"Dire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accident to our venture might affect the whole American business fabric, and no one realized the danger of the situation better than Mr. Rogers and myself. During the anxious days that were passing we canvassed the dire possibilities that the situation contained, just as children tell each other ghost stories when left alone in the darkness of the night. The great catastrophes of finance, we remembered, had all been born of the unexpected—of unforeseen ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... who has had a look behind the scenes will ever forget the three War Wednesdays of 1914, the 22nd and 29th of July and the 5th of August; for during that dire fortnight the fate of the whole world hung trembling in the scales ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... city alderman) a Christmas present of a new hat. She came to invoke my aid in trying to discover the size of Joe's head. I readily undertook the task, which loomed larger and larger as I came fully to realize that I was the sole member of the committee of ways and means. In my dire perplexity I saw Ed grouching along the hall. Calling him to one side, I explained to the last detail the whole case, and confessed that I did not know how to proceed. At once his face brightened, and he readily agreed to make the discovery for me; and in half an hour I had the information ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... ship and for a short period it would seem that Weeks did not trust the Medic. Then, high in her needle nose, one of the escape ports, not intended for use except in dire emergency opened and allowed a plastic link ladder ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious Things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than Fables yet have feign'd, or Fear conceiv'd, Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... drops that I swallowed from that vein have set my brain on fire. What's that? The ground's a-tremble 'neath my feet as touched with life. Earth, rend your breast and let me in! For anything but this dire darkness, made alive with vengeful eye-balls—his eyes! They glare with hate at me. I heard him laugh but now. For anything but this most loving corpse whose head caressing rests it on my feet. Ah, no, I ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... comprehended the dire threats, the personal remarks, and unmitigated scorn of those three fair travellers, the blue-coated imbeciles would have been reduced to submission. Fortunately the great man came in time to save them from utter rout; for the ladies ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... happiness be accorded me, your indulgence would not have to stoop so low as you might fancy. Though reduced by an adverse destiny and the jealous hatred of one of the great ones of the earth, who must be nameless, to the dire necessity of hiding myself under this disguise, I am not what I seem. I do not need to blush for my birth—rather I may glory in it. If I dared to betray the secrecy imposed upon me, for reasons of state, I could prove to you that most illustrious blood runs in my ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... have known several offending priests to receive this summons; I never knew of one who dared disregard the summons; I never knew of one who received it who was not filled with dire foreboding; and I never knew an instance where the man was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... of dire import in the bird-lover's calendar. It means virtually the end of the bird season. The wooing and nesting and rearing the family are all over, and now looms before the feathered population that annual trouble—the change of dress, the only ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... France will not pay the promised gold. Charles the Seventh is flying from place to place, and our poor land is groaning under the burdens of a crippling and exhausting war. We must put an end to this. In such dire need and necessity it is better to die an honorable death than to bear disgrace, to live like beggars by the grace of our enemies. I have not the insolence and courage of cowardice so to live. I will die or conquer! I will wash out these ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... time Mosu was in dire extremity. Hence, when he heard these words he was greatly pleased. He begged the neighbor to act as a go-between ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... old man as he sank upon a stool in the house. "Now I zhall shmoke mein bibe, und den go do mein wagon und haf a big long schleep, vor I am dire." ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... one thing, seems so universal that it might, for aught I know, be employed to interpret the dicta of Ackermann and Macrobius, or even the canons of Doctors Matthews and Sherman herein cited, and thus open dire vistas wherein critic would prey on critic, and the most respectable would be locked in fratricidal strife. Moreover, I have applied your method to many of the Mother Goose rhymes with rather curious results.... But happily, I have here to confess to you, not any disputable literary ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... to speak, but the words refused to come to her icy lips. She made an effort to raise her eyes to Jack's face, with a careless smile; but it was a failure—a dire failure. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... departed from the saloon exceeding wroth, breathing dire threats of legal proceedings against the line and the captain personally, but most of the passengers agreed that it would be an inhuman thing to leave the Adamant alone in mid-ocean in such ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... (Perceives him, and starts back in terror.) Ha! Dreadful! dreadful! I fear some dire misfortune is even now realizing the forebodings of my soul! (To WORM, with a look of disdain.) Do you seek the president? ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... vous dire que vous faites vous pret; car ce soldat ici est dispose tout a cette heure ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... twilight time Of every people, in every clime, Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, Born of water, and air, and fire, Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, Through dusk tradition and ballad age. So from the childhood of Newbury town And its time of fable the tale ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... sense of comfort; a little grotesque no doubt;—the mechanical admiration for all that is about her, for the general atmosphere, the Figaro, that is to say Albert Wolf, l'homme le plus spirituel de Paris, c'est-a-dire, dans le monde, the success of Georges Ohnet and the talent of Gustave Dore. But with all this vulgarity of taste certain appreciations, certain ebullitions of sentiment, within the radius of sentiment certain ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... turned around to look. She bethought herself of an incident related in Miss Crofutt's book, and she essayed its recital. It concerned a lawyer who was once pleading in a French criminal court in behalf of a man whose crime had been committed under the influence of dire want. In his plea he described the case of another whom he knew who had been punished with a just but short imprisonment instead of a long one, which the judge had been at liberty to impose, but from which he humanely refrained. Miss Eunice happily remembered the words of the lawyer: "That ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... last sip of coffee, I asked Therese for my hat and cane, which she gave me not without dire suspicions; she feared I might be going upon another journey. But I reassured her by telling her to have dinner ready at ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... Koran to consult it as to his future, his divining rod stopped at verse 82, chap. xix., which says, "He doth flatter himself in vain. He shall appear before our tribunal naked and bare." Ali closed the book and spat three times into his bosom. He was yielding to the most dire presentiments, when a courier, arriving from the capital, informed him that all hope of pardon ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the bank hauls on the line, and in spite of protests and struggling the game is landed, to be chopped and beaten to death with tomahawks and nulla-nullas. Then follows a feast, the inevitable surfeit, and the dire conclusion that crocodile as "tucker" is no good. The flesh is said to be "All a same turtle. Little more hard fella!" My investigations lead to the opinion that a crocodile was once caught in the manner described, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... and dying daily Flash forward their wants and words, While still on Thought's slender railway Sit scathless the little birds: They heed not the sentence dire By magical hands exprest, And only the sun's warm fire Stirs softly their happy breast. On, and on, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the statement of Origen, that these words occurred in the 'Preaching of Peter,' they might have been referred without much difficulty to Luke xxiv. 39" ("Gospels in the Second Century," p. 81). And they most certainly would have been so referred, and dire would have been Christian wrath against those who refused to admit these words as a proof of the canonicity of Luke's Gospel in the time ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... on a railroad, while at least one victim, too cowardly to leave the field, had haunted the lunch counters, hotel lobbies, and race-tracks for months, preying on friends and acquaintances alike until dire poverty forced him into crime, and a stone cell and a steel grille ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... heroine in dire distress invariably exclaims aloud: "Will no one aid me?" Brown, whose automatic legs had compelled him to follow, ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... realms of Night, dire Demon, hence! Thy chain of adamant can bind That little world, the human mind, And sink its noblest powers to impotence. Wake the lion's loudest roar, Clot his shaggy mane with gore, With flashing fury bid his eye-balls shine; Meek is his savage, sullen soul, to thine! Thy touch, thy deadening touch ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... in the Channel should be played the last great scene. Drake had not been two days out when a storm struck his fleet and scattered it over the face of the sea. For three days it raged with extraordinary fury. Drake's own flag-ship was in dire peril, and, when the heavens cleared, only three of the battle-ships and half a dozen smaller craft were together. Not a single merchant-ship was to be seen, and the Lion, Borough's flag-ship, on which he was still a prisoner, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... it said that oftentimes, under the influence of some dire calamity, unfortunate men have suddenly lost their reason entirely; and she was wondering if her father ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... Pickwick that the ties which bound them were friendly. On his side, Mr. Pickwick, albeit he stood well aware how there was never a rat in the room, arose vivaciously and went snuffling and scuffling behind curtains and beneath sofas, and all in a mood prodigiously dire. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... mortals may hardly speak of it. Gulveig the Witch came into Asgard, for Heimdall might not forbid her entrance. She came within and she had her seat amongst the AEsir and the Vanir. She walked through Asgard with a smile upon her face, and where she walked and where she smiled Care and dire Foreboding came. ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... m'a priv du dernier plaisir que je pouvois avoir en Europe. Permettez moi, madame, de vous remercier encore une fois do toutes vos bonts, de vous demander un peu de part dans votre souvenir, et laissez moi vous dire que mes voeux se porteront dans tous les terns de ma vie vers vous, vers le capitaine, vers vos enfans. Vous allez avoir en Amrique un serviteur bien zl; je ne reviendrai pas en Europe sans arriver dans ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... the dying fire, 5 Watching the spruce boughs glow and pale, I heard outside a tumult dire, And the fierce roaring of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... of the first attempt at a sugar crop in Louisiana by a Frenchman named Bore in 1794. His indigo plant, once so profitable, had been attacked and destroyed by a worm, and dire poverty threatened. He conceived the project of planting sugar cane. The great question was would the syrup granulate; and hundreds gathered to watch the experiment. It did granulate, and the first product sold for twelve thousand dollars—a large ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... conduct out of it. After ten years' regular attendance, the boldest conjecturer would not have dared to define his political principles. It was a rule with Stapylton Toad never to commit himself. Once, indeed, he wrote an able pamphlet on the Corn Laws, which excited the dire indignation of the Political Economy Club. But Stapylton cared little for their subtle confutations and their loudly expressed contempt. He had obliged the country gentlemen of England, and ensured the return, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... that could be brought to bear could induce some of them to plant corn, make soap, kill pigs, or perform many other important duties in certain phases of the moon, for they would be positive if they did it would result in dire disaster. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... well how seriously they have been compelled to regard their trouble, and out of respect for their protracted suffering and efforts to get relief I should instead have sympathized and condoled with them in their dire misfortune. But we all know and realize that there are occasions when we get into awful and painful predicaments, and, when the whole situation is taken in, it becomes comical and ridiculous, so that for a time we ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... slumbers sound, Though confiscation's vultures hover round[d]. The needy traveller, serene and gay, Walks the wild heath, and sings his toil away. Does envy seize thee? crush th' upbraiding joy; Increase his riches, and his peace destroy; [e]Now fears, in dire vicissitude, invade, The rustling brake alarms, and quiv'ring shade; Nor light nor darkness bring his pain relief, One shows the plunder, and one hides the thief. [f] Yet still one gen'ral cry[g] the skies assails, And gain and grandeur load the tainted gales: Few know ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... and said: "Would it may be so, dear Menelaos. But the leech shall feel the wound, and lay thereon drugs that shall assuage thy dire pangs." ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... man, I am the person who telephoned for you to come for my stricken partner," said Balcom, "and I still insist that he is in dire need ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... low voice rose, his arm uplifted fiercely for an instant in dire menace. Then, quick as lightning flashes, all was transformed. The eyes were bent upon the carpet, the arms folded, the voice sunk, ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... morality had been instinct in the girl now seemed to be in absolute abeyance. In the extremity of dire necessity, cornered at last, face to face with a world that threatened her, and watching it now out of cool, intelligent eyes, she had, without realising it, slipped back into her ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... and walked away. Had Sam but known it, his chance in life was in dire peril at that moment. Seldom had Christopher felt so angry and never had he felt so out of touch with his companion. Why on earth couldn't Sam take his luck without wanting reasons. It was so preposterous, in Christopher's eyes, to want any. In the old days Sam had been ready ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... there is no danger nowthey have hardly left us a spoonful in which to perform the dire feat." ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 3: All things are common property in a case of extreme necessity. Hence one who is in such dire straits may take another's goods in order to succor himself, if he can find no one who is willing to give him something. For the same reason a man may retain what belongs to another, and give alms thereof; or even take something ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Gem, the solicitor to the committee for the protection of the button trade, advertised a reward for any information against the wearers of the unlawful covered buttons. The "gilt button days" of Birmingham was a time of rare prosperity, and dire was the distress when, like the old buckles, the fashion of wearing the gilt on the blue went out. Deputations to royalty had no effect in staying the change, and thousands were thrown on the parish. It was sought to revive the old style ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... when he printed Luther's German edition of the Sacred Scriptures. It is said that the Pope used to write Lufftius' name on paper once every year, and cast it into the fire, uttering terrible imprecations and dire threatenings. But the thunders of Roman pontiffs did not trouble the worthy bookseller, who laughed at their threats, and exclaimed, "I perspired so freely at Rome in the flame, that I must take a larger draught, as it is necessary to ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... dire result of his apparently inhuman thoughtlessness, Alfred glanced at Aggie, uncertain as to ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... profound ignorance; no such disease exists or ever did exist. Gale itself is a sufficiently tangible reality, to be sure, but it is a purely local disease of the skin, due to a perfectly definite cause, and the dire internal conditions formerly ascribed to it have really no causal connection with it whatever. This definite cause, as every one nowadays knows, is nothing more or less than a microscopic insect which has found lodgment on the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... whole Trinity, may be justified by the rules of theology, and has been gradually adopted by the Catholics of the East and West. But it had been imagined by a Monophysite bishop; [77] the gift of an enemy was at first rejected as a dire and dangerous blasphemy, and the rash innovation had nearly cost the emperor Anastasius his throne and his life. [78] The people of Constantinople was devoid of any rational principles of freedom; but they held, as a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... looking at her, paralyzed with the certainty that no mortal aid could save her from this dire extremity, there came an unexpected diversion. Old Lady Green spoke out clearly and decidedly from her corner, in so rational a voice that it seemed like one calling ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... Sail'd on till Ocean seem'd to be All shoreless as Eternity, Till, from its long-loved Star estranged, At last the constant Needle changed,{C} And fierce amid his murmuring crew Prone terror into treason grew; While on his tortured spirit rose, More dire than portents, toils, or foes, The awaiting World's loud jeers and scorn Yell'd o'er his profitless Return; No—none through that dark watch may trace The feelings wild beneath whose swell, As heaves the bark the billows' race, His ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... knew to whom he could dispose of the white girl for a price that would make it worth while to be burdened with the danger and responsibility of retaining her. He had had some experience of white men in the past and knew that dire were the punishments meted to those who wronged the white man's women. All through the remainder of the long night Ninaka pondered the question deeply. At last he ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... James Wilson and five other persons fully armed. Resistance was useless, the hounds would have caught me before I could have run a hundred yards, even if I could have escaped the bullets. I surrendered, and was securely tied by James Wilson and his gang and taken back to the plantation. Dire threats were made against me, but my mistress, James' mother, saved me again. She informed her son that "Charles belonged to her; that Charles' mother had placed him, under the care of God, in her custody, and that she did not intend ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... a ruthless promise-breaker, John's natural cruelty would in itself sufficiently account for the dire penalties threatened under the warrant of 1208; but neither his tyranny, his faithlessness of character, nor his very human irritation at the concessions wrung from him by his barons, can explain to our satisfaction why, having granted a charter affirming and safeguarding the liberties of, ostensibly, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... country round about "like the sound," says the Burmese chronicle, "of a great bell hung in the canopy of the skies."[4] At last one day, when he was walking in a much enfeebled state, he felt on a sudden an extreme weakness, like that caused by dire starvation, and unable to stand any longer he fell to the ground. Some thought he was dead, but he recovered, and from that time took regular food and gave up his severe penance, so much so that his five disciples soon ceased ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Your friend and I met in secret; in secret we plighted our troth, and exchanged those rings, and hoped and believed that by showing a bold front to our destiny we should subdue it to our will. The commencement was sinful, it has met with a dire retribution, Jules's letters announced his speedy return. He had sold everything in his own country, had given up all his mercantile affairs, through which he had greatly increased an already considerable fortune, and now he was about to join us, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... the strain in the men and knew it was her place to try and keep the peace. But a sense of forlorn helplessness amid these warring spirits lay heavily on her and she beckoned to the old servant, wanting him near her as one who, no matter how dire the circumstances, would ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... on the verge of dishonoured death, I could have no respect. For the lady of his household, who was confiding to me her very life, whose soft hand I had touched with due reverence, there was an instinctive feeling of sympathy. In her hour of dire need, most likely of extreme danger, she had turned to me, a man of staid repute and old enough, no doubt, to be her father. So this was no affair of conjugal wrong, from which my religious scruples and my abiding principles ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... however, demonstrated that the government could not provide all that was necessary for the soldier, either in sickness or in health, and the Sanitary Commission became often the only hope of brave men in dire distress. In fact, at this day, it is difficult to see how the Northern cause would have triumphed at all but for the widespread and wholly helpful activity of the ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... a sigh, barely conscious of the spoliation. After all, she was of his trade, herself mired with guilt; she would never dare betray him, the consequences to herself would be so dire. ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... woods partake, And bear me helpless, spent, along Where freedom lives far from the throng; Thus pours the mountain torrent wild, That stubborn rocks would check; Thus rolls the molten lava stream, Dispersing havoc dire, supreme, Enfolding, whelming all in wreck! Thus flies the pollen on the breeze To meet its floral love; The song, outgushing from the soul, Thus seeks the starry vault above. Is it a curse? There is no other life for me. 'Tis written in the book of fate: Thy race must ev'ry pledge abate And ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... vestir. es sacada de vnos platanos y dello hacen vnas mantas como bocaci de colores qe llaman los naturales medrinaqe y en estas yslas la que tiene aRoz y Algodon, es tierra Rica por lo que vale en la nueva espana el algodon y las mantas, la condicion de la gte dire despues de todos los pintados en general porqe todos son de vna manera tienen tambien gallinas y puercos y algunas cabras frisoles y vnas Rayces como batatas de sancto domingo qe llaman camotes en esta ysla y en todas las demas el principal ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... enter into the causes of this dire malady, which had begun with long nights given to dissipation—not to gross pleasures or vulgar companions, but to a semi-intellectual dissipation: wit, fun, copious talk about all things between heaven and earth, in the society of artists, actors, journalists, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... contemplation, I came to know, by my own feelings, that Niagara is indeed a wonder of the world, and not the less wonderful, because time and thought must be employed in comprehending it. Casting aside all preconceived notions, and preparation to be dire-struck or delighted, the beholder must stand beside it in the simplicity of his heart, suffering the mighty scene to work its own impression. Night after night, I dreamed of it, and was gladdened every morning by the consciousness of a growing capacity to enjoy it. Yet I will not pretend ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... only manly, and dignified, and merciful course is to complete what I have begun... And for worldly reasons, too, it will be better for her to be independent. I have hopelessly ruined my prospects because of my decision as to what was best for us, though she does not know it; I see only dire poverty ahead from my feet to the grave; for I can be accepted as teacher no more. I shall probably have enough to do to make both ends meet during the remainder of my life, now my occupation's gone; and I shall be better able to bear it alone. I may as well tell you that what ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... always kept, being only used on rare occasions when special honor was intended. During the civil war it had lain securely hidden in a heavy box under the brick pavement of one of the cellar rooms, thereby escaping dire vicissitudes. Many pieces had been broken, said to have been followed in every case by calamities harder to endure than the loss of precious porcelain, but much of it still remained. In design it was unique, in execution wonderful, and ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... would return some day even better and richer than it was before. Now, all her hopes are gone, all her delusions swept away. She knows she will never sing again, and here in her hand she holds the cable message which forms the last in this series of dire misfortunes which have come upon her within the last two years. It is the message which tells her that her investments have failed and that ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... confusion and horror, has leaned over the side with averted face, now turns to behold the pair locked in their close embrace, and rushes to the front, wringing her hands in despair). Woe's me! Woe's me! Endless mis'ry I have wrought instead of death! Dire the deed of my dull fond heart: ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... the linesmen continued to go out during the heaviest shelling, while others maintained a system of lamp signalling to the brigade behind a pile of ammunition boxes until a 5.9 dropped plumb amongst them with dire results. Other signallers at once found a new spot and kept communication going. But these were searching days for everyone, when physical endurance and mental stamina were stretched to their furthest limit. As the day wore on, ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... he answered. "I chanced to be able to retrieve the message. I feel certain that, however dire your necessity, you would not have written to her in that strain unless you had some strong reason. Who did you mean when you said 'both in ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... reflected Heaven of many a bright lake, has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed and gazed alone. What flippant Frenchman was it who said in allusion to the well-known work of Zimmerman, that, "la solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude est une belle chose?" The epigram cannot be gainsayed; but the necessity is a thing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... might pass on to masterpieces of another inspiration: to the luxurious and charming graces of Sara la Baigneuse; to the superb crescendo and diminuendo of les Djinns; to 'Si vous n'avez rien a me dire,' that daintiest of songlets; to the ringing rhymes and gallant spirit of the Pas d'Armes du ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... come here to hire themselves out, so don't give them more than ten roubles a month. Their place was burned down to ashes last summer, and they are now in dire need—they'll ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... an art which inspires extraordinary confidence; it makes us fancy that drowning is impossible to us, because we cannot imagine ourselves so fatigued as to fail in keeping above water. Kenrick knew that the attempt was only one to be undertaken at dire extremity; but that extremity had now arrived, and it was literally the last chance that lay between him and—what he would not ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... of his dire necessity, his old friends Schurka (the dog) and Waska (the cat) remembered how Martin had once saved them from a cruel death; and they took counsel together as to how they should help him. And Schurka growled, and was of opinion that he would like to tear everyone in pieces; ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... There was little time for thought. She must plan quickly. If she left the house at once he might awaken immediately and after searching the apartment, follow her; there was the dire possibility that he would learn too much before the terrific drama of the revolution opened, and manage to thwart their plans. He was a man of quick brain and ruthless will; no consideration for her would stop him, although he would save her from the ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... chanced, however, it was not the tenor, but a message from him—a message that brought dire consternation to the Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements. The tenor had thrown up his part. He could not take it; it was too difficult. He felt that this should be told—at once rather than to worry along for another ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... regiment the society of the officers is a thousand times worse than it is here," he continued. "I hope that it is saying a good deal; J'ESPERE QUE C'EST BEAUCOUP DIRE; that is, you cannot imagine what it is. I am not speaking of the yunkers and the soldiers. That is horrible, it is so bad. At first they received me very kindly, that is absolutely the truth; but when they saw that I could not help despising them, you know, in these inconceivably small circumstances, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... Weird instruments made their appearance: drums of bell-metal, jew's-harps of bamboo. The gansas, a flute that the performer plays from one nostril, would have distracted an American's attention from the music, holding him in suspense, anticipating the dire consequences of a sneeze. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... his child, and a firm friendship grew between them. Often she came and went, bringing peace and welcome food, quite at home in the little streets of Jamestown. And Captain John Smith in his writings has said that without her help in times of dire need, and without her influence for peace, the feeble colony must surely have perished, either by famine or by the hands of her savage kindred. Much we owe to the Indian maid who helped so greatly in the early struggles of the founders of ...
— The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith • E. Boyd Smith
... invest it well, for we shall have dire need of all that it is worth. I want you to assist me in sitting at the table which the Exchange always keeps spread, and we will gorge ourselves with the good things there offered us, for you must admit that ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... quagmire of dread, beat on numbly and did not join the joy. As the time for going home approached, Bud shivered in his soul at the thought of meeting Miss Morgan. Not even the watermelon revived him, and when a watermelon will not help a boy his extremity is dire. Still he laughed and chatted with apparent merriment, but he knew how hollow was his laughter and what mockery was in his cheer. When the melon was eaten business took ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... find fault; but her whole views of life were absolutely different from his. According to his ideas, there should be no Marquises, no singing girls making huge fortunes—only singing girls in receipt of modest sums of money; and that when dire necessity compelled them. There should be no gorgeous theatres flaring with gas, and certainly no policemen to take down men's words. Everything in the world was wrong,—except those twenty ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... no guarantee for success in Iraq. The situation in Baghdad and several provinces is dire. Saddam Hussein has been removed from power and the Iraqi people have a democratically elected government that is broadly representative of Iraq's population, yet the government is not adequately advancing national reconciliation, ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... the flowers / Kriemhild's noble knight, While from his wound flowed thickly / the blood before the sight. Then gan he reviling / —for dire was his need— Who had thus encompassed / his death by ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... Britain and Ireland the redbreast's nest is spared, while those of other birds are robbed without ceremony; and his life is equally sacred. No schoolboy who has ever killed a robin can forget the dire remorse and fear that followed the deed. And little wonder, for terrible are the punishments said to overtake those who persecute this little bird. Generally such a crime is believed to be expiated by the death of a friend. Sometimes the punishment is more ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... intellectual admiration which bright and enthusiastic women sometimes feel for those who dazzle their brains, or who enjoy a great eclat; still less was it that impassioned ardor, that wild infatuation, that tempestuous frenzy, that dire unrest, that mad conflict between sense and reason, that sad forgetfulness sometimes of fame and duty, that reckless defiance of the future, that selfish, exacting, ungovernable, transient impulse which ignores God and law and punishment, treading happiness and heaven beneath ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... Haggis to press on with greater speed, for now he was certain that his chum must be in a terrible fix, out from which there was no self-help. He would hardly waste cartridges so recklessly were he not in some dire extremity. ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... wife of Etzel had set the hall on fire. How sore then were they tortur'd in burning anguish dire! At once, as the wind freshen'd, the house was in a glow. Never, I ween, were mortals in ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... vauntings from an instinctive impulse to leaven with humor a situation which, at the moment, could not be bettered. Just as they had, when came the news of the Old Man's dire plight, sought to push the tragedy of it into the background and cling to their creed of optimism, they had avoided openly facing the sheep complication squarely with mutual admissions of all it might mean to ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... sat in dire perplexity. He had come out to get money, and to go back without any, to be powerless to help when his boy needed every shilling to save him from disaster, that would be very bitter to him. On the other hand, it was so much that he surrendered, and so little that he received. Little, and yet something. ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... when the houre is past, A yeare is ended since the Clocke strooke last, When your Remembrance puts me on the Racke, And I should Swound to see an Almanacke, 40 To reade what silent weekes away are slid, Since the dire Fates you from my sight haue hid. I hate him who the first Deuisor was Of this same foolish thing, the Hower-glasse, And of the Watch, whose dribbling sands and Wheele, With their slow stroakes, make mee too ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... of these women, responding to ideas that are still powerful, are yet intrigued, of course, by marriage, and prefer it to the autonomy that is coming in, but the fact remains that they now have a free choice in the matter, and that dire necessity no longer controls them. After all, they needn't marry if they don't want to; it is possible to get their bread by their own labour in the workshops of the world. Their grandmothers were in a far more difficult position. Failing ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... fain would keep hidden:—you know, Ere now, that the trail of the insolent foe Leaves ruin behind it, disastrous and dire, And burns through our Valley, a pathway of fire. —Our beautiful home,—as I write it, I weep, Our beautiful home is a smouldering heap! And blackened, and blasted, and grim, and forlorn, Its chimneys stand stark in the ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... Enville continued to give cautions and charges, as they occurred to her, now regarding conduct and now costume: but a miserable time Blanche found it. She felt herself, and she fancied every one else considered her, in dire disgrace. Yet beneath all the mortification, the humiliation, and the grief over which she was brooding, there was a conviction in the depth of Blanche's heart, resist it as she might, that the father who was crossing her ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... thine (otherwise) engage in such a wicked act with the deceitful Sakuni? O thou that art endued with great wisdom, gambling robs even the good of their understanding, and as regards the wicked, disunion and dire consequence spring from it. It was thou who hadst devised with thy wicked counsellors, that terrible source of calamity in the form of the gambling match, without consulting with persons of righteous behaviour. Who else is there, capable of insulting a brother's wife in the way thou didst or of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that if he advances there will be bloodshed—that it will be the beginning of civil war. If he has orders to come at all hazards, my words will not stop him; if it is left to his discretion, possibly he may pause before he brings on so dire a calamity." ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... put it?" said Gerard. "Here is no dead face. 'Twas that made it look so dire." The cure groped about the room. "Good; here is an image: 'tis ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... made through dire necessity by the savages of every land, with the results handed down by tradition, the nutritious, stimulating, and medicinal properties of the most unpromising plants were probably first discovered. It appears, for instance, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... Ted, the skilled huntsman and wolf exterminator, and the wily wolf, whose scarred hide told of many battles with bull and dog, wild cat and man, serpent of the desert, and the eagles of the mountains, when, in his dire hunger, he ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... single ovum. With respect to the young of molluscs, undoubtedly if the bird to which they were attached alighted on the sea, they would be instantly killed; but a land-bird would, I should think, never alight except under dire necessity from fatigue. This, however, has been observed near Heligoland (205/1. Instances are recorded by Gatke in his "Heligoland as an Ornithological Observatory" (translated by Rudolph Rosenstock, Edinburgh, 1895) of land-birds, such as thrushes, buntings, finches, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of dire forewarnings that my brains will all be scattered, My memory extinguished, and my nervous system shattered, That my hand will take to trembling, and my heart begin to flutter, My digestion turn a rebel to my very bread ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... over our country people have seen Bills which they were told beforehand would be ruinous to the unity and integrity of the United Kingdom—Land Bills and Local Government Bills—passed into law; and so far from the dire consequences which were apprehended from these measures, they have found—you here have found—that great good has resulted from that legislation. Many people are encouraged by what has taken place to make a step forward in the future; and I think if we ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... have been known to form a prognostic, before having seen the patient, from the effluvia of the sick-room. Those who are in the habit of visiting the insane, know the peculiar odour that characterises that dire calamity; and it was remarked of the plague, that it had "a scent of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... the history of a nation which stand out in prominent relief. One of these is the French Revolution, which commenced in 1792, and wrought such dire havoc amongst the aristocracy, with so much misery and distress throughout the country. It was an event of great importance, whether we consider the religion, the politics, or the manners and customs of a people, as affecting the changes ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... Talleyrand, and head of that branch of the family to which he belonged. Meanwhile the younger son, Archambaut, had likewise returned from his nursing; but he had the better chance—his limbs were sound and well developed, as God had made them. No dire accident, the consequence of foul neglect, had marred his shape, or tarnished his comeliness. So, one fine day, and as a natural consequence, mark you, of this fortunate circumstance, when Charles Maurice, the eldest son, had finished his course of study at Louis le Grand, having ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... low in the creation yet, be she as high-born and beautiful as a heathen goddess, to understand the things of which I am writing. But she has got to understand them—they are not mine—and the understanding may come in dread pain, and dire dismay. Hester was one of those who in their chambers are not alone, but with him who seeth in secret; and not to get so near to God in her chamber —I can but speak in human figure—did not argue well for the new relationship. But the Lord is mindful of his own. He does ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... majesty to provide us aid with the despatch and diligence fitting, in order that your majesty's purpose to introduce the Christian religion into these districts, and to reduce these people, neglected for so many years, and who are in dire need of receiving the fruits of our holy Catholic faith, may be attained. We are of stout heart because of the many favors that our Lord has been pleased to bestow upon us hitherto; and for the future we trust that he will keep us in his holy service, and protect ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... dressing with a feeling of dire pressure driving him on. He finished rapidly, and yanked the bedroom door open, just as he heard the outer lock click. She was coming in with a bottle of cream and a package of sausage as he reached the kitchen, and there was a smile tucked into ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... the reserved passengers made no remarks on what was passing; for, in those days, Englishmen were afraid to speak to each other for fear of recognizing one not of their class, while to strangers and foreigners they would not speak except in case of dire necessity. The Frenchman was ready enough to talk, but, unfortunately, we were separated by different languages. Thus the Englishman would not talk, the Frenchman could not, and the intelligent, loquacious American driver, who discourses on politics, religion, national institutions, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... gang came through force of circumstances. Men—good, bad and indifferent—were drawn into the orbit of its activities, as extraordinary circumstances arose or dire necessities dictated. Throughout the length and breadth of Britain, through France, Italy, and in the days before the war, and even during the war, in Germany, in Russia and in the United States, were ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... this reserved power of society to call the force of woman to the common defense, either in the hospital or the field, it would be woman, who has been deprived of participation in the government and in shaping the public policy which has resulted in dire emergency to the state. But in all times, and under all forms of government and of social existence, woman has given her body and her soul to the ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... their senses, wish they were dead. So do Torin and Acorionde. The tears run down in floods from their eyes upon their breasts. Life and joy seem hateful now. And Parmenides more than the rest tore his hair in dire distress. No greater grief could be shown than that of these five for their lord. Yet, their dismay is groundless, for it is another's body which they bear away when they think to have their lord. Their distress is further increased by the sight of the other shields, which cause ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... so much as those of the subject of the narrative himself. "The anti-rent combination," for instance, will prove, according to the editor's conjectures, to be one of two things in this community—the commencement of a dire revolution, or the commencement of a return to the sounder notions and juster principles that prevailed among us thirty years since, than certainly prevail to-day. There is one favourable symptom discoverable in the deep-seated disease that pervades the social system: men dare, and do, deal ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the utter helplessness of the officers and men when left to themselves. If the natives had repeated the attack, they would most probably have got into dire confusion. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... date to "give Ireland away too." The move from Orange River had occasioned general rejoicings. Unaccountable delay ensued. One disappointment was followed by another. Anxiety began to manifest itself. The dire stage of doubt was reached. Hunger, thirst, and horseflesh succeeded in due order; until at last ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... they sat round the table; Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and Lord Antony Dewhurst, two typical good-looking, well-born and well-bred Englishmen of that year of grace 1792, and the aristocratic French comtesse with her two children, who had just escaped from such dire perils, and found a safe retreat at last on the shores ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... about even this early in the morning, hopping, hopping—the jerking gait of the mutilated—the little broken waves of a sea of "horizon blue." But they must have been just getting their faces washed at the Salon, where once we went to see pictures and now find compositions more dire than the newest schools ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... then to our Counsell-Table Shall she be call'd, that read aloud, she told The Church commands her quicke returne for Florence, With such a dower as Spaine received with her; And that they will not hazard heavens dire curse To yeeld to a match unlawfull, which shall taint The issue of the King with Bastardy. This done, in State Majestic come you forth (Our new-crown'd Queene) in sight of all our Peeres. —Are ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... alter'd mien, Just what would make suspicion start; No pause the dire extremes between, He made me ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... three-way framework of the Constitution of the United States. The coordinate branches of the Government continue freely to function. The Bill of Rights remains inviolate. The freedom of elections is wholly maintained. Prophets of the downfall of American democracy have seen their dire predictions come ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... these dire shores our rapid course we held; Auspicious gales the flying canvas swell'd; And joy's faint sunshine kindled in my eyes, As the last mountain mingled with the skies: When, by conflicting winds together driven, A night of clouds involved the starless heaven; Fierce and more fierce th' increasing ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... the caravan to Mecca, where the heat and dearth of water had given it fresh intensity. It raged in the Holy Town, striking down twenty thousand victims, and touched at Jeddah and Zambo, where its effects were very dire. Passing through Suez, it decimated the population, and in August it reached Cairo and spread to Upper and Lower Egypt. The army did not escape the common scourge, and when about to invade Syria was overtaken by the epidemic. Five thousand out of ninety thousand perished. All preparations for the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... French Academy once crowned,) produced a play founded upon it, in Paris, in 1766; but the language of Swiss freemen on a French stage was little to the taste of those days, and it was a failure. Voltaire, when asked what he thought of it, replied,—"Il n'y a rien a dire; il est ecrit en langue du pays." But twenty years afterwards it was revived with prodigious success; for the truth which was in it flashed out then, forerunner of the storm which was soon to break over France. Again, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... que les choses humaines exposees dans leur verite, c'est-a-dire avec leur grandeur, leur variete, leur inepuisable fecondite, qui aient le droit de retenir le lecteur et qui le retiennent en effet. Si l'ecrivain parait une fois, il ennuie ou fait sourire de pitie les lecteurs serieux.—THIERS to STE. BEUVE, Lundis, iii. ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... whispered to the older boy, "not to go to Aunt Emily's to-night. Tell her we can't do without her—that we want her at home." He turned to the younger. "Dis a maman que tu vas pleurer si elle te quitte ce soir—qu'il faut qu'elle vienne t'ecouler dire ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... promised, since he knew his employer well enough to be positive that nothing short of an act of God would prevent his doing what he had planned to do. I was also aware of the fact that the sending apparatus of the Toreador's wireless equipment was sealed, and that it would only be used in event of dire necessity. There was, therefore, nothing to do ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... be thought or spoken of—I knew something of the dreadful and disgusting expedients to prolong life, which have sometimes been resorted to by famishing wretches. I had read how the pangs of hunger, and the still fiercer torments of thirst, had seemed to work a dire change even in kind and generous natures, making men wolfish, so that they slew and fed upon each other. Now, all that was most revolting and inhuman, in what I had heard or read of such things, rose vividly before me, and I shuddered at the growing probability that experiences ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... mode of explaining many things, and therefore very welcome to a narrator, but it would not be at all just towards Columbus to saddle upon him any such character. Here were men who had come out with very grand. expectations, and who found themselves pinched with hunger, having dire storms to encounter, and vast labours to undergo; who were restrained within due bounds by no pressure of society; who were commanded by a foreigner, or by members of his family, whom they knew to have many enemies at court; who thought that the Sovereigns themselves could scarcely reach them ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... their stores of water and provision: their numbers exhausted the inland country: the sea was remote, the Greeks were unfriendly, and the Christians of every sect fled before the voracious and cruel rapine of their brethren. In the dire necessity of famine, they sometimes roasted and devoured the flesh of their infant or adult captives. Among the Turks and Saracens, the idolaters of Europe were rendered more odious by the name and reputation of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the printer's. General Paralysis of the Insane is known to have this effect on the writing. It attacks its victims about the period of middle age—the age at which the deaths of all the Orvens who died mysteriously occurred. Finding then that the dire heritage of his race—the heritage of madness—is falling or fallen on him, he summons his son from India. On himself he passes sentence of death: it is the tradition of the family, the secret vow of self-destruction handed down through ages from father to son. But he must have aid: in these days ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... have acquired the habit of living on others in order to save themselves work and to lead an easier life. The poor wretches have made a sorry blunder. Their life is of the hardest. If a few establish themselves comfortably, dearth and dire famine await most of the rest. There are some—look at certain of the Oil-beetles—exposed to so many chances of destruction that, to save one, they are obliged to procreate a thousand. They seldom enjoy a free meal. Some stray into the houses of hosts whose victuals ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... this way of preparing the staple article of diet is largely responsible for that dire and frequent disease "cut him belly," and several other quaint disorders, possibly even for the sleep disease. The natives themselves say that a diet too exclusively maniocan produces dimness of vision, ending in blindness if the food is not varied; the poisonous principle ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... said Calchas, "dared profane Minerva's gift, dire plagues" (which Heaven forestall Or turn on him) "should Priam's realm sustain; But if by Trojan aid it scaled your wall, Proud Asia then should Pelops' sons enthrall, And children rue the folly of the sire."' His arts gave credence, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... had our few things loaded on the two colts, for they had fully decided to go with me, and I was not in the least put back by McMahon's dire forebodings. We shook hands with quivering lips as we each hoped the other would meet good luck, and find enough to eat and all such sort of friendly talk, and then with my little party on the one ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly |
