"Calamity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have previously made reference to. It is written, evidently, in despondency, and heartfelt sorrow, under the shock of the frightful calamity. It relates to the disastrous death of poor Alfred, his youngest brother. It is dated from, and ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... sickness I was much impressed by Mary's manner of nursing him. She was always entirely wrapped up in her father, so much so, that I had often doubted if she could survive him; but she never revealed any trace of agitation. Under the pressure of the calamity which had befallen her, she showed rather increased steadiness, and even a cheerfulness which surprised me. Nothing went wrong in the house. Everything was perfectly ordered, perfectly quiet, and she rose to a height of which I had never suspected her capable, while ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... of the same name, south of Shanghai. On 19th March he succeeded in capturing the Chinese city, but the Tartar portion held out, and a relieving army compelled Chung Wang to retire. What seemed an unredeemed calamity proved a stroke of good fortune, for the Imperialists had sent their best troops to pursue him, and thus materially weakened the force before Nanking. Chung Wang saw his chance, and while the Imperialists were rejoicing in Hangchow at its recovery, he hastened back by forced marches, and fell ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... who saw him just then might have deemed him one. No, indeed! He was doing what none but a faithful and experienced railroad man would have thought of doing under the circumstances; doing his best to avert further calamity by warning approaching trains from the west of the danger before them. He ran half a mile and then placed the torpedoes, which, with a brakeman's instinct, he still carried ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... the Emperor heaps his gifts and graces, To the heart-burning of all good Bohemians— Those minions of court favour, those court harpies, 75 Who fatten on the wrecks of citizens Driven from their house and home—who reap no harvests Save in the general calamity— Who now, with kingly pomp, insult and mock The desolation of their country—these, 80 Let these, and such as these, support the war, The fatal war, which they ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... idols were at first only designed to represent these attributes: they believe in ten Avators, or incarnation of the Deity, nine of which have taken place for the punishment of tyrants, or removing some great natural calamity; and the tenth is to take place at the dissolution of the universe. Several of the Avators inculcate the transmigration of souls, and the ninth of them, which forbids the sacrifices of animals, gave rise to the religion of Gauda Boodma, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... life of the hunter. There are, of course, exceptions when calamity and woe come. A joint may be sprained, a limb broken. Fire may burn, or Indians may come, bringing captivity and torture. But the ordinary life of the hunter, gratifying his natural taste, has many fascinations. ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... geomancer will be invited to modify in some way the arrangement of the ancestral graveyard. Houses in a Chinese street are never built up so as to form a line of uniform height; every now and again one house must be a little higher or a little lower than its neighbour, or calamity will certainly ensue. It is impossible to walk straight into an ordinary middle-class dwelling-house. Just inside the front door there will be a fixed screen, which forces the visitor to turn to the right or to the left; the avowed ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... sign on the windows read The Lone Tree Saloon and Dance Hall, the place had earned the sobriquet of the Bucket of Blood, from the many tragedies enacted therein. And this place was run by a woman, Calamity Jane, famous in several mining camps. One fellow analyzed her when he said: "She is a powerful good woman, except she hain't got ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... Hiberniores ipsis Hiberniis? Because of the astral mold, certainly. It is race-consciousness that makes race, and not the other way; and there is something behind that makes race-consciousness; so that even where calamity has smashed up the latter and put it altogether in abeyance, the seeds of it remain, in the soil and on the inner planes, to sprout again in their day; when the Crest-Wave rolls in; when Souls come to revive them. It may be that this will never happen, of course; but it seems to me that where Nature ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... not every calamity that is a curse, and early adversity is often a blessing. Surmounted difficulties not only teach, but hearten us in our ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... want and suffering. And then I was forced to acknowledge that Count Schwarzenberg had acted right well as Stadtholder in the Mark in wishing, before all things, to preserve the Mark intrusted to him from yet greater calamity, by holding it to that neutrality, being alike impartial between the Emperor and the Swedes. I therefore begged his pardon in my heart for having often accused him unjustly before, for he is indeed a faithful and zealous servant ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... yearning or tortured by an unceasing anxiety, well- nigh gives beneath the abnormal strain. This does not last long, or it would kill or drive us to the mad-house. Then comes that long epoch of dull misery, enduring till at last kindly nature in pity rubs off the rough extremes of our calamity, and by slow but sure degrees softens ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... to put up with it. Now, in the case of Madagascar, the formalities had originally been observed, but by neglect they had fallen into desuetude ages ago. England should have snatched Madagascar from the French clothes-line. Without an effort she could have saved those harmless natives from the calamity of French civilization, and she did not do it. Now ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by the cacique. The Pueblo Indians now have two religions, that of Montezuma, and the Roman Catholic. The Sun, Moon, and Stars were Gods, of which the greatest and most potent was the Sun; but greater than he was Montezuma. In time of drought, or actual or threatened calamity, the Pueblo Indians prayed to Montezuma, and also to the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The old religion (that of Montezuma) is believed in all the New Mexican pueblos. They practice the Catholic religion ostensibly; but in their consciences and in reality the old religion is that of the pueblos. The ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... our great American calamity, which purports to have come from the spirit of Gen. Washington, appears in a book published by Josiah Brigham in 1859, of which few of my readers have any knowledge. The messages were written by the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... relatives. According to the generosity or stinginess of the feast givers there was a feast or a famine in spirit land, and those who were so unfortunate as to have no namesake, either through their own carelessness[21] or the neglect of the community,[22] went hungry and naked. This was the worst calamity that could befall an Eskimo, hence the necessity of providing a namesake and of regularly feeding and clothing the same, in the interest ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... worst of it. It had to be done in silence and a guilty secrecy, for Molly was in bed again, suffering from a sort of nervous relapse. Up to the last day Tyson was wretched, haunted by the fear of some unforeseen calamity that might still happen and destroy his plans. By way of guarding against it he had stuck the Steamship Company's labels on all his luggage long ago. That seemed to make his decision irrevocable whatever happened. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... and in the night the water broke out and filled all the plain, and what was land is now water." This, then, was the origin of Loch Awe. It is a little like the Australian account of the Deluge. That calamity was produced by a man's showing a woman the mystic turndun, a native sacred toy. Instantly water broke out of the earth ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... himself to avoid misery, fears it, And, at the best, shows but a bastard valor. This life's a fort committed to my trust, Which I must not yield up, till it be forced: Nor will I. He's not valiant that dares die, But he that boldly bears calamity. Maid of Honor, Act iv. Sc. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... into deep despondency, others became peevish and impatient. Murmurs broke forth, and, as usual with men in distress, murmurs of the most unreasonable kind. Instead of sympathizing with their aged and infirm commander, who was involved in the same calamity, who in suffering transcended them all, and yet who was incessantly studious of their welfare, they began to rail against him as the cause of ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the rapid St. Lawrence, and dripped from the spars and rigging of ships. It hung over and enveloped the town, where, combined with smoke, it formed a yellow canopy; and damp and chill it penetrated the flag of England, weighing it down in heavy folds, as though ominous of impending calamity. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Cooper House, and was driven forth, with two hundred and fifty other guests, by the fire which burned it to the ground in the early dawn of the eighth of August. This summer hotel stood within the grounds occupied by the Present High School. Its burning was a calamity to Cooperstown, for under the management of Simeon E. Crittenden it had become widely famous, and drew guests from every part of ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... great as to defeat the happiness of life. And the effect of this is, that the blow is greater by reason of its not having been foreseen, and not, as they suppose, that when similar misfortunes befall two different people, that man only is affected with grief whom this calamity has befallen unexpectedly. So that some persons, under the oppression of grief, are said to have borne it actually worse for hearing of this common condition of man, that we are born under such conditions as render it impossible for a man to ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... held in my own hands the police report of the accident. It states that the fall was unavoidable; and that, if no such calamity had occurred before, this was due to the simple fact, that, during the bad weather, nobody had thought of looking out of the window. The castings of the little railing in front were found to be broken in two places, and so long ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... foot or a foot and a half long? The nurse is so unhandy; she tumbles the baby about so roughly, handles it so awkwardly, she will certainly dress it too loosely, or too tight, or leave a pin that will prick it, or some terrible calamity will happen. So she takes possession of the little thing, and with a hand guided by experience and the instincts of affection, puts its things on in a ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... Rain thy broad deluge first! All-teeming earth Disgorge thy poisons, till the attainted air Offend the sense! Thou, miscreative hell, Let loose calamity!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... easily perceived; and that, by suggesting a bloody arbitration, did not lessen her agitation. I hoped therefore that, by placing her in the pew, I might at least liberate her for the moment from the besetting memorials of sorrow and calamity. But, as if in the very teeth of my purpose, one of the large columns which supported the roof of the chapel had its basis and lower part of the shaft in this very pew. On the side of it, and just facing her as she lay reclining on the cushions, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... shock Mrs. Mathusek took courage and begged the gentleman to sit down. There are always two vultures hanging over the poor—death and the law; but of the two the law is the lesser evil. The former is a calamity; the latter is a misfortune. The one is final, hopeless, irretrievable; from the other there may perhaps be an escape. She knew Tony was a good boy; was sure his arrest was a mistake, and that when ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... the dagger of a fanatic, friends and foes alike were thrilled with the feeling that the event affected them all, and would have an immeasurable influence on the world. In England also it was felt as a domestic calamity. Robert Cecil, now Earl of Salisbury, said in Parliament that Henry IV had been as it were their advanced guard against conspiracies of which he had always given the first information: that the first warning of the Gunpowder Plot must ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... scaled down and the creditors of this railroad must accept the loss, while on the other route the fixed charges must be reduced still more and the creditors must suffer a larger loss. It goes without saying that the prospect of such a calamity means consolidation. It is evident what alternative competitors face in cases in which heroic competition goes on to the bitter end. As a rule this is an unrealized alternative. The mere prospect of the calamity connected with it is bad enough to put an end ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... a man awake, to keep him alive to his own soul and its fixed design of righteousness, that the better part of moral and religious education is directed; not only that of words and doctors, but the sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all God's scholars till we die. If, as teachers, we are to say anything to the purpose, we must say what will remind the pupil of his soul; we must speak that soul's dialect; we must talk of life and conduct as his soul would have him think of them. If, from some conformity between ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only then, did she realise that something was amiss. Millie Splay in her desire to spare her darling the sudden shock of learning what calamity had befallen the house that night had bidden Joan's maid keep silence. She herself would break the news. But Millie Splay was busy with telegrams to Robert Croyle and Stella's own friends, and all the sad little duties which wait ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... mishap of poor, awkward Andy, who tipped his plate of hot cakes and honey into his lap, and then in his sudden spring backward, threw a part of the plate's contents upon Ethelyn's shining silk. This was the direst calamity of all, and sent poor Andy from the table so heart-broken and disconsolate that he did not return again, and Eunice found him sitting on the wood-house steps, wiping away with his coat-sleeve the great tears which ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... his jealous, passionate nature, to love is a calamity. No return, however perfect, can quite compensate him for all the pains and fears his passion must afford. Already Philip's torture has begun; already the pangs of unrequited love ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... as a son, address him in writing as "Excellentissime and Carissime," the cruelties of such a friend are too revolting for Byron to profit by his offer of services. He calls him the man of war and calamity, and in immortal verse perpetuates the memory of his crimes, and even foretells the death he actually died a few years later. He can forgive him the weakness of the flesh, but not those crimes which are deaf to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... object of which is another in distress? instead of this, but designing to have it mistaken for this, they speak of an affection or passion, the object of which is ourselves, or danger to ourselves. Hobbes defines pity, imagination, or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense (he means sight or knowledge) of another man's calamity. Thus fear and compassion would be the same idea, and a fearful and a compassionate man the same character, which every one immediately sees are totally different. Further, to those who ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... in earnest and half joking. "Only four weeks ago you yourself witnessed Banker Heinersdorf's calamity. He too thought the sea and the magnificent waves would respect him on account of his millions. But the gods are jealous of each other, and Neptune, without any apparent cause, took sides against Pluto, or ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... knows that. All must needs be told. For, after the first throes of the overwhelming calamity, in which her thoughts alone dwelt on the slain son, they turned towards him suspected as the slayer. In her case with something stronger than suspicion—indeed almost belief, based on her foreknowledge of the circumstances; these not only accounting ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... pine grosbeak comes down from the north and shears your maples of their buds; the fox prowls about your premises at night, and the red squirrels find your grain in the barn or steal the butternuts from your attic. In fact, winter, like some great calamity, changes the status of most creatures and sets them adrift. Winter, like poverty, makes ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... four centuries was beyond calculation. One of their favourite practices was the kidnapping of eminent or wealthy persons, in the hope of extorting ransom. Cervantes and Vincent de Paul were among the celebrated men who thus tasted the horrors of Moorish slavery; but it was a calamity that might fall to the lot of any man, or woman, and it was but rarely that the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... to ravage, his territories. The Imperialist minister at Rome actually gave a comedy and a ball in his palace there, contrary to the express orders of the Pope, who had forbidden all kinds of amusement in this period of calamity. When remonstrated with by the Pope, this minister said that he had promised a fete to the ladies, and could not break his word, The strangest thing is, that after this public instance of contempt ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... man of rare merit and fine character, was then sub-governor of the pages, by whom his faithfulness, kindness, and justice had caused him to be much beloved. Wishing to prevent a calamity, he called before him the two adversaries; but these young men, destined for army service, would hear of no other reparation than the duel. M. d'Assigny had too much tact to attempt to argue with them, knowing that he would not have been obeyed; but he offered himself as second, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... course of the night. The medical man shook his head—Tyrrel rushed to the bedside, and was convinced by his own eyes that the being whose sorrows he had both caused and shared, was now insensible to all earthly calamity. He raised almost a shriek of despair, as he threw himself on the pale hand of the corpse, wet it with tears, devoured it with kisses, and played for a short time the part of a distracted person. At ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Ryder had heard the cries. They went up and down the whole bank of the mere, and cast their torches' red light over the placid waters themselves. But there was nothing to be seen, alive or dead,—no trace either of calamity or crime. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... me, that I am asking to see you here, at my house in New York. Engagements make it difficult for me to leave at present. I hope you will not find this impertinent from an older woman, threatened very much as you in her affections by an impossible calamity—" ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... occasion I thought you might have been hurt; and I clambered up our high peach-tree in the grass plot nearest the place; and thence I saw Messer Dante, with his white sleeve reddened by the fig-juice, and the seeds sticking to it pertinaciously, and Messer blushing, and trying to conceal his calamity, and still holding the verses. They were ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... minds to send us back to the frontier. Unluckily, it appears that the Pombo had a vision during the night. A spirit told him that, if he did not kill us, he and his country would suffer from a great calamity. "You can kill the Plenki," the spirit was reported to have said, "and no one will punish you if you do. The Plenkis are afraid to fight ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... student now betake himself, what relief will he find for his eyes, wearied with intense reading, now that the pleasant stream is taken from him?" Two centuries and more have passed since this complaint was uttered; and time has shown that the outward calamity, which it recorded, was but the emblem of the great moral revolution, which was to follow; till the institution itself has followed its green meadows, into the region of things which once were and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... fire spread quickly and enveloped the whole quarter with extraordinary rapidity. (The fire burnt, however, only at two ends; at the third spot it was extinguished almost as soon as it began to burn—of which later.) But the Petersburg and Moscow papers exaggerated our calamity. Not more than a quarter, roughly speaking, of the riverside district was burnt down; possibly less indeed. Our fire brigade, though it was hardly adequate to the size and population of the town, worked with great promptitude and devotion. But it would not have ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... which is entirely consistent with faith. In all ages, the Church has held that the blood of a martyr could efface the sins of the people, and deliver them from their penalties. Undoubtedly you know, better than I do, that formerly, in times of war and calamity, a monk was confined in a tower or a cell, where he fasted and prayed for the salvation of all. I have not left my intention in doubt, for in the third Book I have caused it to be positively declared to the Eternal that Eudore ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the whole story as the hallucination of a mind shaken by calamity. He had suffered heavy loss by his Italian transactions; and hence the sight of an Italian was hateful to him, and the principal part in his nightmare would naturally enough be played ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... fire, undoubtedly the first impulse is—to assist in putting it out. But that field of exertion is very limited, and is soon filled by regular professional people, trained and equipped for the service. In the case of a fire which is operating upon private property, pity for a neighbor's calamity checks us at first in treating the affair as a scenic spectacle. But perhaps the fire may be confined to public buildings. And in any case, after we have paid our tribute of regret to the affair, considered as a calamity, inevitably, and without restraint, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... on In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad, My "gentle-hearted" Charles! for thou hast pined And hungered after nature, many a year, In the great city pent, winning thy way With sad yet patient soul through evil and pain And strange calamity." ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... sacrifice that lies in your power. For we are face to face with a peril greater than plagues, greater than influenza, greater than earthquakes and mighty floods, which sometimes overwhelm this land. These physical calamities can rob us of so many Indian bodies. But the calamity that has at the present moment overtaken India touches the religious honour of a fourth of her children and the self-respect of the whole nation. The Khilafat wrong affects the Mussalmans of India, and ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... he knows well that out of all griefs, the grief he has brought upon her in two short years is the one which will seem to her hardest to bear. Very few women of the present day could feel this particular calamity as Catherine Elsmere ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... much perturbed, his link never blazes. On those occasions, however, as he goes his rounds, he ever and anon whirls it around his head, and it bursts into a dismal flame. This is a fearful omen, and always portends some direful crisis or calamity. It occurs, only once or twice in ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... with which death visited the family during his childhood and youth, familiarized him at an early age with scenes of sorrow and grief. No doubt he was too young when his father died to comprehend the calamity that had come upon the household, but it was not many months before he knew the meaning of his mother's tears, not only for his father, but also for his sister, who died in her infancy. Referring to his father's death, he writes ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... of it was that Saint Schlatter had fled from Colorado without warning in the night—whether for a short time or for ever nobody knew. The news spread far and wide, the affair assumed the proportions of a public calamity, and the Rocky Morning News and other Colorado journals shed copious tears over the sad lot of the abandoned pilgrims. Even the American newspapers, which so often foresee events that never happen, had not been able to foresee this thunderbolt ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... perish? Or had some new tempest of calamity, let loose upon France, drowned the memory of their exile? In vain the watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of waters. A deep dejection fell upon them,—a dejection that would have sunk to despair could their ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... comes singly! At this crisis of affairs, Captain Carr suddenly succumbed to a malady that had been troubling him for years, and Jessie Bain found herself thrown homeless, penniless upon the world. She was thankful that poor Margaret Moore did not realize the calamity that had overtaken her. That humble cottage roof which had sheltered her so long would cover her head ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... books, being supposed to contain the fate of the Roman Empire, were kept a profound secret, and only on occasions of public danger or calamity, and by special order of the senate, were they allowed to be consulted. When the Capitol was burned in the Marsic war, eighty-two years before Christ, they perished in the flames: but so seriously was the loss regarded that ambassadors were sent to Greece, Asia Minor, and Cumae, wherever Sibylline ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... republicanism of the factions which had expelled the stadtholder, was speedily punished by the plunderings and corruptions of their new allies, and the insolent and atrocious annexation of Holland to the French empire was followed by the additional calamity of a war with England, which stripped her of all her colonies. An English expedition sailed for Java, stormed its defences, and took possession of Batavia and the Dutch possessions on the island in 1811. An English government was established, Sir Stamford Raffles was placed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... municipality and permanent council of Soissons writes that the establishment of Saint-Jean des Vignes "has always earnestly claimed its share of the public charges. This is the institution which, in times of calamity, welcomes homeless citizens and provides them with subsistence. It alone bears the expenses of the assembly of the bailiwick at the time of the election of deputies to the National Assembly. A company of the regiment of Armagnac is actually lodged under its roof. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... practically powerless in that or in any community that tolerates, licenses, and votes for the means of the downfall of men, women, and children. All we can do is pray and wait, wait and pray. God speed the day when the enemy of souls shall no longer reign over them and laugh at their calamity. God ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... all that, I look upon Philosophy to be one of the most excellent Things in Nature, if used moderately. I don't approve of philosophising too much, for it is a very jejune, barren, and melancholy Thing. When I fall into any Calamity or Sickness, then I betake myself to Philosophy, as to a Physician; but when I am well again, I bid ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... sympathy so genial and delightful, a new era in the existence of the composer seemed to open, and he abandoned himself without reserve to its pleasures. In retracing a life so ill rewarded by contemporaries, and so checkered by calamity, it is pleasant to dally awhile in the primrose path, and enjoy the opening prospects ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... weeks. Spontaneity of action had long since ceased within his fettered mind, where doubt had laid its detaining hand upon his judgment. Uncertainty of his steps, fear of their consequence, and dread lest he precipitate the calamity which he felt hung always just above him, had sapped the courage and strength of will which his soul needed for a determined stand, and left him incapable of decisive action, even in the face of grossest evil. The mordant reply ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the nature of a calamity, now ain't it?" smiled the stranger, enjoying his contributions to the success ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... experienced a feeling of painful emotion. Tabarith lay still half in ruins; for the dreadful earthquake of 1839 had made this place one of the chief victims of its fury. How must the town have looked immediately after the calamity, when even now, in spite of the extensive repairs, it appears almost like a heap of ruins! We saw some houses that had completely fallen in; others were very much damaged, with large cracks in the walls, and shattered terraces and towers: every where, in short, we wandered ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... them to beg a shirt and tobacco. The shirt, of course, I did not send, the scoundrel is not worthy of it. I merely sent him six inches of tobacco with reluctance. That cursed family is a perfect pest to the place, and it is my humble opinion that the hand of Providence sends them the present calamity for their ill deeds."[!] ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... joint," and thereby to discredit the theological view of the universe. Theology knows only too well that life is "a dread machinery of sin and sorrow." It is the very existence of the vast aboriginal calamity, whatever it may have been, in which the human race, the whole creation, is involved, that forms the ground for the need of the revelation which Christianity professes to bring. If there were no evil, there would be no need of a deliverance from evil. Of course, why evil has been suffered ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... zealous in prosecuting the same, deseruing honourable remembrance for his good minde, and expense of life in so vertuous an enterprise. Whereby neuerthelesse, least any man should be dismayd by example of other folks calamity, and misdeeme that God doth resist all attempts intended that way: I thought good, so farre as my selfe was an eye witnesse, to deliuer the circumstance and maner of our proceedings in that action: in which the gentleman was so incumbred with wants, and woorse ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... Even if the sense of the misfortune of death is uppermost in an archaeologist's mind, he may find not a little comfort in having before him the example of so many good, men, who, in their hour, have faced that great calamity with squared shoulders. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... say, did not at first think the death of Smith Westcott by violence a very great crime or calamity, if it served to save Katy. However, as he walked and talked with Gray, the thought of murder made him shudder, and he made an earnest effort to persuade the Inhabitant to give up his criminal thoughts. But it is the misfortune of people like George Gray that the romance in their composition ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... the depriving a fellow creature of his life. As we have before intimated, the spectacle of pain inflicted is at all times an evil in itself. Even the presence of those gloomy buildings, devoted to all the wretched purposes of incarceration, is, we should say, a public calamity. The more men see of misery, the more callous do they become to it; the less effort do they make to relieve; the more ready are they to inflict it. Punishments should be multiplied as little as possible. Very slight offences had better be left to the correction of public opinion, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... him into the hands of boys." One of the boys escaped, but two days after the fight the head of the elder was brought to Caesar, who was not liked for the triumph he made himself after the event in Rome, where it was thought out of taste to rejoice over the calamity of his fellow-countrymen as if they had been foreign foes; the Romans do not seem to have minded his putting twenty-eight thousand Cordovese to death for their Pompeian politics. If I had remembered all this ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... much distress. He interrupted the business of the council to inquire the cause of his grief. "Commander of the faithful," answered Abou Hassan, with repeated sighs and sobs, "God preserve your majesty on the throne, which you fill so gloriously! a greater calamity could not have befallen me than what I now lament. Alas! Nouzhatoul-aouadat whom you in your bounty gave me for a wife to gladden my existence, alas!" at this exclamation Abou Hassan pretended to have his ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... great scourges: the pest of horse-sickness and fly and the calamity of rain. For after twelve hours' rain in that black cotton soil never a wheel could move until a hot sun had dried the surface of the roads again. Roads, too, were mere bush tracks in the forest, knee-deep either in dust or in greasy ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... Green, from which the precincts were entered. At last the blow fell! One by one the monks filed out of their historic home in solemn procession, their heads bent beneath a weight of misery they were hardly able to bear, though not yet capable of realising the full meaning of the calamity which had befallen them. It is true they were not sent into the world entirely without means of subsistence; some who were in holy orders had been appointed to livings by the Abbot and convent; to others pensions were allowed, but ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... John, accustomed as he was to the wilderness, felt an uneasiness in his soul, the reflex perhaps of the previous night's awakening, that he could not quite throw off—a sense of impending danger—of a calamity about to happen. The trees became mighty men ready to strike at him as he approached and behind every bush crouched a waiting enemy. His guilty conscience was at work. The little spirit that God had placed within his bosom, ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... when they die go to Scheveningen; but my heaven is elsewhere. To go thither is, however, no calamity, so long as one chooses the old road. It is being there that so lowers the spirits. The Oude Scheveningen Weg is perhaps the pleasantest, and certainly the shadiest, road in Holland: not one avenue but many, straight as a line in Euclid. On either side is a spreading ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Nuova. The poorer population had been almost utterly destroyed by the plague; so that these funds were for the most part wasted, misapplied, and preyed upon by mal-administrators.[1] The foundation of the University of Florence is also mentioned as one of the extraordinary consequences of this calamity. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Saumarez, on her inner bow, as well as that of the "Defence," hitherto engaged by the "Peuple Souverain." This accumulation upon them of three fresh ships would doubtless have proved irresistible, even if a yet more dire calamity had not supervened. The new-comers took their positions soon after eight, and a little before nine a fire was observed on the poop of the "Orient." The British captains, seeing the flames fighting on their ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... accommodation as could be procured in the house, as it was impossible to remove the smallest article of our baggage from the boats, or even to stir out of the house we were in, the whole city being under water. However, the town was as suddenly relieved from this calamity as it had been afflicted with it, for, on the next morning, the whole inundation had ceased, the waters having run off, and the river being confined within ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... have set your finger on a great calamity. If Marcel had been properly understood, there would have ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... you one of a sailor boy who was even braver and nobler than she. As a schooner was sailing near Montauk Point, Long Island, she was suddenly struck by a heavy gust of wind, upset, and instantly sunk. A vessel near by, which had seen the calamity, sent its boat to save from sinking any that had not gone to the bottom. On coming near where the schooner went down, they saw a little boy, twelve years old, floating on some wood, and went to take him off. As they approached him, he cried out, 'Never mind me; ...
— Two Festivals • Eliza Lee Follen
... had not been by any means uneventful since the death of his brother, though that mysterious calamity had taken away the zest from his success for many a day, and though he no longer cherished the same visions of a happy home in England, when his circumstances should have become so prosperous as to enable ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... vague and pleasant meditation which are perhaps the chief joy of such a temperament, when he suddenly sprang up as if in fear. And fear had in fact seized him. Suppose he forgot those belongings on the rack? Suppose, sublimely careless, he descended from the train and left them there? What a calamity! And similar misadventures had happened to him before. It was the cheese that disquieted him. No one would be sufficiently unprincipled to steal the coffin, and he would ultimately recover it at the lost luggage office, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... of the island of Britain was the visit of one of the emperors to this northern extremity of his dominions. The name of this emperor was Severus. He was powerful and prosperous at home, but his life was embittered by one great calamity, the dissolute character and the perpetual quarrels of his sons. To remove them from Rome, where they disgraced both themselves and their father by their vicious lives, and the ferocious rivalry and hatred they ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... over-taking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek. That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the States does not admit of a doubt. Humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so great a calamity. It is too late to inquire whether it was just in the United States to include them and their territory within the bounds of new States, whose limits they could control. That step can not be retraced. A State can not be dismembered by Congress ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... ostracised, no one going to his house or giving him food or water; and when it is cured the Mahars of ten or twelve surrounding villages assemble and he must give a feast to the whole community. The reason for this calamity being looked upon with such peculiar abhorrence is obscure, but the feeling about it ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Republican paper at New York, connecting his name and that of Senator Conkling with Guiteau's crime. The Vice-President seemed deeply moved by these insinuations. "No one," he said, "deplores the calamity more than Senator Conkling and myself. These reports are so base and so unfounded that I cannot believe they will be credited. They do not affect Senator Conkling and myself as much as they do the entire country. They are a slur upon our institutions, an attack upon the integrity ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... hard together as she listened, wondering who and what like she might be. She suspected no harm,—for who could desire to harm her who had never injured a living being? Yet there she stood on the one side of that black door of doom, while the calamity of her life stood on the other side like a tigress ready to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... unfathomable darkened upon him; unshared, the burden was overwhelming: a foreboding of unspeakable calamity, based upon his ghastly discovery, bore down upon him, crushing out hope of power to ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... sign of the awful interior was on any of the windows of the house either to deepen awe or relieve. They were blank as eyeballs of the mindless. He shivered. Death is our common cloak; but Calamity individualizes, to set the unwounded speculating whether indeed a stricken man, who has become the cause of woeful trouble, may not be pointing a moral. Pacing on the Park side of the house, he saw ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to understand a caution which had been often impressed upon me, that, if I regarded my safety, I should not cross the southern Border; and I cursed my own folly, which kept me fluttering like a moth around the candle, until I was betrayed into the calamity with which I had dallied. 'What are those rights,' I said, 'which you claim over me? To what end do ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... and defective elements in modern society, we must repeat, cannot be minimized because of their alleged small numerical proportion to the rest of the population. The proportion seems small only because we accustom ourselves to the habit of looking upon feeble-mindedness as a separate and distinct calamity to the race, as a chance phenomenon unrelated to the sexual and biological customs not only condoned but even encouraged by our so-called civilization. The actual dangers can only be fully realized when we have acquired definite information concerning the financial ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... my most gracious Miss," said the caller, "that His Majesty would never permit a calamity so colossal to overtake his people, whose welfare he has continually and exclusively in his all-highest thoughts. Therefore you may take it from me as completely certain ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... volcano of energy. Now and then some one coming in or out would leave the door open, and the night air was chill; Marija as she passed would stretch out her foot and kick the doorknob, and slam would go the door! Once this procedure was the cause of a calamity of which Sebastijonas Szedvilas was the hapless victim. Little Sebastijonas, aged three, had been wandering about oblivious to all things, holding turned up over his mouth a bottle of liquid known as "pop," pink-colored, ice-cold, and delicious. Passing through the doorway ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... lightning. At fifteen years of age she was walking with a young female friend, when they were overtaken by a fearful thunder-shower, and her friend was struck by lightning at her side and instantly killed. The terrible calamity wrought seriously upon her nervous system, and from that time she was unable to control her nerves during a thunder-storm. Otherwise she was one of the most fearless and resolute women ever born ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... over and engaged them for two or three hours with some advantage. The breeze rose at noon; a few fast sloops got under way and easily drove them back. But the same breeze which enabled the English to move brought a serious calamity with it. The Mary Rose, one of Lisle's finest vessels, had been under the fire of the galleys. Her ports had been left open, and when the wind sprang up, she heeled over, filled, and went down, carrying two hundred men along with her. The French saw ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... rubbed, curried, and ground down to fine powder in the hopper of an evil fortune, and who therefore could sympathize with one in similar circumstances. For though we may look grave and behave kindly and considerately to a friend in calamity; yet, if we have never actually experienced something like the woe that weighs him down, we can not with the best grace proffer our sympathy. And perhaps there is no true sympathy but between equals; and it may be, that we should distrust that man's sincerity, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... of the gate in an automobile set at its highest speed, and as he saw Roscoe he made a gesture singularly eloquent of calamity, and was lost at once in a cloud of dust down the street. Edith had followed part of the way down the drive, and it could be seen that she was crying bitterly. She lifted both arms to Roscoe, ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... the evidence of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons. Of this writer's works a very small proportion survives in the original Greek; but that little is such as might well make every scholar and divine lament the calamity which theology and literature have sustained by the loss of the author's own language. It is not perhaps beyond the range of hope that future researches may yet recover at least some part of the treasure. ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... he was equal to the performance of all his duties. He knew that he could rely upon himself and upon his crew, and these thoughts transfigured him. The youth of yesterday was a man to-day. The spirit of a hero burned in his eyes. He rose superior to the calamity which had befallen them. His ability impressed all who approached him. Even the doctor and Mr. Bredejord submitted to ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... hear the pealing ring of the same great English trumpet that was yet to sound over the battle of the Baltic, and again in our later day over a sea-fight of Shakespeare's own, more splendid and heart-cheering in its calamity than that other and all others in their triumph; a war-song and a sea-song divine and deep as death or as the sea, making thrice more glorious at once the glorious three names of England, of Grenville, and of Tennyson for ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... not to tell the sad news to Lady Fernborough. The telegraph outstrips the ocean liner, and a newspaper, with tidings of the great calamity, was in Aunt Ella's hands long before the arrival of the broken-hearted wife and disconsolate sister. The invitations were countermanded, and days of sorrow followed instead of ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... conversations, they never allude to the subject of slavery; for they do so frequently, or at least every Fourth of July. But my complaint is that they content themselves with representing slavery as an evil—a misfortune—a calamity which has been entailed upon us by former generations,—and not as an individual CRIME, embracing in its folds, robbery, cruelty, oppression, and piracy. They do not identify the criminal; they make no direct, pungent, earnest appeal to the consciences ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... A serious calamity threatens the Silver Fox Patrol when on one of their vacation trips to the wonderland of the great Northwest. How apparent disaster is bravely met and overcome by Thad and his friends, forms the main theme of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... invention of casting could hardly have been prevented from taking the final step, save by the sudden intervention of some social cataclysm like the European invasion of Eastern America. And how awful a calamity that was for the Indians themselves we at this day ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... came in just in time to seize M. Costeclar by his coat-collar, and to throw him at my feet, livid with fear, and begging for mercy. He came, notwithstanding the terrible calamity that has befallen us. Notwithstanding ruin, and notwithstanding shame, he came to offer me his name, and to tell me, that, in the course of the day, he would send a friend of his family to apprise you ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... and he was sent home under arrest. But eventually, owing to the intervention of the bereaved Empress, and many sympathetic friends, the unfortunate officer was released. The news of the calamity was received with profound grief throughout the country. Some mourned the death of a Prince, some sighed over the extinction of Napoleonic hopes, officers regretted the loss of a promising comrade, and mothers spent tears of sympathy for the great lady, Empress and mother, who had thus ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... is the whole universe a cruel lie; its wonderful arrangement from star to flower, its careful adaptation of means to ends, the provision for the satisfaction of every sense, an arrant fraud, a colossal falsehood. If there be no God, then is creation a calamity; if there be a God and no immortality for man, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the category of letters that no one can possibly receive with pleasure might be put the "letter of calamity," the letter of gloomy apprehension, the letter filled with petty annoyances. Less disturbing to receive but far from enjoyable are such letters as "the blank," the "meandering," the "letter of the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Ocean's stream, And sable-vestured Night came floating up O'er the wide firmament, and brought her boon Of sleep to sorrowing mortals. On the sands There slept they, all the Achaean host, with heads Bowed 'neath the burden of calamity. But upon Thetis sleep laid not his hand: Still with the deathless Nereids by the sea She sate; on either side the Muses spake One after other comfortable words To make that sorrowing ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... savage, pointing at the ravine, "whoever treads along that track and is not a Raot will be afflicted by a great calamity." ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor |
