"Shattering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... . . his church? He had forgotten it, or almost forgotten; and the recollection came upon him like a blow. He halted beneath a gas-lamp in dismay; not in resentment at the shattering of his dream, for he scarcely thought of himself; not in doubt, for he had done rightly, and his church could not be restored at the expense of right; but in sheer dismay before the blank certainty that now his church must ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... light up the entire labyrinth of his brain; each sense-message came inward like a bomb-shell, reaching with its explosion the highest as well as the deepest centers, discharging circuits of swift fire through every area of associated ideas, and so completely shattering the normal congruity between impressions and recognitions that the slight drag of the sheet across his raised toes was sufficient to make him feel again the pressure of thick boots that he had worn years ago when he tramped as new postman on the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... crushing of a cart over a gravelly road, came the rattle of musketry fire. Then, as the visibility increased, war-ships manoeuvred into position, and fired slowly and deliberately at unknown inland targets. Occasionally the troop-ship shook from the shattering crash of the Queen Elizabeth's guns. Reflecting was not one of the trooper's habitual occupations; but undoubtedly these first scenes and sounds of the real thing were occasions for thought. A bugle-call for parade cut short further ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... a shot struck the end of Desmond's telescope, shattering it to pieces, and carrying the instrument out of his hands, a fragment striking Billy on the cheek and drawing blood, but not inflicting any serious wound. The same shot took off the head of a man who was at the moment coming aft, at the other side ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... shock of shattering spears, Of screaming shell and shard, Snatched from the smoke that blinds and sears, They come with bodies scarred, And count the hours that idly toll, Restless until their hurts be healed, And they may fare, made strong and whole, To face ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... at one of the car's port-holes, fingers fumbling at the heavy bolts. The seconds seemed eternal, and the box's whine had become a shattering, sinister scream when at last the bolts loosened. The round pane of glass teetered back, swung open—and the masked man slung his metal burden out, out from the ZX-1 into the gulf between sea ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... iron hail and shattering shell, Where the dull earth is stained with red, Fearless she fronts the gates of Hell ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... a shattering sort of laugh to Mary. She stared at the man who uttered it as if he were—what he had for the moment become—a stranger. He was not, certainly, the man who, down in North Carolina had talked about March with her, regretted the "rough ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... as I am do not wed for love. What! you take advantage of my misfortune, the shattering of my dreams, to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... was all. And firm he stood against any breach in the long established code of his class. But they did not suffer this to disturb their plans and reveries, and through those soft July days they roamed together in their lotus-land. Then suddenly thundered that dream-shattering cannon out of ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... whole were concerned. Then, again, the vast accumulation of wealth in the Southern States, caused by the overshadowing of all other commodities of commerce—cotton—created a jealousy at the North that nothing but the prostration of the South, the shattering of her commerce, the destruction of her homes, and the freedom of her slaves, could answer. The wealth of the South had become a proverb The "Wealthy Southern Planter" had become an eyesore to the North, and to humble her haughty pride, as the North ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... them. No doubt the passion of the collector was strong in them: so strong that Edmond half forgot his grief for his brother and his terror of the Commune in the pursuit of first editions: so strong that the chances of a Prussian bomb shattering his storehouse of treasures—the Maison d'un artiste—at Auteuil saddened him more than the dismemberment of France. But, even so, the idea that the Goncourts could in any circumstances subordinate literature to any other interest was the merest illusion. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... quarters of the World; by sending the few troops of the United States to remote points; by robbing the arsenals in the Northern States of arms and munitions of war, so as to abundantly supply the Southern States at the critical moment; by bankrupting the Treasury and shattering the public credit of the Nation; and by other means no less nefarious. Thus swindled, betrayed, and ruined, by its degenerate and perfidious sons, the imbecile Administration stood with dejected mien and folded hands helplessly ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... from further invention, Prosper was, nevertheless, somewhat concerned at this shattering of the ideal mother in the very camp that had sung her praises. But he could only trust to her recognizing the situation with her usual sagacity, of which he stood ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and handle our Spark. In all the previous centuries he had been roaming gaily about the world in perfect freedom; sometimes gliding silently to and fro like an angel of light; sometimes leaping forth with frightful energy in the midst of raging tempest, like a destructive demon—ripping, rending, shattering all that attempted to arrest his course. Men have feared and shunned him since the beginning of time, and with good reason, for he has killed many of ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... owned that when Bertie Fellowes received this letter, which was neither more nor less than a shattering of all his Christmas hopes and joys, that he fairly broke down, and hiding his face upon his arms as they rested on his desk, sobbed aloud. The forlorn boy from India, who sat next to him, tried every boyish means of ...
— The Christmas Fairy - and Other Stories • John Strange Winter
... on a neighbouring ruin runs to the effect that the mansion having been severely damaged in the earthquake of 1783, its owner had rebuilt it on lines calculated to defy future shattering! Whether he would rebuild ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... slogging run. Jason, followed close behind him, greatly interested by this new turn of affairs. Ahead of them the other slaves scattered and from their midst burst another armed and armored figure. They churned towards each other at top speed and Jason hoped for a shattering crash when they met. However they slowed before they hit and began circling each other, ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... part for ever with the idea of Knox as a human cannon-ball, endowed simply with force of will, and tearing and shattering as it goes. The views which at a definite period gave this tremendous impulse to a nature previously passive, are not obscure, and are perfectly traceable. They are views upon which Knox continually insists as common to himself with all Christian men, and which were common to him with ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... The irreparable shattering of the greatest of these monuments of the past, occurred in our day. The Cathedral of Rheims, the crowning perfection of architecture having survived "the ravages of wars, the brutishness of revolutions, the smug complacency of restoration which had stripped it of its altars, its shrines and ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... but it does not run them to travel. This ship was floating above the Earth, which might be a vast sunlit ball filling half the universe below the rocket, or might be a blackness as of the Pit. Cochrane had lost track of time, but not of the shattering effect of being snatched from the job he knew and thought important, to travel incredibly to do something he had no idea of. He felt, in his mind, like somebody who climbs stairs in the dark and tries to take a step that isn't there. It was a shock to find that his work wasn't ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... parody of TV newscasters] 1. Used in conversation to announce ordinary events, with a sarcastic implication that these events are earth-shattering. "{{ITS}} crashes; film at 11." "Bug found in scheduler; film at 11." 2. Also widely used outside MIT to indicate that additional information will be available at some future time, *without* the implication of anything particularly ordinary about the referenced event. For example, "The mail file ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... It is therefore not so much Science that the religionist is fighting, but the scientific method. This scientific method of approach, he rightly perceives, has so pervaded our mode of thinking that it is the subtle and most disintegrating force that is shattering the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... strangely troubled her poor disordered brain. She would fancy at times that Rougon had risen from the dead to punish her for her dissoluteness. Every week she fell into one of those nervous fits which were shattering her constitution. She was left to struggle until she recovered consciousness, after which she would creep about more feebly than ever. She would also often sob the whole night long, holding her head in her hands, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... one entire neuralgia. The unending use of the same muscles, the repetition of the same rhythmic series, the cranium-shattering clatter of all the riveting-guns, the anxiety to be sure of each successive rivet, quite burned her out. And she learned that the reward for this ordeal was, according to the minimum wage-scale adopted by the Emergency Fleet Corporation, thirty cents ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... snarling current, and they laid up two days to dry their saturated belongings. Once their horses, impelled by some mysterious home yearning, hit the back trail in a black night of downpour, and they trudged half a day through wet grass and dripping scrub to overtake the truants. Thunderstorms drove up, shattering the hush of the land with ponderous detonations, assaulting them with fierce bursts of rain. Haps and mishaps alike they accepted with an equable spirit and the true philosophy of the trail—to take things as they ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Whereas, so these primitive philosophers may have argued, when a man lets his own name pass his lips, he is parting with a living piece of himself, and if he persists in so reckless a course he must certainly end by dissipating his energy and shattering his constitution. Many a broken-down debauchee, many a feeble frame wasted with disease, may have been pointed out by these simple moralists to their awe-struck disciples as a fearful example of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the slaughter fell alike upon all of them. A young squaw was standing in the grass, a short distance from the American line, holding her child, a little girl of four years old, in her arms. In this position, a ball struck the right arm of the child, just above the elbow, and shattering the bone, passed into the breast of its young mother, and instantly killed her. She fell upon the child and confined it to the ground. When the battle was nearly over, and the Indians had been driven from this point, Lieutenant Anderson of the ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... the shattering roar died out when Brian's reeling senses caught a wild yell of dismay ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... utterly failed to do it justice; and last, as well as least, Gillie White had forgotten it in the pursuit of general knowledge, in which pursuit he had used his alpenstock effectively in opening up everything, stabbing, knocking down, uprooting, overturning, and generally shattering everything that was capable of being in any degree affected by the physical powers and forces at his command. There can be no doubt whatever that if Gillie White had been big and strong enough, Mont Blanc itself would ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... perilous thing to leave unwatched. She had known France in all the glitter of its showy Empire, and had seen its imperial glories dispersed as mist. Russia she had watched with curiosity and dread. On the day when the ruler, who had bestowed freedom on millions of his people, met his reward in the shattering bomb which tore him to fragments, she had been in St. Petersburg. A king, who had been assassinated, she had known well and had well liked; an empress, whom a frenzied madman had stabbed to the heart, had ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... untrue to the people whose servant he is; and untrue to the institutions of the country; for the country can exist only upon the triumph of such principles. He who is unwilling to deal fairly by the North and the South, is a man who is guilty of shattering and ruining the Confederacy; destroying the peace and harmony and success of this ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... men killed or disabled, conceived a wholesome fear for such terrible arms, so intrepidly plied. They suspended the attack, and, applying their long lances after the fashion of crow-bars, succeeded, without approaching too near, in shattering the handles of the scythes. This safeguard demolished, a new attack commenced. The issue was not doubtful. While the scythes were falling under the blows of the soldiers, my mother hurriedly said a few words to Martha and Henory. The two, with a look of pride and determination on their ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... shocks, and confounds The bounding bulk whereon it bounds And breaks and shattering seaward sounds As crying of the old sea's wolves and hounds That moan and ravin and rage and wail, So steed on steed encountering sheer Shocked, and the strength of Launceor's spear Shivered on Balen's shield, and fear Bade hope within ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells, Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust — Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... must have seemed to him very singular, if not absurd, in contrast with the mischief which we had wrought upon his home and people. Meantime, the ships were disposed to have a share in the fight, and opened a cannonade upon the woods, shattering the great branches of the trees, and adding to the terror, if not to the loss, of the enemy. Little Berebee being now a heap of ashes, we re-embarked, taking with us an American flag, probably that of the Mary Carver, which had been found in the town. We also ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... at home, Jeff had to admit. Calaxian calm-crystals did what no refinement of Terran therapeutics had been able to manage. They erased the fears of the neurotic and calmed the quiverings of the hypertensive—both in alarming majority in the shattering aftermath of the Fourth War—with no adverse effects at all. Permanent benefit was slow but cumulative, offering for the first time a real step toward ultimate stability. The medical, psychiatric and political fields cried out for ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... (with the accent) who dare not be spontaneous, and cannot act independently if they would continue to be admirable in the world's eye, and who for that object must remain fixed on shelves, like other marketable wares, avoiding motion to avoid shattering or tarnishing. This is their fate, only in degree less inhuman than that of Hellenic and Trojan princesses offered up to the Gods, or pretty slaves to the dealers. Their artificiality is at once their bane and their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Hadrian—centuries unfilled, as far as Athens is concerned, with memorable deeds or national activity—the Acropolis has stood uncovered to the sun. The tones of the marble of Pentelicus have daily grown more golden; decay has here and there invaded frieze and capital; war too has done its work, shattering the Parthenon in 1687 by the explosion of a powder magazine, and the Propylaea in 1656 by a similar accident, and seaming the colonnades that still remain with cannon-balls in 1827. Yet in spite of time and violence the Acropolis survives, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Spirit Whom the white man worships, and Who also works through nature, as you learned, Hokosa, when He rolled the lightning back upon your head, shattering your god and ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... captain. Davy Jones was preparing something worse yet for him, or thought he was. He was tired of seeing him simply wander hopelessly on the ocean; he wanted to plague him more. He could do this, he thought, by giving him now and then a little hope and then shattering it and sinking it to the bottom of the sea, and dragging the man's heart to the bottom of the sea, too, with a leaden load ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... holding Suzee. The bull paused for a moment in front of us, then with his head lowered almost to the ground, made a terrific rush forwards, shattering the woodwork of the platform at our feet to atoms with his horns. Suzee gave a piercing shriek and fell across me, unconscious. The animal, startled by ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... can ruin batteries in a number of undetectable ways: Take the valve cap off a cell, and drive a screw driver slantwise into the exposed water vent, shattering the plates of the cell; no damage will show when you put the cap back on. Iron or copper filings put into the cells i.e., dropped into the acid, will greatly shorten its life. Copper coins or a few pieces of iron will accomplish the ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... strike, both Franks and Arrabies, Breaking the shafts of all their burnished spears. Whoso had seen that shattering of shields, Whoso had heard those shining hauberks creak, And heard those shields on iron helmets beat, Whoso had seen fall down those chevaliers, And heard men groan, dying upon that field, Some memory of bitter pains might keep. That battle ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... beginning of the night of the past, with its stories and dreaming traditions.... The Caucasus contained my world, and I peacefully slept in that night. I thought to be famous in Daghestan—the height of glory. And what then? History has peopled my former desert with nations, shattering each other for glory; with heroes, terrifying the nations by valour to which we can never rise. And where are they? Half forgotten, they have vanished in the dust of ages. The description of the earth shows me that the Tartars occupy a little corner of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... sitting with bandaged eyes in a darkened room, held out both hands to her cousin, later in the evening, and said, "God bless our dear little girl!" Billy knew it too, for the next morning he gave Susan one of his shattering hand-grasps and muttered that he was "darned glad, and Coleman was darned lucky," and Georgie, who was feeling a little better than usual, though still pale and limp, came in to rejoice and exclaim later in the ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... else can it be?" I demanded, driven by my wrongs to the cruelty of shattering his illusions. "Who ever heard of a pirate's treasure that wasn't moonshine? The moment I had read Aunt Jane's letter telling of the perfectly absurd business she was setting out on I rushed down by ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... discharged (to borrow their pet phrase from our physicists) Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in Asia would be necessary to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal subversion, the shattering of the empire into small states, and above all the introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast I do not say this as one who desires it, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... had minded what he was about; but then he did not. So far from it, he was saying to himself, "One 'ud ha' thought now she might ha' took a sort of pride in it," when the bottom of the world seemed to drop away from under his feet, and his irrelevant meditations ended in a shattering thud down on the rocky pavement a long way below. He never heard the shouts and shrieks which the incident occasioned above his head. Once only he became dimly conscious of a quivering network of prismatic flashes, which he could not see through, and a booming throb in his ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... ships were taken, five Spanish and four French. Villeneuve's flagship, the "Bucentaure," was one of these. She struck a few minutes after two o'clock. At the opening of the battle she had fired four broadsides at the approaching "Victory." Nelson gave her one shattering broadside in reply at close quarters, as he passed on to attack the "Redoutable." As this ship's way was stopped, and a space opened between her and the French flagship, Captain Fremantle brought his three-decker, the "Neptune," under ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... at least an hour after sleep had at last overcome McGee's and Larkin's joyous excitement, a sleep-shattering motor cycle again came pop-popping to their door. The dispatch bearer hammered lustily on the barred front door until admitted by the sleepy-eyed, white robed, grumbling Madame Beauchamp, and then clattered up the stairs, two steps at a time. ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... the scene behind him, he heard the guns suddenly roar out. He imagined them shaking in black rage. They belched and howled like brass devils guarding a gate. The soft air was filled with the tremendous remonstrance. With it came the shattering peal of opposing infantry. Turning to look behind him, he could see sheets of orange light illumine the shadowy distance. There were subtle and sudden lightnings in the far air. At times he thought he could ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... With unabating fury sent From battery to battlement; And thunder-like the pealing din[oj] Rose from each heated culverin; And here and there some crackling dome Was fired before the exploding bomb; And as the fabric sank beneath The shattering shell's volcanic breath, In red and wreathing columns flashed The flame, as loud the ruin crashed, 170 Or into countless meteors driven, Its earth-stars melted into heaven;[ok] Whose clouds that day grew doubly dun, Impervious to the hidden sun, With volumed smoke that slowly grew[ol] ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... for days while it sucked through opening seams the life-blood of his helpless craft. The game here would be to lift its victim on the back of a smooth under-roller and with mighty effort hurl it like a battering ram against the shore rocks, shattering its timbers into ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... his hip-pocket and came out grasping a small revolver. Instantly I struck up with my left and caught him a smart blow under the chin, which dislodged him; and as he rolled over there was a flash and a report, accompanied by the shattering of glass and followed immediately by the slamming of the street door. I let go his left hand, and, rising to my knees, grabbed the revolver with my own left, while, with my right, I whisked out the concussor ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... "which they upon the adverse faction wanted." Passing them without an effort, as it seemed, we threw them into the rear with so lengthening an interval between us as proved in itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption; whilst our guard blew back a shattering blast of triumph that was really ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... mingle with the blue precipices that tumbled, slid, or plunged in horrible confusion. Only a portion, indeed, of the mighty mass had been actually disrupted, but the shock to the surrounding ice was so shattering that the entire ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... Henry Wimbush, smoking a long cigar through a tunnelled pillar of amber, trod out the shattering dance music with serene patience. Locked together, Gombauld and Anne moved with a harmoniousness that made them seem a single creature, two-headed and four-legged. Mr. Scogan, solemnly buffoonish, shuffled round the room with Mary. Jenny sat in the shadow behind the piano, scribbling, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... me a powder-keg from that magazine!" Dolores said, still crouching low and hidden beneath the smoke-pall. The giant entered the room, shattering the lock with a lunge of his shoulder, and returned bearing an unopened keg of ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... aware of the superiority of the Swedish troops, he awaited the attack of his formidable foe behind his redoubts. In one of the skirmishes, two days before the great battle, a bullet struck Charles XII., shattering the bone of his heel. It was an exceedingly painful wound, which was followed by an equally painful operation. Though the indomitable warrior was suffering severely, he caused himself to be borne in a litter to the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... it might be laid to the door of almost any unmarried officer in the service, nobody had ever before dreamed of forcing home for judgment. But at last, it seemed, there was a man willing and ready, for the sake of an old spite, to risk shattering his own glass house to splinters for the sake of a revenge. Brodsky was determined, immediately upon Ivan's return, to summon him to a court-martial; and, since he was not a man to keep silence with regard to his plans, the tale, with its piquant references to Brodsky's private malice, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... what he recognized as living, he retained no reverence for the ossified experience of past ages. The principle of evolution, which forms a saving link between the obsolete and the organically vital, had no place in his logic. The spirit of the French Revolution, uncompromising, shattering, eager to build in a day the structure which long centuries of growth must fashion, was still fresh upon him. We who have survived the enthusiasm of that epoch, who are exhausted with its passions, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... he repeated, with a bitter sort of smile. "And all about Kruger's guns. So it is coming, is it, Johnny Bull; and you do know all about his guns, do you? If it is, and you do know, then a shattering big thing is coming, and you know quite a lot, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The shattering of the Tenth Russian Army in the "winter battle" of the Mazurian Lakes was part of a greater conflict which in February, 1915, extended far down the armies on the right flank of the great Russian battle ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... mountains; and, finding among these the colour, and liberty, and variety, and power, which are for ever grateful to them, delight in these to an extent never before known; rejoice in all the wildest shattering of the mountain side, as an opposition to Gower Street, gaze in a rapt manner at sunsets and sunrises, to see there the blue, and gold, and purple, which glow for them no longer on knight's armour or temple ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... of the lock in his hand drop heavily across the breech, and discharge the gun in his fall. Thereupon a blood—red glare shot up into the cold blue sky, as if a volcano had burst forth from beneath the mighty deep, followed by a roar, and a shattering crash, and a mingling of unearthly cries and groans, and a concussion of the air, and of the water, as if our whole broadside had been fired at once. Then a solitary splash here, and a dip there, and short sharp yells, and low choking bubbling moans, as the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... our good. Royal funerals, marriages, christenings, coronations, and jubilees interrupted traffic and stimulated trade everywhere. They seemed to give a raison d'etre for mankind. It is the Emperor William and the Czar Ferdinand who have betrayed not only humanity but their own strange caste by shattering all these pleasant illusions. The wisdom of Kant is justified, and we know now that kings cause wars. It needed the shock of the great war to bring home the wisdom of that old Scotchman of Koenigsberg to the mind of the ordinary man. Moreover in support of the dynastic ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... darting full forty feet at a stretch. As it approached, Medea tossed the contents of the gold box right down the monster's wide-open throat. Immediately, with an outrageous hiss and a tremendous wriggle—flinging his tail up to the tip-top of the tallest tree and shattering all its branches as it crashed heavily down again—the dragon fell at full length upon the ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... opposite, mirth, 'like the crackling of thorns under a pot,' which dies down into a doleful ring of black ashes in the pathless desert. Choose whether you will have joy dwelling with and conquering sorrow, or unrest and sorrow, darkening and finally shattering your partial and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... series of earthquakes began. They were not severe, but were continuous. The ground cracked open in places, and some houses were overturned, but there were no wall-shattering shocks—only a continual and dreadful trembling, accompanied ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... on vanished youth; it is bitter to lose an election or a suit. Bitter are rage suppressed, vengeance unwreaked, and prize-money kept back. Bitter are a failing crop, a glutted market, and a shattering spec. Bitter are rents in arrear and tithes in kind. Bitter are salaries reduced and perquisites destroyed. Bitter is a tax, particularly if misapplied; a rate, particularly if embezzled. Bitter is a trade too full, and bitterer still a trade ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... holding his breath, with every muscle tense, and his heart sank within him. For out of that inner doorway came a sound—a sound unmistakably human—tragically human, it seemed now, shattering his returning ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... lightning shivered across the darkness. The dead electric burners leaped into golden globes of light once more, and in the garish, shattering glare the man and woman sprang apart and stood staring at each other, trembling, with ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... revise his opinions on what he will there learn of the spirit that has stood unswervingly behind the commanding officer in every decision that he has been called upon to make, even though that decision involved sore disappointment and shattering of hopes. These men have been started out on correct lines and will have ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... interests of his country to a foreign potentate, or at any rate accept a present which might or might not influence his judgment, A commissioner to Illyria had been suspected of pocketing money offered him by the potentates of that district in 171,[127] and the first hint was given of that shattering of public confidence in the integrity of diplomatists which wrought such havoc in the foreign politics of the period which forms the immediate subject of our work. The system of the Protectorate, which Rome had so widely adopted, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... gun I had to push aside a bough—the empty hoods, from which a bunch of brown nuts had fallen, rested against the barrel as I looked along it. I aimed at the head—knowing that it would mean instant death, and would also avoid shattering the bird at so short a range; besides which there would be fewer scattered feathers to collect and thrust out of sight into a rabbit bury. A reason why people frequently miss pheasants in cover-shooting, despite of their size, is because they look at the body, the wings, and the tail. ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... her first half-understood glimpse of passion, it was sweet to be near him, to hear his voice, to touch his hand and, above all, to spend her strength in his service. But to him the strain was almost intolerable. The sight of her, the touch of her, the whole soul-shattering nearness of her beauty meant constant conflict; all the fiercer ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Nagaya!" he cried—"This is most excellent fooling! I, Zephoranim, the destroyer of my friend and first favorite in the realm? ... Old man, thy frenzy exceeds belief and exhausts patience,—though of a truth I am sorry for the shattering of thy wits,—'tis sad that reason should be lacking to one so revered and grave of aspect. Dear to me as my royal crown is the life of Sah-luma, through whose inspired writings alone my name shall live in the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... enter the House of Lords at Westminster. But commerce was certain to thrive now that the British Empire unreservedly threw open its markets to Irish products; and in the political sphere the Act of Union, by shattering the Irish pocket-borough system, assigned an influence to the larger towns such as those of Great Britain did not enjoy until the time of the Reform Bill. Nothing, it is true, was said to encourage the Catholics; but in Cooke's semi-official pamphlet they had been led to hope for justice ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... his right hand approvingly on Tom's head. "First, Tom," he pursues, "be to yourself a friend; second, forget the error of your mother, and forgive her sending you here; and third, cut the house of Madame Flamingo, in which our chivalry are sure to get a shattering. To be honest in temptation, Tom, is one of the noblest attributes of our nature; and to be capable of forming and maintaining a resolution to shake off the thraldom of vice, and to place oneself in the serener atmosphere ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... forethought for you, is it? Do you retract every word which you have said, or I'll cut you off without a penny," and with a fearful oath he swung himself around in his chair with such violence as to overturn the small onyx table upon which the cigars were standing, shattering it to fragments. ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... indignation got the better of him. For he was the last man to behold with patience the shattering of his idols. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... judges, jurymen, policemen, gaolers, and executioners, to all tax-collectors, speculators, and financiers, Tolstoy was, indeed, the devil in human form. To them he was the gainsayer, the destroyer, the most shattering of existent forces. And, in themselves, how large and powerful a section of every modern State they are! They may almost be called the Church and State incarnate, and they seldom hesitate to call themselves so. But, against all their authorities, formulae, and traditions, Tolstoy ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... him of several abortive attempts at suicide. He remembered having read in a newspaper that a married man, after killing his wife, had, like Chevalier, fired his revolver into his mouth, but had only succeeded in shattering his jaw; he remembered that at his club a well known sportsman, after a card scandal, tried to blow out his brains but merely shot off an ear. These instances applied to Chevalier with ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... is a well-known symptom of solitary confinement; it is by shattering a man's nerves all to pieces that it prepares the way for his death, which death comes sometimes in raging lunacy, of which eight men have died under Mr. Hawes's reign. Here is the list of deaths by lunacy from breach of Rule 37, eight. You will ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... entered he beheld a mighty beam of light which sprang from the ground, shattering itself against the roof in countless sparks, falling and flowing all together into a great pool in the rock. Brighter was the light-beam than molten gold, but silent in its rise, and silent in its fall. The sacred stillness of a shrine, a never-broken hush of joy and wonder, ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... turn me into stone, so great was the shock of this sudden shattering of the confidence ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... a shattering effect upon Master Wacht that a consuming surly peevishness was the consequence of it. This time the stout strong oak was shaken from its topmost branch to its deepest root. Often when his mind was thought to be busy with quite different matters, he ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... stumps, all speeding downward with great swiftness and force. The course of the boat being at right angles to these objects, must bring it in collision with some of them, at the great risk of overturning or shattering the canoe, that was not calculated to withstand any ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... from between his teeth Jabe shot out his long arm and knocked up the barrel of the rifle. In the same instant the Hunter's finger had closed on the trigger. The report rang out, shattering the night; the bullet whined away high over the treetops, and the great bull, springing at one bound far back into the thickets, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... perhaps hereafter, When she shall learn how heartless is the world, A voice within her will repeat my name, And she will say, "He was indeed my friend!" O, would I were a soldier, not a scholar, That the loud march, the deafening beat of drums, The shattering blast of the brass-throated trumpet, The din of arms, the onslaught and the storm, And a swift death, might make me deaf forever To the upbraidings of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... was once more quiet, and I slept for an hour, only to meet black and angry looks from the men all day, accompanied by threats and curses, though I said nothing to them. I picked up the stone from my reindeer rug, where it had fallen after shattering the window pane, and it lay only two feet from my head. It was about the size ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... northern Italy. Suchet, Massena, Oudinot, and Soult were, with fluctuating fortunes but always with stubborn valour, clinging desperately to their positions or yielding ground to superior strength, awaiting with confidence the hour when the supreme master would strike the shattering blow that, while relieving the pressure on them, would completely change the aspect of the war. It was while pondering his masterstroke, and deliberating on the choice of the path across the Alps that was to lead to it, that Bonaparte gave his approval; while elaborating a scheme to overwhelm ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... had been built of paper. The crew sprang overboard on either side, endeavouring to escape—whether any were killed we could not ascertain—and the next instant the whale, raising its powerful flukes, struck a third boat, shattering her by the blow, and throwing her high into the air, bottom upwards, her people and gear being scattered around on the foam-covered surface of the water. The other boats pulled away to avoid the same fate, which it seemed likely would ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... stone—no pain at all, nor any further recollection of what had happened, until he found himself at the base, in hospital. When the surgeons came to examine him for the bullet, they found that it had struck the broad brass plate of his cross-belt fairly in the middle, penetrating it and shattering his breast bone. But after torturing him vilely with the probe, they were about to give up the search in despair, when he told them he felt a pain in his back. Examining the spot indicated by him, they found a bullet just beneath the skin, which a touch with the knife allowed ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... had broken, and racing clouds, thick as a pall, sped across the sky that had been so blue and so cheerful; a wind screamed all day, now high, now low, shattering the tender flowers of spring, ruffling the Derwent against its current, by which he rode, and dashing spatters of rain now and again on his back, tossing high and wide the branches under which he went, until the woods themselves ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... of armies and cannon, of navies, of aircraft, when from some unreachable height these monsters within their bulbous machines could drop coldly—methodically—their diminutive bombs. And when each bomb meant shattering destruction; each explosion blasting all within a radius of miles; each followed by the blue blast of fire that melted the twisted framework of buildings and powdered the stones to make of a proud city a desolation of wreckage, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... himself, as though he were standing outside himself and looking on to another man's work, he pointed out to himself his own shortcomings. If it were all to be done again he thought that he could avoid this bump against the rocks on one side, and that terribly shattering blow on the other. There was much that he was ashamed of,— many a little act which recurred to him vividly in this solitary hour as a thing to be repented of with inner sackcloth and ashes. But never once, not for a moment, did it occur to him that he should repent ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... the deserted mansion; and still towing his laggardly companion, the young man sped across the square in the Oxford Street direction. They had not yet passed the corner of the garden, when they were arrested by a dull thud of an extraordinary amplitude of sound, accompanied and followed by a shattering fracas. Somerset turned in time to see the mansion rend in twain, vomit forth flames and smoke, and instantly collapse into its cellars. At the same moment, he was thrown violently to the ground. His first glance was towards Zero. The plotter had but reeled against the garden ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... continued, "I know that you are not a sensationalist. At the same time, this request of yours is a little nerve-shattering, isn't it? Sir Alfred Anselman has been the Chancellor's right-hand man. It was mainly owing to his efforts that the war loan was such a success. He has done more for us in the city than any other Englishman. He has ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... don't know whether she grieved much over the shattering of her dreams concerning Lizaveta Nikolaevna. Family pride, of course, helped her to get over it. One thing was strange: Varvara Petrovna was suddenly convinced that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch really ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... sitting-room, Christine, the door being ajar, most faintly transmitted to her a command in French to tranquillise herself and go away. And outside a boy broke the vast lull of the Sunday night with a shattering cry of victory in the ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... begins with one of the love themes; other themes are worked in; the parts weave and interweave with each other, swelling and mounting until a shattering climax is reached; then all subsides, and an effect of terrible suspense is produced by the last subdued phrase in the bass as the curtain rises, and we feel that something tragic is to come. Here we have Wagner the full and ripe musician. As a technical achievement this prelude ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... ears. Curses and credos, snarls and sneers, laughter and mockery, sacred names and howls of hate, came huddling in chaotic interpenetration. Skeletons and phantoms fought in maddest confusion. Swords swept through the phantoms: they only shivered. Maces crashed on the skeletons, shattering them hideously: not one fell or ceased to fight, so long as a single joint held two bones together. Bones of men and horses lay scattered and heaped; grinding and crunching them under foot fought the skeletons. ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... tardy builder knows nothing. As the lightning scorns the oak, as the fire triumphs over the venerable pile, as the swollen river scoffs at the P. W. D., while arch after arch tumbles into its gurgling whirlpools, so the Dhobie, dashing your cambric and fine linen against the stones, shattering a button, fraying a hem, or rending a seam at every stroke, feels a triumphant contempt for the miserable creature whose plodding needle and thread put the garment together. This feeling is the germ from which the Dhobie has grown. Day after day he has stood before that great black stone and ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... arrival at the Front. "Battle," in eleven sections, reproduces the mental and physical phenomena of the attack. "The Dead," in four instalments, tells the tale of grief. "The Aftermath," with extraordinary skill, records in eight stages the gradual recovery of nerve-power after the shattering emotions of the right. The first section of "Battle," as being shorter than the rest, may be quoted in full as an example ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... at the absolute wrong-headedness of the whole thing, the self-deception of a criminal idealist shattering his existence like a thunder-clap out of a clear sky, and re-echoing amongst the wreckage in the false assumptions of those other fools. Fancy that hungry and piteous imbecile furnishing to the curiosity of the revolutionist refugees this utterly fantastic detail! He appreciated it as ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... George had had time to draw breath after it, he and Roger and Maxime were all three in the water. The ball from the little cannon of the prison-boat had done its work better this time, striking the electric launch on her nose and shattering her to pieces. ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... He had slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at the picture. Upon my word, I can't give you a better idea of the shattering effect of Corky's uncle Alexander when in action than by saying that he had absolutely made me forget for the ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... either as individuals or as world-citizens, without some relation of reverence and affection to something outside and above themselves. He foresees that Christianity will come bankrupt out of the War, and yet that the huge, shattering experience will throw the minds of men open to spiritual influences. At the same time (of this one could point to several incidental evidences) he has come a good deal in contact with Indian religiosity, and learnt ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer |
