"Crumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... oppressive priesthood must perish, for false prophets in the present as in the past stumble onward to their doom; while their tabernacles crumble with dry rot. "God is not mocked," and "the word ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... not a mere matter of instinct, inertia, and routine. The Tite Barnacles of Dickens's satire were perfectly honest people according to their lights. They were sincerely convinced that the British Empire would crumble to pieces the moment its ligaments of red tape were in the slightest degree relaxed. Their strength lay in the fact that they represented an innate tendency in the nation, or at any rate in the dominant class at the period of which Dickens wrote. In America there is no such ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... end of the morass, charging full tilt upon the right of our line. I saw that end crumble up, and, a moment later, scarcely realizing what had occurred, we were racing backward, firing as we ran, and stumbling ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... them had thought of keeping his part of glory to himself? Nowadays the battle was beginning. Each hungry one was eagerly biting. And a fissure was there, a scarcely perceptible crack that had rent the old, sworn friendships, and some day would make them crumble into a ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... had feared neither Assur nor Ishtar, and who had often brought trouble on the ancestors of Assur-bani-pal. Their sepulchres were violated, their coffins broken open, their bones collected and despatched to Nineveh, to crumble finally into dust in the land of exile: their souls, chained to their mortal bodies, shared their captivity, and if they were provided with the necessary sustenance and libations to keep them from annihilation, it was not from any motives of compassion or pity, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ordered, the final assault is given; and if God does not perform a real miracle to save that soul, the last walls crumble, the doors are beaten down! Then the confessor makes a triumphant entry into the place; the very heart, soul, ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... the whole world is on my side, I have natural rights, and the law with me. I protest! The country will go to ruin if a father's rights are trampled under foot. That is easy to see. The whole world turns on fatherly love; fatherly love is the foundation of society; it will crumble into ruin when children do not love their fathers. Oh! if I could only see them, and hear them, no matter what they said; if I could simply hear their voices, it would soothe the pain. Delphine! Delphine most of all. But tell them when they come not to ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... May 12, 1917: "The great and glorious work of Dr. Krauth in the Council has been nullified. The General Synod's practise of fraternizing with the sects will prevail. What is sound and good in the Council will crumble; the proposed union is a great victory for the lax portion of the General Synod and a pitiable defeat for the Council. Indeed, we shall be told about the 'salt' that the Council may be in the new body, but that is an old, old game, which cannot fool people any more. And this to celebrate ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... thickness of the strata in the gypseous formation hitherto described, but it must certainly be very many hundred feet. Bed 11 is at least 800 feet in thickness: it consists of thin layers of whitish, greenish, or more commonly brown, fine-grained, indurated tuffs, which crumble into angular fragments: some of the layers are semi-porcellanic, many of them highly ferruginous, and some are almost composed of carbonate of lime and iron with drusy cavities lined with quartzf-crystals. Bed 12, dull purplish or greenish or dark-grey, very compact and much indurated mudstone: ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... Leeks, and Mint, a clove of Garlick when you will, a small quantity of Pepper, Cloves, and Saffron, so mingled that not one of them over-rule, the Pepper and Cloves must be beaten as fine as possible may be, and the Saffron must be first dryed, and then crumble in powder and dissolved apart in two or three spoonfuls of broth, but both the Spices and the Saffron may be kept apart till immediately before they be used, which must not be, till within a quarter of a houre before the Olio be taken off ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... prosperity were now to be paid for. All markets were glutted; all markets were falling; and amidst the general crumble of prices the price of labor crumbled fastest of all. The land was convulsed with industrial dissensions. Labor was striking here, there, and everywhere; and where it was not striking, it was being turned out by the capitalists. The papers were filled ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... endowment of two or three professorships. If he would dream of being remembered by coming generations, what monument so enduring as a college building that shall bear his name, and even when its solid masonry shall crumble give place to another still charged with the same sacred duty of perpetuating his remembrance. Who was Sir Matthew Holworthy, that his name is a household word on the lips of thousands of scholars, and will be centuries hence, as that of Walter de Merton, dead six hundred years ago, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Dead roses crumble to ashes in the gentle fingers that open the long folded pages—the violets of a forgotten spring impart a delicate fragrance to the yellowed spot on which they lay. The ink is faded and the letter much worn, ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... each side of him and patted him on the shoulders and glared across at me. I felt that if I was a rock, Jim's ship had struck on me and was sinking, as he said, because of me. I began to crumble. ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... grandmother, pray do not speak of such dreadful things. If you knew him as well as I do, you would rejoice with me, and would tell me I was right to believe that the Nile may dry up and the Pyramids crumble into ruins, before my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... London, was threatened by a "tube," and only saved by vigorous protest from having its foundations jarred and shaken by rumbling trains in the bowels of the earth. Moreover, by sewers and drains the earth is made devoid of moisture, and therefore is liable to crack and crumble, and to disturb the foundations of ponderous buildings. St. Paul's still causes anxiety on this account, and requires all the care and vigilance of the skilful ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... death very often in my life but I had never thought of it like this. I did not now think of death very clearly but only of the uselessness of trying to bear up against anything when that was all one came to in the end. I felt my very bones crumble and my flesh decay on my body, as I stood there. I felt as though I had really been caught at last after a silly aimless flight and that even if I had the strength or cleverness to escape I had not the desire to try. I had been mocked with ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... himself rapidly. His clothes were quite dry; indeed the very atmosphere of this strange beautiful place was so dry that it seemed to crumble in the nostrils. As he finished dressing Adan reached him. The horses' heads were hanging listlessly. Adan's face had lost ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... The years may thy grandeur and glory betray; But long as thy songs murmur over the earth, No forces can carry thy splendors away! Then live, ye dear songs of my country, forever, With voices eternal to utter her name, That cycles may never her liberty sever, Nor trample her greatness nor crumble her fame! ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... that dreadful and fluctuating glare. At the same moment we heard the fall of something heavy and inelastic in the upper story. The whole pavilion, it was plain, had gone alight like a box of matches, and now not only flamed sky-high to land and sea, but threatened with every moment to crumble and fall ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I will keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... said Halfoff. "We are close against the wall but we cannot shatter it. We are working to make a bomb. No bomb that we can make is hard enough. We can only try once. If it fails the noise would ruin us. There is no second chance. We try our bombs in the crucible. They crumble. They have no strength. We are ignorant. We are only learning. We studied it in the books, the forbidden books. It took a month to learn to set the wires to fire the bomb. The tunnel was there. We did not have to dig it. It was for my father, Vangorod Vasselitch. He would not let them use ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... said, coldly, "since a prating mouth knows no other argument than the mailed fist. But you shall not see the hand that smites, nor even know the quarter from whence it comes. Build high your walls and your bulwarks; they shall but prove the greater peril when they crumble under the impact of our lord's hammer. You will believe; yes, when trencher-mate and bedfellow are stricken at your side, and yet no man shall be able to say at what instant the avenger's shadow passed between, or catch the faintest sound of his retreating footsteps. All ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... river was changed; the flat had become an island, between which and the slope where she stood the North Fork was rolling its resistless yellow torrent. As she gazed spellbound, a portion of the slope beneath her suddenly seemed to sink and crumble, and was swallowed up in the rushing stream. She heard a cry of warning behind her, but, rooted to the spot by a fearful fascination, she ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... their minds retain the impression of that pensive and benevolent countenance. The generation of those who have gazed upon his features will pass away and be forgotten. The marble, like the features which it enshrines, will crumble into dust. Ut vultus hominum ita simulacra vultus imbecilla ac mortalia sunt, forma mentis aeterna; the attributes of his mighty intellect are stamped for ever upon his works which will be transmitted to future ages as a portion ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the night; Even the black Australian dying hopes he shall return, a white. Truth for truth, and good for good! The good, the true, the pure, the just— Take the charm 'Forever' from them, and they crumble into dust." ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... Langernault in particular, have always considered that the heap of rocks and stones overhanging your head was bound to fall to pieces sooner or later. And I myself, for years, with untiring patience, believing in a favourable opportunity, have amused myself by making it crumble away still more, by undermining it with the rain water, in short, by working at it in such a way that, upon my word, I can't make out how the thing keeps standing at all. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... of millionaires live in New York at a third of the price they were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant, and said, this is the last feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself. In that moment—in that memorable moment, I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I was become just a mere moral sand-pile, and I lifted up my hand, along with those seasoned and experienced deacons, and swore off every rag of personal property I've got in ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the mental framework commences to crumble the end comes rapidly. This is why at the time of the Revolution ideas were so quickly propagated which were by no means new, but which until then had exerted no influence, as they had not fallen on ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... for centuries the proudest capital of the Mogul Empire. Within a circle of twenty miles about the present city, one dynasty after another has established its capital, ruled in splendor, and passed away. Instead of occupying the same site, each has founded a new city, leaving the old to crumble into dust, scattering their debris over the plain, and telling of the mutability of human temples. All this ground is now abandoned to an army of foxes, jackals, and owls. Could this archaeological soil be plowed up, and its ancient monuments, palaces, tombs, and mosques exhumed, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... use one's common (or garden variety of) sense. A good rule is to wait until the ground has warmed up a bit. Never try to work in soil wet enough to be sticky, or muddy; wait until it dries enough to crumble readily. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... much better understanding of the existing political conditions; he complained that Wyndham submitted too much to Bolingbroke's dictation. The whole alliance was founded on unstable and unwholesome principles; it was sure to crumble and collapse sooner or later. There can be no question but that Walpole's invective precipitated the collapse. With consummate political art he had drawn his picture of Bolingbroke in such form as to make it especially odious just then to Englishmen. The mere supposition that an English ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... work of the ceiling has almost entirely lost its crystallization, and is as ready to crumble as the enclosed clay, which is still retained because it had not yet reached the necessary point of deterioration to be carried out before the great volume of water, required for that service, retired from this high level ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretch'd out on the spoils that his own hand ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... shall crumble down, And human pride and grandeur fall, The herald's line of long renown, The mitre and the kingly crown,— Perishing glories all! The pure devotion of thy generous heart Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... and brown, fat and greasy-looking. To protect the plants put one quarter of a pound of paris-green with twenty-five pounds of slightly moistened bran, using a little sugar in the water and stirring the paris-green into the bran very thoroughly. If too wet, add more dry bran. It should crumble through the fingers. Sprinkle a little of this mixture with the fingers along the row close to the plants. The cutworms eat this poisoned bran quite readily. Care must be exercised in using this poison lest poultry should get at it. On the other hand, poultry ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... the look of things, at all," he had said to Bull and Ryan, the evening before the siege guns began their work. "In the first place the defences will crumble, in no time, under the French fire. In the second place, I don't think that the Portuguese, with the exception of our own men, have any fight in them. Da Costa, the lieutenant governor, openly declares that the place is indefensible, and that it is simply ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... the murk of heaviest clouds, Out of the feudal wrecks and heap'd-up skeletons of kings, Out of that old entire European debris, the shatter'd mummeries, Ruin'd cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests, Lo, Freedom's features fresh undimm'd look forth—the same immortal face looks forth; (A glimpse as of thy Mother's face Columbia, A flash significant as of a sword, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... dough, not stiff nor soft. Shape into balls the size of a small egg, roll out very thin, prick lightly all over, and bake brown—it will take about five minutes in a quick oven. Cool on cloth and keep dry. Handle delicately—if the wafers are what they should be; they break and crumble at any ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... for the same end, to develop to its ideal consummation the fraternal instinct, thanks to which mankind have brought the earth under their dominion. Every time that he has been false to this instinct which is his law of life, his natural destiny, man has seen his temples crumble, his societies dissolve, his intellectual sense go wrong, his moral sense die out. The future is ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... mother capable of doing anything to defend the happiness of the child whom she adored. Serge had calculated well. Between Jeanne and Micheline, Madame Desvarennes would not hesitate. She would have allowed the world to crumble away to make of its ruins a shelter where her daughter ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... "simple views" from which they come forth at present furnished with a social and domestic decalogue whose sacredness it is impious to doubt or to dispute. In other words, the power which woman now exercises will simply crumble to dust. Whether she might gain a power higher and more beneficial to the world and to herself, is a matter which we are not now discussing. What is perfectly certain is that such a power would not be the power she exercises now. The moral censorship of woman over woman, for example, would ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... all that is left of the majestic Abbey of St. Jean des Vignes, where Becket spent nine long years. It is a mere bit of stage scenery, with height and breadth, but no thickness. It is a pity that such a charming structure as this noble building must once have been is now left to crumble. The magnificent rose window, or rather the circular opening which it once occupied, is now but a mere orifice, of great proportions, but destitute of glazing. The entire confines of the building, which crowns a slight eminence at the entrance ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... your goose, dry it, and rub the inside with pepper and salt. Crumble some bread, but not too fine; take a piece of butter and make it hot; cut a middle-sized onion and stew in the butter. Cut the liver very small, and put that also in the butter for about a minute just ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... ourselves to collapse on our haversacks at the foot of the stacked rifles—stacks that form on the call of the whistle with feverish haste and exasperating delay, through our blindness in that atmosphere of ink-dawn reveals itself, extends, and acquires the domain of Space. The walls of the Shadow crumble in vague ruin. Once more we pass under the grand panorama of the day's unfolding upon the ever-wandering ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the self-same vision in the dim past when the first savage clambered this "Citadel of Cecrops" and spoke, "Here is my dwelling-place." This will be the vision until earth and ocean are no more. The human habitation changes, the temples rise and crumble; the red and gray rock, the crystalline air, the sapphire sea, come from the god, and ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... thou whose body is sweet, and comely to behold—wherefore should I not rejoice to depart? When I see my house lying in ruins about me, I look down upon this ugly overgrown body of mine, the very foundations whereof crumble from beneath me, and I thank God it is but a tent, and no enduring house even like this house of Raglan, which yet will ere long be a dwelling of owls and foxes. Very soon will Death pull out the tent-pins and let me fly, and therefore am I glad; for, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... being sung in Christian churches throughout the world. Tremendous as was the cannonade, the earthworks were almost a match for it. The fort was not a mass of masonry that these enormous guns might batter down and crumble into rubbish, but a huge bank of earth in which the shells might harmlessly bury themselves. But five hundred cannon are more than a match for any fort, and so they soon proved to be in this instance. Earthworks, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... shrank from seeing his suddenly wakened hope, dead for many a year, crumble before his eyes. He dared not ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... might perhaps leave the wall to crumble into extinction, so that the rancor and bitterness of the Howes and Websters would come to an end, and the enmity of a ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... dread exposure to destruction, my inability to cope with or even comprehend the mighty architecture of nature. More than all this I felt as never before my entire dependence upon that Almighty Power who had wrought these wonders. A sense of danger, lest the rock should crumble away, almost overpowered me. My knees trembled, and I experienced the terror which causes, men to turn pale and their countenances to blanch with fear, and I recoiled from the vision I had seen, glad to feel the solid earth beneath me and to realize ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... white flame in us is gone, And we that lost the world's delight Stiffen in darkness, left alone To crumble in our ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... years I preached the truths of Christianity with a real sincerity, but with a fluctuating sense of their authority and value. Sometimes their authority seemed supreme, and then I trod on bright clouds high above the world; at other times they appeared to crumble at my touch, and then I walked in darkness. One thing I saw at intervals, and at last with complete and agonized distinctness, that however I preached these truths, they had little visible effect upon the lives of others. Those ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... sceptre of Priam, of the lapis-lazuli casket which enshrines the tatters remaining of Ilione's veil; but more than at sight of them I have trembled with awe to look at that little statuette, no longer than my forearm, and to think that if it were destroyed the Empire would crumble and Rome would perish. You maybe sure I shall do all I can to keep safe the precious treasure ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... indefinite ages; it must have been placed there at some finite time. Only one source for such an object is conceivable; it must have fallen from the sky. On the same plains the stony meteorites have also fallen in hundreds and in thousands, but they crumble away in the course of time, and in any case would not arrest the attention of the traveller as the irons are likely to do. Hence it follows, that although the stony meteorites seem to fall much more frequently, yet, unless they are actually observed at the moment of descent, they ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... little chapel in the dell beside your manor, Monsieur. If you will go there, and get upon your knees, and pray till the candles no more burn, and the Popish images crumble in their places, you will yet never understand ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is our reliance and our hope, and against it all the powers of earth shall not prevail. It is just as certain that Virginia would come back to the unchallenged control of her white race—that before the moral and material power of her people once more unified, opposition would crumble until its last desperate leader was left alone, vainly striving to rally his disordered hosts—as that night should fade in the kindling glory of the sun. You may pass force bills, but they will not avail. You may surrender ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... flank and rear. The two Dinosaurs disappeared from view. The dreadful mountain of writhing, gigantic shapes heaved convulsively for some minutes. Then the great columns that were the Dinosaurs' legs seemed to crumble beneath the weight. The awful, battling heap sagged, fell apart, and let in the glare of the sunlight upon what had been the two colossal monarchs of the early world. The dreadful, unrecognizable things still moved, still ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... fer de ha'nts. En folks sez dat de ole school-'ouse, er any yuther house w'at got any er dat lumber in it w'at wuz sawed out'n de tree w'at Sandy wuz turnt inter, is gwine ter be ha'nted tel de las' piece er plank is rotted en crumble' ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... different. That through which the water had passed, after it had been dried, was more open and porous. It did not possess so much of the blue cast. In less than one hour after the rain fell, the clay taken six inches from the top of the keg would crumble by ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... that pretend to be teachers of others, that understand not what they say, or whereof they affirm. No marvel the peace of churches is broken, when their watchmen want skill to preserve their unity, which of all other things is as the church's walls; when they are divided, no wonder they crumble to atoms, if there is no skilful physician to heal them. It is sad when there is no balm in Gilead, and when there is no physician there. Hence it is, that the wounds of churches become incurable, like the wounds of God's people of old, either not healed ...
— An Exhortation to Peace and Unity • Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan
... tree." "And I should not have sat here. Everything Would have been different. For it would have been Another world." "Ay, and a better, though If we could see all all might seem good." Then The lovers came out of the wood again: The horses started and for the last time I watched the clods crumble and topple over After the ploughshare and the ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... feet in height, while his strength and appetite were in accordance with his gigantic stature. It is stated that he could drink seven gallons of wine and eat thirty or forty pounds of meat in a day, and could move a loaded wagon with his arms, break a horse's leg with his fist, crumble stones in his hands, and tear up small trees by the roots. His mental powers did not accord with his physical ones. He was savage of aspect, ignorant of civilized arts, destitute of accomplishments, and ruthless ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds, and to enjoy a great deal of happiness, in this bright and ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... historical pageant that sweeps by us in wondrous fantastic forms of light and shadow, when we scan the life of Queen Hortense with searching gaze, and meditate upon her destiny. She had known all the grandeur and splendor of earth, and had seen them all crumble again to dust. No, not all! Her ballads and poems remain, for genius needs ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... mile of the Mansion House. Its exterior was built of Aberdeen granite, a material calculated to impress the prospective investor with a comfortable sense of security. Other stucco, or even brick-built, offices might crumble and fall in an actual or a financial sense, but this rock-like edifice of granite, surmounted by a life-sized statue of Justice with her scales, admired from either corner by pleasing effigies of Commerce and of Industry, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... be cursed; the young around you be sporting with hell; the awakened sinner be drowning conviction at his bottle; the once fair communicant be disgraced; the once happy congregation be rent; its ministry be driven from the altar, and its sanctuary crumble to ruin? Shall our benevolent institutions fail, and our liberties be sacrificed? Shall God be grieved? Shall wailings from the bottomless pit hereafter reproach and agonize you as the cause of the ruin, perhaps of your children and ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... from his vine, the laborer from his furrow, the mason from his scaffold, the weaver from his loom. Men accepted this mission of causing the immense public calamity to fall, morsel by morsel, upon the humblest walks of life. Detestable task! To crumble a catastrophe upon the little ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... sand on the beach of the mighty ocean. But then you cry, 'But what am I—poor mortal thing—lost among all this inconceivable greatness?' The answer comes that You are that most precious thing—a living soul. And if you were destroyed the whole system of universes would crumble, for you are as necessary as the greatest part of it—it cannot do without you—you cannot be lost or destroyed—you are a part of it all, and are eternal. 'But,' you ask, 'beyond all of this of which you have told me, what is there—what is the Centre ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... casts are often extremely faint. In some loose sands of recent date we meet with shells in so advanced a stage of decomposition as to crumble into powder when touched. It is clear that water percolating such strata may soon remove the calcareous matter of the shell; and unless circumstances cause the carbonate of lime to be again deposited, the grains of sand will not ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... time of which we speak, governed by the aged and excellent Elector Frederick, stood the Castle of Lindburg. It was one of those feudal piles of the Middle Ages, impregnable to the engines of ancient warfare, but which were destined to crumble before the iron shots with which cannon assailed them, as the system they represented was compelled to succumb to the light of that truth which the Gospel was then diffusing over the ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... Bolivar, higher and brighter. Washington established a republic which later became one of the greatest countries on earth; Bolivar founded also a great country, but, less happy than his elder brother, saw it crumble down; and though he did not see his work destroyed, he saw it disfigured and diminished. The successors of Washington, great citizens, philosophers and statesmen, never dreamed of tearing up the sacred ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... criticism there are few things more perplexing than the vicissitudes of taste and celebrity, whereby the idols of past generations crumble suddenly to dust, while the despised and rejected are lifted to pinnacles of glory. Successive waves of aesthetical preference, following one upon the other with curious rapidity, sweep ancient fortresses of fame from their venerable basements, and raise upon the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the flames from the neighboring buildings could not reach it. But we watched not long ere from its western extremity the fire broke forth, and warned us that that peerless monument of human genius, like all else, would soon crumble to the ground. To our amazement however and joy, the flames, after having made great progress, were suddenly arrested, and by some cause extinguished; and the vast pile stood towering in the centre of the desolation, of double size as it seemed, from the fall and disappearance ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... the presence of the most mighty Face he had ever looked into. It was the Face of Eternity. On its brow was written in words of blazing light the one word "Now." And as he looked into that calm, awful Face and read that word, Mr. Hardy felt his soul crumble within him. When the Face spoke it was the speech of a thousand oceans heaved by a million tempests, yet through the terror of it ran a thread of music—a still, sweet sound like everlasting love—as if angels sang somewhere a divine accompaniment. ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... fit. The spirit of the place requires them, as much as the captives who came in the triumphs, as the Goths and Huns, as the pilgrims of the Mediaeval Jubilees, and it subdues them: subdues them, as it subdues with the chemistry of this odd climate of crumble and decay, the new dreadful houses; as it has made, with the marvellous rank Roman vegetation, a sort of Forum or Palatine of the knocked-down modern houses, the empty unfinished basements behind the hoardings under my window. ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... Balfour, attacked the battery of St. George, which, however, was relieved, but not without severe loss, by Camillo di Monte, who hastened thither from St. James' battery. The Pile battery was in a much worse condition, it being hotly cannonaded by the ships, and threatened every moment to crumble to pieces. Gainboa, who commanded it, lay wounded, and it was unfortunately deficient in artillery to keep the enemy at a distance. The breastwork, too, which the Zealanders had thrown up between this battery and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... arrows, fish, deer, antelope, horses, lizards and almost everything imagined was carved in this timber. Those parts not exposed directly to the elements were in a good state of preservation, while those pieces exposed to the weather were brittle and would crumble like chalk. ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... carefully, remove any tainted or unclean portions and keep in a clean, cool place until required. Good beef should be a bright red color, well mixed with fat, and a layer of fat on the outside; the suet should be dry and crumble easily. (See meat diagrams for different cuts.) Mutton should have an abundance of clear, white fat, the flesh fine grained and a bright red color. The fat of veal should be clear and white, the lean pink, and should always be thoroughly cooked. Pork is more indigestible when fresh than when cured, ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... trivial act there was always a set purpose. In a boy's feeble hands, a puppet as he had called him, a king in legal age and yet a child in years and ignorance, this great France he had built up so laboriously would crumble into ruin. Louis was a statesman first and a father afterwards. So Commines must go to Amboise, must sift, search, find—but especially find. Find what? His question had been answered—find and prove the boy's guilty knowledge. But having found, having ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... plying on the shore; still see, through some break in the acrid smoke, the profile of the castle and houses; nay, of the very earth itself and the rocky cliff; see them all, change, break, dissolve into dust; crumble as if by enchantment into strange new outlines, under the enormous explosions of our 15-in. lyddite shells. Buildings gutted: walls and trenches turned inside out and upside down: friend and foe surely must be wiped out together under such a fire: ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the face of the ground. When you have finished pulling them up by the roots, you will find that your supposedly level plot is knobby with hummocks. Stand directly over each little mound; swing the back of your axe vigorously against it, adze-wise, between your legs. Nine times out of ten it will crumble, and the tenth time means merely a root to cut or a stone to pry out. At length you are possessed of a plot of clean, fresh earth, level and soft, free from projections. But do not unpack ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Sigurd, patting her hand caressingly. "When we are all dead, dead! When our bodies crumble away and turn to flowers and birds and butterflies,—and our souls come out like white and red flames,—yes! . . . then we shall love each other and talk of such strange, strange things!" He paused and laughed ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... by the varnish, and how delightful their pungent perfume. Let us crack a few of the strong, deeply-fluted shells. In their tawny nooks nestle the dark, golden-veined meats, which with the most delicious sweetness crumble in the mouth. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... let us meet together, Once more see each other's face; Then, like men that need not tremble, Go to our appointed place. God, our Father, will not fail us In that last tremendous hour,— If all other bulwarks crumble, HE will be our strength and tower: Though the ramparts rock beneath us, And the walls go crashing down, Though the roar of conflagration Bellow o'er the sinking town; There is yet one place of shelter, ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... "You will not find him in Russia. He is what they call the middle-class, which we who were foolish used to laugh at. But he is the stuff which above all others makes a great people. He will endure when aristocracies crack and proletariats crumble. In our own land we have never known him, but till we create him our land ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... opposite the church stood an old, one-story stone building that was built in its present form, eight hundred years ago. The roof was overgrown with moss and one corner had started to crumble in from old age. In this building Corporals James Cataldo and Michael A. Tito, the battery barbers, set up a barber shop. They did good business after they were able to convince the battery in general that the roof would not cave in ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... workers were filling and sealing small test-tubes with the contents of dishes. These tubes were extraordinarily delicate of structure, and Beale saw at least three crumble and shiver in the hands ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... help them to balance more fairly with the elastic properties of the young daguerreotypist—should not have painted a lusty conservative to match his strenuous radical. As it is, the mustiness and mouldiness of the tenants of the House of the Seven Gables crumble away rather too easily. Evidently, however, what Hawthorne designed to represent was not the struggle between an old society and a new, for in this case he would have given the old one a better chance; but simply, as I have said, the shrinkage and extinction ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... nature of its contents. Had she merely anticipated by an hour his petition for release? Even the bitterness of this conjecture was neutralized by the testimony it bore to his integrity of purpose, his unwillingness to conceal his disloyalty. When temples are shattered and altars crumble, we save our idol and flee into the wilderness, exulting in the assurance that no clay ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Romans and Visigoths; here and there are marks of old breaches, hastily repaired. We passed into the town, - into that part of it not included in the citadel. It is the queerest and most fragmentary little place in the world, as everything save the fortifications is being suffered to crumble away, in order that the spirit of M. Viollet-le-Duc alone may pervade it, and it may subsist simply as a magnificent shell. As the leases of the wretched little houses fall in, the ground is cleared of them; and a mumbling old ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... holy of life and blameless, the young bride of the physician whose skill could not save her, but whose last testimony to her virtues has survived the wreck of the centuries that have made the city crumble and the very sea retire.[13] The tender feeling for children mingles with the bitter grief at their loss, a touch of fancy, as though they were flowers plucked by Persephone to be worn by her and light up the greyness of the underworld. Cleodicus, dead before ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... Rousbys, the ancestors of the present occupants of the estate; that several generations of this family, dating back to the early days of the Province, had resided in it; and that when it had fallen into decay, the modern building was erected, and the old one suffered to crumble into the condition in which we saw it. I could easily understand and appreciate the sentiment that preserved it untouched as part and parcel in the family associations of the place, and as a relic of the olden time which no one was willing ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... And are ten times worse than all the others, For you I've a draught that has long been brewing, You shall do a penance worth the doing! Away to your prayers, then, one and all! I wonder the very convent wall Does not crumble and crush you ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... all doomed," asserted Stanton, "unless something happens. They can crumble our cities with heat and bury us under ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... masses of drift bowlders. The flats largely formed of silting while they still constituted beds of lakes, have a deep soil of fine sand and mold resting on coarse gravel and bowlder drift. Ridges composed of brecciated lavas, which crumble easily under the influence of atmospheric agencies, are covered with soil two or three feet, or even more, in depth, where gentle slopes or broad saddles have favored deposition and prevented washing. The granite areas of the main range and elsewhere have a very thin soil. The flats at ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... thro out universal nature. Let that be suspended, cease its active operations for a moment, and our own earth will be decomposed into particles; the sun, moon and stars will dissolve and mingle with the common dust; all creation will crumble into atoms, and one vast ocean of darkness and chaos will fill ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... if it had not been that it was the capital of the so-called Confederacy, and the fact of evacuating the capital would, of course, have had a very demoralizing effect upon the Confederate army. When it was evacuated (as we shall see further on), the Confederacy at once began to crumble and fade away. Then, too, desertions were taking place, not only among those who were with General Lee in the neighborhood of their capital, but throughout the whole Confederacy. I remember that in a conversation with me on one occasion long ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... kaekeekes—you know, our ancient drums, hollowed sections of the coconut tree, covered one end with shark-skin. The first kaekeeke of all Hawaii Ahuna pointed out to me and told me the tale. It was manifestly most ancient. He was afraid to touch it for fear the age-rotted wood of it would crumble to dust, the ragged tatters of the shark-skin head of it still attached. 'This is the very oldest and father of all our kaekeekes,' Ahuna told me. 'Kila, the son of Moikeha, brought it back from far Raiatea ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... as straight as we can, but get driven at an angle by the strange ribs of rock which come straight down. These are most tiresome to deal with, getting worse the higher we go, and so rotten and weather-eaten are they that they crumble into dust and fragments under our feet. Head man gets half a dozen falls, and when we are about three parts of the way up Xenia gives in. The cold and the climbing are too much for him, so I make him wrap himself up in his blanket, which he is glad enough of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... front of the minster is beginning to crumble at places," said Mr Halgrove, looking up at the noble pile before them; "I hope it's not true. Are ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... epitaph to guard a name Which men shall praise while worthy work is done. He lived and died for good, be that his fame. Let marble crumble: this ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... the Hermit, and with such a vehemence that I was startled from the design of revealing myself, which I was on the point of executing. "I would rather that these walls would crush me into dust, or that this solid stone would crumble beneath my feet,—ay, even into a bottomless pit, than meet the glance ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... English holding their fire and the ship sweeping on in grim, inexorable silence until she was within some two hundred feet of the structure, when all her larboard ordnance, great and small, bellowed and barked back its answer. As the smoke drove away ahead before the wind the wall was seen to crumble into dust under the impact of the heavy iron shot, while the lighter missiles mowed down the soldiers like corn beneath the sickle, until not a man was left standing upon his feet, even the magnifico in armour going down before the hail ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... widened—widened as a gulley in a sand bank does when a swift stream rushes through it. Lightnings these were—and more than lightnings; lightnings keyed up to an invincible annihilating weapon that could rend and split and crumble to ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... if the stone do congeal and wax hard through heat, we use not contrary things to dissolve it by coldness, but light things, as parsley, fennel and the like? A. It is thought, to fall out by an excessive scorching heat, by which the stones do crumble into sand, as in the manner of earthen vessels, which, when they are overheated or roasted, turn to sand. And by this means it happens that small stones are avoided, together with sand, in making water. Sometimes cold drink thrusts out ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... within the natural sphere of woman, and to be forced, on the spur of the moment, to decide a delicate question of manners, awoke in him the dismay of one who sees his accustomed prop of authority beginning to crumble. Surely Pussy knew best about things like that! He would as soon have thought of interfering with her housekeeping as of instructing her in the details of ladylike conduct. And, indeed, he had not observed that Gabriella was in the room until his wife, for her own purpose, had ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... can hang. "The soul that sinneth it shall die." But if the fire is "an accident," owing to "a defective flue," if the fire-escape breaks, the stairs give away under a little extra weight, or ill-built walls crumble prematurely—who can we lay hands on? Where is the soul ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... hope of going to college in the fall went glimmering. But really this last disappointment did not affect her as strongly as the others had done. She was getting used to having everything she touched crumble to dust, and besides, she felt too tired to care which way things went ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... 1822. All this was now to change, and the fabric of prosperity which he had raised by his genius and labour, and which had never spoiled the simplicity and generosity of his character, was suddenly to crumble into ruin with, however, the result of revealing him as the possessor of qualities even greater and nobler than any he had shown in his happier days. The publishing and printing firms with which he had been connected fell in the commercial crisis of 1826, and S. found himself ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... loin, and the shoulder may be stuffed with well-seasoned sage stuffing. To make this, cut a few strips of fat pork into small dice and fry over a slow fire. Add a finely chopped onion and cook until brown. Crumble as many slices of dry bread as you will need, and fry with the onion and pork over a slow fire until nicely browned. Moisten a little with milk or cream, and fill the space left by removing the bones. Sew tightly together and bake thoroughly. ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... for a moment. The gold-seekers had a glimpse of the natives in full retreat, with the Fogers—father and son—racing panic-stricken after them. Tom could also see a big cave, just beyond the gold hole, collapse and crumble to pieces like a house ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... took place on the eleventh day of the fourth month in the same year, B.C. 479 [1]. Early one morning, we are told, he got up, and with his hands behind his back, dragging his staff, he moved about by his door, crooning over,— 'The great mountain must crumble; The strong beam must break; And the wise man wither away like a plant.' After a little, he entered the house and sat down opposite the door. Tsze-kung had heard his words, and said to himself, 'If the great mountain crumble, to what shall ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... rock by blue lightning divided Down the hillside scatters its course, So in twain their army is parted By the sabres sabring in force: They have striven enough for honour! . . . and now Crumble and shatter, and sheer o'er the bank Where torrent Danube hisses and swirls Slant and hurry in rankless rank:— There are sixty thousand the morn 'Gainst the Lions marching in scorn; But twenty, when even is here, Broken and brave and at bay, the ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... when brought to the surface in a moist condition, flow during rainy weather down any moderate slope; and the smaller particles are washed far down even a gently inclined surface. Castings when dry often crumble into small pellets and these are apt to roll down any sloping surface. Where the land is quite level and is covered with herbage, and where the climate is humid so that much dust cannot be blown away, it appears at first ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... gives her heart all at once, men crumble theirs away, as one feeds bread to birds—a crumb to this woman, a crumb to that—and such a little crumb, sometimes! And his wife ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... helpless. I was soon despatched; and my bones left to whiten on the sand. This was long ago; and, one by one, all my relics have been carried off or washed away. My jaw-bone has been used as a seat here, till it's worn out; but I couldn't crumble away till I'd told some one my story. Remember, child, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... gave an account of it not very dissimilar to that which the Russell of 1861 wrote to the London "Times" after his first encounter with the feeling of New York. There were doubtless the same assurances on the part of confident partisans that the whole framework of the British government would crumble at the first attack. There were, too, the same extravagant alarms, the same wild misrepresentations, the same volunteer enthusiasm on the part of loyal subjects a little later on in the history. There was on the part of the rebels the same confidence in the justice of their cause, the same utter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various |
