with a number of Iroquois families who were to remain as hostages ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... the mad indecencies which are contained in the piece, its purpose, when stript of these, is upon the whole very innocent: the longing for the enjoyment of domestic joys, so often interrupted by the absence of the husbands, is to be the means of putting an end to the calamitous war by which Greece had so long been torn in pieces. In particular, the honest bluntness of the Lacedaemonians is ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... in anticipation of the event are set alight throughout the city. The play naturally falls into three divisions. The first introduces the Chorus of Argive elders, Clytemnestra, and a Herald who tells of the hardships of the siege and of the calamitous return, and ends with the triumphal entrance of Agamemnon with Cassandra, and his welcome by the Queen; the second comprehends the prophecy of the frenzied Cassandra of the doom about to fall upon the house and the murder of the King; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the happiness of a mistress, for, the women there, he says, are so coy, and so narrowly watched by their relations, that there is no possibility of accomplishing an intrigue. He mentions, however, one Monsieur Hoffman, who married a French lady, with whom he was very great, and after the calamitous accident of Mr. Hoffman's being drowned, he pleasantly describes the grief of the widow, and the methods he took of removing her sorrow, by an attempt in which he succeeded. These two letters discover the true character of Etherege, as well as of the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... The calamitous conflict is not of my seeking, my voice has been cast throughout on the side of peace. My Ministers earnestly strove to allay the causes of strife and to appease differences with which my empire was not concerned. Had I stood aside when, in defiance of pledges to which my ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... and love both pointed out the course for the obliged M. c. to pursue; but, alas! there is nothing certain in the anticipations of complete happiness in this life. The lady fell suddenly sick, and died on the very day they were to have been married, leaving him sole executor of her property. The calamitous event made such a deep impression upon a feeling mind, already shaken by trouble and disease, that finding his prospects of bliss again blighted without a chance of recovery, he fell into a state of despondency, and was, within a week, laid a corpse by ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... by circumstances doubly calamitous. Though destined to survive all his brothers and sisters, Anthony was a weak, sickly child, not considered never heard the mention of his mother's name, or was the Archdeacon himself capable of showing any tenderness whatever. In place of a mother the little ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... thoughts, he remained for a while in that state of silent uncertainty which follows the receipt of calamitous news. The servant having finished his report had joined his three companions, ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid |
