"Defeat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been accorded to him on this floor. But in this discussion I cannot and will not forget that the welfare and rights of my whole race in this country are involved. When, therefore, the honorable gentleman from Georgia lends his voice and influence to defeat this measure, I do not shrink from saying that it is not from him that the American House of Representatives should take lessons in matters touching human rights or the joint relations of the State and national governments. While the honorable gentleman contented himself with harmless ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... of the election for governor and lieutenant-governor was practically settled by the nomination of an anti-masonic independent ticket. Thurlow Weed advised Smith Thompson that votes enough to defeat him would be thrown away upon Southwick. Van Buren wrote Hamilton to "bet for me on joint-account five hundred dollars that Thompson will be defeated, and one hundred dollars on every thousand of a majority up to five thousand; or, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... heroes, the Cid, Bernardo del Carpo, and Pelayo, are to this day a vital part of the belief and poetry of the lower classes in Spain, and are revered as they were hundreds of years ago. The wandering Mulateers still sing of Guarinos and of the defeat at Roncesvalles as they did when Don Quixote heard them on his way to Toboso; and the street showmen in Seville rehearse to this day the same wonderful adventures that the Don saw in the Inn at Montesinos. The Chronicles developed among the more refined and educated ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... justify the assertion that there is no such basis, or that it is not discoverable by man. Surely, it is unreasonable to make intellectual death the condition of spiritual life. If such a condition were imposed on man, it must inevitably defeat its own purpose; for man cannot possibly continue to live a divided life, and persist in believing that for which his reason knows no defence. We must, in the long run, either rationalize our faith ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... 'His lofty brows in folds do figure death.' Cosroe describes him as 'His fortune's master and the king of men.' His own speeches and actions reveal no unsuspected flaw, no unworthy weakness; rather they almost defeat their own purpose by their exaggeration of his greatness. It would be possible to show by numerous quotations how Marlowe has everywhere selected epithets and imagery of magnitude to enhance the impressiveness ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... seem, it is nevertheless true, that the middle division, called the Secondary, and covering the "Teen Age," has been sadly neglected—the joint in the harness of our Sunday school fabric. Here we have met with many a signal defeat, for the doors of our Sunday schools have seemed to swing outward and the boys and girls have gone from us, many of them never to return. We have busied ourselves to such an extent in studying the problem of the boy and the girl that the real ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... from the result of the action of the County Commissioners that I am strongly identified with the Democratic party. Such is not the case. I never voted an out and out Democratic ticket in my life. I voted for Buchanan for President to defeat Fremont, but not because he was my first choice. In all other elections I have universally selected the candidates that, in my estimation, were the best fitted for the different offices, and it never happens that such men are all arrayed on one side. The strongest ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... humbled in the dust by the events of 1757 and 1758. Failure, due to the want of sufficent resources is severe, but how utterly insufferable when, with abundant means, incompetency to use them brings defeat. Still, we are under greater obligation to Lord Londown than we are wont to think. His imbecility helped rouse the British nation and recall William Pitt to power, whose vigor of purpose animated anew the people of other countries ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... agreeable and indispensable to her. And when she will not compromise herself— (is that not your convenient little phrase?)—she is judged much more severely than if she had done so! And do you know why? Because you men can never endure defeat in love-matters! You would rather spread abroad the rumour that you had conquered, than confess that your libertinism had been perceived and repulsed with indignation and scorn! And I will tell you another thing if you do not know it. In the frequent destruction of an innocent woman's ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... foreign nobleman in disguise, fleeing for his life from a charge of complicity in a Nihilist conspiracy: he wisely came to the conclusion, therefore, that he would not be the first to divulge the story of his own ignominious defeat, unless he found that damned radical chap was going boasting around the countryside how he had balked Sir Lionel. And as nothing was further than boasting from Bertram Ingledew's gentle nature, and as Philip and Frida ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... who "will carry out the wishes of the organization," and add that "I have not yet made up my mind who that man is." Of one thing I am certain, that, to have it publicly known that the candidate, whoever he may be, "will carry out the wishes of the organization," would insure his defeat; for such a statement implies that he would merely register the decrees of a small body of men inside the Republican Party, instead of trying to work for the success of the party as a whole and of good citizenship generally. It is not the business of a Governor ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... cloaked under a zeal for religion. It may be said that we are to 'contend earnestly for the faith.' We answer, verily, but never with the weapons of malice and wickedness. This mode of treating science, if persisted in, must end only in chagrin and defeat to the parties employing it, for the simple reason that it does violence to reason, nature, and all the laws of man's being. Science cannot be turned aside in her strenuous and ever-successful progress by any such impediments thrown in her way. The clear, calm, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... missing ranchman. She no longer thought of giving him up, and the knowledge that she might now keep the love which she had won for her very own made her reel on the pony's back from pure joy. She was his as he was hers, but the Rexhills were his enemies: she knew that positively now, and she meant to defeat them at their own game. If they would tell her where Gordon was, they might go free for all she cared; if they would not, she would give them over to the vengeance of Crawling Water, and she would not worry about what might happen to them. Meanwhile she thanked her lucky stars that Trowbridge ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... that Island, (though he never mentioned to us any Jewels, nor, I believe, would he have owned the gold there but that he thought he should himselfe be sent for it), I presently reflected that that man (whom I have since discovered to be one of Kidd's Men) was to defeat us of that Treasure; I privately posted away a Messenger by Land with a peremptory order to Mr. Gardiner in the King's name to come forthwith, and deliver up such Treasure as Kidd or any of his Crew had lodged with him; acquainting ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... spirit of rather pathetic seriousness. It is far from easy, at eighteen, to control tongue and temper to the extent of joining battle with your elders in calm and dignified sort. To lay about you in a rage is easy enough. But rage is tiresomely liable to defeat its own object and make you make a fool of yourself. Any unfurling of the flag would be useless, and worse than useless, unless it heralded victory sure and complete—Damaris realized this. So she kept a brave front, although her pulse quickened ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... with his magical rod, and water gushed from it. The precious fluid came just in time to refresh them for their fight with the Amalekites. These people were very obstinate foes, and it required a miracle to defeat them. Moses ascended a hill and held up his hand. While he did so the Israelites prevailed, but when he let down his hand the Amalekites prevailed. To ensure victory, Aaron and Hur stood on either side of him, and held up ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... trophies to the victors: and the green banner of the serasker was sent to Rome by Sobieski, in the belief that it was the Sandjak-shereef, or sacred standard of the Prophet—the oriflamme of the Ottoman empire. Never had a defeat nearly so disastrous, with the single exception of that of St. Gotthard, ten years before, befallen the Turkish arms in Europe; and the other corps, under the command of the grand-vizir and of his brother-in-law, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... we'll have to keep on the keen move to finish our cutting before the deep snow; to haul our logs before the spring thaws; to float them down the river while the freshet water lasts. When we gain a day we have scored a victory; when the wilderness puts us back an hour, we have suffered a defeat. Our ammunition is Time; our small shot the minutes, our heavy ordnance ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... strife. Now, as the theology was Catholic, and the metaphysics Aristotelian, Stanton sometimes wished himself at the miserable Posada from whose filth and famine he had been fighting his escape; but though his reverend antagonists always denounced his creed, and comforted themselves, even in defeat, with the assurance that he must be damned, on the double score of his being a heretic and an Englishman, they were obliged to confess that his Latin was good, and his logic unanswerable; and he was allowed, in most cases, to sup and sleep in peace. This ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... had been stunned. Then had risen up in her a desperate courage. She would fight. She would fight for herself, she would fight for the love which all unbidden, all undesired, had come to her. Then, in the end, if defeat should overtake her, she would, yes, she could, submit to the punishment his hand should ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... stir of the waters far down in his soul. But the Young Doctor was fingering the doors of his inner life—all at once this conviction came to him—and the past rushed upon him with all its disarray and ignominy, its sorrow, joy, elation and loss. Not since he had left the scene of his defeat, not since the farewell to his dead Carmen, that sweet summer day when he had put the lovely, ruined being away with her words, "Jean Jacques—ah, my beautiful Jean Jacques," ringing in his ears, had he ever told anyone ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... different from that desire of pleasing, which is so natural and so consistent even with the greatest modesty, in that it always builds on some falsity, mistaken for a means of pleasing, though nothing can more surely defeat that intention; there is not an axiom more true than that the graces are incompatible with affectation. They vanish at the first appearance of it: and the curse of affectation is, that it never but lets itself be seen, and wherever it is seen, it is sure to offend, and to frustrate ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... east by south where the workhouse now stands, coming into the modern road again at Bishop Sutton. But though the Pilgrim's Way knew it not, New Alresford is of high antiquity. Local tradition has it that it owes its existence, as distinct from Old Alresford, "to a defeat inflicted by the Saxons on a party of Danes near the village of West Tisted about five miles (south) east of Alresford. The Saxons granted quarter to the defeated enemy on condition that they went to the ford over the River ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... me!—I would tell thee all! His worth, his charm, do my weak hearth enflame A traitor here! And he is aye the same! If I should gaze, and long—'gainst virtue, honour, sense, The citadel I yield, and mine my own defence! I know my virtues sure, and fair my fame, But struggle is defeat,—and combat shame! ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... IX. A sorrowful defeat was that for King Don Sancho, more for the quality of the slain than for their number; and he put himself at the head of his army, and hastened through the midst of Portugal, to go against his brother. And King Don Garcia hearing of his approach, called together his knights and hidalgos, and ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... as it is, but it sums up in a single paragraph the extraordinary political situation which exists in Turkey to-day. Little more than a year ago Turkey surrendered in defeat, her resources exhausted, her armies destroyed or scattered. If anything in the world seemed certain at that time it was that the redhanded nation, whose very name has for centuries been a synonym for cruelty and oppression, ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... good heart of humanity will defeat the cruel ruling of the gods. Let the lightning ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... of the river, while jets of fire reached out as though striving to clutch the men who had escaped. Then seemingly bent on overtaking them, the flames leaped over the edge, devouring the brush and grass to the water's edge, where, loath to admit defeat, the flames flickered uncertainly and then died away, leaving nothing but a pall of smoke to mark ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... Dumfries. But the element of discord was now in our cause, and I was reproached by many for having abdicated my natural right to the command. It was in vain that I tried to redeem the fault by taking part with Learmont, under the determination, when the black hour of defeat or dismay should come upon us, to take my stand with him, and, regardless of Wallace, to consider him as the chief and champion of our covenanted liberties. But why do I dwell on these intents? Let me hasten to describe the upshot ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... quite courteous, and even friendly after a fashion, with this Mr. Hepburn, anything more is quite out of the question. He must move in his own sphere, you in yours. People are happier in their own sphere. To try and lift them out of it is always a mistake, and ends in disaster and defeat. Would you have liked ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... with an honest purpose in life," she gently said, "with a duty to perform, who sticks to it through thick and thin, admitting no defeat, hammering upon stubborn places, finds in good womankind an ever-ready tenderness. It is the feminine answer ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... hornets' nest about his ears. It would scarcely have been so bad, but the young man entered the game with all the zest and earnestness of his intense nature, and several times by brilliant playing saved his side from defeat. In consequence, his name was in the mouth of every one who had seen or heard of the contest. He was going home that evening, feeling pleased and satisfied with himself, when he thought he would drop in a moment ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the unthinking boy the distant sky Seems on some mountain's surface to relie; He with ambitious haste climbs the ascent, Curious to touch the firmament; But when with an unwearied pace, He is arrived at the long-wish'd-for place, With sighs the sad defeat he does deplore, His heaven is still as distant as before! The Infidel, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... full of glorious confidence—so certain of success. He will go to battle with the assured hope of victory. I shall fight expecting nothing but defeat." ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... calculated to sweeten Walter's sense of defeat or make him more friendly to Anderson, who, after glaring at Bauer, who had not said a word, abruptly went out of ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... he might make the Academy glorious. On the other hand Euctus and Eulaeus, companions of Perseus, in the days of his prosperity ingratiated themselves with him, and assented to him in all things, and danced attendance upon him, like all the other courtiers, but when he fled after his defeat by the Romans at Pydna, they attacked him and censured him bitterly, reminding him and upbraiding him in regard to everything he had done amiss or neglected to do, till he was so greatly exasperated both from grief and rage that he whipped out his sword and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... history of their fortunes or their times. Each is, in his turn, the man of his age, the type of a generation, or the interpreter of a crisis. He is made for his day, and his day for him. Hooker would not have been, but for the existence of Catholics and Puritans, the defeat of the former and the rise of the latter; Clarendon would not have been without the Great Rebellion; Hobbes is the prophet of the reaction to scoffing infidelity; and Addison is the child of the Revolution and its attendant ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... opened the adventurers resumed their journey into the unknown. In his usual forcible fashion De Soto seized on Indians to carry his baggage, and in this way he brought on a violent battle, in which the whites met with a serious defeat and were in imminent danger of annihilation. Not a man of them would have lived to tell the tale if the savages had not been so scared at their own success that they drew back just when they had the hated ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... only before the king's homecoming and taking of the covenant, but also since that time, as is evident by the Declaration emitted by the commission in July last,(325) the Declaration of the Assembly itself, a little after,(326) by the Declaration emitted at Stirling since the defeat at Dunbar,(327) the Causes of the Fast upon that defeat,(328) the Remonstrance to the king at Perth after his escape, together with the Remonstrance given in by them to the parliament,(329) all which do clearly hold ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... order: their flagship came first and then the other vessels, the bow of one right against the stern of the other. Although they could have raked the "San Juan Bautista," which was astern of the flagship, or have borne down upon the "San Miguel," which lay to leeward, they cared only to defeat the flagship. Since our ships could not get to windward, they passed it very closely, each ship raking it. But our flagship was not asleep, and kept replying in such a way that, although the enemy's vessels came so close together, so great haste ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... pantomime from a distance, I fancied that, for some reason, Carmona was to be denied the privilege of which he had boasted; but, apparently, he did not intend to accept defeat without a struggle. He and the guide moved on, then stopped again to argue—this time with their backs to us; but, from the action of Carmona's elbows, I judged that he put his hand into his pocket. Five or six minutes later he returned, to announce that after some difficulty he had succeeded ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... effort was made to defeat the charter on account of this clause granting the Company banking privileges. But the necessity for a proper water system, which could be procured only by the organization of a responsible company with large capital, ...
— Bank of the Manhattan Company - Chartered 1799: A Progressive Commercial Bank • Anonymous
... the owner may redeem them on paying the price of their agistment. The tithe of agistment or "tithe of cattle and other produce of grass lands,'' was formally abolished by the act of union in 1707, on a motion submitted with a view to defeat ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the elections are far worse than could be expected. Some of them are very odd. I have to deplore the defeat of many of my friends. I suppose the Queen will have to make up her mind to a ministry composed of men she abhors; but the majority will have in it inherent weakness and ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... It had always been latent in my breast, even in the very midst of my greatest admiration for her. Yet I had never acknowledged to myself of what I suspected her, nor did I now—not quite—not enough to give that point to my attack which would have insured me immediate victory or defeat. I was obliged to feel my way and so answered, with ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... places, seen poverty and trial, and I have had more than my share of success, but in not one instance, either of failure or triumph, would I have been better off single. My partner in this task of living has doubled every joy and halved every defeat. ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... had a singular amusement in hearing, instigating, and provoking a war of words, alternating triumph and overthrow, between clever and ambitious colloquial combatants, where there was nothing that could inflict disgrace upon defeat.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of representation, such as would antagonize public opinion, and "when emigration shall have increased the English population of the Upper Province, the adoption of such a principle would operate to defeat the very purpose it is intended to serve. It appears to me that any such electoral arrangement, founded on the present provincial divisions, would tend to defeat the purpose of union and perpetuate ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... had won over Alfego and had gotten the influence of the penitentes on his side, Ramon's one remaining object was to defeat just such deals as this, which MacDougall already had under way. He intended to stir up feeling against the gringos, and to persuade the Mexicans not to sell. Later, such lands as he needed in order to control ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... digging party back on the plain, as also the nearer sounds. They were units of this garrison—and there must be many others like them scattered about—fortifying for a particular counter attack tomorrow when, with a line of machine-gun sections operating in the Allied rear, defeat might be turned to victory. It was an audacious scheme, thus to burrow while a victorious army passed over them, and then come up out of ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... giving merely a half-constrained or half-indifferent consent. He had learned, by painful and sometimes humiliating experience, that any contest with Mrs. Helen Dinneford upon which he might enter was sure to end in his defeat. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... The lithe little figure ran swiftly along the walk to the street; the pursuer was close behind. The feet ahead seemed heavy and slow; the steps that followed came nearer, nearer! Miss Sterling could almost feel the big hand upon her shoulder! Her heart beat suffocatingly, her ears thundered defeat, she must drop or die! Then she thought of Nelson Randolph and grew strong! She bounded forward—she was nearly there! No, she was only passing the corner! On, on, on! She reached the gate, bumped against it, sped along the ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... opinion as final, proceed to vie with each other in their jubilant praise of the war, and of the powerful influences it has brought to bear upon morality, culture, and art. Yet it must be confessed that a gieat victory is a great danger. Human nature bears a triumph less easily than a defeat; indeed, it might even be urged that it is simpler to gain a victory of this sort than to turn it to such account that it may not ultimately proxe ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of British supremacy in India. This violent attitude naturally led to reprisals and bitter recriminations from the native press, with the result that the total withdrawal of the measure would have been construed as a decisive defeat to the adoption of even the most moderate measures of liberal reform in India. The project of total withdrawal ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... of defeat was rankling in him, the defeat of his lifelong determination that never, while he was on the earth to prevent it, should a woman live where his faith in the sex had been wrecked. It was bitter to think how he had been foiled after all by a woman, ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... treason. Any army that is thoroughly united in the authority of its commander and cheerfully and promptly obeys his orders, is usually successful; while the largest and best army on earth would be doomed to defeat the moment its officers and men would disobey orders and each do as he pleases, or as he thinks best. The reason Christ's, army on earth to-day is weak and constantly defeated and retreating is because his orders are disregarded and the "think ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... emperor without empire; but M. d'Armancourt insists that the window was given in memory not of this Pierre, but of his nephew, another Pierre de Courtenay, Seigneur de Conches, who went on crusade with Saint Louis in 1249 to Egypt, and died shortly before the defeat and captivity of the King, on February 8, 1250. His brother Raoul, Seigneur d'Illiers, who died in 1271, is said to be donor of the next window, number 40. The date of the Courtenay windows should therefore be no earlier than the death of Saint Louis in 1270; yet one would like to know ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... to ascribe our Successes to our own Management, and not to esteem our selves upon any Blessing, rather as it is the Bounty of Heaven, than the Acquisition of our own Prudence. I am very well pleased with a Medal which was struck by Queen Elizabeth, a little after the Defeat of the Invincible Armada, to perpetuate the Memory of that extraordinary Event. It is well known how the King of Spain, and others, who were the Enemies of that great Princess, to derogate from her Glory, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... desperate game there was but one possible end. It is only in story-books writ for sentimental maids that the good who are weak defeat the wicked who are strong. We shattered many an assailant before the last stake was dared, but in the end they shattered my sword-arm, which left me helpless as a hull at ebb-tide. Then Godefroy, the craven rascal, must throw up his arms for surrender, which gave Le ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... awaiting me when I arrived home. She was, however, relieved beyond measure when I told her of the defeat ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... about among the various groups. They were quite at home; their faces were fiery with excitement; they were afready triumphant. Bramah, a horse belonging to Lord Reading, had gained the Grand Prix the previous year, and this had been a defeat over which hearts were still bleeding. This year it would be terrible if France were beaten anew. Accordingly all the ladies were wild with national pride. The Vandeuvres stable became the rampart of their honor, and Lusignan was pushed and defended ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... finally, she became in the eyes of the fascinated Louis the most desired of women. It was not long before Madame de Maintenon was so advanced in the King's favor that the affair was the gossip of the Court, and Madame de Montespan was compelled to stand by, a silent and bitter witness of her own defeat. It was a humiliating blow to Madame de Montespan to see the King with eyes only for Madame de Maintenon, saying witty and agreeable things to her, and ignoring his former favorite completely. It was not long before Madame de Montespan ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... of skirmishing occurred between the militia and detached parties of the mutineers, which uniformly ended in the defeat of the latter. At length Daaga appeared to the right of a party of six, at the entrance of the town; they were challenged by the militia, and the mutineers fired on them, but without effect. Only two of the militia returned the fire, when all but Daaga fled. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... dismantling of the German Empire. We would undo what Bismarck accomplished; for in destroying the unity of Germany we should destroy most of its power to reorganize after defeat. The dismantling of ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... supreme cruelty of a hope for ever deferred. He knows that our best hopes are irrealisable; that it is the almost incredible misfortune of mankind, but also its highest privilege, to aspire towards the impossible; that men have never failed to defeat their highest aims by the very strength of their humanity which can conceive the most gigantic tasks but leaves them disarmed before their irremediable littleness. He knows this well because he is an artist and a master; but he ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... that of Genoa by Oberto Doria, met at Meloria, not far from Bocca d'Arno, when the Pisans were utterly defeated, partly owing to the treachery of the immortal Count Ugolino, who sailed away without striking a blow.[1] Yet in spite of her defeat Pisa carried on the war for four years, when she sued for peace, which, however, she could not keep, so that in 1290 we find Corrado Doria sailing into the Porto Pisano, breaking the chain which guarded it, and carrying ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... Sea-Kings had not been immune from disaster and defeat any more than any other great Empire of the ancient world. The times of conquest and triumph, when Knossos exacted its human tribute from the vanquished states, Megara or Athens, or from its own far-spread dependencies, had occasionally ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... you, sir, that the British Army can hold its own and that he has no fears for the result. The French cavalry has been destroyed, two of their divisions of infantry have ceased to exist, and only the Guard is in reserve. If you give us a vigorous support the defeat will be changed to absolute rout and—" His knees gave way under him and he fell in a heap ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... would have dropped from his chair, if the waiter whom he had cut with the glass had not caught him. Some of the guests had withdrawn, some were sleeping, and some were senseless: but the few who could open their eyes, and see to such a distance, triumphed in the defeat of their leader: which they considered ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and men of letters for purposes of reading, and will remain the authentic lexicon, the recognised source of English words and constructions of the best period. The days of creation; the narratives of Joseph and his brethren, of Ruth, of the final defeat of Ahab, of the discomfiture of the Assyrian host of Sennacherib; the moral discourses of Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiasticus and the Book of Wisdom; the poems of the Psalms and the prophets; the visions of the Revelation,—a hundred other passages ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... way between Wilna and the ancient capital of Russia. After a day of hard fighting, the Russians fired the city and abandoned it. The French entered the smoking ruins. They were victors, but such a victory was almost as disheartening as a defeat. From that place a weary seven-days march brought the Grand Army to the village of Borodino, on the banks of the Kologa, a tributary of the Moskwa.[127] Here the Russian general, Kutusoff, had determined to ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... ship: it needed Mr. Fant and his colleagues to degrade her into a sea-going prophet and give aptness to her by-name of "Hell-packet." He was clear of her now; he might fail to reach the shore and drown, but at least the grey woman aft would never see his humiliation and defeat. He turned over, setting his face to the waterside lights of the city, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Vere. The brightening mist was cool and fresh. There was neither horror nor defeat in ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... done his utmost, and has failed, he shows his breeding by the manner in which he accepts his defeat. For me, I took the letter which I had in my pocket, and stepping forward, I handed it with such grace of manner as I ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... draft Constitutional Treaty, signed on 29 October 2004 in Rome, gave member states two years for ratification either by parliamentary vote or national referendum before it was scheduled to take effect on 1 November 2006; defeat in French and Dutch referenda in May-June 2005 dealt a severe setback to the ratification process; in June 2007, the European Council agreed on a clear and concise mandate for an Intergovernmental Conference to form a political agreement ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... October there were many rumors in circulation charging that prominent capitalists and speculators were combining to defeat resumption. Among them Jay Gould was mentioned as being actively engaged in "bearing" the market. About this period I received from ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... significant difference, that whereas in the elemental warfare portrayed in the older myth mutual violence and alternate destruction prevail, in all these later myths Quetzalcoatl makes no effort at defence, scarcely remonstrates, but accepts his defeat as a decree of Fate which it is vain to resist. He sees his people fall about him, and the beautiful city sink into destruction, but he knows it is the hand of Destiny, and prepares himself to meet the inevitable with what stoicism ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... history of our development. The race has not come so far toward its maturity without a mighty struggle. The long course of preparation for the present higher condition has had many interruptions and obstructions. There have been dark ages of stagnation and threatened defeat, and there have been ages of hope and advancement. Through all this history the light of the gospel, though often obscured, has never been extinguished, and every step of progress that has been made in our ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... Sicilian squadron, he fell on the Algerine galleys with such fierceness that they were forced to recoil. In their retreat they were hotly assailed by Doria, and Uluch, beset on all sides, was obliged to abandon his prizes and take to flight. Tidings now came to him of the defeat of the centre and the death of Ali, and, hoisting signals for retreat, he stood in all haste to the north, followed by the galleys ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... liked to talk big and to come out with a farewell phrase, a parting speech, like an actor making a showy exit from the stage, and at least to disappear with the honours of war. But his defeat was so pitiable that he could think of nothing better than to bang his hat on his head and stamp his feet as he followed the portress down the hall. ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... Bularchus, which Candaules had purchased for its weight in gold, executed upon the wood of the female larch-tree, and representing the defeat of the Magnesians, evoked universal admiration by the beauty of its design, the truthfulness of the attitude of its figures, and the harmony of its colouring, although the artist had only employed in its production the ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... brief history running back to the beginning of the century. Mad Anthony Wayne encamped on its site when he went north to avenge St. Clair's defeat on the Indians; it was at first a fort, and it remained a military post until the tribes about were reduced, and a fort was no longer needed. To this time belonged a tragedy, which my boy knew of vaguely when he was a child. Two of the soldiers were sentenced to be hanged for desertion, and the ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... less generals but a larger force of men who will obey their commands. All the successes of the Boer army were the result of the fact that every burgher was a general, and to the same cause may be attributed almost every defeat. Whenever this army of generals combined and agreed to do a certain work it was successful, but it was unsuccessful whenever the generals disagreed. If the opportunity had given birth to a man who would have been accepted as general ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... too urgently, because of their recent mourning, she feared, with a confused yet dominating fear, anything that might defeat that plan; and she sought, almost in spite of herself, to awaken in her daughter's heart some feeling ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... win, the water-people. What's the difference? It will be just the exchange of one Skin for another. Before I heard of the landing of the Earthman I was going to fight no matter what the cost to me or inevitable defeat. ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... States, which still viewed the public domain as a national asset from which revenue should be derived; and, finally, the opposition of the old States to the new. Nevertheless, the bill passed the Senate by a good majority. In the House it suffered defeat, owing to the undisguised opposition of the South and of the landless States both East and West. The Middle States showed distrust and uncertainty. It was perfectly clear that before such a project could pass the House, Eastern and Southern representatives would have ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... the regiments from Holland, and the Cameronians, went from Perth to oppose his entrance into the Lowlands. The minds of men were suspended. Should he defeat Mackay, it was plain that the crown would soon be restored to James Stuart, and the woes of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... trees whose obstructing branches swished before and behind them. They were bringing in a load for this shed, whose uses he would consequently soon understand. Grateful for his good luck—for his was a curiosity which could not stand defeat—he took a few steps into the wood, and from the vantage point of a concealing cluster of bushes, fixed his eyes upon the spot where the road ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... alone, sat for some moments looking from the broken table to the cannonball and then back again. Finally he picked up a fragment of glass, for the Royal face protector had likewise been broken, when the good old English oak had met its defeat at the hands of this Hun of the world of science, and with it, very gingerly, he tapped the iron ball—this rusty old barbarian which had set at naught the force of gravity, had violated all the established laws of nature, and had like the Germans ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... against the feudal nobility to that of other countries, had succeeded in securing its victory without yielding those concessions to the demands of the people which in our own country were extorted from it by the civil war. The strength gained by the defeat of the nobility in the wars of the Fronde, offered the opportunity for an able sovereign like Louis XIV to dry up all sources of independent power, by centralizing all authority in the monarchy. Proud in the consciousness of internal power and foreign victory, surrounded ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... subsidies which should be accorded the crown. The desired vote of supplies was refused and the long-brewing contest between the king and the barons broke in civil war. But during the struggle that ensued the foundations of Parliament were still more securely laid. Following the king's defeat at Lewes, in 1264, Simon de Montfort, leader of the barons, convened a parliament composed of not only barons and clergy but also four knights from each shire, and at London during the following year, he caused again to be assembled, in addition to five earls, eighteen barons, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... brilliant strokes of the war. This was the midnight and midwinter crossing of the Delaware by the American general and his troops, the forced march upon Trenton through the snow and cold, and the surprise and utter defeat of the Hessians at that place ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... unintentionally. There were many days which were not only harassing but seemingly wasted. I often despaired of achieving results worth all the exertion I was making and the money I was spending. I must have worn to shreds the patience of some English-speaking Japanese friends, but they never owned defeat. In the end I found that I ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... a long and dangerous service men grown old and gray are succeeded by the youth to whom society owes no debt. Thus man journeys from strength to invalidism, from prosperity to adversity, from joy to sorrow, or goes from misery to happiness, from defeat ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... 1910 two questions are uppermost—a constitutional change and a fiscal change. In order to defeat the latter proposals the Liberals in part have created the former situation. The King can act only upon the advice of his Ministry unless tacitly and by unusual agreement, as latterly was the case with King Edward, he ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... over the plain away from the hunters, away from the scattered, discomfited pack; away, away, as he had never galloped before. But, then, before he had always been the hunter. This time, if he knew anything of "Pack Law" and the temper of the pack over this bad defeat and heavy loss, coming on top of the bad bear "break"—this time, I say, it was he who was, or, at any rate, might be, the hunted. And he had reasons—very sound and private reasons—why he must not meet even one wolf of the pack in combat. Wherefore he streaked, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... so cross'd. It would be better in my opinion to separate the adventures, to form divers Histories of them, and to make persons acting, thereby to appear both fertile and judicious together, and to be still within this so necessary true resemblance. And indeed they who have made one man alone defeat whole Armies, have forgotten the Proverb which saith, not one against two; and know not that Antiquity doth assure us, how Hercules would in that case be too weak. It is without all doubt, that to represent a true heroical courage, one should make it execute some ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... none to begin with, for I know these people. But we are doing everything possible. God in heaven! The country is wild. From Rome has come the order, definite, explicit, to stamp out the banditti, if it requires an army; enough soldiers are coming to defeat the Germans. But the more we have the less we shall accomplish. 'Sweep Sicily!' 'Stamp out the Mafia!' What does Rome know about the Mafia? Signore, did we arrest one half of those whom we know to be Mafiosi, Rome would need to send us, not an army of soldiers, but regiments ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... long wars he conducted through defeat and disaster to such a glorious end for his country, together with that large list of famous names connected with those and later events formed no mean subject for reverie, and these were the fancies conjured through my brain by a near approach to the shores ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... strikes have hitherto ended, in disaster to the strikers. But I am sure that strikes will not always end so. It is only a question of time, and of a very little time, till the union of labor shall be so perfect that nothing can defeat it. We may say this will be a very good time or a very bad time; all the same it is coming."—W. D. Howells, in Harper's Weekly, ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... were two contests between Brill and Roxley, a rival college located some miles away. One contest was at baseball, and the other football. During the past Fall, Roxley had suffered its second defeat on the gridiron at the hands of Brill. But the Spring previous, its baseball nine had literally "wiped up the diamond" with Brill by a score of 6 to 0. My, readers can, therefore, well imagine how anxious the baseball management was to win the game scheduled to come off ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... progress. The true religious philosophy of an imperfect being is not a system of creed, but, as Socrates thought, an infinite search or approximation. Finality is but another name for bewilderment or defeat. Science gratifies the religious feeling without arresting it, and opens out the unfathomable mystery of the One Supreme into more explicit and manageable Forms, which express not indeed His Essence, which is wholly beyond our reach and higher than our faculties ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... would have shown itself just as it has in France—in struggles and convulsions. The frequent revolutions of France are not a thing to be sneered at; they are not evidences of fickleness, but of constancy; they are, in fact, a prolonged struggle for liberty, in which there occur periods of defeat, but in which, after every interval of repose, the strife is renewed. Their great difficulty has been, that the destruction of the reformed church in France took out of the country entirely that element of religious rationalism which is at once ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... terrible Attila and his horde of devastating Huns, who had swept over Europe and threatened to annihilate civilization. Orleans was the turning-point in the career of victory of this all-conquering barbarian. From its walls he was driven backward to defeat. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... not in vain; before he died, many of those who worked for his downfall in 1912 were looking up to him as the natural leader of the country, in the new dangers which encompassed it. "Had he lived," said a very eminent man who had done more than any other to defeat him, "he would have been the unanimous candidate of the Republicans in 1920." Time brings its revenges swiftly. As I write these lines, it is not Capital, but overweening Labor which makes its truculent demands on the Administration at Washington, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Mungo Park had disappeared in 1805. The mystery of Timbuktu and the Niger remained unsolved, though more than one expedition had left the coast of Africa for the "mystic city" lying "deep in that lion-haunted inland." Notwithstanding disaster, death, and defeat, a new expedition set forth from Tripoli to cross the great Sahara Desert. It was under Major Denham, Lieutenant Clapperton, and Dr. Oudney. They left Tripoli in March 1822. "We were the first English travellers," ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... bloodthirsty scum of a half-savage tropical city, let loose for a riot of murder, plunder, and destruction. Why, my dear boy, the moment you and Poole got outside the shelter of these walls, a hundred rifles would be aimed at you, with their owners burning to take revenge for the little defeat they ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... contingent from Havre had joined the French Army just before the German onslaught began. The battle was lost by the Allies tactically and strategically through the defeat of their right wing at Longwy and Neufchateau, and through the encircling of their left wing at Mons. The direct result of the outcome was the German invasion of France; the indirect consequence (resulting from the necessity of drawing ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... of which Death is perpetually contending; only the incessant activity of Life at every foot of the rampart keeps him at bay; but, with, the advance of years, the assailants gain, here and there a foothold, pressing the defenders back; and just in proportion as this defeat take a place the man becomes old. But Life sets out from the same basis of mystery to build each new body, no matter how many myriads of such forms have been built before; and forsaking it finally, is no less young, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... without amendment. At the last moment, however, the Southern group were to part company with their allies and to vote against the bill. The Representatives from New England, and the supporters of the Administration generally, would of course vote against the bill also, and so compass its defeat. The odium would then fall upon the Adams men, while the Jackson men could pose as the only whole-hearted advocates of protection; and, finally, not the least factor in Calhoun's calculations, the South would escape the toils of high protection. There ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson |
