"Plague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... learned, much to the relief of my mind, that this tag had been put on me by the Major as a warning to the next surgeon into whose hands I should fall, against tuberculosis. In other words, in my condition, it was necessary to take precautions against the white plague. ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... Dear heart, They shunned her like the plague—though if the truth Were known, many that shun her now would keep Her company perforce. None came near But pious Master Dimsdell, and even he Came only out of duty to her soul; He ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.—Guard against ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... Paris, the lord of Isle-Adam, and the principal Burgundian chieftains, galloped up with a thousand horse, and strove to pacify these madmen, numbering, it is said, some forty thousand. They were received with a stout of, "A plague of your justice and pity! Accursed be he whosoever shall have pity on these traitors of Armagnacs. They are English; they are hounds. They had already made banners for the King of England, and would fain have planted them upon the gates of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the anxious parents been relieved by this auspicious termination, when that painful disorder which renders pork unwholesome and children fractious, made its appearance. Had we the plague-pen of the romancist of Rookwood, we would revel in the detail of this domesticated pestilence—we would picture the little sufferer in the hour of its agony—and be as minute as Mr. Hume in our calculations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... councils, and again 90 Dissolves them, Themis, that henceforth ye cease, That ye permit me, oh my friends! to wear My days in solitary grief away, Unless Ulysses, my illustrious Sire, Hath in his anger any Greecian wrong'd, Whose wrongs ye purpose to avenge on me, Inciting these to plague me. Better far Were my condition, if yourselves consumed My substance and my revenue; from you I might obtain, perchance, righteous amends 100 Hereafter; you I might with vehement suit O'ercome, from house to house ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... "I sha'n't plague mysen. I'n been wi' you twenty year, an' you can't get twenty year wi' whistlin' for 'em, no more nor you can make the trees grow: you mun wait till God A'mighty sends 'em. I can't abide new victual nor new faces, I can't,—you niver know ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Governor. De Guzman sallied out to meet them and was killed at the head of his troops. They burned Panama and turned that beautiful city into a hell like unto La Guayra. I found means to secrete Isabella de Guzman and her child. The plague raged in the town. This man's wife died. He gave command to Hornigold to take the child away. He consulted me, as a priest whose life he had spared, as to what were best to do with him, and I advised Cuchillo, but his child died with its mother before ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... has it no other end than to provoke my patience? You know well enough, that, had I twenty serving-men, I would hold the faithful follower that stood by me in my distress the most valued of them all. But it is totally out of reason to plague me with your ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Geoffrey Langford came to help him to bed, he said, as he watched the various arrangements his uncle was for the last time sedulously making for his comfort, "Uncle Geoffrey, I ought to thank you very much; I am afraid I have been a great plague to you." ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cattle-plague again at Zheltonhiny,' the miller's wife was saying; 'father Ivan's two cows are ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... between the English and French, England was visited by the Black Death, a plague that came from Asia and bade fair to depopulate the country. London lost fifty thousand people, and at times there were hardly enough people left to bury the dead or till the fields. This contagion occurred in 1349, and even ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... may do for your ma's niggers, but it will never do for mine; and, plague them, they shall never have it; that is the word, ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... hid his face for a moment behind the huge mug of Beaune wine which Robin Turgis at that moment handed to him. Much refreshed by his mighty draught he resumed briskly: "For three and thirty years I have taken toll of life with such result as you see. A light pocket is a plague, but a light heart and a light love make amends for much." And as he spoke he slapped his pocket whose emptiness gave back no jingle, drummed lightly on his bosom and nodded gallantly to the admiring womenkind. "You are a philosopher," said ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... your estimates, "Dream Faces" shall your heavy heads bemuse, Because your hand, unheeding, desecrates Our temple; fit for higher, worthier use. And all the long verandas, eloquent With echoes of a score of Simla years, Shall plague you with unbidden sentiment— Babbling of kisses, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of Social Democrats has always been unmeasured. "A crew undeserving the name of Germans," a "plague that must be extirpated," "traitors," "people without a country and enemies to religion," "foes to the Empire and the country"—such were a few of the expressions he then and during the next few years publicly applied to ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... Last Man, which appeared in 1825, Mrs. Shelley attempted a stupendous theme, no less then a picture of the devastation of the human race by plague and pestilence. She casts her imagination forward into the twenty-first century, when the last king of England has abdicated the throne and a republic is established. Very wisely, she narrows the interest by concentrating on the pathetic ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... practically certain. His lack of faith, in the broader sense of the word, will incapacitate him for high seriousness (which he will regard as "bad form"), and a fortiori for enthusiasm (which he will shun like the plague), and will therefore predispose him to frivolity. Being fully persuaded, owing to his lack of imaginative sympathy, that his own outlook on life is alone compatible with mental sanity, and yet being too clear-sighted to accept that outlook as ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... made his first visit to the Record Office in the Tower, to collect materials for his work of "THE ORDER OF THE GARTER." In May following, Hollar accompanied the author to Windsor, to take views of the castle. In the winter of 1665, Ashmole composed a "good part of the work at Roe-Barnes (the plague increasing)." In May, 1672, a copy of it was presented to King Charles II.: and in June, the following year, Ashmole received "his privy-seal for 400l. out of the custom of paper, which the king ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Elizabeth, 'I think it a very useless plague. It used really to take me two hours a day, and now I am ready directly without trouble or fuss. People I care about will not think the worse of me for ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her debt at Ashpound. Ashpound was a much more exhilarating residence than Newton-le-Moor. At Newton-le-Moor the desolation of prodigality and immorality was objective and deductive. At Ashpound the desolation was subjective and inductive, a plague-spot within; and although the flush of decay was visible, Gervase would struggle against it to the last. He would make an effort to preserve the pleasant, rambling, mellow brick house, most of it one-storied and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... dear reader, when that day comes, the most 'rapid abolitionist' will say-'Behold, I saw all this while on the earth?' Will he not rather say, 'Oh, who has conceived the breadth and depth of this moral malaria, this putrescent plague-spot?' Perhaps the pioneers in the slave's cause will be as much surprised as any to find that with all their looking, there remained ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... Mark's, had, on finding signs of life in me, put me in a gondola and got me taken over to Giudecca into the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, where the Benedictines had established a hospital. How can I describe to you, old woman, this moment of re-awakening? The violence of the plague had completely robbed me of all recollections of the past. Just as if the spark of life had been suddenly dropped into a lifeless statue, I had but a momentary kind of existence, so to speak, linked on to nothing. You may imagine ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... mountains. I had not taken into account the effects of altitude upon a person not accustomed to it, and in consequence of my sudden ascent I had a slight expectoration of blood. This seemed to be cause for genuine alarm, and I now realized that I was to be a victim of "the great white plague," vulgarly known as consumption. Consumptives were as thick as English sparrows in Colorado and I saw ample evidences of the disease in all its horrible details. It seemed that there was a sort of caste among the "lungers," depending mainly upon their amount of ready cash. ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... your bells, let mourning shows be spread: For love is dead: Love is dead, infected With plague of deep disdain—'" ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... our parts?" asked the count: "for methinks everything is prepared, except the headsman and the spectators. A plague ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... discovered the 'piece' that makes them free of the whole amazing puzzle, they know where they belong and, therefore, whither they are bound: more, they are definitely en route. The littlenesses of existence that plague the majority pass ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... managed a good meeting at the Club. The Treasurership must be a plague to you, and I hope you will not be Treasurer for long: I know I would much sooner give up the Club ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... head in many fevers a great inroad is frequently made upon the memory, and it is long before the convalescent can rightly put together all the ideas of his past life. Such was one of the effects of the plague at Athens, as we learn from Thucydides; "and many, on recovery, still experienced such any extraordinary oblivion of all things that they knew neither themselves nor their friends." A few years ago a man with a brain-fever was taken into St. Thomas's Hospital, who as he grew better spoke ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... province. The repeated ravaging of Attica by Peloponnesian armies weakened both the resources and the morale of the Athenians, and the crowding of the inhabitants into the city resulted in frightful mortality from the plague. At the same time the naval expeditions sent out to harry the coast of the Peloponnesus accomplished nothing ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Moving out of the Town continues, & the City looks in some Streets as if the Plague had been in it, so many Houses being shut up. Br. & Sr. Seuneffs, with their 7 children, moved to-day to Philadelphia, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... terrific, so five of us clubbed together and rented a Chalet on the beach, which was christened The Filbert. We bathed in our off time (when the jelly fish permitted, for, whenever it got extra warm, a whole plague of them infested the sea, and hot vinegar was the only cure for their stinging bites; of course we only found this out well on into the jelly-fish season!). We gave tea parties and supper parties there, weather ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... Sandy. "Why, I didn't suppose we should have any neighbors within five or ten miles. Did you, Oscar? I was in hopes we wouldn't have neighbors to plague us with their pigs and chickens, and their running in to borrow a cupful of molasses, or last week's newspaper. Neighbors!" and the boy's brown face ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... a time in doubt whether he should dare to punish the sinners, for it was to be expected that he would eventually meet his death in this way, being one against two, Zimri and his mistress Cozbi. When, however, the plague that God had sent upon Israel on account of their sins spread more and more rapidly, Phinehas determined to risk his life in trying to kill the sinners. "For," said he to himself, "the horse goes willingly into battle, and is ready to be slain ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... makes the neighbors drunken and insane is a public nuisance, and may be pulled down and destroyed by the neighbors who are injured by it. It is worse than the plague. And if men will not put hands on it, then should the women do it. Tell us not it is property. It ceases to be property when it is employed to destroy the people. If a man lights his torch and sets about putting fire to the houses about him, any person may seize the torch and destroy ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... white devil of the Plague Moves out of Asian skies, With his foot on a waste of cities And his head in ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... "What a plague those creatures are—staring at me so!" he said, and flung a stone, which scattered them; when the game was ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... by the rapid spread of the plague, the feldshers were unceremoniously relegated to the background. Their surgery was practically useless and their drugs proved powerless to stay the disease. The snakharkas, on the other hand, prospered greatly. Superstition ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Bavaria, during his stay at Paris, instead of visiting his nephews and nieces, passed all his time, by day and by night, with the Duchess and her daughters. As to me, he fled me as he would fly the plague, and never spoke to me but in the company of M. de Torcy. The Duchess had three of the handsomest daughters in the world: the one called Mademoiselle de Clermont is extremely beautiful; but I think her sister, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... internal strife and outward dangers. These are of a kind to appal one in reading them. Then come the temporal or physical evils. These are to be a horrible train of ills in the form of pestilence, famine, and earthquakes. The plague of yellow fever is as nought to some of the scourges that will then go forth. Gibbon, the historian, tells of a plague that swept away two-thirds of Europe and Asia. At that time the dead lay unburied by ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... she said irascibly, "I wish they'd die. Andrew calls them his, but they'd starve only for me. I'm always saying I'll have no more pets, and still they're brought here. Some day when he has a home of his own and people plague him, ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... described them as "wingless, dumpy, black, swollen-headed, with bulging eyes in cases like goggles, mounted upon legs of steel wire and clock spring, and with a general personal appearance that justified the Mormons in comparing them to a cross of a spider and the buffalo." When this plague was at its worst, the Mormons saw flocks of gulls descend and devour the crickets so greedily that they would often disgorge the food undigested. Day after day did the gulls appear until the plague was removed. Utah guide-books of to-day refer to this as a divine interposition ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... plague was a shriek which came on every May eve, over every hearth in the island of Britain. And this went through people's hearts, and so scared them that men lost their hue and their strength, and the women their children, and ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... had now become a most terrible plague, especially to the horses, but most of all to the unfortunate that happens to be tied up. One horse, when he found he could not break away, threw himself down so often and so violently, and hurt himself so much, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... ten P.M., when we were forced to take shelter from an impending storm, on a small island where we wedged ourselves between the trees. But though we secured the canoes, we incurred a personal evil of much greater magnitude, in the torments inflicted by the musquitoes, a plague which had grown upon us since our departure from Cumberland House, and which infested us during the whole summer; we found no relief from their attacks by exposing ourselves to the utmost violence ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... were then, as they have invariably been throughout English history, against the Crown, which truly represented and defended the people. They flocked to the Royal Standard, and after six weeks' siege, plague and famine ravaging the garrison, Odo surrendered and was imprisoned at Tonbridge, and later expelled the kingdom. As this great rascal Bishop came out of Rochester Castle, the English youths sang out "Rope and Cord! ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... mentioned of the black rivers; that is, that mosquitoes—the plague of tropical America—are not found on their banks. This is not only a curious, but an important fact, and might be sufficient to determine any one on the choice of a settlement. You may deem a mosquito a very small thing, and its presence a trifling annoyance. Let me ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Wamba the Fool to say, "Marry, gossip, thou art like the man on ship-board, who, when the boatswain flogged him, did cry out 'Oh!' wherever the rope's-end fell on him: which caused Master Boatswain to say, 'Plague on thee, fellow, and a pize on thee, knave, wherever I hit thee there is no ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be compared with St. Jerome—I agree; yet I have never moved unless forced by the plague or for reasons of study or health, and wherever I have lived (I shall say this of myself, arrogantly perhaps, but truthfully) I have been commended by the most highly commended and praised by the most praised. There is no ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... tale may be told of many more deserted mistresses; and fair Athenais de Montespan was to hear it of herself one day. Meantime, while La Valliere's heart is breaking, the model of a finished hero is yawning; as, on such paltry occasions, a finished hero should. LET her heart break: a plague upon her tears and repentance; what right has she to repent? Away with her to her convent. She goes, and the finished hero never sheds a tear. What a noble pitch of stoicism to have reached! Our Louis was ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... A plague, I say, On maidens gay; I'll weave no compliments to tell 'em! Vain fool I were, Did I prefer Those dolls to these old friends ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... of the plague that passed, taking with it the breath of the unlucky and the unfit: and in the hut on Lonesome three were dead—a gaunt mountaineer, a gaunt daughter, and a gaunt son. Later, the mother, too, "jes' kind o' got tired," as ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... the day before. Grettir put it back into the sea and said he would never carry it home. That night passed and dirty weather set in with rain, so that they did not care to go out and told Glaum to fetch fuel. He grumbled very much and declared it was cruel to make him plague himself to death in every kind of weather. He descended the ladder and found there the woman's log. He thought himself lucky, laboured home with it to the hut and threw it down with a ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... skilfully uses as a background the great plague and fire in London, which gives realism ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... enough," said Philip; "and I know you've hid them away somewhere, because you thought we should forget them and not want them any more; so come now, Sam, tell us where they are, or we'll all begin to plague you." ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... who had dared to offend the pious bishop. "Cursed be she and all that belongs to her. Let her be expelled from the congregation and the Church. Let no man stretch forth a helping hand to her, and let friends and relations avoid her as a plague and a pestilence!" ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... to his fate. I learned, a few days later, that the Crotonians, furious because the old fox had lived so long and so sumptuously at the public expense, had put him to death in the Massilian manner. That you may comprehend what this means, know that) whenever the Massilians were ravaged by the plague, one of the poor would offer himself to be fed for a whole year upon choice food at public charge; after which, decked out with olive branches and sacred vestments, he was led out through the entire city, loaded with imprecations so that he might take to himself ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... "A plague on my memory!" I exclaimed. "We were in the parlor, and Miss Warren was singing. Your mother spoke—would that I might hear her again!—it's all tolerably clear up to that time, and then everything ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... a large lump of damp clay with it. Having lighted our candles he stuck them against the front of our hats with the clay—in order, as he said, to leave both our hands free to us to use as we liked. Thus strangely accoutred, like Solomon Eagles in the Great Plague, with flame on our heads, we resumed the descent of the shaft; and now at last began to penetrate beneath the surface of the earth ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... knees; Aunt Phoebe thinks waltzing immoral; And 'Algy, you are such a tease; It's nonsense, of course, but she is strict'; And little Dick Hodge has the croup; And there's no one to visit your 'district' Or make Mother Tettleby's soup. Let them cease for a se'nnight to plague you; Oh, leave them to manage pro tem. With their croups and their soups and their ague) Dear Kitty, ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a thorn? Then count it not a whit! Man is well done with it; Soon as he's born He should all means essay To put the plague away: And I, war-worn, Poor captured fugitive, My life most gladly give— I might have had to ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... had been removed during the summer to Jena, on account of a fresh outbreak of the plague, or at all events an alarm of it, and there they remained till the following February. Luther, however, would not listen to the idea of leaving Wittenberg. This time he could stay there in all rest and cheerfulness ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... cried gaily, as gaily as Wanda had spoken at first and more genuinely so. "You've just set out to plague me. And I'll show you how I treat little ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... But to me she is one of the most perverse. I never was supposed to be an ill-natured mortal neither. How can it be? I imagined, for a long while, that we were born to make each other happy: but quite the contrary; we really seem to be sent to plague each other. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... in The Inns of Old Southwark, p. 235, states that in this year "Tarleton, Wilson, and others note the stay of the plague, and ask leave to play at the Bull in Bishopsgate, or the Bell in Gracechurch Street," citing as his authority merely "City MS." The Privy Council on November 26, 1583, addressed to the Lord Mayor a letter requesting "that Her Majesty's Players [i.e., Tarleton, Wilson, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... fortunate than Poland. At this time that country presented a melancholy aspect. It was torn by civil wars, harassed by religious discord, and wasted by the famine and the plague. But these were only the accessories to still greater misfortunes. Crippled by them, Poland had no power of resisting the spoilers who were now casting their eyes upon her as their prey. These spoilers were the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... miraculous charm in operating upon her. Thus it is impossible for anyone to imagine the delight she takes in bathing; and as for the sun, no mortal can conceive the effect it has upon her. If she was to have the plague she would assure you it was owing to some peculiar virtue in her blood; and if she was to be put in the pillory she would ascribe it entirely to her great merit. If her coachman were to make her ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... 1892, a cholera epidemic had broken out in Russia. Young Smidovich, then a fourth-year student, asked to be sent immediately to a province in the East, where the epidemic was spreading like wildfire. He remained there several months, in fact until the plague had gone. As a doctor's assistant in an infirmary organized in one of the mining districts of the government of Ekaterinoslav, he witnessed a peasant revolt in which several doctors were killed and others cruelly burned by the exasperated and ignorant mob. Veressayev has traced these sad ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... grounds that they may lodge their sheep in them. As if forests and parks had swallowed up too little of the land, those worthy countrymen turn the best inhabited places in solitudes; for when an insatiable wretch, who is a plague to his country, resolves to inclose many thousand acres of ground, the owners, as well as tenants, are turned out of their possessions, by tricks, or by main force, or being wearied out with ill usage, they ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... dreamed his earliest dreams of life and of love. Salinguerra makes peace with the Guelphs, marries a daughter of Eccelino the monk, and effaces himself once for all in the Romano house, leaving its sons Eccelino and Alberic to plague the world at their pleasure, and meet the fate they have deserved. He himself, after varied fortunes, dwindles into a "showy, turbulent soldier," less "astute" than people profess to think: whose qualities even foes admire; and whose aggressions they punish, but do not much resent. We see him for ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of romance which is eaten elsewhere than on these heights in mid-air. The young come to drink deep of wonders; the old, to refresh the depleted fountains of memory; and the tourist, behold, he is as a plague of locusts let loose upon ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... impetus to daring ambition, if it does not always purify the motives which prompt its exercise. This genius divorced from wisdom, scornful of moral obligations, and ravenous for notoriety, is especially marked by wilfulness, presumptuous self-assertion, the curse and plague-spot of the perverted soul. Alcibiades in politics and Byron in literature are among its most conspicuous examples. Their defiance of rule was not the confident daring which comes from the vision of genius, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... he did not know what to do with the succession of pairs of young men, whose mission seemed to be to plague their master consciously, and to plague him unconsciously. Once or twice Mr. Gibson had declined taking a fresh pupil, in the hopes of shaking himself free from the incubus, but his reputation as a clever surgeon had ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the vessel remains for more than forty-eight hours at any of the ports visited. Personally, if I wanted to have an enjoyable cruise among the various island groups in the South Pacific I should avoid the "excursion" steamer as I would the plague. In the first place, one sees next to nothing for his passage money if he fatuously takes a ticket in either Sydney or New Zealand for "a round trip to Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, and back." Certainly, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... was Caesus, told a grewsome tale of the horrors of the plague and of the death of almost all his slaves. He was gloomy about his future, as he, his two sons, and their surviving slave were too few to work his farm. He seemed to regard us as fugitives from justice ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... captives to believe themselves free and happy. Luther: "The Scriptures set before us a man who is not only bound, wretched, captive, sick, dead, but who (through the operation of Satan, his prince) adds this plague of blindness to his other plagues, that he believes himself to be free, happy, unfettered, strong, healthy, alive. For Satan knows that, if man were to realize his own misery, he would not be able to retain any one in his kingdom, because God could not but at once pity and help ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... or demoniacal worship it was necessary to destroy the whole race root and branch. As an example, I will imagine a certain contagions disease which is transmitted by parents to children, and which, like the plague, is communicated to sound persons by contact; to destroy a family of men who would spread this disease over the whole earth would unquestionably be a mercy. Besides, I believe in the immortality of the sentient principle ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... have starved before next Harvest, if a Minister of State, in love with his Virtue, had not provided for him. And I myself knew one, who hearing black Puddings were a Preservative against pestilential Infections, and that the Plague was within Two Thousand Leagues of our Island, laid out his whole Patrimony in Puddings, and sent 'em to every Sea-port in ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... justices With capons make their errands; And if they hap to fail of these, They plague them with their warrants. But now they feed them with good cheer, And what they want they take in beer, For Christmas comes but once a year, And then they shall ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... Montrose, Dundee, Ayrshire, and Haddington. In the last-named place he had among his followers John Knox, who was then a young man, and who afterwards became the great leader of the Scottish Reformation. Before going to Haddington he had paid a second visit to Dundee, where the plague was raging at the time, and had ministered with great fearlessness and tenderness to those who were suffering from this dreadful disease. There is still standing in Dundee one of the old city gates—the Cowgate Port, where Wishart preached ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick
... was barred, because you were all 'good pals,' and didn't want to look like the 'boring people' who were to be avoided like the plague, and only asked to the big evenings, which were given as seldom as possible, and then only if it would amuse the painter or make the musician better known. The rest of the time you were quite happy playing charades and having supper in fancy ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... as if her anger, too, was vicious enough to do as the hornet would. But she turned to get the hot water and when she returned to deluge the plague, lo! it ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... am sure of it," said Ellen, clinging to her. "Oh, I'll come gladly, if you will let me and if aunt Fortune will let me; and I hope she will, for she said last Sunday I was the plague of ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of disease: but knowing something, as I happen to do, of the social state and of the health of the Middle and Elizabethan Ages, I have no hesitation in saying that the average of disease and death was far greater then than it is now. Epidemics of many kinds, typhus, ague, plague—all diseases which were caused more or less by bad air—devastated this land and Europe in those days with a horrible intensity, to which even the choleras of our times are mild. The back streets, the hospitals, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... picked out the best stories first, these latter ones take more time, being more perplext and unmanageable. But however I hope soon to tell you that they are quite completed. I have finished one to-day which teazed me more than all the rest put together. The[y] sometimes plague me as bad as your Lovers do you. How do you go on, and how many new ones ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Weaker in most points, stronger in a few, Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while, Things He admires and mocks too,—that is it. Because, so brave, so better though they be, It nothing skills if He begin to plague. Look now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash, Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived, Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss,— Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all, Quick, quick, till ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... of this character, and we should be lost as an independent state. And the peril that menaces us is the peril of being so lost. Not only by defection of our own, but by the force of arms of another. That other is Caesar Borgia. His dominion is spreading like a plague upon the face of this Italy, which he has threatened to eat up like an artichoke—leaf by leaf. Already his greedy eyes are turned upon us, and what power have we—all unready as we are—wherewith successfully to oppose the overwhelming might of the Duke of Valentinois? All this his Highness realises, ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... in any of them. The Athenians were routed in Thrace by the Chalcidians, Calliades and Xenophon commanding in chief. Demosthenes was the general when they were unfortunate in Aetolia. At Delium, they lost a thousand citizens under the conduct of Hippocrates; the plague was principally laid to the charge of Pericles, he, to carry on the war, having shut up close together in the town the crowd of people from the country, who, by the change of place, and of their usual course of living, bred the pestilence. Nicias stood clear of all this; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Dieppe. She had never had the measles. "Why did not Anne carry the child to some other place? Julia, you will on no account go and see that little pestiferous swarm of Newcomes, unless you want to send me out of the world—which I dare say you do, for I am a dreadful plague to you, I know, and my death would be a release ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you mean internally, Nancy," he said dryly. "She's hurt infernally, all right—plague take that autymobile!—but I don't guess Miss Polly'd be usin' that word, ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... be required of them; leaving a land of ease and plenty for a certainty of short commons and hard work, without preparation or farewells, I do not think I ever heard of such a strange thing before. Had their home been famine or plague-stricken, they could not have evinced greater eagerness to leave it, or to face the ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... was very much vexed at having lost my evening, and particularly vexed at having relied on the little peasant-girl. It is quite likely that I might have exclaimed, as I walked along, "Plague upon my friend, the priest, who goes and dines in town!" or some ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... return, and he accordingly hastened to bid Oonagh farewell, and to assure her, that from that day out, he never wished to hear of, much less to see, her husband. "I admit fairly that I'm not a match for him," said he, "strong as I am; tell him I will avoid him as I would the plague, and that I will make myself scarce in this part of the ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Doyle's new play is the Florence of 1400; the atmosphere that of a plague stricken city in a time when man was helpless, authorities hopeless, social life in shreds and patches. The plot of the play founded on this state of affairs is rich in incident, varied and sufficiently complex in color, passion and character to furnish material for an exciting ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... want to go with you. You want me no more. I can't afford to give you boats.... Come, don't plague me any more with your toy," she said, pushing it away, and then in a moment of convulsive passion she threw the boat across the room. It struck the opposite wall, its mast was broken, and the sails and cords made ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... hospitals. When diphtheria appeared in England in 1858 he was sent to investigate the disease at the different points of outbreak, and in subsequent years he carried out a number of similar inquiries, e.g. into the cattle plague and into cholera in 1866. He became first principal of the Brown Institution at Lambeth in 1871, and in 1874 was appointed Jodrell professor of physiology at University College, London, retaining that post till 1882. When the Waynflete ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... it was a torture like being burned alive. Whether it was the slaughterhouses or the dumps that were responsible, one could not say, but with the hot weather there descended upon Packingtown a veritable Egyptian plague of flies; there could be no describing this—the houses would be black with them. There was no escaping; you might provide all your doors and windows with screens, but their buzzing outside would be like the swarming of bees, and whenever you opened the door ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... up near them, and by the looks of the ground which was torn and tramped for quite a distance we decided that they had been in that condition quite a while. Jim said, "How in the plague, Will, are we going to get these critters apart? They are too plaguey poor to eat, so we don't want to kill them, and they will die if we leave them in this fix; what shall ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... not understand me at all," she declared. "I think that you are very dense. Besides, your remark is not in the least complimentary. I have always understood that men avoid like the plague a woman with a sense ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible supernatural significance—that ideal, destined to guide this man and his associates, had scope for its development in Africa. Whatever he does succeeds. The plague does not touch him. The cruelty of murdering prisoners is not imputed to him as a fault. His childishly rash, uncalled-for, and ignoble departure from Africa, leaving his comrades in distress, is ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... had done. When they came out from the shadow and struck into the parish of Kilbogie—whose fields, now yellow unto harvest, shone in the moonlight—his guide broke silence and enlarged on a plague of field-mice which had quite suddenly appeared and had sadly devastated the grain of Kilbogie, Saunderson awoke from study and became exceedingly curious, first of all demanding a particular account of the coming of the mice, their multitude, their habits, and ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... 841 the Northmen had sailed up the Seine as far as Rouen, but they found little to plunder, for during the reign of the Merovingian kings, the town had been reduced to a mere shadow of its former prosperity. There had been a great fire and a great plague, and its ruin had been rendered complete during the civil strife that succeeded the death of Charlemagne. Wave after wave came the northern invasions led by such men as Bjorn Ironside, and Ragnar Lodbrog. Charles the Bald, fearing to meet these dreaded warriors, ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... estate in England. In these cases, however, there is no reason to suppose that diligent husbandry has done more than to eradicate the pests of agriculture within a comparatively limited area, and the cockle and the darnel will probably remain to plague the slovenly cultivator as long as the cereal grains continue to bless him. [Footnote: Although it is not known that man has absolutely extirpated any vegetable, the mysterious diseases which have, for the last twenty years, so injuriously ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... and when he caught sight of anyone he covered him with his gun, and unless the man ran away he would pop at him—but not for fun, he didn't mind whom he shot, even if it were a Cossack. What he lived on? The gods of the taiga know! Nobody else did. Every living thing shunned him like the plague. Those who caught sight of him in the forest when he ran about like a devil said that at first he wore clothes such as the Russian gentlemen wear who know how to write, but later on he was dressed in skins which he must have tanned himself. People said he got to look more and more ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... "Irish-born"—particularly those who lived in the mountainous parts of the country—escaped its ravages. We have already mentioned the account of this calamity given by Friar Clynn, who fell a victim to the plague himself, soon after he had recorded his mournful forebodings. Several other pestilences, more or less severe, visited the country at intervals during ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... The writer, who called himself an old friend, entreated the farmer to prevent his dear child from becoming the wife of one who was suspected of being a gambler. The farmer was of an easy-going, indulgent nature, shunning care and anxiety as a very plague. Accordingly, no sooner had he read the anonymous missive than he handed it to his daughter, as though its contents were no concern ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... "See there! plague on it!" cried the housekeeper at this: "did not my heart tell the truth as to which foot my master went lame of? To bed with your worship at once, and we will contrive to cure you here without fetching ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... said it, and Lady Russell saw it; but it had been no unhappiness to sour his mind, nor (she began pretty soon to suspect) to prevent his thinking of a second choice. Her satisfaction in Mr Elliot outweighed all the plague of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... strong conviction of the absolutely imperishable nature of the Congregation of the Lord finds utterance in the words, "I will ransom them from the hand of hell; I will redeem them from death: O death! where is thy plague? O hell! where is thy pestilence? repentance is hid from Mine eyes." Simson is perplexed "by the sudden transition of the discourse, in this passage, from threatening to promise,—and this without even any particle to indicate the mutual relation of the sentences and thoughts." ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... injurious insects a few may be mentioned: the House Fly or Filth Fly, which may carry disease germs on its feet to the food that we eat; the mosquitoes, which transmit yellow fever and malaria, the rat flea, which carries bubonic plague; the weevils, which destroy rice, beans, chestnuts, etc., and the plant lice, or aphids, which, by sucking the juices from ornamental and food plants, are among the most destructive of ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... constant plague to me," said the cavalier, with a vexed smile and an impatient movement; "but speak on, Paolo,—for when you once get anything on your mind, one may as well hear it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... off his nervousness, Ralph started to school before the time. But, plague upon plagues! Mirandy Means, who had seen him leave Pete Jones's, started just in time to join him where he came into the big road. Ralph was not in a good humor after his wakeful night, and to be thus dogged by Mirandy did not help the matter. So he found himself speaking ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... a plague raging, denotes disappointing returns in business, and your wife or lover will lead ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... of the epidemic was so rapid that many left the town and took lodgings in the villages and farms. Mr. Maumbry's house was close to the most infected street, and he himself was occupied morn, noon, and night in endeavours to stamp out the plague and in alleviating the sufferings of the victims. So, as a matter of ordinary precaution, he decided to isolate his wife somewhere away ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Brigadier General Juan Arolas, long the governor of Jolo, had a thorough knowledge of modern sanitary methods and a keen appreciation of the benefits derivable from their application. When he was sent to Jolo, practically in banishment, the town was a plague spot to which were assigned Spaniards whose early demise would have been looked upon with favour by those in power. He converted it into a healthy place the death rate of which compared favourably with that of European cities, thereby ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... malaria, Rift Valley fever, plague, schistosomiasis overall degree of risk: very ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Litany of our English Church, when breathing forth supplications, as if in some representative character for the whole human race prostrate before God, places such a death in the very van of horrors. "From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death,—Good Lord, deliver us." Sudden death is here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of calamities; it is the last of curses; ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... cattle, sheep, and goats, that their camps would not suffice to hold them, and they turned the church of St. Germain into a stable and crowded it with these animals. The saint, as the Abbe D'Abbon relates, indignant at this desecration, sent a terrible plague among the cattle, and when the Danes in the morning entered the church it contained nothing but carcasses in the ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... a heathen practice to bury living creatures," continued the Pastor, "to avert the plague, when sometimes they buried children, or for other fantastic reasons. Thus, there is the legend of the Gravso, meaning the buried sow. The reason for its having been buried alive is lost. The sow is supposed ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... friendship sprang up between Brown and Elihu Hubbard Smith, and Brown made his home in New York, where Smith introduced him to "The Friendly Club." After the plague visited New York and Smith died of the fever, Brown returned to Philadelphia to spend ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... corner. "Is the plague among us!" The master turned on him. "Here and now, I say five lashes for the man who says that word again! Has any man here ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... wearing these slippers that I could have had no insidious designs, since I shared the danger, whatever it might be, the merchants were a little pacified; but what was my terror and remorse the next day, when one of them came to inform me that plague-boils had broken out under the arms of all the slaves who had worn this pestilential apparel! On looking carefully into the chest, we found the word 'Smyrna' written, and half effaced, upon the lid. ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... of amusement in the yard; twelve cats on the fence to plague, and no end of snow to make balls and pelt the cook with; beside, the gingerbread was just baked, and I got a brown corner! So! there! while I was eating it, and it was so hot that it almost sizzled, all at once I heard a lot of noise in the next yard. ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... his manuscript he says: "We are now in the passage, and he that brought us, which was one of the Commissioners called Collonell George Cartaret, was taken by the Hollanders, and wee arrived in England in a very bad time for the plague and the warrs. Being at Oxford, wee went to Sir George Cartaret, who spoke to His Majesty, who gave good hopes that wee should have a shipp ready for the next Spring, and that the King did allow us forty shillings a week for our maintenance, and wee ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... of patience then: Hold, good sir, said I; don't impute disguise and hypocrisy to me, above all things; for I hate them both, mean as I am. I have put on no disguise.—What a plague, said he, for that was his word, do you mean then by this dress?—Why, and please your honour, said I, I mean one of the ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... on Winter. "All that is really necessary is identification and a brief statement by the doctor. Then the coroner will issue the burial certificate, and the inquiry should be adjourned for a fortnight. I would recommend discretion in choosing a jury. Avoid busybodies like the plague. Summons only sensible men, who will do as they are told and ask ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... supposed that the first snow which fell in the year had particular virtues. Bartholin wrote a treatise on the uses of snow, wherein he endeavoured to show that early gathered snow preserved from the plague, cured fevers, toothache, and sore eyes. In Denmark the people kept snow water, obtained in March, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... began in 431 B.C. Its first stage was indecisive. The Athenians avoided a conflict in the open field with the stronger Peloponnesian army, which ravaged Attica. They were crippled almost at the outset of the struggle by a terrible plague among the refugees from Attica, crowded behind the Long Walls. The pestilence slew at least one-fourth of the inhabitants of Athens, including Pericles himself. After ten years of fighting both sides grew weary of the war and made a treaty of peace ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... slavery, which fifteen States of the Union maintain as a part of their domestic life, is, by many of the people in the Free States, regarded as they regard the plague and death; they prescribe certain degrees of latitude as barriers to it, as though they enacted thus: 'North of 36 deg. 30' whooping-cough is prohibited, measles are forbidden, cholera-morbus is forever interdicted.' They regard slave-holders as living ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... windflower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hills the goldenrod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... the justices were evidently coming forth. Mr. Dill laid hold of Barbara, whisked her through the clerks' room, not daring to take her the other way, lest he should encounter them, and shut her in his own. "What the plague brought papa here at this moment?" thought Barbara, whose face ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... you are quite mistaken,' said Lady Isabel, 'he was never a favourite of mine; I always detested him; I only flirted with him to plague his wife. Oh that wife, my dear Elizabeth, I do hate!' cried she, clasping her hands, and expressing hatred with all her soul and with all her strength. 'I detest that Lady de Cresey to such a degree, that, to purchase the pleasure of making her feel the pangs of ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... pitiful coward—unjustly, because, nurtured as she had been on the proprieties, surrounded all her days by men and women of a class most sensitive to public opinion, who feared the breath of scandal worse than a plague, confession for her must mean a shame unspeakable. What! Admit that she, Dorothea Westcote, had loved a French prisoner almost young enough to be her son! that she had given him audience at night! that he had been shot and captured beneath ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was before her. There were eight boys in Massart's class besides herself. At first the boys sneered at her and resented her presence. Not content with this they tried to annoy her with rudeness and to plague her with boyish pranks. She took it all patiently, replied to nothing and clung to her ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard |
