"Disaster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could make me change my mind, we shook hands, wished each other luck, and, as she turned away, she said, in her pretty French: "I am sorry it is disaster that brought us together, but I hope to know you better when days are happier"; and ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... consider. It seems to me it would be a good idea if every woman who is both protected and untrained but whose husband is approaching forty should, if not financially independent, begin seriously to think of fitting herself for self-support. The time to prepare for possible disaster is not after the torpedo has ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... place where the cyclone had struck the ship, lay the great island of Borneo. They knew it to be the nearest land, and for this had they been directing the boat's course ever since their disaster. The tarpaulin now promised to bring them nearer to it in one night, than their oars had done with ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... his father, and, before opening the letter, kissed it rapturously; but it contained only a few words. Instead of feeling his trouble softened, it seemed to the young man still harder to bear. Honorable until then, and known as such, the old gentleman, ruined by an unforeseen disaster (the bankruptcy of a partner), had left for his son nothing but a few commonplace words of consolation, and no hope, except, perhaps, that vague hope without aim or reason which constitutes, it is said, the last possession ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... before the breezes Wouldst thou show thy strength, then teach it Both to conquer as it pleases— Both are weaker than the grave. Choose thy port, and steer to reach it! Threatening rocks? The rudder's master; Turning back is sure disaster, And its ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the Green Shutters had been a fact of his existence; it had never entered his boyish mind to question its continuance. But a weakening doubt stole through his limbs. What would become of him if the Gourlays were threatened with disaster? He had a terrifying vision of himself as a lonely atomy, adrift on a tossing world, cut ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... proverbial last straw to Mrs. Bertram. It haunted her by day and night; she dreamt of it, sleeping, she pondered over it, waking. Six short months would speedily disappear, and then she would be ruined; she could not meet the bill, exposure and disaster must follow. ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... marry her. But he decided only with his reason; he felt that he must have her whatever happened; and if he could not get her without marrying her he would do that; the future could look after itself. It might end in disaster; he did not care. When he got hold of an idea it obsessed him, he could think of nothing else, and he had a more than common power to persuade himself of the reasonableness of what he wished to do. He found himself overthrowing all the sensible arguments which had occurred to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... away from justice, fair play, and good faith would be a misfortune under any circumstances, but that at a conjuncture like the present it should befall the men who set up as the moral guides of mankind and wield the power to loosen the fabric of society is indeed a dire disaster. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... This defeat gave the northern command to Massena and sent Jourdan {255} back to politics. When, some years later, the victor of Fleurus was again entrusted with the command of large armies, it was only to lead them to failure at Talavera, and to disaster at Vittoria. ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... our soldiers. To the end there were always those who were ready to throw themselves between these savages and their prey. One man above all rose greater as the danger thickened, and won a higher name amid disaster than he had done when he led our van to victory. To him I drink this glass—to Ney, the red-maned Lion, glaring back over his shoulder at the enemy who feared to tread too closely on his heels. I ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not listen to her. But being now thoroughly alarmed at her obviously nervous condition, I questioned her until I elicited from her that all her old dread of Mannering had returned, and with double intensity, in that it was accompanied by a presentiment of disaster to myself. ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... declared war on each other. A chance musket shot in the backwoods of Virginia started a conflict which reverberated in Europe, disturbed the peace of the world for seven years, and had serious consequences in the French and English colonies of North America. The news of Washington's disaster at Fort Necessity aroused the British Government to the conclusion that it must make a strong demonstration in order to crush the swelling prestige of the French rivals in America. The British planned, accordingly, to send out ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... weapon, and ever and anon he would utter some pessimistic word, or presage dire disaster, or remind Casey that his scalp was destined to dry in a Sioux's lodge, or call on Shane to hit something to save his life, or declare the engine was off the track. He rambled on. But it was all talk. The man had gray hairs and he was ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... Only you, Dick Stockton! Zounds! There's none whom I'd sooner see! Quick! Tell me the news! These be stirring days, and here am I tied to this tavern-room, and afraid to leave it lest those brawling red-coats loot it while I'm gone. To leave a tavern-room empty is to invite disaster—and yet—what patriot should bide indoors on days like these! 'Faith! I'm torn 'twixt necessities! Come! Your news. Sit by the fire and out with it! What's to become of the tea we ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... death of a god. If they remained unsympathetic, the deities would punish them as enemies. Worshippers of nature gods, therefore, based their ceremonial practices on natural phenomena. "The dread of the worshippers that the neglect of the usual ritual would be followed by disaster, is particularly intelligible", writes Professor Robertson Smith, "if they regarded the necessary operations of agriculture as involving the violent extinction of a particle of divine life."[108] By observing ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... with enthusiasm; but for some time it brought nothing but disaster. The campaign was opened in the Netherlands, where the Austrians, taken by surprise, were so weak in numbers that it seemed certain that they would be driven from the country without difficulty or delay. Marshal Beaulieu, their commander-in-chief, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... with dismay at the news. The citizens dressed in mourning, business and amusements were suspended, and every energy was devoted to repairing the disaster. Compliance with the terms of the treaty was refused, on the ground that no treaty was valid unless sanctioned by a vote of the people. It was determined to deliver the Consuls who had signed it to ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... would be labour thrown away. His captors were evidently well up to their business, and there was no wriggling out of their neatly-tied bonds. Nor did the onslaught which the boy made with his teeth on the gag result in anything but disaster. It loosened at least two of his teeth, and gave him during the remainder of the day considerable pain in some of the others. As to his eyes, he rubbed his forehead and the side of his head on the floor, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... this apparition of wreck, ruin, and concentrated energy that Marie Venot saw flash past her father's door, hastening to the relief of the victims of a worse disaster, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... immediate results of the disaster was Gay's inability to fulfil his obligations to one of the publishers of his "Poems on ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... even hints that the sequel, opening in July, 1914, may in many respects be far indeed from the dulness of happily-ever-after. If Ledgar had been satisfied to marry the sweetheart of his school-days there might have been some danger of such a disaster; but, having put his humble past, including his Nonconformist conscience, too diligently behind him for that, he will have to face whatever his author and the KAISER may have in store, supported ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... guns almost every half hour to keep our squadron together. On the 31st we were alarmed by a gun from the Gloucester, and a signal to speak the commodore. We immediately bore down to her, prepared to learn some terrible disaster, of which we were apprised before we came down, by seeing that her main-yard was broken in the slings. This was a grievous misfortune to us all, at this juncture, as it was evident that it must prove a hinderance to our sailing, and would detain us the longer in these inhospitable latitudes. Our ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... outlook, Winter had passed without actual disaster to the Confederate arms and now that Spring had come the plantation home of the Herbert Carys, twenty miles below Richmond, had never had a fairer setting. White-pillared and stately the old Colonial mansion stood on one of the low, emerald hills which roll back ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... faithful friend, without compromising his religious principles and practice. Friedrich was born at Brandenburg on February 12, 1777, was educated by good parents at home, served in the Prussian army through disaster and success, took an enthusiastic part in the rising of his country against Napoleon, inditing as many battle-songs as Korner. When victory was achieved, he dedicated his sword in the church of Neunhausen where his estate lay. ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... a world such as the present! Such numbers of women of all ages, and all degrees of mental qualifications, find themselves suddenly without resource, through the accident of early death in the case of the professions, or of disaster in commercial life; and so many others, through disease or advanced age, or the still more cruel stroke of death, find themselves stranded, lonely, and deserted, and languishing for a fireside friend. What comfortable, beneficial unions might be brought about in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... upon him,' on the other hand, because Eternity is in our hearts, therefore there is the answer to the longings, the adequate sphere for the capacities in that great future, and in the God that fills it. You go into the quarries left by reason of some great convulsion or disaster, by forgotten races, and you will find there half excavated and rounded pillars still adhering to the matrix of the rock from which they were being hewn. Such unfinished abortions are all human lives if, when Death drops its curtain, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... resting-place under the apple trees. All true men had tearful faces, and a stern resolve in the heart. And while this was the condition of the nation and the people, the high-toned Wall Street was speculating on the life of the Republic. It bought and sold blood. It was a bull on disaster and a bear on victory. It established bureaus through which to falsify intelligence and to bring the nation to the verge of ruin. It had no compunction. It regarded the gore of battlefields as the rich rain and mould out ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... What's the matter?" the children asked him all at once. He flung himself on Ralph, burying his face in the other boy's coat, and sobbed out some disjointed story which only Ralph could hear ... and then as last and final climax of the disaster, who should come looking over the shoulders of the children but Uncle Henry AND Mr. Pond! And 'Lias all ragged and dirty again! Betsy sat down weakly on a pile of wood, utterly disheartened. What was the use ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... or other; (3) or if they did reluctantly take the field—the miserable inefficiency of their service. "But, more than that," they added, "we note the jealousy with which you eye any good fortune which may betide our state; the extravagant pleasure (4) you exhibit at the sudden descent of some disaster." ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... long time silence reigned among the Indians. The whites, however, felt sure that plans were being matured which meant disaster to them. ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... fears, I shall care for them in some way; but I am not going to forego anything in anticipation of disaster. Surely you will come back. My great grief at the absence of my husband will rend my heart so sorely that I must needs have some pleasure to drive away the sorrow and perpetuate the bloom on these cheeks and the brightness in these ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... the door cut short further comment and Hollings and Mr. Rhinehart came into the room. It was evident from their manner they had no inkling as to why they had been summoned and the former employee, fearful of another disaster, was ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... over, was dismissed with public contempt. All the while the two leaders of the ruling house, Guido and Ridolfo, were holding frequent interviews with Suor Colomba of Rieti, a Dominican nun of saintly reputation and miraculous powers, who under penalty of some great disaster ordered them to make peace naturally in vain. Nevertheless the chronicle takes the opportunity to point out the devotion and piety of the better men in Perugia during this reign of terror. When in 1494 Charles VIII approached, the Baglioni from Perugia ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... in San Francisco with Senora Estrada, the agent of the insurgents; of the incident of her calling-card—how she tore it in two and gave one-half to Isham; of their outfitting, and the broken sextant that was to cause their ultimate discomfiture and disaster, and of the voyage to the rendezvous on ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... had an effect upon his troops. They are nervous, and look round, expecting to see the enemy in overwhelming numbers. General Wallace sees that there has been disaster. He does not wait ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... declares that the whole civil society of Europe seems to be withdrawing itself in its public life from Christianity. In England and America, religious persons perceive with dismay that the intellectual basis of faith has been undermined by the spirit of the age. They prepare for the approaching disaster in the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... resources: coastal scenery and beaches, cultivable land Land use: arable land 10%; permanent crops 8%; meadows and pastures 30%; forest and woodland 26%; other 26%; includes irrigated 5% Environment: subject to hurricanes, flooding, and volcanic activity that result in an average of one major natural disaster every five years Note: located 625 km southeast of Puerto Rico in the ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... settlement in Kentucky was still in jeopardy, and there came moments of dejection, when some of her bravest leaders spoke gloomily of the possibility of the Americans being driven from the land. But these were merely words such as even strong men utter when sore from fresh disaster. After the spring of 1779, there was never any real danger that the whites would be forced ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... reconstruction policy, she warned, "There has been no hour fraught with so much danger as the present.... To be foiled now in gathering up the fruits of our blood-bought victories and to re-enthrone slavery under the new guise of Negro disfranchisement ... would be a disaster, a cruelty and crime, which would surely bequeath to coming generations a legacy of wars ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... scarlet. Helen as well as he got Bo's inference to that last audacious epithet he had boldly called out as the train was leaving Las Vegas. She also sensed something of the disaster in store for Mr. Carmichael. Just then the embarrassed young man was saved by Dale's call to the ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... declarations of the mad but mysterious assassin. No. Promise me, Edwards, that you will postpone this projected step of yours, which can, in any case, even though my love be innocent, only result in dire disaster." ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... of that enterprise is a tale of disaster which has few parallels in history. A perilous passage over Lake Ontario in a ten-ton vessel brought them to Niagara. Above the falls they built The Griffin, a schooner of forty-five tons, to carry the necessities of the Mississippi settlement westward by way of the Great Lakes. This ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... a feeling. He only asks, in one sonnet, where can a balm be found for the heart fretted and torn with eternal cares; when we have thought and striven for some great and good purpose, when all our striving has ended in disaster? His plan, he concludes, is to go out in the quiet night-time and look at ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the room without replying. She needed solitude to recover strength in presence of this terrible unforeseen disaster. ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... 1881 or by the warnings of seismologists, Casamicciola was rebuilt, only to suffer more complete disaster. On July 28th, 1883, at 9.25 P.M., occurred the most destructive earthquake of which we have any record in Ischia. The shock lasted about fifteen seconds, and before it was over clouds of dust were rising above the ruins ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... As it crawled down one of the steep streets from Montmartre there was a creak, the horse stopped and, as quickly as I tell it, the bottom was out of the cab and we were in the street. Harland, as if prepared all along for just such a disaster, whisked the top hat so conspicuous in everything we did from the astonished Architect's head, handed it round, made a pitiful tale of le pauvr' cocher and his hungry wife and children, and implored us to show, now or never, the charitable stuff we were made of. Considering it was the ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... expected to crown any efforts. Guiding their steps by frequent consultations of the priests, the appeals of the kings would increase in earnestness and fervor as the campaign progressed and assumed more serious aspects. When disaster stared them in the face, they would be forced to conclude that the gods were angered, and there was only one way left of averting the divine wrath—a free confession of sins, accompanied, of course, by offerings and magic rites. The Assyrian kings do not tell us in their annals ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... been like it since the Cracksman broke with her, Toinette. But that was before your time, ma fille. Mother of the heavens! but there was a man for you! There was a king that was worthy of such a queen. Name of disaster! that she could not hold him, that the curse of virtue sapped such a splendid tree, and that she could take up with ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... wanted for the fete at Versailles. The king had demanded an ascent for the 19th, a week after the disaster at the Faubourg St. Antoine. Already the possibility of a man going up with the balloon was discussed, and people indulged in visions of splendid aerial trips; but the king would not hear of the proposal. Balloons were novelties, not offering sufficient security, and he was unwilling that any ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... like a man pushed to the verge of disaster, weighing the slender chances of mending his broken fortunes. But as he pondered his face gradually lightened with a faint glimmer of satisfaction. His mind, seeking for a straw, caught at a possible ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... strong hold of his mind, as he frequently, at our subsequent meetings, reverted to the subject. Upon another occasion by degrees the topic of conversation slipped into its wonted channel—the rebellion of 1745, its final disaster, and the singular escape of the Prince from the pursuit of his enemies. The Comte inquired what effect the failure of the enterprise had produced upon the Prince's character, with whose gallant bearing ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... distribution is doomed; capitalist appropriation of labor's product forces the bulk of mankind into wage slavery, throws society into the convulsions of the class struggle, and momentarily threatens to engulf humanity in chaos and disaster. ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... usual to play music at the suttee, but that the white man's notion that this was to drown the screams of the martyr is not correct; that it had a quite different purpose. It was believed that the martyr died prophecying; that the prophecies sometimes foretold disaster, and it was considered a kindness to those upon whom it was to fall to drown the voice and keep them in ignorance of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... can somehow "strike it rich" without that tedious attention to details and expenses which wears out life in effete regions such as Europe and the Eastern states. In this feeling there is just enough of truth to keep the notion alive, but never enough to save from disaster those who make it a working hypothesis. The hope of great or sudden wealth has been the mainspring of enterprise in California, but it has also been the excuse for shiftlessness and recklessness, the cause of social disintegration ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... upon a dangerous and uncertain mission. Should that mission prove successful and restore the fortunes of my house, I will return and claim my daughter. Should fate overwhelm me with disaster, I must beg that you will continue to regard her and love her as your own. The issue will have been decided within five years. Permit me to add but one thing more,—in the event that I fall in the cause I have embraced, I have ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... second-class cruiser Novik. The Russians ultimately retreated towards the harbour with the intention of drawing the Japanese under closer fire of the land batteries, but the Japanese fleet declined to follow after them, and, instead, steamed away. Three days later (February 11th) another disaster overtook the Russians. The Yenisei, one of the two mining-transports included in their fleet, struck a mine and sank so rapidly in Talien Bay that ninety-six of her crew perished. The Japanese had no part at all in this catastrophe. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... clung to it, he should emerge from disaster, he should ascend again into the sunlight, he should let the bitter water drip from his garments and his hair, he ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... sound of his voice, his whole being seemed steeped in venom. Darya Mihailovna gave Pigasov a cordial reception; he amused her with his sallies. They were certainly absurd enough. He took delight in perpetual exaggeration. For example, if he were told of any disaster, that a village had been struck by lightning, or that a mill had been carried away by floods, or that a peasant had cut his hand with an axe, he invariably asked with concentrated bitterness, 'And what's her name?' meaning, what is the name of the woman responsible for this calamity, ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... Sioux, after the Bull Run disaster, arose as the allies of the South, and butchered one thousand men, women and children in Minnesota, the Quakers and other good people flew to arms in their defense, and carried public sentiment in their favor. ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... the world unite, to make it clean, clean, clean, Witch clean—NOW!" they chanted. "Pestilence or peril, disease or disaster, Stay clean, clean, ...
— Prologue to an Analogue • Leigh Richmond
... means waterproof, and we were literally soaked the greater part of the time. In passing through Lake Winnebago the wind was so fearful that the combined efforts of Captain and crew were necessary to prevent shipwreck and disaster. The passage through the rapids below was extremely hazardous, but a famous Indian pilot was employed to guide us over, and no harm befel us. The picture of that tall, dark figure at the bow, his long, black hair streaming ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness and fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... weeks after the unlucky affair before described, we met with a still greater disaster. We had cruised off the Spanish Main and taken several prizes; shortly after we had manned the last and had parted company, the Revenge being then close in shore, a fresh gale sprung up, which compelled us to make all sail to clear the land. We beat off shore ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... strength to do these other things as pleasures, very well; but she should be relieved from them as duties. And as to the need of self-support, I can hardly conceive of an instance where it can be to the mother of young children anything but a disaster. As we all know, this calamity often occurs; I have seen it among the factory operatives at the North, and among the negro women in the cotton-fields at the South: in both cases it is a tragedy, and the bodies and brains of mother ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... towards which the government leaned, as far as its intentions can be gathered, yet Banks could only have accepted it by sacrificing his communications, putting New Orleans in imminent peril, and creating irreparable and almost inevitable disaster as a price of a remote chance of achieving a great success. In point of fact, in the early days of January, McClernand, accompanied by Sherman as a corps commander, was moving toward the White River and the brilliant adventure of Arkansas ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... of eager hands and warm southern hearts—a cargo amounting by this time to 39 wounded persons and 22 dead bodies. And with these she delivered a list of 96 missing persons that had drowned or otherwise perished at the scene of the disaster. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Rassasna, and ascend quickly to Smolensk. He reckoned upon finding the town without defence, and then by a sudden movement taking the Russian in flank, and so at last inflicting upon his enemies a great military disaster. The movements of the French army were to be concealed from the enemy behind the forests abounding everywhere. It was important to conceal our march from the Russians, who were about to form their ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... of the enemy, and, almost at the same moment, a gun was fired from the bushes. It is said that the Iroquois, seeing the Mohawks, who were an allied tribe, in the van, wished to warn them of danger. The warning came too late to save the column from disaster, but it saved it from destruction. From the thicket on the left a deadly fire blazed out, and the head of the column was almost swept away. Hendrick's horse was shot, and the chief killed with a bayonet as he tried ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... desert tribe over whom the authority of Suleiman was but nominal. When summoned for any great effort, these children of the desert would rally to his armies and fight for a short time; but at the first disaster, or whenever they became tired of the discipline and regularity of the army, they would mount their camels and return to the desert, generally managing on the way to abstract from the farms of those on their route ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... children, and not children only, love to be upon the winning side, and it told something of the trend of the boy's deeper nature that he would rather die for France than live for England. So would it have been the afternoon of the day La Mothe had followed his own course to his own disaster had not Charles once more proved the truth of Villon's observation. The dull eyes saw more than ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... 8.0 the Turkish reinforcements at Suvla seemed to have got enough. They did not appear to be in any great strength: here and there they fell back: no more came up in support: evidently, they were being held: failure, not disaster, was the upshot: few things so bad they might not be worse. By 8.0 the musketry and the shelling began to slacken down although there was a good deal of desultory shooting. We were holding our own; the Welsh Division are coming in this morning; but we have not sweated blood only to hold our own; ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... the advice of the man whom he asked to join his family, the event might have been different. But I must not anticipate, and I find my hardest task in writing what is before me is to escape the shadow of the disaster which was to come. At that time, and, indeed, until the storm burst, few of us had penetration to discern the cloud on the horizon,—Colonel Washington, Mr. Franklin, and a few others, perhaps, ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... but he could find no precedent in any of its pages for abandoning a quest like his in the teeth of disaster or adversity. He read it for hour after crackling hour, moistening his throat from time to time with warm, unappetizing water from the improvised jar filter; but when the oven blast that makes the Indian summer day a hell on earth had waned and died away, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... to her station resolved on vengeance. Four girls followed her to their places divided between two fears. Awe of Miss Archer and the disaster that would surely overtake them if they persisted in their former tactics acted as a spur to their sleeping consciences. Fear of Mignon became a secondary emotion. They vowed within themselves to play fairly and they kept ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... money help and aid in times of disaster and sickness there are many who are lonesome for words of cheer and acts of kindness on the part of those with whom they daily come in contact. There is a deeper meaning in the parable than that which ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... statutes, or pleaded in law courts. The matrimonial bond is not merely a physical union, and we have to learn that, as the author of The Question of English Divorce (p. 49) remarks, "other than physical divergencies are, in fact, by far the most important of the originating causes of matrimonial disaster." ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Archipelago. Philip Garland, a young animal collector and trainer, of New York, sets sail for Eastern seas in quest of a new stock of living curiosities. The vessel is wrecked off the coast of Borneo and young Garland, the sole survivor of the disaster, is cast ashore on a small island, and captured by the apes that overrun the place. The lad discovers that the ruling spirit of the monkey tribe is a gigantic and vicious baboon, whom he identifies as Goliah, an animal at one time in his possession ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... found at the back of Temple Island, not far from Mackay, 150 miles or more north of Flinders' situation when he wrote this passage. The wreckage is believed by some to be part of the craft built by Laperouse's people at Vanikoro, after the disaster which overtook them there. The sternpost recovered from the wreckage is, I am informed, included among the Laperouse relics preserved at Paris. See A.C. Macdonald, on "The Fate of Laperouse," Victorian Geographical ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... the Allies, who had at their command unlimited means, and the bravest of soldiers in the greatest numbers, were all owing to bad management; and our reverses in every instance are owing to the same cause. The disaster at Bull Run, and the inability of our men to keep the ground they had won at Wilson's Creek, in Missouri, (August 10,) were the legitimate consequences of action over which the mass of the soldiers could have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... weather, in many merchantmen, all hands are kept, throughout the day, and, then, there are eight hours on deck for one watch each night. Thus it is usually the case that at the end of a voyage, where there has been the finest weather, and no disaster, the crew have a wearied and worn-out appearance. They never sleep longer than four hours at a time, and are seldom called without being really in need of more rest. There is no one thing that a sailor thinks more of as a luxury of life ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... in olden time, an eclipse of the sun came as an omen of terrible disaster, nay as being itself one of the worst of disasters. It came so to all nations but one. But to that nation the word of the prophet ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... respect had anything to do with rouge and powder. She sat down on a low chair by the window with the fearlessness of one whose complexion is not a matter of anxiety, and she told Mrs. Ogilvie the story of the disaster. ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... prince, gained the consent of the cultivators of the surrounding district to the cutting of the dykes. The camps and trenches of the besiegers were flooded out; and (October 8) the siege was raised and the army of Don Frederick retired, leaving Alkmaar untaken. Within a week another disaster befell the Spanish arms. Between Hoorn and Enkhuizen the fleet of Bossu on the Zuyder Zee was attacked by the Sea-Beggars and was completely defeated. Bossu himself was taken prisoner and was held as a hostage for the safety of Ste ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... the remedy for our depreciated and depreciating national currency? The Secretary of the Treasury anticipated the disaster, and proposed a remedy in 1861. I gave his bank plan then my earnest and immediate support. Well would it have been for our country if it had then been adopted, and gold would not now command a premium ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... immovable, and Bertrand reluctantly added, "We fear either your son or his cousin, possibly both of them, have met with disaster—maybe murder." ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... insult. They certainly founded their republic on principles of adamant, but in spite of high hopes and wise laws the boulders refused to move. Even Iowa enterprise at last gave way under constant disaster, and the people of the little city are one by one forsaking it for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... view and glancing searchingly into his troubled countenance. "Is he wounded?" He could have gathered her into his arms and kissed her as she stood before him, but that the very air seemed charged with impending disaster. As gently as brevity would permit, he told her of Carrick's fate. Together they rode swiftly back to where Carrick lay, fighting his ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... country's omissions. All the country cares for is to hope Dick Turpin may get to York. Our men are good beasts; they give the best in 'em, and drop. More's the scandal to a country that has grand material and overtasks it. A blazing disaster ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... other half of the problem, our failures even fail to instruct us. After each new collapse we begin our life anew, but on the old conditions; and the attempt ends as usual in the repetition—in the circumstances the inevitable repetition—of the old disaster. Not that at times we do not obtain glimpses of the true state of the case. After seasons of much discouragement, with the sore sense upon us of our abject feebleness, we do confer with ourselves, insisting ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... looking toward Christ Church and the quickly descending road over which only a few days ago my father had journeyed. I caught in her face, as I entered, an anxious and disturbed glance, and I felt almost instantly an intimation of disaster. She turned to me as I came into the room and ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... struggle; assault seemed to give him new vigour; the attempt to tear the robe of office from his shoulders only gave the nobler display of his intellectual proportions. When I saw him, night after night, standing almost alone, with nothing but disaster in front and timidity in the rear, combating a force such as had never before been arrayed under the banners of Opposition; the whole scene of magnificent conflict and still grander fortitude, reminded me of the Homeric war and its warriors.—The champion of the kingdom, standing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... understood clearly that Egypt needed more land and more people. Second, he believed that the simplest way to find men was a war with Asia. But Pentuer had proved to him that war could only heighten the disaster. A new question rose then, did Pentuer speak the truth, or was he lying? If he spoke the truth, he plunged the prince in despair, for Ramses saw no means to raise the state except war. Unless war were made, Egypt would lose population yearly, and ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... among the London merchants, as had been agreed upon. Philip was exasperated and enraged beyond expression at this unexpected destruction of armaments which had cost him so much time and money to prepare. His spirit was irritated and aroused by the disaster, not quelled; and he immediately began to renew his preparations, making them now on a still vaster scale than before. The amount of damage which Drake effected was, therefore, after all, of no greater benefit to England than putting back the ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... chosen of Allah, the charm boy by divine right. Kali was glad of the opportunity to plunge his people into gaieties, for a mysterious shadow had hovered over the barrio for a week, and he hoped to dispel the effects of a recent disaster by merriment and fiesta. In the night an infant had disappeared from its hammock under the mango-tree and no trace of it had ever been found. The mother, who had been sleeping on the ground near her babe, told a strange ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... one woman, and to the average woman a similar revelation would seem a thing indelicate; but these two were not of the common sort. Harlson pulled off his stocking as carefully as he would have done a glove, and spread it on the sand where it might dry, and, laughing at his disaster, he dabbled with his foot ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... by the coronation of Charles X., that great ceremonial of which the Cathedral of Rheims was the scene, and which, coming as it did after all the horrors of the Revolution, gave rise to the sanguine hope that the ancient monarchy would repair every disaster now, just as it had in the time of Charles VII. But our childish ideas were not of so far-reaching a nature. It was the splendour displayed that interested us—the dresses, the carriages, and so on, of the princes and ambassadors who came from all parts of the world to greet the opening of the ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... should have loved each other so long and not made it known, that they should ever have uttered it, and that, being uttered, it should be so much more and better than ever could have been dreamed. The broken engagement was a fable of disaster that only made their present fortune more prosperous. The city ceased about them, and they walked on up the street, the first man and first woman in the garden of the new-made earth. As they were both very conscious people, they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... from their stores. And the rumor of an epidemic might accomplish that as thoroughly as the epidemic itself. Therefore, without questioning too far, they were quite willing to spend money to avert such disaster. The sum suggested was voted into the hands of a committee of three to ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in which he has played a part, and of extraordinary services which only he could have performed; and when he dies, the country will be called upon to mourn for one who has saved it from social degradation, and from political disaster. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... immediately that one of two things was very sure to happen; and he could not see how either of them would result in anything but terrible disaster to him. ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... which, having been built more strongly than the rest, had hitherto escaped destruction. The ladies' tent had also withstood the gale; but how long it would continue to do so it was difficult to say. The seamen, in no way disconcerted by the disaster, were laughing and cutting jokes with each other as they endeavoured to rebuild their huts in the dark; but scarcely had they tried to fix the boughs in a proper position than another gust would again scatter the whole ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... spoke, the moonlight shone down. There were two trawlers and a patrol boat in sight, and twenty or thirty boats rowing to the scene of the disaster. Suddenly there was ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... investment in other sectors will remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, its landlocked geographic location, its civil strife, and its susceptibility to natural disaster. ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... shout of joy, for they had begun to fear that the expedition must have met with some disaster, in doubling Cape Horn, and ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... who did not know how to keep a good thing when they had it. When Commodore Preble came, six months afterwards, to blockade the port of Tripoli, he discovered that the "Philadelphia" was nearly ready for sea; and, to prevent the disaster of having a United States ship with United States cannon bear down upon them, he determined to destroy the "Philadelphia," if possible, and an excellent plan for the purpose was devised. A small vessel called ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... attacked the evil of it in Bleak House in the character of Harold Skimpole, with its essentially cowardly carelessness and its highly selfish communism. Nevertheless, as I have said before, it must have been no small degree of actual melancholia which led Dickens to look for a lesson of disaster and slavery in the very same career from which he had once taught lessons of continual recuperation and a kind of fantastic freedom. There must have been at this time some melancholy behind the writings. There must have existed on this earth ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... no man has need of them? But there was nothing to strike others as sublime about Mr. Casaubon, and Lydgate, who had some contempt at hand for futile scholarship, felt a little amusement mingling with his pity. He was at present too ill acquainted with disaster to enter into the pathos of a lot where everything is below the level of tragedy except the passionate egoism ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Malvinas) overfishing by unlicensed vessels is a problem; reindeer were introduced to the islands in 2001 for commercial reasons; this is the only commercial reindeer herd in the world unaffected by the Chornobyl disaster ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States |
