"Collapse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the exact manner in which I blundered into it. The fact that I did make such a blunder was because I was talking extemporaneously and had wandered ahead of my text. I was trying to show the results of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, and the partition of the Middle East into a loose collection of Arab states, and the passing of British and other European spheres of influence following ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... as overhanging a suitable ditch, or pit, or puddle. If all signs of weather and season failed and a sudden drought set in, sap would dry, leaf would shrivel, and the pitiful gamble for life of the little jungle frogs would be lost; the spoonful of froth would collapse bubble by bubble, and, finally, a thin dry film on the brown leaf would in turn vanish, and Guinevere and her companions would ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... and Dora had returned to the hotel. Mrs. Hauksbee had come out of the Valley of Humiliation, had ceased to reproach herself for her collapse in an hour of need, and was even beginning to direct the affairs of the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... so busy with it that he is on the verge of a nervous break-down. Of course he is. Who would n't be with that job? And of course he has n't a constitution for chickens and a cow. But neither does he seem to have constitution enough for the light-giving either, being ready to collapse from his continuous shining. ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... live for a time—until they had chosen their shop and furnished it—with the Clays. This arrangement was very disagreeable to Jim, but it did not occur to him to demur; his whole mind was in such a state of collapse that he allowed Louisa and her people to make what arrangements ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... Aurora Borealis, and I supposed it was an interchange of rifle shots. There were flashes like summer lightning; and then all the sky became a whirling confusion of battle that was still largely noiseless. Some of the Central European aeroplanes were certainly charged and overset; others seemed to collapse and fall and then flare out with so bright a light that it took the edge off one's vision and made the rest of the battle disappear as though it had been snatched ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... human—long hours of waiting had made him ravenously hungry. At Janzoon's hint, his countenance showed signs of a collapse. ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... like true British sailors; to employ an extravagance that is half conscious and therefore half humorous. Compare, for example, the rants of Shakespeare with the rants of Victor Hugo. A piece of Hugo's eloquence is either a serious triumph or a serious collapse: one feels the poet is offended at a smile. But Shakespeare seems rather proud of talking nonsense: I never can read that rousing and mounting description of the storm, where it ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... not fever. According to the doctor, it was an utter collapse of the whole system, probably caused by some severe shock. But he states that the patient would tell him nothing, and that he was consequently at some disadvantage ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... covered Europe with railway lines, can give an idea of the zeal with which the urban populations set about building cathedrals; ... anecessity at the end of the twelfth century because it was an energetic protest against feudalism." The collapse of the unscientific Romanesque vaulting of some of the earlier cathedrals and the destruction by fire of others stimulated this movement by the necessity for their immediate rebuilding. The entire reconstruction ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... winnings from the Comstock he sank into the various holes of the bottomless Daffodil Group in Eldorado County. The wreckage from the Benicia Line he turned into the Napa Consolidated, which was a quicksilver venture, and it earned him five thousand per cent. What he lost in the collapse of the Stockton boom was more than balanced by the realty appreciation of his key- ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... densely packed pilgrims. Men were carrying out dead bodies from the train; there were already at least fifty corpses laid on the platform, and the tale of dead increased every minute. Others, stricken with the fell disease, were lying on the platform, still alive, but in a state of collapse, or in the agonising cramps of this swift-slaying scourge. There happened to be two white doctors in the train, who did all that was possible for the sufferers, but, beyond the administration of opium, medical science is powerless in cholera cases. The horrors of that railway platform ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... where is it to come from? Not from Hungary, where we are within a narrow margin of financial collapse, and not in Austria, where there is already to all intents and purposes a state of bankruptcy. More money is not to be got, for we have none ourselves and nobody will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... his cheeks sank in, the muscles of his great form seemed to collapse, and he grovelled on the ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... enjoy the view. The guide, who was behind me, thrust me unceremoniously forward. It is not always safe to admire scenery from Montenegrin bridges. Certainly, on inspecting the bridge from below, he seemed to have shown no unnecessary caution. Two of the arches had completely given, and may collapse at any moment. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... "Memoirs of a Certain Island." Though she was content to retaliate only by heaping coals of fire upon the poet's bays, and though she even heightens the pathos of his story by relating how he had refused the moiety of a small pension from his mother upon hearing that she had suffered losses in the collapse of the South Sea scheme, Savage remained henceforth her implacable enemy. Perhaps her abuse of the divine Clio, the suspected instigator of his attacks upon her, may have ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... was an explosion that threw them all flat from the force of the concussion, and a terrific noise deafened them. They seemed to be at the ending of the career of this part of the old earth as they saw the whole front wall of the red mill collapse, falling as though sliced off by ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... than women. They seem able to stand shock better than the weaker sex. They are not so apt to go down under defeat, to take the full count, as I have done. For I still have to face the fact that I was a failure. Then I turned tail and fled from the scene of my collapse. That flight, it is true, has brought me a certain brand of peace, but it is not an enduring peace, for you can't run away from what's in your own heart. And already I'm restless and ill-at-ease. It's not so much that I'm dissatisfied; it's more that I'm unsatisfied. There still ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... their patience and impatience, their trials, temptations, and weaknesses. He gauges with pitiful fidelity the faults of character and purpose which make almost every "strike" contain within itself the germs of collapse and failure. The plot is cleverly conceived and successfully carried out. That the bubble which has for a time floated Richard Wilton's frauds and crimes bursts at last, and that the villain is brought to well-merited ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... into angry tears on Elinor's neck, but the brisk and significant air with which Griffin spoke roused her to herself again. She put Elinor's arms away, and going to the mirror, smoothed her tumbled hair, and whisked away the telltale traces of her collapse, while Elinor sat quietly on the edge of the couch watching her ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... agree with you," interrupted Dorothy, sitting up from her collapse as if galvanized into life and speech by Mr. Pierce's monologue. "You don't understand Peter. He is a man of great feeling. Think of that speech of his about those children! Think of his conduct to his mother ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... she said scornfully. "What is money? I care so little for money, Hiram. It was only to try and preserve from total collapse all my hard-working, indomitable, old foster father had built up so patiently that I undertook the freighting job. I've made money—lots of it—and if you think you and the rest of the boys haven't had a big share in my success you're all wrong. We'll keep on skinning ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... moment came the panic and the collapse. Screaming and howling, the great creatures rushed away in all directions through the brushwood, while our allies yelled in their savage delight, following swiftly after their flying enemies. All the feuds of countless generations, all the hatreds and cruelties of their narrow history, all the ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... how Talbot and his wife could laugh and jest with that terrible object lying motionless between them. Had the danger and excitement turned her brain, he wondered, and looked at her apprehensively, but Katrine gave no sign of mental or physical collapse. She looked smiling and well pleased with herself, and was stirring the fire and settling the coffee-pot over the flames as if nothing the least startling or disconcerting had occurred, as if no cold body was lying stretched there by the threshold. Stephen, reassured for her, let his eyes travel ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... with an inborn instinct of fear, he made his first attempt to rise and follow, and although unsuccessful it caused his mother to return and by her gentle nosings and lickings to calm him. Then in an effort to rise he struggled to his knees, only to collapse like a limp rag. But after several such attempts he finally stood on his feet, unsteady on his legs, and tottering like one drunken. Then his mother nursed him, and as the new milk warmed his stomach ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... except it be due to the action of others. People, carts, cattle, and dogs on the road are liable to such unexpected movements, that the real danger of the cyclist comes from the outside; to danger from absolute collapse, due to a hidden flaw in the materials employed, every one is liable, but, the bicyclist more remotely than the tricyclist, owing to the greater simplicity of his machine. The bicyclist, though he has further to fall in case of an accident from any of these causes, is in a better ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... power. Here was one of those unconscious prophecies, pointing to the advent of a white race from the east, that wrote the doom of the red man in letters of fire. Historians have marvelled at the instantaneous collapse of the empires of Mexico, Peru, the Mayas, and the Natchez, before a handful of Spanish filibusters. The fact was, wherever the whites appeared they were connected with these ancient predictions of the spirit of the dawn returning ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... strike, a quick, decisive series of blows, and the Acquatainians will collapse like a house of paper. Before the Star Watch can interfere, we will be masters of the Cluster. Then, with the resources of Acquatainia to draw on, we can challenge any force in the ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... he said, "I am dumb." And for a moment there was silence, till I began to fear that our argument would collapse; when, to my relief, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... into the future. At the present minute, we witness the biggest economic collapse that the world has ever seen, all countries suffer from it, except Germany. All states had made preparations for peace, now the stored up goods are lying there and nobody wants them, not even Germany. We thought, that Germany, bare ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer
... interpretation of what I was pleased to term in my mind the message from Francis. If I had read it falsely—if, perhaps, it were not from him at all—then all the hopes I had built on this mad dash into the enemy's country would collapse like a house of cards. Then, indeed, I should be in ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... was perfectly well aware that his master wanted of all things to avoid a meeting with her. For some reason or other, Bromfield was in a state of collapse this morning the valet could not understand. The man's business was to protect him until he had recovered. But he could not flatly turn his master's fiancee out of the apartment. His eye turned to Whitford and found no help there. He fell back on the usual ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... that when we get to it," said Brett. "This whole place is going to collapse before long. We really started something. I suppose other underground storage ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... lull, after the erection and before the collapse of the Napoleonic edifice in Italy. If no thinking mind believed that edifice to be eternal, if every day did not add to its solidity but took something silently from it, nevertheless it had the outwardly imposing appearance which obtains for a political regime ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... in this narrow space shut in by the white wilderness. And as the slow days went by, the low log house seemed to be filled more and more with smothered and conflicting emotions. A dozen times the whole extravaganza came near collapse; a dozen times Hugh saved it by a word, or Pete and Bella by a silence. Their parts were not easy, and although Pete still smiled, his young clear face grew whiter and more strained. Sylvie treated him always as though he were a child. ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... desert it, begin another, and are eight months without doing any work, you will be in a DECHE too. I am not in a DECHE, however; DISTINGUO - I would fain distinguish; I am rather a swell, but NOT SOLVENT. At a touch the edifice, AEDIFICIUM, might collapse. If my creditors began to babble around me, I would sink with a slow strain of music into the crimson west. The difficulty in my elegant villa is to find oil, OLEUM, for the dam axles. But I've paid my rent until September; and beyond the ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appear strong, have nevertheless undermined their constitution, and when an unusual strain comes upon it there is a collapse. ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... eminent lawyer was talking a veritable blue streak, occasionally flinging over his shoulder a bolstering remark in answer to one of Mrs. Calvert's questions, as his quick ear detected a preoccupation in Garrison's tones, and he sensed that there might be a sudden collapse to their rising fortunes. He was in a very good humor, for, besides the ten thousand, and the bonus he would receive from Garrison on the major's death, he had accepted an invitation to stay the week end at ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... work are not made after the sixth century. But this by itself is scarcely a sufficient reason, since the Church gathered all the knowledge of it she required from the writings of St Augustine. From him we learn that Varro feared the entire collapse of the old faith; that he attributed its decline in some measure to the outward representations of divine objects; and, observing that Rome had existed 170 years without any image in her temples, instanced ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources and also on a growing machine-building sector specializing in construction equipment, tractors, agricultural machinery, and some defense items. The breakup of the USSR in December 1991 and the collapse in demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products resulted in a short-term contraction of the economy, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. In 1995-97, the pace of the government program of economic reform and privatization quickened, resulting in a substantial ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... he might have had toward Derek Pruyn postponed by the circumstance that Miss Regina van Tromp was dead. The helpless, inarticulate life, which for three years had served as a bond to hold more active existences together, had failed suddenly, leaving in the little group a curious impression of collapse. It became perceptible that the hushed sick-room, where Miss Lucilla and Mrs. Eveleth were the only ministrants, had in reality been a centre for those who never entered it. Now that the living presence was withdrawn, there came the consciousness of dispersing interests, inseparable from the ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... my tale ended here with the downfall of Foxy, but, my dear Ned, I have to record a sadder and more humiliating downfall than that—the abject and utter collapse of my noble self. I have once more played the fool, and played into the hands of the devil, mine own familiar ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... in the financial world. If the reform party cannot borrow money the movement will collapse. At any rate that is what the Manchus believe, and they will strain every nerve ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... Bears and the Wolves joined hands and actually danced about the old hut until it seemed about to collapse. The secret service men looked on and smiled at the sight of so much ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... wavering, treacherous compass had he steered? His honour was inviolable, his measurements were all wrong. I was thrilled with the whole impression and with all that came crowding in its train. It was too grand a collapse—it was too hideous a triumph; I exalted almost with tears—I lamented with a strange delight. Indeed as the short night waned and, threshing about in my emotion, I fidgeted to my high-perched window for a glimpse of the summer dawn, I became at last aware that ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... were there, neatly and stylishly dressed in walking-costumes. They were three quiet gentlemanly and lady-like persons, but their faces were Medusa-like to almost every American who gazed upon them. The foreigners looked intensely amused at this collapse of the American contingent,—all save our Danish landlord, who stared with amazement. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... no animal is ever instantly killed, for there is always a gradual collapse, or more or less of a movement caused by the contraction of its muscles, before death actually comes; but when an animal feigns death, it is always in too much of a hurry about it, and drops instantly without a final struggle, or any hard breathing—that is the time ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... members the two men appointed by the said legislature; (2) as a matter of policy he urged that the people of Western Virginia should not be forced to run the risk of having the whole State, because of the collapse of the rebellion, repeal the act of the legislature and thereby continue a domination of tyranny over them. The vote was taken and the motion ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... to recall the distress of bitter disillusionment which has followed the collapse of some plausible system of "sweet reasonableness" under the granite-like impact of a rock of reality which has knocked the bottom out of it and left it a derelict upon the waves? This collapse of an ordered and ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... produced. The practical coincidence and significance of our tariff changes and panics is shown by an extract below from an article written by the translator in October-November, 1890, predicting the recent panic which was hastened somewhat by the Baring collapse. [Footnote: Inter-relations of Tariffs, Panics, and the Condition of Agriculture, as Developed in the History of ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... game is open to him in "patience," while there is no pastime more indicative of the true Communistic spirit than "ring-a-ring o' roses," so long as proper care be taken that at the last "tishu" all the players collapse simultaneously. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... exterior, raw and sinewy within, and an affront to the whole profession of innkeeping. Whereupon, in the days that followed, looking back at our fine mood of expectancy as we entered that hostelry, and its pitiable collapse when the miserable travesty of victuals was laid before us, we fell to thinking about some of the inns we had known of old time where we had feasted ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Beside the window looking out upon a gray-brick wall almost within reach, a canary with a white-fluted curtain about the cage dozed headless. Beside that window, covered in flowered chintz, a sewing-machine that could collapse to a table; a golden-oak sideboard laid out in pressed glassware. A homely simplicity here saved by chance or chintz ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... the wall, nearer to collapse than she had ever been before. But the momentary respite had its effect, and instinctively she began to gather herself together for fresh effort. He had wrested her deliverance from her, but she would never ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... he was on the verge of collapse, and that cost what it would, he must get away. Corydon's mother was with her, and when she was strong enough to be moved, she would be taken back to the farm. He mentioned this to Corydon, and she replied that she would be satisfied. There would be Mr. Harding also, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... faithfully and cordially did his best to keep the presidential mansion from falling down. Without him innumerable mouse-sized holes, gnawed by mouse-sized dinies, would assuredly have brought about its collapse. The president was grateful, but he'd meant to keep Timothy out of sight. Timothy must have escaped and as a faithful snake, loyal to his duty, he'd wriggled straight ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... seemed to have exhausted himself in that scream. There was no other light in the room but the darkened glow of the embers and I could hardly make out amongst the shadows of furniture Dona Rita sunk on her knees in a penitential and despairing attitude. Before this collapse I, who had been wrestling desperately with her a moment before, felt that I dare not touch her. This emotion, too, I could not understand; this abandonment of herself, this conscience-stricken humility. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... me to order all there was in sight. Well, I have witnessed heart-rending scenes, but I never saw anything that would draw tears like dad digging down for that $43. The doctors at home had ordered excitement for dad, but this seemed to be an overdose, and I was afraid he would collapse and I offered him my glass of brown pop to stimulate him, but he told me I could go plumb, and if I spoke to him again he would maul me. He got his roll half out of his pistol pocket, and then talked loud and said it was a damoutridge, and he wanted to see Astor himself before ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... an air of almost fierce determination. "Well, if I get an offer of a good place, I shan't refuse it. I shall leave the Bank." She spoke as if so desperate a step would be followed by the instantaneous collapse of that institution. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... standing stiff and straight, and working his signal flags. He had to stand on a high spot and in a clearing to do this, as otherwise, of course, his flags could not have been seen at any distance. Jack measured the place with his eyes. His whole plan would collapse if the body of the signalling Scout were visible from the next relay stations, but he quickly decided that only the flags ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... means been exhausted, but it was supplemented now by talk of Lakatos Pal's wealth. The old man had been ailing for some time. His nephew Andor's return had certainly cheered him up for a while, but soon after that he seemed to collapse very suddenly in health, like old folk do in this part of the world—stricken down by one or other of the several diseases which are engendered by the violent extremes of heat and cold—diseases of the liver for the most part—the beginning of a ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... for, makeshift and stop-gap as it is, it does not even succeed in what it tries to do. It does not last. Have we not seen that it does not, cannot last? How can it last. This falsehood, like all falsehoods, must collapse at one touch of Ithuriel's spear ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... There was a regular collapse of the tea-party, like that of the Hamlet play scene. Bob seized his sweetheart and carried her upstairs, the miller exclaiming, 'Ah, she's terribly worn by the journey! I thought she was when I saw her nearly go off at the blare of ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... and that the leaders of the present Independence Movement in Korea are mostly members of the old Independence Club, who somehow escaped with their lives from the wholesale persecution that followed the collapse of the Independence Club. Six out of the eight cabinet members elected by the people this year, (1919) were the former active ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... and determination were never better shown than in the closing hours of his life. When he was told by his doctors at St. Luke's Hospital, New York, whither he had been taken by the New York trustees of the Institute after his final collapse, that he had but a few hours to live, he insisted upon starting for home at once. His physicians expostulated and warned him that in his condition he could not reasonably expect to survive the journey. He insisted that he must go and be true to his oft-repeated ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... a change in the prospect of his whole life. It was the collapse of all his hopes. He had nothing more to work for, nothing more to think about; the bottom had fallen ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... back-breaking work of carrying more boulders from the water to the wall. Then I widened my cairn below, so that I could stand firmly before springing upon the pinnacle with which I completed it. I knew well that this would collapse under me if I allowed my weight to rest more than an instant upon it. And so at last it did; but my fingers had clutched the coping in time; had grabbed it even as the insecure pyramid crumbled ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... torrent, at nine o'clock at night. They were ready to drop in their tracks, yet hope inspired them to renewed exertions. They struggled on fifteen miles more ere they staggered into a farm-house on the verge of collapse. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... of laughter, which ran along the line from end to end and back again—a roar of laughter so loud that hardly a man knew that the band was now playing in full force "God save the Queen," with an additional obbligato from the drums—that one known as the "big" threatening collapse from the vigorous action of the stick-wielder's ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... as possible it was most difficult to form any opinion as to what load he was really able to draw. Consequently I am afraid there is little doubt that he was generally overloaded until that grim day on the Barrier when he was set upon by a dog-team. It was his final collapse at the end of the Depot journey which caused Scott to stay behind when we went out on the sea-ice. But of that I shall ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the Richard collapse and drop sullenly into the sea. The "machine-guns" had ceased firing and Bronson was regarding him with a smile. The boatman's face was crusted with salt and ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... her. Grasping Elise's hand firmly, she whispered: "Don't you collapse, Elise! If you cry I'll never forgive you! Brace up now and help me through. It will be all right if ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... He started at sight of the four figures; then his gaze fastened on Matilda and grew hard. Mrs. De Peyster tried to collapse within herself. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... month after month till winter would come and spring return, followed once more by summer. In those days we used to say: 'It will all be over in a fortnight, or three weeks, or a month at the latest;' and again and again did our hopes alternately collapse and revive. Thus the few chapters of 'Fecondite,' which he thought he might be able to pen in England, multiplied and multiplied till they at last became ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... of such a state of things you may conceive, or rather they are utterly inconceivable. Owing to the foundations of the earth having been cut away, it is more than probable that the present coal districts of the United Kingdom will collapse, the ocean will rush in, and several of our largest counties will become salt-water lakes. Besides this, coal being the grand source of our national wealth, its sudden failure will entail national bankruptcy. The barbarians of ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... Elkan commanded, and there was a ring of authority in his tone that made Polatkin collapse into his chair. "I am buying ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... Others collapse at once; they go to pieces under the slightest excuse, and frequently without as much as an excuse. As soon as the pain begins, they willfully ignore all the instructions given and desperately and foolishly try to escape what they cannot escape. In this unreasonable selfishness ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... her fully into what light there was, falling mistily through lattice and door. And at the look in her eyes, young Dr. Vivian's hands fell dead without a struggle at his sides. His tall figure seemed mysteriously to shrink and collapse inside his clothes. He said, oddly, nothing whatever. Yet an hour's oration could not have conveyed more convincingly ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of which has been attended with such abuses that a special act has been passed for their control. A number of banks and insurance companies have also sprung up of late years. Of some of these the paid up capital is absurdly small, and the recent collapse of the largest and of two smaller native banks has drawn attention to the extremely risky nature of the business done. Of course European and Hindu family banking businesses of the old type stand on quite a different footing. ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... Stock Exchange, although for that matter a great many mornings during the past three weeks had been the same. The bottom had fallen out of innumerable cans. Persons with scarlet or greenish white faces were waving their hands and calling on the Deity to explain the collapse of cast iron securities. If there had been a threat of war things could hardly have been worse. The worst of it was that none of the big sellers seemed disposed to give their reasons for unloading. Mr. Hilbert Torrington, when asked why he had sold huge quantities of oil shares, ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... life.[340] The name of "faith-state," by which Professor Leuba designates it, is a good one.[341] It is a biological as well as a psychological condition, and Tolstoy is absolutely accurate in classing faith among the forces BY WHICH MEN LIVE.[342] The total absence of it, anhedonia,[343] means collapse. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... a special, authentic source in the late evening, the cause of the mental collapse of the dancer is said to have been a fright caused by a burglary that happened after an abortion that was carried out successfully. A court-ordered investigation ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... she has her fling at the little squabbles and absurdities of provincial society, the "sets" and petty distinctions, giving a humorous relation of the collapse of her well-meaning efforts, in conjunction with friends at the sous-prefecture, to do away with some of these caste prejudices, of the horror and indignation created in the oligarchy of La Chatre ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... naturally defensive position; a narrow plain among steep, almost precipitous, ranges, and in the plain, arresting further progress, an abruptly sunken valley, scooped out to a depth of a couple of hundred feet; as though, what must perhaps have happened, some sudden collapse down below had allowed the ground here to fall in. The sides are in most places precipitous, but to the north they shelve up by degrees in terraces of sloping rock which a man can easily clamber up. The first terrace is only a few feet deep, and accordingly ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... the Spartan, the Athenian had a regard for paternity and genealogy, and the only way he knew to insure it was the Asiatic. He failed to make the discovery that the best safeguard of woman's virtue is education—as witness America; and to this failure is due to a large extent the collapse of Greek civilization. Athenian women were more chaste than Spartans because they had to be, and they were superior also in being less masculine; but the topsy-turvy Athenian men looked down on them because ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... easily confined to narrow limits and readily extinguished with the apparatus at hand. Steel columns will not burn, but if exposed to heat of sufficient degree they will warp and bend and probably collapse, therefore they should be protected by heat resisting agents. Nothing can be better than terra-cotta and concrete for this purpose. When terra-cotta blocks are used they should be at least 2 inches thick with an air space running through ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... take me home," said Clo. "I won't try to start without you. I've gone through enough. I'll just let myself collapse. I promised not to faint unless you made me. ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the mining man, and then, in slow, measured tones, he read out the contents of the convicting documents. As he concluded, Mortlake seemed about to collapse. But he took the papers with a trembling ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... sort of predestined the present work is a sealed book. We do not write any more for those imbeciles, walking effigies, who are like the statues of a cathedral, than for those old machines of Marly which are too weak to fling water over the hedges of Versailles without being in danger of sudden collapse. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... "He's right, I'm afraid. I would collapse rather quickly under physical coercion. You might last a bit longer, Ross possibly longer still. But in the end we ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... for months borne the burden of duties that could not be avoided or delayed, until many were on the verge of collapse from strain and overwork. Some were sick, and all were reduced in flesh from the urgent toil at camp duty and from lack of variety of food. Such was the condition of the motley crowd of sixty persons as we slowly neared that wonderful channel through which the great Columbia ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... the recent report that the Sittinghurst Vermin Club had killed 1,175 mice in one day, we are asked to say that the number should be 1,176. It appears that one mouse made its way in a state of collapse to the Club headquarters ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... judge, places as much faith in the protestation of the one as in the other. He reserves judgment until sufficient evidence shall have been developed to establish which of the accused is telling the truth. For, he knows that while the guilty man's lie may sound entirely plausible, it will collapse like a perforated gas-bag in the end. Likewise, truth coming from the innocent man's lips may be utterly lacking in plausibility. Yet, it will establish itself by reason of its ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... skimming six feet down, And saw the long fronds waving, white with shells, Waving, unfolding, drooping, to the swells; That sadder day when we beheld the great And terrible beauty of a Lammas spate Roaring white-mouthed in all the great cliff's gaps, Headlong, tree-tumbling fury of collapse, While drenching clouds drove by and every sense Was water roaring or rushing or in offence, And mountain sheep stood huddled and blown gaps gleamed Where torn white hair of torrents shook and streamed. That sadder day when we beheld again A spate going down in sunshine after rain ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... ran toward that ominous figure. She was prepared to fling herself upon that strong support which had never yet failed her. But, for once, no such support was forthcoming. Long before she reached her side Kate had stepped into the room and seemed to collapse into the rocker beside the dressing bureau. The brave Kate was reduced to a pitiful ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... and saw the sights and shopped; but I began to feel in Paris for the first time that the dreaded break-down or collapse which I had long apprehended was coming over me. There was a very clever surgeon and physician named Laborde, who was called Nelaton's right-hand man. I met him several times, and he observed to a mutual friend that I was evidently suffering seriously from threatening nervous symptoms, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... could be in a more terrible state of complete collapse than poor Mr. Lorrimer. The blow he had most dreaded had overtaken him. He had been as plucky an English gentleman as ever walked. As true-hearted and affectionate a husband and father, as kind ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... came to the convent without a small supply of a powerful stimulant of his own invention. The liquid, however, was of such a nature that he did not like to leave the use of it to Maria Addolorata's discretion, for he was aware that she might easily be mistaken in the symptoms of the collapse which would really require ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... restraint? Rather uglier had been Bassett's identification with the organization of the White River Canneries Company, a combination of industries on which a scandalous overissue of stock had been sold in generous chunks to a confiding public, followed in a couple of years by a collapse of the business and a reorganization that had frozen out all but a favored few. Still, Bassett had not been the sole culprit in that affair, and was not this sort of financiering typical of the time? ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... kept a feast going the whole day, and we invited this one, and not that one. Reflecting also that it was thanks to our master's vast bounty that we've come in for this unforeseen glory and splendour, I felt quite agreeable to do anything, even though it may entail the collapse of our household. I therefore advised his father to give banquets on three consecutive days. That he should, on the first, put up several tables, and a stage in our mean garden, and invite your venerable dowager ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources and also on a relatively large machine building sector specializing in construction equipment, tractors, agricultural machinery, and some defense items. The breakup of the USSR and the collapse of demand for Kazakstan's traditional heavy industry products have resulted in a sharp contraction of the economy since 1991, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. The government has pursued a moderate program of economic reform and privatization, ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... The phenomenal growth and collapse of the Knights of Labor is one of the outstanding events in American economic history. The membership in 1869 consisted of eleven tailors. This small beginning grew into the famous Assembly No. 1. Soon ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... mighty near starved right now," declared Dan Tucker; but then the boys had known him to put up that same sort of a plea only an hour after devouring the biggest meal possible, so they did not expect to see him collapse yet awhile from weakness ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... slowly to relax and collapse like a man stretched on the rack, who ceases to suffer either because the torture is ended or because his nerves mercifully refuse to register any more pain. "That is all," ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... attention now wandered from it altogether: he had so much closer a vision of his master's intimate conditions than our superficialities represented. There were better hours, and he was more in and out of the room, but I could see he was conscious of the decline, almost of the collapse, of our great institution. He seemed to wish to take counsel with me about it, to feel responsible for its going on in some form or other. When for the second period—the first had lasted several days—he had to tell me that his employer didn't ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... distress yourself, you will be quite well enough to leave to-morrow," the doctor said to him many times. "I expected this momentary collapse. It ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... carriage is not to be sat in in the usual way," she said. And indeed it was not. In the family rockaway there was constant need of muscular adjustment to different shocks at successive moments; here muscular surrender was required: a comfortable collapse—and there you were! ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen |
