"Breakdown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... utmost limits of the Czar's patience; and he at once returned his French passports. In forwarding them to the French ambassador at Berlin, Hardenberg expressed the deep regret of the Prussian monarch at the breakdown of this most salutary negotiation—a phrase which showed that the patience of Berlin was ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... combined effect of ruined transport and the six years' blockade on Russian life in town and country. First of all was cut off the import of manufactured goods from abroad. That has had a cumulative effect completed, as it were, and rounded off by the breakdown of transport. By making it impossible to bring food, fuel and raw material to the factories, the wreck of transport makes it impossible for Russian industry to produce even that modicum which it contributed to the general ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... wood at the time, and the windy tumult as well as the roaring from the loch made confusion for his hearing; but presently he recognised the intruding sound as the throbbing of a motor. "Some silly fool got a breakdown," he was thinking sympathetically, when a terrific gust caught and fairly staggered him. Ere he fully recovered balance and breath something cold and clammy fell upon his face, was dragged down over his shoulders and arms, blinding, pinioning him. The suit case was rudely wrenched from his hand; ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... the first breakdown in Mother's health which necessitated her removal to the country. Luther and Dorinda Rogers were distant relatives of our friend, the lawyer. They owned the little house by the shore at Denboro and the lawyer had visited them occasionally on shooting and fishing trips. They were in need of money, ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... passed off, and seemed of no importance, but it had left him in a state of nervous weakness and prostration, at which Dr Hunt looked grave. Mr Goodwin must have been over-exerting himself for some time past, he declared, and this breakdown was the result. It would probably be some time before he could do any work. Perfect rest, and freedom from all care and agitation, ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... her breakdown the intervals between intelligent consciousness and insanity had been long. She was herself, or was able to keep herself fairly in hand, the greater part of the time, and chaos, when it came, lasted only for a few days or weeks. Recently this condition had ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... dead white at least, shaking like an aspen, and mowing at the man with speechless lips. And this was the soldier of Napoleon, and the gentleman who intended going next night to an Assembly Ball! I am the more particular in telling of my breakdown, because it was my only experience of the sort; and it is a good tale for officers. I will allow no man to call me coward; I have made my proofs; few men more. And yet I (come of the best blood in France and inured to danger from a child) did, for some ten or twenty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... keynote of whatever was vital in any of them. And the reason of this is not far to seek. We have seen already (p. 82) how the chaos of sophistic doctrine was largely conditioned, if not produced, by the breakdown of the old civic life of Greece. The process hardly suffered delay from all the efforts of Socrates and Plato. Cosmopolitanism was already a point of union between the Cynics and Cyrenaics (see p. 128). And the march of ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... His arguments are always clear, complete, concise. He used to work long into the night, and then, when in the early morning the post to Berlin had gone, he would mount his horse and ride out into the country. It was in these years that he formed those habits to which the breakdown of his health in later years was due; but now his physical and intellectual vigour ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... chaos. From the cabin door to the tryworks there was hardly an inch of available space, and the oozing oil kept some of us continually baling it up, lest it should leak out through the interstices in the bulwarks. In order to avoid a breakdown, it became necessary to divide the crew into six-hour watches, as although the work was exceedingly urgent on account of the weather, there were evident signs that some of the crew were perilously near giving in. So we got rest none too soon, and the good effects of it were soon ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... the screen. Good God! was France to see another annee terrible, a second edition of 1870, with the same old tale of unreadiness, corruption in high quarters, breakdown of organization, and national humiliation after ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... more complete concentration of capital and industry than has yet taken place; doubtless, too, he underrated the powers of endurance of some petty industries, and saw the breakdown of capitalism in a cataclysm, whereas modern Socialists see its merging into a form of socialization. But, when all this is admitted, it cannot be fairly said that the sum of criticism has seriously affected the general ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... Farther he would not trace them, although he might easily have cabled and caused his son-in-law's arrest. For a month he went about in a sort of daze, speaking to almost no one and sitting for hours alone in his room. The doctor feared for his sanity, but when the breakdown came it was in the form of a second paralytic stroke which left him a helpless, crippled dependent, weak and shattered ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the situation develops as forecast in Dr. Forster's statement, our entire nuclear weapons program will grind to a halt within two weeks. If we drain men from civilian research, it will cause a total breakdown in the civilian atomic power production program. As you all know, the nation's entire economic expansion program is based on the availability of that power. Without it, industry will be forced into a deep freeze. That in turn means we might as well ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... was that Lloyd felt something breakdown within her, something to which she could not put a name. A mysterious element of her character, hitherto rigid and intact, was beginning at last to crumble. Somewhere a breach had been opened; somewhere the barrier ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... campaign. For the much larger force which we have actually found it necessary to employ our resources were absolutely and miserably inadequate. The result has been that the department, even by working under conditions which have nearly led to a breakdown, has been barely able to keep pace with the requirements ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... like lightning until the early dawn. Don't tell me 'bout cotillions, or germans. No sir 'ee! That whirl at Anson City just takes the cake with me. I'm sick of lazy shufflin's, of them I've had my fill, Give me a fronteer breakdown, backed up by Windy Bill. McAllister ain't nowhere! when Windy leads the show, I've seen 'em both in harness, an' so I sorter know— Oh, Bill, I sha'n't forget yer, and I'll oftentimes recall, That lively-gaited sworray—"The Cowboys' Christmas Ball." Larry Chittenden ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... had, it appeared, suffered a severe nervous breakdown. The physicians had ordered immediate dropping of business and ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... these crowded months with very frequent misgivings. No one knew better than she that Robert was constitutionally not of the toughest fibre, and she realised long before he did that the Oxford life as he was bent on leading it must end for him in premature breakdown. But, as always happens, neither her remonstrances, nor Mr. Grey's common-sense, nor Langham's fidgety protests had any effect on the young enthusiast to whom self-slaughter came so easy. During the latter half of his third ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the road, a hundred paces from the place of our breakdown, a cliff of soft stone, the foot of which was quarried in several places. We resolved to wait in one of those caves, warming ourselves until the return of the boy sent to Tournus. The second boy tied the three remaining horses to the trunk of a tree, near our cavern. The abbe, who had made a ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... again she lulled herself with the old rhyme, for comfort's sake. But Dickie she could not comfort, since, irony of ironies, she was the cause of his pitiful breakdown. Why, if she spoke, he started; if she moved towards him, he shrank. Yet still Ruth dreamt that if he would only let her touch him, she could bring him reassurance. But meanwhile his appetite was meagre, the rare half-hours he slept were broken with evil dreams, from which ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... general has never suspected the nephew. Only two people suspect him: the broken-hearted girl and an old friend of his father. This gentleman puts a detective on the trail. (The detective is impersonated by Ralph Lewis.) The gradual breakdown of the victim is traced by dramatic degrees. This is the second case of the thing I have argued as being generally impossible in a photoplay chronicle of a private person, and which the considerations of chapter twelve indicate as exceptional. We trace the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... heard your voice singing, and, screaming for help, I slipped from my saddle, with the intention of running towards you. Olivet made a brave effort to help me—but——" And it was only with an effort that she prevented another breakdown. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... and youth, it is with peculiar appreciation that I read the dedication of this first book: "To my Father and Mother." I may add in this connection that while pursuing his indefatigable labors for the support of his large family, his father's sickness and death overtaxed his strength, and the breakdown followed. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... overcome. My eldest brother had a nervous breakdown while working on the DEW Line (he was posted on the Arctic Circle watching radar screens for a possible incoming attack from Russia). I believe his collapse actually began with our childhood nutrition. ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... do you think she had the effrontery to tell me? She said that I wasn't practising and really trying to learn anything. And I've been working myself into——Really, my nerves were in such a shape, I would have been in danger of a nervous breakdown if I had kept on. Tottykins told me how she had a nervous breakdown, and had me see her doctor, such a dear, Dr. St. Claire, so refined and sympathetic, and he told me I was right in suspecting that nobody takes Vashkowska seriously any more, and, besides, I don't think much of all ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... "They're coming from the Russian front. The breakdown of Russia means a cool million at the very least added to the German troops on ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... it in existence, this does not vitiate the fact that, when free of all external constraint, growth gains on waste. Indeed, even in the case of old age, the statement remains essentially true, for the phenomena then displayed point to a breakdown of the functioning power of the cell, an approximation to configurations incapable of assimilation. It is not as if life showed in these phenomena that its conditions could obtain in the midst of abundance, and yet its law be suspended; ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... Haskell in very low health. Experts had sent him on a tour through Europe in search of that health he failed to find; his body was starving on three meals a day that were not digested, and he began to arrange his affairs with reference to a near-at-hand breakdown. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... last grueling months in Berlin, when Carl had a breakdown, and I got sick nursing him and had to go to a German hospital; and while I was there Jim was threatened with pneumonia and Nandy got tonsillitis. In the midst of it all the lease expired on our Wohnung, ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... give us a breakdown. (Pause.) Well, well, perhaps the suggestion's a little inopportune. What is your opinion of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... guardianship of several young brothers and sisters, his struggle to get established in his profession and make money for their support, his many anxieties in the process, and this culminating trouble in the breakdown of the younger sister, just as he thought he had her safely established in a school where she might have a ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... number of aids. Buy an alarm clock, and tell some one of your decision. Such efforts at the start "will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all." Man has discovered the value of such devices during the course of his long history, and has evolved customs accordingly. When men decide to swear off smoking, they choose ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... cherished habits of two generations were not to be discarded so quickly. Goldwin Smith asserted[1] that, whoever laid claim to the parentage of Confederation, the real parent was Deadlock. But this was the critic, not the historian, who spoke. The causes lay far deeper than in the breakdown of party government in Canada. Events of profound significance were about to change an atmosphere overladen with partisanship and to strike ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... in the car, "Shanks's pony" seemed a very slow mode of progress; their breakdown had happened in an out-of-the-way spot, and it was more than an hour before they reached a highroad. It was almost dark by that time, and matters seemed so desperate that Everard determined to hail the very first passing motorist who seemed to ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... fish-knives and Standard lamps, he suddenly decided on a complete set of Dickens. But as soon as he had ordered it, it seemed to him pitiably flat, and he countermanded it. Then they spent weary hours at Liberty's, and other places of the kind, when Bruce declared he felt a nervous breakdown coming on, and left it to Edith, who ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... constitution of iron," she said, "and I have always lived on the most sanitary principles, and with the utmost simplicity. So I hoped to go to my grave without much suffering. Certainly I never expected to have to consult any one on the ground of nervous breakdown. Yet that is exactly why I am here with you at this moment. The circumstances of my life have been too much for me, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... breakdown is in dealing with the new relations that arise from the mutualism, the interdependence of our time. Every new social relation begets a new type of wrongdoing—of sin, to use an old-fashioned word—and many ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... comparatively short-lived. Word came that John was in hospital again—at the Duke of Westminster's hospital at Le Toquet, in France. This time he was not wounded; he was suffering from dysentery, fever and—a nervous breakdown. That was what staggered his mother and me. A nervous breakdown! We could not reconcile the John we knew with the idea that the words conveyed to us. He had been high strung, to be sure, and sensitive. But never had he been the sort of boy of whom to expect a ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... doubt, it will be most important to begin peace negotiations at a moment when the enemy has not yet grasped the fact of our waning strength. If we approach the Entente at a moment when disturbances in the interior of the Empire reveal the coming breakdown every step will have been in vain, and the Entente will agree to no terms except such as would mean the absolute destruction of the Central Powers. To begin at the right time ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... handling the sexual organs. It is true that masturbation is a common habit of certain types of insane people and of some neurotics; but it is probable that the habit is more often one of several factors rather than the direct cause of the nervous breakdown. However, it is scientific to say that the habit may weaken the nervous system and indirectly affect general health, especially in pre-adolescent and early adolescent years. Probably the greatest nervous ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... delighted that you've really come, because he said you were the only person he would consent to see at all—the only doctor, I mean. But, of course, he doesn't know how frightened I am, or how much I have noticed. He pretends with me that it's just a nervous breakdown, and I'm sure he doesn't realise all the odd things I've noticed him doing. But the main ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... any sign of overhearing his weakness, and exulted mightily in my youth, despising the enchantments of a woman. Madame de Ferrier watched the departure from another side of the gallery, and did not witness my poor master's breakdown. She came and talked to him, and took more notice of him than I had ever seen her ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... other animal, it would seem that the addition of this last demand, namely, of satisfying the sexual desires of the husband during the period of pregnancy, might prove "the straw that breaks the camel's back," and result in the more or less complete nervous breakdown of the woman. The author submits this question to all fair-minded men: Is it not due to the wife that she be not asked to satisfy the recurring sexual desires of the husband during the period when her life and its energies ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... know that as well as you do. In fact, it might be best not to mention business to dad at all. You must remember that this is the third breakdown he has had since we came to Brill, and another such turn might ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... of antiseptics. I rather like that. I spent six weeks in a hospital once. I had a nervous breakdown, and the quiet was heavenly, and all the ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... of an airship a thoroughly reliable engine is a paramount necessity. The main requirements are—firstly, that it must be capable of running for long periods without a breakdown; secondly, that it must be so arranged that minor repairs can be effected in the air; and thirdly, that economy of oil and fuel is of far greater importance to an airship than the initial weight of ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... was the applause that greeted Lottie's conclusion. Dan executed a miniature breakdown as an expression of his feelings, and it seemed as if Mr. Dimmerly's chuckling laugh would never cease. De Forrest looked uneasy, and Hemstead was in a trance of bewildered delight. Alice and Harcourt exchanged significant ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... achieving unhappy prominence in America as in our own police-courts. A worthy aim, I doubt not. One of the chief characters is a drug-taker; and as if that were not enough another is "out of her head," while a third, Dr. Callandar, the Montreal specialist, is in the throes of a nervous breakdown. This seems to me to be distinctly overdoing it. It is the doctor's love-story (a story so complicated that I cannot attempt a precis) which is the designedly central but actually subordinate theme. I have the absurd ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... came up from Magna Graecia and whose formal acceptance into the state-cult formed one of the earliest incidents in the breakdown of the old agricultural religion, was Castor, with his twin-brother Pollux, although brother Pollux was always an insignificant partner, so much so that the temple which was subsequently built to them both was referred to either as the temple of "Castor" alone or as the temple of ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... Guy Oscard had organised a retreating party, commanded by Joseph, to convey Jack Meredith down to the coast. He knew enough of medicine to recognise the fact that this was no passing indisposition, but a thorough breakdown in health. The work and anxiety of the last year, added to the strange disquieting breath of the Simiacine grove, had brought about a serious collapse in the system which only months of rest and ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... literature of this propaganda is the appeal to standard modern practice in regard to machinery. "Those to whom the care of delicate mechanical apparatus is entrusted," says the New York Commissioner of Health, "do not wait until a breakdown occurs, but inspect and examine the apparatus minutely, at regular intervals, and thus detect the first signs of damage." "This principle of periodic inspection," says the prospectus of the Life Extension Institute, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... means partially cooked or underdone. This, then, is a clear case of Exclusion. Other examples: "Men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, and men whose shoulders do grow beneath their heads;" "Cushion, Mule's Hoof;" "Ungoverned, Henpecked;" "Bed of Ease, Hornet's Nest;" "Waltz, Breakdown." ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... was a most doleful breakdown. The philanthropist deranged the symmetry of the table, sat himself in the way of the waiting, blocked up the thoroughfare, and drove Mr. Tope (who assisted the parlour-maid) to the verge of distraction by passing ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... how soon a gallon of petrol would vaporize in the Du Vallon's six cylinders. Having taken the precaution to measure that exact quantity into the tank before leaving Cheddar, they were prepared for a breakdown at any point within a few hundred yards of the precise ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... of the common experience of the world. Its most universal and important propositions must in a certain sense be truisms. The road has been so broadly trodden by the hosts who have travelled along it, that the main rules of the journey are clear enough, and we all know that the secret of breakdown and wreck is seldom so much an insufficient knowledge of the route, as imperfect discipline of the will. The truism, however, and the commonplace may be stated in a form so fresh, pungent, and free from triviality, as to have all the force of new discovery. Hence the ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... of the War was the complete breakdown of international socialism. Not only socialists, but those of us who had been thoughtfully watching the movement from without, had come to believe that the measure of consciousness of international brotherhood ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... had third-degreed her into cowering and trembling indignation, into hectic mental uncertainties. Then, with the fatigue point well passed, he had marshaled the last of his own animal strength and essayed the final blasphemous Vesuvian onslaught that brought about the nervous breakdown, the ultimate collapse. She had wept, then, the blubbering, loose-lipped, abandoned weeping of hysteria. She had stumbled forward and caught at his arm and clung to it, as though it were her last earthly pillar of support. Her huge plaited ropes of hair ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... wild oats of a man, General," he had said. "The new game isn't like the old one,—the convivial spirit is not the popular one among men of affairs. And that isn't the worst of it, with Barry's temperament there's danger of a breakdown, moral and physical. If it were not for that, he could come into your office and practice law, as you suggest. But he's got to get away from Washington. He's got to get away from old associations, and ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... put the question squarely, I'm going to be candid. I'm alarmed about you. The strain on your nerves is too great. This maggot of Socialism in your brain is the trouble. It is the mark of mental and moral breakdown, the fleeing from self-reliant individual life into the herd for help. You call it 'brotherhood,' the 'solidarity of the race.' Sentimental mush. It's a stampede back to the animal herd out of which a powerful manhood has been evolved. This idea is destroying your will, your brain, ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... have heard of Lucas's breakdown, and equally, of course, he must have seen them both. What happened at that interview, by what casual attitude he allayed Lucas's probable jealousy and the girl's own nervousness, Bassett had no way of discovering. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... one—two boys, Robert A—and Jonathan R—, and one girl, Annie P—, leading all the school. Jonathan suddenly fell behind, and was soon distanced by his two competitors. Lowry, who was his teacher, asked him what was the reason of his sudden breakdown. The boy blushed, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... be a 'situation' for him to lose. Old Asquith thinks that we always have got along, and that we always shall get along by being quietly artful and saying, 'Wait and see.' And it's just because we are all convinced that we are so safe against a general breakdown that we are able to be so recklessly violent in our special cases. Why shouldn't women have the vote? they argue. What does it matter? And bang goes a bomb in Westminster Abbey. Why shouldn't Ulster create an impossible position? And off trots some demented ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... apparently no dreamers among the Washo today, in the sense that the term was used in times past. That is, no one is especially singled out as having infallible dreams foretelling certain classes of events. It may be that the breakdown of the band structure, which was related to economic exploitative activity, in effect, forced everyone to dream for himself. In the past, dreamers were particularly important in setting the time and place for activities ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... that we are our brother's keeper; that a brotherhood of man does exist outside after-dinner speeches. Too many men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on pursuing the same old game: accumulating more money, grasping for more power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad incapacity results, or they drop "in the harness," which is, of course; only calling an early grave by another name. They cannot seem to get the truth into their heads that as they have been helped by others so should they now help others: as ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... best to choke girls off it for a year or two. It's one of the outward and visible signs of emancipation. This is another!" and she sprang up the high turf bank of the orchard of La Tour and danced a breakdown on it, and then jumped back into the road with ballooning skirts, to the intense amazement of old Mrs. Hamon of Le Fort, who had just come round the corner to draw sweet water from ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... How Competition affects Capital.—Now the force which brings about all these movements is the force of competition. Every increase of knowledge, every improvement of communication, every breakdown of international or local barriers, increases the advantage of the big business, and makes the struggle for existence among small businesses more keen and more hopeless. It is the desire to escape from the heavy and harassing strain ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... had seemed at first a simple matter to do away with Gray. That had been mistake number one. The miserable breakdown of that plan, the refusal of his hireling to go forward, and the impossibility of securing a trustworthy substitute convinced him finally that he had erred grievously in his method. Some men are invulnerable ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... case of numerous other railroads, the financial breakdown of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was primarily due to a bad or reckless financial policy, for there was nothing inherently insecure in the railroad property itself. During all the years of the Garrett regime, the company had shared in the general growth and expansion of industry, wealth, and ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... believer; for it is not untrue that the sinner's extremest need is the occasion for God's salvation.(622) Yet the sudden transition feels artificial, and lacks, be it observed, what we should expect from Jeremiah himself, a call to the doomed people to repent. Note, too, the breakdown of the metre under a certain redundancy, which ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... And then a breakdown worse than the night before. What genius, what sheer genius Nature had for torturing her creatures! If anyone had told him, even so little as a week ago, that he could have caused such suffering to Sylvia—Sylvia, whom as a child with wide blue eyes and a blue ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The breakdown of individualism has been so complete in Great Britain that we are confronted with the spectacle of this great and ancient kingdom reconstructing itself perforce, while it wages the greatest war in history. A temporary nationalisation of land transit has been improvised, and only the vast, deep-rooted, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... act in accordance with these my respectful recommendations, the breakdown of the negotiations with England is the worst that can happen; and then it would be clear for all the world to see that our enemies were to blame for this breakdown, and Mr. Wilson would come over to our side. Knowing the President as ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... and her threat to build a railroad from Berlin to Bagdad and tap the riches of the East, led the British to form alliances with their traditional enemies—the French and the Russians. Russia, after the breakdown of Czarism in 1917, dropped out of the Entente, and the United States took her place among the Allies of the British Empire. During the struggle France was reduced to a mere shell of her former power. The War of 1914 bled her white, loaded ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... speech making or the festivities or the hard work or a combination of all three I cannot say, but Robert Hart suddenly found himself over-tired and threatened with a breakdown of health by the time the Exhibition closed. Sir William Gull, the famous specialist, whom he consulted, put the case tersely to him: "If you will do ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... "but if you take any more violent or irregular plunges, you may very greatly shorten your time. Should you insist on remaining in your regiment and doing your work, you have, I fancy, about two years more before a complete breakdown. You are a very strong man, and your lung-tissue is tough. Should you remain here under my care, you will live indefinitely, but I can hold out no hope of an ultimate recovery. If you return to England as an invalid, you will most undoubtedly kill yourself from boredom, ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... at her wild and furious rush from the spot where she had faced Jim Cleve, at the storm of shame ending in her collapse. She realized that if she had met Jim Cleve here in the dress in which she had left home there would have been the same shock of surprise and fear and love. She owed part of that breakdown to the suspense she had been under and then the suddenness of the meeting. Looking back at her agitation, she felt that it had been natural—that if she could only tell the truth to Jim Cleve the situation was not impossible. But the meeting, and all following it, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... peculiar songs of the "profession." He would sometimes give us a specimen of his vocal powers, and would nearly bring the house down, literally and metaphorically, while executing the mysteries of a "Virginny breakdown" in thick soled ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... of October, 1828, he began to show signs of a serious breakdown. He was living at the home of his brother Ferdinand, in one of the suburbs of the city. Although he revived a little during the early part of November, so that he could resume walks in the neighborhood, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... have a few minutes' rest when the clown came on, and perhaps that would help her to go through the rest of the act without an absolute breakdown. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... laughed the reporter. "I see so many things I don't want to see. I see that people are wearing clothes that are not made for them. I see when women are lying to me. I can see when men are on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and whether it is drink or ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm on the mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in that night of the opera. She was too near a breakdown to care ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to abandon the machine, with her determination to wade! Clearly this would seem to demonstrate that there had been a breakdown, irreparable so far as frail feminine hands ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... again, when, after two hours, the Wonder was still close behind them. "Our only chance is that they may have a breakdown." ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... seized with a doubt; and there was a moment's silence. The same idea dawned on all the country-folk. The stranger's arrival at Heberville, the breakdown of his motor, his manner of questioning the people at the inn and of gaining admission to the farm: were not all these part and parcel of a put-up job, the trick of a cracksman who had learnt the story from the papers and who had come to try ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... nonny! I told you how he broke down before; but on Sunday morning, in spite of mine own amended Litany, I had just as much hope of the breakdown of the Falls of Niagara, or a nineteen-feet spring tide. You would have said his face was afire, and those great eyes of his were lit up like the red ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... nature too well; but he was earnestly hoping that she was starting out on a life of happiness and well-being. Though healthy and moderately strong, Patty was not of a robust constitution, and there was danger that too much gaiety might result in a nervous breakdown. This, Mr. Fairfield determined to guard against; and resolved that, while Patty should be allowed generally to do as she chose, he should keep a ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... its cargo, the gun and all the rest. From every cot necks were stretched, and grinning faces watched the show. In the excess of his joy the Kid let out a blast on the trumpet that fairly shook the building. As if it were a signal, the boys jumped out of bed and danced a breakdown about him in their shirt-tails, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... to keep ever before his mind, while he preached God's word, the sin he had committed against God's law and man's. He visibly grew more pale, more thin, more distraught. The changes inspired his congregation with concern; they began to talk of overwork, of the danger of a breakdown; and seeing the dire possibility of losing so popular and pew-filling a pastor, they began to urge upon him the ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... morning. It was this way. We were three: the daughter-wife (who happened to see the magazine article that led to it all), her mother, and her husband. The head of the family, true to the spirit of the age, had achieved a nervous breakdown and was under instructions from his physician to betake himself upon a long, a ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... think what that poor injured young man will suffer. To-day he may feel quite well, but to-morrow he will have all kinds of pains in his head and eyes, his spine will ache, he will experience symptoms of a nervous breakdown. He will retire to bed and not emerge for six months, and when he does he'll be a hopeless and helpless cripple for life. Tom is an artist, he is, in his own line. They tell me he made sixty thousand last year out of his accident practice ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... safe, and by November 26 it was apparent that the Germans were engaged in a general retirement all along the River Dvina. The Allies then became interested in the Kaiser's probable choice of a line of defense for the winter on the northern section of his Russian front. The breakdown of the German offensive was attributed by the Allies to three things—the increase in the Russian ammunition supply, a German shortage of munitions, and the weakening of the German line for the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... following the breakdown of the central government, most regions have reverted to local forms of conflict resolution, either secular, traditional clan-based arbitration, or Islamic (Shari'a) law with a provision ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... of the Rocky Mountains at midnight on the 17th. The climate changes suddenly, and the cold is intense. We resume runners, have a breakdown, and are ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... again, and pass through Canton, Massillon, Brookfield, Greeneville, Dover, and on to Brother Jacob Kurtz's, where we stay all night." We have to wonder how a man laboring under a well-defined attack of typhoid fever could keep on going for twelve consecutive days before the final breakdown came. It makes one think of Paul, who could even be stoned until he was thought to be dead, and next day be found preaching again. But the crisis with Brother Kline came at last. The entry in ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... of another breakdown, and she laid her hand in his for a moment before she went from him hurriedly with ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... feature of the defence is that no one trusts the neighbouring detachment sufficiently to believe that it will stand firm under all circumstances and not abandon its ground; consequently this fear that a sudden breakdown along some barricades will allow of an inrush of Chinese troops and Boxers makes men fight all the time with their eyes over their shoulders, which is the very worst way of fighting I can possibly imagine. And another hardly less important ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... it is impossible at any time," replied Mrs. Burton, "and I shall be only too thankful if he will stay for a while because of poor father. Oh, Katherine, I am afraid this long terrible winter has killed him'" she said, with a quiver of breakdown in ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... speech or two more, to which I did not listen, the proceedings in the Town Hall ended. I drew a breath of relief. No breakdown by Sir Anthony, no scandalous interruption by Gedge, had marred the impressive ceremony. The band in the gallery played "God Save the King." The crowd in the body of the hall, who had stood for the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... and his head pained ominously. Two and a half years of office work were telling on him, although he scarcely realized to what extent, and but for a very fortunate circumstance—which seemed to Evan an extremely unfortunate one—he would have experienced a nervous breakdown before long. But more about that ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... case worker puts it, "the sort of home that tends to get itself deserted." These faults of the wife are responsible for as many desertions, probably, as are the faults of the husband. When the man and the wife are both industrial failures we get the extremity of family breakdown to be found in records ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... miserable breakdown of sobs and tears. Now that help had come—she was sure of it after one glance into this second officer's honest face—her courage collapsed entirely. The sergeant allowed her a moment to compose herself and then said, as he took out a notebook and ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... disease for conditions of health. In cases of nervous breakdown, patients are often spurred on, by the malady itself, to work when they ought to rest. The less able to work they are, the harder they work. They do not know that this restless activity is a sign of disease, they think it is proof of abounding vitality. ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... at Balmoral by the breakdown of the coach on these dreadful roads, I telegraphed to Hamilton for a conveyance; and the Superintendent of the Sunday School, dear Mr. Laidlaw, volunteered, in order to reduce expenses, to spend one day of his precious ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... riddle. Tell yourself a few anecdotes. I'll be with you in a moment. I say, I wonder what the cove is doing at Belpher? Deuced civil cove," said Reggie approvingly. "I liked him. And now, business of repairing breakdown." ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... It took that old box of misfortune thirty-two days to make Port Duluth. Every day we had some breakdown or other. She was like a good many other ships that fly the Red Ensign, worn out. But did I grumble? Not a bit of it. I looked at it as any man will who's got sand in him. It was a fight. There was no fighting in Victoria Street; ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... to the above, there is in course of construction still more powerful pumps of 40 in. diameter, which will provide against contingencies, and prevent delay in case of a breakdown such as occurred lately on the Liverpool side of the works. The nature of the rock is the new red sandstone, of a solid and compact character, favorable for tunneling, and yielding only a moderate quantity of water. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... of the most unsympathetic being of the present day, should be considered sufficient three hundred years ago, to convict the narrator of a crime worthy of death; yet so it was. This sad picture of the breakdown of a poor woman's intellect in the unequal struggle against poverty and sickness is only made visible to us by the light of the flames that, mercifully to her perhaps, took poor Bessie Dunlop away for ever from the sick husband, and weakly children, and the "ky," ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... in the course of Teutonic destiny, this breakdown of the Frankish empire, was wrought by two destroying forces, one from within, one from without. From within came the insubordination, the still savage love of combat, the natural turbulence of the race. It is conceivable that, had Charlemagne been followed on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... and wheeled about in her chair with a perplexed expression on her strong, handsome face. Generally speaking, she went her way with courage and conviction, but since Conning Truedale's breakdown, an element in her had arisen that demanded recognition and she had yet to learn how to control it and insist upon ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... worth while if it is the means of teaching us how to avoid nervous strain, it certainly is far preferable to avoid the strain without the extreme pain of a nervous breakdown. ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... insanity may be cast aside, one of those foolish delusions of shallow people to whom all abnormal conditions are of the same nature as all others. Lincoln wrote to a noted Western physician, Doctor Drake of Cincinnati, with regard to his "case"—that is, his nervous breakdown—and Doctor Drake replied but refused to prescribe without an interview. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... forth in the pages of the Old Testament. How, then, did the transition take place from the maternal system, in which the mother was so important in the family, to the paternal system, in which the father was so all-important? What were the causes which brought about the breakdown of the maternal system and the gradual development of the patriarchal family? Some of these causes we can clearly make out from the study of ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... forgotten to think about it. But there is a sort of reflex fright. He becomes either cautious and liable to sudden panics, or very rash indeed, or absolutely mechanical in his actions. The first state means the approach of a nervous breakdown, the second a near death. There are very few, indeed, who retain a nervous balance and a calm judgment. And all have a harsh frightened voice. If you came suddenly out here, you would think they were all mortally afraid. ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... as best they could, no one, it appeared, having anything hot. It was at a critical period during the fighting, and the commissary and transportation departments were suffering from a temporary breakdown. Still the men had enough to ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... to the semi-hysterical condition into which he eventually fell. That is not impossible, but certainly a sense of impotence to save his father and his family from the calamities he clearly saw approaching was the proximate cause of his breakdown. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the first or only driver to complain of the packed course. The Mercury had scarcely departed when the Marathon car came in, its experienced and steel-fibred pilot on the brink of nervous breakdown. ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... to bolt."' True enough, next day we found on the site of the German batteries, which had been precipitately evacuated, stacks of munitions; while by the roadside we came upon motors abandoned for the slightest breakdown, and near Betz almost the entire outfit of a field bakery, with a great store of flour and dough half-kneaded. Paris and ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... King's breakdown, physical as well as financial, brought the indirect gain to Adams that, on recovering strength, King induced him to go to Cuba, where, in January, 1894, they drifted into the little town of Santiago. The picturesque Cuban society, which King ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... an infinite pity for himself when he reflected that many a time nothing but a breakdown, or a loudly bawled hymn, or a series of twisted faces, had been the only thing which stood between him and the cooking fires. But there was no help for it. He was a fighting man, but he could not do battle with a continent; and so he had either to take the only ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... in Kirk's room, silently, and after what seemed an eternity, the doctor came out, tapping the back of his hand with his glasses. He informed them, with professional lack of emotion, that their mother was suffering from a complete nervous breakdown, from which it might ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... Lucy his manner was wonderfully considerate and gentle. If I had guessed at anything, it would have been that the wife was in trouble and not the husband. He could not sit still for long at a time, but he did not in the least suggest a man who was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His activity and sudden shiftings from place to place and from topic to topic were rather those of a man who superabounds in physical ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... the environment of the soul and became, henceforth, not a spiritual mind, but a mind "sensual," "devilish," a mind continually suggesting to the soul fresh and unlimited gratification of its desires. With the breakdown of soul and mind, the spirit lost its vital relationship to God, lost its function as a connecting link with, and a transmitter of, the mind and will of God; so that it could no longer enable man to know and understand God; and feeling ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... though it shook audibly. This home-coming without the dear doctor whom she had loved so well was not easy for her; and if hard for her, she knew something of what it must be for her aunt. She knew, too, that the one thing her aunt was dreading was a breakdown before Nancy, than which nothing could be worse in her eyes. Behind the heavy black veil the eyes were brimming and the lips were trembling, Pollyanna knew. She knew, too, that to hide these facts her aunt ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... the doctor hurriedly; "with care, and under favourable circumstances, there might be no further breakdown for another year; but"—with a keen look at his patient—"I will not undertake to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... extending his travels, and, till the letter in reply should arrive, he proceeded into Hanover and Brunswick. On his return to Berlin towards the end of August he found a letter waiting him from Lord Auchinleck, who was naturally chagrined at the breakdown of his scheme of compromise. A visit to Paris he was prepared to allow, but the return of the wanderer to Utrecht was peremptorily commanded. The family of the Envoy was now at Spa, but next day Boswell wrote him a letter urging him to intercede with his father for the proposed extension. ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... into effect is working efficiently. Moreover, since most of the projects of social reform which are being urged upon our attention involve an enlargement of the activities of the State, it is obvious that we shall be running the risk of a breakdown unless we make sure that the machinery of the State is capable of meeting the demands which are made upon it. We must be satisfied that our engine has sufficient power before we require it to draw a double load. In truth, one reason why the engine of government ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... Cackling Hen and a Breakdown so that the nimblest of the dancers might show out alone and so the frolic ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... desired, even at the risk of disappointment, to see a dramatic start into existence. She did not wish her pleasure to be spoiled and her excitement to be diminished by trials. Her husband humoured her, but secretly he took care that every preventible chance of a breakdown should be removed. When she was absent, he tested every pinion and every cog, eased a wheel here and an axle there, and in truth what he had to do in this way with file and sandpaper was almost equal to the labour spent ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... in a manner consonant with that which he has left us, there would probably have been no question as to the propriety of the means he used. I am fully aware how difficult and often dangerous it is in these matters to argue from a mere fragment, especially in view of the breakdown of so many plays when they come to the unravelling, but it should be borne in mind that in the matter of dramatic construction Jonson stood head and shoulders above all the other writers with whom we have been concerned, Fletcher ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... between us for a couple of months at Beaulieu. As for the system, Beckett, who was by no means disheartened, played it himself for many nights in succession, and ultimately admitted that there were defects in it which its late breakdown had revealed rather than caused. Not long afterward he was persuaded into adopting another, commended to him by Butler Johnson, once a prominent Member of Parliament. This system, mechanical rather than mathematical, was based ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... won't. This is a sudden trip into the country. I told her you had been taken unwell—a nervous breakdown—and that the doctor had ordered ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... suggestion the countess was overjoyed. But they found Madame Benet in a state of complete collapse. The conduct of the Germans had brought about a nervous breakdown. ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... humanitarian sentiment. The adherence of old-line Whig politicians like Seward suggests that there was some alloy in the pure gold of Republicanism. Such leaders were willing to make political capital out of the breakdown of popular sovereignty in Kansas.[523] They were too shrewd to stake the fortune of the nascent party on a bold, constructive policy. They preferred to play a waiting game. Events in Kansas came to their aid in ways that they could not ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... after Poussin, sculptured by Marin. I bought it at Lord Breakdown's sale; it happened to be a wet day—much such a day as this—and things went for nothing. This you'll know, I presume?' observed Jawleyford, laying his hand on a life-size bust ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the Federal party, both within and without Connecticut from 1808 to 1815, was quite as much the real cause of their downfall in the state as that coalition between clergy and lawyers described by Dr. Beecher as causing the breakdown of party machinery and its ultimate ruin. Glancing somewhat hastily at some of the most far-reaching acts of the Federalists, we find first the Federal opposition to the embargo that from December 22, 1807, for over a year paralyzed ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... It loosened all the props of life; she ceased to struggle and to hope. The world went on, but Cornelia's heart stood still; and at the end of the third week things came to this—her father looked at her keenly one morning and sent her instantly to bed. At the last the breakdown had come in a night, but it had found ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... peacekeeping troops of the International Force for East Timor (INTERFET) deployed to the country and brought the violence to an end. On 20 May 2002, East Timor was internationally recognized as an independent state. In March of 2006, a military strike led to violence and a near breakdown of law and order. Over 2,000 Australian, New Zealand, and Portuguese police and peacekeepers deployed to East Timor in late May. Although many of the peacekeepers were replaced by UN police officers, 850 Australian soldiers remained ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... would have none of his lagging ways, and compelling him to drive ahead, were soon forced to abandon the useless locomotive. Each such obstacle was a lengthy hindrance, and the kind gentlemen of our party were obliged to organise a breakdown gang to overcome the difficulty. Our trolleys, with all the baggage, had to be transferred to another line. Effort and energy were not spared, and the following midday brought us face to face with the first engine carrying Imperial soldiery towards Taiyueanfu. At Niangtzekwan Pass we were ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... talking about other things, and we had a song, and then a breakdown; and after that the captain of the watch called for another song; but it was clouding up, now, and the bar'l stuck right thar in the same place, and the song didn't seem to have much warm-up to it, somehow, and so they didn't finish it, and there warn't any cheers, but it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... faces of German officers who went about in these towns behind the lines with gloomy looks, and whose tempers, never of the sweetest, became irritable and unbearable, so that the soldiers hated them for all this cursing and bullying. A certain battalion commander had a nervous breakdown because he had to meet his colonel ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... (1841), the Queen's English (1863), and many well-known hymns, and he was the first editor of the Contemporary Review. He was also an accomplished artist and musician. His industry was incessant and induced a premature breakdown in health, which terminated in his death in 1871. He was the friend of most of his eminent contemporaries, and was much beloved ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... government, their effervescence ended as rapidly as it began. They did not really understand what was going on. 'By-the-bye, what is this same constitution they are making such a noise about?' asked a lazzarone who had been shouting 'Viva la Costituzione' all the day. Within a few weeks of the breakdown at Novara, Count Confalonieri wrote wisely to Gino Capponi that revolutions are not made by high intelligences, but by the masses which are moved by enthusiasm, and for a possibility of success, the word Constitution, the least magical of words, should have been replaced by the more comprehensible ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... State the endless variety of incidents, characters, fortunes, the succession of centuries, and of modes of thought, literatures, arts, creeds, the revolutions in political ideals, offer so complex a mass of phenomena that the breakdown of the theory, patent at once in the narrower sphere of observation, is here obscured and shielded from detection. Man's intellect is easily the dupe of the heart's desire, and in the brief span of human life willingly carries a fiction to the grave. And he who ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... defeated, he would never return to Paris alive. It was evident by their tone that at the time the proclamations were penned it was intended that the battle should take place on that day, and that the delay was consequent upon a breakdown in the arrangements and was not the ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... party, wasn't it? That man's on the verge of a breakdown. Don't like it at all. That wife of his is overdoing it. Shall look him up again next week. His mind's not right. He forgot to pay for the lunch. I suggested that I should do it, and he let me. Something seriously wrong there. ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... favour has been proposed in this house, and carried unanimously." Sir Isaac, looking shy, gave another lick to the plate, and wagged his tail. "It is true that thou wert once (shall I say it?) in fault at 'Beauty and Worth,'—thy memory deserted thee; thy peroration was on the verge of a breakdown; but 'Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit, I as the Latin grammar philosophically expresseth it. Mortals the wisest, not only on two legs but even upon four, occasionally stumble. The greatest general, statesman, sage, is not he who commits no blunder, but he who best ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prefer to do it among the trees as they seemed to help him bear the pain miraculously. But on second consideration Don Quixote deemed it advisable to put it off till a later time, when they were closer to their village, in case Sancho should have a breakdown as a result of his flogging himself. Their conversation came to an end when Sancho began to shoot proverbs at his master out of the corner of his mouth at such a speed that Don Quixote was overwhelmed and ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... represented the depreciation of Confederate paper money. Drastic drafting and the arming of negroes could avail little for lack of accoutrements and food. Thus Lee's capitulation at Appomattox (April 9, 1865) represents less a defeat of his army than the breakdown of the Confederacy at large. So true and impressive is this that reflection upon it makes the last year of Lee's commandership seem peculiarly glorious. Only by rarest genius, surely, were those dazzling tactics, that lynx-eyed, sleepless watchfulness, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... to reflect and to emancipate himself from the hand that pressed like a weight upon him. Even before this time he had observed a little discrepancy between his father's words and deeds, between his wide liberal theories and his harsh petty despotism; but he had not expected such a complete breakdown. His confirmed egoism was patent now in everything. Young Lavretsky was getting ready! to go to Moscow, to prepare for the university, when a new unexpected calamity overtook Ivan Petrovitch; he became blind, and hopelessly blind, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... bake more pies, Elizabeth. The men have been put back by a breakdown. They won't be able to get through before five or half-past," he said, coming into the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... he said, "we have our sources. Confidential. Top secret. I'm sure you understand, commissioner." Hurriedly, he added: "What does the breakdown ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... had nursed Gerda by day and worked by night. The middle of October, just when they usually moved into town for the winter, she collapsed, had what the doctor called a nervous breakdown. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... the breakdown of national government, most regions have reverted to either Islamic (Shari'a) law with a provision for appeal of all sentences, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the seaside for the whole of August, where he promised everything from the air and the bathing. Mr. Ewbert merely needed toning up, she said; but to correct the impression she might be giving that his breakdown was a trifling matter, she added that she felt very anxious about it, and wanted to get him away as soon as possible. She said with a confidential effect, as of something in which Hilbrook could sympathize with her: "You know it isn't merely his church ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... of Eleanore; he was passionately fond of her. He told how she had brought him the quartette, and how she had glowed with inspiration and the desire to help. He also had a good deal to say about Gertrude, especially with regard to her mental breakdown and her death. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the statue of a saint, and full of a country air. But I had done too much in this night march, as you will presently learn, for my next day was a day without salt, and in it appreciation left me. And this breakdown of appreciation was due to what I did not know at the time to be fatigue, but to what was undoubtedly a ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... came near him, had in view the purchase of a little horse for his cousin, far better than that which the boy rode, when the circumstances occurred which brought all our poor Harry's coaches and horses to a sudden breakdown. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... chosen as weapons officer of the Niccola. His choice had been deliberate, because he was a xenophobe. He had been a problem personality all his life. He had a seemingly congenital fear and hatred of strangers—which in mild cases is common enough, but Taine could not be cured without a complete breakdown of personality. He could not serve on a ship with a multiracial crew, because he was invincibly suspicious of and hostile to all but his own small breed. Yet he seemed ideal for weapons officer on the Niccola, provided he never commanded the ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... words so much, but the tone of his voice that maddened Paul. Throughout the day he had been in a state of intense excitement. It seemed to him as though his nerves were raw, and he knew that he was on the point of a breakdown. Bolitho's tones, therefore, maddened him, and he was almost beside himself. "Yes, you have won," he said. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... The boy Husayn Gennah, a small cyclops in a brown felt calotte and a huge military overcoat cut short, caused roars of laughter by his ultra-Gaditanian style of dancing. I have also reason to suspect that a jig and a breakdown tested the solidity of the plank table, while a Jew's harp represented Europe. In fact, throughout the journey, reminiscences of Mabille and the Music Halls contrasted strongly with the memories of majestic and mysterious Midian. And, to make the shock more violent, some friend, mal salsus, sent ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... have taken place to put the lads from Freeport on the pedestal of fame more noticeably than this experiment. They had easily and modestly staged a complete breakdown of the hazing habit at Marshallton Tech. Strangely perhaps there was no blame nor suspicion put upon Bill and Gus for the subsequent edict from the faculty forbidding it. That seemed to be considered a natural aftermath to the news of the electrical reception ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple |
