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Famine   /fˈæmən/   Listen
Famine

noun
1.
An acute insufficiency.  Synonyms: dearth, shortage.
2.
A severe shortage of food (as through crop failure) resulting in violent hunger and starvation and death.



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"Famine" Quotes from Famous Books



... a way," said the doctor unhappily. "One doesn't like to think about it." He paused. "Twenty years ago there was a famine on Dara. There were crop failures. The situation must have been very ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... singular enough that the plague was foretold a year before it broke out. A large comet appearing in 1628, the opinions of astrologers were divided with regard to it. Some insisted that it was a forerunner of a bloody war; others maintained that it predicted a great famine; but the greater number, founding their judgment upon its pale colour, thought it portended a pestilence. The fulfilment of their prediction brought them into great repute while ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... that on our heads came down, Disease and famine, agony and fear, In wood or wilderness, in camp or town, 300 It would unman the firmest heart to hear. [35] All perished—all in one remorseless year, Husband and children! one by one, by sword And ravenous plague, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... Ist, of France, usurped the title of Duke of Normandy, but was defeated by his nephew, and finally obliged to surrender his castle. This, however, was not till, after a long siege, in which Arques proved itself impregnable to every thing but famine. In the following reign, we again find mention made of Arques, as a portion given by Robert, Duke of Normandy, to induce Helie, son of Lambert of St. Saen, to marry his illegitimate daughter, and join him in defending ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... withdraw their funds from the banks. Fisk and Hatch opened their doors for fifteen minutes and received calls for $1,500,000. They closed at once. The smaller financial institutions followed the bigger ones. Stocks fell, the Exchange was closed, there was a money famine. Industrial concerns, dependent on the banks, failed by scores. Industrial paralysis, with railroad receiverships, laborers out of employment, riots and their accompaniments, showed how deep-seated had been the trouble. Not until late in the decade ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... grave, every strictly wild animal lives, day and night, in a state of fear of bodily harm, and dread of hunger and famine. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... copy of a letter from Madrid, circulated among the members of our foreign diplomatic corps, which draws a most deplorable picture of the Court and Kingdom of Spain. Forced into an unprofitable and expensive war, famine ravaging some, and disease other provinces, experiencing from allies the treatment of tyrannical foes, disunion in his family and among his Ministers, His Spanish Majesty totters on a throne exposed to the combined attacks ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... eyes in my own igloo again," he said, "the famine was already over. Flocks of sea-birds were flying overhead. The sea swarmed with fish, and with walrus and seal. Every one along the whole coast was happy. ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... another they turned black and died—the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the man and the woman, the prince and the slave. The pestilence slew and slew, and ceased not by day or by night, and those who escaped from the pestilence were slain of the famine. No longer could the bodies of the children of Kor be preserved according to the ancient rites, because of the number of the dead, therefore were they hurled into the great pit beneath the cave, through the hole in the floor of ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... of hospitality, for they are our guests. Now return to Simba the King, and say to Simba that if he lifts a spear against us the threefold curse of the Child shall fall upon him and upon you his people: The curse of Heaven by storm or by drought. The curse of famine. The curse of war. I ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... painfully, and suffering from disease, famine, and the heat, made its way south. Antioch, a city of great strength and importance, was besieged, but it proved so strong that it resisted for many months, and was at last only ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... chance of success, no doubt Bruges would go with her, for she would fear that, should it be successful, she would suffer from the domination of Ghent. At present, however, the latter is in a strait, the rivers are blockaded by the earl's ships, and the town is sorely pressed by famine. After the vengeance taken by the earl on the places that, at the commencement of the trouble, threw in their lot with Ghent, she can expect no aid until she shows herself capable of ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... Like many other men of his rank at that time, he was an ardent admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and a firm believer in the native nobility and general perfectibility of man. He was a very popular landlord, and his generosity was equal to his wealth. During six months of a severe famine he fed the peasants of Montsallier at his own expense. He was one of the believers in Madame de Stael's man of destiny, her father, the Genevese banker, Necker. In November 1790 he was elected constitutional mayor of Apt, and inducted into office 'with ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... them with a smile of ineffable sweetness and protection; like Rowena going to see Ivanhoe; like Marie Antoinette visiting the poor in the famine; like the Marchioness of Carabas alighting from her carriage and four at a pauper-tenant's door, and taking from John No. II., the packet of Epsom salts for the invalid's benefit, carrying it with her own imperial hand into ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... liberty, not one elective franchise, nor one of the rights of self-government; but religion was especially enjoined to be established according to the rites and doctrine of the Church of England. The infant colony suffered greatly for several years from threatened famine, dissensions, and fear of the Indians, but through the energy and firmness of Capt John Smith, was enabled to maintain its ground, and in time, show evident signs of prosperity. The jealousy of arbitrary power, and impatience of liberty ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... unsuccessful effort, as too often happens, would only rivet still closer the chains of bondage, and retard the moment of delivery to this oppressed description of men. What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and, the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery, than ages of that ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... his hours of sleep, and the actual appearance to him, when sleep was far from his eyelids, of beings or phantoms not of this world; and the traditions which told of the love, or hatred, or favour, or punishment, of the Great Spirit—of his bounties sent to the Cherokees, when famine reared his gaunt form among them, or of wrath provoked, and punishment inflicted, when pride dwelt in their villages, when their thoughts were far from him, when no clay was put on their heads, when the tender and juicy flesh of the deer smoked not ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... summer will ere long be succeeded by dark dreary winter, with rain, sleet, and snow almost continuously. Then no food will be procurable, and to stay where they are would be to starve. Captain Gancy also recalls the attempts at colonising Tierra del Fuego, notably that made by Sarmiento at Port Famine in the Magellan Straits, where his whole colony, men, women, and children—nearly three hundred souls—miserably perished by starvation; and where, too, the lamented missionary, Gardner, with all his companions, succumbed to a similar fate. [Note 1.] The Captain ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... exhausted, he must have moved forward upon London, where Harold, at the head of the full military strength of the kingdom, could have defied his assault, and probably might have witnessed his rival's destruction by famine and disease, without having to strike a single blow. But Harold's bold blood was up, and his kindly heart could not endure to inflict on the South Saxon subjects even the temporary misery of wasting the country. "He would not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... of a coat!—referring to religious disputes between Catholics and Protestants. He says, that among the Yahoos, "It is a very justifiable cause of war to invade the country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves." With regard to internal matters, "there is a society of men among us, bred up from youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... mother; when they hear of folk lying down to die i' th' streets, or hiding their want i' some hole o' a cellar till death come to set 'em free; and when they hear o' all this plague, pestilence, and famine, they'll surely do somewhat wiser for us than we can guess at now. Howe'er, I han no objection, if so be there's an opening, to speak up for what yo say; anyhow, I'll do my best, and yo see now, if better times don't come after ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... of March, the end of a winter so severe as to have surpassed the memory of living men. The Seine had been frozen over from Havre to Paris for the first time since 1709; and, added to the horrors of famine arising from destruction of the last summer's harvest by hail, the icy fields and gleaming river now had a terrible aspect to the shivering poor; and even to him, Canadian though he was, accustomed to think ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... he, "hear me. You received at my hands forbearance, friendship, fostering and anxious care. When your own follies plunged you into penury, mine was the unseen hand that plucked you from famine, or the prison. I strove to redeem, and save, and raise you, and endow your miserable spirit with the thirst and the power of honour and independence. The agent of that wish was Florence Lascelles; you repaid us well! a base and fraudulent forgery, attaching meanness to me, fraught with agony ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... shared with her. Some of the English forayers had discovered and driven off the few sheep which had escaped the first researches of their avarice. Two cows shared the fate of the remnant of their stock; they had afforded the family almost their sole support, and now famine appeared to stare them in ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... the wind moved them lightly from time to time. He was at ease in the great night-world, and master of many a secret that sleepy-eyed day-folk never guess. As he shook out his loose, soft coat and breathed the cool air, he felt the pleasant tang of a hunger that has with it no fear of famine. ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... people. Washington needed reinforcements; nay, more, the perilous situation of the army as it lay in camp at Valley Forge, at the conclusion of the campaign of 1777, was indeed distressing. The encampment consisted of huts, and there was danger of a famine. The soldiers were nearly destitute of comfortable clothing. "Many," says the historian, "for want of shoes, walked barefoot on the frozen ground; few, if any, had blankets for the night. Great numbers sickened; near three thousand at a time ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... all times; and in times of general scarcity, this arrangement would alone be sufficient to prevent those public and private calamities, which never fail to accompany that most dreadful of all visitations, a famine. ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford

... understand; and I trust your reward will not be delayed. You and I can lean with confidence upon the wisdom and the mercy of the God we worship; but each must serve out His appointed time of bondage in the Egypt of suffering, in the famine of the desert; and must drink at Marah, before the blessing of the manna, the grapes of Eshcol, the roses of Sharon. If ever you should need an earthly friend, remember me; and if all other refuge fail you, my home ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... immediately begin. Therefore they did not reap neither did they sow, they toiled not, neither did they spin, and the appearance of the comet strengthened their convictions. The fateful year, however, passed by without anything remarkable taking place; but the neglect of husbandry brought great famine and pestilence over Europe in ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... servants" using carefully rationed needle and thread. Dale was credited, by a contemporary, as building on the foundations laid by Gates in a manner that dealt effectively with the two greatest "enemies and disturbers of our proceedings": "enmity with the naturalls, and ... famine." Among the important achievements was the careful husbanding of livestock to the end that a "great stock of kine, goates, and other cattle" was built up for the company "for the service ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... fatigued of all; and though he was pale, his countenance was calm, and nothing in his appearance indicated his mental sufferings; and indeed they must needs have been intense to be evident to the public. The roads were strewn with men and horses slain by fatigue or famine; and men as they passed turned their eyes aside. As for the horses they were a prize for ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... war. The people for the past few years have not tilled the fields and have lived solely upon meat; so when finally cattle were lacking, famine came. There is famine in all the Sudan, and a sack of durra today costs ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... written page of a defense such as history has never seen, and the future, glowing with the unquenchable fire of undying France. When I think of the flaming courage of that heroic race, my imagination returns always to the vision of that defense—not the patient fortitude before famine of Paris, Sebastopol or Mafeking, but that miracle of patience and calm in the face of torrential rains of steel which for months swept the human earth in such a deluge as never before had been sent in punishment upon the world. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... dragon used to live in that region, and made more trouble than a tax-collector. He was as long as a railway-train, and had the customary impenetrable green scales all over him. His breath bred pestilence and conflagration, and his appetite bred famine. He ate men and cattle impartially, and was exceedingly unpopular. The German emperor of that day made the usual offer: he would grant to the destroyer of the dragon, any one solitary thing he might ask for; for he had a surplusage of daughters, and it was customary for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... elderly lady remarkable for her charities, and was by consequence always surrounded by large crowds of poor folk during her residence at the Chatelaine, the ruins of which lie a mile or two from Arbois. On the occasion of a severe famine in Burgundy, she collected a band of her mendicant friends in a stable, and burned them all, saying that 'par pitie elle hauoit faict cela, considerant les peines que ces pauvres debuoient endurer en temps de si ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... In this fashion she made them when, after pillage, it was possible to reinstate the housewifely crafts. Quail ran then in the Black Rock by hundreds,—so you will still find them in fortunate years,—and in the famine time the women cut their long hair to make snares when the flocks came morning ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... and I expect you, therefore, to be a good tenant to me. You hint that I, along with the rest, have dealt unfairly with my people; but can you prove it? You can lay to my charge no tales of harshness. In famine times, and when potatoes failed, in times of misfortune and sickness, I have always stood your friend, and the friend of every man, woman, and child on my estate; yet now what harvest do I reap, save grossest ingratitude? yet what more can I hope for in this most unhappy ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... seven feet."(91) the same which, to this day, holds his mortal remains in the Abbey at Caen. He was succeeded by William his son. The death of the father and accession of his son was marked by fire, pestilence, and famine.(92) ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... gloomy spring. We have lately read a most affecting account of the famine in the northern provinces. It is the ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... reigned the worse were the crops; and the bondes laid the blame on them. They were very greedy, and used the bondes harshly. It came at length to be so bad that fish, as well as corn, were wanting. In Halogaland there was the greatest famine and distress; for scarcely any corn grew, and even snow was lying, and the cattle were bound in the byres (1) all over the country until midsummer. Eyvind Skaldaspiller describes it in his poem, as he came outside of his house and found a ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... and kept him up all night, relating the wonders he had seen since he left them; in doing which he talked to such a degree that when he came on board in the morning he could hardly speak from hoarseness. We found the natives had been suffering most severely from famine, occasioned by a long-continued drought that had dried up everything on the island, to such an extent, that the rice crops, upon which they chiefly depend for food, had entirely failed; but of livestock we found no difficulty ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... loaded with oats for our horses, and carried the personal baggage of the cavalry troop. Another was loaded with ordinary army rations. A third was devoted to mess supplies of the officers of the party, and as we were going into a country wasted by war and almost famine-stricken, we each tried to carry with us a small stock of choice provisions which might eke out a little comfort to the mess. The fourth wagon carried our personal baggage. Captain Day had carefully selected strong and serviceable ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... directed their course to Surinam but not having sufficient water for the voyage they were soon reduced to a mouthful of water in the day; their numbers daily diminished by thirst and famine and the few who survived were reduced to the greatest weakness. They at last had not one drop of water or any other liquid, when, to their inexpressible joy, they anchored in seven fathoms of water. This tended to revive exhausted nature and inspire them with new ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... suffering obtruded brutally into his immediate surroundings, was it necessary for him to set about resolving the problem of existence—for, like most hereditary optimists, he did not borrow trouble from his neighbours. A famine or an earthquake at a little distance appeared to him a puerile obstacle to put forward against his belief in the perfection of the planetary scheme; but when his eyes rested upon the martyred saintliness of Mrs. Gay's expression, he was conscious that his optimism tottered ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... time and the stove-pipes were hanging rather heavily on their hands. Elizabeth shifted her cramped position and wondered what could be keeping father; and Sarah Emily braced herself against the wall and declared some folks were slower than a seven years' famine. It was impossible to leave their places, for the pipes would collapse into the study below, so that there was nothing to do but wait, Casabianca-like. Elizabeth misquoted something about the noble two who held the pipes in the brave days of old. But Sarah ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... is for the wisdom of Parliament to consider: but if it is persisted in, I am well founded to say, that nothing will save Barbadoes and the Leeward Islands from the dreadful consequences of absolute famine. I repeat, the famine will not be prevented. The distress will fall upon them suddenly; they will be overwhelmed with it, before they can turn themselves about to look for relief. What a scene! when rapine, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... it a good draught of water for his comfort. Some, who never were out of their mothers' kitchens, may ask, how these pirates could eat and digest those pieces of leather, so hard and dry? Whom I answer, that, could they once experiment what hunger, or rather famine, is, they would find the way as the pirates did. For these first sliced it in pieces, then they beat it between two stones, and rubbed it, often dipping it in water, to make it supple and tender. Lastly, they scraped off the hair, and broiled it. Being thus cooked, they cut ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... Vrijheid we have been harassed by large forces of the enemy for six or eight months, and the district is now completely devastated. The presence of women and children causes great difficulty, for of late the English have refused to receive the families which, compelled by absolute famine, wished to take refuge with them. There is also continual danger from the Kaffirs, whose attitude towards us is becoming positively hostile. Both horses and grain are scarce; but as far as the latter is concerned there will ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... dreamt in the dream of the seven cows and the seven ears of corn, which is written in the Bible. And Joseph was now travelling over all the land of Egypt to gather together corn to store up against the seven years of famine which were to follow the seven of plenty. And upon a certain day in harvest-time, Potipherah and his wife, who had been away at an estate which they possessed in the country, returned to the city of On; and no sooner ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James

... the people of England were startled with tidings of fierce conflicts which faction waged, the disloyalty of the great majority of the people, the relentless cruelty with which the Ribbon Society exacted its victims, and the continued pressure of famine and sickness upon the physical life of the people. Ireland, so long conversant with misery, was still to taste the cup in all its bitterness. Everything meant for her good by the legislature brought with it some new form of evil, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Dante sees in the second division, Antenora, the shade of the traitor Ugolino imprisoned in ice with his enemy, Archbishop Ruggieri, by whom he was betrayed. Ugolino, with his two sons and two grandsons, were locked in the Tower of Famine at Pisa, the key of the prison was thrown into the river and the prisoners began their term of starvation ending in death. The story of the imprisonment and the death of the five prisoners is one of the most tragic recitals in the domain of literature. In the passage ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... of Louis No. 15, who assisted her husband to spend the French taxes. Was also a practical joker, her humor terminating at Versailles when she advised a mob to eat cake during a bread famine. Her wit was unappreciated. Ambition: Anything but October 16, 1791. Recreation: Versailles; looking through a grated window. Address: ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous

... sleep from their eyelids; to force hoarded coin into circulation; to restore the equalization of property; in one word, to bring back the golden age; to relieve Providence of many a burdensome pensioner, and so save it the trouble of sending war, pestilence, famine, and above all, doctors—that is what I call honesty, d'ye see; that's what I call being a worthy instrument in the hand of Providence,—and then, at every meal you eat, to have the sweet reflection: this is ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... anxious eyes that hopeless scan The burning sky. Hot lie the glimmering plain And uplands parched. 'Behold, the bending grain, Fair in the springtide, now is dead; and dry The brooks. If yet the rainfall fail, we die Of famine sore. No bleating lambs I hear in fold Safe shut, nor lowing kine; nor on the wold The whir of mounting bird: Nor thrives about me Any living thing. So seemeth, end must be Of striving. Since all the ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... peres doe decaie, and al the whole multitude dooe perishe: the baseste kinde of menne [Sidenote: The Shepe- herdes state necessarie.] wantyng. Remoue the Shepeherdes state, what good follo- weth, yea, what lacke and famine increaseth not: to all states [Sidenote: The state of the husbande manne, moste necessarie.] the belie ill fedde, our backes worse clad. The toilyng house- bandman is so necessarie, that his office ceasyng vniuersallie the whole bodie perisheth, where eche laboureth to further and aide one ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde

... dunghills are infectious. A man's belly was not made for a powdering beef-tub; to feed the poor twelve days, and let them starve all the year after, would but stretch out the guts wider than they should be, and so make famine a bigger den in their bellies than he had before. I should kill an ox, and have some such fellow as Milo to come and eat it up at a mouthful; or, like the Sybarites,[129] do nothing all one year but bid guests against the next year. The scraping of trenchers ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... for any person to propose a treaty or accommodation with Demetrius, immediately opened the nearest gates to send ambassadors to him, not so much out of hopes of obtaining any honorable conditions from his clemency as out of necessity, to avoid death by famine. For among many frightful instances of the distress they were reduced to, it is said that a father and son were sitting in a room together, having abandoned every hope, when a dead mouse fell from the ceiling; and for this prize they leaped ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... result of your imbecile, idiotic, ignominious, incomprehensible policy and of your absurd "Intelligence" and "Righteousness!" Call yourselves a Parliament? I tell you, your Constitution is rotten to the core. Do you think we are to shed our blood for you, to perish of famine, sword and pestilence, while you sit here, talking the most delirious nonsense that ever was talked since the Confusion of Tongues? You never have anything fresh to say; but there you are, and nothing stops you. ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... those writhing columns winding through a rocky wilderness—old crones knocked aside to shrivel with famine, babies withering like blistered flowers from the flattened breasts of their mothers dying with hunger, fatigue, blows, violation, and despair. He thought of Poland childless and beyond pity; of the Serbian shambles. The talons ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... spurred by the recital of famine to tear out a chunk of bear-meat and broil it on a stick over the coals. This he devoured with smacking lips, while Long-Beard ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London

... defined it as the swift wave of sympathy that surged over the earth. A famine in India, a devastating earthquake in Mexico, a bid for freedom on the part of an oppressed population, a deed of heroism at sea—each was felt within practically a few moments, emotionally, in an English, French or German village. Our hearts were throbbing continuously at ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... the face of its mistress the look of cheerful fortitude with which her generation had survived the agony of defeat and the humiliation of reconstruction. After nineteen years, the Academy still bore the scars of war on its battered front. Once it had watched the spectre of famine stalk over the grass-grown pavement, and had heard the rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon borne on the southern breeze that now wafted the sounds of the saw and the hammer from an adjacent street. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... observation, and came to the scratch with animadversions on Dr. Gowdy's maladroit management of the finances of the Famine Fund (a matter that cannot be gone into here). This was blow for blow, and ever since then Dr. Gowdy had panted to ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... there should be such a plentiful harvest of courtship before marriage, and generally such a famine afterwards. Courtship is a fine bowling-green turf, all galloping round and sweet-hearting, a sunshine holiday in summer time: but when once through matrimony's turnpike, the weather becomes wintry, and some husbands are seized with a cold aguish fit, to which the faculty have given this name—[Shews ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... Chivalry" thrust into their place; they would have seen red-handed vengeance doom that city of blood to destruction, and the glaring tongues of fire lap up the costly goods and edifices of its vile and relentless citizens; and those who had no mercy for them in their wretchedness and famine, now awe-struck on finding that the men they had so barbarously trampled upon had now the power and the will to retort upon them with interest; they would have seen brothers in arms, who until now had been merciful to their enemies when in their power, suddenly transformed ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... discovered, had been extirpated, it is said, to the very last one. Near the seashore in the east of the island are some caves, in which mouldering bones of the unhappy aborigines are still found, who had taken refuge here, preferring to die of famine rather than to fall into the merciless hands of ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... of a large and coarse-featured man, but wasted and shrunk as if by famine to a very skeleton. The hands and legs were cramped up, and the trunk bowed together, as if the man had died of cold or famine. Yeo drew back the clothes from the thin bosom, while the girl screamed and wept, but made no effort ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... gentle bearing towards her; carps at her for her efforts at kindness or service; rails at her for her silly pride in her child and her neglect of her parents. Georgy's house is not a very lively one since Uncle Jos's annuity has been withdrawn and the little family are almost upon famine diet. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... "And don't say a word about the famine years. That episode, and the grandeur of the Irish priests, is written in Heaven. We want a Manzoni to tell it,—that is, if we would not prefer to leave it unrecorded, except in the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... forces Morgan directed to follow himself. They carried but a small supply of provisions, not only that his march might not be impeded, but also because the means of conveyance were very limited. Besides, he was apprehensive lest he should expose to famine the garrison he had left in the fort, which did not abound with provisions, and was cut off on every side from receiving supplies; and it was likewise necessary that he should leave sufficient for the support ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... boat which in the summer of 1906 was attacked by pirates on one of her trips and all of the officers and first class passengers killed while at dinner. The cause of this attack, it is said, or the excuse for it, was threatened famine resulting from destructive floods which had ruined the rice and mulberry crops of the great delta region and had prevented the carrying of manure and bean cake as fertilizers to the tea fields in the hill lands beyond, thus bringing ruin to three of ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... but has suffered some civil strife. Puntland disputes its border with Somaliland as it also claims portions of eastern Sool and Sanaag. Beginning in 1993, a two-year UN humanitarian effort (primarily in the south) was able to alleviate famine conditions, but when the UN withdrew in 1995, having suffered significant casualties, order still had not been restored. The mandate of the Transitional National Government (TNG), created in August 2000 in ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... Steam had brought us to rely on foreign countries for our corn, and a day would come when through a war, or a failure of the crops there, the vast population of this country would be in danger of famine. But 'old folk' are prone to prophesy disaster and failure of ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... Roughly speaking, Atherly's father was only a bucolic emigrant from "Mizzouri," and his mother had done the washing for the camp on her first arrival. The Atherlys had suffered on their overland journey from drought and famine, with the addition of being captured by Indians, who had held them captive for ten months. Indeed, Mr. Atherly, senior, never recovered from the effects of his captivity, and died shortly after Mrs. Atherly had given birth to twins, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... the year 1585. This colony after a life of a few years disappeared: whether destroyed by Indian attack, or by a Spanish fleet which resented the settlement of Englishmen in a land that was claimed for Spain, or by famine or disease, no one knows to this day. The one permanent result was the giving of the name Virginia to their American land ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon

... had the power; they organized the whole of the working district, and one night they turned on all the taps, the street fountains as well. And we, because at last they were taking their full share, were threatened with a water famine! Yes, if they had those tenement baths which the last Housing Commission recommended they could run us dry as their leader proposed,—hold the whole city up to ransom and dictate terms. As it was even those taps proved dangerous, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... The famine, all human opinion imagined, and all human judgment was bound to conclude, was a mortal wound, coming in as the ally of the vile persecution I have named. It has turned out the very contrary. From it there springs indirectly the dispersion, and that power which ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... without a coat; his common calico shirt, yellow and in rags; his hair hanging over his face; his features changed with suffering, and pinched with famine—there sat Mr. Alfred Jingle; his head resting on his hands, his eyes fixed upon the fire, and his whole appearance denoting misery ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... in the period under discussion are denied by the protectionists. While admitting the general correctness of the free-trader's statements as to the prosperous condition of the country, they call attention to the fact that directly after the enactment of the tariff of 1846 the great famine occurred in Ireland, followed in the ensuing years by short crops in Europe. The prosperity which came to the American agriculturist was therefore from causes beyond the sea and not at home,—causes which ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... faint, I devoured a spoonful or two of my portion without thinking of its taste; but the first edge of hunger blunted, I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess; burnt porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over it. The spoons were moved slowly: I saw each girl taste her food and try to swallow it; but in most cases the effort was soon relinquished. Breakfast was over, and none had ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... that they made OEdipus their king, giving him in marriage their queen Jocasta. OEdipus, ignorant of his parentage, had already become the slayer of his father; in marrying the queen he became the husband of his mother. These horrors remained undiscovered, till at length Thebes was afflicted with famine and pestilence, and the oracle being consulted, the double crime of OEdipus came to light. Jocasta put an end to her own life, and OEdipus, seized with madness, tore out his eyes, and wandered away from Thebes, dreaded and abandoned hy all except his daughters, who faithfully adhered to ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... received, they cried out, 'They could thrive no longer, since they were now put under orders.'—Memoirs, Vol. II. p. 133. The allusion in the next verse is to the dreadful siege of Londonderry, when the besieged suffered the last extremities of famine. The account of this memorable leaguer, by the author just quoted, is a most ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... the next, barrenness shall make it its seat. To-day the peasant will complain that poverty prevents him from building the covering necessary to house his crops, while to-morrow he will be heard groaning over empty garners. Abundance and famine travel the earth hard upon each other's heels, and it is not surprising that he who lives by his wits should sometimes fail of his harvest, as well as he who ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... chasing up his advantage with tremulous ardor; "the long famine of my heart will be thankful for a dry crust and a cup of ice. Here at the fireside let me sit and warm, and hear the rustle of your dress, and grow in heavenly sensibility. You will redeem a savage, you ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... upon the wretched Morris, who was sick with famine. He sped upon his errand, and returned to find John still nursing his foot in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... coal operators with favor, would enforce low prices. Hence during the last three months of the year an unprecedented amount of coal had to be shipped, and the congestion on the competing railroads was such that the country faced a real coal famine. In December, the Government recognized the obvious fact that the railroad must be placed under one management, if the confusion in the whole industrial situation were to be eliminated. President Wilson accordingly announced that the Federal Government would take over the railroads ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... and family as curious people. However informers only investigate wicked acts or plots, but curious people pry into and publish abroad the involuntary misfortunes of their neighbours. And it is said that impious people first got their name from curiosity, for it seems there was a mighty famine at Athens, and those people that had wheat not producing it, but grinding it stealthily by night in their houses, some of their neighbours went about and noticed the noise of the mills grinding, and so they got their name.[635] This also is the origin of the ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... world's crop was 2,226,750,000 bushels, and as a result, the countries in which the crop was short suffered from high prices. Had it not been for the prompt carrying service of railways and steamships famine would ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... thou dost afflict them: then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants, and of thy people Israel, when thou teachest them the good way wherein they should walk; and send rain upon thy land, which thou hast given to thy people for an inheritance. If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, if there be blasting or mildew, locust or caterpiller; if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities; whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be; what prayer ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... the time that danger is past. In a happy home and so far as man can judge, in time, and only just in time, came the repeal of the corn laws, and the great cause of strife and the sense of injustice passed away out of men's minds. The nation was roused by the Irish famine, and the fearful distress in other parts of the country, to begin looking steadily and seriously at some of the sores which were festering in its body, and undermining health and life. And so the tide had turned, and England ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... men arrived, utterly worn out with fatigue and famine, at Wills Creek. This action left the French masters of the whole country beyond ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... country, as each trading party that arrives with ivory from the interior brings with it five or six hundred native porters, all of whom have to be fed during their stay at Gondokoro, and in many cases, in times of scarcity, they starve. This famine has given a bad name to the locality, and it is accordingly difficult to procure porters from the interior, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... at the end of December 1838 the march began. As far as the Indus things went smoothly enough, but after that difficulties crowded in upon them. They had deserts to cross, and not enough animals to drag their guns and waggons, food grew scarcer and scarcer, and at length the general ordered 'famine rations' to be served out. It was winter also, and the country was high and bitterly cold, and April was nearly at its close before the city of Candahar was reached. Here sickness broke out among the troops, and they were ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... Joseph for what he gives, and for what he withholds; yea, for what he takes away!" observed Mere St. Louis to her special friend and gossip, Mere St. Antoine, as they retired from the chapel. "Our years of famine are nearly over. The day of the consecration of Amelie de Repentigny will be to us the marriage at Cana. Our water will be turned into wine. I shall no longer need to save the crumbs, except for ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... silk-worm might be bred, and silk in great quantities exported. Under the present system, when the vines fail, as the people do not grow sufficient corn in the island for their support, they are at once reduced to a state of famine. But I must not prolong my description of Madeira. It is a very lovely island, and has a very delicious climate, and produces all sorts of nice fruits; and though the inhabitants have rather a fancy for being dirty, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... conveyed to her own room, by the hands of Missouri Joe and the Chinese cook, where she dispensed such restoratives as finally brought back consciousness; and some slight nourishment being administered, revealed the fact that exhaustion and famine, more than disease, had reduced the invalid to his present condition; on becoming aware of which fact, Miss Edwards grew suddenly embarrassed, and, arranging everything for his comfort, was about to withdraw from the apartment, when Erskine beckoned to her, and, fumbling in his pockets, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... year's, a week's, even an hour's passion from anywhere while it could be won. Through want of it she had sung without being merry, possessed without enjoying, outshone without triumphing. Her loneliness deepened her desire. On Egdon, coldest and meanest kisses were at famine prices; and where was a mouth matching ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... trousers, with the intention of sitting by the fire; but he had found himself too weak, and had crept back to his bed and laid himself down on the outside of it. I could have pronounced him, alone, to be a young man aged by famine and sickness. As we were standing by the Irish soldier's bed, I mentioned my perplexity to the Doctor. He took a board with an inscription on it from the head of the Irishman's bed, and asked me what age I supposed ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... birds—everything that walked or crawled or flew—because His loving-kindness is over all His works. They knew that God, for the purpose of civilizing His children, had devoured some with earthquakes, destroyed some with storms of fire, killed some with his lightnings, millions with famine, with pestilence, and sacrificed countless thousands upon the fields of war. They knew that it was necessary to believe these things and to love God. They knew that there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the atoning blood ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... according to my view. He could retire to-morrow —but he keeps on—why? Because he feels the weight of a tremendous responsibility on his shoulders, because he knows if it weren't for him and men like him upon whom the prosperity of this nation depends, we'd have famine and anarchy on our hands in no time. And look what he's done for the city, without ostentation, mind you! He never blows his own horn-never makes a speech. And for the Church! But I needn't tell you. When this settlement house and chapel are finished, they'll be coming out ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... won't see it thrown out of the window. Oh, yes, of course I know you will reimburse me, but that isn't the question; and, anyway, it's the opinion of your friends, old man, that you will not be worse off for a little abstinence from fleshly pleasures. You are positively a freak in this famine-cursed city ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... in garrisons defended by armed men. The Indian marches exceeded in celerity the movements of well-furnished cavalry in civilized countries. Their women even aided in the march and in the camp. Accustomed to hardship and famine, they subsisted in a manner incredible to our time and race. And with one or two exceptions, when the colonists came upon the Indians unexpectedly, the latter were superior in the strategic arts of war, though in ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... repetition served to represent the growing of the lover's admiration. The same repetition can be used much more effectively in describing weariness and pain, as In the lines about the winter famine: ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... its factions that quarrel and fight among themselves, but let a great calamity come upon the land, flood, famine, pestilence, and these little personal differences are entirely forgotten and all work shoulder to shoulder in the one great cause. The changing, the evolving self gives rise to quarrels; the permanent, the soul self unites all in the highest ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine

... changes; slight differences of adjustment end quick in death. Small, now, they would seem to us; but to the infinite mind all things small and great are alike; the spore of rust in the ear is very slight, but a famine in the corn will ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... better fitted for life than is man. He can survive long periods of famine, he can survive extremes of heat and cold. The insect produces great numbers of young which have no long period of infancy requiring the attention of the parents over a large part of their life. Every function of the insect is directed toward the propagation ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... his humiliation exalted, received power and dominion over all Egypt. Patrick, after his servitude and his affliction, obtained the primacy of the especial and spiritual dominion of Ireland. Joseph refreshed with corn the Egyptians oppressed by famine; Patrick, in process of time, fed with the salutary food of the Christian faith the Irish perishing under idolatry. To each was affliction sent for the profit of his soul, as is the flail to the grain, the furnace to the gold, the file to the iron, the wine-press to the grape, ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... was at the breakfast-table in my branch establishment, me and Mabel and the five boarders. All hands was doing their best to start a famine in the fruit market, and Dr. Blatt was waving a banana and cheering us with a yarn about an old lady that his Burdock Bitters had h'isted bodily out of the tomb. He was at the most exciting part, the bitters ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... before him, and secured every pass behind him, approached the Welsh army in its last retreat. He here avoided the putting to trial the valor of a nation proud of its ancient independence, and inflamed with animosity against its hereditary enemies; and he trusted to the slow, but sure effects of famine, for reducing that people to subjection. The rude and simple manners of the natives, as well as the mountainous situation of their country, had made them entirely neglect tillage, and trust to pasturage alone for their subsistence; a method of life which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... had full and plenty. There was a bite and a sup for every stranger who came to the door, and no one talked of money, nor thought of it neither. The land yielded a good crop, and the potatoes—oh, dear! oh, dear! that was before the famine. The famine brought us a lot of bad luck, ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... the god Ningirsu had been installed within his shrine with due pomp and ceremony. It would appear that Southern Babylonia had been suffering from a prolonged drought, and that the water in the rivers and canals had fallen, so that the crops had suffered and the country was threatened with famine. Gudea was at a loss to know by what means he might restore prosperity to his country, when one night he had a dream, and it was in consequence of this dream that he eventually erected one of the most sumptuously ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... Universe's ken: Gods haunt the Half-Gods, Half-Gods men, And Man the brute. Gods, born of Night, Feel a blacker appetite Gape to devour them; Half-Gods dread But jealous Gods; and mere men tread Warily lest a Half-God rise And loose on them from empty skies Amazement, thunder, stark affright, Famine and sudden War's thick night, In which loud Furies hunt the Pities Through smoke above ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... swarmed in, by whom, in the long process of time, the aforesaid kingdom, at one time through the disturbances of civil war, and again through deadly pestilence, and finally through the various butcheries of men, and mighty famine—Alas! the pity of it!—has now been so shaken that scarcely can a sufficient number of sound justices be found in modern times, nor can others succeed, without great difficulty and personal peril, in acquiring securely knowledge and advancement, particularly in Civil Law; whence the aforesaid ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... they pass'd, A crowd of spirits, silent and devout. The eyes of each were dark and hollow: pale Their visage, and so lean withal, the bones Stood staring thro' the skin. I do not think Thus dry and meagre Erisicthon show'd, When pinc'ed by sharp-set famine to the quick. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... Lean-framed and haggard-visaged, bowed beneath The weight of years, or worldly cares that press Still heavier than the iron hand of time. His tottering form is fearful to behold! If the fierce scourge which men on earth call famine, Could incarnate itself, methinks 'twould choose Just such a shape, so worn and grim and gaunt, And wo-begone of aspect. Groping round He gathers from the burning floor of hell Some shining pebbles, which his fond conceit Transmutes to gold, and these with constant care He ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... and ensigns led out against thy enemies after having been well trained by superior officers? O oppressor of all foes, O great king, I hope thou slayest thy foes without regarding their seasons of reaping and of famine? O king, I hope thy servants and agents in thy own kingdom and in the kingdoms of thy foes continue to look after their respective duties and to protect one another. O monarch, I hope trusted servants have been employed by thee to look after thy food, the robes thou wearest and the perfumes ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... last famine? The rogue did nothing but eat maccaroni, and swallow the lachryma christi, which the Dalmatian ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... so shadow a whole place, Let us but think of that beleaguered town Where famine's blackness sits in every face, War cutting thousands, want ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... and rebellious people." This was to bring a huge force of cavalry and infantry into the country, give the Irish a brief time to submit, and after that to hunt them down like wild beasts. He calculated that cold, famine, and sickness would help the work of the sword, and that after the rebels had been well hounded for two winters the following summer would find the country peaceful. This plan, from the poet of harmony and beauty, was somewhat milder ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... state, in his wanderings up and down the face of the earth to escape destruction by terrific terrestrial convulsions and cataclysmic changes in climate and temperatures, chilled during long glacial periods, parched and blistered by tropic heats, starved and wasted by drouth and famine, man has been driven by ages of hardships and emergencies to adopt every imaginable expedient to survive immediate destruction, and in so doing has acquired so great a number of unnatural tastes, appetites and habits, perversions and abnormalities in customs and modes of life, that ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... am sure I don't know. I am prepared for any sort of news on that subject; one would think there had been a party famine for years, and lost time was to be made up, to see the manner in which one entertainment crowds after another, since the meetings closed. It is a mercy that I am never invited, it would take all my leisure, and a great deal of note paper to prepare ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... my orders. Nothing was done, however, to make it more possible for me to remain in the island. I had, in the second year of the war, determined to resign on account of the pecuniary difficulties of my position. We were living in a besieged town, with all necessaries of life at famine prices, and, since my brother's death, I had no fund to draw on for my excessive expenses. The Cretan committee in Boston, considering my resignation probably fatal to the insurrection, had promised that they would be responsible for any expenses above my salary, and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... season of gloom such as our frontier states had never known, and to add to the general depression there was a growing conviction that the hatching of the grasshoppers' eggs when warm weather came would complete the famine. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... between the Restoration and the Revolution; and it is to be observed that, in the year in which this order was made, the necessaries of life were immoderately dear. Wheat was at seventy shillings the quarter, which would even now be considered as almost a famine ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the industrial problem. In 1909. there was a strike which brought about a complete stoppage of work for several months in the anthracite coal regions. Both operators and workers were determined to make no concession. The coal famine became a national menace as the winter approached. "The big coal operators had banded together," so Roosevelt has described the situation, "and positively refused to take any steps looking toward an accommodation. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... thrive. Only one thing is essential, and that is the annual rainfall. As, owing to the porous nature of loess, no artificial irrigation is possible, if the rain fails the crops must necessarily fail. Thus seasons of great famine alternate with seasons of great plenty. It appears, also, that the soil needs little or no manuring and very little tillage. From its extremely friable nature it is easily broken up, and thus a less amount of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... to belie the best traditions of the party, and discredit the cardinal principles of their once powerful and still deeply revered chief—the late Lord Beaconsfield—to whom Home Rule meant "veiled rebellion," and presented a danger "scarcely less disastrous than pestilence and famine." The Liberals are equally unlikely to risk the integrity and unity of the party by the concession of a claim which even an advanced Radical like Mr. Chamberlain has condemned as unwarrantable, unwise, and impossible to be granted. Still this and nothing less than this ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... her ways but thee. All that we hold hangs on a slender twine, And our best states by sudden chance decline. Who hath not heard of Cr[oe]sus' proverb'd gold, Yet knows his foe did him a pris'ner hold? He that once aw'd Sicilia's proud extent By a poor art could famine scarce prevent; And mighty Pompey, ere he made an end, Was glad to beg his slave to be his friend. Nay, he that had so oft Rome's consul been, And forc'd Jugurtha and the Cimbrians in, Great Marius! with much want and ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... and all the miseries it brought. There are no dreams here. 'Tis a quiet place, and they keep away. Let us never think about them, lest they should pursue us again. Sunken eyes and hollow cheeks—wet, cold, and famine—and horrors before them all, that were even worse—we must forget such things if we ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... greatest importance, grown, as she is, out of all proportion, continuing to extend her tentacles wherever there is a chance of seizing something. To this cause of weakness must be added others: the need of money for her gigantic enterprises; the famine, now become endemic, by which her European provinces are ravaged, depopulated and reduced to the greatest misery. She is profiting now by her experiences after the Crimean War. As long as she remains inactive, the influence she exercises ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot

... with joy. And I Am setting such a war of joy against thee, It shall be as man's heart became a god Murdering thy mind of weakling darkness. All the hot happiness of being wroth And seeing a stroke leave behind it wound, The pleasures of wily hunting, and a feast After long famine, and the dancing stored Within the must of berries,—these, and all Gladdenings that make thrill the being of man Shall pour, mixt with an unknown rage of glee, Into the meaning men shall find in women. And if we have at all a fear of them, It shall not be the old ignorant dismay, ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie



Words linked to "Famine" :   disaster, cataclysm, want, tragedy, the Great Starvation, deficiency, catastrophe, calamity, the Great Calamity, the Great Hunger, lack



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