"Destructive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and ribbons we read their indwelling despair. It was so, indeed, with Byron himself; his really bitter moments were his frivolous moments. He went on year after year calling down fire upon mankind, summoning the deluge and the destructive sea and all the ultimate energies of nature to sweep away the cities of the spawn of man. But through all this his sub-conscious mind was not that of a despairer; on the contrary, there is something ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... anterior to it, and long before the appearance of batrachian reptiles and other low air-breathing forms of life. In fact, there could have been no life-breathing atmosphere until the earlier land vegetation had whipped out its more destructive elements, and paved the way, in necessary conditions, for the appearance of air-breathing animals. Hence the command for the earth to bring forth both marine and land vegetation—the vegetation ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... especially from little Fay, who, hitherto, had obeyed nobody. Tony, less wilful and not so prone to be destructive, was secretly still unwon, though outwardly quite friendly. He waited and watched and weighed Jan in the balance of his small judgment. Tony was never in any hurry to ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... 1846 was gloriously marked by the repeal of the Corn Laws; a measure of justice and mercy, the withholding of which from the people had for several years produced much distress and commotion. Some destructive work had been done by mobs on the houses of the supporters of the old laws; they had even stoned the town residence of the Duke of Wellington, Apsley House. The stern old fighter would have been glad at the moment to have swept ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... to thunder, though the height of that terrible battle, which up to this time[19] divides with Malvern Hill and Shiloh the fearful honor of being the most destructive of any fought on the American continent, had not yet been reached. One hundred and twenty thousand of the Union troops held the eastern bank of Antietam Creek, ready to cross and complete the expulsion ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... opportunities of witnessing the ravages and unmanageable character of this destructive disease, I have long and deeply felt the want of some written account, both of the malady, and of a proper mode of treatment. Some research and observation, made in consequence of this feeling, have terminated in the acquisition of more fixed ideas, and of a ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... from other governments, it is hoped that some plan may soon be devised to effect the object in a manner likely to give general satisfaction. The Government of the United States will not fail, by the exercise of all proper friendly offices, to do all in its power to put an end to the destructive war which has raged between the different parts of the island and to secure to them both the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... told! They excited strife with their din of arms. They plunged headlong in their swift impatience. They aroused great terror at their accoutrement, at their armour, at their cunning, at their power, at their hugeness, at their destructive, terrible, hostile vengeance on the four grand, proud provinces of Erin. Amazing to me was their appearance because of the unwontedness of their trappings both in form and in garb. Three wonderful flights of birds with variety of appearance ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... open doors of saloons, are caught glimpses of a life which we all should unite in condemning and loathing; and what I have seen has always led me to connect cards with just that kind of life. Moreover, gambling—that fearful and destructive vice—is almost ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... suppose that the new form of art was founded chiefly on the memory of the art of the past; although, strange to say, the civil war was much less destructive of art than of other things, and though what of art existed under the old forms, revived in a wonderful way during the latter part of the struggle, especially as regards music and poetry. The art or work-pleasure, ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... this verse; but with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive of its character. ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... militia in fairly good position. In each case the result was the same. After some preliminary skirmishing, manoeuvring, and volley firing, the British charged with the bayonet. The rawest regiments among the American militia then broke at once; the others kept pretty steady, pouring in quite a destructive fire, until the regulars had come up close to them, when they also fled. The British regulars were too heavily loaded to pursue, and, owing to their mode of attack, and the rapidity with which their opponents ran away, the loss of the latter was ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... sun-parched areas and preventing the excessive flooding of those districts which are now rendered impassable swamps when the rivers overflow. A network of canals was constructed throughout the country, which restricted the destructive tendencies of the Tigris and Euphrates and developed to a high degree their potentialities as fertilizing agencies. The greatest of these canals appear to have been anciently river beds. One, which is called Shatt en Nil to the north, and Shatt el Kar to the south, curved ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Utopian condition of the world as it would be after his first suggestion had been carried into effect, and all arms, ammunition, ships of war, and all destructive agencies had been destroyed. ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... meaning of the story seems to be, that it is fatal to attempt to separate the sensuous and emotional life from the life of reason. Philosophy alone is cold and destructive, but the pleasures of the senses alone are unreal and unsatisfying. The man who attempts such a divorce between the two parts of his nature will fail miserably as did Lycius, who, unable permanently to exclude reason, was compelled ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Plutonic rocks. If man has existed on the earth as long as science asserts, he must have passed through many of the great catastrophes which are written upon the face of the planet; and it is very natural that in myths and legends he should preserve some recollection of events so appalling and destructive. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... obtain them. Thus the general state of tribal equilibrium which had before prevailed was rudely disturbed. Tribal warfare, which hitherto had been attended with inconsiderable loss of life and slight territorial changes, was now made terribly destructive, and the territorial possessions of whole groups of tribes were augmented at the expense of those less fortunate. The horse made wanderers of many tribes which there is sufficient evidence to show were formerly nearly sedentary. Firearms ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... last slipped through it, Rocky Bend was still a bad little town and proud of its badness. To the northeast lay the big timber tracts into which the Western Lumber Company was tearing its destructive way; only nine miles due west were the Rock Creek mines, running full blast; on the other sides it was surrounded by cattle ranges where a lusty brood of young untamed devils were constrained to give themselves soberly to their work during the long, dusty days. ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... and, like all young things, he was foolish. He liked to roll about, and was often destructive—he would gnaw the nets and skins, break the traps, and lick up the gunpowder. Then Demid punished him, whereupon Makar would turn on his heel, make foolish grimaces, and ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... Marriage," and argues accurately that, once the adventurous descends to the habitual, it takes on an offensive and degrading character. The intimate approach, to give genuine joy, must be a concession, a feat of persuasion, a victory; once it loses that character it loses everything. Such a destructive conversion is effected by the average monogamous marriage. It breaks down all mystery and reserve, for how can mystery and reserve survive the use of the same hot water bag and a joint concern ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... meaner; it whets the sword for destruction; it urges the laudable acts of humanity; it is the universal hinge on which we move; it glides the gentle stream of usefulness, it overflows the mounds of reason, and swells into a destructive flood; like the sun, in his milder rays, it animates and draws us towards perfection; but, like him, in his fiercer beams, it ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... I knew well, was sent to a hospital for the insane in a generally bad state of mind, with destructive propensities marked. With no desire for food, and certainly with no mind to realize the need to eat without hunger, she naturally refused to eat. But for a time her meals were forced down her throat, a proceeding that taxed the strength of ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... corvus frugilegus, is a bird of considerable intelligence, and is, besides, extremely useful in destroying large quantities of worms and larvA| of destructive insects. It will, it is true, if not watched, pick out, after they are dibbled, both pease and beans from the holes with a precision truly astonishing: a very moderate degree of care is, however, sufficient ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... misfortunes we experienced in common, as shattered rigging, leaky ships, and the fatigues and despondency necessarily attendant on these disasters, there was superadded on board our squadron the ravages of a most destructive and incurable disease; and in the Spanish squadron the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... the reproductive system is fairly made up during the educational period. Then force is withdrawn from the brain and nerves and ganglia. These are dwarfed or checked or arrested in their development. In the process of waste and repair, of destructive and constructive metamorphosis, by which brains as well as bones are built up and consolidated, education often leaves insufficient margin for growth. Income derived from air, food, and sleep, which should largely, may only moderately exceed expenditure upon study and work, and ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... During its sojourn there it frequents chiefly open prairies, or wheat fields, where it nibbles the young and tender blades, and cornfields, where it feeds upon the scattered grains. In California, Ridgway says, it is so numerous in winter as to be very destructive of the growing wheat crop, and it is said that in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, farmers often find it necessary to employ men by the month to hunt and drive them from the fields. This is most successfully accomplished by means ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... front of the triggers. It was clear that this had been fired at close range and that he had received the whole charge in the face, blowing his head almost to pieces. The triggers had been wired together, so as to make the simultaneous discharge more destructive. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of National Guards, very brave men but lacking in military tenacity, were forced to fall back, after some hesitation, leaving fifteen corpses on the pavement. This momentary hesitation gave the insurgents time to re-load their weapons, and a second and very destructive discharge struck the company before it could regain the corner of the street, its shelter. A moment more, and it was caught between two fires, and it received the volley from the battery piece which, not having received the order, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... very improper, doubtless, in Brown to come to life just at this moment. One lover too many is as destructive to the happiness of a conscientious girl as one too few. If Emilia had been trained in society, her joy at having two lovers would have had no alloy save her grief that there were not four of them. But it was one of the misfortunes of her solitary ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... to Philidor. It would have benefited us both greatly more, if Philidor had not proved a scoundrel.' 'The complaisant Italian,' says the Gent Mag. (xlix. 361), 'in compliment to our island chooses "to drive destructive war and pestilence" ad Mauros, Seras et Indos, instead of ad Persas atque Britannos.' Mr. Tasker, the clergyman, went a step further. 'I,' he says in his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Boston with a sad feeling at my heart that a quarrel was imminent between England and the States, and that any such quarrel must be destructive to the cause of the North. I had never believed that the States of New England and the Gulf States would again become parts of one nation, but I had thought that the terms of separation would be dictated by the North, and not by the South. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... to prove victorious over every adversary." The fact was that Godwin watched the dangers of his friends "almost with envy" (letter to Gerrald). But he held that a man who deliberately provokes martyrdom acts immorally, since he confuses the progress of reason by exciting destructive passions, and drives his adversaries into ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... the history of Rome this fire was far the most violent and destructive. Breaking out in a number of shops stored with combustible goods, and driven by the winds, it raged with the utmost fury, neither the thick walls of the houses nor the enclosures of the temples sufficing to stay its frightful progress. The form of the streets, long, narrow, and ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... remember, human from the beginning, yet retracing its ancestry in those early days—was driven by the incoming life into various lines of activity, harmless to the brute, but that would have been destructive to the upward-climbing human being. Hence the need for a swift intervention on the part of the Guardians of all humanities; and our planetary Logos called to His help humanity from a chain older than His own, ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... that night, and the next morning, as they looked out of the window and saw how the storm had prevailed in the vineyards and on the fields, they felt that the storm in their own hearts had been far more destructive. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... election give me and my friends quiet hell. Nothing public, you know—just unfortunate assassinations that he will regret exceedingly, me bye. But I have never yit been assassinated, and, on principle, I object to being trated so. It's very destructive to ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... he soon fell into bad company, who in as short a time gave him a perfect relish for the scandalous and expensive amusement of gaming and tippling. His finances, though sufficiently plentiful for a youth of his age, were by these destructive means so much encumbered with little debts, that to maintain a worthless credit among his worthless companions, he formed the wicked resolution of taking money from his father and mother without their ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... at the right time, and in the right manner. Henry Eldridge was thoughtful, modest, and earnest-minded. His attachment to the cause of temperance was not a mere boyish enthusiasm, but the result of a conviction that intemperance was a vice destructive, to both soul and body, and one that lay like a curse and a plague-spot on society, He could understand how, if the boys rejected, entirely, the cup of confusion, the next, generation of men would be sober; and this had led him to join the Cadets, and do all in his power to get other lads ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... squadron or an army yields, And festering carnage loads the waves or fields; When few from famines or from plagues survive, Or earthquakes swallow half a realm alive;— While Nature sinks in Time's destructive storms, The wrecks of Death are but a change of forms; Emerging matter from the grave returns, Feels new desires, with new sensations burns; 400 With youth's first bloom a finer sense acquires, And Loves and Pleasures fan the rising fires.— ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... destructive missiles, those shells, bursting as they hit and blowing great holes in the junk's sides; and it soon became apparent that the vessel was sinking rapidly. I therefore ceased firing and went up on to the ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... all the harm possible, and inflict upon themselves, in his honor, all imaginable torments. In a word, everywhere the baneful ideas of Divinity, far from consoling men for misfortunes incident to their existence, have filled the heart with trouble, and given birth to follies destructive to them. How could the human mind, filled with frightful phantoms and guided by men interested in perpetuating its ignorance and its fear, make progress? Man was compelled to vegetate in his primitive ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... folly. 'Tis a mere whim—a youthful fancy, not worthy of respect,"—forgetting or shutting their eyes to the fact, that, light though the whim or fancy may be in their eyes, it has positive weight to those who cherish it, and the thwarting of it is as destructive of peace and joy to the young as the heavier disappointments of ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... carcasses of the horses for food, tore the cloth and the curtains from the carriages for coverlets, and went to sleep, instead of continuing their way and crossing quietly during the night that cruel Beresina, which an incredible fatality had already made so destructive to ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... movement. The constitutional societies felt bound to exclude "militants" from their membership and on several occasions issued strongly-worded protests against the use of violence as political propaganda. The fact that men under similar circumstances had been much more violent and destructive, especially in earlier days when they were less civilized, did not inspire us with the wish to imitate them. We considered that they had been wrong and that "direct action," as it is now the fashion to call coercion by means of physical force, had always reacted unfavorably ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... no crime that is meaner, there is no crime that is so destructive to society, there is no crime so prejudicial to the man who commits it as the crime of preventing a citizen from participating in the government. Here I intend to leave the question. I appeal to you, of whatever party, or color, or ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... depicted the wild vagaries into which many had wandered, and the unsatisfactory results to which all had attained. Not content with these instances of the insufficiency and mocking nature of human wisdom and learning, he adverted to the destructive tendency of the Helvetian and D'Holbach systems, and, after a brief discussion of their ruinous tenets, dilated, with some erudition upon the conflicting and dangerous theories propounded by Germany. Then came the contemplation of Christianity, from it's rise among the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the king of Navarre, who had aided the English in their raids, suddenly made peace with France. This displeased his English allies, who none the less, however, continued their destructive raids, small parties marching hither and thither, now victorious, now vanquished, an interminable series of minor encounters taking the place of large operations. Both armies were reduced to guerilla bands, who fought as they met, and lived ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... there is any thing much more destructive to human happiness than the blues. I wonder how they ever came by their name? It must have arisen from the weirdness of the tempest, from the changing hues of the snake's skin and the lizard's back, from the blue ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... was especially destructive on the right or upper end of the line where the river made a short bend. As Logan, with a valor equal to that of his illustrious namesake, swept forward, he and his men found themselves directly at the backs of the Indians hidden in this bend, who now turned and ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... physiology, or from want of ability to appreciate their importance, men of much good sense in every other respect not only subject themselves unwittingly to the active causes of disease, but give their sanction to laws and practices destructive equally to life and to morality, and which, if they saw them in their true light, they would shrink from countenancing in the ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Ascend to the summit. A strange view. Gratified at our discoveries. Return to Fort Mueller. Digging with a tomahawk. Storing water. Wallaby for supper. Another attack. Gibson's gardens. Opossums destructive. Birds. Thoughts. Physical peculiarities of ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... within the walls some excellent riflemen, chiefly Albanians. They placed stones, one over the other, on the walls, put their firearms through the interstices, and thus, completely sheltered, fired with destructive precision. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... a great deal of ink about the character of the present Prime Minister. Grant all that you write—I say, I fear that he will ruin Ireland, and pursue a line of policy destructive to the true interests of his country; and then you tell me that he is faithful to Mrs. Perceval, and kind to the Master Percevals. I should prefer that he whipped his boys and ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... Miss Phillips, "I really want my bonnet to go out with tomorrow. Your London smoke is dreadfully destructive. I had no idea that mine was so bad till I put it on this bright day, and really it looks too shabby to wear, though I had intended to make it last another month. At home it would have looked better after three ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... a frequently recurrent emblem of the Holy Spirit, both in the Old and New Testament. It is not the destructive, but the vitalising, glowing, transforming, energy of fire, which is expressed. The fervour of holy enthusiasm, the warmth of ardent love, the melting of hard hearts, the change of cold, damp material into its own ruddy likeness, are all set forth in this great symbol. John's water baptism ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... us to advance with incredible rapidity and certainty into the arcana of those departments which he was then obliged to explore with the most tedious research, the most plodding patience, and the most destructive intellectual tension, in order to accumulate a limited array of Facts, is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... vents which had previously been noticed on Krakatoa must at that moment have been blown into one, and the original crater of the old volcano—said to have been about six miles in diameter—must have resumed its destructive work. All the eye-witnesses who were near the spot at the time, and sufficiently calm to take note of the terrific events of that morning, are agreed as to the splendour of the electrical phenomena displayed during this paroxysmal outburst. One who, at the time, was forty miles distant ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... proceed in securing themselves, at every step of their progress, by galleries or covered ways, which, though extremely feeble, are sufficiently strong to keep off the attacks of every other kind of ant. It is curious enough, that, although the white ant be the most destructive of its species, it is said to be, individually, by far the weakest, and cannot move a step without the artificial protection of the galleries it constructs as it goes along; just as the besiegers of a fortification secure themselves ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... international dealings. If the war stops before Germany sees that those policies cannot prevail in twentieth-century Europe, the horrible wrongs and evils which we are now witnessing will recur; and all the nations will have to continue the destructive process of competitive armaments. If peace should be made now, before the Allies have arrived at attacking Germany on her own soil, there would result only a truce of moderate length, and then a renewal of the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... fled to the jail on the Common for protection. The mob determined to seize them, and tore down the fences about the jail. Then the Mayor gathered a body of citizens to oppose the mob. As night came on, the rioters, becoming more and more destructive, were fired upon and five were killed. After this they scampered away, the trouble was over, and that was the last of ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... of the woods and waters, even a Puritan could find occasional and proper diversion without entering into frivolous and sinful amusement. The wolf, most hated and most destructive of all the beasts of the woods, a "ravening runnagadore," was a proper prey. Wolves were caught in pits, in log pens, in traps; they were also hooked on mackerel hooks bound in an ugly bunch and dipped in tallow, to which they were toled ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... gradually reduced to ruin by the destruction of the forests. Cultivation is diminishing, vineyards are being washed away, the towns are threatened, the population is dwindling, and unless something is done the country will be reduced to a desert; until, when it has been released from the destructive presence of man, Nature reproduces a covering of vegetable soil, restores the vegetation, creates the forests anew, and once again fits these regions for ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... systematically pursued, a crowd of vague and subtle speculations; it was a mental gymnastic that gave suppleness to the wits, it is true, but only by corrupting and deteriorating the moral sense, a system that in the long run was merely destructive. Such, then, was the threefold poison that was destroying Athenian morality—the triobolus, the noisy assemblies in the Agora, the doctrines of the Sophists; the antidote was the recollection of former virtue and past prosperity, which the Poet systematically revives in contrast with the turpitudes ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... singularly regular and symmetrical form, and receive very little artificial treatment. Their extreme thinness makes it easy to trim off the projecting corners and angles, reducing them to such a form that they can be laid in close contact. Thus laid they furnish an admirable protection against the destructive action of the violent rains. The stones are usually trimmed to a width corresponding to the thickness of the walls. Of course where a projecting cornice is built, it can be made, to some extent, to conform to the width of available coping stones. These can usually ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... chimneys at the rear of your property, and within about fifty yards of the back windows of this house. During the recent high winds the cowl has kept up a continual shrieking, day and night, which has been extremely destructive to "Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." I trust that you will be so good as to have the cowl overhauled, and this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... that attack the nuts and cause them to be poorly filled at harvest are pecan scab and walnut bacteriosis. Pecan scab may also attack other species of hickory. It is the most destructive pecan disease, causing a high percentage of the nuts on highly susceptible varieties to drop prematurely and those that stick to the tree to be poorly filled at harvest. Walnut bacteriosis or blight is the most important walnut ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... the instrumentality of punishment in which we seek to turn the activity which has been employed in a wrong direction into its proper channel, to make the deed positive instead of negative, to substitute for the destructive deed one which shall be in harmony with the constructive forces of society. But education implies its real limits in its definition, which is to build up the individual into theoretical and practical Reason. When this work goes properly on, the authority of the educator, as authority, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... coal for illuminating purposes began in the latter part of the eighteenth century. From this beginning the manufacture of coal-gas has been developed to a great and complex industry. The method is essentially destructive distillation. The coal is placed in a retort and when it reaches a temperature of about 700 deg.F. through heating by an outside fire, the coal begins to fuse and hydrocarbon vapors begin to emanate. These are generally paraffins and olefins. As the temperature increases, ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... some thousands of our own people, who are in arms against us. Our women and children have been cooped up for almost two years in the Concentration Camps, where they die by thousands. Not only do they die, but they are exposed to destructive moral influences. The Kaffirs are armed against us, and only recently 56 burghers were murdered by Kaffirs. Truly, our prospects are not bright. In how far all this must weigh with the Delegates, I leave to you. As far as I am concerned, I must confess that all these things ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... (page 366) that "the most striking superabundance of pigeons, as well as of parrots, is confined to the Australo-Malayan sub-region in which...the forest-haunting and fruit-eating mammals, such as monkeys and squirrels, are totally absent." He points out also that monkeys are "exceedingly destructive to eggs and young birds."), which interested me, as everything that you write does. Who would ever have dreamed that monkeys influenced the distribution of pigeons and parrots! But I have had a still ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Insects, &c.—The most destructive are the red, and the large black ant, which attack, and frequently entirely destroy the roots before you can be aware of its approach; powdered turmeric should therefore be constantly kept strewed ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... the rebound from repression was tremendous, like a powerful spring that has been held down, or like an explosive which is the more destructive in proportion as it is more confined. People newly made free go to the opposite extreme. Emancipate a serf and he becomes insolent, he does not know how to use his freedom, and becomes violent. The great majority of the people are smarting from the old land ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... to revert to nothingness. On the contrary, its very nature demands that it remain constant until destroyed by its opposite or by some positive cause. It is impossible to conceive a quality that would of itself revert to nothingness without the intervention of a destructive cause. Billuart merely beats the air when he says: "Potest dici qualitas incompleta habens se per modum passionis transeuntis."(77) What would Aristotle have said if he had been told of a thing ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... the majority of the Commons choose to support their representatives in a course of conduct adverse to the opinion of the nation, the House of Commons will set the nation at defiance. They have done so once; may they never repeat that destructive career! Such are our two Houses of Parliament—the most illustrious assemblies since the Roman Senate and Grecian Areopagus; neither of them is the 'House of the People,' but both alike ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... "Such questions are not arguments, but fallacies unworthy of a liberal mind." Nevertheless, so long as men are attached to the leading strings of sentiment rather than to those of reason, such questions will possess tremendous destructive force, as Mr. Garrison, in his own case, presently perceived. He understood the importance of not arousing against him "denominational feelings or peculiarities," and so had steered the Liberator clear of the rocks of sectarianism. But when he took up in its columns the Sabbath question ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... thorax, just like the bat," he went on, shutting the box; "the bones and muscles are tremendously developed, the mouth is extraordinarily powerfully furnished. If it had the proportions of an elephant, it would be an all-destructive, invincible animal. It is interesting when two moles meet underground; they begin at once as though by agreement digging a little platform; they need the platform in order to have a battle more conveniently. When they have made ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... difficult, notwithstanding the naked loftiness of the pikes, and the snow-capped summits of the mounts, to escape from the depressing sensation, that the whole are in a rapid process of dissolution; and, were it not that the destructive agency must abate as the heights diminish, would, in time to come, be levelled with the plains. Nevertheless, I would relish to the utmost the demonstrations of every species of power at work ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... laughed a little. "You will see many a bandaged arm before the twenty-four hours are up; few of us finish without a scratch or strain or blister. This is a man's game, but it's not half so destructive as foot-ball. You wished me good luck for the Georgia race; will you repeat the honor before I go ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... splendid long distance practice for his gunners; and, when they got the range, not a shot missed the stranded Confederate vessel. From his pilot-house Worden could see the crew of the "Nashville" escaping in boats, leaping into the water over the sides,—doing anything to escape from that terribly destructive fire. All the time the great fifteen-inch shells were dropping into the vessel with fearful precision. By and by a heavy fog fell upon the scene; but the gunners on the "Montauk" knew where their enemy was, and kept up their steady fire, though they could see nothing. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... stage, and whilst they are naturally yet incapable of flight, their locomotive powers are very considerable, and they are very destructive, for their voracity is great. Comparatively speaking, the flying locusts do less damage to the growing crops than the hoppers, who devour everything ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... believe, with every Englishman who ever visited it. Gin and brandy have killed five-sixths of all the Europeans who have died in Batavia within the last twenty years; but with pleasure I can add, that this destructive habit has almost entirely disappeared: hence the diminished number of deaths, and the more robust and ruddy appearance of the European inhabitants. The surrounding country is both salubrious and beautiful, rising gradually as you proceed inland, till you reach Buytenzorg, forty miles S.S.E. ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... annihilating rays instead of with steel, that they would have about the same handicaps and advantages as tanks, except that since they would float lightly on short repeller rays, they could hardly resort to the destructive crushing tactics of the tanks ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... question. Avoiding the destructive paws, he leaped in and away, and then in, all the while employing the thing in his hand until Obe's life-stuff had run its course ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... of Ellieslaw had been remarkable for a career of dissipation, which, in advanced life, he had exchanged for the no less destructive career of dark and turbulent ambition. In both cases, he had gratified the predominant passion without respect to the diminution of his private fortune, although, where such inducements were wanting, he was deemed close, avaricious, and grasping. His affairs ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... harmless, and a great many of them are positively beautiful, if we will but take the trouble to look at them properly, and consider their wonderful forms and colors. To be sure, many insects to which we give the general name of bugs are quite destructive in our orchards and gardens, but, for all that, they are only eating their natural food, and although we may be very glad to get rid of our garden bugs as a body, we can have nothing to say against any particular bug. None of ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... recollection of that strong man's wild, bold words, his defiant kiss upon her lips. She had yielded them in the recklessness of that moment, in the force of his all-carrying demand, when she might have denied them, or sped away from him, as innocence is believed to know from instinct when to fly from a destructive lure. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... stand of the farmers and they point out that their political platform[1] is constructive, not destructive. The farmers are not trying to sidestep their fair share of the expenses in connection with government and public institutions; where they have torn down they ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... on the ground, and proposed charging the unbroken line of the British. The proposal was as promptly accepted as it had been made, and the troops were arrayed for the purpose. The eagerness of their leader prevented the preparations necessary to insure success, and the horse, receiving a destructive fire as they advanced, were thrown into additional confusion. Both Lawton and his more juvenile comrade fell at this discharge. Fortunately for the credit of the Virginians, Major Dunwoodie reentered the field at this critical instant; he ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... every possible difficulty would have been thrown in their way, because the worthy people, from the Governor downwards, flourished,—or festered,—by means of the slave-trade, and legitimate commerce is everywhere found to be destructive to the slave-trade. ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... consequences, but in scorn of them. Here we are told we have at least one moral end that can never be taken away from us. It will still survive to give life a meaning, a dignity, and a value, even should the pursuit of it prove destructive to all the others. The language used by the modern school upon this subject is very curious and instructive. I will take two typical instances. The common argument, says Dr. Tyndall, in favour of belief is the comfort ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... until we were in the latitude of the river La Plata. Here there are violent gales from the south-west, called Pomperos, which are very destructive to the shipping in the river, and are felt for many leagues at sea. They are usually preceded by lightning. The captain told the mates to keep a bright look-out, and if they saw lightning at the south-west, to take in sail at once. We got the first touch ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... efforts of some "protracted meeting" will compensate for their neglect in childhood. They overlook the command of God to teach them His words. The influence of this defect and delusion has been most destructive. Many Christian homes are now altogether destitute of religious appliances. If the angel that visited the homes of Israel were to visit the Christian homes of this age, would he not be tempted to say, as Abraham said to Abimelech, "Surely ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Duke of Suffolk vice-president, and above them both is Mistress Anne;"[170] this last addition to the council being one which boded little good to the interests of the See that had so long detained her in expectation. So confident were the destructive party of the temper of the approaching parliament, and of the irresistible pressure of the times, that the general burden of conversation of the dinner-tables in the great houses in London was an exulting expectation of a dissolution ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... whispers, which have been wafted from the other house, inform us, a motion has been made in terms which might imply the subordination of this assembly, an assertion without foundation either in reason or justice, and which I shall always oppose as destructive to our rights, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... pointing out that, whatever views one might hold as to his ultimate goal, the methods he was employing in trying to break up the existing schools and colleges and law-courts and to paralyse the machinery of administration was destructive rather than constructive, and that, confident as he might feel of substituting better things ultimately for those that he had destroyed, construction must always be a much slower process than destruction; and in the meantime ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... yellow blossoms, attenuated stalks lifted what looked like crumpled fragments of brown paper, which quivered in a breeze too light to move the surface of the stream. Here alone the fingers of the frost had left a blight, like that of flames, and had denied to their destructive work the glamour of a funeral pall, dealing death without ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... your enemies, whatever achievements your fierce soldiery shall have accomplished, under your command; either on ship-board or on horseback. We humble writers, O Agrippa, neither undertake these high subjects, nor the destructive wrath of inexorable Achilles, nor the voyages of the crafty Ulysses, nor the cruel house of Pelops: while diffidence, and the Muse who presides over the peaceful lyre, forbid me to diminish the praise of illustrious Caesar, and yours, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Preaching "with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven" is indescribably searching in its effects. But it is also edifying, strengthening, comforting to those who are wholly the Lord's. It cuts, but only to cure. It searches, but only to save. It is constructive, as well as destructive. It tears down sin and pride and unbelief, but it builds up faith and righteousness and holiness and all the graces of a Christian character. It warms the heart with love, strengthens faith, and confirms the will ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... are among the best friends the gardener has; for they live almost exclusively on the most destructive kinds of vermin. Unsightly, therefore, though they may be, they should on all accounts be encouraged; they should never be touched nor molested in any way; on the contrary, places of shelter should be made ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... choose a good climate, not subject to destructive storms, and a soil that is naturally strong. If possible, your farm should be at the foot of a mountain, looking to the South, in a healthy situation, where labour and cattle can be had, well watered, near a good sized town, and either on the sea or a navigable river, or else ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... of their ships differed but slightly from that of the Greek vessels; they had turrets on the decks of their larger men-of-war, and employed a variety of destructive engines; so that in battle the soldiers on board fought much as they did when standing on the walls of a fortress. Of one thing I am sure, that no correct drawings of ancient ships have come down to us, if any such were really made; those on medals, cameos, and such as are ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... that followed the fall of the old broker in the Stock Exchange the storm seemed to be gathering for a still more destructive sweep. A few friends took up the old man and bore him out. No sooner had they passed over the threshold than a roar like that of an angry sea burst forth. Bulls and bears seemed on the verge of personal violence. The ...
— Halsey & Co. - or, The Young Bankers and Speculators • H. K. Shackleford
... announce that, through the judicious and energetic action of the military commanders of the two nations on each side of the Rio Grande, under the instructions of their respective Governments, raids and depredations have greatly decreased, and in the localities where formerly most destructive have now almost wholly ceased. In view of this result, I entertain a confident expectation that the prevalence of quiet on the border will soon become so assured as to justify a modification of the present orders to our military commanders as to crossing the border, without encouraging such disturbances ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... as he is sometimes called, is a native of South America. He is beautifully spotted with rings containing smaller spots on a deeper ground tint. He is a ferocious and destructive beast, inhabits the forests, and seeks his prey by watching, or by openly seizing cattle or horses in the enclosures. His depredations among the herds of horses which graze on the prairies of Paraguay are vast and terrible. ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... crouched in gullies and ravines, and opened a deadly fire on the helpless soldiery, who, themselves completely visible, could see no enemy, and wasted volley after volley on the impassive trees. The most destructive fire came from a hill on the English right, where the Indians lay in multitudes, firing from their lurking-places on the living target below. But the invisible death was everywhere, in front, flank, and rear. The British ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such forms, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... bones, and brandished about the mangled limbs of warriors, the stock I have wrenched off shall crush the backs of the wicked, crush the hearths of our kindred, shed the blood of our countrymen, and be a destructive pest upon ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Their offspring will, by a parity of reasoning, tend to predominate over their contemporaries, and there being (suppose) no room for more than one species such as A, the weaker variety will eventually be destroyed by the new destructive influence which is thrown into the scale, and the stronger will take its place. Surrounding conditions remaining unchanged, the new variety (which we may call B)—supposed, for argument's sake, to be the best adapted for these ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... smaller citadel, and of 56 feet at the great stronghold of Agamemnon; their massive gateways, and the ingenious devices by which the assailant was obliged to subject himself in his approach to a destructive fire on his unshielded side—everything about them points to a land and a time in which life and property were continually exposed to the dangers of war, and the only security was to be found within the gates of an impregnable ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... the east, and, as soon as the Crows discovered how few composed the besieging force, they in turn became the assailants, and rushed out of their fort with their frightful war whoops, but they were met by such a destructive fire that they ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... knives, scythes, axes and hammers. On these were heaped arms, deliberately fashioned for the offence of mankind, swords, daggers, poignards, scimitars, and rapiers, while on the opposite side of the spacious place were stored the more refined and destructive instruments of European war, rifles, muskets, revolvers, bayonets, small field-pieces, machine-guns of various patterns, including four Maxims and their food, boxes of cartridges, kegs of powder, cakes of dynamite, ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... that she knew she should have the measles; in fact, she immediately fell sick of that disorder, (and died, I think I understood.) All her family took it, and it raged through the island, proving dreadfully destructive. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... be the wise man, and the single-hearted the politic man. Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. On the most profitable lie the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness proves to be the best tactics, for it invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing and makes their business a friendship. Trust men and they will be true to you; ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Church. Some are born Catholics or Protestants, and are so with vehemence; others are born in these religions, but are only lukewarm in their doctrinal observance; while others reason and jump the traces in either direction. The followers of the destructive theories of Bronssais could not see the errors of their ways, and neither could they be made to see the merits of a less interfering form of medical practice. Trousseau was himself at one time tainted with Bronssaisism, but, like Paul of Tarsus, he was made to see ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... appearance of the sunset sky, as if the heavens were bathed in blood; the arrival of hundreds of junks from seaward seeking shelter: all these signs summed up were considered satisfactory reasons for preparing for a typhoon—than which, I suppose, no wind is more violent and destructive. It is said that persons who have never witnessed the sublime and terrible spectacle can scarcely realize, even from the most graphic descriptions of eye witnesses, what a typhoon really means. A Chinaman ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... of this age is iconoclastic. It seeks to destroy sacred memorials, hallowed associations, holy shrines, everything that tells of the faith and the worship of a God-fearing past. The spirit of the age is irreverent, destructive, faithless. Against this and all despoiling forces we as patriots are called to arms. For what does America stand? What are the truths that have gone into her blood and made her strong and beautiful and dominant? The divineness of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... influenced by ideas, and instinctively distrustful of all that is logical, will take a leap in the dark and attempt to put Tolstoi's theory of life into practice. But one may at least be sure that his destructive criticism of the present social and political REGIME will become a powerful force in the work of disintegration and social reconstruction which is going on around us. Many earnest thinkers who, like Tolstoi, are struggling to find their way out ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... use. From this Circumstance alone the Bottom of all Boats sent into Countrys where these worms are ought to be painted with White Lead, and the Ships supply'd with a good stock in order to give them a New Coat whenever it's necessary. By this means they would be preserved free from these destructive Vermin. The Long boat's Bottom being so much destroy'd appear'd a little extraordinary, as the Dolphin's Launch was in the Water at this very place full as long, and no such thing happened to her, as the Officers that were ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... his understanding, nor determined, in accordance with principles, the limits of possible cognition, who, consequently, is ignorant of his own powers, and believes he will discover them by the attempts he makes in the field of cognition, these attacks of scepticism are not only dangerous, but destructive. For if there is one proposition in his chain of reasoning which be he cannot prove, or the fallacy in which he cannot evolve in accordance with a principle, suspicion falls on all his statements, however plausible they ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... sand that objects a few hundred feet distant can not be distinguished. These sand storms were and are potent factors in producing the picturesque features of the red cliffs forming the canyon walls; but they are constructive as well as destructive, and cavities and hollow places in exposed situations such as the canyon bottom are soon filled up. The stream itself is also a powerful agent of destruction and construction; during flood periods banks of sand and ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... air refrogne La met au dessus du vulgaire, La privation de tes bienfaits Seule fait naitre sa satyre; Charmante idole du Francois Chez lui reside ton empire: Tes detracteurs font les pedans, Les avares et les amans De cette gloire destructive Qui peuple l'infernale rive, Et remplit l'univers d'exces. L'ambitieux dans son delire N'eprouve que de noirs acces, Le genre-humain seroit en paix, Si les conquerans savoient rire. Contre ce principe evident C'est ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... seen, at any time, in or about the rifle-pits. General Duffield, on the other hand, reports that they numbered five hundred, and that their artillery shelled the railroad track and the woods where his troops were until 3 P.M.—about five hours. That their fire was not very destructive sufficiently appears from the fact that, in half a day of more or less continuous skirmishing, General Duffield lost only two men killed ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... infrequent but seldom very destructive earthquakes; the occasional cloud-bursts and tornadoes, sudden and violent as a gunpowder-explosion; and, finally, the astounding contrast between the fertile regions and the desert. There are places where you can stand with ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... machinations of tyranny stares you in the face. Every friend to his country, to himself, and posterity is now called upon to meet at Faneuil Hall at nine o'clock this day, at which time the bells will ring, to make a united resistance to this last, worst, and most destructive measure of administration! ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... formed a regular even column—a dark solid living mass, following in a straight undeviating flight the guidance of its leader. The sight was so exciting that Mr. Lee and Uncle John ran for their rifles as Tom had done, and opened a destructive fire as it ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... was surprised at the manner in which the Black Prince held aloof after the Speedy had bore up and was running down in the track of her enemies, sheering first upon one quarter of le Cerf, and then on the other, pouring in a close and evidently a destructive fire. At length Sir Hotham Ward bore up, and went off before the wind also, moving three feet to the Speedy's two, in consequence of being able to carry all three of her top-sails. It would seem that Monsieur Menneval was not satisfied ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... strut! A fighter he of the choicest brand, one not to stop at trifles; there was martial ire in his flaming glance; defiance breathed from his nostrils; triumph sat on his lips; he swung his arms like destructive flails; and as he entered a tavern one could only fancy him calling in a voice of Stentor for a jug of rum and blood plentifully besprinkled with gunpowder and cayenne pepper to assuage the thirst ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... caused sad damage to the cocoanut groves and plantations in our little settlement, and we had no doubt that it, in addition to the eruption of the volcano, had produced still more destructive effects throughout the island, but I own that my thoughts were far more occupied with my anxiety about my father. In vain we watched for the return of his canoe. No sail appeared in the blue ocean in ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston
... bad lot, the rats—a bad, destructive lot," said the old man solemnly. "I wonder why such vermin was made. You'd never believe the number of fish and young wild-ducks, and game of different sorts, which are eaten up every season ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... shipwrights were employed in putting up the frame of a long-boat purchased of the master of the Britannia, and repairing the hoy, which had been lying for some months useless for want of repairs, having been much injured by the destructive worm that was found in the waters ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... yielding threads, and, there being nothing else that I could reach, to extricate myself was impossible. I was utterly powerless; and, besides, the yarn and cords hurt me very much. For all that, the destructive weaver seized a loom-spoke, and began a-beating me most unmercifully, while, entangled as I was, I could do nothing but shout aloud for mercy, or assistance, whichever chanced to be within hearing. The latter ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... the African wilderness, and would need too much space to be recorded in detail. The natives whom they encountered from time to time during their progress were by no means uniformly friendly, but tact and firmness, coupled with an occasional demonstration of the terribly destructive qualities of their firearms, and a judicious distribution of presents among the chiefs, secured them from actual molestation, though there were times when it seemed to be, figuratively speaking, a toss-up, whether they would or would not have to choose between ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... which in English signifies 'black haunch.' It is a very infectious disease, and, if not taken in time, would carry off most of the cattle in the country." The method taken by the Highlanders to prevent its destructive ravages is thus: "All fires are extinguished between the two nearest rivers, and all the people within that boundary convene in a convenient place, where they erect a machine, as above described; and, after they have commenced, they continue night and day until ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... of chickens, the florist was puzzled to determine the cause of their sickness and death. After a careful study of the symptoms he found that the source of the trouble arose from the fumes of the tobacco stems burned in the greenhouse to destroy green flies and destructive plant parasites. Though the chickens had always been removed from the greenhouse during the tobacco fumigation and were not returned while any trace of smoke was apparent to the human senses, it was evident that the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the above document in the light of a deadly and destructive missile, thrown by an unperceived enemy into a peaceful citadel; attracting no particular notice from the innocent unsuspecting inhabitants—among whom, nevertheless, it presently explodes, and all is ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... like this," she said at last, "human nature is full of mischief. It loves to start trouble and fan a fire into a destructive mood; and there's only one way to stop it—plough a fire-guard. I wish there had been some one here to plough a fire-guard when the fires of gossip began to run here ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... term—social-political-conservatism; but his conservatism is, we conceive, of a thoroughly philosophical kind. He sees in European society incarnate history, and any attempt to disengage it from its historical elements must, he believes, be simply destructive of social vitality. {164} What has grown up historically can only die out historically, by the gradual operation of necessary laws. The external conditions which society has inherited from the past are but the manifestation of inherited ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... that Darwin's scientific labours must have actually proved destructive to his artistic and literary tastes, and have even gone so far as to assert—in spite of numerous examples to the contrary—that there is a natural antithesis between the mental conditions that respectively favour scientific and ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... bears his name with commendable fortitude, says he has given much thought to the task of bringing the forces of war to such perfection that war will be no more. Commonly the man who talks of war becoming so destructive as to be impossible is only a harmless lunatic, but this fellow utters his cant to conceal his cupidity. If he thought there was any danger of the nations beating their swords into plowshares we should see him "take the stump" against ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... in aristocratic circles. He was a clever lad, without any principle; he would lie unblushingly, and steal deliberately, if he thought he could do so with impunity. He was cautious, acquisitive, imaginative, self-conceited, and destructive. He had strong perceptive faculties, and much invention and versatility, but his "moral sense" was almost entirely wanting. He found that his fellow clerks were not of that "gentlemanly" stamp which his mother thought so admirable, and therefore he despised them. He ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... management, this result might have happened; for there is no sort of doubt that depreciation in southern money was, in some regards, reason for appreciation in northern. But while the policy of the southern Treasury was weak, vacillating and destructive, that of the northern was strong, bold and cautious. While Mr. Memminger—instead of utilizing those products which had heretofore been the life-blood of northern finance—allowed the precious moments to pass; and flooded the country with paper, with only future, instead ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... axioms of the supremacy of reason, and the invariability of the laws of nature; and its instrument was a new rigorous analytical method, which was applicable to history as well as to physical knowledge. The axioms had destructive corollaries. The immutability of the processes of nature collided with the theory of an active Providence. The supremacy of reason shook the thrones from which authority and tradition had tyrannised over the brains of men. Cartesianism was equivalent to ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Collier's 'Dissuasive from the Play-House', with the result that, on the day following the Fast Day, three of the pamphlets attacking the stage and referring to the performances of plays representing tempests soon after the destructive storm of November 26-27, 1703, were brought simultaneously to the ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... think we may reasonably remark, in conclusion, that all obstinate adherence to rubbish which the time has long outlived, is certain to have in the soul of it more or less that is pernicious and destructive; and that will some day set fire to something or other; which, if given boldly to the winds would have been harmless; but which, obstinately retained, is ruinous. I believe myself that when Administrative Reform goes up it will be idle to ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... each of these elements may itself be an organism in certain cases, and that in subordinating the existence of this small organism to the life of the great one we accept the principle of an external finality. The idea of a finality that is always internal is therefore a self-destructive notion. An organism is composed of tissues, each of which lives for itself. The cells of which the tissues are made have also a certain independence. Strictly speaking, if the subordination of all the elements of the individual to the individual ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... boatswain was left in command, with about twenty men under him, and these now began to see that they were in a trap, being too few to fight the ship to any purpose, while any attempt to land would expose them to a destructive fire either from the fleet or from Mr. Clive's troops, which would come along the sand spit ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... out, and burned with such amazing ardour that it levelled all distinctions. To increase the confusion, Archbishop Laud insisted on conformity, and persecuted all who refused obedience to his mandates with the utmost rigour. But persecution, for the most part, proves destructive to the cause it is intended to promote. The miseries the Puritans endured, and their firmness and perseverance in the midst of sufferings, contributed to give them that merit and importance in the eyes of the nation, which otherwise perhaps ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... to any real Democracy in a densely-peopled, economically-complicated modern State, is that the Government should not be one. The very concentration of authority which is essential in war is, in peace, fatally destructive not of freedom alone, but also of that maximum individual development which is the very end and purpose for which society exists."—Sidney Webb, Towards Social ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... harm those who believe in Christ, because He has overcome sin by His death. Armed with this conviction, we are enlightened and may pass judgment upon the papists, monks, nuns, priests, Mohammedans, Anabaptists, and all who trust in their own merits, as wicked and destructive sects that rob God and Christ of the honor that ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... canals, and other public works, bear the marks of superior intelligence acting for the general good. His countrymen were the first to press steam into the active service of mankind. By the genius of Watt and his successors, a power, before destructive and uncontrollable, has been rendered the mighty agent of man's will, the supplier of his wants, and the minister of his convenience. Through their inventions, steam has become, as it were, the breath, the life, of a noble animal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the Queen, had, by saving her life, made England her long debtor; but Leicester had judged rightly in believing that the Queen might find the debt irksome; that her gratitude would be corroded by other destructive emotions. It was true that Angele had saved her life, but Michel had charmed her eye. He had proved himself a more gallant fighter than any in her kingdom; and had done it, as he had said, in her honour. So, as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had come to destroy their teaching and to abandon all their splendid history, though Jesus repeatedly told them that his purpose was not destructive; that he wanted to take all that great past and fill it full of the meaning it was meant to bear; to fulfill, as this famous verse says, their law and prophets. A great many people still think that Jesus comes to destroy. The religious life appears to them a life of giving ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... guess," the oldster with the silver bar and the keystone-shaped red patch on his left shoulder replied. "It is a shocking habit—destructive to the logical faculties. What seems strange to you is only so because you do not follow my ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... but you weren't constructive. You were—well, facts are facts—you were destructive. You were a bonanza farmer. What did you do? You took forty thousand acres of the finest Sacramento Valley soil and you grew wheat on it year after year. You never dreamed of rotation. You burned your straw. You exhausted your humus. You plowed four inches and put a plow-sole ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the Company's forces were rushed to the scene. Before their very eyes the roaring waters, as if mad with destructive power, wrenched and tore at the Company's property, twisting, ripping, smashing, until not a trestle, plank or stick was left in place and the terrific current, rushing with ever increasing volume and power through the opening, plowed into the soft, alluvial soil of the embankment, ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... sky, monstrous masses of frowning blue, with icy gaps of cold light, was like the great confusions of the war. All our youth has had to go into that terrible and destructive chaos—because of the kings and churches and nationalities sturdier-souled ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... condemn. They may have some oddities of behavior, and some peculiarities of temper. They may be subject to accidental ill humor, or to whimsical complaints. Blemishes of this kind often shade the brightest character; but they are never destructive of mutual felicity, unless when they are made so by an improper resentment, or by an ill-judged opposition. When cooled, and in his usual temper, the man of understanding, if he has been wrong, will suggest to himself all that could be urged against him. ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Ocean, as well as the Mediterranean Sea and the North Sea. They have got the science of building U-boats down exceedingly fine, and they evidently know exactly how to handle such craft. And not only that, but they have invented some exceedingly destructive torpedoes, and ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... than Jonah!" Now one is amused with a nonsense letter to one of his children, and again with an account of a pet. "I wish you would write seriously to M——. She is not behaving well to Oliver. I have seen handsomer kittens, but few more lively, and energetically destructive. Just now he scratched away at something M—— says cost 13s. 6d. a yard and reduced more or less of it to combings. M—— therefore excludes him from the dining-room and all those opportunities of higher education which he would have in MY ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... with satisfaction, for she was aware of the destructive propensities of children, and preferred that the family ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... a taste for handsome furs, no boy who has read of lion and tiger hunts and has longed to emulate the doughty deeds of the hunter, can fail to be interested in an assemblage which furnishes animals at once so useful, so beautiful and so destructive. It must not be supposed from the name of this group that all its members are exclusively flesh-eaters, and indeed it will be hardly necessary to warn the reader against falling into this mistake, as there are few people who have ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... reflects but its devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-formed thoughts; in short, that, it has been but the dreams of such a brain put into action and invested with a semi-substance. That this brain is of immense power, that it can set matter into movement, that it is malignant and destructive, I believe; some material force must have killed my dog; the same force might, for aught I know, have sufficed to kill myself, had I been as subjugated by terror as the dog—had my intellect or my spirit given me no countervailing resistance ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... aristocratic theory of existence. Leisure for the grand duties which devolve on the lords of mankind. It doesn't seem to strike Xenophon that this rigid system of self-absorption in the higher selfhood of the social system might be destructive of individual life. Of course he would say, "No, it enlarges the ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... a great quantity of azote or nitrogen, one of the ultimate elements of animal matter, and strongly characterized in the destructive distillation of horn, hoofs, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... other account? Mr. Gilmore? Indeed, indeed, I am not thinking of him. He is out of my mind altogether. I say it because I know it is impossible that you and your cousin should be married, and because such an engagement is destructive to both ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... scores are forgiven and forgotten, but the Zeppelin raids on England will survive, if only as a curious failure. Their failure was both material and moral. Anti-aircraft guns and our intrepid airmen brought one after another of these destructive monsters blazing to the ground, and their work of "frightfulness" was taken up by the aeroplane; while more lamentable still was the failure of the Zeppelin as an instrument of terror to the civil population. In the long list of German miscalculations must be included ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... submitted to the decision of this foreign usurper, and who were thereby reduced to an absolute dependence upon him, they could only expect by resistance to entail on themselves and their posterity a more grievous and more destructive servitude. Yet even in this desperate state of their affairs the Scottish barons, as we learn from Walsingham,[*] one of the best historians of that period, had the courage to reply that, till they had a king, they could take no resolution on so momentous a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... in the Kingdom, 450,000 in London alone. Since 1916 the number must have greatly increased. Many diseases are more immediately fatal to mankind than are these diseases, but none are so disastrous in their effects. To take but two examples of their destructive incidence; it is known that to them more than half of both the blindness and the lunacy in this country is directly due. But I need not trouble you with facts and figures that to-day are ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley |
