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Annihilating   /ənˈaɪəlˌeɪtɪŋ/   Listen
Annihilating

adjective
1.
Wreaking or capable of wreaking complete destruction.  Synonyms: annihilative, devastating, withering.  "A devastating hurricane" , "The guns opened a withering fire"
2.
Making light of.  Synonyms: devastating, withering.  "A devastating portrait of human folly" , "To compliments inflated I've a withering reply"






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"Annihilating" Quotes from Famous Books



... their maps; the number was too great. The forest of Gremilly, northeast of the point of attack, was just a great cloud shot through with lightning-flashes. A deluge of shells fell on the French positions, annihilating the first line, attacking the batteries and finding their mark as far back as the city of Verdun. At five o'clock in the afternoon the first waves of infantry assaulted and carried the advanced French positions in the woods of Haumont and Caures. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... and hidden for a moment from the eyes of his disciples? The demonstration of the simplest truths of astronomy destroyed at a blow the legends that were most significant to the early Christians by annihilating their symbolism. Well might the Church persecute Galileo for his proof of the world's mobility. Instinctively she perceived that in this one proposition was involved the principle of hostility to her most cherished conceptions, to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... coat Looked with contemptuous scorn? Oh yonder see, Carelessly basking in the mid-day sun They lie, and heed him not;—little thinking While there they triumph in the blaze of noon. How soon the dread annihilating hour Will come, and death seal up their eyes, Like his, forever. Now moralizer Retire! yet first proclaim this sacred truth; Chance rules not over Death; but, when a fly Falls to the earth, 'tis Heaven that ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French

... extinguished, as the first spark is extinguished which the steel gives birth to. He could not confide himself to Wilhelm; the understanding which this very confidence would give birth to between them, must separate them from each other. It was humiliating, it was annihilating. But for Sophie? No, how could he, after that, declare the love of his heart? how far below her should he be placed, as the child of poverty and shame! But the mother of the family? Yes, she was gentle and kind; with a maternal sentiment she extended to ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... relation to his violence of speech; that such excesses, on his part, made her think of a retired General whom she had once seen playing with toy soldiers, fighting and winning battles, carrying on sieges and annihilating enemies with little fortresses of wood and little armies of tin. Her husband's exaggerated emphasis was his box of toy soldiers, his military game. It harmlessly gratified in him, for his declining years, the military instinct; bad words, when sufficiently numerous and arrayed in their ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... tremble all over like an aspen leaf. My system, which I thought proof against every accident, had vanished: I acknowledged an avenging God who had waited for this opportunity of punishing me at one blow for all my sins, and of annihilating me, in order to put an end to my want of faith. The complete immobility which paralyzed all my limbs seemed to me a proof of the uselessness of my repentance, and that conviction ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... not need that to realize her perceptions were swallowed up by magnitude. Hitherto the power of her eyes had been unknown. How splendid to see afar! She could see—yes—but what did she see? Space first, annihilating space, dwarfing her preconceived images, and then wondrous colors! What had she known of color? No wonder artists failed adequately and truly to paint mountains, let alone the desert space. The toiling ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... developments and disclosures, while the insurgent leaders, in their underground world watched warily too, and pushed forward with undiminished confidence their final preparations, when they would, out of the dark, strike suddenly their liberating and annihilating blow. This awful state of suspense, of the most watchful suspicion and anxiety on one side, and of wary and anxious preparations on the other, continued for about five or six days, when it was ended by ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke

... But there still remained the other one, the really annihilating effect of the expense on the nest-eggs, and especially on Mrs. Wilkins's, which was in size, compared with Mrs. Arbuthnot's, as the egg of the plover to that of the duck; and this in its turn was overcome by the vision vouchsafed to Mrs. Wilkins, revealing to her the steps to be taken for its overcoming. ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... infant city from its dead mother in so Caesarean a fashion, had set his heart upon calling the town after himself, and took the contrary decree of the Roman Senate very much in dudgeon. He therefore left the country in a huff, and revenged himself by annihilating vast numbers of unfortunate Gauls, Britons, Germans, and other barbarians, who happened to come ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... four weary years, a poor prisoner, and that prisoner a woman—the Countess of Buchan—whose frightful crime consisted in having assisted at the coronation of her liege sovereign, Robert the Bruce. In the construction of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway the line was driven, with annihilating effect, through the centre of the old and rich Roman Station on the Wall of Antoninus at Castlecary. Some years ago, as I passed along the line, I saw the farmer in the immediate neighbourhood of this station busily removing a harmless wall,—among the last, if not the ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... fire is what I wish to see kindled in our women,—burning white and strong and steady, through all weakness, timidity, vacillation, treachery in Church or State or press or parlor, scorching, blasting, annihilating whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie,—extinguished by no tempest of defeat, no drizzle of delay, but glowing on its steadfast path till it shall have cleared through the abomination of our desolation a highway for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... orders for his troops to be in motion early in the morning. On the 30th was fought the decisive battle of Second Manassas, and the plains above Bull Run were again the scene of a glorious Confederate victory, by Lee almost annihilating the army of John Pope, "the Braggart." Had it not been for the steady discipline, extraordinary coolness, and soldierly behavior of Sykes and his regulars at Stone Bridge, the rout of the Federal Army at Second Manassas would have been but little less ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... took their revenge. Their own guns were but a small part of the huge orchestra of "heavies" and field batteries which played the devil's tattoo upon the German positions in our old trenches. It was annihilating, and the German soldiers had to endure the same experience as their guns had given to Canadian troops on the same ground. Trenches already battered were smashed again. The earth, which was plowed with shells in their own attack, was flung up again ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... and his pride Humbl'd by such rebuke, so farr beneath His confidence to equal God in power. Yet soon he heal'd; for Spirits that live throughout Vital in every part, not as frail man In Entrailes, Heart or Head, Liver or Reines, Cannot but by annihilating die; Nor in thir liquid texture mortal wound Receive, no more then can the fluid Aire: All Heart they live, all Head, all Eye, all Eare, 350 All Intellect, all Sense, and as they please, They Limb themselves, and colour, shape or size ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... three masts to his eye; the White Whale churning himself into furious speed, almost in an instant as it were, rushing among the boats with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered appalling battle on every side; and heedless of the irons darted at him from every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank of which those boats were made. But skilfully manoeuvred, incessantly wheeling like trained chargers in the field; the boats for a while eluded him; though, at times, but by a plank's breadth; while all the time, Ahab's unearthly ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... times, she would clasp with both hands a ring that her lover had given her, which at night she wore suspended from her neck, so that it lay upon her heart. At other times, she would be consumed by a passion for annihilating all thoughts and considerations for self in her relations with Perigal; she was urged by every fibre in her body to merge her being with his. When thus possessed, she would sometimes, if she were at home when thus moved, go upon her knees to pray long ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... court-martial was in keeping with that prelude. No effort was spared in stifling all the evidence on Lord Cochrane's side, and in adducing false testimony against him. Logbooks and witnesses alike were tampered with. In support of his scheme for annihilating the whole French fleet, Lord Cochrane produced in court a chart showing the relative position of the various points in Aix Roads, and of the overhanging fort which was to protect the French ships. This chart, left lying upon the table, was tacitly accepted by the authorities of ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... natural, human and divine right permits their acts because the intention justifies them is all wind: but their crime condemns them to infernal fire, as do also the offences and injuries done to the Kings of Castile, by destroying these their kingdoms and annihilating (as far as they possibly can) their rights over all the Indies. These, and none other, are the services the Spaniards have rendered, and do render to-day to the said sovereign kings in these countries. 27. By this just and approved title, did this tyrant captain ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... fashion, whither every body goes that pleases; though, when they ask leave, the answer is, "Je ne le defends ni le permets." This is the first time that ever the will of a King of France was interpreted against his inclination. Yet, after annihilating his Parliament, and ruining public credit, he tamely submits to be affronted by his own servants. Madame de Beauveau, and two or three high-spirited dames, defy this Czar of Gaul- Yet they and their cabal are as inconsistent ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... Horse's band, and the so-called hostiles or renegades of the Western bands. Hostilities began in 1872, culminating in 1876 with the famous "Custer fight," which practically ended the struggle, for after annihilating Custer's command the Indians fled into British America. Four years later Sitting Bull was induced to come in and settle down upon the ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman

... hold out against the avalanche of lead. First the right of a brigade went to pieces and then its center and the left of another brigade south of it were forced back. Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry held fast. The Second Essex Regiment also made some little success for their side by annihilating a small detachment of Germans; but that was more than offset by the breaking of the center of another brigade, after which the First Suffolks were surrounded and put out of the fight. Finally the Germans pushed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... twitching of his face. She felt that she too ought to be theatrical, that she ought nobly to scorn his infamous suggestion, his unwarrantable attack. Even supposing that she had decided to sell herself to the old pasha, did that concern him? A dignified silence, an annihilating glance, were all that he deserved. But she was not capable of this ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... the towers of Osborne, to Ryde. Again the telegraph asked the question, and again there was a negative answer. Then we cut across the Solent towards Southsea, watching the weird evolutions of a 35-knot torpedo-boat. It darted about, annihilating the small distances of the Solent and making a strange, buzzing noise like some foul fly. Vomiting flames and sparks, it trailed a cloud in the air and snow upon the water. While we were crawling across the river it had made a dozen journeys. Now it would ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... are stained with purple, the trees tremble, there is fury even in the clouds, and in the obscurity the sombre heights—Mont Saint-Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit—ap-pear dimly crowned with throngs of apparitions annihilating one another. ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... impelled to it by a love vital enough to survive the frenzy of that terrible moment, mighty enough to make its own law, and justify itself against the natural remorse. But to have perpetrated a dreadful murder (and such was his crime, unless love, annihilating moral distinctions, made it otherwise) on no better warrant than a boy's idle fantasy! I pity him from the very depths of my soul! As for myself, I am past my own or ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... 'Yankees' in London at the close of the Stock Exchange day. It was enough. New York had still four hours' trading in front of her. The strategy of pointing to Manderson as the saviour and warden of the markets had recoiled upon its authors with annihilating force, and Jeffrey, his ear at his private telephone, listened to the tale of disaster with a set jaw. The new Napoleon had lost his Marengo. He saw the whole financial landscape sliding and falling into chaos before him. ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... with all the contradictions and the self-annihilating characteristics which Strauss gives it, be worthy of religious veneration and be addressed by the name "God," as Strauss addresses it?—"Our God does not, indeed, take us into His arms from the outside (here one expects, as an antithesis, a somewhat miraculous process ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... Jesuits appeared to him destructive of social order; but, more than this, he considered it as impious, as a deflection from the form of Christian economy, as a mischievous seduction of the Church into a slough of self-annihilating cupidity and concupiscence. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... turned his head and spat disgustedly into the grass and looked back slightingly with other annihilating remarks close behind his wide-apart teeth, but instead of speaking he made an unbelievably quick motion with his hand. The blow smacked loudly upon Dunk's cheek, and so nearly sent him out of the saddle that he grabbed for the ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... Magellines, a Portuguese, who, being slighted in his own country, went over to the Spaniards, and pointed out that by sailing west the east would be attained, and so found the straits that bear his name, and the Ladrones and Philippines, annihilating the Papal boundary line by taking and breaking it ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... money—leastwise you don't owe me nothin' till ye kin pay it," and she darted an annihilating glance ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... tiny machine-ships capable of maneuvering far more rapidly than the giants. Tremendous induction beams snapped out through the dark, star-flecked space, to meet tremendous screens that threw them back and checked them. Then all the awful power of annihilating matter was thrown against them, and titanic flaming screens reeled back under the force of the beams, and the screens of the ships from Outside flamed gradually violet, then blue, orange—red—the interference was getting ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell

... of Lord Cornwallis, the arms of France and Spain in the American seas had been attended with such signal success, that the hope of annihilating the power of Great Britain in the West Indies was not too extravagant to be indulged. Immense preparations had been made for the invasion of Jamaica; and, early in April, Admiral Count de Grasse sailed from Martinique with a powerful fleet, having on board the land forces and artillery which ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... by her abundant meal and the strong tea which three times daily heartened her for battle. She laid aside her bonnet, and carefully folded the veil. Then she looked about her, and, persistently ignoring all the empty chairs, fixed an annihilating gaze on one where ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... seemed the personification of Ares, the destroyer, the waster of cities. The pirate was gazing fixedly on the blazing wreck and ruin. His firm lips were set with an expression grave and hard. He took no part in the annihilating ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... a love that is selfish as well as a love that is wholly self-annihilating, and an inexperienced child is incapable of ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... weapon was hate. But after learning the futility of it, sentient creatures discovered another, the succeeding evolutionary emotion. It is pure savagery in its destructive power, a thousand times more effective in annihilating ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones

... their needlework, their paint-boxes, their trinkets of ivory, of silver in fillagree, of mother-pearl, and of tortoise-shell. Even the calendar, at this time so defective in Europe, that Pope Gregory was urged to the bold undertaking of leaping over, or annihilating, ten days, was found to be, in China, a national concern, and the particular care of government. Decimal arithmetic, a new and useful discovery of the seventeenth century in Europe, was the only system of arithmetic in use in China. In a word, when the nobility of England were sleeping on ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... was fighting for that supremacy which experience had shown to be the condition of its existence. Not that any Emperor ever cherished the thought of destroying the Papacy any more than the Pope dreamed of annihilating the Empire. Many passages have been cited to prove that Frederick contemplated the establishment of a Church of his own in Sicily. Here perhaps he did not aim at anything more than Henry VIII afterwards accomplished in England or the barons ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... adopted. The effect of these several improvements in the means of locomotion, has been to greatly increase the public activity, and to promote the general comfort and well-being. They have tended to bring the country and the town much closer together; and, by annihilating distance as measured by time, to make the whole kingdom as one great city. What the personal blessings of improved communication have been, no one has described so well as the witty ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... skirmishing order, were speedily driven back by the Dervishes, and retired into the zareba. When the latter came near enough to see the small British force, a shout of exultation rose from their ranks, for they felt certain now of surrounding and annihilating the ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... double-shotted my guns; double applause descended on myself; but I remarked with some awe, though not repenting of what I had done, that double confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my enemies. Amongst them loomed out in the distance my "annihilating" friend, who shook his huge fist at me, but with something like a grim smile about his eyes. He took an early opportunity of paying his respects to me—saying, "You little devil, do you call this writing your worst?" "No," I replied; "I call it writing my best." The annihilator, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... the rashest zeal the national records of the conquered people; hence it is that the Irish people deplore the irreparable losses of their most ancient national memorials, which their invaders have been too successful in annihilating. The same event occurred in the conquest of Mexico; and the interesting history of the New World must ever remain imperfect, in consequence of the unfortunate success of the first missionaries. Clavigero, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... relinquish his desire of universal dominion. On the other side, it was believed that Napoleon had formed the design of invading England. Had he been able to do so it would have been less with the view of striking a blow at her commerce and destroying her maritime power, than of annihilating the liberty of the press, which he had extinguished in his own dominions. The spectacle of a free people, separated only by six leagues of sea, was, according to him, a seductive example to the French, especially to those among them who bent unwillingly ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... while Dan strolled mournfully back to the bench. Then Prescott turned, bent on annihilating his good old friend Darrin, if possible. In great disgust, Dave struck out. The look on the Navy fan's faces could ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock

... actually existing. For this devolution of power, to the people at large, includes in it a dissolution of the whole form of government established by that people, reduces all the members to their original state of equality, and by annihilating the sovereign power repeals all positive laws whatsoever before enacted. No human laws will therefore suppose a case, which at once must destroy all law, and compel men to build afresh upon a new foundation; nor will they make provision for so desperate an ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... this time, and was confronting her adversary with a look almost capable of annihilating a less daring foe than Ada Irvine. Quite undaunted by the fear of future punishment, and recognizing only the great wrong this girl was doing her, she said, "I think you are a female Judas, Ada, and your true character will come to light some day. ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... enemy of dirt, dust, untidiness, and of every kind of irregularity, as the cat is the born natural enemy of the mouse. The sight of dirt, in fact, gave her a quiet kind of delight, because she foresaw the pleasure of annihilating it. Irregularity was just as hateful to her. She could not sit still if one ornament on the mantelpiece looked one way and the other another way, and she would have risen from her deathbed, if she could have done so, to put a chair straight. She was not, therefore, aggrieved ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... woman for you—a really wonderful woman, unobtrusive, devoted to her husband, almost annihilating herself for him, and, what is very noteworthy, she denies herself in studies to which she is much attached, and for which she has a remarkable capacity, merely in order that she may the better sympathise with him. Then her care ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... itself was quite tolerable; the terrible, annihilating thing about it was the painting that sprawled over the middle of the board. A handsome yellow lion with the face of a man and with wavy mane, standing erect; in his front paws he held a boot, apparently of patent-leather. Beneath this representation was printed the following: You may ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... in importance to the two primary consequences, the overthrow of the principle of secession and the destruction of slavery. Thus, this tremendous convulsion would bring out of the chaos a new order in the political world, by annihilating secession, and by perpetuating the Union and banishing all fear of its dissolution; in the social, by substituting free men for slaves; in the financial, by a permanent adjustment of tariffs and taxation; and in the commercial, by the prohibition of bank ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Judith and Arnold would be playing tennis, oblivious of the heat, and Aunt Victoria would be annihilating the tedious center of the day by sleep. Nobody would interrupt them for hours. How they would talk! How they had talked! As she thought of it the golden fortnight hummed and sang about Sylvia's ears ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... bent upon annihilating Mike was diverted by the intriguing spectacle of this strange four-armed creature refusing to be clubbed to death. So Mike was able to get in some telling blows that felled three more ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis

... am just in the act of annihilating with a logical stroke a multitude of grumblers and croakers. If this world does not belong exclusively to man, and the other races have as much right here as he, and, consequently, a claim to their proportion of land, water, and sky, and their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... the result he comes to is, that they could, in one minute and a half, dispose of 210 men on the opposite deck. This would amount to the destruction of the whole crew stationed on the upper deck! The undoubted possibility of such a summary mode of annihilating an enemy, must soon change the system of warfare, and at least demands grave consideration. We make no comment upon this, as we should be inclined to do were we not announcing the forebodings of a naval officer, who must be supposed to see cause of apprehension ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... struck the Minister-President on the shoulder as he stooped over his dying servant, then falling between his feet exploded with a terrific concentrated violence, striking him dead to the ground, finishing the wounded man and practically annihilating the empty sledge in the twinkling of an eye. With a yell of horror the crowd broke up and fled in all directions, except for those who fell dead or dying where they stood nearest to the Minister-President, and one or two others who did not fall ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... new faith uproot the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic process may be possible—in Hawaii, where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal race: such a process is most decidedly impossible in Japan—nay, it is a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his kingdom on earth. It behooves us to take more to heart the following words of a saintly man, devout Christian ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... cars, annihilating space at the rate of sixty miles an hour, but few passengers ever give a thought to the telegraph operators of the road stuck away in towers or in dingy little depots, in swamps, on the tops of mountains, or on the bald prairies and sandy deserts of the west; and yet, these selfsame telegraph ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... It consists in a love as deep as it is universal, as conscious as it is unspeakable; a love that can no more be reasoned about than life itself—a love whose presence is its all-sufficing proof and justification, whose absence is an annihilating defect: he who has it not cannot believe in it: how should death believe in life, though all the birds of God are singing jubilant over the empty tomb! The delight of such a being, the splendour of a consciousness ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... journey from Augusta, Georgia, to New York was an affair of eleven or twelve days; it is now performed in three. Steam and railroad are, in fact, annihilating time and space in this country. In proof of it, I can safely assert that if a traveller visiting the South-west, say, from Savannah to New Orleans, will be at the trouble of recollecting this book in the year 1837, he will find the account of the difficulties of my journey extremely amusing; since, ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... certain Oriental schools of thought, together with various Western offshoots from them, which are entirely founded on the principle of annihilating all desire. Reach that point at which you have no wish for anything and you will find yourself free, is the sum and substance of their teaching; and in support of this they put forward a great deal of very ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... believed them buried under the ashes of time; and behold they reappeared, just the same as those characters traced in sympathetic ink when held before a fire. In an instant they unrolled themselves before his memory, with the instantaneousness of a dream annihilating time ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... spite of this, is there any degree of insolence to which he does not proceed? Not content with annihilating cities, does he not manage the Pythian games,[n] the common meeting of the Hellenes, and send his slaves to preside over the competition in his absence? [Is he not master of Thermopylae, and of the passes which ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes

... reign, and without the merit of the avowal—adsum qui feci! gave him all its dread responsibilities. An old despot surviving his greatness while retaining the stinging irony of its title—a saint amid the standing reminiscences of his adulteries, expiating his pleasures by annihilating those of others, and tormenting consciences to save his own—his suffering and downcast people became at length disabused but too utterly of the base apotheosis of his person and character, so long maintained by him in the name of a false glory ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... said Mr. Penny, with an annihilating look at a corner of the school chimney, "I don't quite stomach her, if this is it. Your plain music well done is as worthy as your other sort done bad, a' b'lieve, ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... Warren Hastings did, by the said proceedings, which were contrary both to law and to good faith, constitute a double government, thereby destroying and annihilating all government whatever; and, by his said orders to the military officers, did prepare for open resistance by arms, exposing thereby the settlement, and all the inhabitants, subjects of or dependent on the British government, whether native or European, not ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... A tall clump of perfect asters grew at her side. The little spot was as dreamy and witching and evasive as any retreat of fairies and dryads in ancient forests. Into it Norman Douglas bounced, scattering and annihilating its charm in a moment. His personality seemed to swallow the place up. There was simply nothing there but Norman Douglas, ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... masses, and as clouds before the intellectual sight (see above, no. 38); and those who have been conceited of their learning from this source perceive still less. But those who have used the sciences as means of invalidating and annihilating the things that belong to the church and to faith, have entirely destroyed their Intellectual, and see in the dark like owls, seeing falsity for truth and evil for good. The spirits of Jupiter, from intercourse with such persons, concluded that the sciences occasion shade and blindness; it was ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg

... gradual if certain extinction. But they both agreed in desiring to conceal from their community all premature opening into the regions lighted by the sun; both were humane, and shrunk from the thought of annihilating so many millions of creatures; and the pictures I drew of our life, highly coloured as they were, saddened them. In vain I boasted of our great men—poets, philosophers, orators, generals—and defied the Vril-ya to produce their equals. "Alas," said Zee, "this predominance of the few over ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... deal and crimson merino) to carry my books; the washing table opposite turned into a cabinet with another coronal of shelves; and Chaucer's and Homer's busts in guard over these two departments of English and Greek poetry; three more busts consecrating the wardrobe which there was no annihilating; and the window—oh, I must take a new paragraph for the window, I am out ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... same elegant diction, 'When psychological education comes in, common sense is annihilated.' Everybody seems to be sitting round this child in an adoring fashion. It did not seem to occur to anybody that we do not particularly want even a child of twelve to talk about annihilating superstition; that we do not want a child of six to talk like a child of twelve, or a child of twelve to talk like a man of fifty, or even a man of fifty to talk like a fool. And on the principle ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... ours had suddenly flashed into their vision? We agreed that, in any case, not one of them—or any other person of true imagination—would call abominable a wonderful piece of mechanism with the power of flattening mountains into plains, triumphing over space, annihilating distance; a machine combining fiercest energy with the mildest docility. No, only old fogies would close their hearts to a machine fit for the gods, and pride themselves on being motophobes forever. We felt ourselves, car and all, to be worthy of this magic way, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... chap frae Enbro'," said Andra, collecting all his spleen into one tremendous and annihilating phrase—"him that tummilt aff the stane—that there's a feck o' paddocks [a good many frogs] up there i' the bog. He micht come up here an' guddle for paddocks. It wad be safer for the like o' him!" The ironical method is the favourite mode or vehicle of humour among the common orders in Galloway. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... the third estate to be impressed towards him; but the promoters of the revolution, those who wanted it complete and subversive of the old government, those men who were so small a matter at the outset, either in weight or in number, had too much interest in annihilating M. Necker not to represent as pieces of perfidy his hesitations, his tenderness towards the two upper orders, and his air of restraint towards the commons" [Memoires de Malouet, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... ultra and extravagant courses. Carlstadt was a type of such men. He was learned, sincere, and amiable, but did not know where to stop; and the experiment was now to be tried, whether it was possible to introduce a necessary reform, without annihilating also all the results of the labors of preceding generations. Carlstadt's mind was not well balanced, and to him the reformation was only a half measure, and a useless movement, unless all the external observances of religion and the whole economy of the church were destroyed. He abolished, or ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... extending her hand to him with one of her beaming disarming smiles, and annihilating all that was most obtrusively democratic in him at once by her pleasant manner. 'I'm a friend of your son's, Mr. Berkeley, and I've come here to see him about very particular private business—in short, on an errand ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... save death, was mute: Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry For quarter or for victory, Mingle there with the volleying thunder, Which makes the distant cities wonder How the sounding battle goes, If with them, or for their foes; If they must mourn, or must rejoice In that annihilating voice, Which pierces the deep hills through and through With an echo dread and new. * * * * * * * From the point of encountering blades to the hilt, Sabres and swords with blood were gilt; But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering over the universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do great things. Within the limits of his short tether he had tumbled about, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater singleness of purpose than many of the blatant personages whose company ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... for the first time noticed the murmurs of the Tarpeian rock; he had noticed the dark, threatening glances which were directed at him from all sides. He felt the danger which menaced him, and he was determined to remove it from his person by annihilating ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... of Nashville came nearer than any other to being a really annihilating victory. Out of the forty thousand men Hood had at first in Tennessee not half escaped; and of the remainder not nearly half were ever seen in arms again. As an organized force his army simply disappeared. The few thousands saved from the wreckage of the ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... words with extraordinary loudness. The heavens rang with them, as if calling him to account; for those were the very words Freya would have to use. It was an annihilating question; it struck his consciousness like a thunderbolt and brought a sudden night upon the chaos of his thoughts even as he walked. He did not check his pace. He went on in the darkness for another three ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... iron way at a speed of fifty or sixty miles an hour; steamships moving on every sea, defiant of tide and wind, at the rate of fifteen or twenty miles an hour; and the electric telegraph outstripping all else, and practically annihilating time and space. ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... well as Nelson that his comrade, next to himself, was to play the leading part in not only assuring a victory, but in completely annihilating the French and Spanish fleets. Yet the British Government of that day only counted the services he had rendered to the nation worthy of a peerage, plus the same pension as Nelson's widow; i.e. he was to have a pension ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... an arrow up the road. The noise of the tempest was audible. Closer it was coming, crushing, rending, annihilating all before it. The way grew darker. The terrified pony scarce touched the ground. His only will was to go forward, and he still obeyed a firm use of the bit. But who could hope to outrun a hurricane? Twelve miles an hour against ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... against unity; difference against agreement; particularity against generality; individuality against society. Manifoldness, nevertheless, instead of annihilating, enriches unity; difference, instead of destroying agreement, gives it variety; particularities, instead of putting an end to generality, increase its content; individuals, instead of breaking the harmony of society, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... dawn upon us. We have a strong and united Government, evidently as firmly fixed in the confidence of the Queen as in that of the country, and supported by a powerful majority in the House of Commons—an annihilating one in the House of Lords. The reign of order and tranquillity has been restored in Wales, and let us also add, in Ireland, after an unexampled display of mingled determination and forbearance on the part of the Government. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... allowed the master to stand before her in bootless expectation. He did not interrupt her, but with a refinement of cruelty that ought to have done him credit in his own eyes, waited till the universal silence had at length aroused Annie to self-consciousness and a sense of annihilating confusion. Then, with a smile on his thin lips, but a lowering thunder-cloud on his brow, he ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... as I can venture to offer an opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our being in existence, the highest object that human beings can set before themselves, is not the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilating of the unknown; but it is simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its boundaries a little further from our little sphere ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... the chimneys, instead of assisting in the composition of the groups of roofs, stand out in staring masses of scarlet and black, with foxes and cocks whisking about, like so many little black devils, in the smoke on the top of them, interrupting all repose, annihilating all dignity, and awaking every possible conception which would be picturesque, and every imagination which would be rapturous, to the mind ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... spark which now circles round the world, annihilating time and space, was evolved; it flashed down the wire; the ocean could not put it out; the dry powder received it; the massive rock burst into fragments; a decided shock was felt on board the barge, and a turmoil of gas-bubbles and dead or dying fish came ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... picked up my pen for the express purpose of annihilating you at one fell swoop. Even were such the case, I do not flatter myself that your impending doom would cause you to miss meals or lose sleep, for you have become somewhat used to being knocked off the Christmas tree by theological disputants from the back districts. At least ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... dear," said the Duke, the proud blood of his race coming to his aid in a perfect and commanding coolness in the face of the terrible danger that faced him, "you will find three cans of JOBSON's Patent Fire Annihilating Essence. It is advertised as infallible. Give one to the butler, take one yourself, and give the third to me. This appears to be a good opportunity for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various

... screaming of vast forces that clutched at the tower as if in fury because the normal processes of nature had been defied. Would those forces attain their revenge? Was the tower about to thunder down upon the Castle of Manzecca, annihilating her and us, the secret and its possessors? For a moment I would have welcomed even ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... capabilities of the South were now fairly pitted against the almost exhaustless resources of the North. Grant's plan was to keep constantly hammering Lee's army, conscious that it was the last hope of the Confederacy. The idea of thus annihilating an army was terrible, yet it seemed the only way ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... in that woman the faculty of annihilating or of traversing space, if you obtain a certainty that here, in Paris, she sees and hears what is said and done in Nemours, you must admit all other magnetic facts; they are not more incredible than these. Ask her for some one ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... increase in the size and number of the cities, as compared with the country, is a great factor in the spread of neurasthenia. Then, too, the introduction of so-called time-saving, i.e. distance-annihilating instruments, such as the telephone, telegraph, railroad, etc., have acted not so much to save time as to increase the number of things done, seen, and heard. The busy man with his telephone close at hand may be saving time on each transaction, but by enormously increasing the number ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... the planet alternate periods of tranquillity and convulsion, the former enduring for ages, and resembling the state of things now experienced by man; the other brief, transient, and paroxysmal, giving rise to new mountains, seas, and valleys, annihilating one set of organic beings, and ushering in the creation of another. These theories, however, are not borne out by a fair interpretation of geological monuments; but, on the contrary, nature indicates no such cataclysms, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... 'll have her hands full to look after her own family.' Well, I thought of you all, an' some of you had families, an' some of you had to go out fur day's work; an' then there 's some people's hands I would n't want to see the child fall into." (This with an annihilating glance in Mrs. Warren's direction.) "You know what the Bible says about the sins of the father; well, that child needs proper raisin': so in this way the Lord showed it to me that it was my dooty to take up the ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... hard one, and it fired his southern blood still more. He leaped up, and seizing a large stick which lay upon the ground, he rushed towards his unhappy servant, with the intention of annihilating him upon the spot. Dandy's senses came to him when he saw Archy fall, and he was appalled at the result of the conflict. He had struck the blow upon the impulse of a momentary rage, and he would have given any thing ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic

... throughout, Vital in every part, not as frail man, In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins, Cannot but by annihilating die. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... justification of him, and a passionate condemnation of me. "He had no doubt I deserved the flogging. He did not believe I was sick; I was only endeavoring to get rid of work. My dizziness was laziness, and Covey did right to flog me, as he had done." After thus fairly annihilating me, and rousing himself by his own eloquence, he fiercely demanded what I wished him to ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... less Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that 's made To a green ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... After annihilating this scoundrel emeritus by the lightning look of an honest man insulted, the Colonel rushed off, carried away by a thousand contrary emotions. He was suspicious, indignant, ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac

... "mounted warriors" in the west, and "ungovernable vermin" in the south. Against these savages war was probably long continued, the invaders gradually widening their area, founding new states, driving back the natives into the mountains and deserts, and finally so nearly annihilating them that only a small remnant remained. The descendants of these, the Meaou-tsze, mountain-dwellers, still remain hostile to China, and hold their own in the mountain strongholds against ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... or paint it or something," was the lucid answer, as the corpulent lady threw herself against Mr. Hubbard, nearly annihilating him in her effort to clear ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... is coarse and limited, And yet we sail along and search no more, And look no farther, though the ear is pall'd With the vile din of tame monotony, The taste perverted, judgment led astray, By soul-annihilating idleness, By universal, strengthless poverty, Which leans upon its neighbour for support, And lifts the eye for sanction, or assent, To weakness still ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham

... this stupendous force is evolved, concentrated and regulated by science from the most unpromising of substances, cold water. Nothing man has discovered or imagined is to be named with the steam engine. It has no fellow. Franklin capturing the lightning, Morse annihilating space with the telegraph, Bell transmitting speech through the air by the telephone, are not less mysterious—being more ethereal, perhaps in one sense they are even more so—still, the labor of the world performed by heating cold water places Watt and his steam engine in a class ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... on her, and told her she was a child and knew nothing about it—their favourite way of annihilating her; and then Alda, in her excitement, walked with Wilmet to the school, leaving Cherry, as usual, to wash up the breakfast things. She felt a conviction that all this accounted for the weary oppressed look, broken ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... numbers of Washington's army is erroneous, even if it refers only to effective men, and his schemes for annihilating Washington's army would probably not have been so easily executed as he imagined. Still the army was very weak. Marshall says that although the total of the army exceeded 17,000 men (February, 1778), the present effective ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... of Mr. Effingham had deceived Aristabulus, who did not anticipate any proof so completely annihilating to the pretensions of the public, as that he now held in his hand. It was a simple, brief devise, disposing of the piece of property in question, and left it without dispute, that Mr. Effingham had succeeded to all the rights of his father, with no ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... The Portuguese claim the credit of constructing these destructive machines, and actually sent a despatch to the Governor of Macao, saying they had destroyed at least one-third of the Ladrone's fleet, and hoped soon to effect their purpose by totally annihilating them! ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... probabilities are that the African will remain a hewer of wood and a drawer of water until his face shall pale—and it is paling rapidly—and he shall cease to be a social factor. No two races ever lived antagonistic, yet in contact, without the stronger either annihilating or absorbing the other. ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... really very serious," said Lord Reckage, with twitching lips. "The whole story has had all along something of unreality about it. Robert seems fated to a renunciant career—colourless, self-annihilating." ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes



Words linked to "Annihilating" :   destructive, disrespectful



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