"Black Death" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 1346, and the archers of Crecy were not exactly the sort of men who take kindly to eviction, to say nothing of slavery. As no one meddled much with the villeins before 1349, all went well until after Crecy, but in 1348 the Black Death ravaged England, and so many laborers died that the cost of farming property by hired hands exceeded the value of the rent which the villeins paid. Then the landlords, under the usual reactionary ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... church you can trace without the least difficulty the ground-plan of many houses under the short turf. The early writers do not mention Cottam, and so far I have come upon no explanation for the wiping out of this village. Possibly its extinction was due to the Black Death in 1349. ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... humanity. But the vast conflagration of to-day must not conceal from our eyes the great central fact that war is diminishing, and will one day disappear as completely as the mediaeval scourge of the Black Death. To reach this consummation all the best humanising and civilising energies of mankind will ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... a tempest gathering across the sun pours quick destruction over a parterre of flowers, black horror swallowed up Gruyere. The plague called the Black Death, born in the Levant and rushing like a destroying flood with terrifying rapidity over the borders of Switzerland, penetrated even into the mountain-encircled country of Count Pierre. The devils and evil spirits of the caverns and the forests ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... the fight if need come. Rich men will spend all they possess rather than die, and see those they love die of it. Nations will do the same. Compromises are not considered; no one talks of reforming the Black Death. Unless it be jettisoned from the Ship of Civilization, progress and enlightenment ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... trading classes was fast bringing about a social revolution which tended as strongly as the outrages of the baronage to the profit of the crown. The rise in the price of wool was giving a fresh impulse to the changes in agriculture which had begun with the Black Death and were to go steadily on for a hundred years to come. These changes were the throwing together of the smaller holdings, and the introduction of sheep-farming on an enormous scale. The new wealth of the merchant classes helped on the change. They began to invest ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... reign the French war had produced a crop of disgrace, disorder, and discontent. Heavy taxation had not availed to retain the provinces ceded to England at the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, and hordes of disbanded soldiery exploited the social disorganization produced by the Black Death; a third of the population was swept away, and many villeins deserted their land to take up the more attractive labour provided in towns by growing crafts and manufactures. The lords tried by drastic measures to exact the services ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... brother Hasan, who was still a minor; the emirs who ruled in his name competed for the highest posts until Baibagharus and his brother Menjik carried off the victory. These two ruled supreme for a time. The so-called "black death" was ravaging Egypt; many families were decimated, and their riches fell to the state. The disease, which differed from the ordinary pest in the blood-spitting and internal heat, raged in Europe and Asia, and spread the greatest consternation even amongst the Moslems, who generally ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... progressed in the same way in the medieval cities, those of our own days mostly being but a continuation of what had grown at that time. The prosperity of the Flemish cities was based upon the fine woollen cloth they fabricated. Florence, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, before the black death, fabricated from 70,000 to 100,000 panni of woollen stuffs, which were valued at 1,200,000 golden florins.(36) The chiselling of precious metals, the art of casting, the fine forging of iron, were creations of the mediaeval "mysteries" which had succeeded in attaining in their own ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... least three men were concerned at different times in the work. The share of the first of these, Ralph Stratford, Bishop of London, being but a slight one, may be briefly dismissed. In 1348-49 a terrible visitation of the black death devastated the country. The bishop, being concerned that many were being interred in unconsecrated ground, purchased three acres of land in West Smithfield outside the city boundaries, known as ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... of these calamities, the fearful pestilence swept over France, called the "Black Death." It came from Egypt, possibly from farther east. In Florence three-fifths of the inhabitants perished by it. From Italy it passed over to Provence, and thence moved northward to Paris, spreading destruction in its path. It reached England, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... description of the plague of Athens given by Thucydides, and the discussion of it by Lucretius, exemplify their severity. In the Middle Ages they raged from time to time throughout Europe: such plagues as the Black Death and the sweating sickness swept off vast multitudes, the best authorities estimating that of the former, at the middle of the fourteenth century, more than half the population of England died, and that twenty-five millions of people perished in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... know not. For when that fearful being had spoken, as I have told thee, I hid my eyes for very fear. Only once did I raise them and see her like a black death still standing by my couch; but she had grasped thy jewelled dagger which lay upon the table, and held it with outstretched hand towards the ground, and with upturned gaze and frightful calm she seemed to plead an answer from the goddess. ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... less courage than you and even thus accompanied I dare not die. Listen to me, and then reflect if you ought to win me to your project, even if with the over-bearing eloquence of despair you could make black death so inviting that the fair heaven should appear darkness. Listen I entreat you to the words of one who has himself nurtured desperate thoughts, and longed with impatient desire for death, but who has at length ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... page, Like some rapt poet o'er his rhyme. He scarcely paused to tell his beads, Except at night; and then he lay And tossed, unrestful, on the straw, Impatient for the coming day,— Working like one who feels, perchance, That, ere the longed-for goal be won, Ere Beauty bare her perfect breast, Black Death may pluck him from the sun. At intervals the busy brook, Turning the mill-wheel, caught his ear; And through the grating of the cell He saw the honeysuckles peer; And knew't was summer, that the sheep In golden pastures lay asleep; And felt, that, somehow, God was near. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... man, in a horrible passion; between his clenched teeth; 'if I had only had the courage to say the word, I might have been free of you in a night. Curses on your head, and black death on your heart, you imp! ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... morn!) Shall see his bloody spoils in triumph borne, With this keen javelin shall his breast be gored, And prostrate heroes bleed around their lord. Certain as this, oh! might my days endure, From age inglorious, and black death secure; So might my life and glory know no bound, Like Pallas worshipp'd, like the sun renown'd! As the next dawn, the last they shall enjoy, Shall crush the Greeks, and end the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Trojans, or of their renowned allies, Could point him out to Menelaus, loved Of Mars; and had they known his lurking-place They would not for his sake have kept him hid, For like black death they ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... fairest maiden, Bride of mine to be forever." Louhi, hostess of Pohyola, Made this answer to the suitor: "I will only give my daughter, Give to thee my fairest virgin, Bride of thine to be forever, When for me the swan thou killest In the river of Tuoni, Swimming in the black death-river, In the sacred stream and whirlpool; Thou canst try one cross-bow only, But one arrow from thy quiver." Then the reckless Lemminkainen, Handsome hero, Kaukomieli, Braved the third test of ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... than before. The town through its length and breadth was shattered and dilapidated; whole families were homeless and packed like rabbits in hutches; the slaughtered dead, men and beasts, could not be buried quick enough; black death stalked abroad in the guise of what was called hospital typhus—an epidemic fever of some kind. After the French flight, I take it, provisional chief-policeman Wagner had returned to his deputy-registrarship; ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... abnormality, because it is not yet above the juvenile age of its growth, which is the age of feebleness and folly, disease and crime. The imperfect organism of childhood is incapable of resisting either temptation or disease. The twenty-five millions destroyed by the black death, in the fourteenth century, and the countless millions destroyed by war in all centuries, including the present, show how little we have advanced beyond the spirit of savage life. The ferocity of nations is as much the product of their cerebral organization, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... the year 1348, Venice was visited by an earthquake, and this was followed by the plague (the Black Death). In order to complete the roll of the republic's misfortunes in this gloomy year, it may be added that she also lost almost the whole of her Black Sea fleet ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann |
