"Ruinous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... makes his will, and devises sundry chateaux en Espagne for the benefit of those concerned—The legacy duty in this instance not ruinous—He signs, seals, and dies. ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... did carry him through became plain enough to him afterwards: his faith in God was all the time growing—and that through what seemed at the time only a succession of interruptions. Nothing is so ruinous to progress in which effort is needful, as satisfaction with apparent achievement; that ever sounds a halt; but Wingfold's experience was that no sooner did he set his foot on the lowest hillock of self-congratulation than some fresh difficulty came that threw ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... passed a large building, with lights still twinkling in the windows. Presently the tall Highlander stood up and sniffed. Then motioning Waverley to do as he did, he began to crawl on all fours toward a low and ruinous sheep-fold. With some difficulty Edward obeyed, and with so much care was the stalk conducted, that presently, looking over a stone wall, he could see an outpost of five or six soldiers lying round ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... room for half a dozen times, trying to resolve what it would most become him to do in the present emergency. If his name were dragged before the courts,—if he should be shown up in the public papers as having been engaged in accommodation bills, that would certainly be ruinous to him. He had already learned from Lord Lufton's innuendoes what he might expect to hear as the public version of his share in these transactions! And then his wife,—how would she bear such exposure? "I will meet Mr. Sowerby at your ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... exactly how it will all happen. By the day after to-morrow there will be no more earth, no more sky; and I will tell you this, child: If, when Serapis falls, the universe does not crumble to pieces like a ruinous hovel, then the wisdom of the Magians is a lie, the course of the stars has nothing to do with the destinies of the earth and its inhabitants, the planets are mere lamps, the sun is no more than a luminous ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... removal of the galilee as being an encumbrance. The roof was ruinous, the walls were in bad condition; it was "neither ornamental nor useful"; it would cost a large sum to put it into decent repair. Happily this advice was not followed. In the course of the renovation then undertaken it was discovered that the remains of an older ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... castle called Dinas Bren, sometime builded by Brennus, as our writers do remember. Certes this castle is no great thing, but yet a pile sometime very strong and inaccessible for enemies, though now all ruinous as many others are. It standeth upon a hard rock, in the side whereof an eagle breedeth every year. This also is notable in the overthrow of her nest (a thing oft attempted), that he which goeth thither must be sure of two large baskets, and so provide to be let down thereto, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... character, and were productive of all his unhappiness. The neglect he incurred in those poetical studies to which he had devoted his hopes; his secret sorrows in not having formed a domestic union, from prudential motives, with one whom he loved; the ruinous state of his domestic affairs, arising from a seducing passion for creating a new taste in landscape gardening and an ornamented farm; and finally, his disappointment of that promised patronage, which might have induced him to have become a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... impossible it would be to prevail on any of the ladies there to take such a walk. The houses seemed scattered about here and there, apparently without any design, and looked, for the most part, either unfinished or ruinous. One feature of the scene alone recalled the villages of New England—the magnificent oaks, which seemed to add to the meanness and insignificance of the human dwellings they overshadowed by their enormous size and ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... in the hollow had its barn and out-buildings attached at right angles, with a cart-path leading thereto from the street; but at the top of the slope, on the other side of the schoolward path, stood a large, half-ruinous old barn, used only for storing surplus hay. The door of this great, gray, swaying structure usually stood open, and in it, on an old wreck of a wheelbarrow, sat Mindy Toggs, in fair or ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... shirks his tasks; and instead of thinking about his employer's interests, or his own self-improvement, gives his mind to trifles,—often to evil things, which in their ruinous effects upon his life are not trifles. As soon as he is free from his daily duties, he is off with his companions, having what they call a good time; his heart is with them even while his hands are employed in the shop ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... by the principal settlers to men of influence in the nation. But before any decisive measures could be taken, Virginia interfered, by instructing her representatives in Congress to make strong representations against the ruinous policy of ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... others, had made frequent efforts to call the people's attention to the only measure calculated to check the progress—the fatal progress of corruption, and its consequent effects, unjust and unnecessary war, profligate expenditure, the funding or swindling system, and the rapid annual increase of a ruinous and irredeemable debt. It will be said that these subjects will naturally be included in, and make part of, my history. They certainly will, but there is one circumstance connected with the events of 1816 and 1817, which is very imperfectly known to any of the reformers, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... much of him as of you," at last she said. "Such an engagement to you would be fraught with much misery, but to him it would be ruinous." ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... I, that could always catch The sunrise in one beam along the wall, The nests of June in April's mating call, And ruinous autumn in the wind's first snatch At summer's green impenetrable thatch— That always knew far off the secret fall Of a god's feet across the city's brawl, The touch of silent fingers ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... smash-up at this time, and that they are willing to go into this transaction, which they would not otherwise go into, because it seems the opinion of those best fitted to express judgment in New York that it will be an important factor in preventing a break that might be ruinous; and that this has been urged upon them by the combination of the most responsible bankers in New York who are now thus engaged in endeavoring to save the situation. But they asserted that they did not wish to do this if I stated that it ought not to ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... bivouacked corn-field a russet foil, the air a heady wine. Shelby thrilled with dumb pastorals and a vague longing to do and speak in keeping with the spirit of the scene. A tuft of oxeye daisies in the shelter of a ruinous worm fence attracted him, and he reined the cob from the highway to fetch them. To his bewilderment Ruth's ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... saving the life of one man, whom he was the first to hear faintly groaning under a heap of wreckage; and then, as he tells in the "postscript" to the book, scrambled back into the carriage to find the crumpled MS. of a portion of "Our Mutual Friend."[31] But even pluck is powerless to prevent a ruinous shock to the nerves. Though Dickens had done so manfully what he had to do at the time, he never fully recovered from the blow. His daughter tells us how he would often, "when travelling home from London, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... its crystalline facets than the opening chapter that tells of the pale, uncanny weaver of Raveloe in his stone cottage by the deserted pit. Some of us can remember such house weavers in such lonesome cottages on the Northern moors, and have heard the unfamiliar rattle of the loom in a half-ruinous homestead. How perfect is that vignette of Raveloe—"a village where many of the old echoes lingered, undrowned by new voices"—with its "strange lingering echoes of the old demon-worship among the grey-haired peasantry"! The entire ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... already quoted far below their usual price, and he, in common with all the street, had heard of the secret irresistible influence that was bearing down upon the daily sales. If Tonsor should come into market against him, the consequences might be ruinous. It was out of the question for him to stand up against any ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... Dilli, which is a Portuguese settlement on the north-west coast of Timor. A Portuguese naval officer boarded us in the outer roads, and piloted us through a narrow channel to the inner roads. It is a wretched-looking place; and the houses, small, dirty, and ruinous, were scattered without any order or symmetry in all directions. Van Graoul, who could speak Portuguese, landed with me, as I wished to pay my respects to the Governor. On each side of the town were two half-ruinous forts, on which were mounted some old iron guns of small calibre. ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... a most ruinous and dilapidated state, yet extremely curious; indeed not less so than the church. Its front to the west exhibits a row of three semi-circular arches, with an ornament on the archivolt altogether different from what I recollect to have seen elsewhere[5]. The inside corresponds in profuse ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... next, universal and compulsory education. No one can vote who cannot read and write. We believe that one man's ignorance should not countervail the just influence of another man's intelligence. Ignorance is not only ruinous to the individual, but destructive to society. It is an epidemic ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... from being thereto enough, Without the long, compulsive awe Of duty, that the bond of law Does oftener marriage-love evoke, Than love, which does not wear the yoke Of legal vows, submits to be Self-rein'd from ruinous liberty. Lovely is love; but age well knows 'Twas law which kept the lover's vows Inviolate through the year or years Of worship pieced with panic fears, When she who lay within his breast Seem'd of all ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... Kings are passing deathward in the dark Of days that had been splendid where they went; Their crowns are captive and their courts are stark Of purples that are ruinous, now, and rent. For all that they have seen disastrous things: The shattered pomp, the split and shaken throne, They cannot quite forget the way of Kings: Gravely they pass, majestic ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... the intrinsic dignity of their hereditary vocation, but they will also learn from it the difficulties of their situation, the dangers of usurpation, the inevitable fall of tyranny, which buries itself under its attempts to obtain a firmer foundation; lastly, the ruinous consequences of the weaknesses, errors, and crimes of kings, for whole nations, and many subsequent generations. Eight of these plays, from Richard the Second to Richard the Third, are linked together in an uninterrupted succession, and embrace a most ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... insisted that the monks of Fiesole should again leave their convent, and remove to that of San Marco, in Florence. Most unwillingly the brethren submitted, and immediately Cosimo set architects and builders to work to erect a new convent, for the old one was in a ruinous state. The new cloisters offered a noble field to the genius of Fra Angelico, and he labored for their decoration with his whole soul; though the rule of the order was so strict that the pictures in the cells could be seen only by ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... ranges, stealing the Circle Bar cattle and killing Circle Bar cowboys. Your father had trouble in keeping men; in order to surround himself with enough men to protect his cattle and resist the aggressions of Dunlavey's hired assassins he was forced to pay ruinous wages. ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... great indeed. Anton had the wagons reloaded and the freight properly secured. Full of his work, he scarcely looked around, and only realized at odd moments his singular entourage, and the exciting nature of the scene. It was a large square court, surrounded by low, ruinous wooden buildings, stables, and coach-houses, and having two entrances, one through the inn itself, and one through a gate opposite. It occupied a space of several acres, as is often the case with these hostelries ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... nineties. Fish had fallen to a ruinous price and for some temporary reason the fishing was poor. There had been bank kiting in Newfoundland's financial system. She had no railroads and few steamships. Her mines had not been exploited, and she did not know her own wealth in ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... had indeed put the besom of destruction into the hands of the Reformers; and that not one of all the buildings which had been polluted by the papistry—no, not one—had escaped the erasing fierceness of its ruinous sweep. The presence of the magistrates lent the grace of authority to the zeal of the people, and all things were done in order. The idols were torn down from the altars, and deliberately broken by the children with ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Palmer fell the first. We returned the fire with the greatest briskness that can be imagined; and so the firing continued for some time; but, unluckily, we were penned up in a demolished fort; there was no room to extend. The Spaniards endeavored to get in at the ruinous gate; and our party defended the same with the utmost bravery. Here was a terrible slaughter on both sides; but the Spaniards, who were five times our number, got at last, by dint of strength, the better; which, when I saw, that some ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... pre-determined what his enemies should accomplish. "Hast thou not heard long ago, how I have done it; and of ancient times, that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps."[504] In reference to a Covenant people to be continued to discharge their peculiar duties, and to provisions of grace, described in terms most beauteous, it is applied.[505] "Thus saith the Lord, the maker thereof, the Lord that formed it, to establish it; the Lord is his name."[506] ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... magnificent Madeley Court, Salop[1] (now, alas! in the last stage of desolation and decay, surrounded by coal-fields and undermined by pits), is honeycombed with places for concealment and escape. A ruinous apartment at the top of the house, known as "the chapel" (only a few years ago wainscoted to the ceiling and divided by fine old oak screen), contained a secret chamber behind one of the panels. This could be fastened on the inside by a strong ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... for educating clergymen intended for Wales, which I am going to see. I shall then start for Badnor by Tregaron, and hope soon to be in England. I have seen an enormous deal since I have been away, and have walked several hundred miles. Amongst other places I have seen St. David's, a wonderful half ruinous cathedral on the S. Western end of Pembrokeshire, but I shall be glad to get back. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... very quiet that night, and very dark. The few loiterers who observed the procession must have shrugged their shoulders and turned aside, zealous only to keep out of trouble. Such sights were not uncommon in the Savoy. They entered a high ruinous house on the east side, and after threading various passages reached a door which opened on a flight of broken steps where it was hard for more than one to pass at a time. Lovel heard the carriers of the dead grunting as they squeezed up with their burden. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... fertile, is now covered with aloe, cactus, and thorn, while an air of weary heat and desolation envelops it. Some idea of its size may be formed when I tell you that a thousand of its pagodas are known by name, while as many more are little but a heap of ruinous brickwork. ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... they would give him the ruin'd church or minster at Peterburgh; this they did accordingly, and he gave it to the town of Peterburgh for their use, to be employ'd as a parochial church, their own parish church being then very ruinous and gone ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... a toiling peon, afterwards to revolt against a system of slavery that even religion failed to make endurable; the neophyte turning his hand against his priestly instructor, equally his oppressor; revolt followed by a deluge of blood, with ruinous devastation, until the walls of both mission and military cuartel are left tenantless, and the redskin ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... of any duty whatsoever. That State is thus relieved from the payment of any part of the public burthens, and duties and imposts are not only rendered not uniform throughout the United States, but a direct and ruinous preference is given to the ports of that State over those of all the other States of the Union, in manifest violation of the positive ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... this old uncle died. Then mother and son said good-by to Aberdeen, and at length traveled southwards to take possession of their great house and broad lands. But the heritage was not so great as at first sight would appear, for the house was so ruinous that it was scarcely fit to live in, and the wicked lord had sold some of the land. However, as the sale was unlawful, after much trouble the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... not for any desire to give the treasure to others, but simply, so it seems, in obedience to a tyrannous instinct to lend the thought, the sight, another shape. I despair of defining the feeling. It is partly a desire to arrest the fleeting moment, to give it permanence in the ruinous lapse of things, the same feeling that made old Herrick say to the daffodils, "We weep to see you haste away so soon." Partly the joy of the craftsman in making something that shall please the eye and ear. It is not the desire to ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the broad plains of Mexico and Puebla; the first object which the morning sun greeted in his rising, the last where his evening rays were seen to linger, shedding a glorious effulgence over its head, that contrasted strikingly with the ruinous waste of sand and lava immediately below, and the deep fringe of funereal ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... desired shape if in harmony with the shape of the lamp. Lacquered painted tin shades are liked by some for lamps on writing tables. There should be a certain amount of uniformity in the style of the shades in a room, although they need not be exactly alike. Too much variety is ruinous to the effect of simple charm in the room. The chintz which is used for curtains will supply a motif for the painted shades if one wishes them, but if there is a great deal of chintz, plain shades will be more attractive. ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... forenoon, which has a princely appearance. Fochabers, the neighbouring village, is a poor place, many of the houses being ruinous; but it is remarkable, they have in general orchards well stored with apple-trees[355]. Elgin has what in England are called piazzas, that run in many places on each side of the street. It must have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... considering that there was an illustration to every number in which there was always a pool of blood, and at least one body, was cheap." An obliging correspondent writes to me upon my reference to the Fox-under-the-hill, at p. 62: "Will you permit me to say that the house, shut up and almost ruinous, is still to be found at the bottom of a curious and most precipitous court, the entrance of which is just past Salisbury Street. . . . It was once, I think, the approach to the halfpenny boats. The house is now shut out from ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... quarrels to which this stipulation gave rise led to the conquest of the country by the Marathas, at whose hands Mewar suffered more cruel devastation than it had ever been subjected to by the Muhammadans. Ruinous war also ensued between Jodhpur and Jaipur for the hand of the famous Udaipur princess Kishen Kumari at the time when Rajputana was being devastated by the Marathas and Pindaris; and the quarrel was only settled by the voluntary ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... reserving only Naples for the Bourbon king. The allies refused; they demanded the abandonment of the whole Spanish Empire without exception by the Duke of Anjou, refusing to call him king, and added thereto ruinous conditions for France herself. Louis would not yield these, and the war ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... had been before. The Golden Rule was no more a common practice than it had ever been. Yet the country was rich, bursting with money. Big business throve, even while it howled to high heaven about ruinous, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... effort, acumen, and enthusiasm expended in almost any other occupation will bring you financial returns tremendously out of proportion to your most successful compensation in the law, measured by mere money. The money-making conception of our profession is not only erroneous, but ruinous; for you must remember, to begin with, that you are practising ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... was seen to be ruinous throughout, and filled with a violent and abominable reek. And it also teemed with everything that could disgust the eye or the mind: the door-posts were begrimed with the soot of ages, the wall was ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... chief and his men were unused to the management of a station in the new country; they had everything to learn, and at a ruinous cost. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... sanctions within the domain of verifiable consequences was a doctrine to be resisted strenuously. With the high sacerdotalist it amounted to a denial of the Christian mysteries; to the Broad Churchman it was ethically inadequate and ignoble; to the scholastic professor of divinity it meant ruinous materialism. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... none that thou lovest so, and that will love thee to mortal sorrow, if thou goest without care to thy end too soon?" The desert, the dark monastery, the acacia tree, the ancient palm, the ruinous garden, disappeared. He only saw a face which smiled at him, as it had done 'by the brazier in the garden at Cairo, that night when she and Nahoum and himself and Mizraim had met in the room of his house by the Ezbekieh gardens, and she had gone out to her old life ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... authority, to the verse. . . . . Yet neither everywhere must old words be stuffed in, nor the common Dialect and manner of speaking so corrupted thereby, that, as in old buildings, it seem disorderly and ruinous. But as in most exquisite pictures they use to blaze and portrait not only the dainty lineaments of beauty, but also round about it to shadow the rude thickets and craggy cliffs, that by the baseness of such parts, more excellency may accrue ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... upper end of the Temple, were encumbered by sheepfolds, goat-yards, poultry-yards, donkey-sheds, clusters of mud huts, refuse-heaps, and piles of broken pottery. Upon the roof of the portico there stood a large, rambling, ruinous old house, the property of the French Government, and known as the "Maison de France" . . . Within its walls the illustrious Champollion and his ally Rosellini lived and worked together in 1829, during part of their long sojourn at Thebes. Here the naval officers ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... been fulfilled in our sight. At this very time, the monometallists of the United States are pointing to all sorts of causes and irreconcilable matters to explain the ruinous fall in prices. They not only allege all the causes here assigned, but many more peculiar to this country; and, after the fashion of all who oppose any reform in the interests of producing labor, they particularly and even ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... of sleep would in time enforce itself, while eating did nothing of the sort. You might sleep for nothing, but someone had to be paid if you ate. He cheerfully paid eighty cents for his repast. The catsup as an appetizer had been ruinous. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... to get out of eyeshot as speedily as he could. He was not in the humor to be challenged, and he was conscious of making a very conspicuous mark upon the snow. Just on his left hand there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and a large porch before the door; it was half-ruinous, he remembered, and had long stood empty; and so he made three steps of it, and jumped into the shelter of the porch. It was pretty dark inside, after the glimmer of the snowy streets, and he was groping forward with outspread hands, when he stumbled over some substance which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... have got on better had Sievers himself been at my side. Nor did I spare Mr. Beckendorff; but, on the contrary, I said a few things which, had he been in his senses, must, I imagine, have gone home. Do you know I finished by drawing his own character, and showing the inevitable effects of his ruinous policy: and what do you ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... at the same time, laments are heard, as in former days, sad and desponding accents. Defeats have succeeded to victories, and they contribute to raise doubts as to the validity of Edward's claims.[601] What if, after all, this ruinous war, the issue of which is uncertain, should turn out to be an unjust war as well? Verses are even composed on the subject of wrongs done to inoffensive people in France: "Sanguis communitatis Franciae quae nihil ei ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... not take for his subjects grand or novel conformations of objects; he has, you see, no precipices, no forests, no frowning castles,— nothing that a poet would take at all times, and a painter take in these times. No; he gets some little ponds, old tumble-down cottages, that ruinous chateau, two or three peasants, a hay-rick, and other such humble images, which looked at in and by themselves convey no pleasure and excite no surprise; but he—and he Peter Paul Rubens alone—handles these every- day ingredients of all common landscapes as they are handled in nature; ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... impressed with its importance, and the more anxious we are to urge your strict and faithful observance of it. We shall only add thereto, at present, one other request, and that is, that you would avoid gaming in all its varied forms—the ruinous and miserable consequences of this most pernicious evil, are so notorious, and so generally acknowledged, that we cannot too forcibly endeavour to guard you against it. It subjects you to the control of the most degrading passions, and too generally leads to the loss of fortune, reputation, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... in strict moderation at the right time and in the right place), he indulges in them on all occasions shamelessly and excessively. He commits hideous crimes when crime is presented to him as part of his duty; his craze for work is more ruinous than the craze for drink; when he can afford secondary education for his sons you find three out of every five of them with their minds lamed for life by examinations which only a thoroughly wooden head could ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... enough. Those that had looted the stores of ready-made clothes put on three or four suits, and, not yet satisfied, took under their arms all they could lay their hands on. Others drove off in vehicles, carrying with them bags filled with loot.... The Christian population saved itself from the ruinous operations of the crowd by placing holy ikons in their windows and painting crosses on ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... months to have supplied the total annual consumption as it actually was. And those plants could have been multiplied indefinitely. In like manner the agricultural product of the country was always kept far within its possibility, for a plentiful crop under the profit system meant ruinous prices to the farmers. As has been said, it was an admitted proposition of the old economists that there was no visible limit to production if only sufficient demand for consumption could ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... extravagance. During the Rebellion the City had been despoiled by both parties under various pretexts. After the Restoration the great fire consumed a vast amount of city property and necessitated a ruinous outlay in the reconstruction of entire streets. To this was added the shutting up of the Exchequer by Charles II., and the seizure of the charter when the City refused any longer to provide the means for his selfish and disgraceful prodigality. A better era, however, ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... temperance before its modern tee-total false pretences; or lauding some Richard Cromwell's choice of a quiet country life, before the turbulent honours of a proffered Protectorate; while Thales, with his all but old English proverb of "more haste, less speed," would apply admirably to Sultan Mahmoud's ruinous reforms; or to the actual injury gulled Britain has done to the condition of negroes in general by a vastly too precipitate abolition of the slave-trade: a vile evil, indeed, but a cancer of too long creeping to be cured in a day, a rottenness too deeply seated ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... lodged was in the lordly quartier of the Faubourg St. Germain; the neighbouring streets were venerable with the ancient edifices of a fallen noblesse; but their tenement was in a narrow, dingy lane, and the building itself seemed beggarly and ruinous. The apartment was in an attic on the sixth story, and the window, placed at the back of the lane, looked upon another row of houses of a better description, that communicated with one of the great streets of the quartier. The space between their abode and their opposite neighbours was ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... storms remote but murmur on thine ear, Nor waves in ruinous uproar round thee roll, Yet, yet a moment check thy prone career, And curb the keen resolve that ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... iron to cost, but Mr. Garrett, nothing dismayed, employed another person to attend his store, put on his leather apron, took to his anvil, and in the prosecution of his trade, as an edge-tool maker, prepared to support himself as long as this ruinous rivalry was kept up. Thus in the sweat of the brow of one of the heroes and philanthropists of this age, was laid the foundation of one of the most extensive business houses that our city now boasts. His competitor saw that no amount of rivalry ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... self-respect against the foe—so long as she sternly keeps the door of her heart shut against her deadly enemy—she is safe. But let no one forget this: she is safe only so long as she does not surrender. When the enemy is once master of the place, I emphatically repeat, the ruinous consequences are as great, if not greater, and more irreparable than in the lowest classes of society. Throw a piece of precious gold into the mud, and tell me if it will not plunge deeper than ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... course absurd. The most obvious point of the situation to her was that she dared not marry him. In her sober senses she would not want to do such a ruinous thing. Already she was beginning to escape from the thrill of his physical presence. He had taken the future for granted, and during that mad quarter of an hour she had let him. Carried away by his impetuosity and her own desire, she had consented to ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... hour every evening (I believe at ten o'clock); and any Jew found without its precincts after that time, is liable to punishment and a heavy fine. The street is narrow and dirty, the houses wretched and ruinous, and the appearance of the inhabitants squalid, filthy, and miserable—on the whole, it was a painful scene, and one I should have avoided, had I followed my own inclinations. If this specimen of ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... and to his ruin. Thus even in my case it will be seen that it was all my master's want of kindness that forced me into a very different sort of life to that which my parents intended for me; into one which, though it was not altogether so ruinous, was perhaps more perilous than many others, and on which I can only now look back in wonder that I have been spared to tell my ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... industries out of existence, threw vast quantities of goods into the American markets, completely swamping native productions, and making it impossible for native manufacturers to compete with the importations. It was this ruinous relapse from comparative prosperity that prompted the agitation for a protective tariff. As further evidence of British purpose to do all the damage possible to American interests, even in time of peace, it may be mentioned ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... immediately: and, to Mr. Blyth's great delight, inspected the sketch of the old five-barred gate with the most extraordinary and flattering attention. "Wants doing up, don't it?" said Mat, referring to the picturesquely-ruinous original of the gate represented. "Yes, indeed," answered Valentine, thinking he spoke of the creased and ragged condition of the paper on which the sketch was made; "a morsel of paste and a sheet ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... "I thought the place miserable enough yesterday evening, while now, though the sun does give it a sort of golden glaze, the miserable huddle of shabby huts looks ten times worse, for the light exposes its ruinous state." ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... like a tomb My little parlour sounds which only now Yearned like some holy chancel with his voice. So still! so empty! Surely one might fear The walls should meet in ruinous collapse That held no more his music. Yet they stand Firm in a foolish firmness, meaningless As frescoed sepulchre some Pharaoh built But never came to sleep in; built, indeed, For—that grey moth to flit in ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... describe the inveterate tenacity with which a drunkard's habits cling to him through life? He may repent—he may reform—he may look with actual abhorrence upon his past profligacy; but amid all this reformation and compunction, who can tell the moment in which the base and ruinous propensity may not recur, triumphing over resolution, remorse, shame, everything, and prostrating its victim once more in all that is destructive and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... King then reigning, and who was of another family from that of the sleeping Princess, being gone a-hunting on that side of the country, asked, what were those towers which he saw in the middle of a great thick wood? Every one answered according as they had heard; some said that it was a ruinous old castle, haunted by spirits; others, that all the sorcerers and witches of the country kept there their sabbath, or nights meeting. The common opinion was that an Ogre[1] lived there, and that he carried thither all the ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... the duty on British spirits produced L1,636,504. But I reply, first, that it is obligatory on good governments to protect the people against the effects of their vices; and second, that, if the people were not indulged in the ruinous habit of gin-drinking, and destroyed by it in body and mind, they would be able to pay a greater sum to the revenue from productions of a salutary nature. Such are the pernicious effects of drunkenness, and the numerous miseries created by drinking ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... another he wormed his way, till he struck an old ruinous communication trench which led in the right direction. The Turks must have been forced back in the past week, and the Russians were now in the evacuated trenches. The thing was half full of water, but it gave Peter a feeling of safety, for it enabled him ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... write me a few more particulars, for your letters are very unsatisfactory, and I am full of anxiety. Make Richardson write,—what has he better to do? God bless thee, my dear, dear Dick,—would it were over and all well! I am afraid, at any rate, it will be ruinous work. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... of a most ruinous strife. The expenditure of many households is adjusted by what their neighbors have, not by what they themselves can afford to have; and the great anxiety is as to who shall have the finest house and the most costly equipage. ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... of giving are manifold, and he now felt a novel glow of sheer beneficence. He was a victim to the craze for philanthropy. Too young to realize its insidious character, he was to embark upon a ruinous career. Ever it is the first step that costs. That carelessly given knife—with something to dig stones out of a horse's foot—was to wipe out, ere night again shrouded Newbern Center, a fortune supposed to be as lasting as the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... disorder was 'decidedly liver;' that it was occasioned by his eating his meat before his bread instead of after it, and drinking at the end of the first course instead of the beginning of the second; that he had only to correct these ruinous habits, and that he would then regain ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... happily prevails between the employers and the workmen in our great industry as another of the most important elements of its future prosperity. It confers honor on all concerned that by our Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration, ruinous strikes, and even momentary suspensions of labor, are avoided; and still more that masters like our esteemed Treasurer, Mr. David Dale, should deserve, and that large bodies of workmen should have the manliness and discernment ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... think the system of long payments which exists here is a wholesome one as regards the habits of the fishermen?-I think it is most ruinous. I think I have had very good opportunities of judging of the effect of the system upon the people, being intimately acquainted with them, and having received the statements in private of a great many of them; and I cannot conceive ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... better—Christian love and Christian charity seem to have slept in those days, and no man cared for the moral elevation of the wild daring fellows. True indeed, they were accused of lending to vessels in distress a 'predatory succour' more ruinous to them than the angry elements which assailed them. In 1705 a charge of this kind was made by Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, and was sternly repelled by the Mayor and Corporation of Deal; and Mr. Pritchard mentions that only one charge of plundering ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... daylight. But why spend a single breath in referring to such miserable specimens of humanity? The world knows what they are; and Canada ought to have some slight acquaintance with them: as they built her into the worthless Grand Trunk at a ruinous figure, and, like her present, leading, political juggler, Sir John A., fleeced her in every direction that a collop could be ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... choose to interfere with your mode of life, unwise and ruinous as I may consider it," he said, "as long as it does not interfere with your discharge of duty. But to-day you are clearly incapacitated for labor, and I have a right to complain. If it happens again, I shall be obliged to ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... do not hesitate to say, and have no fears of being contradicted by those capable of critisizing is on the whole ruinous to any daguerreotype, and to a perfect one absolutely disgusting. The day may come when accurate coloring may be obtained in the camera. Until that day, if we cannot lead taste into the right channel, we will endeavor to give such instructions that Daguerreotypists may ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... Little did Malcolm think as he gazed around it that it was the room in which he had first breathed the air of the world; in which his mother had wept over her own false position and his reported death; and from which he had been carried, by Duncan's wicked wife, down the ruinous stair and away to the lip of the sea, to find a home in the arms of the man whom he had just left on his lonely couch torn between the conflicting emotions of a gracious love for him and the frightful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... sands stretch level and far, Around this little oasis of Tamarind trees. A curious, Eastern fragrance fills the breeze From the ruinous ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... replied the old gentleman. "You know that at present these shares are scarcely saleable except at a ruinous discount, and it would be a pity to part with them just now, seeing that there is some hope of improvement at this time. There is nothing for it but to sell my estate, and I don't think there will be enough left to buy butter to my bread after this unhappy affair is settled, for it ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... Gyneconitis, the hall of the women. To thrust oneself into the Gyneconitis of even a fairly intimate friend is a studied insult at Athens, and sure to be resented by bodily chastisement, social ostracism, and a ruinous legal prosecution. The Gyneconitis is in short the Athenian's holy of holies. Their women are forbidden to participate in so much of public life that their own peculiar world is especially reserved to them. To invade this world ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... been marked by fate. The Portuguese burned it in the last century, and Charles III. restored it just in time for the French to destroy it anew. Its indestructible walls alone remain. Now, after many years of ruinous neglect, the government has begun the work of restoration. The vast quadrangle is one mass of scaffolding and plaster dust. The grand staircase is almost finished again. In the course of a few years we may expect to see the Alcazar ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... will be ruinous to the reputation of the United States," had said President Washington. With this in mind, General Wayne declared for drilling his troops hard, at Legionville, below Pittsburg. Infantry, artillery and cavalry were kept ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... too, he probably knew by experience—he certainly knew by native shrewdness and acquired observation—that to look too much on the wine when it is red, or on the cards when they are parti-coloured, is ruinous to health and fortune; but he thought not over badly of any man who did these things. Still it is possible to admit this in him, and to stop short of that idea of a careless and reckless viveur which has so often been put forward. In particular, Lady Mary's ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... graceless vagabond had struck the outskirts of Red Dog in a cyclone of dissipation which left him a stranded but still rather interesting wreck in a ruinous cabin not far from Peg Moffat's virgin bower. Pale, crippled from excesses, with a voice quite tremulous from sympathetic emotion more or less developed by stimulants, he lingered languidly, with ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... The ruinous stone wall in this and three other sketches, which is a frequent sort of fence in the neighbourhood, gives a characteristic propriety to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... remember an insolent fellow taking advantage of the ruinous state the house was in to make his way into my study," said ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... name, I grant you, at present; and are anxious to promote the marriage. We are all most anxious to bring to a close this ruinous litigation. Now, I am told that the young lady feels herself hampered by some childish promise ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... "From whence come you, Mr. Smack?" says the afflicted young lady; "and what news do you bring?" Smack, nothing abashed, informed her he came from fighting with Pluck: the weapons, great cowl-staves; the scene, a ruinous bakehouse in Dame Samuel's yard. "And who got the mastery, I pray you?" said the damsel. Smack answered, he had broken Pluck's head. "I would," said the damsel, "he had broken your neck also." "Is that the thanks I am to have for ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... purpose. The tube is pierced with holes to admit the water. In wet meadows, these tubes laid deep would be durable and efficient, and far more reliable than brush or even stones, because they may be better protected from the admission of sand and the ruinous working of vermin. Their economy depends upon the price of the wood and the cost of tiles—which are far better if ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... was of small dimensions, but as the wealth of the community increased it had been enlarged from time to time, and, it would appear, with an ever-increasing idea of comfort. Of this completed building as the monks knew it, a large part remained, some of it in a more or less ruinous state it is true, but much of it incorporated in the work of those subsequent builders who had succeeded in converting Aylingford Abbey into one of the most picturesque residences in Hampshire. It faced away from the stream, and the long, massive front, besides being the most modern part of ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... Royal to the thousand reports and protests, remonstrances and replications, of the whole ringing and raging, public mind of England! This was the age of pamphleteering. Every sage who could, or could not, write, flung his pamphlet in the teeth of the party whose existence he conceived to be ruinous to his country, or perhaps prejudicial to his own prospect of a sinecure. The journals printed their columns in gall; the satirists dipped their pens in concentrated acid; the popular haranguers dashed the oil of vitriol of contempt in each other's faces. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... that to so abandon that position under the circumstances would be utterly ruinous; that the necessity under which it was to be done would not be fully understood; that by many it would be construed as a part of a voluntary policy; that at home it would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its adversaries, and go far to insure to the latter a recognition abroad; ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... America was set free from injudicious and ruinous impositions,—its revenue was improved, and settled upon a rational foundation,—its commerce extended with foreign countries; while all the advantages were secured to Great Britain, by the act for repealing certain duties, and encouraging, regulating, and securing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... feathers of this his nestling dove? He was discomfited at every turn this evening. He had hoped that Kitty would notice that his little imperial had been retrimmed; and he had bought a set of sleeve-buttons, antique coins, at a ruinous price, in hopes they would please her. She looked at neither the one nor the other. Yet she had a keen eye for dress—too keen an eye indeed. Only last night she had spent an hour anxiously cutting old Peter's hair and beard, and Mr. Muller could not but remember that he was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... There were ruinous buildings on it: barracks and storehouses and offices, an airship dock and an air-traffic control tower from which all the glass had long ago vanished, a great steel telecast tower that had fallen, crushing ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... Stuart, to whom, indeed, the imbecility of the King and the ill regulated habits of Rothsay left no other choice of a leader. Were I, therefore, to break the bond which I have so lately formed with Albany, the consequence must be civil war, an event ruinous to poor Scotland while threatened by invasion from the activity of the Percy, backed by the treachery of March. No, Balveny, the punishment of Albany must rest with Heaven, which, in its own good time, will execute judgment on him and ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... by his last words, was one of those people, of whom we see so many at every step we take through life, who ask advice when they need it, are convinced of its soundness when given, and yet, though their natural good sense assents to dispassionate reasoning, return to their old, foolish, absurd, and ruinous opinions ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... not, or cannot, support two Pantomimes, several Circuses, and a Show like BARNUM'S, all through one winter, why try the experiment? especially when the luxe of Pantomime, fostered by DRURIOLANUS, is so enormous, that any competitor must be forced into ruinous and even reckless extravagance, in order to enter into anything like rivalry with The Imperator who "holds the field" for Pantomime, just as he holds "The Garden" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... their lines coming from the Cape Colony, whilst the other lines are favoured by a charge of less than half that. The burdens placed upon the mining industry by the excessive charges imposed for political purposes were, in the case of the poorer mines, ruinous. The right which the Company had to collect the Customs dues for account of the State, to retain them as security for the payment of interest on their shares and debentures, and to impose a charge for collection quite disproportionate to the cost, was another ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... in any respect with such exalted tears? Do we mourn for sin, our own sin—the deep insult which it inflicts on God—the ruinous consequences it entails on ourselves? Do we grieve at sin in others? Do we know any thing of "vexing our souls," like righteous Lot, "from day to day," with the world's "unlawful deeds," the stupid hardness and obduracy of the depraved heart, which ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... to be a blessing to the nation. Repeal I know to be a mere delusion. I know it to be impracticable: and I know that, if it were practicable, it would be pernicious to every part of the empire, and utterly ruinous to Ireland. Is it not then absurd to say that, because I wished last year to quiet the English people by giving them that which was beneficial to them, I am therefore bound in consistency to quiet the Irish people ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... afterwards fully confirmed by the receipt of the dispatch of our consul in the City of Mexico, with the accompanying documents, which are herewith transmitted. Besides, it was reasonable to suppose that he must see the ruinous consequences to Mexico of a war with the United States, and that it would be his interest ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... appearance; and as we had to search for an hotel, and were at last obliged to be content with one far from inviting, our first impression was by no means agreeable; nor does Lisieux offer anything to warrant a change in the traveller's opinion who considers it dreary, slovenly, and ruinous. There is much, however, to admire in the once beautiful cathedral, and the church of St. Jacques, both grand specimens of the massive architecture of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... assistants, engineer, chemist, and metallurgist, with assistant assayers, etc., all highly qualified men. But it will be asked, how are many struggling mines in sparsely populated countries to obtain the services of all these eminent scientists? The reply is by co-operation. One of the most ruinous mistakes of the past has been that each little mining venture has started on an independent course, with different management, separate machinery, etc. Can it then be wondered at that our gold-mining is ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... a long series of ages. But although these superstitions were originally invented by savages, they still have the power of regulating the fate of many civilized nations, who are not less tenacious of their chimeras, than their rude progenitors. These systems, so ruinous in their principles, have been variously modified by the human mind, of which it is the essence, to labour incessantly on unknown objects; it always, commences by attaching to these, a very first-rate importance, which it afterwards ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... employed as a forester in Russia, describes the consequences of the general war upon the woods in that country as already most disastrous, and as threatening still more ruinous evils. The river Volga, the life artery of Russian internal commerce, is drying up from this cause, and the great Muscovite plains are fast advancing to a desolation like that ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... the ardent curiosity of youth, longed to behold the place in which a long line of their ancestors had lived, and eagerly availed themselves of his invitation to accompany him. Their imaginations were fired by all they had heard of the old chateau; and the ruinous condition into which it had fallen of late years, only added fuel to the flame. Clara remembered, or fancied that she remembered, a vast dark building, with huge towers and buttresses; she often ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... waving in the blaze. Scott rode through the lines cheering the men, and gallantly leading them on; Jessup and his third battalion turned the right flank of the enemy after a dreadful conflict; Ketchum had kept up a cross and ruinous fire; and Towson, from his dread artillery, scattered grape like hail amongst them. On, on! cried Leavenworth, the day's our own, my boys! Just then a shot struck down my comrade, Harrison, ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... the influence of those who solicited exemptions. Whether this was the case or not is uncertain, and not very material. What is certain is, that the rule by which the chamber was invariably regulated, viz. that of consulting no other interest but that of the poor consumer, is as vicious and ruinous as the one so much approved of now-a-days, of attending only to the interest of the proprietors and producers. Government, doubtless, should attend to the vital matter of the subsistence of the people; ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... with cheerfulness and alacrity. But the orders forbidding the sale of intoxicating liquors to soldiers were all right, and an imperative military necessity. If the men had been allowed unlimited access to whisky, and the like, that would, in my opinion, simply have been ruinous to the good order, discipline, and efficiency of the army. That statement is based on events I saw myself while in the service, and which occurred when, in spite of the orders, the men managed to obtain liquor without let or hindrance. The scenes that would ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... James Peake, made similar exclamations that morning; for the collapse of Eardley Brothers, the great earthenware manufacturers, who were chiefly responsible for the ruinous cutting of prices in the American and Colonial markets, was no ordinary trade fiasco. Bursley was staggered, especially when it learnt that the Bank, the inaccessible and autocratic Bank, was an unsecured creditor for ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... is an exquisitely tender and pathetic farewell, but not the stifled cry of a man who has received a crushing blow. Not easily, but yet without any ruinous convulsion, he makes that transition from love to "mere friendship" which passionate men ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... triumph at the end; but stories of long, painful quests after hidden treasure,—mysterious enchantments thrown around certain persons by witch or wizard, drawing the subject in charmed circles nearer and nearer to his royal or ruinous destiny,—strange spells cast upon bewitched houses or places, that could be removed only by the one hand appointed by Fate. So I pored over the misty legends of the San Grail, and the sweet story of "The Sleeping ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the profits made by selling lands to the gullible "tender feet" from the east, who, when they have bought these farms at enormous prices, find to their utter discouragement, that they must also buy water for irrigation from monopolists, at ruinous rates, else the soil is worthless. Here as nowhere else is illustrated the truth of the Scriptural adage: "To him that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... veteran loyalist. "The Gazette here says that many of your countrymen agree with you about the new one. At the declaration of hostilities the flags of the shipping at Boston were placed at half-mast and a public meeting denounced the war as ruinous and unjust." ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... their arrearages of wages paid in Continental currency worth four pence on the dollar, were now about to be discharged to return to their needy families carrying only paper promises of the United States to pay. These certificates could be disposed of only to brokers and that at ruinous rates. What was to become of a veteran who was disabled? Congress had already authorised the several States to look up needy soldiers of the Continental service and pay them five dollars a month, such sums to be ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... supposition that one man is as much a born ruler as another, which means a levelling down of the best talent of the community, for that is the only way in which capacities can be equalised—a very wasteful and ruinous expedient, and one that the born leaders of the people will not long endure. Then there is the proverbial fickleness of democracy, one day all aglow, and cooled down the next, never pursuing any course steadily, in foreign policy least of all, though ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... at naught the laws? Not so. But there are men in this city who have long time had ill will to me, not bowing their necks to my yoke; and they have persuaded these fellows with money to do this thing. Surely there never was so evil a thing as money, which maketh cities into ruinous heaps, and banisheth men from their houses, and turneth their thoughts from good unto evil. But as for them that have done this deed for hire, of a truth they shall not escape, for I say to thee, fellow, if ye bring not here before my eyes the man that did this thing, I will hang ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... which a great prize might be drawn. To do Vargrave justice, money with him had never been an object, but a means; he was grasping, but not avaricious. If men much richer than Lord Vargrave find State distinctions very expensive, and often ruinous, it is not to be supposed that his salary, joined to so moderate a private fortune, could support the style in which he lived. His income was already deeply mortgaged, and debt accumulated upon ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... borrow through you." Dumont never would accept a favor from any one. He regarded favors as profitable investments but ruinous debts. ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... applied to a case where most of us could appreciate the result—namely, to the Paradise Lost. If, said Coleridge, this Bentley could err so extravagantly in a case of mother-English, what must we presume him often to have done in Greek? Here we may see to this day that practice carried to a ruinous extent, which, when charged upon tinkers, I have seen cause to restrict. In the present case from Macbeth, I fear that COR. is slightly indulging in this tinkering practice. As I view the case, there really is no hole to mend. The old ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... desert-girdled Timbuctoo, we drove several miles over a rough road, passed the Devil's Den unmolested, crossed a fretful little streamlet noisily working its way into a valley, where it turned a lonely, half- ruinous mill, and climbing a steep hill beyond, saw before us a wide sandy level, skirted on the west and north by low, scraggy hills, and dotted here and there with dwarf pitch-pines. In the centre of this desolate region were some twenty or thirty small ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... evident to all in the retouching, which many photographs receive. Likeness is so dependent on those surfaces connecting the features or upon the light and shade of the features, that any tampering with them in a sensitive part is ruinous. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... bounty-jumpers, and there was a host of them. Yet the measure was popular with soldiers, and Congress was unanimously in favor of it. Great was the amazement of his fellow-members when the young member from the Nineteenth Ohio district rose in his seat and earnestly opposed it. He objected that the policy was ruinous, involving immense expense, while effecting little good. He claimed that the country had a right to the service of every one of its children at such a crisis, ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Had not the ruin of the Conway cabal and the profound trust of the people lifted Washington into a position of authority, the fears and predictions of men like my friend Wilson would have been fully justified. Intrigues, ruinous methods of finance, appointments given to untried foreign officers who were mere adventurers— all these and baser influences were working toward the ruin ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... admitted the right of former rulers of all descriptions to alienate in perpetuity the land, the principal source of the revenue of the state, in favour of their relatives, friends, and favourites, leaving upon the holders the burthen of proving, at a ruinous cost in fees and bribes, through court after court, that these alienations had been made by the authorities we declare competent, before the time prescribed; and we have thus given rise to an infinite deal of fraud, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... he had hitherto accomplished, was compelled either to desist for want of ready money, and throw his labourers on the parish, or to have recourse to the pernicious system of discounting bills at a ruinous rate of interest. The manufacturer, in despair, was reduced to close his works, and the operatives went forth to combine, or starve, or burn; for the hand of the ministry was upon them likewise, and their burden ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... thrown away. There are moments in the lives of most of us in which it seems to us that there will never be more cakes and ale. George, however, talked of the children, and reminded his father that in matters of business nothing is so ruinous as ruin. 'If you've got to get your money out of a thing, it should always be in working order,' he said. Michel acknowledged the truth of the rule, but again declared that there was no money to be got out of the thing. He yielded, however, and promised that the repairs should be made. ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... severally addressed his Most Sacred Majesty, representing the ill consequences which the said coinage may have upon this kingdom. And lastly whereas it is universally agreed, that the whole nation to a man (except Mr. Wood and his confederates) are in the utmost apprehensions of the ruinous consequences, that must follow from the said coinage. Therefore we whose names are underwritten, being persons of considerable estates in this kingdom, and residers therein, do unanimously resolve and declare that we will never receive, one farthing or halfpenny ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... path?" bellowed the officer, while the line of trembling Indians, told to halt above, and driven on by blows below, surged up and down upon the ruinous steps of the Indian road, until the poor old man fell groveling on ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... grass which reached nearly to her waist, she felt very bold and adventurous, for the children seldom ventured on this side—it was unknown ground. Certainly the house looked far more mournful and ruinous here than it did in front. Wooden shutters were fastened outside most of the windows, and one of them had swung back and gave a dismal creak now and then on its rusty hinges. Trailing masses of convolvulus and ivy and Virginian creeper were hanging about everywhere, ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... rode Geraint into the castle court, His charger trampling many a prickly star Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones. He looked and saw that all was ruinous. Here stood a shattered archway plumed with fern; And here had fallen a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: And high above a piece of turret stair, Worn ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... rather than evil from goodness. Loud the tumult in Mecca surrounding the fane of the idol;— Naked and prostrate the priesthood were laid—the people with mad shouts 10 Thundering now, and now with saddest ululation Flew, as over the channel of rock-stone the ruinous river Shatters its waters abreast, and in mazy uproar bewilder'd, Rushes dividuous all—all rushing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... face to face with the ironic interrogation of sky and mountains, when his anxieties came back, more persistent and importunate. Sometimes they took the form of merely material difficulties. How, for instance, was he to meet the cost of their ruinous suite at the Engadine Palace while he awaited Mr. Spragg's next remittance? And once the hotel bills were paid, what would be left for the journey back to Paris, the looming expenses there, the price of the passage to America? These questions would fling him back ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... and bushes they shot at the soldiers on the skyline as if they were stalking deer," says Mr. Russell. There was "continuous musketry fire, steady and fatal on the one side, wild and ineffectual on the other." The Boers reached the top, and began to put in their ruinous work. Presently the British "broke and fled for their lives down the rugged steep." The Boers had won the battle. Result in killed and wounded, including among ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Melissa was so far recovered 1870 taking the key of that with her. When Melissa was so far recovered A few medical and odoriferous herbs 1851 medinical [sic] 1870 medicinal The out buildings were generally in a ruinous situation 1870 ... in a ruinous condition through several upper rooms to the chamber she inhabited 1811ff ... the chamber they inhabited West, all was wilderness, from a brook which wound along at a little ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... rather overwhelming fortune which you so long ago set aside for me to accumulate until my marriage is at last at your disposal again. Because Gray told me that Acton was forced to borrow such frightful sums at such ruinous rates. And now you need ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... a great and, as I think, beneficial change has taken place in the practice of medicine. The habit of the English "general practitioner" of making his profit out of the pills and potions he administered was ruinous to professional advancement and the dignity of the physician. When a half-starving medical man felt that he must give his patient draught and boluses for which he could charge him, he was in a pitiable position ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... which was on a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the prospect which is, perhaps, as pleasant as any in the world." When Raleigh was imprisoned the See of Durham again obtained the house. The stables, facing the Strand, were then in a very ruinous condition, and were pulled down. On their site was built an exchange, called the New Exchange, which obtained some popularity. This was erected partly on the pattern of the Royal Exchange, and was opened by King James I. This, Strype tells ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... expedition only a few weeks before and given as my reasons for so doing, the "utter and entire destitution of the country," and that in the face of this we were again sent through the same country, it would be ruinous on all sides to return again without first meeting the enemy. Moreover, from all the information General Washburn had acquired, there could be no considerable force in our front and all my own information led to the same conclusion. To be sure my information was exceedingly meagre ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... little fellows, our colleagues." His eyes twinkled behind his rimless spectacles. "Just amuse yourself with these photographs awhile. Not in your line, perhaps, but interesting to us glow-worms that flit about in ruinous places. I 'll be with you ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... softly shining eyes, close to the horse; and she laid her hand upon its belly and stroked it. And Cassandra saw her and reviled her, saying, "Thou shame to Ilium, and thou curse! The Ruinous Face, the Ruinous Face! Cried I not so in the beginning when they praised thy low voice and soft beguiling ways? But thou too, ...
— The Ruinous Face • Maurice Hewlett
... what will happen? You have raised 400,000 men; I am about to raise 200,000. Germany, who was beginning to breathe after so many ruinous wars, is about to see again all her wounds reopened. I shall reconstruct the places of Silesia, instead of evacuating that province and the Prussian States, as I wished to do. Europe will be all up in arms. Soon the very women must ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... little Schulenburg; the light of him snuffed out in this manner on a sudden. It is said he had thoughts of resigning, so indignant was he: no doubt he went home to Landsberg gloomily reflective, with the pipe-clay of his mind in such a ruinous condition. But there was no serious anger, on Friedrich's part; and he consoled his little Schulenburg soon after, by expediting some promotion he had intended him. "Terribly proud young Majesty this," exclaim ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... adventures. The mansion house of Graden stood in a bleak stretch of country some three miles from the shore of the German Ocean. It was as large as a barrack; and as it had been built of a soft stone, liable to consume in the eager air of the seaside, it was damp and draughty within and half ruinous without. It was impossible for two young men to lodge with comfort in such a dwelling. But there stood in the northern part of the estate, in a wilderness of links and blowing sand hills, and between a plantation and the sea, a small pavilion or belvedere, of modern design, which was exactly ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... guided the mind from infancy into those narrow depths of bigotry from which it was never to escape. Commercial despotism was joined to political and religious despotism. The hands of the government were on every branch of industry. Perverse regulations, uncertain and ruinous taxes, monopolies, encouragements, prohibitions, restrictions, cramped the national energy. Mistress of the Indies, Spain swarmed with beggars. Yet, verging to decay, she had an ominous and appalling strength. Her condition was that of an athletic man penetrated with disease, which had not yet unstrung ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... at an arched gateway, battlemented and flanked with turrets, one whereof was totally ruinous, excepting the lower story, which served as a cow-house to the peasant, whose family inhabited the turret that remained entire. The gate had been broken down by Monk's soldiers during the civil war, and had never been replaced, therefore presented no obstacle to Bothwell and his party. The avenue, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... rest of her soil to be restored in the condition of the Wytschaete ridge—a horror of desolation unfit for man or even for nature's growths; and there seemed little prospect of driving the Germans out except by a succession of ruinous tactical victories. Germany, moreover, was playing up to the Stockholm Conference and suggesting restoration without the accompaniment of ruin; and it was clear that if the Entente was to liberate Belgium, it must be done by other methods and at ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard |
