"Devastation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 1st March, 1779, says—"An opinion prevails here that government (the British) will adopt the mode of devastation. If that should really take place, adieu to all the hopes of the friends of government ever again living in America. Be assured that, should government be restored by such means, her friends would find it impossible ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Denonville remained in daily hopes of receiving a deputation of ten or twelve of the Indians to treat for peace, he was astounded by the sudden descent of 1200 warriors upon the island of Montreal.[405] Terrible indeed was the devastation they caused; blood and ashes marked their path to within three leagues of the territory, where they blockaded two forts, after having burned the neighboring houses. A small force of 100 soldiers and 50 Indians, imprudently sent against these fierce marauders, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... they reached the wide waste that ruin and devastation left within the gates, and, marshalled in long lines on either side, extending far down the vistaed streets, and leaving a broad space in the centre, awaited the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... away from them now, and they were able, above the distant roar, to hear ordinary sounds, which had not been the case when the attack started. The sun was well up now, and the day gave promise of being a fine one—hot, too. And on such a scene the sun shone! Death and devastation brought ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... secret some people could be in their designs. There was no saying what Lady Hunter might think of it; it really seemed as if Deerbrook, that had had such a good character hitherto, was going to be on a level with Popish places—a place of devastation and conflagration. Lady Hunter looked excessively grave when she heard this; and, if possible, graver than ever, when she was told that not only had a lantern been found in the churchyard with a bit of candle left in the socket, but that a piece of ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... exhausted of supplies than formerly, particularly in the latter phases of the struggle, except when one has the good-fortune to fall upon rich stretches of the country which by chance may have escaped the devastation ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... son. That year the presentiment of coming political convulsions found expression in reports of supernatural prodigies, while 'signs both on the earth and in the heavens portended war and bloodshed, the tramp of hostile armies, and the devastation of the peninsula.' ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... officer could not, or would not, converse with Colonel Langley, the latter had little difficulty in making a pretty good guess as to how matters stood, for on his way to the palace, short though it was, he saw devastation enough to convince him that the British had gained the day. Arrived at the palace, the party were locked ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... punishment on ourselves, hostile men, unfaithfulness on the part of those with whom we are closely connected, banishment, abuse, desertion, miserable children, public and domestic strife, wars, murder, and devastation. And since such things appear to befall good and bad without distinction, many wise men have inquired whether there were any Providence, or whether accident brings everything to pass independent of a divine purpose? But we ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... No chariot may descend 80 Or charioteer fight there; strait are the bounds, And incommodious, and his death were sure. If Jove, high-thundering Ruler of the skies, Will succor Ilium, and nought less intend Than utter devastation of the Greeks, 85 I am content; now perish all their host Inglorious, from their country far remote. But should they turn, and should ourselves be driven Back from the fleet impeded and perplex'd In this deep foss, I judge that not a man, 90 'Scaping the rallied Grecians, should survive ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... of eucalyptus, there groups of pine parasols above some ruined walls, were all the vegetation which met Alba Steno's eye. But the scene accorded so well with the moral devastation she bore within her that the barrenness around her in her last walk was ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... consciousness of assisting at a great development whose evidences to-day on every hand attest its magnitude. We have felt the fierce play of volcanic effort, lifting new continents of opportunity from the infertile sea, without any devastation of pre-existing fields of human toil and harvest. But it still remains to elucidate the actual thing done; to reduce it to concrete data, and in reducing, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... mortal sin, worthy of terrible and eternal punishment. I therefore esteemed it right to furnish Your Highness with this very brief summary of a very long history that could and ought to be composed, of the massacres and devastation that have taken place. 8. I supplicate Your Highness to receive and read it with the clemency, and royal benignity he usually shows to his creatures, and servants, who desire to serve solely for the public good and for the prosperity of the State. 9. Having seen and understood the monstrous ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the threatened devastation will not be consummated in my day. Although the adventurous spirit of times short while since passed gave rise to the undertaking, I have been encouraged to think, that the subsequent changes have so far damped the spirit of speculation, that the rest of the woodland ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Dantes, in his low, clear and musical tones, "at what moment the breath will come which may hurl on its errand of devastation the avalanche which the snows and suns of centuries, perchance, have been preparing for its awful mission? In the stillness of the night-time, beneath the clear blue sky of summer, or amid the ravings of the midnight ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... plunderings became especially severe and led to several other expeditions, but with little result. The problem became a serious one in 1861, when the Civil War necessitated the withdrawal of troops from the frontier, leaving the way open to the devastation of the country by the Navaho and Mescaleros, until General Carleton, who assumed command of the military forces in New Mexico in 1862, formulated a policy to thoroughly subdue the Navaho and to transfer them to the Bosque ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... For what can long depress the youthful and the loving when they dream that they are entirely beloved? Lands and thrones may perish, plague and devastation walk abroad with death, misery and beggary crawl naked to the doorway, and crime cower in the hedges; but to the egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities bulking in the crowded universe. To these immensities all other beings are audacious ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... heels of the other. The woods were more variegated, interspersed with shrubs. We no longer passed through forests of vast pines stretching along with savage magnificence. Forests that only exhibited the slow decay of time or the devastation produced by warring elements. No; oaks, ashes, beech, and all the light and graceful tenants of our woods here sported luxuriantly. I had not observed many oaks before, for the greater part of the oak-planks, I am informed, ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the crucial part of the whole party was the eats and he lingered near them like a faithful sentinel. The artistic quality of these saved them from devastation. Those pyramids of luscious beauty could not be denied by human hands without showing the indubitable signs of vandalism. Their very splendor ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... were committed in the name of Christ. What a strange delusion! To think of honoring the memory of the meek and lowly Jesus by utterly disregarding his peaceful precepts and his loving and gentle example, and going forth in thousands to the work of murder, rapine, and devastation, in order to get ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... village, so that, when the French came up, he had handed it over to them as a victor. A French general had pinned the cross on his breast on a day of wind and rain and bursting shell, on a vast plain of unutterable devastation. The upholding of it before the mob of Marseilles had been a profanation. In these moments of anguished amazement he had suffered as he had never suffered in his life before. And he had been helpless. Before he realized what was being done, Elodie, in her tempestuous swiftness, had done it. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... to the Lamberts and their trials, and turned their minds upon phagocytes and other ravening mites whose likes and dislikes, minute as they are, work more devastation than cannon. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... asunder, and men perish in great numbers, and the eagles of the air feast upon their still quivering bodies. The wolf Fenris will now break his bands, the Midgard serpent rise out of her bed in the sea, and Loki, released from his bonds, will join the enemies of the gods. Amidst the general devastation the sons of Muspelheim will rush forth under their leader Surtur, before and behind whom are flames and burning fire. Onward they ride over Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, which breaks under the horses' hoofs. But they, disregarding its fall, direct their course to the battlefield called ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... and—from the amount of dry rot in the wreck—a mortifying exercise. Every night saw a deeper inroad into the bones of the Flying Scud—more beams tapped and hewn in splinters, more planking peeled away and tossed aside—and every night saw us as far as ever from the end and object of our arduous devastation. In this perpetual disappointment, my courage did not fail me, but my spirits dwindled; and Nares himself grew silent and morose. At night, when supper was done, we passed an hour in the cabin, mostly without speech: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and scrutinized by the most learned—their nature has been studied; various experiments have been tried to prevent their depredations; but after all, the monster in gaudy hue marches onward, committing the greatest havoc and devastation, with but little molestation. I have lost my whole stock at least four times since 1808, as I supposed by the moth. I tried all the experiments recommended in this and other countries, that came to my knowledge; but after all, I ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
... are of sufficient urgency to render it necessary that the Commanding General of this Department should assume administrative powers of the State. Its disorganized condition, helplessness of civil authority, and the total insecurity of life and devastation of property by bands of murderers and marauders, who infest nearly every county in the State, and avail themselves of public misfortunes and the vicinity of a hostile force to gratify private and neighborhood vengeance, and who find an enemy wherever they find plunder, finally demand the severest ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... that of the Germans in the seventeenth century was thenceforth easily drawn away from home. One generation of continuous warfare throughout all Germany, followed by another generation of intermittent invasion from France, and closed by a crisis of rapine and devastation, made hundreds of thousands of the German people homeless, despairing, and eager for escape. It was this situation of the people, combined with the religious condition before described, that made Germany the best recruiting-ground for American colonists to be ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... Chaldean legend represents not a mere rain-storm, but a tremendous cataclysm. There was rain, it is true, but there was also thunder, lightning, earthquakes, wind, a water-spout, and a devastation of mountain and land by the war of the elements. All the dreadful forces of nature were fighting together over the doomed land: "the archangel of the abyss brought destruction," "the water rose to the sky," "the brother no longer saw ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... him would have precipitated a domestic row, which would have caused immense sacrifice of life, and the destruction of San Francisco. It would have extended into the interior, and raged there in bloodshed and devastation. The peaceful way out of the difficulty was thought the better course, if it could be accomplished. The occasion was extraordinary, and never contemplated—the exigency beyond immediate solution. As James Dows, one of the coolest in judgment and wisest ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... the child upon her bosom, nor does she heed nor resist Nannie as she takes it gently away and runs back to the region of the overflowed cellar. The morning has dawned in serenity and loveliness, but there are signs of a late devastation all about. Broken limbs of trees are strewn hither and thither, while now and then one wholly uprooted lies prostrate across the street. Busy men are working hurriedly to extricate a poor family whose house a land-slide ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... on the pleasure of the British officers, who deprived them of either or all on the most frivolous pretenses. Indians, slaves, and a desperate banditti of the most profligate characters were caressed and employed by the enemy to execute their infamous purposes. Devastation and ruin marked their progress and that of their adherents; nor were their violences restrained by the charms or influence of beauty and innocence; even the fair sex, whom it is the duty of all, and the pleasure and pride of the brave to protect, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... restored. We are now together as a band of brothers. The soldiers of the Confederacy, headed by the great chief we now mourn, have expressed their willingness to abide by the issue of the contest. What a spectacle to the world! After years of military devastation, with tens of thousands dead on her battle-fields, with the flower of her children slain, with her wealth destroyed, her commerce swept away, her agricultural and mechanical pursuits almost ruined, the South yielded. The ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... which they cannot account for as they have always acted as dutiful, Faithful and Loyal Subjects to their most Gracious Sovereign the said Queen of Hungary even during the many Revolutions that have happened in Prague within these few Years and notwithstanding the great Devastation and Excesses which Naturally occur'd therefrom they have continued and still do continue firm and unshaken in their Principles of Affection & Fidelity to her said Majesty and ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... the night. We never go to our fields, but we are seized with an involuntary fear, which lessens our strength, and weakens our labour. No other subject of discourse intervenes between the different accounts, which spread through the country, of successive acts of devastation; and these, told in chimney corners, swell themselves in our affrighted imaginations into the most terrific ideas. We never sit down, either to dinner, or supper, but the least noise spreads a general alarm, and prevents us from enjoying the comforts of our meals. The very ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... this spirited foreign policy took a very subordinate place, and Henry turned his attention to the cultivation of his own garden instead of seeking to annex his neighbour's. It is possible that he was (p. 150) better employed in wasting his people's blood and treasure in the futile devastation of France, than in placing his heel on the Church and sending Fisher and More to the scaffold; but his attempts to reduce Ireland to order, and to unite England and Scotland, violent though his methods may have been, were at least more sane than the quest for ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... nations out from the bondage of ages. Inspirited by the success attending the struggle in the British colonies, the French people, long crushed beneath a grinding despotism, resolved to burst their shackles and strike for Freedom. It was a noble resolution, but consummated, alas amid devastation and the wildest anarchy. The French Revolution filled the world with horror. It was the work of a blind giant, urged to fury by the remembrance of wrongs endured for generations. The Altar of Liberty was reared amid seas ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... of such trying scenes and devastation on the part of the French and savages, that superstition and fanaticism broke loose in Salem and produced a reign of terror far greater than that caused by the savages on the frontier. It was from such scenes to such scenes ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... ordinary material was brick, of much better quality than had formerly been used. On the sites of the ancient parish churches had arisen a multitude of new domes, towers, and spires which bore the mark of the fertile genius of Wren. In every place save one the traces of the great devastation had been completely effaced. But the crowds of workmen, the scaffolds, and the masses of hewn stone were still to be seen where the noblest of Protestant temples was slowly rising on the ruins of the Old ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fortune; and secondly, because then, for the first time, opposition was offered to the power of the nobility; a contest which threw every thing, religious and civil, into confusion,[20] and was carried to such a height of madness, that nothing but war, and the devastation of Italy, could put an end to civil dissensions.[21] But before I fairly commence my narrative, I will take a review of a few preceding particulars, in order that the whole subject may be ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... royal authority. Thousands were ejected from their livings, and otherwise punished, for not conforming to the royal conscience. But persecution and penal laws fanned a fanatical spirit, which, in the reign of Charles, burst out into a destructive flame, and spread devastation and ruin through ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... of devastation and destruction the prince overran all the southern part of France. One of his attendants in this campaign, a knight who served in the prince's household, in a letter which he wrote back to England from Bordeaux, gave the ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... now to watch a slow, implacable, methodical devastation of their country, tract by tract. Day by day they fight, and one by one they fall. Comrades and friends drop at each other's sides; sons drop by fathers, and brothers by brothers. The smoke rises in the valley, and the home is blotted out. All that makes life worth living goes, ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... daylight, while gladly hailed by the occupants of the wrecked raft, also disclosed the extent of the devastation caused by the flood. As they had surmised, the Venture was stranded at the foot of the huge stone bagasse-burner. The mill near by was partly demolished. The great house, standing amid its clumps of shrubbery and stately trees, a quarter ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... France; and so early as the eventful year of 1333 an eruption of Etna took place. According to the Chinese annuals, about 4,000,000 of people perished by famine in the neighbourhood of Kiang in 1337; and deluges, swarms of locusts, and an earthquake which lasted six days, caused incredible devastation. In the same year, the first swarms of locusts appeared in Franconia, which were succeeded in the following year by myriads of these insects. In 1338 Kingsai was visited by an earthquake of ten days' duration; at the same time France suffered from a failure in the harvest; ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... great makers of conquests; but the modern Guerilla regiments of the hod, the trowel, and the brick-kiln, are the greatest conquerors of all; for they hold the longest the soil that they have once possessed. How mighty the devastation which follows in the wake of these tremendous aggressors, as they march through the kingdom of nature, triumphantly bricklaying beauty wherever they go! What dismantled castle, with the enemy's flag flying over its crumbling ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... wore the aspect of a ruder devastation; and though every thing seemed now quiet, the repose was like that of death, spread over features, which retain the impression ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... the magnificence of this residence, or the tremendous devastation the French have committed. The throne-room was lined with ebony, carved in a marvellous way. There were huge mirrors of all shapes and kinds, clocks, watches, musical boxes with puppets on them, magnificent china of every description, heaps and heaps of silks of all ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... to, first and foremost, that we may pay some tribute, if only in thought, to these and our other brave allies who have suffered loss incalculable, and in the second place to direct our attention to our own more fortunate position and to remind us that amid all the devastation, the War is being commemorated by works of beneficence and mercy, works intended to show our sympathy for suffering and our gratitude to the God who is supporting us through these ...
— No. 4, Intersession: A Sermon Preached by the Rev. B. N. Michelson, - B.A. • B. N. Michelson
... games of Peace are again being played. Tennis suffered the world over from war's blight, but everywhere the game sprang up in renewed life at the close of hostilities. The season of 1919 was one of reconstruction after the devastation. New figures were standing in prominence where old stars were accustomed to be seen. The question on the lips of all the tennis players was whether the stars of pre-War days would ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... the tall corn, gently stirred by the breeze, seemed to swell the concert of sweet sounds; but no human voice awoke the echoes there. It was as if the earth was speaking in thankfulness to its Maker, while man,—ungrateful and unworthy man,—pursuing his ruthless path of devastation and destruction, had left no being to say, "I thank Thee ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... a highly ornamented Gothic gateway, we ascended the famous historic street, still called the Street of the Knights, the massive houses of which have withstood the shocks of earthquakes and the devastation of Saracenic and Turkish occupation. This street, of whose palaces we have heard so much, is not imposing; it is not wide, its solid stone houses are only two stories high, and their fronts are now disfigured by cheap Arab balconies; but the facades are gray with age. All along ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... contains the first revelations of God; the New Testament, the last revelations. Our Christian Brother "forgets" to remind the visitor that the difference of opinion regarding these two Testaments of God has caused more sorrow, bloodshed, harm, devilment, misery, and devastation than any other single item in the life and history of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... never contented in idleness, but, like the volcanic fires, its passions and thirst for revenge, when not in open eruption, are actively at work in secret and darkness, preparing for new outbursts, bearing death along their path, and leaving devastation, blight and ruin in their wake. This was much the case with Louis Durant, after the failure of his attempt on the boat. He was resolved to accomplish the villainy on which he had set his heart, and to this end determined to leave no means untried, be they ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... many effusions or improvisations as served for fuel to boil the scanty and precarious pot of his uncertain and uncomfortable sustenance. "The Wonderful Year" of the death of Elizabeth, the accession of James, and the devastation of London by pestilence, supplied him with matter enough for one of his quaintest and liveliest tracts: in which the historical part has no quality so valuable or remarkable as the grotesque mixture of horror and humor in the anecdotes appended "like a merry epilogue ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... destruction shall come To the children of men in that day When the forest shall pass away; When the low woodland voices are dumb; And death's devastation and dearth Shall be spread o'er the face of ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... visitation in Frankfurt. To appreciate this fact at its true significance we must remember that Germany suffered from direct invasion by Russia immediately on the outbreak of the war, and that all the stories of atrocities and devastation that we heard of Belgium were also told ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... appearance of the saplings which were growing from the stumps of some of the trees which had been broken, this terrific storm appeared to have taken place about two years ago. Not a tree had been left standing in the part where we crossed, nor could we tell how far the devastation had extended to the south-west; but the ground to the north and east being swampy, and covered only with small Melaleucas and Banksias, the wind had not taken much effect. Many of the trees in the middle of the fallen timber measured two feet in diameter. Some were torn up by the roots, and ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... great gods into the Sakti worship of the female principle, often with ritual observances either obscene or sanguinary or both. Possibly as a result of closer contact with primitive Dravidian religions, or of such wild lawlessness as followed the barbarous devastation wrought by Timur, the blood even of human victims flowed more freely before the altars of the Mahamatri, the great goddesses personified in Kali and Durga. The worship of the gods assumed a more terrific and orgiastic character. ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... shores of the Tagus, to seize upon Abrantes, and to invest the English each day more closely in their lines. Already discontent was great in Lisbon, where provisions arrived with difficulty. Wellington urged upon the regency of Portugal the devastation of the country districts, and especially that of Alemtejo, the natural resource of the French army; the Portuguese authorities resisted. "Deliver Portugal, instead ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... will be made without explanation, the presumption being that this publication shall accompany the earlier one and be, as it is, a continuation of it. In the present report more attention is given to an estimate of damages than in the earlier work, and remedies by which devastation may be avoided ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... pledges and trophies of our victory. The battle was over by eleven in the morning, and in the forenoon I caused our engineers to burn a part and to sink a part of the vaunted bridge of the Khalsa army, across which they had boastfully come once more to defy us, and to threaten India with ruin and devastation."[21] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... as if your pastime had consisted not in harmless novelty and display, in gentlemanly games or good-humoured sport, but in destruction and devastation for their own sake. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... sometimes have questioned, when lingering near The home of the dead, of the friends who were dear, If the brightest enchantments of earth could repair The sad devastation that time has made there; If the joys of the world had a balm to impart, That would act as a charm to the woes of the heart. Yes, there is such a balm, but it comes from above, It is wafted to earth on the pinions of love; 'Tis ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... he murmured, in a sort of wail or whine. "Take notice, comrade, that I weep when I speak of it. If you write anything about me be sure to say that I cried when the war was mentioned. We Germans have been so misjudged. When I think of the devastation of France ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... are made to New Guinea and the easternmost islands, where they are procured, and afterward sold at high prices among any Malay community. The great nests of piracy are Magindano, Sooloo, and the northern part of Borneo; and the devastation and misery they inflict on the rest of the Archipelago are well known; yet are no measures adopted for their suppression, as every European community, be it English, Dutch, or Spanish, seems quite satisfied to clear the vicinity of its own ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... tempest's wrath Sufficed to mark one dreadful path With scenes of devastation; While over piles of wild debris Rose shrieks of dying agony Above ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... instead. Again, the arms of Hellenes should not be offered up in the temples of the Gods; they are a pollution, for they are taken from brethren. And on similar grounds there should be a limit to the devastation of Hellenic territory—the houses should not be burnt, nor more than the annual produce carried off. For war is of two kinds, civil and foreign; the first of which is properly termed 'discord,' and ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Franks, and given Attila so terrible a defeat at Chalons that the Huns were fairly driven out of Gaul. And here it must be mentioned that when the next year, 452, Attila with his murderous host came down into Italy, and after horrible devastation of all the northern provinces, came to the gates of Rome, no one dared to meet him but one venerable Bishop, Leo, the Pope, who, when his flock were in transports of despair, went forth only accompanied ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... than to their lord the king." Churches were destroyed, bishops and priests slain, and the land was again defiled with blood. They allied with the Avars, and Charles was thus beset with heathen foes in Hungary and in North Germany at once. He tried every measure of devastation and exile; but it seems that by 797 he had come more clearly to see the Christian way. "Let but the same pains be taken," he wrote—or the English scholar Alcuin wrote for him—"to preach the easy yoke and light burden of Christ to the obstinate people ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... perceived. A strong hot wind bore along ashes, and carried them far over the ocean, where falling on the decks of vessels fifty miles from land, the passengers were terrified with vague apprehension, or thought that the end of the world was come. The effects of this devastation were in some places appalling. The Barrabool Hills, near Geelong, a district of romantic beauty celebrated for its vines, and occupied by small holders, were covered with blackened ruins. The whole family of Mr. M Leland, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... natural for Jesus, in foretelling such an event as the coming destruction of Jerusalem, in conflagration and massacre, with the irretrievable subversion of the old dispensation, to picture it forth in a similar way. Fire was to the Jews a common emblem of calamity and devastation; and judgments incomparably less momentous than those gathered about the fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the self boasted favorites of Jehovah were often described by the prophets in appalling images of darkened planets, shaking heavens, clouds, fire, and blackness. Joel, speaking ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... them give answer, why they despoil and mock all of God's commandments, and rant so violently about this power, whereas they cannot show at all why it is necessary, or what it is good for. For ever since it has arisen, it has accomplished nothing but the devastation of Christendom, and no one is able to show anything good or useful that has resulted from it. Of this I will speak more fully if this Romanist comes again, and then, please God, I will throw light upon the Holy Chair at Rome and expose it as it ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... Longstreet were now joined under the personal eye of Lee, who rode with his two generals. Ewell was still ahead. Finally they came to Chambersburg, which the Southern advance had reached earlier in the month, and Lee issued an order that no devastation should be committed by his troops, an ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... you quit the present narrow scene, ye shall wear a form congenial to your vices. The fierce and lawless shall assume the figure of the unrelenting wolf. The unreflecting tyrant, that raised a mistaken fame from scenes of devastation and war, shall spurn the ground, a haughty and indignant horse; and in that form, shall learn, by dear experience, what were the sufferings and what the scourge that he inflicted on mankind. The sensual shall wear the shaggy ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... licentious and brutal plunderers subjected their helpless victims to every species of indignity and cruelty. Hence the hostility to arts and science, the tokens of refined civilization,—indiscriminate devastation of life and property perpetrated by the savage warriors, has given rise to the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... he said, "I had to leave the mail at Niuafou, in the Tongan Islands. It is a tiny isle, three miles long by as wide, an old crater in which is a lagoon, hot springs, and every sign of the devastation of many eruptions. The mail for Niuafou was often only a single letter and a few newspapers. We sealed them in a tin can, and when we met the postmaster at sea, we threw it over. He would be three miles out, swimming, with a small log under arm for support, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness—calling ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... nothing could be more unfounded. Independent of the destruction of the plantations which tropical hurricanes so often occasion, an insect of the locust kind, more particularly in the East Indies, produces such fearful devastation as to realize the scene described by the prophet Joel—"A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them[T]." From such visitations, ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... clay, had to do with that—until only a weak uncleansing trickle remained. That at first did not strike me as a misfortune. An adventurous small boy might walk dryshod in places hitherto inaccessible. But hard upon that came the pegs, the planks and carts and devastation. Roper's meadows, being no longer in fear of floods, were now to be slashed out into parallelograms of untidy road, and built upon with rows of working-class cottages. The roads came,—horribly; the houses followed. They ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... verbal modelling which, in many cases, is but the mere expression of a mood pro tempo. There is, however, somewhat of truth in the description. About the granite walls there is a grimness and gauntness of decay; of changed plans and projects; of devastation; of restoration; and, finally, of what is, apparently, submission to the ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... some granaries, the site of which he exceedingly coveted, they were battered as if with machines of war, and set on fire, the walls being built of stone. During six days and seven nights this terrible devastation continued, the people being obliged to fly to the tombs and monuments for lodging and shelter. Meanwhile, a vast number of stately buildings, the houses of generals celebrated in former times, and even then still decorated ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... suspecting any such cowardly attack, Herman was took unprepared by Manuel Romares, who did a lot of things to him in the way of ruthless devastation. Furthermore, Herman was clear-minded enough to see that Manuel could do these things to him any time he wanted to. In that coarse kind of fighting with the fists he was Herman's superior. So Herman drawed off and planned ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... our heads the ruin must fall. We cannot and will not talk about abstractions now. We are impelled by every consideration to do all we can to settle our differences, and keep off the evil day that brings civil war upon our happy and prosperous country, and to prevent the devastation ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... feared by every property holder, and the theaters were frequently the scenes of outbreaks of the apprentices. The danger of the plague from the crowd at plays was the greatest of all. London was hardly ever free from it, and suffered terrible devastation in the years 1593 and 1603. For these reasons the theaters were forbidden within the city's jurisdiction, and were driven into the outskirts. The best companies appeared frequently at court, and on the accession of James I they were licensed directly as ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... and dismay filled the city, at the sight of the devastation that was being wrought; and there were very many among the multitude who would gladly have avoided further evils, by submitting to the Romans. But such an idea did not enter the heads of the military leaders, and Simon determined ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... from his mother the devastation of that portion of his wardrobe which is not a matter ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... at sunset and the fringe of war's devastation penetrated. Little interest or casual comment was aroused, although a reputable thirsty one remarked that he thought Jerry might have ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... devastation caused me much vexation, I could not help laughing at their antics, and at the humble and submissive manner in which I had advanced to pay homage to them. I called my sons, who laughed heartily, and rallied "the prince of the ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... continent of North America Hollister grew more and more restive under the accumulating knowledge that the horrible devastation of his features made a No Man's Land about him which few had the courage to cross. It was a fact. Here, upon the evening of the third day in Vancouver, a blind and indescribable fear seized upon him, a sickening conviction that although living, ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... vessel built in Birkenhead for the Confederates in the late American Civil War, for the devastation done by which, according to the decision of a court of arbitration, the English Government had to pay heavy damages of three millions ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Meerut, and it would not have been possible for the 60th Rifles, marching in the terrible heat of the month of May, to have reached that place before the next evening (the 11th), and, as was afterwards ascertained, the work of murder and devastation there began on the morning of that day. The three Native Infantry regiments and the battery of Artillery stationed at Delhi were prepared to join the insurgent troopers from Meerut directly they arrived. The magazine, with its vast stores of war material, was in the hands of the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... happiest art, we grieve most bitterly. The view of what has been done by man, produces a melancholy, yet aggrandizing, sense of what remains to be achieved by human intellect; but a mental convulsion, which, like the devastation of an earthquake, throws all the elements of thought and imagination into confusion, makes contemplation giddy, and we fearfully ask on what ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... there were many more, but being no objects of assessment they are passed over. It would be difficult not to associate the memory of the Conqueror with the New Forest, and not to believe that his unbridled will was here the cause of great misery and devastation. Ordericus Vitalis says, speaking of the death of William's second son, Richard: "Learn now, my reader, why the forest in which the young prince was slain received the name of the New Forest. That part of the country was extremely populous from early times, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... lightning, or rain. To them "fair is foul, and foul is fair," as they "hover through the fog and filthy air." The whole of the earlier part of the third scene of the first act is one blast of tempest with its attendant devastation. They can loose and bind the winds,[1] cause vessels to be tempest-tossed at sea, and mutilate wrecked bodies.[2] They describe themselves as "posters of the sea and land;"[3] the heath they meet upon is blasted;[4] and they ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... pestilence or a plague. Moreover, it was lost sight of in the general misery and misfortunes of the times. The Emperor Valerian had just been defeated and taken prisoner by Sapor. Pretenders had started up in nineteen different places for the imperial purple. Banditti had spread devastation in Sicily. Alexandria was disturbed by tumults. Famine and the plague raged for ten years in nearly all parts of the empire. Rome lost by the pestilence five thousand daily, while half the inhabitants of Alexandria were swept away. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... so dishonorable. Why should you bury me alive? Is it because one friend still comes with no scheme for the devastation of our sylvan home?" ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... a vile fluid this trade spirit, yet the country is deluged with it, and it leaves behind it disaster and demoralisation and ruined homes. Mary feels bitter against the civilised countries that seek profit from the moral devastation ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... work of devastation could not have been completed many minutes before their arrival, the elephant appeared to have gone away from the ground. At east, it was not to be seen anywhere near the spot; and it is needless to say that ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... appearance of fortresses. It may well be that they served as such in Stephen's time, for the northern one was severely battered. It differs somewhat in detail from that on the south side, there being an interlacing arcade half-way up, possibly being so rebuilt when the devastation caused by the siege was being repaired. There are six stages on each tower, but only the uppermost four are in any way ornamented. These have blind arcades and window openings of circular form; but the details differ slightly on each. The turrets ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... weapons used by the legions. The same experiment had been recently tried with the same result at the battle of Ravenna, one of those tremendous days into which human folly and wickedness compress the whole devastation of a famine or a plague. In that memorable conflict, the infantry of Arragon, the old companions of Gonsalvo, deserted by all their allies, hewed a passage through the thickest of the imperial pikes, and effected ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... she broke in, coldly furious, but with a volcano in her breast that threatened eruption and devastation shortly. "Will you let me go, Captain Carey? Or must I call my servants to my assistance? ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... literally drowned. The site of the old town, once a populous and thriving port, has almost entirely disappeared in the sea. The German Ocean has swallowed up streets, market-places, jetties, and public walks; and the merciless waters, consummating their work of devastation, closed, no longer than eighty years since, over the salt-master's cottage at Aldborough, now famous in memory only as the birthplace of ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... South Pacific island nations, the Cook Islands' economic development is hindered by the isolation of the country from foreign markets, the limited size of domestic markets, lack of natural resources, periodic devastation from natural disasters, and inadequate infrastructure. Agriculture, employing about one-third of the working population, provides the economic base with major exports made up of copra and citrus fruit. Black pearls are the Cook Islands' leading ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the day is settled,' answered Jim, even now scarcely conscious of the devastation he was causing in one fair breast. 'But from the rate the courting is scudding along at, I should say it ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy |
