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More "Calamity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your weakness,' he said, 'where women are concerned. Valeria is aware that you are my old friend. She will certainly write to you; she may even be bold enough to make her way into your house. Renew your promise to keep the great calamity of my life a secret, on your honor and on your oath. 'Those were his words, as nearly as I can remember them. I tried to treat the thing lightly; I ridiculed the absurdly theatrical notion of 'renewing my promise,' and all the rest of it. Quite useless! ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... painful to the sensitive heart of my dear husband, in being thus surrounded by tokens of calamity. He inquired, with a sigh, whether any efforts had been made to help ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... glowered. Keith smiled wearily. It did not to him at the moment that this would be so great a calamity. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... early in May, 1560, Hubert Languet wrote that suspicion was everywhere rife; men of any standing scarcely dared to converse with each other; some great calamity seemed on the point of breaking forth. The king's ministers evidently feared the great cities; so the court proceeded from one provincial town to another. Disturbances in Rouen and Dieppe had frightened the Guises away from Normandy, whither they had intended leading ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... brought them into some show of order or formation?' asked Saxon. 'They are straggling along the road like a line of geese upon a common when Michaelmas is nigh. Have you no fears? Is it not written that your calamity cometh suddenly—suddenly shall you be broken down ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... me to decide, that he rated the consequence of those islands to Great-Britain too low[397]. But however this may be, every humane mind must surely applaud the earnestness with which he averted the calamity of war; a calamity so dreadful, that it is astonishing how civilised, nay, Christian nations, can deliberately continue to renew it. His description of its miseries in this pamphlet, is one of the finest pieces of eloquence in the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... are sustained; which yet, to their eternal shame, is too frequently the lot and condition of those poor people, from whose labour their wealth and livelihood doth wholly arise; not only in their diet, but in their cloathing, and overworking some of them even to death (which is particularly the calamity of the most innocent and laborious) but also in tormenting and whipping them almost, and sometimes quite, to death, upon even small miscarriages. He apprehends it was from this prejudice against the Negroes, that arose those supercilious ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... irremediable calamity as this renewed for a time the despondency which he had felt at the first sinking of the boat. Full of depression, he turned away, and tried to account for it all. It was on the previous day that he had landed—about twenty-four hours ago. How had he ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... his temper had to walk a mile and a half uphill through the snow, before he could say or do anything else, there would never be a murder in this world, no divorces, and—by gosh!—maybe no marriages either. That would be a calamity. Snow certainly does ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... above, where a ghostly moon still lingered, the velvet neck ridged with veins and muscles, the body already buried in black ooze. And such a pretty red-and-white-spotted heifer, lying on her side, opening and shutting her eyes, breathing softly in meek resignation to her horrible calamity! And, again, another one was plunging and battling in the act of realizing her doom: a fierce, furious, red cow, glaring and bellowing at the soft, yielding inexorable abysm under her, the bustards settling afar off, and her own species browsing ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... mercy. Had the pagan Rhadogast taken Rome, not a life would have been spared, no stone left on another. The Christian Alaric, though a Goth, respects his Christian brethren, and for their sakes you are saved. As to the gods, those daemons in whom you trust, did they always save you from calamity? How long did Hannibal insult them? Was it a goose or a god that saved the Capitol from Brennus? Where were the gods in all the defeats, some of them but recent, of the pagan emperors? It is well that the purple ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... continents are involved, the whole of the Old World, and the New World suffers grievously in its trade, industry, and finances. Thus the whole world is interested in preventing the recurrence of such a calamity and there is a general feeling throughout the world that the causes which have brought it upon us ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... given the finishing stroke to some complicated action; but to me recurs another thought that is worthy of record, and may encourage others who are to follow us in our profession. I never saw the rear of an army engaged in battle but I feared that some calamity had happened at the front the apparent confusion, broken wagons, crippled horses, men lying about dead and maimed, parties hastening to and fro in seeming disorder, and a general apprehension of something ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... institutes of Calvin were still a serious matter. I have at least learned something; and while writing against the lack of faith in the present religion of humanity, I shall at least remember that my own calamity has come from one inured in the old dogma. It is the irony of Fate that warns ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... natural in old age when they come as the product of years of inner travail, and are won by suffering and really are intellectual riches; for a youthful brain on the threshold of real life they are simply a calamity! A calamity!" Ananyev repeated with a wave of his hand. "To my mind it is better at your age to have no head on your shoulders at all than to think on these lines. I am speaking seriously, Baron. And I have been meaning to speak to you ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... ways of God to man! The controversial spirit observable in many parts of the poem, especially in God's speeches, is immediately attributable to the great controversy of that age, the origination of evil. The Arminians considered it a mere calamity. The Calvinists took away all human will. Milton asserted the will, but declared for the enslavement of the will out of an act of the will itself. There are three powers in us, which distinguish us from the beasts that perish;—1, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... agonies of that half hour I have never forgotten. Military failure was nothing compared to the universal shame and blighting which must fall on the officer who suffered such a disgrace to be inflicted on him in the presence of the whole army; and such a calamity to arrest the progress of that army, if not the hopes of Europe. My resolution was desperately but decidedly taken, if the post fell into the enemy's hands, on that night to throw away my sword and abandon my profession, unless some French bayonet or bullet relieved me from all the anxieties ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Those days we would return with our ears full of the obstinate clamor of that recording bird, which had set itself fiercely to immortalize the noise that passed for a moment through the world, and toss the echoes of an ancient calamity, of which everybody ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... asked herself if she had given as much as she had demanded. Had she not thought too much of her own rights and wrongs and too little of his hopes and burdens? And perhaps because of this he was to be crushed at a blow, and his enemies laugh at his calamity and give to her their ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... came to an abrupt end. The guests, unwilling to go as yet, stunned, distressed, stood clumsily about, their eyes vague, their hands swinging at their sides, looking stupidly into each others' faces. A sense of impending calamity, oppressive, foreboding, gloomy, passed through the air overhead in the night, a long shiver of anguish and of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... calamity threatens the Silver Fox Patrol when on one of their vacation trips to the wonderland of the great Northwest. How apparent disaster is bravely met and overcome by Thad and his friends, forms the main theme of the story, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... dwelling upon the dangers that beset the republic—dangers which are sometimes very real. Nevertheless an hour in his presence is more often than not depressing; it leaves one with a sense of impending calamity. There are few ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... martingale brasses, worn on the breast; and three brasses suspended from straps on each of the shoulders. These amulets were primarily worn to keep off the "evil eye," and thus protect the horse and its rider or its owner from calamity and harm. The brasses were varied in design, some of the more important being developments of the crescent moon. Some were made to imitate the sun with its pointed rays, others the Catherine wheel; the Kentish ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... but twenty-seven dozen plates on a swaying plank for eight hours a day up steps and down steps, and in doorways and out of doorways, and not break one plate in seven years! Judge, therefore, the simple but terrific satisfaction of a Five Towns audience in the hugeness of the calamity. Moreover, every plate smashed means a demand for a new plate and increased prosperity for the Five Towns. The grateful crowd in the auditorium of the Empire would have covered the stage with wreaths, if it had known that ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... don't know about that," argued Tom. "I hate to hear any fellow talk disparagingly about his own country or its people. It doesn't sound just right. In war time, or during any great national disaster or calamity, the Americans who do things always seem to rise to the occasion. We're a truly great people, all right. But I don't make that claim because I consider myself ever likely to be ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... the eyelids, causing great damage and often blindness. Many babies get the clap plant into the eyes during birth, from the mother, and unless treated within a few minutes after birth, have sore eyes and go blind,—a terrible calamity to the child and the family. If you have clap the germs can be carried on your hands ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... which half of Korsakoff's army was destroyed, rendered Russian failure in the campaign inevitable. All the genius in the world, on that field of action, could not have done anything that should have compensated for so terrible a calamity. Zuerich saved France far more than did Marengo, and it is to be noted that it was fought and won by the oldest of all the able men who figure in history as Napoleon's Marshals. There were some of the Marshals who were older than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... pauperism. The dangers with which Germany is externally threatened will also compel governments, however egotistical and indifferent, to seek their safety in unity, and even should the long neglect of this truth be productive of fresh calamity and draw upon Germany a fresh attack from abroad, that very circumstance will but strengthen our union and accelerate the regeneration of our great fatherland, already anticipated by the people on the fall of ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... wonder how life was resumed after so great a calamity. The title deeds to houses and estates were burned—who would claim and prove the right to property? The account books were all lost—who could claim or prove a debt? The warehouses and shops with their contents were gone—who could carry on business? The craftsmen had ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... to noble deeds, To shield from dire calamity his friends, Extend his empire, or protect its bounds, Or put to flight its ancient enemies, Let him be grateful! For to him a god Imparts the first, the sweetest joy of life. Me have they doom'd ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... deep interest in your little entertainment," she said, "and was so pleased when it brought so much money. I know that every penny under the wise direction of the Red Cross will help to make some poor soldier more comfortable; or if some sudden calamity should come in this country, before it was sent away, your little fund might help ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... be no recriminations," I responded; "let us stand shoulder to shoulder in this calamity,—isn't there a story called 'Calamity Jane?' We might live at the inn, and give her the cottage for a summer residence, but I utterly refuse to be parted from our ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... born. She was an intruder and a calamity, of course. That a Feather should become a parent gave rise to much wit of light weight when Robin was exhibited in the form of a ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Don Pablo saw that it would be a terrible calamity, should these creatures gain a lodgment on the balza. Not only were they the dreaded stinging ants, but in a short time nothing on board would be left. In a few hours they would have eaten all his stores,—his bark, his vanilla, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the calamity one must remember that Scott regarded literature not as an art but as a profitable business; that he aimed to be not a great writer but a lord of high degree. He had been made a baronet, and was childishly proud of the title; his work and his vast earnings were devoted ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... and Austro-Hungarian Embassies were ready to leave for this ancient seat of the Ottoman Government. The families of many German officers in the Turkish service left Constantinople. In short, everybody understood that a calamity was pending. What its exact nature ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... maintain its own privileges, as with a view to encroach upon those of the Latins.] so that if Spain be not speedily liberated, it is to be feared that the whole establishment of the Terra Santa must be abandoned. This would be a great calamity, for it cannot be doubted that they have done honour to ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... Hilary, "are intending to stand as a candidate for this constituency. You require for that, I fancy, a reputation wholly untarnished; the least breath dimming it would be for you a disastrous calamity. I have some information which, if sent to the local Liberal paper, would seriously tell against you in the ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... visitor, was not a regular member of the South Harniss Methodist Sunday school, the superintendent personally had invited her to go and Zoeth and the Captain had given their consent. Not to go would be a heart-breaking calamity. She finally resolved to be very, very good and obedient from ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of Kishinev. These lamentable events have caused the profoundest impression throughout the world." President Roosevelt said, "I have never in my experience in this country known of a more immediate or a deeper expression of the sympathy for the victims and of horror over the appalling calamity that has occurred." ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... those operative classes in Lancashire, whom the war ruined for a while, has often been pointed to as showing that the more informed and intelligent workingmen were also for the North. They endured a great calamity without murmuring, because they thought the cause just which had entailed that calamity upon them. Assuming this to be correct, as I believe it to be, the question remains, What was the opinion (or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... serious division between the Piper family, supported by the Contingent, and the rest of the settlement. Tom Sparrell's warning was remembered by the latter, and the ingratitude of the picnickers to their rescuers commented upon; the actual calamity to the reservoir was more or less attributed to the imprudent and reckless contiguity of the revelers on that day, and there were not wanting those who referred the accident itself to the machinations of the scheming Ditch ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... resulting in more violent convulsions, more widespread misery, and more atrocious crimes, than in all probability would have resulted even from the temporary triumph of the revolutionary cause in 1793. But in both nations political passion welcomed impending calamity; and the declaration of war by the Convention on February 1st only anticipated the desire of the English people. Great Britain once committed to the struggle, Pitt spared neither money nor intimidation in his efforts to unite all Europe against France. Holland was included with England ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... gesture of general deprecation, and did not ask WHY Mainwaring's young brother should contemplate his death with satisfaction. Nevertheless, some time afterwards Miss Macy remarked that it seemed hard that the happiness of one member of a family should depend upon a calamity to another. "As for instance?" asked Mainwaring, who had already forgotten the circumstance. "Why, if you had died and your younger brother succeeded to the baronetcy, and become Sir Robert Mainwaring," responded Miss Macy, with precision. This was the first and only allusion to his ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... first great calamity of the war. But apart from the treachery of the king of Naples and the dereliction of the Pope, it was impossible it should end thoroughly well. The people were in earnest, and have shown themselves so; brave, and able ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... individual, when casually mentioned in history, ought to be free from misrepresentation. Why this rule should not apply to the manly soldier who, in the streets of old Quebec in 1791, headed his gallant men wherever a riot, a fire, or a public calamity required their presence, is difficult to understand. No man was more popular in the city from the services he rendered when called on. One class, however, found in him an unrelenting disciplinarian—the refractory soldier attempting mutiny ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... ethical and spiritual qualities of the book are pure and high; the writer does not fail to enforce the truth that it is because "Jerusalem hath grievously sinned" that "she is become an unclean thing." And in the midst of all this calamity there is no rebellion against God; it is only the cry of a desolate but trusting soul to a just ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... 8th arrived but this day, by some delay, common but inexplicable. Your domestic calamity is very grievous, and I feel with you as much as I dare feel at all. Throughout life, your loss must be my loss, and your gain my gain; and, though my heart may ebb, there will always be a drop for ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... world-school the divine teachers are not alone happiness and prosperity, but also uncertainty and suffering, defeat and death. Inventors with steel plates may make warships proof against bombs, but no man hath invented an armor against troubles. The arrows of calamity are numberless, falling from above and also shot up from beneath. Like Achilles, each man hath one vulnerable spot. No palace door is proof against phantoms. Each prince's palace and peasant's cottage holds at least ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... existent, which for want of ampler designation we call GOD—God, whom some of us will scarcely recognize, save with the mixture of doubt, levity, and general reluctance; God, whom we never obey unless obedience is enforced by calamity; God, whom we never truly love, because so many of us prefer to stake our chances of the future on the possibility of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... savages. I might speak of houses pillaged and burnt; of maize-fields laid waste to feed the horses of the roving marauder; of sheep and cattle driven off to desert fastnesses; bah! what are all these? What signify such trifling misfortunes, compared with that other calamity, which almost every family in the land may lament—the loss of one or more of its members— wife, daughter, sister, child—borne off into hopeless bandage, to satisfy the will, or gratify the lust, of a ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... against one of the vice-presidents of this great corporation that has so successfully and impudently defied the law will create a profound impression upon the whole country. It is a warning to the corporation criminals that the President and his advisers are not to be frightened by calamity-howlers, and will steadfastly pursue their policy of going higher up in their effort to bring the real offenders before the courts. The coming trial before federal Judge Barstow will be followed ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the district! One of the young mistresses, persisting in dancing on the cabin roof of the launch, wilful young madam, drowned in the midst of the festival, with the young doctor! Everywhere on the Sunday morning, the colliers wandered about, discussing the calamity. At all the Sunday dinners of the people, there seemed a strange presence. It was as if the angel of death were very near, there was a sense of the supernatural in the air. The men had excited, startled faces, the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... stuffing his cap into the pocket of his blue serge sack, and smiled down on the company with such happiness in his gay eyes that March wondered what chance at this late day could have given any human creature his content so absolute, and what calamity could be lurking round the corner to take it out of him. The new-comer looked at March as if he knew him, and March saw at a second glance that he was the young fellow who had told him about the mother put off after the start. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... defence of an invaded country. Again they were prepared to undergo whatever service might be laid upon them in her behalf. They could foresee the arduous tasks and inevitable sufferings of a great war, but had no warning of an impending calamity far worse than those which even war, though always attended with horrors, usually entails. Pericles had lately delivered his great funeral oration at the public interment of soldiers who had fallen for Athens. "The bright colors and tone of cheerful confidence," ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... the parcel, and Edith took it, though she was scarce conscious of the act. An awful foreboding of calamity, the mysterious shadow of her father's fate, descended over her soul. She was unconscious of the kiss which Miss Plympton gave her; nor was she conscious of any thing till she found herself seated at ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... to each breast, inducing an almost cheerful state of mind. In the case of Francois Le Rue, the influence of sunshine was so powerful that a feeling of sympathy and respect for the McLeods in the calamity which had overtaken them alone restrained him from breaking out ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... betrayed fears that were troublesome. Of Mulford it is unnecessary to speak. His deportment had been quiet, thoughtful, and full of a manly interest in the comfort of others, from the first moment of the calamity. That Rose should share the largest in his attentions was natural enough, but he neglected no essential duty to her companions. Rose, herself, had little hope of being rescued. Her naturally courageous character, however, prevented any undue exhibitions ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... letters to the widow show how much he felt Thrale's death. 'April 5, 1781. I am not without my part of the calamity. No death since that of my wife has ever oppressed me like this. April 7. My part of the loss hangs upon me. I have lost a friend of boundless kindness, at an age when it is very unlikely that I should find another. April 9. Our sorrow has different effects; you are withdrawn into solitude, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... lovers. Calamity fell upon calamity. It would be better to be dead. And suddenly all that was hard and resisting in the girl broke with the taut strain, broke with a poignant bodily throe, and she fell face downward into a great ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the worst penalty that can befall him. "For the belly," he says, "one will play many tricks." To smite his cheek with your leathern glove, or to kick him with your shoe, is an outrage at which the gods rave; to kill him would draw down a monstrous calamity upon the world. If he break faith with you, it is as nothing; if you fail him in the least promise, you take your portion with Karta, the Fox, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... individual, left alone with your doubts, deprived of everything, you have exhibited a solid, enduring principle of life, in withstanding all this. But your brother, a captive, forgotten, and in bonds, will not long-endure the calamity; and Heaven will resume his soul at the appointed ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... whose absence on a vacation in America at the time of the abduction of little Jack had been attributed by her as the cause of the calamity, had returned and ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... this airy sapphire's brooding rest, Its shadows overcast me with a chill Like coming storm, that black calamity Which struck and took our Darling from their charge And mine. Grief stupefied us all. At once The childless mother lost her wavering strength, And lay prostrated; never tasting life On earth again! Beside her husband sat And watched her fading; saw the ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... able to give any particular details. M. Schlosser conversed a good deal, and very earnestly, about Lord Spencer's library—and its probable ultimate destination; seeming to dread its "dispersion" as a national calamity. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... this future seem, that the village worthies, dying to know whether it was founded on fact, began to think of ways of getting at the truth through the servants at the chateau. None of these, however, could throw any light on the calamity which had brought their mistress into the country at the beginning of winter, and to the old chateau of Saint-Lange of all places, when she might have taken her choice of cheerful country-houses famous ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... 'Any calamity which comes upon a man from causes beyond his control ought not to be imputed to him as a fault. The pathetic petition of the Superintendents of Grain[335] informs us that the cargoes which they destined for Gaul ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... said, "then this little boy, whose eye is like a eagle a-soaring proudly in the azure sky, will some day be a man, if he don't choke hisself to death in childhood's sunny hours with a smelt or a bloater, or some other drefful calamity. How surblime the tho't, my dear Madam, that this infant as you fondle on your knee on this night, may grow up into a free and independent citizen, whose vote will be worth from ten to fifteen pounds, accordin as suffrage may range at that ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... died after having borne him a son and a daughter—a son, who did not long survive his mother; and a daughter, who became afterwards Mrs. Dormer of Oxfordshire. From under this calamity Waller, yet only thirty years of age, rebounded with characteristic elasticity. He came back, nothing both, to the society he had left, and was soon known to be in quest of a fair lady, whom he has made immortal by the sobriquet of Saccharissa. She was the eldest daughter of the Earl ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... us heirs of damnation. This I shall the less need to insist upon, because, of itself, it seems so horrid to impute to the goodness and justice of God to be author of so great calamity to innocents, &c. ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... is said to tramp on one who has lost a near relation by death, or met with some severe calamity."—The Antiquary. ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... scene of the abduction of the Earl of Evesham's daughter occupied but a few seconds. Cuthbert was so astounded at the sudden calamity that he remained rooted to the ground at the spot where, fortunately for himself, unnoticed by the assailants, he had stood when they first burst from ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... of our riches be such as it has been represented, why are no measures formed for the payment of the publick debts? of which no man will say, that they are not in themselves a calamity, and the source of many calamities yet greater; of which it cannot be denied, that they multiply dependence by which our constitution may sometimes be endangered. Why are those debts not only unpaid, but increased by annual ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... she obtained it by a long succession of events. She sustained a small, a moderate, and an immense fortune with the same superiority, derived true welfare from the whole train of her prosperities, and refined every instance of calamity into beneficial instructions. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Thus the calamity which had befallen heaven and earth, by the sun-goddess hiding in the cave became a means of much benefit to mortals. For by their necessity the gods were compelled to invent the arts of metal-working, weaving, carpentry, jeweling and many other useful appliances for ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... of water from the stateroom. While occupied with this thought, however, I fell in spite of every exertion to the contrary, into a state of profound sleep, or rather stupor. My dreams were of the most terrific description. Every species of calamity and horror befell me. Among other miseries I was smothered to death between huge pillows, by demons of the most ghastly and ferocious aspect. Immense serpents held me in their embrace, and looked earnestly in my face with their fearfully ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society. But this, and any similar maxim deduced from simple reason, raises an outcry—the church or the state is in danger, if faith in the wisdom of antiquity is not implicit; and they who, roused by the sight of human calamity, dare to attack human authority, are reviled as despisers of God, and enemies of man. These are bitter calumnies, yet they reached one of the best of men, (Dr. Price.) whose ashes still preach peace, and whose memory demands a respectful ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... hitherto arming him with fortitude, began to forsake him. Taken captive once again upon the very brink of reaching his goal, poor Israel was on the eve of falling into helpless despair. But he rallied, and considering that grief would only add to his calamity, sought with stubborn patience to habituate himself to misery, but still hold aloof from despondency. He roused himself, and began to bethink him how to be extricated ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... together and vowed to be free, but, looking again at Voltaire's eyes, my feelings underwent another revulsion. I trembled like an aspen leaf. I began to dread some terrible calamity. Before me stretched a dark future. I seemed to see rivers of blood, and over them floated awful creatures. For a time I thought I was disembodied, and in my new existence I did deeds too terrible to relate. Then I realized a new experience. I feared Voltaire with a terrible fear. Strange forms ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... this awful calamity we add the following remarks:—Heaven be praised (says Mr. Malcolm[6]) old London was burnt. Good reader, turn to the ancient prints, in order to see what it has been; observe those hovels convulsed; imagine the chambers within them, and wonder why the plague, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... of employers and employees are irreconcilably opposed, not identical, is false, Socialist rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding. As soon as a calamity threatens capital—for instance, a rise in raw cotton or a cotton famine—masters and men are seen to be in the same boat and devise combined measures for meeting the difficulty. The doctrine of the Class War is opposed to ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... but witless grandfather and a father upon whom the contempt of the public was so soon to fall. Infinitely horrible was the reflection that little Dick would inevitably grow into a comprehension of the family calamity and inquire as to its causes. It was Saturday night, eight days after the elopement. Mostyn had that day been irritated—that is, as much as a man in his plight could be irritated by any extraneous incident—by Delbridge's open criticism of the negligent condition ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... Account of Idolatry in the World; nor indeed could the Devil himself find out any other Reason why Men should Cannonise or rather Deify their Princes and Men of Fame, and worship them after they were dead, as if they could save them from Death and Calamity, who were not able to save themselves when they were alive; much less could Satan bring Men to swallow so gross, so absurd a Thing as the bowing the Knee to a Stock or a Stone, a Calf, an Ox, a Lion, nay the Image or Figure of a Calf, such as the Israelites made at Mount Sinai, and say, ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... name is to kindle in the minds of those who knew him, a host of pleasant and affectionate remembrances. He was the man above all others fitted by his cast of mind and literary powers to make a stand, if a stand could be made, against the calamity of the times. He was gifted with a high and large mind, and a true sensibility of what was great and beautiful; he wrote with warmth and energy; and he had a cool head and cautious judgment. He spent his strength and shortened his life, Pro Ecclesia Dei, as he ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... and was silent. The two men loved one another as men linked by half a lifetime of toil and ambition learn to love,—or hate; and in the face of a calamity so unthinkable, even Desmond's ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... to the completion of which he had lookd for future pecuniary advantage. His mind is at this moment so entirely occupied in this work, that he feels within himself the firmness and resolution that no prospect of evil or calamity shall draw him off from it or suspend his labours. But the calamity itself, if permitted to arrive, will produce the physical impossibility for him to proceed. His books and the materials of his work, as well as ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... raised the fears of the people, and those who had the money to spare laid in a supply of tobacco before the concession came into force. This was regarded by the poor as proof of the coming rise in price, and they therefore hailed the Moullas as their deliverers from the threatened calamity of ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... before long filled both Africa and Rome with his fame, and some, too, wrote home from the army that the war with Africa would never be brought to a conclusion, unless they chose Caius Marius consul. All which was evidently unpleasing to Metellus; but what more especially grieved him was the calamity of Turpillius. This Turpillius had, from his ancestors, been a friend of Metellus, and kept up constant hospitality with him; and was now serving in the war, in command of the smiths and carpenters of the army. Having ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... administered the last sacraments to the old Breton warrior. The whole town was agitated by the news that the father was dying beside his half-dying son. The probable extinction of this old Breton race was felt to be a public calamity. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... heavily on the spirits of the king, and their effect was increased by certain gloomy prognostics of a great calamity, which was shortly to overwhelm the country. His health rapidly gave way. He had died but two years before, and had been succeeded by his son Cacama, the present king, a young prince who was two-and-twenty years ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... Those who bear the host a grudge purposely stay away, and he has to run to their houses and beg them to come, so that his feast can begin. When the feast has begun it was formerly considered a great calamity if any accident should necessitate the rising of the guests before its conclusion. Even if a dog or other impure animal should enter the assembly they would not rise. The explanation of this rule was that it would be disrespectful ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... his friends and bring back an attacking force, the Federal column would be on the ground. Indeed, he was glad that the family upon which he had quartered himself could not associate him with so terrible a calamity. The young girl might not wish to marry her cousin, yet be sorry if he were fatally or even seriously wounded, while the rest of the household would be plunged in the deepest distress. Although ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the seven years of his married life, he had never seen this calamity in front of him. His dreams had always been of a time when their children should be out in the world, when he saw himself walking with his wife in some quiet ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... a calamity the particulars of which have already been related in "The Rover Boys in the Mountains." And then Songbird Powell took ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... wrote a friendly letter expressing his sympathy for him in the calamity by which he had been overtaken, and also his regret at the loss of his services and companionship, he having at once resigned his commission in the army on the occurrence of his bereavement, not only feeling desirous of remaining in England, but finding ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... publication of its numerous prophecies, which were suffered to circulate in private. For many years the persons who held this strange opinion had been content to enjoy their dream in private, shrinking from observation and ridicule; but as the belief had begun in a time of deep calamity, so now, when a heavier evil had overwhelmed the kingdom, it spread beyond all former example. Their prophecies were triumphantly brought to light, for only in the promises which were there held out could the Portuguese find consolation; and proselytes increased so rapidly, that half Lisbon ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... but the hero of La Rioja, he insinuated, had sufficient influence to bring about a settlement of these disputes; no one but he had power to prevent a war; would he not, therefore, hasten to Tucuman, and obviate so dire a calamity? Quiroga hesitated, refused, consented, wavered, and again declined the task. With a vacillation to which he had hitherto been a stranger, he remained for many days undecided; a suspicion of deceit appears to have presented itself to his mind; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... in the midst of our mirth and jollity, there is some grudging, some complaint; as [3563]he saith, our whole life is a glycypicron, a bitter sweet passion, honey and gall mixed together, we are all miserable and discontent, who can deny it? If all, and that it be a common calamity, an inevitable necessity, all distressed, then as Cardan infers, [3564]"who art thou that hopest to go free? Why dost thou not grieve thou art a mortal man, and not governor of the world?" Ferre quam sortem patiuntur omnes, Nemo recuset, [3565]"If it be common to all, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and reluctance, I collected my whole fortune, which now amounted to at least seven thousand dollars, and turned my back upon this ungrateful town. I am sorry to say that I also left behind me the last of my good luck, as hereafter I was to encounter only one calamity after another. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... father. "But I had thought of this running short of school funds as a calamity. If I had been praying about it, I would have asked Him to show me a way to raise money to continue ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... our country are often troubled with the rot (as are our swine with the measles, though never so generally), and many men are now and then great losers by the same; but, after the calamity is over, if they can recover and keep their new stock sound for seven years together, the former loss will easily be recompensed with double commodity. Cardan writeth that our waters are hurtful to our ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... it seems thy greatness was only outward; For thou fall'st faster of thyself than calamity Can drive thee. I 'll not waste longer time; there! ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... of extreme danger to his native land, sacrificed his dearly loved son, Ieoud, as an expiatory offering. Divine sanction had thus been given to the horrid rite; and thenceforth, whenever in Phoenicia either public or private calamity threatened, it became customary that human victims should be selected, the nobler and more honourable the better, and that the wrath of the gods should be appeased by taking their lives. The mode of death was horrible. The sacrifices were to be consumed by fire; the life ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... passengers and crew; lightning sets fire to houses and strikes human beings dead; earthquakes swallow up whole districts destroying industry and human life; tidal waves sweep inland carrying away towns; and our legal phraseology can think of no better explanation of such calamity than to ascribe it to "the act ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... A serious calamity threatens the Silver Fox Patrol when on one of their vacation trips to the wonderland of the great Northwest. How apparent disaster is bravely met and overcome by Thad and his friends, forms the main theme of the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... child, a child of thirteen, who had retired within herself, absorbed in the bitter catastrophe which had annihilated her. You could tell this by the frigidity of her glance, by her absent expression, by the haunted air she ever wore, unable as she was to bestow a thought on anything but her calamity. And never was woman's soul more pure and candid, arrested as it had been in its development. She had had no other romance in life save that tearful farewell to her friend, which for ten long years had sufficed to fill her heart. During the endless days which she had spent ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... commencement of the unhappy difficulties pending in the country, the people of Kentucky have indicated a steadfast desire and purpose to maintain a position of strict neutrality between the belligerent parties. They have earnestly striven by their policy to avert from themselves the calamity of war, and protect their own soil from the presence of contending armies. Up to this period they have enjoyed comparative tranquillity and ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... gazing at the letter, with a dazed expression. Almost before the full significance of the calamity had been realized, a telegram arrived, announcing that Mrs. Fullerton had fallen ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... those confessing and communicating this year has surpassed that of any previous year, for upon their old devotion has been heaped up new, kindled by the torches of calamity. The quarrels of many have also been brought to an end. In Lent, moreover, their zeal for all piety flamed forth in the confession of many evils, and in doing penance for them with daily scourgings, and other ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... not a calamity "per se," nor is physical weakness necessarily a curse, for out of these seeming unkind conditions Nature often distils her finest products. The dying injunction of a father may impress itself upon a son as no example of right living ever can, and the physical disability of a mother may ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... display. She was earnest in her studies, and being gifted with a fine intellect and a good judgment, gave promise of great attainments. He had never known a student more assiduous in study; she wanted to become mistress of her profession. Her death is a calamity, not to her friends alone, but to all who are making an effort for the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the heads of the Guelphic faction that their enemies would be greatly strengthened, and themselves in considerable danger in case a hostile Signory should resolve on their subjugation. Desirous, therefore, of being prepared against this calamity, the leaders of the party assembled to take into consideration the state of the city and that of their own friends in particular, and found the ammoniti so numerous and so great a difficulty, that the whole ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... If peace takes place, there will not be even the appearance of danger; the moment when a nation is happy enough to emerge from one of the most expensive, bloody, and dangerous wars in which she ever has been involved, will be the last she would choose to plunge afresh into a similar calamity. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... stunned by a heavy blow. She had not really believed that a calamity she so much dreaded, would overtake her, and the fact that it had, paralyzed her faculties. Thinking her in a fit of stubbornness Mrs. Atherton said no more, but busied herself in packing her scanty wardrobe, feeling occasionally a twinge ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... and thither, too, had gone many of my pupils to gather gossip, at which girls of six are trustier hands than boys of twelve. Those of us, however, who were neither children nor of gentle blood, remained at home, the farmers more taken up with the want of rain, now become a calamity, than with an old man's wedding, and their women-folk wringing their hands for rain also, yet finding time to marvel at the marriage's taking place at the Spittal instead of in England, of which the ignorant spoke vaguely as an estate ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... Baines to refresh my selfe, and behold, I fortuned to espy my companion Socrates sitting upon the ground, covered with a torn and course mantle; who was so meigre and of so sallow and miserable a countenance, that I scantly knew him: for fortune had brought him into such estate and calamity, that he verily seemed as a common begger that standeth in the streets to crave the benevolence of the passers by. Towards whom (howbeit he was my singular friend and familiar acquaintance, yet half in despaire) I drew nigh ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... are lost. I, at any rate, am not afraid to register an emphatic protest against my King's marriage with a lady, no matter how estimable personally, whose presence in Delgratz as our Queen would be a national calamity. If I speak strongly, it is because I feel so strongly in this matter. The rulers of States such as ours cannot afford to be swayed by sentiment. When your Majesty weds, you ought to choose your wife among ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... found him singing a hymn, and accompanying himself at the harpsichord. When he had finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding with a prayer for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to submit. He then burst into tears, and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... colleague! There is no threatening of any such calamity yet. And, even if it happens, don't forget that Romayne has inherited a second fortune. The Vange estate has an estimated value. If the act of restitution represented that value in ready money, do you think the Church would discourage a good convert by refusing his check? ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... night, disturbing my peace by day," resumed Lady Verner. "I must speak of it to you, Sir Henry. Absurd as the notion really is, and as at times it appears to me that it must be, still it does intrude, and I should scarcely be acting an honourable part by you to conceal it, sad as the calamity ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... years in succession observed the complete silence of the Pythagoreans. The most unforeseen calamity did not draw one sigh from me; and, at the theatre, when I entered, they turned aside from ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... chatter elsewhere. The second and third winters at old Laramie were some of the loveliest, said Margaret afterwards, she ever knew, and Mr. Davies had become one of themselves. His promotion to "I" Troop and transfer to a different post was nothing short of a domestic calamity. ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... eight deniers parisis apiece, and that a crown stamped with a crescent is worth thirty-six unzains of twenty-six sous, six deniers tournois apiece, if I have not a single wretched black liard to risk on the double-six! Oh! Consul Cicero! this is no calamity from which one extricates one's self with periphrases, quemadmodum, and ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... I'd better go aboard our ship and get away from here before anything happens to disable a wing," Jack hastened to remark, sensing possible trouble which would be in the nature of a serious calamity just then. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... got into the argument 'twas different. 'What's goin' to become of the laborin' men of this country if you have free trade?' I says. Dean had to give in that he didn't know. 'Might have to let their wives support 'em,' he says, pompous as ever. 'That would be a calamity, wouldn't it, Lute?' That wasn't no answer, of course. But you can't expect sense of a Democrat. I left him fumin' and come away. I've thought of a lot more questions to ask him since and I was hopin' I could get at him this mornin'. But no! Dorindy's sot on havin' this yard raked, ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... know what to do, unless it be to send away about twenty-five pupils. This I would be very sorry to do, as I would hardly know which ones to send and there would be no school for them to re-enter, as the public schools are full to overflowing; besides, many would consider it a calamity to be thus ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... however, were naturally just then not likely to prevail, and Wellington's victory a fortnight later falsified Lord John's fears. He did not speak again until February 1816, when, in seconding an amendment to the Address, he protested against the continuance of the income-tax as a calamity to the country. He pointed out that, although there had been repeated victories abroad, prosperity at home had vanished; that farmers could not pay their rents nor landlords their taxes; and that everybody who was not paid out of the public ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... the shout of the battle, yet his knowledge of the female heart was almost intuitive. He had loved more than once, but in every case the attachment ended unhappily, terminating either by the death of the object or by some calamity his own evil fate had unavoidably brought upon its victim. Though fearful the same operation of his destiny would ensue, and that misery and misfortune would still follow the current of his affections, yet he resolved ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... coming put together; for he's been a good boy to his mother ever since twelve weeks afore he was born! 'Twas he, a tender deary, that made Anthony marry me, and thereby turned hisself from a little calamity to a little blessing! For, as you know, the man were a backward man in the church part o' matrimony, my lady; though he'll do anything when he's forced a bit by his manly feelings. And now to lose the child—hoo-hoo-hoo! ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... a moment of silence, as the full extent of this calamity was made known to the multitude, and then a clergyman was seen pushing his way nearer ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... love—her devotedness, her acuteness, and energy and activity, in contriving and executing plans for the relief or comfort of her loved one in affliction. His four companions in misfortune, with all that philosophical indifference to calamity and danger that characterizes seamen, after expending an incredible number of strange curses and sea jokes upon their captors, stretched themselves upon the stone floor of the "caliboza," or prison, and were soon sound asleep; and Morton himself, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... her: and you arrived like a guardian angel, my dear Madam, a positive guardian angel, I assure you, to soothe her under the pressure of calamity. But Dr. Squills and I were thinking that our amiable friend is not in such a state as renders confinement to her bed necessary. She is depressed, but this confinement perhaps adds to her depression. She should have change, fresh air, gaiety; the most ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... (gallop about), eager and strong[1]; The tortoise-and-serpent and the falcon banners fly about. Disorder grows, and no peace can be secured. Every state is being ruined; There are no black heads among the people[2]. Everything is reduced to ashes by calamity. Oh! alas! The doom of the kingdom ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... are the results of that individualising care. In one of the Old Testament instances of the use of this metaphor, we read that in the great day of calamity and sorrow 'Thy people shall be delivered, even every one that is written in Thy Book.' So we need not dread anything if our names are there. The sleepless King will read the Book, and will never forget, nor forget to help and succour ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... past admiration strikes me, joined with fear, which keeps me back from approaching you, to embrace your knees. Nor is it strange; for one of freshest and firmest spirit would falter, approaching near to so bright an object: but I am one whom a cruel habit of calamity has prepared to receive strong impressions. Twenty days the unrelenting seas have tossed me up and down coming from Ogygia, and at length cast me shipwrecked last night upon your coast. I have seen no man or woman since I landed but yourself. All that I crave is clothes, which you may ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... long-winded harangue about his affairs; of which I did not hear much, except the often repeated words "combined forces," observing meanwhile the motion of the eyeglass. It is a strange thing how in presence of some great calamity small things will thrust themselves into evidence. I do not know whether this be so with everybody, but in the present instance the reiterated words "combined forces" and the shifting of the eyeglass irritated me beyond endurance. In the earlier moments of the interview ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... this was an occasion to deceive the world: for men, serving either calamity or tyranny, did ascribe unto stones ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... able to share the rare luck of his comrades. In the street through which this procession passed no music was ever afterwards allowed to be played. For a long time the town dated its public documents from this fearful calamity, and many authorities have treated it as an historical event. [17] Similar stories are told of other towns in Germany, and, strange to say, in remote Abyssinia also. Wesleyan peasants in England believe that angels pipe to children who are about to die; and in Scandinavia, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... In the course of the year, however, it was officially declared in Paris that the treaty would not be allowed to weaken the force of a war measure aimed at Great Britain. Under this decision, cargoes already seized were confiscated and the trade of the United States faced a new calamity. The decree, it was declared, was a rightful retaliation of a British order in council of six months before, which had established a partial blockade of a portion of the French coast. In the kidnaping business, France could not, of course, ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... promised such splendid fruit in other directions. Mr Dillon went to Swinford again and he and his associates did everything in their power to stir up a national panic and to spread the impression that the Purchase Act was a public calamity, "a landlord swindle," and that it would lead straight ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... slightest surprise or interest in the discovery. Inherent in him was a calloused familiarity with violent death. The refinements of his recent civilization expunged by the force of the sad calamity which had befallen him, left only the primitive sensibilities which his childhood's training had imprinted indelibly upon the fabric ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the eternal boy about John Elliott. He plays with a paint box on a fifty-foot ceiling or a twenty-seven- foot end wall, turns aside to paint a miniature on ivory, drops all his paints when a great national calamity comes and is converted into an architect overnight, building a whole town in four months and making it as beautiful as he can in the process, though the "practical" man would say that utility alone was demanded; and then, when this work is over, turning blithely ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... every limb. I saw that constable class leader become crimson in the face with suppressed laughter, while he held up his handkerchief, that those who were weeping for the poor woman's calamity might not see his merriment. Then, with assumed gravity, he said to the bereaved mother, "Sister, pray to the Lord that every dispensation of his divine will may be sanctified to the good of your poor ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... came from stockholders protesting vigorously against a continuation of the strike. Some anonymous letters warned the company that great calamity awaited the management, unless the demands of the employees were acceded to and the strike ended. A glance into the newspapers that came in, showed that three-fourths of the press of the country praised the management and referred ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... the turn of the Stock-Exchange dice—dice loaded, too, by every fraudulent device that the ingenuity of the two parties engaged in the struggle can discover or invent. To the 'Bears,' who speculate for a fall, national calamity is a God-send. Especially a failure of the harvest, or a great military disaster like that which befell the Cabool expedition, is an almost priceless blessing—a cause of jubilant thanksgiving and joy. The 'Bulls,' on the other hand, whose gains depend upon a rise in the funds, are ever brimful ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... our light, and so plaintively sought admission to its comfort and its cheer, was a face which one might read at a glance. Not one in our circle that did not instantly feel that he embodied some overwhelming calamity. A look of sadness, of a mild, continuous sorrow, overspread his face. There was a pitiful expression about the mouth, as if brave determination had withdrawn its lines from it forever. From his eyes a certain ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... plank for eight hours a day up steps and down steps, and in doorways and out of doorways, and not break one plate in seven years! Judge, therefore, the simple but terrific satisfaction of a Five Towns audience in the hugeness of the calamity. Moreover, every plate smashed means a demand for a new plate and increased prosperity for the Five Towns. The grateful crowd in the auditorium of the Empire would have covered the stage with wreaths, if it had known that wreaths were used for other occasions than funerals; ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... communication. Now, he was out of humour with her because he had played the ass with an ass of an examiner—not because she was directly or indirectly responsible for his doing so; simply because he had done so. She was the woman. It was true that she in part was indirectly responsible for the calamity, but he did not believe it, and anyhow would never ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... seven years of his married life, he had never seen this calamity in front of him. His dreams had always been of a time when their children should be out in the world, when he saw himself walking with his wife in some quiet country ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... If you deign to accompany my daughter, you will behold a misserable calamity, and I ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... with God's blessing," said the commissioner, shaking hands with the washerwoman as if she were an old acquaintance." Go, with God's blessing, and may He protect you from all calamity, and bless you with ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... pages of history to the chapters written by Tacitus: that she should recite the incredible horrors of despotism under Caligula and Domitian, Caracalla and Commodus, Vitellius and Maximin. She need only point to the centuries of calamity through which the gay French nation passed; to the long oppression of the feudal ages, of the selfish Bourbon kings; to those times when the peasants were robbed and slaughtered by their own lords and princes, like sheep; when the lord claimed the first-fruits of the peasant's ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... him as "my lord," and "your lordship," and exhaust on him the whole series of honorific epithets in which their language abounds for approaching personages of the most exalted rank. At evening and morning, a lamp is lighted before him, and invoked with prayers to protect his family from the dire calamity which has befallen himself. And after his recovery, his former associates refrain from communication with him until a ceremony shall have been performed by the capua, called awasara-pandema, or "the offering of lights for permission," the object of which ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... previous to the Flood, foreseeing an impending Judgment from heaven, either by submersion or fire, which would destroy every created thing, built upon the tops of the mountains in Upper Egypt many pyramids of stone, in order to have some refuge against the approaching calamity. Two of these buildings exceeded the rest in height, being four hundred cubits, high and as many broad and as many long. They were built with large blocks of marble, and they were so well put together that the joints were scarcely perceptible. Upon ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... prevent Kadru then. Those poisonous serpents and others who are sinful, biting others for no faults, shall, indeed, be destroyed, but not they who are harmless and virtuous. And hear also, how, when the hour comes, the snakes may escape this dreadful calamity. There shall be born in the race of the Yayavaras a great Rishi known by the name of Jaratkaru, intelligent, with passions under complete control. That Jaratkaru shall have a son of the name of Astika. He shall put a stop to that sacrifice. And those snakes who shall be virtuous ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... they all certainly were, it was not pride, but dread, which kept them thus apart from their neighbors. The family had suffered for generations past from the horrible affliction of hereditary insanity, and the members of it shrank from exposing their calamity to others, as they must have exposed it if they had mingled with the busy little world around them. There is a frightful story of a crime committed in past times by two of the Monktons, near relatives, from which the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... fuel, and the making of every ton of bar-iron required three additional loads. Thus, notwithstanding the indispensable need of iron, the extension of the manufacture, by threatening the destruction of the timber of the southern counties, came to be regarded in the light of a national calamity. Up to a certain point, the clearing of the Weald of its dense growth of underwood had been of advantage, by affording better opportunities for the operations of agriculture. But the "voragious iron-mills" were proceeding to swallow up ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... at Stas lying there, with hatred but with a certain wonder that one small boy might have been the cause of their calamity and destruction. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... scale and measure. The centre of Africa, the wilds of Siberia, and even more distinctly the world of spirits, had wonderful charms for him. Nothing would have given him greater pleasure than to determine the exact number of the fallen angels and the date of their calamity. In the 'History of the Devil' he touches, with a singular kind of humorous gravity, upon several of these questions, and seems to apologise for his limited information. 'Several things,' he says, 'have been suggested to set us a-calculating ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... (vulgarly Anglicized as taboo) and muru, laughable as they seem to us, tended to preserve public health, to ensure respect for authority, and to prevent any undue accumulation of goods and chattels in the hands of one man. Under the law of muru a man smitten by sudden calamity was politely plundered of all his possessions. It was the principle under which the wounded shark is torn to pieces by its fellows, and under which the merchant wrecked on the Cornish coast in bye-gone days was stripped of anything the waves had spared. Among the Maoris, however, it was at ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the lady,—who was represented as having been cruelly misused by fortune and by himself. On the other hand it had been hinted to him, that nothing was too bad to believe of Lizzie Eustace, and that no calamity could be so great as that by which he would be overwhelmed were he still to allow himself to be forced into that marriage. "It would be better," Mrs. Hittaway had said, "to retire to Ireland at once, and cultivate your demesne in Tipperary." ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... at once ascertained that Jerusalem had undergone a fresh calamity, and fallen more and more beneath the yoke of the infidels. Abou-Kacem, khalif of Egypt, had taken it from the Turks; and his vizier, Afdhel, had left a strong garrison in it. A sharp pang of grief, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... more comfortable quarters and a better playground. This accounts for them clearing out of a ship just before she sails, thus throwing some poor superstitious creature into abject fear that their exodus is the forerunner of calamity. To carry the superstition out logically, instead of rats being exterminated throughout a place or a vessel, they should really be encouraged to remain and multiply. I saw an extract from an American paper some years ago, and it told a sensational tale ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... all. It was in the nature of Caesar's genius to divert an impending calamity that threatened his destruction so as to come out of it better than before, and he suddenly saw the advantage he might take from the pretended disobedience of his lieutenants. Already he had been disturbed now and again by their growing power, and coveted their towns, now ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the verge of an imminent peril. Suddenly they both start at a low noise, apparently in the wall. Angelo rises and looks about, his mistress shivers and shrinks, but they discover nothing. The night deepens around them. The sense of calamity and catastrophe rises in the spectator's mind. They start again. This time they hear a louder noise, and glance helplessly around and feebly try to scoff away their terror. The sound dies away, ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... as decently as we can—and it can be cleared up, if we go at it right. Only, for the love of Heaven, Freddy, before you let Rod go out of the house, give him a dose of veronal and pack him off to a quiet room up-stairs to sleep around the clock! The way he looks now, he's a proclamation of calamity across ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... at Seaford. I borrowed from my old friends. I hung round the pay office. The paymaster said I was not on the strength of the regiment. I was old soldier enough to profit by that calamity at least. The bitter injustice of such miscarriage of justice blinded me, as I think it eventually does most soldiers, to the accepted code of civil life. I refused to attend roll call or do drills, fatigues, or any other part of my regimental duties other than certain interesting ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... insurance had to be one which, in our circumstances, was practicable, and care had to be taken that it was not of a character that would frustrate the main purpose by provoking, and possibly accelerating, the very calamity against which ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... you well. You scorn your friends, as well as your foes. I have seen so many of you. The blessed saints guard us from the calamity of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the clocks, and white paper looked like black velvet. Many people were terrified and wondered what was coming. Some expected a great tornado; others said a comet was due and feared it portended some great calamity, perhaps a disaster to the armies in the field who were fighting England in the war of the Revolution. Still others, more ignorant and superstitious, were sure that the end of the world had come, that the last trumpet would soon sound and the dead ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... put himself, not so much out of life as out of misery. To this argument it is sometimes answered that, whereas death is the greatest of evils, it is foolish and wicked to resort to dying as a refuge against any other calamity. But this answer proves too much. It would show that it is never lawful even to wish for death: whereas under many conditions, such as those now under consideration, death is a consummation devoutly to be wished, and ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from one's nervous system as the ANTICIPATION of calamity. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... an undefined sense of calamity is always apt to do. I said to myself: "Now, a thoroughbrace is probably part of a horse; and doubtless a vital part, too, from the dismay in the driver's voice. Leg, maybe—and yet how could he break his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hatchet to cut firewood, no blankets, no overcoats, and no food except part of a Bologna sausage and a little ginger which Pringle had brought with him. There was no game; not even a squirrel was astir; and their chief sustenance was juniper-berries and the inner bark of trees. But their worst calamity was the helplessness of their guide. His brain wandered; and while always insisting that he knew the country well, he led them during four days hither and thither among a labyrinth of nameless mountains, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... home with peace. O Heaven! Do I live to talk of Lewis the Great as the object of pity? The king shows a great uneasiness to be informed of all that passes; but at the same time, is fearful of every one who appears in his presence, lest he should bring an account of some new calamity. I know not in what terms to represent my thoughts to you, when I speak of the king, with relation to his bodily health. Figure to yourself that immortal man, who stood in our public places, represented with trophies, armour, and terrors, on his pedestal: consider, the Invincible, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... taught but what had been known for ages: such was the machinery provided for the government and instruction of the most enlightened part of the human race. That great community was then in danger of experiencing a calamity far more terrible than any of the quick, inflammatory, destroying maladies, to which nations are liable,—a tottering, drivelling, paralytic longevity, the immortality of the Struldbrugs, a Chinese civilisation. It would be easy to indicate many points of resemblance between the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Such is Baldur the Beautiful of Iceland, and such, also, are Hector and Achilles of Troy. These songs mark the greatness and the waning of the heroic world In the Nibelungen-lied the final event is a great calamity that is akin to a half historical event of the North. Odin descends to the nether world to consult Hela; but she, like the sphinx of Thebes, will not reply save in an enigma, which enigma is to entail terrible tragedies, ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... harsh lord refused to afford relief out of his own substance, reproaching them at the same time as the authors of their own calamity by their indolence and want of economy. But the poor souls were mad for food, and in frightful ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... these things— inasmuch as his age is better suited for the enjoyment of them— him, poor {youth}, have I driven away from home by my severity! Were I to do this, really I should deem myself deserving of any calamity. But so long as he leads this life of penury, banished from his country through my severity, I will revenge his wrongs upon myself, toiling, making money, saving, and laying up for him." At once I set about it; I left nothing in the house, neither ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... has to praise the Imperial Light Horse so often, that reiteration may sound like flattery. But they deserve every distinction that can be given to them for having by superb steadiness, against great odds, saved the force on Bester's Ridge from a very serious calamity, if not from actual disaster. They must share the credit to some extent, however, with two small bodies of men already mentioned, who happened to be on Waggon Hill neither for fighting nor watch-keeping—the few bluejackets of H.M.S. Powerful ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... to the police and be quit of the whole business. But always there was this enveloping cloak of ignorance baffling him at every turn. He did not know what was wrong, and any step he attempted might just precipitate the calamity ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... crushing force of a remorseless foe. They beheld their fields and villages in flames about them, and their hearthstones deluged in the blood of their dearest and their bravest. Shocked and stunned by so unexpected a calamity, they could think of nothing better than turning their backs on the enemy, crowding to the Danube, and imploring the Romans to let them cross over, and to lodge themselves and their families in safety from the calamity which ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... lamentable events have caused the profoundest impression throughout the world." President Roosevelt said, "I have never in my experience in this country known of a more immediate or a deeper expression of the sympathy for the victims and of horror over the appalling calamity that ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... been used for Preventing the outragious and insufferable Disorders of the STAGE, having been in a great measure defeated: It is thought proper, under our present Calamity, and before the approaching FAST, to collect some of the Prophane and Immoral Expressions out of several late PLAYS, and to put them together in a little Compass, that the Nation may thereby be more convinced of the Impiety of the Stage, the Guilt ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... king or hero. Having once been a great man, he is thought to be familiar with the dangers that surround the great, and to know what is best and safest for those whose condition in all respects was once his own. He is hence supposed to avert national calamity, and bring prosperity and peace to ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... is so far fortunate—for you! And it is much to be hoped that she herself is not slain by your dagger thrust;—death is far too easy and light a punishment for her and her associates! We trust it may please a merciful God to visit her with more lingering calamity!" ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... asserted that 80,000 Roman soldiers and half as many of the immense and helpless body of camp-followers perished, and that only ten men escaped: this much is certain, that only a few out of the two armies succeeded in escaping, for the Romans had fought with the river in their rear. It was a calamity which materially and morally far surpassed the day of Cannae. The defeats of Carbo, of Silanus, and of Longinus had passed without producing any permanent impression on the Italians. They were accustomed to open every war with disasters; the invincibleness of the Roman arms was so firmly established, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... fuller with work and interests, appeared long until she came. I saw but little of the outside world. Dale, my sister Agatha, Sir Joshua Oldfield, and Campion were the only friends I met. Dale was ingenuously sympathetic when he head of the calamity. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... sincerest joy, for each ship's company was now restored to its full allowance of bread, and we were now freed from the apprehensions of our provisions falling short before we could reach some amicable port—a calamity which, in these seas, is of all others the most irretrievable. This was the last ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... their enemies; but now, at the very season of their celebration, the gods themselves stood witnesses of the saddest oppressions of Greece, the most holy time being profaned, and their greatest jubilee made the unlucky date of their most extreme calamity. Not many years before, they had a warning from the oracle at Dodona, that they should carefully guard the summits of Diana, lest haply strangers should seize them. And about this very time, when they dyed the ribbons and garlands with which they adorn the couches and cars of the procession, instead ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... decisive touch needed to extinguish the feeble life, that had been uncertainly wavering for months previously; the other was younger, and much beloved. And then came a sense as of some general great calamity, a sort of awe-struck mourning, with which real grief had, perhaps, little to do. The Superior herself had been struck with the fever, and in three days she was dead. Her vigils, her fastings, the wearying abnegations ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... died untimely at twenty-five of raging fever in seven days. Could such a calamity befall me under the rule ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... of which will be found to be an authentic Version of the Legend of Prince Bladud, and a most extraordinary Calamity that ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... drop of rain!" shrilled Will, filled with a new fear, for he was afraid that his pet camera would be ruined should they be soaked to the skin, which was a calamity terrible enough to ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... demagogue, and then privately for years on end as an actor, a traveller, a commission agent or a journalist. Muscari had known him last behind the footlights; he was but too well attuned to the excitements of that profession, and it was believed that some moral calamity had ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... suspected the calamity which was so soon to succeed his absence, it is probable that his mien would have been less composed, as he pursued his way from his own door, on the occasion named. That he had confidence in the virtue of his menaces, however, may be inferred from the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... and disease, by prostitution, crime and war—then mankind will slip back into the abyss, the untamed giants of Nature will resume their ancient sway, and the tides, the tempest and the lightning will sweep the earth clean again. I do not believe that this calamity will befall us. I know that in the diseased social body the forces of resistance are gathering—the Socialist movement, in the broad sense—the activities of all who believe in the possibility of reconstructing society upon a basis of reason, justice ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... angels confided to Lot their dread secret and told him to warn all his relatives to leave the city with him, and he went out and told his sons-in-law of the impending calamity, and he "seemed as one ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... and 'there is no joy but calm,' when all is said and done. We should be more and more tranquil and at rest; and every day there should come, as it were, a deeper and more substantial layer of tranquillity enveloping our hearts, a thicker armour against perturbation and calamity and tumult. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... mentioned his name, Mr. Bennett shook his head and expressed great sorrow; but, on further talk, I found that he referred only to the failure, and had heard nothing about the other rumor. It cannot, therefore, be true; for Bennett lives in his neighborhood, and could not have remained ignorant of such a calamity. There must be some mistake; none, however, in regard to the failure, it having ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gowns. This diversity is not to be condemned. What is to be deprecated is the feeling among some of us that the diversity should give place to uniformity—to uniformity of their own kind, of course. To me, this would be a calamity. Let us continue to make room in our church for individuality. God never intended men to be pressed down in one mold of sameness. In the last analysis, each of us has his own religious beliefs. The doctrines of our church, or of any church are but a composite portrait of these beliefs. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... in the eyelids, causing great damage and often blindness. Many babies get the clap plant into the eyes during birth, from the mother, and unless treated within a few minutes after birth, have sore eyes and go blind,—a terrible calamity to the child and the family. If you have clap the germs can be carried on your hands ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... every resident of China, Chinese or American, with whom I have talked in the last four weeks has volunteered the belief that all the seeds of a future great war are now deeply implanted in China. To avert such a calamity they look to the League of Nations or to some other force outside the immediate scene. Unfortunately the press of Japan treats every attempt to discuss the state of opinion in China or the state ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... that dares go on in sin Known, and so known as thine is? O Evadne! Would there were any safety in thy sex, That I might put a thousand sorrows off, And credit thy repentance! but I must not: Thou hast brought me to that dull calamity, To that strange misbelief of all the world And all things that are in it, that I fear I shall fall like a tree, and find my grave, Only remembering ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... will,—that she might have escaped this tragedy by submitting herself to the man's wishes, as she had always been ready to submit herself to his words. Had she been able always to keep her neck in the dust under his foot, their married life might have been passed without outward calamity, and it is possible that he might still have lived. But if she erred, surely she had been scourged for her error with scorpions. As she sat at his bedside watching him, she thought of her wasted youth, of her faded beauty, of her shattered happiness, of her fallen hopes. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... for such a man: she never could understand why he could not have remained quietly at his post in Dresden, indifferent to good or bad opera representations, and unambitious concerning the proper artistic production of his own works. When calamity followed calamity, to her all the trouble seemed due to Richard's pig-headedness; and she would at once have grown cheerful and good-natured had he burned his finished and unfinished scores and written "something popular." She was, I say, impossible. Cosima, for her part, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... to discover any principle in this Emancipation Bill for the Slaves, except a principle of fear of the abolition party struggling with a dread of causing some monstrous calamity to the empire at large? Well! I will not prophesy; and God grant that this tremendous and unprecedented act of positive enactment may not do the harm to the cause of humanity and freedom which ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... why my thoughts should grow more gloomy by reason of the difficulties of mastication. I once read the story of an Englishman who hanged himself because they had brought him his tea without sugar. There are hours in life when the most trifling cross takes the form of a calamity. Our tempers are like an opera-glass, which makes the object small or great according to ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... worked at replacing the fallen boxes, they kept up a running fire of observations regarding this new calamity that threatened their peace; for when Andy Lasher and the ugly crowd with which he trained took a notion to make themselves disagreeable they could do it "to the queen's taste," as ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... their well-meant civilities to Helen,—now she as abruptly declined them. Why? It would be hard to plumb into all the black secrets of that heart. It would have been but natural to her, who shrank from dooming Helen to no worse calamity than a virgin's grave, to have designed to throw her into such uncongenial guidance, amidst all the manifold temptations of the corrupt city,—to have suffered her to be seen and to be ensnared by those gallants ever on the watch for defenceless ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with its long lines of windows, had a prison-like aspect under the dull November day. Gilbert wondered how such a man as Sir David Forster could endure his existence there, embittered as it was by the memory of that calamity which had taken all the sunlight out of his life, and left him a weary and purposeless hunter after pleasure. But Sir David had been prostrate under the heavy hand of his hereditary foe, the gout, for a long time past; and was fain to ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... for dinner. It was more or less of a calamity, for the board was quite full of early guests for the next day's festivities. Aunt Elizabeth shifted the burden of the entertainment onto the capable shoulders of Vance, who could please these Westerners when he chose. ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... in the cold and frozen. If I was alone, I'd try to make some Esquimo hut or die, but havin' you I can't take a chance.' Hal's manner of speech had improved a great deal during his intercourse with cultured men, and I took note of it as he spoke—such queer things will impress one when a sudden calamity presents itself. ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... a long time the exiled monarch, pensively ruralizing in Peru, which afforded him a safe asylum in his calamity, watched every arrival from the Encantadas, to hear news of the failure of the Republic, the consequent penitence of the rebels, and his own recall to royalty. Doubtless he deemed the Republic but a miserable experiment which would soon explode. But no, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... and useless brain, emergencies often call out powers and virtues before unknown and suspected. How often we see a young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a parent, or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has knocked the props and crutches from under him. The prison has roused the slumbering fire in many a noble mind. "Robinson Crusoe" was written in prison. The "Pilgrim's Progress" appeared in Bedford Jail. The "Life and Times" of Baxter, Eliot's "Monarchia of Man," and Penn's "No Cross, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... I consider the general run of cloudy weather to be a blessing of Providence. Hot weather would have caused us to have died with thirst, and probably being so constantly covered with rain or sea protected us from that dreadful calamity. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... what weary work this is for those who are tremblingly waiting for a result of vital importance to their whole fate and fortune! Thank Heaven, I am liberally endowed with youth's peculiar power and privilege of disregarding future sorrow, and unless under the immediate pressure of calamity can keep the anticipation of it at bay. My journal has become a mere catalogue of the names of people I meet and places I go to. I have had no time latterly for anything but the briefest possible registry of my daily doings. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... them their name, and which are marked by a tumbling over-and-over process, which suggests the idea of their having suddenly become giddy, been deprived of their self-control, or overtaken by some calamity. This acrobatic propensity in these pigeons has been ascribed by some to the absence of a proper power in the tail; but is nothing more than a natural habit, for which no adequate reason can be assigned. Of this variety, the Almond Tumbler is the most beautiful; and the greater ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the city to that hour, the Roman republic had felt no calamity so deplorable, so shocking, as that, unassailed by a foreign enemy, and, were it not for the vices of the age, with the deities propitious, the temple of Jupiter supremely good and great, built by our ancestors with solemn auspices, the pledge of empire, which neither Porsena,[126] when ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... things they passed over lightly before. It is not doctrine they want; faith and belief in beautiful formulas have become less and less satisfying. They are beginning to think for themselves, which is anathema to the Church. Of old she prevented such a calamity by a policy of terrorising her followers; of later years she has adopted the simpler one of boring them. And yet it is only simplicity they want; the simple creeds of helping on the other fellow and playing the game is what they understand. But they will have to be reminded ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... a balustrade of quatrefoils. But, unfortunately, nothing more can now be said of the building, than is supplied by the plate in question. It had, in its earlier time, repeatedly suffered from the effects of fire; and a similar calamity completed its ruin, during the month of June, 1814. The lower part of the walls and the gothic portal are all that are left standing, to attest the original size and ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... (Luke xi. 37-54),—a rebuke which is emphasized by the parable in which, on another occasion, he taught God's preference for a contrite sinner over a complacent saint (Luke xviii. 9-14). When reminded of Pilate's outrage upon certain Galilean worshippers, he used the calamity to warn his hearers that personal godliness was the only protection which could secure them against a more serious outbreak of the hostility of the Roman power (Luke xiii. 1-9); and it was probably in reply to such an ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... and groans? But I dwell not on these things; they are for the man with the gifts of eloquence and imagination to describe. It was certainly a marvel that both parents were not struck lifeless with grief. The calamity was rendered the greater by the fact that their first-born, who had aroused so large hopes concerning himself, was the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... like ours. Immedicable woes, a life of tears, The silent tomb, eternal night, to find More sweet, by far, than the ethereal light, These things were not by heaven's gracious law Imposed on you. If ancient legends speak Of sins of yours, that brought calamity Upon the human race, and fell disease, Alas, the sins more terrible, by far, Committed by your children, and their souls More restless, and with mad ambition fixed, Against them roused the wrath of angry gods, The hand of all-sustaining ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... me, please, and listen to reason," beseeched the lawyer, drawing him resolutely in the direction of a side entrance. "It would be a dire misfortune, sir, a calamity to the community, if the bank were forced to close its doors. So far, however, it is only the small depositors who are clamoring; but the others will quickly enough follow if you do not let your fifty thousand ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... full-to-overflowing look," said Carol. "If we don't keep hold of her, she'll let something bubble over." Connie had a dismal propensity for giving things away,—the twins had often suffered from it. To-night, they were determined to forestall such a calamity. ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... DEAR CHARLES,—I will not at the moment attempt any explanation of the calamity which has befallen our house. If you knew all, you would not blame me as I fear you must be doing. Let me say, however, that I have every reason to hope that in course of time I may be able to redeem ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... this crowning calamity of her son's disgrace did more than all her past sufferings to crush her proud spirit. But fate had not yet dealt the last and most cruel blow of all. That fell on that fatal June day of 1902 when her beloved "Sacha's" mutilated body was flung by his ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... like a funeral procession, and they could see the neighbors draw long faces, under the impression that there had been some fatal domestic calamity to account for such looks of woe. Even Charley was affected, though he could hardly believe even yet in his favorite's guilt, while Jumbo came behind with his tail between his legs—either from the stings of conscience, or because he knew he would ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was another dreadful eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which covered with lava most of the villages at the foot of the mountain. To add to the calamity, torrents of boiling water were, on this occasion, thrown out by the volcano, ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... able to control Dale, then she tried not to think of it any more. It confused and perplexed her that into her mind should flash a thought that, though it would be dreadful for Carmichael to kill Beasley, for Dale to do it would be a calamity—a terrible thing. Helen did not analyze that strange thought. She was as afraid of it as she was of the stir in her blood when ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... men's daughters—for I have not gone through life with my eyes shut; with you love is like lukewarm water in a bath, but it catches us like fire. Sappho of Lesbos flung herself from the Leucadian rock because Phaon flouted her, and if I could save Marcus from any calamity by doing the same, I would follow her example.—You have a lover, too; but your feeling for him, with all the 'intellect' and 'reflections,' and 'thought' of which you spoke, cannot be the right one. There is no but or if in my, love at any rate; and yet, for all that, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... invention of casting could hardly have been prevented from taking the final step, save by the sudden intervention of some social cataclysm like the European invasion of Eastern America. And how awful a calamity that was for the Indians themselves we at this ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Mr. Wyerley to Clarissa.— A generous renewal of his address to her now in her calamity; and a ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... much rather conclude, that, like Physicians who are never better pleased than in Times of general Sickness, they only concealed a selfish Joy under the Mask of an affected Calmness; and it is really scarce credible what Advantage they drew from this public Calamity. The King, being given over by the Physicians, seemed to be lost without miraculous Relief from Heaven, and as the meanest of his Subjects was not wanting in his Endeavours to procure it, so that Sesems, which in that Country are Devotions of about a Quarter ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... gasping with terror. Tim, for it was none other, fell on his knees crying for mercy. "Whoever thou art," continued he, "come and help—help for one that's fa'n under a heavy calamity. Bad though he be, we maunna let him perish ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... fairly stunned by the announcement, and for a moment could not speak one word. To be separated from her beloved nurse who had always taken care of her!—who seemed almost necessary to her existence. It was such a calamity as even her worst fears had never suggested, for they never had been parted, even for a single day; but wherever the little girl went, if to stay more than a few hours, her faithful attendant had always ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... that woman has some rights, that she has some reason to complain of the present relation in which she is placed. In this country we congratulate ourselves that woman occupies a higher position than elsewhere, although some think it would be a calamity to improve her condition still further, and mere fanaticism to raise her ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... death and the burial, the shame and the smart, the cross and the grave of Jesus, shall be laid upon thy score, if thou hast refused the mercies and design of all their holy ends and purposes. And if we remember what a calamity that was which broke the Jewish nation in pieces, when Christ came to judge them for their murdering Him who was their King and the Prince of Life, and consider that this was but a dark image of the terrors of the day of judgment, we may then apprehend that there is ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... unusual courage in coming alone in the darkness to the stable beneath me, and there was a tremor in his voice which showed that even now but little was wanted to make him go howling away. I thought it best not to risk so inopportune and fatal a calamity, so I bade him go away and come again next night, by which time I hoped to have been able to think out a plan that offered reasonable ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... before, and she had also seemed strangely delicate. Perhaps, or perhaps not, she felt the crisis was approaching. It is probable that when the mind has been strained for a long time, and the heart and body suffered much, one sees a calamity vaguely, and cannot define it; appreciates it, and does not know it. She came to Marion's room about a half-hour before they were to start for the church. Marion was already dressed and ready, save for the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... defeated, inasmuch as it would be placed thereby in the hands of men who are avowedly suspicious of the negro, and have no confidence in his fitness for freedom, or his willingness to work; who regard the abolition of slavery as a great sectional calamity, and who, under the semblance and even the protection of the law, and without violating the letter of the emancipation proclamation, would have it in their power to impose burdens upon the negro race scarcely less irksome than those from which ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... upon him became the calamity of our whole nation, for it elevated the hopes of conquering the Romans on the part of those who desired war. But another cause of the revolt arose in Syria from the cruel treatment of the Jews in many cities, where they showed not the least disposition towards rebellion. About 13,000 were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... of the Greek's rifle," exclaimed Melton, in horror-stricken tones, "and it was Carrington who shouted. Some calamity has happened." ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... bade fair to put an end to my activities for the duration of the war, and which calamity was averted in what I cannot help describing now as a miraculous way. I need not go into the matter at length; it was a little affair as far as I was concerned, but was intended as a preliminary ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... thus averting what would have been a calamity to all earnest students of the occult. The advertisement, it is true, had specifically mentioned one dollar as the accustomed honorarium, but this was no time ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... and half Swede. Usually known as 'that damn lazy big-mouthed calamity-howler that ain't satisfied with the way we run things.' No, I ain't curious—whatever you mean by that! I'm just a bookworm. Probably too much reading for the amount of digestion I've got. Probably half-baked. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... present fear of this Louis Asoph's revelations, of a new scandal, if not a calamity, Lady Maulevrier felt that it was a good thing to have her younger granddaughter's future in some measure secured. John Hammond had said of himself to Lesbia that he was not the kind of man to fail, and looking at him critically ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... armies beginning to give way have been rallied by the females, through the earnestness of their supplications, the interposition of their bodies, [54] and the pictures they have drawn of impending slavery, [55] a calamity which these people bear with more impatience for their women than themselves; so that those states who have been obliged to give among their hostages the daughters of noble families, are the most effectually ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... back from the unsuccessful expedition against Louisbourg, received the news of the calamity at Fort William Henry. He returned too late to do anything to retrieve that disaster, and determined, in the spring, to take the offensive by attacking Ticonderoga. This had been left, on the retirement of Montcalm, with a small garrison commanded by Captain ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... sex has run away with her hitherto, and may have made her till now invincible. But is not that pride abated? What may not both men and women be brought to do in a mortified state? What mind is superior to calamity? Pride is perhaps the principal bulwark of female virtue. Humble a woman, and may she not be ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... imagination; the corners of the mouth drawn down, the whites or yellows of the eyes upturned, while with hands outspread she was declaiming, and in a lamentable tone deploring, as Ormond thought, some great public calamity; for the concluding words were "The danger, my dear Lady Annaly—the danger, my dear Miss Annaly—oh! the danger is imminent. We shall all be positively undone, ma'am; and Ireland—oh! I wish I was once safe in England again— Ireland positively ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... most wretched young man in London was Teddy France. What was he to do? He could not go North without informing Doris of the calamity. He could not trust the information to a letter. There he stood in the rain, cursing himself and imagining the cruel blow it would be to the girl. Suddenly he realised that no time must be lost. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... the men eyed him morosely. Bitterness was still alive in their hearts, and the recollection of suffering fresh in their minds. They still looked at him as a sort of person his father had made him appear, and viewed his succession as a calamity. The old regime had been bad enough, they told one another, but this young man, with his ruthlessness, his heartlessness, with what seemed to be a savage desire to trample workingmen into unresisting, unprotesting submission—this would be intolerable. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... soul in patience despite the unjustified delay, there came the heaviest calamity encountered in all my arctic work—the death of my friend, Morris K. Jesup. Without his promised help the future expedition seemed impossible. It may be said with perfect truth that to him, more than to any other ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... it is probable that if I remained silent upon a history at once so true, and so full of sorrow; no other person equally intimate with its incidents will ever give them to the world. I cannot presume to detail unhappy Jane's, calamity with the pathos due to a woe so singularly deep and delicate, or to describe that faithful attachment which gave her once laughing and ruby lips the white smile of a maniac's misery. This I cannot ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... what I have written I see how pointless it is. It is possible, indeed, that brooding over my personal calamity magnifies in my mind the sense of danger to this friend through me, and that I only need to find the right relation of friendliness coupled with aloofness which will secure him against any too ardent attachment. Certainly I have no fear that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... interpretation given the system by W.E. Griffis, in his volume on the "Religions of Japan," is suggestive, but in view of all the facts does not seem conclusive. "One of the most remarkable features of Shinto" he writes, "was the emphasis laid on cleanliness. Pollution was calamity, defilement was sin, and physical purity at least was holiness. Everything that could in any way soil the body or clothing was looked upon with abhorrence and detestation."[CE] The number of specifications given in this connection is worthy of careful perusal. But ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... still worse calamity. The invaders, as we have already intimated, could be more terrible still in their overthrow than in their ravages. The inhabitants of the country had attempted, where they could, to destroy them by fire and water. It would seem as if the malignant animals ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
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