"Earthquake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "serene, indifferent to fate," thus her own poets have styled her, and on no other city since the world began has fate, unmalicious, mechanical and elemental, wrought such a terrible havoc. In a day this city has vanished; the shock of a mighty earthquake forgotten in an hour in the hopeless horror of fire; homes, hotels, hospitals, hovels, libraries, museums, skyscrapers, factories, shops, banks and gambling dens, all blotted out of existence almost in the twinkling ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... fifty men." So he goes away into solitude, and looks about him for some clear sign that God has not deserted him. But nothing happens. The great signs of nature pass before him, the storm, the lightning, and the earthquake, but they only reflect his own stormy mood. The Lord is not in them. Then, within his heart, there speaks that voice which is at once speech and silence, and it says to him: "What doest thou here, Elijah," and behold, the man is convicted. For when he {188} reflects ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... this speech had been made by a member of the Royal Irish academy, it would have had the honour to be noticed all over England as a bull. The honour to be noticed, we say, in imitation of the exquisitely polite expression of a correspondent of the English Royal Society, who talks of "the earthquake that had the honour to be ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... fury depopulates a district, or a small tract of land over which it passes perhaps once in a century—the earthquake rumbles through the hidden recesses of the earth, and here and there the yawning cavern swallows the ill-fated inhabitants that dwell upon its surface; the lightning's stroke blasts in a moment, and cuts the threads of life without any warning; and the steam engine destroy ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... was not idle. In the night-winds he and his legions would shriek and yell and rattle among the scaffolding and cranes in vain. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, he shook the structure with a frightful earthquake, which terrified all Alsatia, and, although whole streets were thrown down in Strasburg, yet the foundations of the Wunderbau, as the Germans love to call it, were not loosened, and no stone was moved from its place. A few years afterward, in 1289, he once more made use of his favorite element, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... ignorant masses. During the three succeeding years the land was visited by enormous flying armies of locusts, which descended in myriads upon the fields, and left the shadow of famine in their track. In 1348 came an earthquake of such frightful violence that many men deemed the end of the world to be presaged. Its devastations were widely spread. Cyprus, Greece, and Italy were terribly visited, and it extended through the Alpine ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... principle of space,—the source of motion,—the cause of magnetism, galvanism, light, heat, gravity, of the aurora, the lightning, the zodiacal light, of the tails and nebulosities of comets, of the great currents of our atmosphere, of the samiel, the hurricane, and the earthquake. It will be perceived that we treat it as any other fluid, in relation to its law of motion and condensation. But we have no right to base our calculations on its resistance, by the analogies presented ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... had been listening to the muffled thunder of the cannonade at long range, suddenly "heard a tremendous explosion from the opposing frigate. The effect of her shot seemed to make the 'Guerriere' reel and tremble, as though she had received the shock of an earthquake. Immediately after this, I heard a tremendous shock on deck, and was told that the mizzen-mast was shot away. In a few moments afterward, the cock-pit was filled ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... a sort of cognizant sleep when a harsh, loud, cruel voice awakened me, and I seemed to see a great Polyphemus, stretching his hands into the clouds, and gaping like an earthquake. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... beauty. If in any one of nature's phenomena she could speak to a troubled soul, surely it would be in this. For while to Elijah the answer was in the still small voice, yet man unaided by divine revelation prefers the earthquake and the fire, or some other grand, overwhelming manifestation of nature's power, which appeals to the sensuous rather than to ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... India is identical with that of Europe, most naturalists being now agreed that it originally came from the East. It was supposed by Pallas that the brown rat crossed over into Russia about the year 1727. When frightened by an earthquake, numbers swam over the Volga from countries bordering on the Caspian Sea. It seems to have driven out the black rat before it wherever it made its appearance. In England it was introduced by shipping about the middle ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... answer, as with a shiver of dread I worded the fearful suspicion that had flashed across my brain. "No, Tom, it's an earthquake!" ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... spot the official's astonishment at the extraordinary destruction became greater and greater. The rock had been rent as if by an earthquake, to the ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... sacrifice; even though no more than the big apples and vegetable marrows of the harvest festival be involved in it. There is the continued belief in a Deity who can and should be persuaded to change the weather, or who punishes those who offend Him by famine, earthquake and pestilence. Vestigial relics of all these phases can still be discovered in the Book of Common Prayer. There is further the undying vogue of the religious amulet. There is the purely magical efficacy which some churches attribute to their sacraments, rites, shrines, liturgic ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... tramp tries, like every other mere male, to be logical. A woman is more heroic. I once read of a French lady being killed during an earthquake because she insisted on going into a falling house to rescue that portion of her hair which usually rested on the dressing-table whilst she ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... of hussars came galloping in with the news that a powder wagon had exploded by accident in the grand avenue of Randstadt, at the river-side. The dark, red smoke rolled up to the sky, and slowly disappeared, while the old houses continued to shake as if an earthquake were rolling by. ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... territories which gave to man special fair play, but no more, in the struggle for existence, the battle with the powers of Nature; tolerably fertile, tolerably temperate; with boundless means of water communication; freer than most parts of the world from those terrible natural phenomena, like the earthquake and the hurricane, before which man lies helpless and astounded, a child beneath the foot of a giant. Nature was to them not so inhospitable as to starve their brains and limbs, as it has done for the Esquimaux ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... force they knew was the force of which they were directly conscious,—the force of will. Accordingly, they imagined all the outward world to be endowed with volition, and to be directed by it. They personified everything,—sky, clouds, thunder, sun, moon, ocean, earthquake, whirlwind. [9] The comparatively enlightened Athenians of the age of Perikles addressed the sky as a person, and prayed to it to rain upon their gardens. [10] And for calling the moon a mass of dead matter, Anaxagoras came near losing his life. To the ancients ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... were at Malta we experienced a rude shock of an earthquake, which alarmed me, though I did not know what it was. It was said to foretell that the ocean, which had given birth to Graham's Island, had, like Pelops, devoured its own offspring, and we are told it is not now visible, and will be, perhaps, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world: Where the smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong; Chanted from ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the Boy, scornfully. "So interesting you went to sleep! And you snored so they thought it was an earthquake. Not another beaver'll show a hair round here to-night. We'd ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... The earthquake is his best ally— It shows up things he cannot buy, And gives him raw material For making mastodons and such, Enough to beat that ancient "Dutch Republic's Rise ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... lived in Barbadoes and Jamaica and traded in severall parts of the West Indies, meeting of late with great losses of above L12,000 sterling by the Earthquake and Enemyes and through misfortune, came to New York and there finding Captain Kid comeing out with a full Power to the East Indies to take the Pyrates, which he shewed me by the means of my Friends, so resolved to go with him to the East Indies ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... made me a big white robe to be baptized in. When I got out I had a white dress to put on. Dey had a tent fer us to go in to change our clothes. We was baptized in de Fairforest jes' above de Harris Bridge. Everybody sung while we was going under de water. Some of 'em shouted, too. It took de earthquake to shake religion in my husband. He was Emanuel Gist, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... the earthquake ceased, and suddenly I was in the outer air. My first ski-run, the most glorious run of modern ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... changes in which the Motor Rangers figure. They have experiences "that never were on land or sea," in heat and cold and storm, over mountain peak and lost city, with savages and reptiles; their ship of the air is attacked by huge birds of the air; they survive explosion and earthquake; they even ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... to the wildest desperation; and woe betide the slaveholder, the day he ventures to remove or hinder the operation of those conductors! I warn him that, in such an event, a spirit will go forth in their midst, more to be dreaded than the most appalling earthquake. ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... old animal man, smeared over, it is true, with a veneer, thin and magical, that makes him dream drunken dreams of self-exaltation and to sneer at the flesh and the blood of him beneath the smear. The raw animal crouching within him is like the earthquake monster pent in the crust of the earth. As he persuades himself against the latter till it arouses and shakes down a city, so does he persuade himself against the former until it shakes him out of his dreaming and he stands undisguised, a brute like ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... be physicked like particular persons, I should venture to prescribe to it after the same manner. I remember when our whole island was shaken with an earthquake some years ago, there was an impudent mountebank who sold pills, which, as he told the country people, were "very good against an earthquake." It may, perhaps, be thought as absurd to prescribe a diet for the allaying popular commotions and national ferments. But I am verily persuaded ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... Nero about the time of the martyrdom of Paul, continued with greater or less fury for centuries. Christians were falsely accused of the most dreadful crimes, and declared to be the cause of great calamities—famine, pestilence, and earthquake. As they became the objects of popular hatred and suspicion, informers stood ready, for the sake of gain, to betray the innocent. They were condemned as rebels against the empire, as foes of religion, and pests to society. Great numbers were thrown to wild ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... with the earthquake.... There was a wood-cellar in one of the out-houses, access to which was easy and safe. One of my host's domestics had slipped flint and steel into my hands. In less than half-an-hour's time, a cheerful fire was crackling before me. I drew forth an old lumbering arm-chair from the wood-cellar, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... secreted therein. While the boat was thus lying at her mooring, the rumor was flying all over town that a number of slaves had escaped, which created a general excitement a degree less, perhaps, than if the citizens had been visited by an earthquake. The mayor of the city with a posse of officers with axes and long spears repaired to Captain F.'s boat. The fearless commander received his Honor very coolly, and as gracefully as the circumstances would admit. The mayor gave him to understand who he was, and by what authority he appeared ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... and his joy in the Lord brimmed full and bubbled over, and at midnight, in the damp, dark, loathsome dungeon, he and Silas, his comrade in service and suffering, "prayed and sang praises unto God." God answered with an earthquake, and the jailer and his household got gloriously converted. Paul was set free and went at once to Thessalonica, where, regardless of the shameful way he had been treated at Philippi, he preached the Gospel boldly, and a blessed revival followed with many converts; ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... flooding the works, and a river turned into the shaft ran down it for two days and three nights. At first no perceptible effect was produced, but on the second a terrific explosion shook the mountain as if an earthquake had taken place. The huts near the opening were blown to pieces, and even the stone houses on the slopes of the hill, fell with tremendous crashes. Water, however, gained the victory. Gradually the ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... eighteen months afterwards with the changes of the Company, when Colbert and the Marquis de Louvois caused him to be created "Antiquary to the King," Louis le Grand, and charged him with collecting coins and medals for the royal cabinet. As he was about to leave Smyrna, he had a narrow escape from the earthquake and subsequent fire which destroyed some fifteen thousand of the inhabitants: he was buried in the ruins; but, his kitchen being cold as becomes a philosopher's, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... trumpets, as if Miss Wirt was storming a breach; and although I knew nothing of music, as I sat and listened with my mouth open to this wonderful display, my CAFFY grew cold, and I wondered the windows did not crack and the chandelier start out of the beam at the sound of this earthquake of ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the old palace was built by Governor-General Mossel, one hundred and fifty years ago, and the original received additions during the reigns of Daendels and Raffles. This structure was destroyed by an earthquake in 1834, and the new palace, the first glimpse of which one receives across an artificial lake, is a worthy residence for the administrator of the Dutch Indies. The surface of the lake is studded with lotus flowers and victoria ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... swam, The rivers piled their floods in a dam, The ridge above Los Gatos Creek Arched its spine in a feline fashion; The forests waltzed till they grew sick, And Nature shook in a speechless passion; And, swallowed up in the earthquake's spleen, The wonderful Spring of San Joaquin Vanished, and never ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... clatter of Rugg's horse and carriage over the pavements shook the houses on both sides of the street. And this is credible, if, indeed, Rugg's horse and carriage did pass on that night. For at this day, in many of the streets, a loaded truck or team in passing will shake the houses like an earthquake. However, Rugg's neighbours never afterward watched again; some of them treated it all as a delusion, and thought no more of it. Others, of a different opinion, shook their heads and said nothing. Thus Rugg and his child, horse and chair, were soon forgotten; and probably many in the neighbourhood ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... he made the plunge, and others have followed Rich in this error. The lad's age was really not less than nineteen or twenty. According to the family legend, his ship touched at Lisbon on the way out; one cannot decide whether this was just before or immediately after the great earthquake. Then to New France, where he joined Montcalm. Entering the service as cadet, he advanced to the rank of lieutenant; was mentioned in the Gazette; shared in the French successes; drew maps of the forests and block-houses that found ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... British Collector of Customs at Boston, rescues a poor girl from the stocks, educates her, and makes her mistress of his household. The scene moves to Lisbon, and there is a wonderful picture of the earthquake. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of Moeris, the pyramids of the Pharaohs, the endless wall of China, and this huge bulwark, built in sterile places, on the summits of mountains, through the abyss of ravines—bear witness to the gigantic iron will, and the unlimited power, of the ancient kings. Neither time, nor earthquake, nor man, transitory man, nor the footstep of thousands of years, have entirely destroyed, entirely trodden down, the remains of immemorial antiquity. These places awake in me solemn and sacred thoughts. I wandered over the traces of Peter the Great; I pictured him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... his "Monasteries of the Levant," 1849, says "the scenery of Meteora (Mt. Pindus in Albania) is of a very singular kind. The end of a range of rocky hills seems to have been broken off by some earthquake, or washed away by the Deluge, leaving only a series of twenty or thirty tall, thin, smooth, needle-like rocks, many hundred feet in height; some like gigantic tusks, some shaped like sugar- loaves, and some ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... all incredible after the day that I've had? Where do the things join? What's all that got to do with the horrors I've been through to-day, with the Forest, the cholera, Marie, Semyonov.... With all that's happening in Europe? With this mad earthquake of a catastrophe? And yet one thinks of such silly things. I can see them doing Othello with their cheap ermine, bad jewellery and impossible wigs. I expect Othello's black came off as he got hotter and hotter; and the Rev. I. R. Glass on "Fools".... There'd be all the cheap ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... lunt in his own hand to fire the largest cannon, such a cannon as none of the Cossacks had ever beheld before. It looked horrible with its wide mouth, and a thousand deaths poured forth from it. And as it thundered, the three others followed, shaking in fourfold earthquake the dully responsive earth. Much woe did they cause. For more than one Cossack wailed the aged mother, beating with bony hands her feeble breast; more than one widow was left in Glukhof, Nemirof, Chernigof, and other cities. The loving woman ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Lydia was converted. She furnished him a home while he continued his work in the city. After some time there arose great opposition to him and he and Silas were beaten and put in prison, but through prayer they were released by an earthquake which also resulted in the conversion of the jailer (Acts ch. 16). He perhaps visited them again on his journey from Ephesus to Macedonia (Acts 20 2 Cor 2:12-13; 7:5-6). He spent the Passover there (Acts 20:6) and received messages from them (Phil. 4:16). They ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... contiguous, they must have overrun the Indies of Castille and peopled them, being part of the same main land. They used much policy in their rule. But at the end of many ages, by divine permission, and perhaps owing to their sins, it happened that a great and continuous earthquake, with an unceasing deluge, perpetual by day and night, opened the earth and swallowed up those warlike and ambitious Atlantic men. The Atlantic Island remained absorbed beneath that great sea, which from that cause continued to be unnavigable owing to the mud of ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... very time, or near it, an earthquake was occurring in the northern part of South America, for the telegram came that day, though why a vision of it should be sent to Harriet no one ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... 'society' news,—and they bored me nearly to death. The trifles they wanted 'mentioned' were innumerable—the other trifles they didn't want mentioned, were quite as endless. One day there was a regular row—a sort of earthquake in the place. Somebody had presumed to mention that the beautiful Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup had smoked several cigarettes with infinite gusto at a certain garden party,—now what are you ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... right on sleeping. Yes! Instead of joining his friends in a mad scamper through the woods in the moonlight, Dickie Deer Mouse slept on and on and on, until—something shook the small tree where he lived and made it sway as if an earthquake had come. ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... behind, a reaching unto that which is before? Therefore destruction itself is holy. It is as if the Eternal said, "I will show myself; but think not to hold me in any form in which I come. The form is not I." The still small voice is ever reminding us that the Lord is neither in the earthquake nor the wind nor the fire; but in the lowly heart that finds him everywhere. The material can cope with the eternal only in ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... as the Many-Eyed One sees," replied Ten-teh, with unmoved determination. "This person has long desired a son, and those who walk into an earthquake while imploring heaven for a sign are unworthy of consideration. Take this fish and depart until the morrow. Also, unless you would have the villagers regard you as not only deficient but profane, reveal nothing of this happening to those whom you encounter." With these words ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... year the Terentilian law, being brought forward again by the entire college, engaged the serious attention of the new consuls, who were Publius Volumnius and Servius Sulpicius. In that year the sky seemed to be on fire, and a violent earthquake took place: it was believed that an ox spoke, a phenomenon which had not been credited in the previous year: among other prodigies there was a shower of flesh, which a large flock of birds is said to have carried off by pecking ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... souls being pitched off into death, and their employers know it. Is there a God? Will there be a judgment? I tell you, if God rises up to redress woman's wrongs, many of our large establishments will be swallowed up quicker than a South American earthquake ever took down a city. God will catch these oppressors between the two millstones of his wrath and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... officials and flunkeys which means that some great personage is coming—then Joan of Arc stepped in, and the house rose! Yes, and tried to shut its indecorous mouth and make itself grave and proper; but when it saw the Maid herself go to laughing, it thanked God for this mercy and the earthquake that followed. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... hot and thundery, and the hum of the bees (Aunt Barbree was famous for her honey) came lazy-like through the open window. Susannah prayed to the Lord that this quiet might last—until four o'clock, at any rate. Short of an earthquake in Plymouth (which, being pious, she didn't dare to pray for) nothing would ward off visitors beyond that hour, but, with luck, Aunt Barbree might be expected back soon after five, when the giving of change would begin. Susannah looked at the clock. The time was close upon half-past two. She ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... course. She never loses her head,—I don't believe she would in an earthquake. Whenever we were at work with our microscopes at the Institute I always told her that her mind was the only achromatic one I ever looked into,—I did n't say looked through.—-But I did n't come to talk about that. I read in one of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Cimbrians, and the Teutons, the national name of the Germans. They came from afar, northward, from the Cimbrian peninsula, nowadays Jutland, and from the countries bordering on the Baltic which nowadays form the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig. A violent shock of earthquake, a terrible inundation, had driven them, they said, from their homes; and those countries do indeed show traces of such events. And Cimbrians and Teutons had been for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... return-tickets, or acting as pony for frozen little boys, or doing duty as special constable when burglars pay an evening call, he is admirable; but, when he enters a room, he has all the general effects of an earthquake without any picturesque accessories. His beauty is of course praised, and, like any other big lumbering male, he is flattered; his vast tail makes a sweep like the blade of a screw-propeller, and away goes a vase. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... women that natural happenings are independent of divine control to at least the extent that natural forces affect all alike, and without the least reference to religious beliefs. Fire burns and water drowns, foods sustain and poisons kill, no matter what our opinions on theology may be. In an earthquake or a war there is no observable relation between casualties and religious opinions. We are, in fact, told by theologians that it is folly to expect that there should be. A particular providence is no longer in fashion; God, we are told, works only through general laws, and that ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... conferred together and exchanged wise looks while a stout and clumsy Saxon serving-man of about forty shook his head. "I did dream of an earthquake no longer ago than night before last," he said, "which is a dream that doth ever warn the dreamer and all concerned with him to be cautious and careful. Here cometh riding the twin of our young lord: and the Evil One only knoweth how this stranger hath the nose, the eyes, the mouth, the complexion, ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... my eyes before I'd read long, and that crowd of fierce lynchers was lookin' industriously upon the ground. One man chawed away on his baccy, like there'd be an earthquake if he stopped, and another lad, with a match in his mouth, scratched a cigarette on his leg, shieldin' it careful with his hands, and your Uncle Willy tried to fill a straight face on a four-card draw, and to talk in a tone of voice ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... and recently rebuilt section in the heart of the town—which boasted some 10,000 inhabitants—flimsy frame houses rose in white poverty upon the ruins of what was once known as "the little Paris of the West Indies." Of the massive buildings of a century ago, not one remained whole. The great earthquake of 1842 did much toward their destruction; the orgy of loot and plunder which followed, did more; but the chiefest of all agents of demolition was the black ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and made thus plain of it. For, in truth, I to have something of belief, and it to seem to me that in a bygone Eternity, when the world was yet light, as in my heart I knew to have been indeed a thing of verity, there was a great and wondrous earthquake. ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... that no one should leave his presence sorrowful; and he thought that day lost in which he had done no good deed. Titus wrote poems and tragedies in Greek, and was familiar with his native literature. During his reign, A.D. 79, occurred a violent eruption of Vesuvius, together with an earthquake, by which Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Pompeii, three towns on the Bay of Naples, were destroyed. The emperor was so touched by the sufferings of the inhabitants that he expended nearly his whole private fortune in relieving their wants. Pompeii and Herculaneum, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... is the chief influence, end has the precedence in its power over the world. And yet there are many who will be ready to think that light is a very tame and feeble instrument, because it is noiseless. An earthquake for example, is to them a much more vigorous, and effective agency. Hear how it comes thundering through the solid foundations of nature. It rocks a whole continent. The noblest works of man—cities, monuments, and temples—are in a moment levelled to the ground or swallowed ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... in bed five minutes before he heard and felt an earthquake. This earthquake seemed to have been born towards the north-east, in the direction of Crown Square, and the shock seemed to pass southwards in the direction of Knype. The bed shook; the basin and ewer rattled together like imperfect false teeth in the mouth of an arrant coward; the walls of the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... of an old Roman king, several prodigies of an alarming nature appeared. When he first became sick there arose a violent tempest of wind, which blew down the cross from one of the churches. After this followed a terrible earthquake, which shook the whole city. Moreover an old eagle, a domestic of the royal palace, that had lived there many years, took wing the day before the king's sickness began, and flew away no one knew whither; then the bells of the imperial chapel rang thrice of their ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... in circles with intense velocity, and accompanied by winds, impetuous beyond all conception; while flashes of awful brilliancy, and murky, lurid flames incessantly broke forth. From these confused clouds, furious winds, and momentary fires, sounds issued, of which no earthquake or thunder ever heard could afford the least idea; striking such awe into all, that it was thought the end of the world had arrived, that the earth, waters, heavens, and entire universe, mingling together, were being resolved into their ancient chaos. Wherever this awful tempest ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... ultimo there was a slight shock of an earthquake felt distinctly by myself and other persons here. It occurred in the afternoon, about two o'clock, was accompanied by a rumbling sound, but lasted little more than a minute. The health of the royal Marines, and all other residents at the ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... of his work are very meager. He set the world up on posts, some say iron posts, with one in the center. At this central post he has his abode, in company with a python, according to the version of some, and whenever he feels displeasure toward men he shakes the post, thereby producing an earthquake and at the same time intimating to man his anger. It is believed that should the trembling continue ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... I approve such cruelties, Because I marvel at the architects Who built these walls, and curved these noble arches? Oh, I am put to shame, when I consider How mean our work is, when compared with theirs! Look at these walls about us and above us! They have been shaken by earthquake; have been made A fortress, and been battered by long sieges; The iron clamps, that held the stones together, Have been wrenched from them; but they stand erect And firm, as if they had been hewn and hollowed Out of the solid rock, and were a part Of the foundations ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... [*Ed. Did. v, 3], an accidental being has no cause, least of all a natural cause, such as is the power of a heavenly body, because what occurs accidentally, neither is a being properly speaking, nor is one—for instance, that an earthquake occur when a stone falls, or that a treasure be discovered when a man digs a grave—for these and like occurrences are not one thing, but are simply several things. Whereas the operation of nature has always some one thing for its ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... forget. Andy was uncomfortably "straight". His mind worked slowly and his decisions were, as a rule, right and just; and when he once came to a conclusion concerning any man or matter, or decided upon a course of action, nothing short of an earthquake or a Nevertire cyclone could move him back an inch—unless a conviction were severely shaken, and then he would require as much time to "back" to his starting point as he did to come to ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... Madge and her cousin had crossed the river and had landed on the New York side. What was the dreadful roar and rumble that met their ears? It sounded like an earthquake, with the noise of frightened people shrieking above it. After a horrified moment it dawned on the two little strangers that this was only the usual roar of New York, which Tom Curtis had so often ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... tremendous were the ideas which he conveyed that it appeared as if the human heart were far too bounded for their conception. His feelings seemed better fitted for a spirit whose habitation is the earthquake and the volcano than for one confined to a mortal body and human lineaments. But these were merely memories; he was changed since then. He was now all love, all softness; and when I raised my eyes in wonder at him as he spoke the ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... over, and rapping on the table so as to create a small earthquake in the room. "I knew, sir, that your father the baron would be satisfied with him; I would have given him a bond for that on stamped paper. He was a clever lad, even when he was that high," indicating with his hand a degree of smallness that ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... gunpowder. The tower blew up with a tremendous explosion; the Moors who were upon its battlements were hurled into the air, and fell mangled in various parts of the town, and the houses in its vicinity were rent and overthrown as with an earthquake. ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... millions of years? Does not a pestilence or a famine send thousands of the guilty and the innocent alike—nay, thousands of those who know not their right hand from their left—to one common destruction? Does not God (if you suppose it his doing) swallow up whole cities by earthquake, or overwhelm them with volcanic fires? I say, is there any difference between the cases, except that the victims are very rarely so wicked as the Canaanites are said to have been, and that God in the one case himself does the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... the Venezuelan troops. But the revolutionary government was too feebly organized to give efficiency to the military force. Divisions arose, and the cause of independence was on the retrograde, when the dreadful earthquake of 1812, and the subsequent invasion by the Spanish force under General Monteverde, for the time, precluded all possibility ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... cart no bigger'n this. Might's well tie up an elephant. Besides, he won't stay tied up nowheres. Busted more clotheslines than I've got fingers and toes, that pup has. He needs a chain cable to keep him to his moorin's. Don't ye, Job, you old earthquake? Hey?" ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... March, before putting out to sea, he touched at the Island of Cano, off the coast of Nicaragua. Here they had an alarm which startled even the boldest. As they lay at anchor they felt the shock of a terrible earthquake, which almost brought down the masts of the ship; and for a moment all thought that she had been struck by some hostile machine, or had fallen down on a rock. The pumps were manned, and it was happily found that ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... about like a maniac, while a beautiful young woman tripped along the edge of the box, supported by her companion's hand, and placed lightly upon my brow a chaplet of roses and laurel. Here the applause was like an earthquake. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... bush; where no sound now surprises me—and any sound alarms; I only thought it would give Jack a fine fright, down where he stood tied to a tree by himself, and he was badly enough scared when I left him. The good folks at home identified it; it was a sharp earthquake. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the world he went till he came to the nether cliffs that stand by the inner mountains in the soul and heart of the earth where the Earthquake dwelleth alone, asleep but astir as he sleeps, breathing and moving his legs, and grunting aloud in the dark. Then in the ear of the Earthquake Limpang Tung said a word that only the gods may say, and the Earthquake ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... posts and the cross-pieces of framework, are filled up with lath and plaster; and the roof is almost invariably of thatch. They resemble huge stools resting upon stones, to keep the legs from sinking into the earth, and look as if the first breeze would upset them. An earthquake shakes them, and makes them vibrate, but seldom or ever injures them; whereas a brick and mortar house, subjected to the same severe trial, would certainly give way, unless it were of very substantial ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... the cities, as if in the midst of an earthquake, and there is hardly a man engaged in mercantile operations (I might say not one) who will not ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... indeed—that could not float on its bottom—the Peggy of Springhaven, bought at thrice her value, through the influence of Admiral Darling. If one has to meet every calumny that arises, and deal with it before going further, the battle that lasted for a fortnight and then turned into an earthquake would be a quick affair compared with the one now in progress. Enough that the Peggy proved by the light she gave, and her grand style of burning to the water's edge before she blew up, that she was worth at least the hundred pounds ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... fear I should be buried in it I ran forward to my ladder, and not thinking myself safe there neither, I got over my wall for fear of the pieces of the hill, which I expected might roll down upon me. I had no sooner stepped do ground, than I plainly saw it was a terrible earthquake, for the ground I stood on shook three times at about eight minutes' distance, with three such shocks as would have overturned the strongest building that could be supposed to have stood on the earth; and a great piece ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... no one ventured to guess as to how he might wish to have his body disposed of. It was feared that if his wishes were incorrectly interpreted, he would punish them by sending the plague, or having the town swallowed up by an earthquake, or by converting the country around into a marsh. Nor would it be wise to take his body to the parish church, as he had sometimes shown an ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... the big adventure's on the wing, doesn't it! Well, I don't mind chasing the old tub, or doing any other damphule thing in reason, but what's the game? Put me next! When was this earthquake that loosened all your little rivets? Speak ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... of view of a mere God who does divine things himself, an earthquake, for instance, may be called a rather feeble affair, a slight jar to a ball going —— miles an hour—a Creator could do little less, if He gave a bare thought to it—but when I waked a few mornings ago and felt myself swinging in my ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... that he was looking for. But the long endless succession of motors and 'buses and vans went by, hooting and grunting, and such newsboys as were to be seen hung about listlessly, bearing no more attractive bait on their posters than the announcement of an "earthquake shock in ...
— When William Came • Saki
... that the average Berliner has a double chin running all the way round, and four rolls of fat on the back of his neck, all closely clipped and shaved, so as to bring out their full beauty and symmetry, and a figure that makes him look as though an earthquake had shaken loose everything on the top floor and it all fell through into his ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... sought repose, And deem'd his hill-fort still repulsed the foes, Starts at the astounding earthquake, and descries His chosen veterans whirling down the skies. Their mangled members round his balcon fall, Scorch'd in the flames, and dasht on every wall: Sad field of contemplation! Here, ye great, Kings, priests of God, and ministers of state, Review your system here! behold and scan Your ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... swiftness which her less powerful wrists had never been able to achieve. The bees tumbled off in a dense shower, asking questions to the last; then, sighting the familiar entrance to the hive, they bustled in without waiting to investigate the cause of the earthquake. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... they'd arrived at the administrative offices of Westinghouse's psionics research area, Malone found himself wishing that something would happen. Possibly, he thought, lightning might strike, or an earthquake swallow everything up. He was, suddenly, profoundly ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... pick out in Nice, and that is a hideous modern Gothic church, Notre Dame, filled with detestable garish glass, so utterly faulty in design, so full of blemish of every sort, that the best wish one could make for the good people of Nice is that the next earthquake that visits the Riviera may shake this wretched structure to pieces, so as to give them an opportunity of erecting another in its place which is ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... and Africa, subduing all Libya as far as Egypt, and Europe to Asia Minor. They were resisted, however, by the Athenians, and driven back to their Atlantic territories. Shortly after this there was a tremendous earthquake, and an overflowing of the sea, which continued for a day and a night. In the course of this the vast island of Atalantis, and all its splendid cities and warlike nations, were swallowed up, and sunk to the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... wonder if an earthquake will swallow me before I get to the wharf today," said Mr. Stillinghast, drawing ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... conquerors came to humble the rest of us into the dust. Peace to his ashes—but perhaps you care nothing for this dear brother of my youth, never heard of him before—such a giddy thing you were; although at the last earthquake the point of his monument flew straight into the side of the church and struck there, so you may have heard the talk before they put it back in its place. It is of Sister Dominica you think, but I think ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... ship would appear in this time and simultaneously a mass-and-energy equivalent would vanish to appear in your time. But I think it must have been because the whole business was done from one end that the business was so spectacular, with lightning, earthquake, and all the rest. With equipment at both ends, there should be no static, no earth-shock, no concussion, nothing but a very ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... nothing like this man, with his seraphic voice and countenance, his choice vocabulary, his refined utterance, his gentle courage, which, with a different manner, might have been called audacity, his temperate statement of opinions which threatened to shake the existing order of thought like an earthquake. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... the church and school building which had been nearly wrecked, first by the Charleston earthquake and then by a cyclone, has been ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 11, November, 1889 • Various
... An earthquake is reported in California, and a volume of poems by the POET LAUREATE is announced. What a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... late terrific sleeps! And groans, that rage of racking famine spoke: The unburied dead that lay in festering heaps! The breathing pestilence that rose like smoke! The shriek that from the distant battle broke! The mine's dire earthquake, and the pallid host Driven by the bomb's incessant thunder-stroke To loathsome vaults, where heart-sick anguish toss'd, Hope died, and fear itself in ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... meet him with sharp reproach. "Why are you so foolish? I believe you would have gone on rolling if there had been an earthquake. You must be wet through and through." She ran her little thin hand over him. "Yes, I knew you were. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... mysterious and inscrutable. John Dounce had led this life for twenty years and upwards, without wish for change, or care for variety, when his whole social system was suddenly upset and turned completely topsy-turvy—not by an earthquake, or some other dreadful convulsion of nature, as the reader would be inclined to suppose, but by the simple agency of an oyster; and thus ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... death and desolation to thousands of the inhabitants. A deadly epidemic, or fatal plague, searing a nation with its dread, mysterious power, is a calamity appalling enough; but the spectacle of a city overthrown at one fell swoop by the earthquake shock may perhaps rank foremost amongst the untoward incidents which environ the sphere of man. A certain event, occurring during a recent holiday by the sea, tended forcibly to impress upon the mind that the great catastrophes ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... also along the Chilterns. Most of the flocks over a very large area took a panic and burst from their folds, and next morning thousands of sheep were wandering all over the hills. I feel certain that there must have been an earthquake shock that night. Nothing else could have accounted for such a wide and general stampede. The last authenticated earthquake shock in the South Midlands took place hereabouts in 1775, and was noted at Lord Macclesfield's Castle of Shirbourne, where the water in the moat was seen to rise ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... turmoil enough out at sea, for the steadily northerly drift was crossed by a violent roll from the east, and these two currents were complicated in their movement by a rush of water that came like a mill-race from the southward. Imagine a great city tossed about by a monstrous earthquake that first dashes the streets against each other, and then flings up the ruins in vast rolls; that may give some idea of that memorable storm. One poor, pretty girl saw her husband gallantly trying to make the harbour. Long, long had she waited ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... dimmed by the distance. San Francisco the Impossible. The City of Miracles! Of it and its people many stories have been told, and many shall be; but a thousand tales shall not exhaust its treasury of romance. Earthquake and fire shall not change it, terror and suffering shall not break its glad, mad spirit. Time alone can tame the town, restrain its wanton manners, refine its terrible beauty, rob it of its nameless charm, subdue it to the commonplace. May time be merciful—may it delay its fatal duty ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... ground, she carefully lifted the plow and the horses and the poor peasant and set them down in the middle. Then, taking the corners of the handkerchief in her hand, she ran up the mountain-side, skipping and jumping for pleasure. It was like the coming of an earthquake. ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... Conrad than in many of his contemporaries, because, like Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe, he avoids the plain prose of realism and sets his romantic heroes against the great powers of nature—tempests, the earthquake, solitude, and grandeur. Thus the contrast is marked by the very resemblance of romantic setting. For Conrad's tempests blow only to beat upon the mind whose behavior he is studying; his moral problems are raised only that he may study their ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... raging flames enwrapping whole villages in terrible ruin, of the flashing of arms and the roaring of artillery; but all was dimness and confusion. The recollection was that of a dream remembered in a dream. The solemn text was in my mind, 'Voices, and thunders, and lightnings, and a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake and so great;' and I now felt as if the convulsion was over, and that its ruins lay scattered around me. The railway, I said, is keeping its Sabbaths. All around was solitary, as in the wastes of ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... that the very streets of Rome seemed to echo her name—though it was only old women calling out "rags" ('cenci')—he was tempted from his airy flights to throw himself for once into the portrayal of reality. There was no need now to dip "his pen in earthquake and eclipse"; clothed in plain and natural language, the action unfolded itself in a crescendo of horror; but from the ease with which he wrote—it cost him relatively the least time and pains of all his works—it would be rash to infer that he could have constructed an equally ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... passion agitated space, Till, lo! the lands a sudden earthquake shook, The river fled, the meadow leaped and took The leaning mountain in a ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... hours of 2 and 2:30 P.M., the station of Dhurmsala was startled by a terrific bursting noise, which was supposed at first to proceed from a succession of loud blastings or from the explosion of a mine in the upper part of the station; others, imagining it to be an earthquake or very large landslip, rushed from their houses in the firm belief that they must fall upon them. It soon became apparent that this was not the case. The first report, which was far louder in its discharge than any volley ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... years before a great earthquake that served ever after for a date to all who had experienced it, there occurred at Bethel, the greatest and most conspicuous sanctuary of Jehovah in Israel, a scene full of significance. The multitude were assembled ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... breeze freshened, and I heard the distant and muffled noise which in the West announces either an earthquake or an "estampede," of herds of wild cattle and other animals. Our horses, too, were aware of some danger, for now they were positively mad, struggling to ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... most celebrated of the gifts of the Order was the endowment of the Chair of Celtic in the Catholic University of America, and one of its greatest gifts to charity was its contribution of $40,000 to the sufferers from the San Francisco earthquake. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... discipline. Nothing short of an earthquake, I believe, would teach some men kindliness and ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... intensely disgusted, and only shook her head when one or another of her companions was sure she felt a shock of earthquake or heard the roll of distant thunder. She could not explain to herself why she, who was usually timid enough, was exempt from the universal panic though she felt deeply pitiful towards the terrified women and children. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... told him Rue Sistina, near La Trinite-des-Monts, and here he is going through Place Barberini instead of cutting across Capo le Case. It is my fault as well. I should not have heeded it had there been an earthquake. Let us at least admire the Triton of Bernin. What a sculptor that man was! yet he never thought of nature except to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... alarmed, that she wished for nothing but to get out of his reach. And no wonder. The stranger did not look remarkably good-natured, in spite of his smile; and as for his voice, its tones were deep and stern, and sounded as much like the rumbling of an earthquake underground than anything else. As is always the case with children in trouble, Proserpina's first thought was ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... does not assert this, Mr. Jeorling! He says only that, when he and Dirk Peters had reached the opening through which they could discern the surrounding country, the seat of the artificial earthquake was revealed to them. Now, as the whole face of the hill was rushing into the ravine, the fate of my brother and twenty-nine of his men could not be doubtful to his mind. He was, most naturally, led to believe that Dirk Peters and himself were the only white men remaining alive on the island. ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... sense left to try and eat; but before he had swallowed five mouthfuls he rolled over and fell sound asleep. Nothing could have kept him awake—neither a thunderstorm nor an earthquake. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... were all like Joe Rendal they earned it. There were days of comparative calm. There were days that were busy. And there were days that packed into the space of a few hours the concentrated essence of a music-hall knock-about sketch, an earthquake, a football scrummage, and the rush-hour on the Tube; when the office was full of shouting men, when strange figures dived in and out and banged doors like characters in an old farce, and Harold, the proud office-boy, lost his air of being on the point of lunching with a duke at the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... ten, and I could count up sixty-four lire fifty. What with Italian tobacco and Italian garlic and Italian humanity, the air had got something too awful for words. The arteries inside my skull were playing some devil's tune of Thumpetty Bump that caused me to see mistily, and to wish for an earthquake which would rearrange terrestrial economy. In short, I couldn't stand it any longer, and so went out for a few minutes' ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... surrounded by a zone of violent volcanic and earthquake activity sometimes referred to as the "Pacific Ring of Fire"; subject to tropical cyclones (typhoons) in southeast and east Asia from May to December (most frequent from July to October); tropical cyclones (hurricanes) may form south of Mexico and strike Central America and Mexico from June to October ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Thorfinn, I shall speak. Feel how the earth trembles under you. That means an earthquake! The whole earth trembles these days, for she is about to give birth. She is to bring forth in dire pain a glorious hero. Open your eyes and look. Do you see how the east wars with the west? It is love's first conflict—the new bride ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... yet stands,—it stands as a great edifice; but let me say, that it stands in the midst of ruins,—in the midst of the ruins that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in such a state that we appear every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... Mark, for he had been intent upon the wave. The captain had, however, been watchful of the boat the whole time, and had seen it caught by the earthquake wave, swung round, and carried up over the sands to be thrown at last and left close to the pile of rocks to which ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... Worship, and reverend sires: with them from earth Departing justice her last footprints left. Me before all things may the Muses sweet, Whose rites I bear with mighty passion pierced, Receive, and show the paths and stars of heaven, The sun's eclipses and the labouring moons, From whence the earthquake, by what power the seas Swell from their depths, and, every barrier burst, Sink back upon themselves, why winter-suns So haste to dip 'neath ocean, or what check The lingering night retards. But if to these High realms of nature the cold curdling blood About my heart ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... of the future. Nothing would escape him. The movement of the stars and planets, their position at different seasons and periods, the appearance of the clouds, an eclipse, the conditions of the streams, an earthquake, the direction of the winds, storms, the flight of birds, the barking of dogs, the movements of snakes and serpents, peculiar marks on the bodies of children, of adults and animals, monstrosities among mankind or the brute creation, the meeting with certain persons or animals, the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... dream. And in the dream she seemed to have departed from the land of the Taurians and to dwell in the city of Argos, wherein she had been born. And as she slept in the women's chamber there befell a great earthquake, and cast to the ground the palace of her fathers, so that there was left one pillar only which stood upright. And as she looked on this pillar, yellow hair seemed to grow upon it as the hair of a man, and it spake with ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church |
