"Ruin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to my good feeling," cried Anton, indignantly; "I yesterday heard from a very singular source that your father has got into difficulties through the intrigues of an unprincipled speculator. I even heard the name of the man who is plotting his ruin." ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... he always did, on sound economical principles; showing that, as trade was conducted, there must always be a waxing and waning of commercial prosperity; and that in the waning a certain number of masters, as well as of men, must go down into ruin, and be no more seen among the ranks of the happy and prosperous. He spoke as if this consequence were so entirely logical, that neither employers nor employed had any right to complain if it became ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... be roasted in flames; may all periwigs, bobwigs, scratchwigs, and Ramillies cocks, frizzle in purgatory from this day forth to the end of time! Mine was the ruin of me: what might I not have been now but ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in ruin! Abandoned, deserted, dead as Babylon! Or at least, so it looked to us then, with its empty streets which, if they had been paved, were ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... find out after a while that he had an easy time at home, and was better paid than he will be among strangers. I won't pay any more of his debts. I'll publish a notice saying that I have given him his time, and won't pay any more debts of his contracting. He might run into debt enough to ruin me, between now and the time he ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... political precepts commonly current in India. Nanda is slain by the contrivances of this wily Brahman, who thus assists Chandragupta to the throne, and becomes his minister. Rakshasa refuses to recognise the usurper and endeavours to be avenged on him for the ruin of his ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... "Oedipus," and "Electra"; and all of them have heard the Rhapsodists. Great wonders have they seen and heard, which, in their appeal to the heart, transcend all the wonders of this nineteenth century. Not more fatal to the poor Indian was modern civilization, bringing swift ruin to his wigwam and transforming his hunting-grounds into the sites of populous cities, than modern improvements would have been to the Greek. Modern strategy! What a subject for Homer would the siege of Troy have been, had it consisted of a series of pitched battles with rifles! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... rapid decadence of the sugar industries of the British West Indies on the Abolition of Slavery and the gravity anent the threatened ruin of the peasantry, some philanthropists and business men from England were sent to Baltimore to try to get free colored people to go to Trinidad. They spoke in many colored churches and succeeded in interesting them so that several shiploads were sent. My father and mother ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... to gain real possession of a woman's soul and body is a task that requires the whole of a man's best skill and insight. It may well be that when a man learns his lesson too late he is inclined to turn ferociously on the society that by its conspiracy of pseudo-morality has done its best to ruin his life, and that of his wife. In some of these cases husband or wife or both are finally attracted to a third person, and a divorce enables them to start afresh with better experience under happier auspices. But as things are at present that is a sad and serious ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... spirit of optimism. The most truly British person I know is a man who will move heaven and earth to secure a post or to compass an end; but when he fails, as he does not often fail, he says genially that he is more thankful than he can say; it would have been ruin to him if he had been successful. The same quality runs through our philosophy and our religion. Who but an Anglo-Saxon would have invented the robust theory, to account for the fact that prayers are often not granted, that ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... acknowledges "the terrible collapse of the transport and the railway system," and urges the introduction of "measures which cannot be delayed and which are to obviate the complete paralysis of the railway system and, together with this, the ruin of the Soviet Republic." Almost all those who have visited Russia would confirm this view of the gravity of the situation. In the factories, in great works like those of Putilov and Sornovo, very little except war work is being done; machinery ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... retreat was inevitable because the Germans succeeded in forcing the crossings of the Meuse at Dinant—that is, in the rear of the main army—while the fall of Namur (Vol. II, 55-59), another triumph for German heavy artillery and a complete surprise to the Allies, completed the ruin of their plans. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the war between Texas and the government of Mexico, San Antonio de Bexar could truthfully be said to be a city of importance gone to decay. Many of the churches, convents, and missions were deserted and fast going to ruin. The friars had returned to Mexico, and with them had gone many of the best of the old Spanish families, although here and there some Castilians remained, to keep up the style of the times as best ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... you are safe home—hein? you say 'cosy?' I hear my landlady. Run till you are safe cosy. But if you are a man wis a head and a pocket, zen you know that 'speculate' means a dozen ventures. So, you come clear. Or, it is ruin. It is ruin, I say: you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had given her. The catastrophe of her whole family so truly deserves commiseration, that we are apt to shut our eyes to all her weakness and ill-judged policy; and yet at every step we find how much she contributed to draw ruin on their heads and her own, by the confession even of her apologists. The Duke of Gloucester was the first prince of the blood, the constitution pointed him out as regent; no will, no disposition of the late king was even alleged to bar his pretensions; he had served the state with bravery, ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... left in the pride of vigorous age, whose noble and majestic bearing had so awed my young imagination, was bowed down and withered into decrepitude. A paralysis had ravaged his stately form, and left it a shaking ruin. He sat propped up in his chair, with pale, relaxed visage and glassy, wandering eye. His intellects had evidently shared in the ravage of his frame. The servant was endeavoring to make him comprehend the visitor that was at hand. I tottered up to him and sunk at his feet. All his past coldness ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... save and redeem and restore him, ... snatch Saul the mistake, Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now,—and bid him awake From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set Clear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony, yet To be run, and continued, and ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... the one by sea and the other on the land, and complete their conquests as they went along. He advised the king, too, to beware of Demaratus's advice. He was a Greek, and, as such, his object was, the admiral believed, to betray and ruin the expedition. ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... sounds. The fatal charge, and shouts proclaim the onset. Destruction rushes dreadful to the field And bathes itself in blood: havoc let loose, Now undistinguish'd, rages all around; While Ruin, seated on her dreary throne, Sees the plain strewed with subjects, truly hers, Breathless ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... powerful counterpoise in two other fifth-form fellows, Franklin and Cradock, whose excellence was almost solely due to Walter's influence. Kenrick, on the other hand, never interfered in the house, and let things go on exactly as they liked, although they were going to rack and ruin. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... able to turn their attention to the position their ship was in, and turning to with a will, unmolested by the enemy, they succeeded in getting afloat again. As they passed close to the fort, they witnessed the state of complete ruin which they had so speedily caused,—guns dismounted, carriages blown to fragments, and ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... ruin me with Valma! oh, if your lordship hasn't any feeling for me, don't let Valma think that I'm a—that I'm—! [Going down on her knees before him.] Oh, I won't tell on you! I promise I won't, if you'll only let me go! I will hold my tongue about you and the Duchess! I take my solemn ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... sin. Lives that have seemed strong and fair go down every day, do they not, and shock us for a moment with their irremediable catastrophe? And we must not forget that before they went down, for many a month or even year they have been hard beset lives. Before that final and complete ruin, they have been drifting and struggling, driven and fighting, sin drawing nearer and nearer, their fated lives urged on, the mind growing darker, the stars in their souls going out, the steering of ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... modern constructions of the Conquerors have been buried in ruins. The hand of the Conquerors, indeed, has fallen heavily on these venerable monuments, and, in their blind and superstitious search for hidden treasure, has caused infinitely more ruin than time or the earthquake. *32 Yet enough of these monuments still remain to invite the researches of the antiquary. Those only in the most conspicuous situations have been hitherto examined. But, by the testimony of travellers, many more are to be found in the less frequented parts of the ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... shall the traitor rest, He, the deceiver, Who could win maiden's breast, Ruin, and leave her? In the lost battle, Borne down by the flying, Where mingle war's rattle With groans of the dying. Eleu loro, &c. There shall ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... a special hell reserved for parents who ruin their daughters' lives to suit their own ambition," said Paul, with a sudden concentrated heat which rather ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... everywhere in public with Sainte-Croix. This behaviour, authorised as it was by the example of the highest nobility, made no impression upon the Marquis of Brinvilliers, who merrily pursued the road to ruin, without worrying about his wife's behaviour. Not so M. de Dreux d'Aubray: he had the scrupulosity of a legal dignitary. He was scandalised at his daughter's conduct, and feared a stain upon his own fair name: he procured a warrant for ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... himself to the true condition of the church, before which lay the alternative of ruin or amendment. Therefore he familiarised Henry with sense that a reformation was inevitable. Dreaming that it could be effected from within, by the church itself inspired with a wiser spirit, he himself fell the first victim ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... there was nobody in them at all, and no living thing except the owls asleep in the crevices of the walls, and the bats that hung head downward from the rafters. Now only one small turret remained to be explored. It was the oldest of the turrets, almost a ruin, and plainly long unused, for the iron door was rusty and the ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... present Lord Mount Dunstan was considered rather a surly brute, and lived a mysterious sort of life which might cover many things. It was bad blood, and people were naturally shy of it. Of course, the man was a pauper, and his place a barrack falling to ruin. There had been something rather shady in his going to America or Australia a ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... now, so I suppose he's satisfied; though, for my part, I haven't changed my mind at all. I still say that they are not one bit suited to each other, and that matrimony will simply ruin his career. Bertram never has loved and never will love any girl long—except to paint. But if he simply would get married, why couldn't he have taken a nice, sensible domestic girl that would have kept ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... would be revenged, and—and I owe him a hundred and twenty pounds, sir—and he has a bill of sale of all my furniture—and says he will turn me out of my house, and send my poor George to prison. He has been the ruin of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you apply to a magistrate, young man, you will bring ruin on these hospitable ladies, to whom, in all human probability, you owe your life. You cannot obtain a warrant for your purpose, without giving a clear detail of all the late scenes through which you have passed. A magistrate would oblige you to give a complete account of yourself, before arming ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... lives!" shouted the captain. The main-topmast had been carried away. Masts, and yards, and blocks, and rigging, came hurtling down on deck in one mass of ruin, injuring two or three of our men, and knocking one poor fellow overboard. In vain an attempt was made to save him. To lower a boat would have been madness. His death-shriek sounded in our ears as he dropped astern, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... me some of the metal if he wanted me to get through with my work. To this the vulgar courtier answered: "Zounds! don't ask the Pope for gold, unless you mean to drive him into such a fury as will ruin you." I said: "Oh, my good lord, will your lordship please to tell me how one can make bread without flour? Even so without gold this piece of mine cannot be finished." The Master of the Wardrobe, having an ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... had made her blind and credulous where her favourite was concerned, so as to lead to his seeming ruin, yet when the idol throne was overturned, she had learnt to find sufficiency in her Maker, and to do offices of love without excess. Then after her time of loneliness, the very darling of her heart had been restored, when it was safe for her to have ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... night, in an interval of duty, on leaving the house where his fiancee lived, he found the shells of the bombardment falling fast in the street outside. He could not make up his mind to go—might not ruin befall the dear house with its inmates at any moment? So he wandered up and down outside for hours in the bitter night, watching, amid the rattle of the shells and the terrified cries of women and children from the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the game," [1] On the prigging lay to the flash-house came, [2] Lushing blue ruin and heavy wet [3] Till the darkey, when the downy set. [4] All toddled and begun the hunt For readers, tattlers, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... sought to embitter our lot and to nip our efforts in the bud. None the less for this, the institution blossomed quick and fair; but later on, through the well-known persecution directed against associations of students, it was brought to the verge of ruin, for the spirit of 1815 was incarnate within it, and it was this spirit which at the time (about 1827) was the object of the extremest irritation.[126] It would carry me too far were I to attempt to give a complete account of these things. At times it really seemed as if the devil himself ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... have reason to believe, be heartily concerned to have such measures adopted; but they are not directors. The little favour they possess, and the desperateness of their situation oblige them to swallow many things they disapprove, and which ruin their character with the nation; while others, who have no character to lose, and whose situation is no less desperate, care not what inconveniences they bring on their master, nor what confusion on their country, in which they can never prosper, except when it is convulsed. The nation, indeed, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Welles indorsed the act of Wilkes in his report! Why couldn't we have been satisfied with the thing without making such a cackling over it? Apologies are cheap, and we could afford to make a very handsome one in this case. A war with England would ruin us. It is too monstrous to think of. May God in His mercy save us ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... hope has fled; That heart is as some ruin old, With ancient arch and wall, o'erspread With moss, and desolating mold; Whose banquet halls, where once the sound Of revelry rang unconfined, Now, with the hoot of owls resound, Or echo back the ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... Water was very fair in the morning sunshine. It was as if, while exploring some great ruin, we had chanced into a secret, hidden chamber, the most splendid of them all, and when after lunch the promised fair wind sprang up, and the canoes with well-filled sails were speeding northward, the lake and its guardian hills became bluer ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... mustn't be! Oh, do, do give up the idea—for my sake! It'll be your ruin as an artist." She had risen to her feet, and was gazing ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... satellites and minions of both sexes, paid and caressed for carrying to their stern, dark-bearded master prayers and supplications. Altars must be strown with broken minds, and incense rise amid abject aspirations. Gods will be found unfit for their places; and it is not impossible that, in the ruin imminent from our contentions for power, and in the necessary extinction both of ancient families and of generous sentiments, our consular fasces may become the water-sprinklers of some upstart priesthood, and that my son may apply for lustration to the son ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Krazinska's celebrated head of hair was cut from the heads of the Breton girls, how could he suspect that the austere defender of the clergy, M. Lemarguillier, had been gravely compromised in a love affair, and had thrown himself at the feet of the chief of police, exclaiming, "Do not ruin me!" When the king of society is announced, the young Duc de la Tour-Prends-Garde, whose one ancestor was at the battle of the bridge, and who is just now introducing a new style in trousers, Amedee could not suspect that the favorite amusement of this ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... place is here. He's got a duty and a responsibility. Your dear father didn't leave him the estate for him to let it go to wrack and ruin. It's most cruel and ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... Sinclair brought Smith the news of the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga in October 1777, and exclaimed in the deepest concern that the nation was ruined. "There is a great deal of ruin in a nation," was Smith's calm reply. In November 1778 Sinclair wanted Smith to send him to Thurso Castle the loan of the important French book on contemporary systems of taxation, which is so often quoted in the Wealth of Nations—the Memoires ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... the first he fitted to the string. But, if chance had brought the head of the boy before the shaft, no doubt the penalty of the son would have recoiled to the peril of the father, and the swerving of the shaft that struck the boy would have linked them both in common ruin. I am in doubt, then, whether to admire most the courage of the father or the temper of the son, of whom the one by skill in his art avoided being the slayer of his child, while the other by patience of mind and quietness of body saved himself alive, and spared the natural ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... Court, and was looking at the stale mirth and madness of the bygone days. Eight out of ten of the men he remembered had settled down, and two of the ten, to make an average, had gone to the devil The two were mainly of the better sort—fellows who stuck to an absurd responsibility, and let it ruin them. The eight were the good citizens who had had the wit to cut responsibility adrift. That was life as he knew it, as the boys of his day who studied divinity or medicine, or who read for the Bar, or who worked in painting or at journalism or letters, all knew ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the contagion; all the channels in which the functions of life should go on are destroyed; all the juices of the system are decomposed; and, seized with a similar feverous delirium, the sound spiritual life and productions of whole ages and nations are involved in irremediable ruin. Hence your antipathy to the church, to every institution which is intended for the communication of religion, is always more prominent than that which you feel to religion itself; hence, also, priests, as the pillars and the most efficient members of such institutions, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... and Sicily.[123] Thus the hopeless attempt to keep both Germany and Italy under the same head was continued. It brought about new conflicts with the popes, who were the feudal suzerains of Naples and Sicily, and ended in the ruin ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... confirm us in our belief, that every dominion should retain its original form, and, indeed, cannot change it without danger of the utter ruin of the whole state. (76) Such are the points I have here thought ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... I must do?" she broke in. "The horror of appealing to that man is almost worse to bear than exposure and ruin." ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Phineas respecting them than he had done to any other human being. If it was true that he had been false, then he must comply with any requisition which Lord Chiltern might make,—short of voluntarily giving up the lady. He must fight if he were asked to do so, even though fighting were his ruin. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... pray, his face bowed against the edge of the bed, his long black cassock trailing behind him in the room. Charles was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched towards Emma. He had taken her hands and pressed them, shuddering at every beat of her heart, as at the shaking of a falling ruin. As the death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his prayers mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes all seemed lost in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that tolled like a ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... above from Pythias.—"Very sorry to hear you have been playing at the Tables. Sure to end in ruin. By the bye, what system do you use? The subject interests me merely as a mathematical problem, of course. Wish I could pay expenses of my Devonshire hotel so easily. But then one ought to have some reward for visiting such a dreary place as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... cooking, and in furnishing to the combatants, provisions and water, during the continuance of the attack. It seemed indeed, as if each individual were sensible, that the safety of all depended on his lone exertions; and that the slightest relaxation of these, would involve them all in one common ruin. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... take the whole in the same way; that this banker now holds lands in the district yielding above two lacs of rupees a-year, can do what he pleases, and is every day aggrandizing himself and family by the ruin of others. There is some truth in what Rambuksh states, though he exaggerates a little the wrong which he himself suffers; and it is lamentable that all power and influence in Oude, of whatever kind or however acquired, should be so sure to be abused, to ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... having been governed by a particular dynasty, it has been administered by governors who have had no other occupation than to amass wealth and to make it pass into Khorassan. Now, this emigration of the resources of a country to the profit of another is one of the surest causes of its ruin; besides, the presence of a king and a court contributes much to the prosperity of a State. The epoch of the glory and splendour of Kerman reaches to the reign of the Seldjouqide dynasty, and during that happy period, a great number of foreigners ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... may have been just such a Verona as this which delights and depresses us, only with new beautiful things being built quite naturally alongside of decayed and defiled ones; things nowadays all equally levelled in ruin and squalor. The splendour of the Past may be a mere fiction of our own, like the romance of the Past which we say we no longer believe in. But history gives us, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... utter ruin of an adjoining country, by nature one of the most fertile and charming on the globe, would engage the serious attention of the Government and people of the United States in any circumstances. In point of fact, they have a concern with it which is by no means of a wholly sentimental ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... is a reasonable certainty that the weather shall continue dry, it is quite practicable to cure clover in the winrow, but in showery weather to attempt to do so would mean ruin to the clover. In no form does it take injury so quickly from rain as in the winrow, and when rain saturates it, much labor is involved in spreading it out again. Nor is it possible to make hay quite so good in quantity when clover ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... a fact, for every day the professor kept them busy with shovels digging away the snow from some piece of ruin he wished to measure and draw, while after the chief had been, and noted what was done, he said something half contemptuously to his men, ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... to save a young girl from ruin, and you from another crime," said the old gentleman, greatly agitated, and leaning with his whole weight, now, on ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... an inch," said Jared hardily, "and then you went to work to take me down an ell. You've tried to harm me all you could; you've tried to ruin me. But it couldn't be done. Let me tell you this: I've sold seventeen hundred dollars' worth of my work here, and the first of the month I'm going East with a lot more of it. A man with money in his pocket can get his rights," said ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... is!" exclaimed Mr. Sagger, "we've got to have a regular department, mayor; that's what we have! We can't have business places burn up this way. Why, it will ruin the town!" ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... the heart of her fellow-woman. She thought of all that was perverted and debased within her, no less than without: of modest graces of the mind, hardened and steeled, like these attractions of the person; of the many gifts of the Creator flung to the winds like the wild hair; of all the beautiful ruin upon which the storm was beating ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... understand me," continued Mr. Franklin. "I mean to say, it is so important for the young to form industrious habits, that they had better work for nothing than to be idle. If they are idle when they are young, they will be so when they become men, and idleness will finally be their ruin. 'The devil tempts all other men, but idle men tempt the devil,' is an old and truthful proverb, and I hope you will never ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... up, and was being carried on a pole between them. I did not know what to do. On looking back I saw the old lady coming and screaming at the top of her voice, "You got my hog! You got my hog!" It was too late to back out now. We had the hog, and had to make the most of it, even if we did ruin a needy and destitute family. We went on until we came to the Conasauga river, when lo and behold! the canoe was on the other side of the river. It was dark then, and getting darker, and what was to be done we did not know. The ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... than a genteel kind of servant; but she seems fair-spoken enough. As to our Miss, bless her dear heart! she want's no watching, I'll lay. But I daresay those City folks, with their stocks going up and going down, and always bringing about the ruin of somebody or other, go which way they will, get their poor heads so muddled with figures that they can't believe there's such a thing as honesty ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... dare go home. An over-rigid standard of morals, an over-repressive policy, an over-righteous judgment, plus a mother ignorant of the facts of life, plus a girl's longing for joy—the sum of these equaled ruin in ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... together. Pomfret's business took him in that direction, and I was glad of a talk about Christopherson. I learnt that the old book-lover's landlady was Pomfret's aunt. Christopherson's story of affluence and ruin was quite true. Ruin complete, for at the age of forty he had been obliged to earn his living as a clerk or something of the kind. About five years later came his ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... with a shrug. "Gang your own gait; I'll have nothing more to do with trying to stop you, since you will ruin yourself." ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... went on year after year, I thought at last to make of him something better than his father—a doctor, or a lawyer. But he hadn't the brains: he disappointed me bitterly. And what use can he make of my money, when I'm in my grave? If I die soon he'll marry, and ruin his life. And won't it be the same with Nancy? Some plotting, greedy fellow—the kind of man you see everywhere now-a-days, will fool her for the ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... a barren scene and wild, Where naked cliffs were rudely piled: But ever and anon between Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; And well the lonely infant knew Recesses where the wall-flower grew, And honeysuckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruin'd wall. I deem'd such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all its round survey'd; And still I thought that shatter'd tower The mightiest work of human power; And marvell'd as the aged hind With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind, Of forayers, who, with headlong force, Down ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... Liverpool by an Old Tory, 1822. The Committee on Agricultural Distress found that farmers were paying rent out of capital (Parliamentary Reports. Committees, v. 71), and that leases fixed on the basis of the high prices of the war meant ruin to the farmer if ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... recognized in England. Applying the term with all its English associations in such a state of things; to one who had only a limited right they gave an absolute right, from another because he had not an absolute right they took away all right, drove whole classes of people to ruin and despair, filled the country with banditti, created a feeling that nothing was secure, and produced, with the best intentions, a disorganization of society which had not been produced in that country by the most ruthless of its barbarian invaders. Yet the usage of persons ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the determining factor in the ruin of Rumania was the failure of the Allies to foresee the number of troops the Germans could send against them. Their reasoning up to a certain point was accurate. In July, August, and for part of September it was, I believe, almost impossible for the Germans to send ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... actually wage it. Occasionally we have had glimpses of the devastation that it brings to the country over the hills and valleys and over the plains and forests of which it rages. Again and again we have been told of the horrible suffering and utter ruin which was the share of the civic population, rich and poor, young and old, man, woman, or child. But these latter features are apt to be overshadowed by the more sensational events of battle and siege, and in the excitement of these we easily lose sight of the tremendous drama in which not trained ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... exchange ceased between the mother-country and the colonies. To extinguish the source of England's riches in America, and to force her to open her eyes to her madness, the colonists shrank from no privation and no sacrifice: luxury had vanished, rich and poor welcomed ruin rather than give up their political rights" [M. Cornelis de Witt, Histoire de Washington]. "I expect nothing more from petitions to the king," said Washington, already one of the most steadfast champions of American ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... demand, added to the demand of the Mohammedan in Africa and Asia, made human beings the highest priced article of commerce in Africa. Under such circumstances there could be but one end: the virtual uprooting of ancient African culture, leaving only misty reminders of the ruin in the customs and work of the people. To complete this disaster came the partition of the continent among European nations and the modern attempt to exploit the country and the natives for the economic benefit of the white world, together with the transplanting ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... ruin of Fort Hensel was accomplished by a shell which penetrated through the thickest of its steel and concrete layers and exploded in its ammunition magazine. This bombardment of Malborghetto necessitated firing mortar shells ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... too, in ruin! Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'! An' naething, now, to big a new ane, O' foggage[7-7] green! An' bleak December's winds ensuin', Baith ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the postmaster, Mihail Averyanitch, the only man in town whose society did not bore Andrey Yefimitch, would come in. Mihail Averyanitch had once been a very rich landowner, and had served in the calvary, but had come to ruin, and was forced by poverty to take a job in the post office late in life. He had a hale and hearty appearance, luxuriant grey whiskers, the manners of a well-bred man, and a loud, pleasant voice. He was good-natured ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and away. Martin watched his long figure go down the outside steps, and, on turning to close the gate, noted with a pang the shoulders, which had once been broad, drawn in now over, the collapsed ruin of the chest. Martin got two tumblers, and fell to reading the book of verse, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... in his pocket was not his own, and that, and hundreds of dollars besides, must be paid back in sixty days. Otherwise he supposed he would be bankrupt, which, to his simple mind, meant disgrace as well as ruin. ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... looked on with anxious eyes. Then at last he found the letter from Karil Zamenoy, and having read it himself, gave it her to read. It was dated seven or eight years back, at a time when Balatka was only on his way to ruin—not absolutely ruined, as was the case with him now—and contained an offer on Zamenoy's part to give safe custody to certain documents which were named, and among which the deed now sought ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... learned, Father," answered the grave Kari, "and for this reason having suffered in the past, I am determined to have as little to do with women as is possible for one in my place. During my travels in other lands, as in this country, I have seen men great and noble brought to nothingness and ruin by their love for women; down into the dirt, indeed, when their hands were full of the world's wealth and glory. Moreover, I have noticed that they seldom learn wisdom, and that what they have done before, they are ready to do again, who believe anything that soft lips swear ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... strength, the energy and stamina, to crush the hydra of disunion or rebellion, no matter where it may appear. For like the upas tree, if it is permitted to take root and grow, its proportions would soon become alarming, while its poisonous influence would pollute the atmosphere with misery, ruin, rapine and death. ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... 'Tis a huge mistake, ye know, To let ructions and recriminations charm ye. If they don't abate their hate, they'll bring ruin on the State, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... Now such is discord, because Jerome in commenting on Matt. 12:25, "Every kingdom divided against itself shall be made desolate," says: "Just as concord makes small things thrive, so discord brings the greatest things to ruin." Therefore discord should itself be reckoned a capital vice, rather ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... gracious unto me. Though I was not so free from sin as the book required, I passed that by; such watchfulness seemed to me almost impossible. I was on my guard against mortal sin—and would to God I had always been so!—but I was careless about venial sins, and that was my ruin. Yet, for all this, at the end of my stay there—I spent nearly nine months in the practice of solitude—our Lord began to comfort me so much in this way of prayer, as in His mercy to raise me to the prayer of quiet, and now ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... imaged griefs her mind distract, Struck with her grief, I catch the madness too, My brain turns round, the headless trunk I view! 790 The roof cracks, shakes, and falls—new horrors rise, And Reason buried in the ruin lies! Nobly disdainful of each slavish art, She makes her first attack upon the heart; Pleased with the summons, it receives her laws, And all is silence, sympathy, applause. But when, by fond ambition drawn aside, Giddy with praise, and puff'd with female pride, She quits the tragic scene, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... entire river front of the city seems to be untenable, except for negroes; the Washington monument stands on the yielding plain in the rear of the Chief Magistrate's, a stunted ruin, finding no foundation; and much of the great Capital reserve near by, would be a dead weight, if any effort were made to dispose it of, as building lots. The small portion of Washington lying upon Capitol Hill, is the most salubrious and covetable; but it is a ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... was doubly your debtor, since this sum had been increased tenfold when you rescued him from the Mexicans who were about to shoot him. 'This is my revenge!' you said to him, without waiting to hear a word from him. Your ruin was the remorse of his whole life. I knew it only when he lay ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was not hard that one deviation from chastity should so absolutely ruin a young woman. JOHNSON. 'Why, no, Sir; it is the great principle which she is taught. When she has given up that principle, she has given up every notion of female honour and virtue, which ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... going," was the answer. "You forget that we are going to a summer land. Oh, Dodo—stop that!" she cried, for from the room where stood Mollie's half-packed trunk came the twin, trailing a garment. "That's my best petticoat!" wailed Mollie. "You'll ruin it. And Paul! What are you doing with that shirtwaist—it's my very ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... used baking powder instead of cream of tartar and soda, and was known to have a leaning toward canned goods. Mrs. Motherwell considered her just the girl to spend a man's honest earnings and bring him to seedy ruin. Moreover, she idled away her time, teaching cats to jump, and her eighteen years old, if she ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... against the day of wrath; and, though they may now enjoy an unhallowed prosperity, and now in an unbridled licentiousness derive happiness from the indulgence of fleshly lusts, yet that these war against the soul, against its present peace, and its ultimate felicity, and that ruin and destruction inevitably await them. Were our spirit that of the psalmist, or that of the prophet referred to, our feelings would be more lively, our endeavours to promote the good of mankind be more energetic. Looking not every one to his own, but on his brothers' good, we should be ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various |
