"Plague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bring the Country to consent thereto; for then the Negroes must be all sent out of the Country, or else the remedy would be worse than the disease; and it is to be feared that those Negroes that are free, if there be not some strict course taken with them by Authority, they will be a plague to ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... relieved by the cypresses of the graveyards; the amphitheatrical situation of the whole place, crowned by Mount Pagus with its picturesque ruined castle, and the fine mountain-scenery in the background,—must impress every visitor. And yet nowhere has the plague so often reaped its harvest, owing to neglect of everything which goes to make life clean ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... street-raking limmer!" she exclaimed, pushing her daughter before her to the door, with no gentle degree of violence. "I'se tell thee what thou is now—thou's a crazed hellicat Bess o' Bedlam, that sall taste naething but bread and water for a fortnight, to serve ye for the plague ye hae gien me—and ower gude for ye, ye ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... influences as these, there is little more distinction between the faculties than the traditionary ideal, handed down through a long sequence of students, and getting rounder and more featureless at each successive session. The plague of uniformity has descended on the College. Students (and indeed all sorts and conditions of men) now require their faculty and character hung round their neck on a placard, like the scenes in Shakespeare's theatre. And in the midst of all this weary ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dram-drinkers, that seemed to be making up, from day to day, not the least important-part of the human life of the city. But no great mercantile resort in the States, such as Boston had now become, could be without that drawback; and fortunate should we account any place to be, though even so plague-afflicted, that has yet so near it the healthier influence of the other life which our older world has ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... about her. She was the widow of a certain Antonio Alberio,[8] and during her marriage had borne him three children, Tommaso, Catilina, and Joanni Ambrogio; but when Jerome was a year old all three of these died of the plague within the space of a few weeks.[9] He himself narrowly escaped death from the same cause, and this attack he attributes to an inherited tendency from his mother, she having suffered from the same disease during her girlhood. There seems to have been born to Fazio and ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... owing to the very crowded and unsanitary state of the cities of Europe, smallpox was one of the various plagues from which the inhabitants were never free for any length of time.[3] Leprosy, influenza, smallpox, cholera, typhus fever and bubonic plague constituted the dreadful group. In most countries, including England, smallpox was practically endemic; an attack of it was accepted as a thing inevitable, in children even more inevitable than whooping-cough, measles, mumps or chickenpox is regarded at the present time. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... student follow his option, or his curriculum? And shall the college itself be a school for schoolmasters, a collection of debating clubs, a reading-room with library attached, an intellectual quarantine for the plague of riches? or, a place of close and protracted drill, of definite methods, of prescribed intellectual work? Shall it fulfill the statement of the Concord sage,—'You send your son to the schoolmasters, and the schoolboys educate ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... Commission proceeded to look at "this curse which is more blasting than any plague or epidemic," at an evil "which spells only ruin to the race." In dealing with what it regards as the greatest calamity in the world, a calamity as old as civilization, the Commission lays it down beforehand that the remedy must be "moral," constitutional, and satisfactory to the public conscience. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... pamphlets of the time, whose snowy skin has been stained by many a blood-drop in the desperate forays of his master, but who has thus far escaped so safely that the Puritans believe him a familiar spirit, and try to destroy him "by poyson and extempore prayer, which yet hurt him no more than the plague plaster did Mr. Pym." Failing in this, they pronounce the pretty creature to be "a divell, not a very downright divell, but some Lapland ladye, once by nature a handsome white ladye, now by art a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... loved me. Hypocrite! Deceiver—liar! He loved that woman! Twenty times handsomer than ever I was—a hundred times more wicked. It is the wicked women that are best loved, Angela, remember that. Oh, bless you for coming to save me! You saved Fareham's life in the plague year. You saved me from everlasting misery. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... "Oh, plague take Bedelia!" snapped Mary V. But she nevertheless spent precious minutes wiping the butcher knife on Bedelia's clean dish towel, and putting away the butter and the bread, and mopping up the splatters of loganberry jam. Getting ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... how easy it is, and how pleasant and instructive, to travel in the States. But, though many people do know this, the plague of English travellers which annually overspreads Europe, from July to December, and disturbs even the quiet of the Nile, has hardly touched America. And while one cannot enter the drawing-room of any decent house without hearing descriptions ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... only deeply moved by sufferings we distinctly realise, and the degrees in which different kinds of suffering appeal to the imagination bear no proportion to their real magnitude. The most benevolent man will read of an earthquake in Japan or a plague in South America with a callousness he would never display towards some untimely death or some painful accident in his immediate neighbourhood, and in general the suffering of a prominent and isolated individual strikes us much more forcibly ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Street which you visited this afternoon. I have heard that Boomsby threatened a dozen times to be the destruction of you. He says you have been the plague of his life; that you have crossed and defeated him so many times that he will be the 'ruination' of you yet. This is out of pure revenge. Besides this, he believes your father is dead, and that, if he can get you out of the way, or bring you into subjection to what he calls ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... world: and so I thought her. But to me she is one of the most perverse. I never was supposed to be an ill-natured mortal neither. How can it be? I imagined, for a long while, that we were born to make each other happy: but quite the contrary; we really seem to be sent to plague each other. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... relieving distress, whenever and wherever he found it. His heart, his hand, and his purse were always open. With his story in one's mind he can almost see his benignant countenance moving calmly among the haggard faces of Milan in the days when the plague swept the city, brave where all others were cowards, full of compassion where pity had been crushed out of all other breasts by the instinct of self-preservation gone mad with terror, cheering all, praying with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... work; but to be hoodwinked and bamboozled by the deliberate stealthy southern fun must have been eternally galling. The Sussex joker grinds slowly and exceeding small; but the flour is his. "There was Nick Cossum the blacksmith [the words are a shepherd's, talking to Mr. Lower]; he was a sad plague to them. Once he made an exciseman run several miles after him, to take away a keg of yeast he was a-carrying to Ditchling! Another time as he was a-going up New Bostall, an exciseman, who knew him of old, saw him a-carrying a tub ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Season: ay, season, season, season. Plague on my memory, my wretched memory! I must een write it down. [He begins to write, but stops, his memory failing him]. Yet tell me which was the vile jingle? You said very justly: mine own ear caught it even as ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... there should be intelligent action on the part of the Nation on the question of preserving the health of the country. Through the practical extermination in San Francisco of disease-bearing rodents our country has thus far escaped the bubonic plague. This is but one of the many achievements of American health officers; and it shows what can be accomplished with a better organization than at present exists. The dangers to public health from food adulteration and from many other sources, such ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to respect us your poor watermen." As a result of these petitions the Council gave permission, probably late in August, 1592, for the reopening of the playhouse.[223] But before Strange's Men could take advantage of this permission, a severe outbreak of the plague caused a general inhibition of acting, and not until December 29, 1592, were they able to resume their performances at the Rose. A month later the plague broke out again with unusual severity, and on February 1, 1593, playing was again inhibited. The year rapidly developed ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... and his company thought themselves patriots when they rebelled against the power of Moses and Aaron. They doubtless moved the people by cunning speeches about their own short-lived honor; yet they brought destruction on themselves and a plague upon Israel. There is nothing more plain in the Bible than God's great regard to the righteousness or wickedness of individual men. Suppose that there had been found ten righteous men in Sodom, for whose sake that ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... being crown'd with you, Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery? Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true, And that your love taught it this alchemy, To make of monsters and things indigest Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, Creating every bad a perfect best, As fast as objects to his beams assemble? O! ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... man for a scourge Defence allures attempt, and defiance provokes an enemy Desire of riches is more sharpened by their use than by the need Difficulty gives all things their estimation Doubt whether those (old writings) we have be not the worst Doubtful ills plague us worst Endeavouring to be brief, I become obscure Engaged in the avenues of old age, being already past forty Every government has a god at the head of it Executions rather whet than dull the edge of vices Fear of the fall more fevers me than the fall itself Folly ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... married again, and that Wife dying, I took another; but both proved to be idle Baggages: the first gave me a great deal of Plague and Vexation by her Extravagancies, and I became one of the Bywords of the City. I knew it would be to no manner of Purpose to go about to curb the Fancies and Inclinations of Women, which fly out the more for being restrained; but what I could I did. I watched her narrowly, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... unknown and unprecedented except in its Indian abode, whence it had advanced city by city, seaport by seaport, sweeping down multitudes before it; nor had science yet discovered how to encounter or forestall it. We heard of it in a helpless sort of way, as if it had been the plague or the Black Death, and thought of ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shrewish, bony wife; he, who had always until then deferred so to her will, now swayed only by his passion for this gay young widow, lighter than thistle-down! She had promised herself to keep watch over the present, and there was the past coming back to plague her. But ought she to speak? Her life in the household was one of silent reproach and protest; she kept herself almost constantly imprisoned in her chamber, devoting herself rigidly to the observances of her austere religion. Now, however, the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... do; everybody tries to tease and plague me now. You and Jean, and father, and that old fool, Rouel, are all alike," and Annot gave symptoms of ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... by excess of life death overtake. To die in brick of brick her destiny, And as the hamadryad eats the snake His wife, and then the snake his son, so she Air not enough, 'though everyone doth take A little,' water scant, a plague of gold, Light out ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... coarse rug. Here lay the founder and possessor of the Golden House, too happy if he might hope for the peaceable possession even of this miserable crypt. But that, he knew too well, was impossible. A rival pretender to the empire was like the plague of fire—as dangerous in the shape of a single spark left unextinguished, as in that of a prosperous conflagration. But a few brief sands yet remained to run in the emperor's hour-glass; much variety of degradation or suffering seemed scarcely within ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... he said, "Between Christmas and New Year I am accustomed to amuse myself by wandering about the world, to watch the doings of men, and to make myself acquainted with some of them. I cannot say anything very remarkable about those whom I have seen and talked to. Most men live only to injure and plague each other. Everybody complains more or less of others. Nobody regards his own faults and failings, but lays the blame on others for what he has ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... many were engaged, and what the actual loss of life had been. The lowest estimate is that one hundred and fifty thousand men perished before Acre during this siege, and some historians calculate the loss at five hundred thousand. The number of deaths was greatly increased by the plague, which prevailed at one time among the troops, and committed fearful ravages. One thing, however, must be said, in justice to the reckless and violent men who commanded these bands, and that is, that they did not send their poor, helpless ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... can lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature. And this Nation is leading the world in confronting and defeating the man-made ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was not very well,—and then she was very fidgety. She must see Brooke again before the day was fixed, and after seeing Brooke she must see her lawyer. "To have a lot of money to look after is more plague than profit, my dear," she said to Dorothy one day; "particularly when you don't quite know what you ought to do with it." Dorothy had always avoided any conversation with her aunt about money since the first moment in which she had thought of accepting Brooke Burgess as her ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... and accursed did this become to me, such a plague and a hissing, vague as was the offence, that I began to shun rather than seek the ships, and also I now dropped my twelve, whom I had kept to be my companions all the way from the Far North, one by one, into the sea: ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... sword and gun. Unable to cope with man on an equal plane, through his superior physical strength, his intrenched social and legal position, she took advantage of her beauty and desirability, of his love; if that failed, she fell back on her grief and sorrow by which to plague him into submission, into yielding. Children use this weapon constantly; they cry for a thing and develop symptoms in the face of some disagreeable event, such as a threatened punishment. In their day-dreams the idea ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... roasted the cure's no good; it can't do impossibilities—all should carry Sypher's Cure in their waistcoat pockets. All mankind should know it, from China to Peru, from Cape Horn to Nova Zembla. It would free the tortured world from plague. I would be the Friend of Humanity. I took that for my device. It was something to live for. I was twenty then. I am forty now. I have had twenty years of the fiercest ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... which were, perhaps, not owing at all to causes for which Charles was responsible, but which have nevertheless connected such associations in men's minds with this unfortunate reign, as that Englishmen have since looked back upon it with very little pleasure. These three calamities were the plague, the fire, and the ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... go into the city, (whether from our tents on the terrace above an ancient and dilapidated pleasure-garden, or from our red-tiled rooms in the good Hotel d'Orient, to which we had been driven by a plague of sand-flies in the camp), we step at once into a chapter of ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... said the Sub-Prior as he passed; but the rude soldier scarce acknowledged the greeting, by bending his head; and dashing the spurs into his horse, went on at a pace which soon left the monk and his mule far behind. And there, thought the Sub-Prior, goes another plague of the times—a fellow whose birth designed him to cultivate the earth, but who is perverted by the unhallowed and unchristian divisions of the country, into a daring and dissolute robber. The barons of Scotland are now turned masterful thieves and ruffians, oppressing the poor by violence, and wasting ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... tell them to their faces, of their private and public sins; and their prophesies to them of their afflictions and downfal, when in the top of their glory: also of some national judgments, as of the plague, and fire of London, in express terms; and likewise particular ones to divers persecutors, which accordingly overtook them; and were very remarkable in the places where they dwelt, which in time may be made public ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... should be, of course, the enlargement of the speaking vocabulary. Mere curiosities, current slang, far-fetched metaphors, passing foreign phrases, archaisms, obsolete and obsolescent terms, too new coinages, atrocities, should be avoided as a plague. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... ranch. How would he like the midget to tag after him all day, to have the care of her when mother went to the Fort to sell the butter and eggs? "Indeed I could get on very well without the little plague," Joan sometimes grumbled—"just for a teenty bit of a while," she generally added, hastily; for she really loved her little sister dearly. Joan tried hard to be patient, but she had a quick temper, and occasionally forgot her good resolutions. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... recommended, and tansy leaves are worn in the shoe by the Sussex peasantry; and in some places common groundsel has been much used as a charm. Angelica was in olden times used as an antidote for poisons. The juice of the arum was considered good for the plague, and Gerarde tells us that Henry VIII. was, "wont to drink the distilled water of broom-flowers against surfeits and diseases thereof arising." An Irish recipe for sore-throat is a cabbage leaf tied round the throat, and the juice of cabbage taken with honey ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... now finished correcting the proofs of my little Volume of Poems. It has been a great plague to me, and one that I would not have incurred, had I expected to be laid up as I have been; but the matter was begun before I had any notion of being disabled by such an illness,—the severest I have suffered since I went to the West Indies. The Book will, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... the hands of the Nova Scotia Presbyterians—Mr. Greddie, Inglis, and others; but the adjacent islands we have always visited and considered ours, and of course a plague of this kind soon spreads. My letter to Mr. Attwood on the matter was read by Sir John Young and Commodore Lambert, and they expressed a warm interest in the matter. Mr. M. says that they think it would be well to accept some rule of conduct in the matter from the Commodore, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he was ten years old at the time. He took them into many of the churches afterwards built by Wren, and Tom stood lost in amaze at the magnificent proportions of the great St. Paul's, the inside of which he had not seen till today. He was shown also the site of one of the Great Plague pits; and Rosamund clung trembling, yet fascinated, to her father's arm whilst he spoke of the things that had ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... I know he does love us?" asked Macco. "He let many people die; many be drowned; many be killed with blow up mountain or shake of earth; many die fever, plague; many kill each other." ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... admire in him: It is that he allows profane persons, such as we are, to plague him, without ever growing angry. He is the only celebrated author who is so simple.... But he is better than an author; he is a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... invent to plague my life out of me. I would not have thought that a man of your sort would ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... grocer's for five-and-twenty pounds, for which Mrs. Harvey had given a two months' bill. That bill would become due early in September: and how to meet it, neither mother nor daughter knew; it lay like a black plague-spot on the future, only surpassed in horror by ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... hither from Salisbury, where he was active against the adherents of Wiclif, was chosen in 1500 to occupy the see of Canterbury, but he died of the plague before his translation, and was buried in his chantry to the south of the Lady Chapel. He seems to have been enthusiastic in the cause of education, since he is said to have himself superintended the teaching ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... hope and fear With trembling hands the lot I see thee draw, 50 Which shall, or sentence thee a victim drear, To that ghaunt Plague which savage knows no law: Or, deep thy dagger in the friendly heart, Whilst each strong passion agitates thy breast, Though oft with Horror back I see thee start, 55 Lo! Hunger drives thee ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... or puts me out of my way, brings death into my mind. All partial evils, like humours, run into that capital plague-sore.—I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge; and speak of the grave as of some soft arms, in which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... town a certain set Of mortals, ever in a sweat, Who idly bustling here and there, Have never any time to spare, While upon nothing they discuss With heat, and most outrageous fuss, Plague to themselves, and to the rest A most intolerable pest. I will correct this stupid clan Of busy-bodies, if I can, By a true story; lend an ear, 'Tis worth a trifler's time to hear. Tiberius Caesar, in his way To Naples, on a certain day Came to his own ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... The term swine-plague should not be used in speaking of outbreaks of hog-cholera, as it is now considered a form of hog-cholera involving especially ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... Buttercup, bound south with the first load of that season: this that I might surely fetch the doctor to my sister's help, who sorely needed cheer and healing, lest she die like a thirsty flower, as my heart told me. And I found the doctor busy with the plague at Bay Saint Billy, himself quartered aboard the Greased Lightning, a fore-and-after which he had chartered for the season: to whom I lied diligently and without shame concerning my sister's condition, and with such happy effect ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... dissatisfaction, discomfort, discomposure, disquiet; malaise; inquietude, uneasiness, vexation of spirit; taking; discontent &c 832. dejection &c 837; weariness &c 841; anhedonia^. annoyance, irritation, worry, infliction, visitation; plague, bore; bother, botheration; stew, vexation, mortification, chagrin, esclandre [Fr.]; mauvais quart d'heur [Fr.]. care, anxiety, solicitude, trouble, trial, ordeal, fiery ordeal, shock, blow, cark^, dole, fret, burden, load. concern, grief, sorrow, distress, affliction, woe, bitterness, heartache; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... it be possible for me to write you as I want to—letters that will be free of the plague of myself—letters that you can treasure if I never come back? Sleeping and waking, I never forget the wonderful truth of your love for me. It did not seem real when I was with you, but, now that we are separated, I know that it is real. Mostly my mind contains only two things—this ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... fallen victims to the efforts made to replace him on his throne, those whom the Austrians have, at his request, shot and sabred, in order to re-establish his authority, and even those who toil in the plague-stricken plains of the Roman Campagna to fill his treasury, are far more to be pitied than ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... he, "it is too late now. A month ago, and we were masters of ourselves; now,—" he turned his face from me; though gathering twilight had already veiled its expression, he turned it yet more away, as he added —"a man died of the plague last night!" ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... a dead pigeon taken from the soles of the feet of one sick of the plague than kiss one ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... transferred to the still and solemn scene in which John baptizes the Saviour. No one can look at this figure without suspecting the plagiarism. Similar instances may be found in his other works; as in the Plague of the Philistines, where the Alcibiades of Raffaelle is coolly sauntering among the dead and dying, and with as little relation to the infected multitude as if he were still with Socrates in the School of Athens. In the same picture may be ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... time, being more perplext and unmanageable. But however I hope soon to tell you that they are quite completed. I have finished one to-day which teazed me more than all the rest put together. The[y] sometimes plague me as bad as your Lovers do you. How do you go on, and how many new ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... came to the valley of the Little Colorado, south of where Winslow now is, we built houses and lived there; and then we crossed to the northern side of the valley and built houses at Homolobi. This was a good place for a time, but a plague of flies came and bit the suckling children, causing many of them to die, so we left there and traveled to ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... most of whom slept in our barns and stacks; and besides these we had fifteen troopers of the regular army. You may suppose that all the country was turned upside down about it; and the folk who came to see them drill—by no means a needless exercise—were a greater plague than the soldiers. The officers too of the Devonshire hand were such a torment to us, that we almost wished their men had dismissed them, as the Somerset troop had done with theirs. For we could not keep them out of our house, being all young men of ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... and Throbson's from the fire station that was still in ineffectual progress. Further a number of people appeared to be destroying interminable red and grey snakes under the heated direction of Mr. Rusper; it was as if the High Street had a plague of worms, and beyond again the more timid and less active crowded in front of an accumulation of arrested traffic. Most of the men were in Sabbatical black, and this and the white and starched quality of the women and children in ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... First-born of our English Settlements: and the Houses of the Good People there are fill'd with the doleful Shrieks of their Children and Servants, Tormented by Invisible Hands, with Tortures altogether preternatural. After the Mischiefs there Endeavoured, and since in part Conquered, the terrible Plague, of Evil Angels, hath made its Progress into some other places, where other Persons have been in like manner Diabolically handled. These our poor Afflicted Neighbours, quickly after they become Infected and Infested with ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... from a picturesque point of view, is the affluence of water. Every rocky glen has its gurgling rill, every ravine its stream, which, at an hour's notice almost, may become a mountain torrent, should a storm break over the watershed. A plague of waters is no unfrequent occurrence, as the farmer in the valley knows to his cost. Fields are laid under water, and the turbulent streams often bring down great masses of earth and rock in a way that becomes "monotonous" for the man who has to clear his land or ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... skilfully uses as a background the great plague and fire in London, which gives realism to her ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... with Earth, why haven't they just blasted the planet out of existence and gotten rid of it? Of course, I know we're thoroughly uncivilized and too warlike for any other race to trust, and all that. I can see how Earth might be considered the plague spot of the universe...." ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... whom it is recorded that "Every farthing that his friends e'er lent, In books and learning was it always spent," was prevailed upon to give his companions a puzzle. He said, "Ofttimes of late have I given much thought to the study of those strange talismans to ward off the plague and such evils that are yclept magic squares, and the secret of such things is very deep and the number of such squares truly great. But the small riddle that I did make yester eve for the purpose of this company is not ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... lay down my pen. I cannot write with any spirit at all. What a plague can be the ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... not! 'Tis no plague-spotted hand.— Oh, I was born a princess, even as thou. For me the path of life stretched smooth and straight As now for thee; blindly thereon I fared, Content, where all seemed right.—Ah, happy days! For ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... "Don't plague him so," interposed the Portuguese duck; "he requires rest and nursing. My little singing-bird do you wish me to prepare another bath ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of so terrible a nature, that it should interrupt every kind of labour. "Moreover, they that work in fine flax, and they that weave network, shall be confounded."(386) We likewise find in Scripture, that one effect of the plague of hail, called down by Moses upon Egypt, was the destruction of all the flax which was then bolled.(387) ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... and any exchanges remain to be effected. That is the light in which the phenomenon must be presented and considered: but thus, it must be admitted, its aspect changes singularly. The displacement of revenue, the suppression of labor and wages, is a chronic, permanent, indelible plague, a sort of cholera which now appears wearing the features of Gutenberg, now assumes those of Arkwright; here is called Jacquard, there James Watt or Marquis de Jouffroy. After carrying on its ravages for a longer or shorter time under one form, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... returned to the post the next day. Young Williams followed close after them, filled with terror. He had found the plague among the Crees of ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... Ellsworth and Morris, Langdon and Madison, have foreseen the possibility of such extraordinary judgments as have lately emanated from the Supreme Court of the United States, they would doubtless have insisted upon the express prohibition, instead of leaving it to posterity to root out the plague, as it will apparently some time have to do, by the cumbrous process of an ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... regiment procureth his owne destruction, the comming of his two brethren Guanius and Melga with their armies, the Scots and Picts plague the Britains, they send for aid to Rome, Valentinian sendeth Gallio Rauenna to releeue them, the Romans refuse anie longer to succour the Britains, whom they taught how to make armour and weapons, the ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... of the plague in the house of Costobarus traveled fast after the death of the gardener, who had fallen in the open and in sight of the watchful inhabitants of Ascalon. So by the time the house servants of the merchant were made aware of their peril by the death of one of their own number, Philip ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... summer of 1595, the periodical plague of London was thinning out the inhabitants of that dirty city. In the lower part of the city skirting the Thames, the sewerage was very bad and but the poorest sanitary rules existed. After a hard rain, the lanes, alleys and streets ran with a stream of putrefaction, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... very seemilar case," broke in Snecky Hobart, shrilly. "Maist o' ye'll mind 'at Donal was michty plague't wi' a drucken wife. Ay, weel, wan day Bowie's man was carryin' a coffin past Donal's door, and Donal an' the wife was there. Says Donal, 'Put doon yer coffin, my man, an' tell's wha it's for.' The laddie rests ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... course. Men embraced each other in brotherhood that were strangers in the flesh. They sang, or prayed, or, deeper yet, many could only think thanksgiving and weep gladness. That peace was sure; that government was firmer than ever; that the land was cleansed of plague; that the ages were opening to our footsteps, and we were to begin a march of blessings; that blood was staunched, and scowling enmities were sinking like storms beneath the horizon; that the dear fatherland, nothing lost, much ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... diseases: typhoid fever, malaria, plague, schistosomiasis overall degree of risk: ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... about them,' said the man, sulkily. Fenwick had been the plague of his life in rehearsals. 'What?—you mean those two girls? Never saw ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to a danger similar to that which threatened the original New York "Samson" that the world owes the most popular melody in Rossini's "Mose." The story is old and familiar to the students of operatic history, but will bear retelling. The plague of darkness opens the opera, the passage of the Red Sea concludes it. Rossini's stage manager had no difficulty with the former, which demanded nothing more than the lowering of the stage lights. But he could evolve ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... was on earth extended, ere She rose and shook her snakes in volumed spire. The knight no more assails her with the spear; But is resolved to plague the foe with fire: He gripes the mace and thunders in her rear With frequent blows, like tempest in its ire; Nor leaves a moment to that monster fell To strike one stroke in answer, ill ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... "Plague on her!" I cried angrily and loudly. A laugh greeted the exclamation, and I turned to see Nell standing in the doorway of the room where ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... bank at Amsterdam: hang it, what's an hundred pounds between him and me? Now does my heart go pit-a-pat, for fear I should not find the money there: I would fain lift it up to see, and yet I am so afraid of missing: Yet a plague, why should I fear he'll fail me; the name of a friend's a sacred thing; sure he'll consider that. Methinks, this hat looks as if it should have something under it: If one could see the yellow boys ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... community seemed to their children to side with the master; the worldly—namely, those who did not profess to be particularly religious—all sided with Alec Forbes; with the exception of a fish-cadger, who had one son, the plague of ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the inevitable plague of vermin. "Hard indeed," one officer was accustomed to say, "must have been Pharaoh's heart, and tougher yet his epidermis, if the lice of the third Egyptian plague were like those of Danville, and yet he ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... passed off very well; but now one of the citizens began to speak of a terrible pestilence which had been raging a few years before, meaning the plague of 1484. The counsellor thought he referred to the cholera, and they could discuss this without finding out the mistake. The war in 1490 was spoken of as quite recent. The English pirates had taken some ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... grimy hand, and then stood a moment looking back to the mill, from which the hands were just coming, and then down at the phaeton moving idly down the road. How cold it was growing! People passing by had a sickly look, as if they were struck by the plague. He pushed the damp hair back, wiping his forehead, with another glance at the mill-women coming out of the gate, and then followed the phaeton ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... "Plague on it, Dick, you are ten miles from home and I am only one," I retorted. "You ought to have seen how bravely her ladyship tried to ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... poor Infants, that come out of their Bowels. They will indeed have a kind of regret and trouble at it. But they will say withal, Why should I bring up a Devil in my House? For they believe, a Child born in an ill hour, will prove a plague and vexation to his Parents ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... The jackal is credited with digging corpses out of the shallow graves, and devouring bodies. I once came across the body of a child in the vicinity of a jungle village which had been unearthed by one. At Seonee we had, at one time, a plague of mad jackals, which did much damage. Sir Emerson Tennent writes of a curious horn or excrescence which grows on the head of the jackal occasionally, which is regarded by the Singhalese as a potent charm, by the instrumentality of which every wish can be realised, and stolen property will return ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Grace knows best," the lawyer said "On your commands I wait." "Be silent, Sir," says Brentford, "A plague upon your prate! Come take your pen and paper, And write as ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when the change began—I think I took too violent a shower bath, with a notion of getting better in as little time as possible,—and the stimulus turned mere feverishness to headache. However, it was no sooner gone, in a degree, than a worse plague came. I sate thinking of you—but I knew my note would arrive at about four o'clock or a little later—and I thought the visit for the quarter of an hour would as effectually prevent to-morrow's meeting as if the whole two hours' blessing had been laid to heart—to-morrow I shall see you, Ba—my ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... manner, and bowed to Pierre, who, astonished by this quiet carelessness, observed: "The people who come, however, must sometimes plague you?" ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the epidemic was so rapid that many left the town and took lodgings in the villages and farms. Mr. Maumbry's house was close to the most infected street, and he himself was occupied morn, noon, and night in endeavours to stamp out the plague and in alleviating the sufferings of the victims. So, as a matter of ordinary precaution, he decided to isolate his wife somewhere away from him ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... whispers in their ears something about cleverness and adulteration. And mistaking the one for the other, they abstract the butter from the milk and leave the verdigris in the utensils. This lust of gain is one of the diseases which come from Europe and America,—it is a plague which even the goatherd cannot escape. Why, do you know, wherever the cheese-monger goes these days ptomaine poison is certain ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... prisoner—"has just drawn a knife on the lady here; and indeed would have killed her, but for this hound of hers. My fellows have him tight and safe, as you see: but I was thinking by your leave to lodge him with you, yours being the nearest house for the safe keeping of such. But the plague is," says he, "there seems to be more in the business than I can fathom: for one half of these drenched villains take the man's part, while scarce one of them seems too well disposed towards the lady: although to my knowledge she has worked more ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... year of woe and dread, 1348, the Black Death fell upon England. Never before had so frightful a calamity been known; never since has it been equalled. Men died by millions. All Europe had been swept by the plague, as by a besom of destruction, and now England became its prey. The population of the island at that period was not great,—some three or four millions in all. When the plague had passed more than half of these were in their graves, and in many places there were hardly enough living ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... have called ye together to help in my healing. From my feet to my head I am eaten with pestilence; yea, I am devoured and possessed by the Evil. Even of old was it thus with thy Mother; long since she complained of the Plague that is Scarlet—moaned and cried out and turned in her misery.... But ye failed me. Then my peoples were weaklings and their hearts all were craven; the Scarlet Evil dismayed them; they fled from its power and left it to batten on me in ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... fauna. The various species of rapacious animals are disappearing, together with the colonies of marmots; the insectivores are also becoming scarce in consequence of the destruction of insects, while vermin, such as the suslik (Spermophilus), become a real plague, as also the destructive insects which have been a scourge to agriculture during recent years. The absence of Coregoni is a characteristic feature of the fish-fauna of the Steppes; the carp, on the contrary, reappears, and the rivers are rich in sturgeons. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... a drop. I will wither the crops and bring a plague upon their flocks. I'll teach ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... had a regular pitched battle—the old gal, I thought she would 'a screamed herself to death! I don't know but she would, but just then poor Sukey came in, and looked so frightened and scarey—Sukey is a pretty gal, and looks so trembling and delicate, that it's kinder a shame to plague her, and so I took and come away ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hands with Burford, of whose life he had been the plague during his childhood, proclaimed him as hardy and unchanging as a gargoyle, and instructed him where to ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... experience they acquired from the itinerant actors. These were rarely the leading performers of the established London companies, however, unless it so happened that the capital was suffering from a visitation of the plague. "Starring in the provinces" was not an early occupation of the players of good repute. As a rule, it was only the inferior actors who quitted town, and as Dekker contemptuously says, "travelled upon the hard ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... can figure, this is about what must have happened. Some sudden, deadly, numbing plague or cataclysm must have struck the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... A plague on Captain Vauvenarde for running away from his wife; for giving up the army; for not letting me know whether he is alive or dead; for being, I'll warrant him, in the most uncomfortable and ungetatable spot ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and fear all evil, for Thou art not with us, and Thy rod and Thy staff comfort us not." He does not choose this task. It is thrust upon him,—just as fatally as the burial of the dead is in a plague-struck city. These are the things he sees, and must speak. He will not become a better artist thereby; no drawing of supreme beauty, or beautiful things, will be possible to him. Yet we cannot say he ought to have done anything else, nor can ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... one from the Miracle-Book heretofore mentioned, and, indeed, with a great deal of force. Faustus, impatient and annoyed at the slow process of human action, desires the quickest servant from hell, and successively cites seven spirits. One after another he rejects. The arrows of the plague, the wings of the winds, the beams of light, are all not quick enough for him. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the plate she was preparing. "Oh, him? That would be Simon Gosler, one of Claggett Chew's men. How he can be a sailor beats me, but Claggett Chew has hired him for years, plague take him! Now," and she came toward the sunny table with a beaming smile, "eat up, young man, or I shall think my cooking does ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... flood a meadow which makes a splendid skating-ground. Great is the joy for a season, and great the skating. But the water floods the neighboring cellars. The boys are cursed through all the moods and tenses,—boys are such a plague! The dam is torn down with emphasis and execration. The boys, however, lie in wait some cold night, between twelve and one, and build it up again; and thus goes on the battle. The boys care not whose ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... which makes the neighbors drunken and insane is a public nuisance, and may be pulled down and destroyed by the neighbors who are injured by it. It is worse than the plague. And if men will not put hands on it, then should the women do it. Tell us not it is property. It ceases to be property when it is employed to destroy the people. If a man lights his torch and sets about ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Lord, that is, in his eyesight, and notwithstanding the kindnesses that he had showed them [Gen. 13:13]; for the land of Sodom was now like the garden of Eden heretofore. [Gen. 13:10] This, therefore, provoked him the more to jealousy, and made their plague as hot as the fire of the Lord out of heaven could make it. And it is most rationally to be concluded, that such, even such as these are, that shall sin in the sight, yea, and that too in despite of such examples that are set continually ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... ruined planet, a cosmic plague, spinning through the shuddering heavens; its verdant plains, its murmuring forests, its meadows and its mountains manned only by a countless crew of soulless, mindless dead-alive, their shells illumined with the Dweller's infernal glory—and flaming over ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... everybody else before he left town yesterday, I prevailed on Doc Taylor to testify that you weren't in no fit frame o' mind to face the music, so they concluded to bring in a verdict muy pronto, an' let it go at that. They tell me there's been a plague o' hard characters droppin' off here lately, an' anyway, to make a long story short, the boys rendered a verdict on general principles an' there ain't no news for the rest o' the town—particularly the women. The way ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... "you youngsters will go off, I see, right or wrong, and you'll get half-drowned in the sea, roasted in the East, smothered in the desert, eaten alive by cannibals, used-up by the plague, poisoned by serpents, and tee-totally ruined altogether. Then you'll come home with the skin of your ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... Gladys Royal might do it to plague Libbie," said Betty slowly. "They don't like any of our crowd, and Libbie is so good at French she turns Ada green with envy. The more I think of it, the surer I am it is Ada. Ruth doesn't dislike any one actively enough ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... St. Paul's church, in London, appointed him the first high master of St. Paul's School, then recently founded by this gentleman's munificence. In this situation, Lily appears to have taught with great credit to himself till 1522, when he died of the plague, at the age of 56. For the use of this school, he wrote and published certain parts of the grammar which has since borne his name. Of the authorship of this work many curious particulars are stated in the preface ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... yet with pity. That Cicero, after his past flatteries of Caesar, after the praises which he was yet to heap on him, should yet have looked on his assassination as a thing to be desired, throws a saddening light upon his inner nature. But the age was sick with a moral plague, and neither strong nor weak, wise nor unwise, bore any antidote ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... my dear. But these were impious bees, dead to all sense of right and wrong. They've done themselves in this time. Guilty of sacrilege and brawling, they may shortly expect a great plague of toads. It will undoubtedly come upon them. I shall curse them tomorrow morning directly ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... fever was raging, and people were dying off like rotton sheep. And Sam got vaccinated and went to Beaver Dam. The excitement was intense. Men became perfectly wild, and were going to rush off and leave the women and children to the mercies of the dead plague. Chicago and Milwaukee bummers could be seen at the hotels, kneeling beside their sample cases trying to pray, but they couldn't. Just before the train started that was to carry away the frightened populace, the doctor came up town and ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... belongin' to you out of my establishment: you were always a plague to me, but now more so than ever. Be quick, sirra, and nidificate for yourself somewhere else. Do you want to thranslate my siminary into an hospital, and myself into Lazarus, as president? Go off, you wild goose! and conjugate aegroto wherever you find a convenient ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... now become a most terrible plague, especially to the horses, but most of all to the unfortunate that happens to be tied up. One horse, when he found he could not break away, threw himself down so often and so violently, and hurt himself so much, that I was compelled to let him go, unless I had ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles |
