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More "Disastrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove disastrous. Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his mind and soul set to develop, as Beatrice could not sympathize with his interests, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... grace which is now recognised as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true that, to a sensitive observer, there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gave it a sharp pull. Although it yielded slightly, it did not break, and, encouraged by this, he threw his whole weight on it as a conclusive test of its strength. The result was sudden, surprising, and wellnigh disastrous. The cord gave way so readily that Peveril sprawled at full length on the rocks, while, at the same time, something heavy fell with a rush down the face of the cliff and struck with great ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... explains the belief of the Old School in the imputation of Adam's sin thus: It was not the personal guilt of Adam which was imputed to his descendants, but "certain disastrous consequences." They, as well as he, became "subject to temporal and eternal death." The next consequence of Adam's sin we must give in Professor Lawrence's own language, in order not to misrepresent him. "The first evil disposition which led ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... needle, as may be noted, invariably quivering back to the same point—namely, righteous anger against Damaris. For was not that high-spirited maiden's imperviousness to influence and defiance of authority—her, Theresa's, influence and authority—the mainspring of all this disastrous complication? Theresa found it convenient to believe so, and whip herself up to almost frantic determination in that belief. It was so perfectly clear. All the more clear because her informant, Mary, evidently did not share her belief. Mary's account ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... necessarily, but restricted opportunity for design, and any attempt at great novelty is apt to be disastrous; if originality appears, it will be in the ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various
... that none succeeded in reaching it. In order to inspire them to desperate deeds he had led them in person, and with him that meant victory or death. According to the army accounts, it was a thrilling moment, and might well have proved disastrous to the Forsythe command, whose leader was wounded and helpless. The danger was acute until Roman Nose fell, and even then his lieutenants were bent upon crossing at any cost, but some of the older chiefs prevailed upon them ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... altered all this. M. Bonfils arrived suddenly one day, bringing most disastrous news of Dahomey. The king was dethroned, taken prisoner by the Ashantees, who meant to found a new dynasty. The royal troops and the regiment of Amazons had all been conquered and dispersed. Kerika alone ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... to me the most utterly incredible about all this terrible story," said Edith, "is that a system which was such a disastrous failure in its effects on the general welfare, which, by disinheriting the great mass of the people, had made them its bitter foes, and which finally even people like Julian, who were its beneficiaries, did not attempt to defend ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... attractive. Poor Enid was often in trouble; her lively tongue could not resist talking in class or whispering during preparation hours. She was ready enough to respect Miss Harper, but she was apt to defy Miss Rowe's authority, a form of insubordination which generally ended in disastrous consequences. Patty, in common with most of the class, found it rather difficult to get on with Miss Rowe. It felt hard to be corrected sharply for some slight slip, and to be expected to obey every trivial ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the Northumbrian towns went again through a furnace of thirst and fever and furious fighting, to gain the same water-courses and invest the same cities as of old. They trod the hills of Galilee and the Horns of Hattin threw no shadow on their souls; they crossed dark and disastrous fields whose fame had been hidden from them, and avenged the fathers they had forgotten. And the most cynical of modern diplomatists, making their settlement by the most sceptical of modern philosophies, can find no practical or even temporary solution for this sacred land, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... Duesseldorf, December 13, 1797, of Jewish parents. The Napoleonic Wars were among the chief impressions of his childhood. He saw Napoleon ride through Duesseldorf; he saw the tattered remains of the Grande Armee return from the disastrous Russian campaign; and although not without the patriotic fervor of the German youth, he could not but admire the genius of the great Corsican (46). At Hamburg the young Heine was to enter upon a commercial career under the guidance of his rich uncle, but failed. An unrequited love for his cousin ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... whose early life had been passed in the East-Indian Portuguese wars, imprudently and cruelly disturbed the peace of the rising settlement, by the murder of a son of one of the chiefs. The consequence was, that after a most disastrous warfare, in the course of which the already flourishing sugar-works were burnt, he and Caramuru were both obliged to abandon the settlement and retire to Ilheos. Soon afterwards, however, he made peace with the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... the case of the ague, a reasonable assumption would be that the plague existed in seventeenth-century Virginia. The Great Plague of London (1665) carried away 69,000 persons, and other cities of Europe had even more disastrous epidemics. During the two years before the first settlers arrived at Jamestown, over 2000 victims were buried in London. The accounts of the ocean voyage indicate rat-infested ships. Ships of the London Company ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... Gratian, to his assistance; but before the emperor of the west arrived, he imprudently engaged the Goths near Adrianople, and with the greater part of his army fell on the field. 19. This was the most disastrous defeat which the Romans had sustained for several centuries; and there was reason to dread that it would encourage a revolt of the Gothic slaves in the eastern provinces, which must terminate in the ruin of the empire. To prevent such a catastrophe, the ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... luxuriant arboreal vegetation, and that in the interests of self-protection, the promotion of forestal industry is among the first duties of her people. There are in Western Piedmont valleys where the felling of the woods has produced consequences geographically and economically as disastrous as in South-eastern France, and there are many other districts in the Alps and the Apennines where human improvidence has been almost equally destructive. Some of these regions must be abandoned to absolute desolation, and for others the opportunity ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... was one of the four fugitives who, with the general, carried out of the woods the inanimate body of the general's wife into the farmhouse where she died, exhausted by the hardships of that terrible retreat. He had survived that disastrous time to attend his general in Palermo when the Neapolitan shells from the castle crashed upon the town. He had cooked for him on the field of Volturno after fighting all day. And everywhere he had seen ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... appear a variety of formulas which specify pyrites (a combination of sulphur and metal), metals, stones and other minerals, soot, (blue) vitriol, calxes (lime or chalk), dye-woods, berries, plants, and animal colors, some of which if made into ink could only have been used with disastrous ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... Assembly in 1848. He was advocating, against the interests of his own party (which in the Assembly was all- powerful), that the President of the Republic should be chosen by the nation, and not by the Assembly; and he ended by saying that if the course he advocated was disastrous to himself, 'Victrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni.' (8) 'Plausuque sui gaudere theatri.' Quoted by Mr. Pitt, in his speech on the address in 1783, on the occasion of peace being made with France, Spain, and America; in allusion to Mr. Sheridan. ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... when the Sun new-risen Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the Moon In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... army from the Conquerors might Speed their disastrous flight, With thee fierce Genius! let me trace their way, And hear at times the deep heart-groan Of some poor sufferer left to die alone, His sore wounds smarting with the winds of night; And we will pause, where, on the wild, The [1] Mother to her frozen breast, On the heap'd snows reclining ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... authority. The Quebec Act brought a final rupture a step nearer and at last there was open war. "The colonists have brought things to a crisis now, indeed;" wrote Gilchrist; "the consequences must be dreadful to them soon and I am afraid in the end to our country." To Great Britain indeed disastrous they were to be and soon the seigneur of Murray Bay was busy with his share in preparing ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... families who had nothing to gain by leaving Quebec were those who deserved the governor's sympathy, and it was for their safety that Champlain would not agree to offer resistance, as the result must have proved disastrous to them. By the articles of capitulation these families would be able to live quietly at home, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... Where the work of building the home has been entrusted to an architect's hands the latter usually appreciates the fact that the building of the fireplaces is liable more than any other part of the house to be taken into the mason's own hands with, if he is not watched, disastrous results. Undoubtedly every mason would resent most strongly any insinuation as to his lack of knowledge regarding fireplace construction. Each mason not only thinks that he knows how a fireplace should be built, but it is almost as general a rule that he feels that his ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor
... British returned the visit with five sea planes, accompanied by a cruiser and destroyers, with disastrous results. As related in a former chapter at some length, only two of the machines succeeded in escaping from the withering fire of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... smoked and drank Scotch "smoke." The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him, seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life. The horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disastrous part now began, for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a wretched fugitive, to lose its sharper outlines. Distance lent assuagement to his view. Bibb had opened the flood-gates of a stream of ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... hesitation to be made the common property of all men, no matter in what direction the results of its promulgation may appear to tend. And so far as the ruination of individual happiness is concerned, no one can have a more lively perception than myself of the possibly disastrous tendency of my work. So far as I am individually concerned, the result of this analysis has been to show that, whether I regard the problem of Theism on the lower plane of strictly relative probability, or on the higher plane of purely formal considerations, it equally becomes ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... of taking care of their own losses, but the sympathetic effect of such a failure as this (twenty million dollars), to say nothing of its reaction upon the honor of themselves and the city as a financial center, was a most unsatisfactory if not disastrous thing to contemplate, and now this matter of Cowperwood's having gained handsomely by it all was added to their misery. Both Hand and Arneel growled in opposition when they heard, and Merrill meditated, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... 'it was a most disastrous consequence of carelessness. I had a friend, a good fellow, but not a bit of a sportsman, as sometimes occurs. Well, one day he said to me, "My dear friend, take me out shooting; I am curious to learn what this diversion consists in." I did ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... of the time of first touching the earth depends the success of safely alighting. He may bank too high, and come down on the tail with disastrous results. If there is plenty of field room it is better to come down at a less angle, or even keep the machine at an even keel, and the elevator can then depress the tail while running over the ground, and thus bring the ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... in History, even the most recent, for their distrust of the liberal professions and seemings of Royalty. But were the King and all his House to abdicate and leave the country to-morrow, I believe that would be a disastrous step for Sardinia and for Human Liberty. For this kingdom is almost walled in by enemies—Austria, Tuscany, Rome (alas!) and Naples—all intensely hating it and seeking its downfall because of the Light and Hope which its policy and its example are diffusing among the nations. With the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Massachusetts, the great Webster upheld the rights of property in government, saying: "It is entirely just that property should have its due weight and consideration in political arrangements.... The disastrous revolutions which the world has witnessed, those political thunderstorms and earthquakes which have shaken the pillars of society to their deepest foundations, have been revolutions against property." In Pennsylvania, a leader in local affairs cried out against a plan to remove ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... understand that plasmon was one of the investments which he had made from "the substance of things hoped for," and in the destiny of a disastrous disappointment. But after paying off the creditors of his late publishing firm he had to do something with his money, and it was not his fault if he did not make a fortune out ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... almost helpless with surprise and grief; but she contrived to hide her emotions, and to soothe the boy to sleep again; then she crept apart and communed miserably with herself upon the disastrous result of her experiment. She tried to believe that her Tom's madness had banished this habitual gesture of his; but she could not do it. "No," she said, "his HANDS are not mad; they could not unlearn so old a habit in so brief a time. Oh, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... entrance-hall filled by a crowd which did not extend beyond any of the doors leading to the rooms; centring its anxious going and coming around the porter's table, where all the famous names of fashionable Paris were being inscribed. It seemed as though a disastrous gust of wind had gone through the house, carrying off a little of its calm, and allowing disquiet and danger ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... same artist, was found in the old-clothes market at Florence by an artist, bought for a few pence, cleaned and sold to Prince Galitzin for twenty-two thousand francs. The "Fortune" of Michel Angelo, or what was supposed to be, not long since was discovered in the same locality in a disastrous condition, secured for a few shillings, put in such order as was possible, and parted with to a French gentleman for three hundred dollars and a pension of one dollar a day during the lives of the seller and his son. Quite recently one of Correggio's most beautiful works was discovered under ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... advisable by all interested, that Mr. Spencer should not go to his home at all. His business, which was large and important, required his presence every day, and to take two weeks away from it just at that time would be disastrous ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... hero of Fort Stanwix.' This fort was situated on the present site of Rome, N.Y.; and there Gansevoort, with a small body of men, held in check reinforcements on their way to join Burgoyne, until the disastrous ending of the latter's campaign of 1777 was insured. The Gansevoorts, it should be said, were at that time and subsequently ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... architecture, but also contrasts strongly with the classical architecture of Japan itself. Our ancient noble edifices, whether secular or ecclesiastical, were not to be despised even as regards their mere size. The few that have been spared in the disastrous conflagrations of centuries are still capable of aweing us by the grandeur and richness of their decoration. Huge pillars of wood from two to three feet in diameter and from thirty to forty feet high, supported, by a complicated network of brackets, the enormous beams which groaned ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... parties, as traitors, to the scaffold. Democratic cries were resounding, more and more loudly, through the streets. Power was fast passing into the hands of the mob. Should the Duke of Orleans fail his party, there was no one else around whom they could rally, and their disastrous defeat ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... despatched to Italy as lieutenant-general, and besieged Milan, but was repeatedly repulsed, and finally fell back on the Ticino. He was killed at Pavia (February 24, 1525), and was largely responsible for that disastrous defeat, having urged Francis I. to give battle, contrary to the advice of the more experienced captains. Bonnivet, as mentioned by Queen Margaret in this story, had the reputation of being one of the handsomest ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Hercules was known till he consulted the oracle of Delphi. 9. LA DURANCE, a river in southwestern France, flowing into the Rhone below Avignon. After beginning an agressive campaign in this part of France in the summer of 1536, the Spaniards were in September forced to a disastrous retreat. 13. DE MOI, for my own part; Malherbe had lost his first two children, Henry in 1587 and Jourdaine in 1599. 27. LOUVRE; the palace of the Louvre, begun ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... on the wings of meditation borne, Let fond remembrance turn, and turn to mourn; Slowly, and sad, her pinions sweep O'er the rough bosom of the boist'rous deep To that disastrous, fatal coast Where, on the foaming billows tost, Imperial Catherine's navies rode; And war's inviting banners wide Wav'd hostile o'er the glitt'ring tide, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... herself, poor thing. Once she was quite distinguished as a local magazine writer, but...well, you know...all people do not have the good fortune to have their genius universally recognized, and the results are sometimes disastrous. We are so proud to welcome you to-night, Miss Dwight, and—and—your charming friends. I am Jane Upton Halsey." She appeared to think ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... fallen at a more disastrous moment. It came when Wall Street was in a condition of suppressed 'scare'-suppressed, because for a week past the great interests known to act with or to be actually controlled by the Colossus had been desperately combating the effects of the sudden arrest of Lucas ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... and scratches, neither Kenric nor Allan had received much hurt. But this accident, which might have proved so disastrous to the isle of Bute, bound the Earl Kenric and Allan Redmain together in a close fellowship, which lasted until they were both ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... lurid glare of which would be seen burning brightly, and raging furiously across the wide Atlantic. The proceedings in America were but as yet, in truth, the warnings of a terrible commotion—the first intimations of an irruption, more frightful in its nature, and more disastrous in its consequences, than the bursting forth of the fire-streaming bowels of Mounts AEtna and Vesuvius, or the devastations of an earthquake. For the storms of human passion, when they burst forth ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... me a patent was, at that period, very disastrous. It was especially discouraging to have made a long voyage across the Atlantic in vain, incurring great expenditure and loss of time, which in their consequences also produced years of delay in the prosecution of my enterprise ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... drooped about the ankles,—trousers of every sort, from blue broadcloth, gold-striped, to the homely fustian,—and a rare show they made. They went fours right or fours left with a fine military jangle, and sometimes went fours right and fours left at the same time, with results disastrous to military order. Then it was good to see and hear the fat Dorn as he caracoled in a field-marshal's uniform, and barked his orders at the disordered crowd like a field-marshal ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... nothing to complain of, for he got as good as he gave, and it occurred to him that he could not expect to start a disastrous conflagration in any maiden bosom so long as he had no brimstone, nor any substitute for it, ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... organ "lower wages are certainly a feature of the new prosperity"—that the American workman need not hope for permanent employment until willing to accept the same wages paid "the pauper labor of Europe," from whose disastrous competition the Republicans solemnly promised him protection. If Supt. Trice is reducing wages and overworking his men it may be accepted as certain that he is compelled thereto by a higher power—that the edict has gone forth that the employees of the I. & G. N. must ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... right. The manner in which the leaders of the Paris Commune dealt with the rights of property during their disastrous, but fortunately very brief, period of office in 1871, serves as a warning of what, in an extreme case, may be expected of despotic democracy in its most aggravated form. Moreover, misgovernment, and the fiscal oppression which is the almost ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... to its sudden and disastrous stop, Smith-Oldwick turned quickly to see what the effect of the accident had been on the girl. He found her pale but smiling, and for several seconds the two sat looking ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... until the strategic objective is achieved. On-the-ground presence, in addition to forces in theater, as demonstrated in Kuwait in 1993 and again in 1996, provided commitment and staying power to convince Iraq that it would be disastrous to consider any form of military action. The inherent staying power of land forces, wherever future tactical concepts may lead, makes them a powerful contributing partner in our Rapid ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... did not play as well in 1912 as it did in the preceding year. There was some bad luck for St. Louis as well as Philadelphia. The players did not get started as well as they had in the previous two years. Their spring training was more or less disastrous, for they were one of the clubs to run into the ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... often and so deeply engaged her secret thoughts; and the idea of her father, associated as it now was with pain, mortification, and misery, never rose to her imagination but instantly to be shunned as some unhallowed image, of which the bitter contemplation was fraught with not less disastrous consequences than the denounced ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... matter of fact, Parker had hoisted the signal only to give Nelson the opportunity for withdrawing from the fight if he wished. The signal had one disastrous result—the little cluster of frigates and sloops engaged with the Three-Crown Batteries obeyed it and hauled off. As the Amazon, Riou's ship, ceased to fire, the smoke lifted, and the Danish battery got her in full sight, and smote her with deadly ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... of this multifarious literature through which his duties led him was the awakening of the ambition to write, stunned by his first disastrous adventures in Boston, and dormant almost ever since, except as it had stirred under the promptings of Evans's kindly interest. But now it did not take the form of verse; he began to write moralistic essays, never ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... polished chip before we have done with him. Your aim, my dear nephew, must always be to be in bon ton. It is not a case of wealth, you understand. Mere riches cannot do it. Golden Price has forty thousand a year, but his clothes are disastrous. I assure you that I saw him come down St. James's Street the other day, and I was so shocked at his appearance that I had to step into Vernet's for a glass of orange brandy. No, it is a question of natural taste, and of following the ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pressed by pain and pressed by pain renewed, Till, closing the life-long vicissitude, Came starving death with full-heaped summer, and Wrung the last pangs that spirit could withstand ... Or to see age in its prison slowly freeze With impotence more disastrous than disease, While trees flowered on, or all the winter through Upheld brave arms and with spring flowered anew Above those living graves and graves of the dead;— 'Twas all such bitterness, but she nothing said. She saw men as courageous boats that ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... resume his attendance upon the king. After him came the duc d'Aiguillon, whose features bore the visible marks of care and disquiet. He met me with the utmost tenderness and concern, asked of me the very smallest details of the disastrous events of the morning. I concealed nothing from him, and he listened to my recital with the most lively interest; and the account of the apparition of the wonderful being who seemed destined to follow me throughout my career was not the least interesting ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... of modern harmony into ecclesiastical music, with reference of course to hymns only. It cannot escape the attention of any one that the modern church music has for one chief differentiation the profuse employment of pathetic chords, the effect of which is often disastrous ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... contempt which a genuine old family ghost has for mere parvenus and impostors is not to be expressed in mere words apparently, for Mauth-hounds of prodigious size and blackness, with white birds, and other disastrous omens, now began to display themselves profusely in the Haunted Chamber. Accustomed as I had become to regard all these appearances as mere automatic symptoms, I confess that I heard with pleasure the crow ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... anything disastrous happened for two or three days after the flood. Life assumed an even tenor, and I yawned ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... the disastrous results of such a course—for the black crimes thrust by Germany upon herself by drawing the sword, and the outrages in which she has indulged herself while drunk with victory are the inevitable fruits of the darkness which she has voluntarily entered. At present she ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... the command of Ricciardetto, Rinaldo's brother, was soon joined by Charlemagne and all his peerage, but experienced a disastrous rout, and the Emperor and many of his paladins were taken prisoners. Gradasso, however, did not abuse his victory; he took Charles by the hand, seated him by his side, and told him he warred only for honor. He renounced all conquests, on condition ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... and tea, and especially the dried fruits, made disastrous inroads upon it. The first words they had were over the sugar question. And it is a really serious thing when two men, wholly dependent upon each other for ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... The result was disastrous. England was not able by herself to consume the entire crop. Nor could the merchants re-export it to the continent because they did not have access to the markets. So the tobacco piled up in the English ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... eager to befriend him now. He had expressed no wish to have him sent on the hurried move, but well he knew the post commander's reasons and approved his course. Still, now that Field was being removed, for the time at least, from the possibility of an entangling alliance that might prove disastrous, in every way in his power Ray meant to show the mortified, indeed sorely angered, officer that his personal regard for him had suffered no change whatever. If he could succeed in winning Field's confidence it might ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... his daughter he had spoken only a few cold words, and his last bidding to her was 'Take care of the pothouse!' This treatment gave Miss Fouracres much pain, for she was a softhearted woman, and had never been anything but loyal and affectionate to her father all through his disastrous years. Moreover, she liked the Pig and Whistle, and could not bear to hear it spoken of disdainfully. Before the sound of the cart had died away she had to wipe moisture from her eyes, and at the moment when she was doing so Mr. Ruddiman came ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... believe that I shall speak for many other Europeans in this matter, that what we feared most in the United States was levity. We expected mere excitement, violent fluctuations of opinion, a confused irresponsibility, and possibly mischievous and disastrous interventions. It is no good hiding an open secret. We judged America by the peace headline. It is time we began to offer our apologies to America and democracy. The result of reading endless various American newspapers and articles, of following the actions of the American Government, of talking ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was disastrous to the Warrascoyack settlement. More than 50 men and women were slain "at Mr. Edward Bennett's Plantation" including the commander "Master Th: Brewood, his wife, his childe, two servants." Perhaps, ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... not employ it in the present catalogue of Philippine earthquakes, but retain the almost universally adopted scale of De Rossi-Forel. We shall also present more details as to the towns and buildings damaged, the number of victims and other disastrous effects than enter into the ...
— Catalogue of Violent and Destructive Earthquakes in the Philippines - With an Appendix: Earthquakes in the Marianas Islands 1599-1909 • Miguel Saderra Maso
... universal might sooner or later bring disastrous consequences on the Holy See, but they lay in the uncertain future. It was otherwise with nepotism, which threatened at one time to destroy the Papacy altogether. Of all the 'nipoti,' Cardinal Pietro Riario enjoyed at first the chief and almost exclusive favour ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Nationales," F7, 3268 and 3269, passim.—Minutes of the meeting of the Municipality of Montlhery, February 28, 1792: "We cannot enter into fuller details without exposing ourselves to extremities which would be only disastrous to us."—Letter of the justice of the peace of the canton, February 25: "Public outcry teaches me that if I issue writs of arrest against those who massacred ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... reported to Rilla; but they did not hurt her as they would once have done. They didn't matter, that was all. Life was too big to leave room for pettiness. She had a pact to keep and a work to do; and through the long hard days and weeks of that disastrous autumn she was faithful to her task. The war news was consistently bad, for Germany marched from victory to victory over poor Rumania. "Foreigners—foreigners," Susan muttered dubiously. "Russians or Rumanians or whatever ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the system on which the young girls in this country are brought up. (You see, I have to come back to the young girls.) When it succeeds, they are the most charming possible; when it doesn't, the failure is disastrous. If a girl is a very nice girl, the American method brings her to great completeness—makes all her graces flower; but if she isn't nice, it makes her exceedingly disagreeable—elaborately and fatally perverts her. In ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... fear the enthusiasm they never felt; and instead of cherishing this divine thing, instead of giving it room and air for healthful growth, they would crush and confine it—with but one result of their victorious endeavours— imposthume, fever, and corruption. And the disastrous consequences would soon appear in the intellect likewise which they worship. Kill that whence spring the crude fancies and wild day-dreams of the young, and you will never lead them beyond dull facts—dull because their ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... to his feet, bursting with anger, in spite of the inward admonition that much that he prized was in danger, that any breach with Hylda would be disastrous. But self-will and his native arrogance overruled the monitor within, and he said: "Don't preach to me, don't play the martyr. You will do this and you will do that! You will save my honour and the family name! You will relieve Claridge Pasha, you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... . There is something poetical, and almost heroic, in this Expedition to the Niger—the motives lofty and Christian—the issue so disastrous. Do you remember in A. Cunningham's Scottish Songs {100b} one called 'The Darien Song'? ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... machines of wood and iron, with foot-rests, seats, and desks revolving automatically, in order to preclude alike the movements of the child and the distortions arising from immobility, are the economically disastrous contribution of a false principle of "school-hygiene." In the modern school, the uniform whiteness and the washable quality of every object denote the triumph of an epoch in which the campaign against microbes would seem to be the sole key ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... afterwards ascertained by prisoners who were recaptured from the Wyandotte, that seventeen of the Indians had been killed, and two severely wounded. This battle was fought on the same day, with the disastrous battle of the ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... and continual attacks; never did I endure infidelity so open or insult so unblushing. But, patience; the day of vengeance is at hand, or rather is here! This moment will I fly and take it! Expect to hear 'of battles, sieges, disastrous chances, and of moving accidents; but not of hair breadth 'scapes!'—Escape she cannot! ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... three days, we remained in this state of cruel uncertainty. By the help of my spying-glass, I had made a drawing of this disastrous scene; that I might be enabled the better to ascertain, whether the morrow would be productive ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... got the band buttoned and Sherm heaved a sigh of relief—a disastrous sigh—it sent the button flying and the weighted skirt once more ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... interest which he could get at home, and not considering that the greater the promised profit the greater the risk, he made investments in some of our stock companies and bonds. When these investments proved disastrous, he raved and fumed, calling upon our Government—which had nothing more to do with the matter than had the English Parliament—to make good ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... boast that a horseman might ride without stumbling over the sites where those cities had stood. Panic-stricken, the emperor moved his court from Chung-tu to K'ai-feng Fu, much against the advice of his ministers, who foresaw the disastrous effect this retreat would have on the fortunes of Kin. The state of Sung, which up to this time had paid tribute, now declined to recognize Kin as its feudal chief, and a short time afterwards declared war against its quondam ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Doctor, very well executed, and representing him with a face of fussy activity and benevolence: just the kind of man, if luck favored him, to build up the fortunes of those about him, or, quite as probably, to blight his whole neighborhood by some disastrous speculation. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thing, but the man seems to have some odd kind of gift. Whether it be that "second sight" which we Scotch people are so prone to believe in, or some other occult form of knowledge, I know not, but nothing of a disastrous tendency ever occurs in this place but the men with whom he lives are able to quote after the event some saying of his which certainly appears to have foretold it. He gets uneasy or excited—wakes up, in fact—when death is in ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... and communications. Since 1970, an increasing fraction of the human race has been losing the battle for self-sufficiency in food, and must rely on heavy imports. A major disruption of agriculture and transportation in the grain-exporting and manufacturing countries could thus prove disastrous to countries importing food, farm machinery, and fertilizers—especially those which are already struggling with the threat of widespread starvation. Moreover, virtually every economic area, from food and medicines to fuel and growth engendering ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... anchorages, near Cape Leveque (volume 2 page 91) the brig was for a whole night surrounded by these enormous fish, and the crew in momentary dread of their falling on board, the consequence of which would have been very disastrous. The noise of their fall in the water, on a calm night, was as loud as the report of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... on which the delicate tracery of leafless sprays and blacker chevaux de frise of pine was faintly etched, as a consistent setting to the turrets and peacefully stacked chimneys of Stukeley Castle. Yet, even in this disastrous eclipse of color and distance, the harmonious outlines of the long, gray, irregular pile seemed to him as wonderful as ever. It still dominated the whole landscape, and, as he had often fancied, carried this subjection even to the human beings who had created ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... fire-place, and in a half dreamy state was reviewing the incidents of my early life, and like most men who, however young, have still to lament talents misapplied, opportunities neglected, profitless labour, and disastrous idleness. The dreary aspect of the large and ill-lighted room—the close-curtained boxes—the unsocial look of every thing and body about suited the habit of my soul, and I was on the verge of becoming excessively sentimental—the unbroken ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... one of the poorest and least developed Latin American countries, reformed its economy after suffering a disastrous economic crisis in the early 1980s. The reforms spurred real GDP growth, which averaged 4 percent in the 1990s, and poverty rates fell. Economic growth, however, lagged again beginning in 1999 because of a global slowdown ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... absolute military despotism. "A military republic, a government founded on mock elections and supported only by the sword," was nearly a quarter of a century since pronounced by Daniel Webster, when speaking of the South American States, as "a movement, indeed, but a retrograde and disastrous movement, from the regular and old-fashioned monarchical ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... professedly defensive warlike preparations have in effect been preparations for breaking the peace; against which, at least ostensibly, a remedy had been sought in the preparation of still heavier armaments, with full realisation that more armament would unfailingly entail a more unsparing and more disastrous war,—which sums up the statecraft of the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Mr. Davis's prediction of the destruction of the army would have been realized, or else Sherman would have been obliged to make a successful retreat, which Mr. Davis said in his speeches would prove more disastrous than Napoleon's ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... be few things so bad as the sense of insecurity that we had that afternoon. The very ground seemed to have been cut away from under our feet. We had gathered enough from the officers of our Division to know that something very disastrous "somewhere" had occurred. It was the very vagueness of the thing that terrified us. What could have happened? Only something very monstrous could have compelled so general a retirement. We might all of us be prisoners ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... so be it; one can get out of it, thank God! or at least, one can hope so, which shortens the time infinitely. Beside, the colonel might noise abroad my approaching descent into Cornwall, which would be truly disastrous." ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... eighteen-mile ride to Valley Forge over the crooked Perkiomen road, which, was none the better for the breaking up of the frost. I rode along with a light heart, but I was watchful, being so used to disastrous adventures. Happily, I met with ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Town did Old King Cole A wise old age anticipate, Desiring, with his pipe and bowl, No Khan's extravagant estate. No crown annoyed his honest head, No fiddlers three were called or needed; For two disastrous heirs instead Made music more than ever ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... the name of James the Eighth, and the landowners in the counties subject to the Earl were taxed at whatever rate he chose to impose. Perth continued to be the head-quarters of the Lieutenant General until a few days before this disastrous ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... motives," replies Trueman. "It is because I have your interests at heart that I cannot see you pursue a course that will lead to disastrous consequences." ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... hearing hard bald matter-of-fact; and she was amused and rebuked by his assumption that she must be entertaining an anxiety about master's favourite mare. But, ah! that Diana had delayed in choosing a mate; had avoided her disastrous union with perhaps a more imposing man, to see the true beauty of masculine character in Mr. Redworth, as he showed himself to-day. How could he have doubted succeeding? One grain more of faith in his energy, and Diana might have been mated to the right husband for her—an open-minded ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... strongly out of them all. War's mad havoc has swept over it in many a troubled period of our history. Plague, pestilence, and famine have afflicted it sorely; and it has suffered from trade riots, "plug-drawings," panics, and strikes of most disastrous kinds. Proud Preston—the town of the Stanleys and the Hoghtons, and of "many a crest that is famous in story"—the town where silly King Jamie disported himself a little, with his knights and nobles, during the time of his ruinous visit ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... home in the Highlands did this disastrous, though glorious intelligence, bring desolation and mourning; and amongst those on whom it brought these dismal effects, was M'Pherson ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... fortune still faithful. These reminiscences are painful to me, but they recur to my mind even against my will; for no year of the Empire was marked by more fetes, more triumphant entries, or more popular rejoicings, than that which preceded the disastrous year ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... as disastrous to human progress to teach women to bow down to the authority of man, as divinely inspired, as it is to teach man to bow down to the authority of Kings and Popes, as divinely ordained, for in both cases we violate the fundamental idea on which a Republican government and the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... following year was disastrous, whether by the intemperature of the air, or by human guilt, Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Caius Valerius being consuls. I find in the annals Flaccus and Potitus variously given as the surname of the consul; ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... what he was expected to do, and was nimbly endeavoring to swing his weight this way or that after they had launched on the waves, so as to keep the pontoons on an even keel, and prevent a disastrous spill. For once this occurred, the hydroplane would be of little more advantage than the wrecked biplane, which barely upheld the two clinging men, and was evidently sinking lower under the strain, with each passing second, until the ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... grinning, "but insanity's worse. Had the maddest ride of my life, Dad—my poor old Garryowen's absolutely cowed, and has no tail left to speak of!" He ducked to avoid a cushion from his sister. "It's a most disastrous experiment to keep Norah off a horse ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... look out fur hisse'f," she thought fretfully, for she could not discern into what disastrous swirl she might be guiding events as she took the helm. "He's big enough, the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... in this connection that the admirable education which we give to girls, and the wise provisions made by the law under which men marry, bear all their fruit. Let us examine the circumstances which precede and attend those marriages which are least disastrous. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... not end at that. The lubras' methods of washing had proved most disastrous to my meagre wardrobe; and the resources of the homestead were taxed to the utmost to provide sufficient patching material to keep ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... made for the debris heaps on the Reservoir side—whence, through a glass, the shells could be seen bursting in rapid succession at Spytfontein. Strong though the position admittedly was, its defenders could never resist a cannonade so awful. It was the famous, disastrous battle of Magersfontein that was in progress. But of that we then knew nothing. We knew not that hundreds of the Highland Brigade lay dead, nor that while Kimberley was brimming over with enthusiasm at the prospect of immediate freedom, dismay ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Southern seaboard the course of the war was even more disastrous to the Americans. Intelligence which reached the national authorities in the spring of 1814 led them to believe that the British were planning an expedition for the capture of Washington. Grave as was the danger, the authorities ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Evil); painfulness, &c 830; evil doer, &c 913. outrage, wrong, injury, foul play; bad turn, ill turn; disservice, spoliation &c 791; grievance, crying evil. V. be in trouble &c (adversity) 735. Adj. disastrous, bad &c 649; awry, out of joint; disadvantageous. Adv. amis [Fr.], wrong, ill, to one's cost Phr. moving accidents by flood ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on to Concord, the thousand disciplined British regulars captured and destroyed the military stores collected there. This was easily done; but the return from Concord to Lexington, and from Lexington to Cambridge, proved a disastrous retreat. The British found indeed no minutemen drawn up in military array to block their path; but they found themselves subject to the deadly fire of men concealed behind the trees and rocks and clumps of shrubs that everywhere conveniently lined the open road. With this method of warfare, ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... the soil, and give rise to moderate and persistent instead of torrential streams. Spain has been irretrievably injured by the cutting down of her forests in the course of a few hundred years. The same thing is going on, to a disastrous extent, in parts of the United States. Whole provinces of the Thibetan borders of China have been converted into uninhabitable, sandy desert, where centuries ago were fertile and well-watered pastures supporting rich cities, in consequence of the reckless destruction of forest. ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... feeling. We should never ask or want him to "put away childish things" at this age, for these childish things are a proof of his normality and good health. His buoyant life and good health may prove disastrous to the furniture in his home, but far better marred furniture than marred childhood. If, at this age, he should become as quiet and sedate as his father, his parents and teacher would have cause for alarm. ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... splendid instrumentalists, who came while yet the Boston Symphonists were playing in Festival Hall. As a result the finest of bands was placed in competition with the finest of orchestras. But nothing disastrous happened. Those who desired, to the number of fifteen thousand, heard Sousa at his opening concert in the Court of the Universe; those who desired heard Dr. Muck's instrumentalists, to the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... own, that an irresistible feeling carries me back incessantly to that disastrous epoch of our public and private calamities. My memory feels a sort of melancholy pleasure in contemplating and renewing the painful traces which so many horrors have left in it. Is the soul, also, proud of her ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... to wait on them after supper with his story. He presented himself promptly in the parlour, and being questioned as to his condition at once rashly proclaimed his former connection with the ducal theatre of Pianura. No avowal could have been more disastrous to his cause. The canonesses crossed themselves with horror, and the abate, seeing his mistake, hastened to repair it by exclaiming—"What, ladies, would you punish me for following a vocation to which my frivolous ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... that Tempe had been evacuated without a blow, and the pass left open to Xerxes. It was said Democrates, in his ever commendable activity, had discovered at the last moment the mountain wall was not as defensible as hoped, and any resistance would have been disastrous. Therefore, whilst the retreat was bewailed, everybody praised the foresight of the orator. Everybody—one should say, except two, Bias and Phormio. They had many conferences together, especially after the coming and ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... memory deceives me), and was admonished that if, when the funeral was in action, I put my hands in my pockets, or took my eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, I was personally lost, and my family disgraced. On the eventful day, having tried to get myself into a disastrous frame of mind, and having formed a very poor opinion of myself because I couldn't cry, I repaired to Sally's. Sally was an excellent creature, and had been a good wife to old Flanders, but the moment I saw her I knew that she was not ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... brilliant victory at Saratoga. With the collapse of Burgoyne, England saw that further campaigning in a country so far removed from home was disastrous. It only remained to formulate some mutual agreement. We have triumphed. Why not be magnanimous? Why subject the country to a terrible strain for years for a ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... off from the district in which your father's property lies. From such spies as have been able to get to me, I learn that a disastrous battle has been fought near the place and that the Constitutionalists have swept everything before them. They have overrun that part of Chihuahua and, that being the case, foreigners are not likely to be well treated ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... principle! Oh my God! That religious principle, that for the sake of an abstract right whose very exercise were disastrous to the unprepared bondmen who inherit it, would tear this blest confederacy in pieces, and deluge these smiling plains in fraternal blood, and barter the loftiest freedom that the world ever saw, for the armed despotism of a great civil warfare! ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... attained personal distinction by the death of an elephant, which one of the party brought to the ground by a two-ounce ball. The "warriors" were all in astonishment at this feat, to which all had predicted the most disastrous termiration; and "Boroo, the brave chief of the Soopa," exclaimed in his delight, "The world was made for you, and no one else has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... restorers" which are advertised are chemical preparations which act in the manner of a dye or as a paint, and are nearly always dependent for their power on the presence of lead. This mineral, applied to the skin, for a long time, will lead to the most disastrous maladies—lead-palsy, lead colic, and other symptoms of poisoning. It should, therefore, never be used ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... from Honeychild was the best man—the oldest and most experienced—but on the other hand he wanted the most money, and probably also his own way. After the disastrous precedent of Fuller, Joanna wasn't going to have another looker who thought he knew better than she did. Now, Dick Socknersh, he would mind her properly, she felt sure.... Day from Slinches had the longest "character"—fifteen years man and boy; but ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... of the horses had perished before the retiring army reached Bavaria. Good fortune, however, attended the retreat. Had the Avars recovered from the panic into which their successive defeats had thrown them, they might have taken a disastrous revenge upon the invaders. But as it was, Charlemagne succeeded in retiring without being attacked, and was able to take with him the valuable booty and the host of prisoners which were the trophies of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... dwell on the disastrous tale? Forbid to see me, Percy soon embark'd With our great king against the Saracen. Soon as the jarring kingdoms were at peace, Earl Douglas, whom till then I ne'er had seen, Came to this castle; 'twas my hapless fate To please ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... has brought back home and home-life with unusual force to him. With all his rough off-handedness, Slagg is a tender-hearted, affectionate fellow. Somehow he has taken it into his head that this voyage will be disastrous, and that he will never see his mother again. I had great difficulty in showing him the unreasonableness ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... States and distinct communities, of such diversified habits, interests, and domestic institutions, must be sacredly and religiously observed. Any attempt to disturb or destroy these compromises, being terms of the compact of union, can lead to none other than the most ruinous and disastrous consequences. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... the others in disastrous consequences is the notion that the young people must begin where their parents left off; that the house must be, if anything, a little more elaborate. Therefore in starting life the rent is allowed to consume one third the income in sight, without considering the cost of maintaining ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... ferment during the greater part of this century, caused by a growing jealousy for the maintenance of the principle of the right to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience. Nor was the struggle less virulent or disastrous in continental Europe. The religious upheaval of the previous century culminated in the terrible conflict known as the Thirty Years' War; this lasted from 1618 till 1648, when the Peace of Westphalia secured religious ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... question'd me the story of my life, From year to year: the battles, sieges, fortunes, That I have past. I ran it through, even from my boyish days To the very moment that he bade me tell it. Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving incidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth 'scapes in the imminent deadly breach, Of being taken by the insolent foe, And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence, And 'portance in my travels' ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... did as he pleased. If the reader wishes to see how the former acted, Mr. Cobden's pamphlet, 'How Wars are got up in India' will enlighten him. If it be necessary to inquire what the policy of the latter might be, the disastrous and disgraceful Affghan War is an illustration. Never perhaps was a war commenced more recklessly. It is certain that when loss and dishonour fell on the English arms, the statesmen who recommended and insisted ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... ship, since a perfect reflector is a perfect non-radiator. The vacuum wall is to protect the occupants of the ship against any undue heat. If we should get within the atmosphere of a sun, it would be disastrous if the physical conduction of heat were permitted, for though the relux will turn out any radiated heat, it is a conductor of heat, and we would roast almost instantly. These artificial metals are both absolutely infusible and non-volatile. The ship ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... decanter of port. I had drawn my chair to the corner of the ample fire-place, and in a half dreamy state was reviewing the incidents of my early life, and like most men who, however young, have still to lament talents misapplied, opportunities neglected, profitless labour, and disastrous idleness. The dreary aspect of the large and ill-lighted room—the close-curtained boxes—the unsocial look of every thing and body about suited the habit of my soul, and I was on the verge of becoming excessively sentimental—the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... gayety, to call her Cotillon II., instead of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, and styled her reign of favor le regne de Cotillon; a witticism which so incensed her, that, according to some writers, we may trace to this petty cause the origin of the disastrous seven years' war. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... a coward, and wanted bottom, upon getting a little wind, whilst the other held him by the throat, gave three of the most ludicrous, but disastrous, howls that ever were witnessed. On his opponent letting him go, he took to his heels, but got a kick on going out that was rather calculated to accelerate his flight. Legislators, therefore, ought to know that no political whipping will ever make a people laugh ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... that a portion of her steam-case was unavoidably exposed above deck. A shot into this would have been disastrous. Orders were therefore given to surround it with bags of ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Chelsea Postman, was it recovered at all, not many days ago, after my Wife's return hither. Consider what kind of fact this was and has been for us! For now, if all have gone right, you are approaching the coast of England; Chelsea and your fraternal House hidden under a disastrous cloud to you; and I know not so much as whitherward to write, and send you a word of solution. It is one of the most unpleasant mistakes that ever befell me; I have no resource but to enclose this Note to Mr. Ireland, and charge him by the strongest adjurations to have it ready for ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... head. "If you're set on it," said he, "you'll do it; I quite agree with you there. But I should have thought you'd seen enough of the nigger to know what a disastrous animal he is after some of these ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... for Tom Tot would stare him stolidly in the eye, however preposterous the tale to be told. The twins and I had waited in vain—ready to explode at the right moment: but never having the opportunity. The last assault on Tom Tot's composure had been disastrous to the skipper. When, with highly elaborate detail, he had once more described his plan for training whales, disclosing, at last, his intention of having a wheel-house on what he called ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... behind, as if perfectly satisfied that she should take the lead. But a mistake now might be disastrous and waste hours of time; so, calling the dog forward, she began to talk to him in an eager, caressing fashion: "Good old Hero, clever old dog, go and find Mary! Mary wants you ever so badly; hurry ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... had lent an attentive ear to every circumstance of this disastrous story, no sooner heard it concluded, than, with an aspect of generous and cordial compassion, not even unattended with tears, he condoled the lamentable fate of Don Diego de Zelos, deplored the untimely death of the ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... battle is prone to take to itself more than its quota of the success from the united efforts of many divisions. A division may be so placed as to bear the brunt of an offensive and by a stubborn, bloody stand stop a disastrous defeat; but it takes many combined divisions fighting with equal valor and success under a great staff to put over a great offensive, such as was the battle of Vittorio Veneto; in result, at least, the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... time, the chief occupation of the colonial forces is the establishment of the Dutch authority in Sumatra. Since 1874 the natives of Achin have successfully resisted the Dutch, and the Achin war has proved so costly and so disastrous, that the Home Government have ordered the operations of the troops to be confined to such as are purely defensive. Acting under these instructions, the colonial forces have retired behind a chain of forts, and all attempts to advance into the interior have been ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... for, as described by Mr. Henson, these fanners are only necessary for propulsion, and not at all requisite for maintaining the machine in the air. Unfortunately, however, I perfectly forgot, in the hurry of the moment, to remove the weights from the safety valve, and the effects from this were disastrous in the extreme. The great accumulation of steam that took place was too much for the pipes; and, consequently, bang went three of them, at the same instant. The machine, at this exact moment, feeling its equilibrium altered, surged considerably, and the remaining pipes necessarily followed ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... news we had previously heard, of the disastrous results which followed the attempt of a party of missionaries, under the Rev. H. Helmore, to plant the gospel at Linyanti, were here fully confirmed. Several of the missionaries and their native attendants, from Kuruman, had succumbed ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... be a question but that distrust of conditions is a fatal element in all effort and achievement. Depression might, indeed, well take its place among the seven deadly sins that Dante names. There are serious errors whose effect is less disastrous than is that of habitual depression of spirits. Mental power is one's working capital, and the degree of power depends, absolutely, on the quality of thought, or, as the phrase goes, on "the state of mind." Conditions determine events, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... part of his forces in fortifying the headland of Plemmyrium, which commanded the entrance to the Great Harbour. Here he built three forts which served as an arsenal for the Athenian stores; and henceforth Plemmyrium became the chief station for his fleet. This removal had a disastrous effect on the Athenian crews; for the place being almost a desert, and the springs distant and scanty, they were compelled to go far from their quarters in search of forage and water, and while thus engaged they were cut off in great numbers by the Syracusan horse, who had been posted ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... best course," said Johnson, mildly; while the doctor walked around the table, being unable to sit quiet any longer. "Yes, that's the best course; and still, too long a delay might have very disastrous consequences. In the first place, the season is a good one, and if it's north we are going, we ought to take advantage of the mild weather to get through Davis Straits; besides, the crew will get more and ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... chipped glasses, mutilated furniture, bore witness in quantities to the disastrous hours they passed in her company. Poor Mamma Sophie avoided her own daughter, and was afraid to be left alone with her. She was the only person in the house who ever heard Athalie's natural voice, and ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... interest, Amphitryon, in the glory which your illustrious exploits have cast upon you; the fame of your victory moves my heart to its depths. But when I see that this disastrous honour keeps my lover away from me, such is my heart's feeling that I cannot forbear to think ill of it, and to regret the high order which makes you general of the Thebans. It is sweet after a victory to see the glory to which one's lover has been raised; but, from among the perils attached ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... much as the tiniest part of a minute," said Yetive, recalling another disastrous eavesdropping. "I am much wiser than when Baldos first came to serve you. We were quite a distance behind Count Marlanx, ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... that romance is the real demiurge, "the first and loveliest daughter of human vanity," whereby mankind is duped—and exalted. "No one on the preferable side of Bedlam wishes to be reminded of what we are in actuality, even were it possible, by any disastrous miracle, ever to dispel the mist which romance has evoked about all human doings." Therefore romance has created the "dynamic illusions" of chivalry and love and common sense and religion and art and patriotism and optimism, and therein "the ape reft of his tail and ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... upon Bohemia had a disastrous effect upon her intellectual life and national development which were completely paralysed until the end of the eighteenth century, when owing to the humanitarian ideals of those times, and as a reaction against the Germanising centralistic efforts of Joseph II., the Czechs ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... said, his character was not heroic; he was, perhaps, inclined to humble himself unduly before mere power and rank, and he had the fault, common to most rhetoricians, of over-estimating the power of words and thinking that a few fluent platitudes would heal inveterate discords and hide disastrous blunders. But when we have said this we have said the worst. He was, as far as we have any means of judging, a loyal subject, a faithful friend, a strenuous and successful administrator, and an exceptionally far-sighted statesman. His right to this last designation rests upon the part ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... too far to say—as several military writers have done—that General von Zwehl saved Germany, and that unless he had arrived as opportunely as he did the "German retreat to the Aisne valley would have been changed into a disastrous and overwhelming rout." But it is not going too far to say that the successful holding of the Aisne line was due to the victor ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... character, Togo's object being to imbue the Russian mind with the idea that the Japanese mines were so useless that they might be safely disregarded. Then, when this object had been achieved, genuine Odo mines would be sown, with disastrous results to such Russian ships as might chance to ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... style than any other of the great poets, with the exception of one or two like Spenser and Keats, who seem to have a mysterious incapacity for writing bad poetry. But almost all original poets, particularly poets who have invented an artistic style, are subject to one most disastrous habit—the habit of writing imitations of themselves. Every now and then in the works of the noblest classical poets you will come upon passages which read like extracts from an American book of parodies. Swinburne, for example, when he ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... the yard, who walk round him on tiptoe, slowly, with their frills out and their tails arched, growling. Rover, also, walks about on tiptoe, arches his tail, and growls with the best of them. He knows that the slightest mistake would be disastrous, and so manoeuvres till he gets to the porch, where, a deal of gravel having been kicked backwards, in the same way as the ancients poured out their wine when they drank a toast, or else (as I think is more probable) as a symbol that animosities were to be buried, Rover is admitted as a guest, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... confusion at the news of the disastrous defeat of its defenders, could perhaps have been easily taken, and its capture might possibly have closed the struggle in favor of liberty. It certainly was a moment for that boldness on which success so often depends, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... taught that human nature is composed of two hostile elements, a body and a soul. The soul alone was to be honoured, while the body was regarded as the vile source of evils. This doctrine has had many disastrous consequences, and it is not surprising that in consequence of it celibacy should have been regarded as the ideal state. Art fell from the Greek ideal until the Renaissance, with its return to that ideal, brought ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... the portion of the wise-hearted man in this kingdom. And this yet further, my friend. If perchance the uncertainties of travel in this distressed land should prove disastrous and I should not return, I shall leave a ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... This long and disastrous retreat was rendered a necessity as soon as Fort Henry, on the Tennessee river, was taken by the Federal forces, as this river was opened, and they could throw an army in the rear of the Confederates as far south as Florence, in Alabama, ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... and when conflicting claims arose between the two powers—the civil and the ecclesiastical—this doctrine of the divine origin of civil government was abused, and turned against the church with most disastrous consequences. While the Roman Empire of the West subsisted, and even after its fall, so long as the emperor of the East asserted and practically maintained his authority in the Exarchate of Ravenna and the ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... appreciations. The invisible ghosts and Gods would never have been thought interested in the morality of the tribe, had not the leaders realized the importance of courage, of loyalty, of respect for neighbors' possessions, and the other elementary virtues. It is when the disastrous consequences of their absence became evident that the Gods were made to sanction these virtues. God or no God, immortality or no immortality, the essential morality of man would have been what it is." (J. H. Leuba: "Belief in God ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... mistake of Mr Paton's—a mistake of judgment only—for which he cannot be blamed. But it was a disastrous mistake. Had he been at all a delicate judge or reader of the phenomena of character, he would have observed at once that at that moment there was a wild spirit of anger, a rankling sense of injustice and persecution in Walter's heart, which no amount ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... The first disastrous defeat took place on a field, which was afterwards made memorable by a great victory, and by a name which lives still as a watchword for hope and gratitude. Happy they who at last conquer where they once failed, and in the retrospect can say, 'Hitherto ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... more fatal than etiquette to those who regard it as the most formidable arm of social law. Lucien easily interpreted the meaning of this scene, so disastrous to him. The Duke and Duchess would not admit him. He felt the spinal marrow freezing in the core of his vertebral column, and a sickly cold sweat bedewed his brow. The conversation had taken place in the presence of his ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... support 40,000 French troops in five garrison-towns upon the Oder. Such was the dismay caused by this announcement, that Stein quitted Koenigsberg, now the seat of government, and passed three months at the head-quarters of the French at Berlin, endeavouring to frame some settlement less disastrous to his country. Count Daru, Napoleon's administrator in Prussia, treated the Minister with respect, and accepted his proposal for the evacuation of Prussian territory on payment of a fixed sum to the French. But the agreement required Napoleon's ratification, and for ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the York and the James rivers. The correctness of his judgment was justified by subsequent campaigns; for the successive attempts of Pope, Burnside, Hooker, and Grant to take the Confederate capital from the north were all disastrous failures. ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... of Hadadrimmon in the Valley of Megiddon. Vespasian reviewed his army in the same great plain. It has been a chosen place for encampments in every contest carried on in this country, from the days of Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, down to the disastrous invasion of Napoleon Bonaparte. Jews, Gentiles, Saracens, Egyptians, Persians, Druses, Turks, Arabs, Christian Crusaders, and Antichristian Frenchmen,—warriors out of every nation under heaven,—have pitched their tents upon the Plain of Esdraelon, and ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Nemesis, the only effect it ever had, was disastrous. Whatever else it might be, it was undoubtedly heretical, and in the Oxford of 1849 heresy was the unpardonable sin. The Senior Tutor of Exeter, the Reverend William Sewell, burnt the book during a lecture in the College Hall. Sewell, afterwards founder and ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... responsibility which now rests with ourselves. We have been too long a prey to that deep delusion, which, because the ills of the country we love were in past days largely caused from without, bids us look to the same source for their cure. The true remedies are to be sought elsewhere; for, however disastrous may have been the past, the injury was moral rather than material, and the opportunity has now arrived for the patient building up again of Irish character in those qualities which win in the modern struggle for existence. The field for ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... ditch being nearly empty of water, was crossed, but a second, close under the walls of the fort, was full; and here, finding his immediate followers reduced to fifty men, while the larger party behind was almost exhausted, nearly 300 having been stricken down in their disastrous rush across the mud—he felt that it was his duty to wait for reinforcements. On sending back, however, for them, the commanding officer was obliged to refuse the request and to order him to retire, as there were no men to be spared. ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... anxiety and embarrassment to me. I would rather not have even Julius; for I could not trust him. He is not amenable to discipline, and it is quite on the cards that at a critical moment he might take it into his head to do the wrong thing, with disastrous consequences ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... was at Scarborough during one of the most fearful and disastrous storms that ever swept the Yorkshire coast. He had no sleep on the previous night on account of the storm, and on Saturday he said to a friend 'I shall have a sound sleep to-night.' Alas! before he closed his eyes in sleep, and while nobly endeavouring to rescue a number of drowning sailors, ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... ultimatum, Spence advised yielding as he "could not hesitate ... seeing that nothing could be so disastrous politically, as well as financially, as the public break-down of the Loan[1068]." Mason gave the required authorization and this was later approved from Richmond. For a time the "bulling" of the loan was successful, but again and again ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... unhappy Piso, was this disastrous night. Surely all was done on our part to secure a successful issue. I can discern no defect nor fault. We could not have been more fleet. Swifter beasts never trod the sands of Arabia. What then? Hath there not been, think you, foul play? Whence got ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... to the fine arts, himself a talented painter and composer. He was a hard worker, and also fond of the pleasures of life. His health was injured through illness, in 1857, and he never recovered. The premature death of his second son, Prince Gustavus, a talented composer and highly popular, had a disastrous effect on him, and he died July 8, 1859, after a long illness, beloved by the two nations who, during his reign, had enjoyed the happiest ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... During the disastrous fire of the Kent East Indiaman, a lady on board exhibited a very singular instance of sang froid and presence of mind. Being in one of the cabins, with a large, helpless, despairing, and of course, most troublesome party, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... had died away too, the last violent squall which had been so disastrous to the Josephine, having been the expiring blast of the hurricane; so, although, as I've said, the sea still continued to run high, the waves rolled by more regularly and with an equal pulsation, ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... usual, will be supported by famine, by the absolute refusal of all prisoners to take any nourishment whatsoever, a process which kills the prisoners, but before which the Government, anxious to avoid the disastrous impression which these numerous deaths produce, yields, at least in appearance. Whilst we wait all is darkness, for the warders have not lit the little lamps. Through the disordered cells run strange murmurs, and passions are again ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... his parents, which happened not many months after this disastrous accident, and were probably (one or both of them) accelerated by it, threw our youth upon the protection of his maternal great-aunt, Mrs. Sittingbourn. Of this aunt we have never heard him speak but with expressions amounting almost to reverence. To the influence of her early counsels and manners ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... of death by the divine law itself. And Saul is praised for having caused this law to be put in execution in the beginning of his reign; and the Holy Scripture attributes to the breach of it (namely, his consulting the witch) his disastrous death, and the transfer of the kingdom to David. The Emperor Constantine the Great, and other emperors who founded the civil law, condemned to death those who should practise such facinorousness, - as the President of Tolosa ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... nineteenth century, is this book true? The gentleman who wrote it begins by telling us that God made the universe out of nothing. That I cannot conceive; it may be so, but I cannot conceive it. Nothing in the light of raw material, is, to my mind, a decided and disastrous failure. I cannot imagine of nothing being made into something, any more than I can of something being changed back into nothing. I cannot conceive of force aside from matter, because force to be force must be active, and unless there is matter ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... excitement. The minister and elders of the Church heard it with serious concern, and considered that a Church meeting should be called without delay before the thing grew worse. It would be disastrous to permit such a scandal to go unexamined ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. He smiled, and glanced about the room. Did Warricombe know how far things had gone between him and Sidwell? Whether or no, it was certain now that Sidwell would be informed of this disastrous piece of authorship—and ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... attendance upon the king. After him came the duc d'Aiguillon, whose features bore the visible marks of care and disquiet. He met me with the utmost tenderness and concern, asked of me the very smallest details of the disastrous events of the morning. I concealed nothing from him, and he listened to my recital with the most lively interest; and the account of the apparition of the wonderful being who seemed destined to follow me throughout my career was not the least interesting ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... touching in the patient fidelity with which Mrs. Barbauld tried to soothe the later sad disastrous years of her husband's life. She must have been a woman of singular nerve and courage to endure as she did the excitement and cruel aberrations of her once gentle and devoted companion. She only gave ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... we are in favor of peace; we grant that we have a large sympathy for the sufferings of humanity, but we also claim to be possessed of intelligence and knowledge and these have convinced us that there could be nothing more disastrous to the human race than a peace at this time, which would lead to greater suffering than a continuation of the war. Therefore, because we love peace and because we have large sympathy for human sufferings, we are opposed ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... displacing the air in the pipes, they will for some time contain a mixture of air and acetylene in proportions which fall within the explosive limits of such a mixture. If the escaping acetylene caught fire from any adjacent light under these conditions, a most disastrous explosion would ensue and extend through all the ramifications of the system of pipes. Therefore the first step when a new system of pipes has to be cleared of air is to see that there are no lights in or about the house—either fires, lamps, cigars or pipes, candles or other flames. Obviously ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... with Normandy by the capture of Meulan, and made himself master of the line of the Yonne by a victory near Auxerre. In 1424 the Constable of Buchan pushed from the Loire to the very borders of Normandy to arrest his progress, and attacked the English army at Verneuil. But a repulse hardly less disastrous than that of Agincourt left a third of the French knighthood on the field: and the Regent was preparing to cross the Loire for a final struggle with "the King of Bourges" as the English in mockery called Charles the Seventh when his career of victory was ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... retreating, disheartened and penniless, from the enemy, after the disastrous defeat at Camden, he was met at Catawba ford by Mrs. Elizabeth Steele, who, in her generous ardor in the cause of freedom, drew him aside, and, taking two bags of specie from under her apron, presented them to him, saying, "Take these, for you will want ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... dreadful,' said Stockdale, thinking of the disastrous effects of such indulgence upon the household of a minister, should it become a ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the original Confederation, the greatest of which was the paralysis of the action of the general agent by the opposition or indifference of the States? Sad as have been the consequences of the war which followed secession—disastrous in its moral, material, and political relations—still we have good cause to feel proud that the course of the Southern States has left no blot nor stain upon the honor and ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... in readiness in the attic which was his own; and the person who was to help him had waited with him, as interested as himself in the odd adventure. Ram Dass had been lying flat upon the slates, looking in at the skylight, when the banquet had come to its disastrous conclusion; he had been sure of the profoundness of Sara's wearied sleep; and then, with a dark lantern, he had crept into the room, while his companion remained outside and handed the things to him. When Sara had ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to the Mongolian or yellow race. They are an industrious, frugal, and temperate people, though the opium habit is very general and is disastrous in its effects. Doubtless the overcrowded population, which has driven many to live in boats and in crowded apartments, has had much to do in molding the Chinese character. Until recently they have been slow to admit modern improvements and ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... settled as a surgeon in his native town. Amidst due attention to his professional duties, he became ardently devoted to literary pursuits. Besides conducting several local periodicals, he contributed to some of the more important serials. During the year 1826, which proved so disastrous to the manufacturing interests in Paisley, he devised a scheme for the relief of the unemployed, and his services were appropriately acknowledged by the magistrates. He afterwards sought the general ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... beating the air on my side, and a steady trampling of solid earth on hers. My final argument, and that only, produced a certain effect upon this remarkably clear- headed girl. I told her that part of my story which dealt with Aurelia's perfections and my own disastrous imperfections; I made her understand that I was not the inexperienced man she had thought me; rather, I was one with two examples ever before him—one shining with the pure effulgence of Heaven, the other harsh, staring, horrible, like some baleful fire at sea. "Ah, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... state of the weather, the condition of the vessel, and the perverseness of the lieutenant, it is of no particular advantage to us in the explanation of the wreck, for we already know the why and wherefore of the disastrous event. But Mr. Ingram does not precisely state the number of persons lost. Was it not ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... transports provided for the enterprise. In this expedition the laurels of Poitiers were flung on the ground; after vainly attempting Rheims and Paris, Edward was constrained, by cruel weather and lack of provisions, to retreat toward his ships; the fury of the elements made the retreat more disastrous than an overthrow in pitched battle; horses and men perished by thousands, or fell into the hands of the pursuing French. Chaucer, who had been made prisoner at the siege of Retters, was among the captives in the possession of France when the treaty of Bretigny — the "great peace" ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... cynical, neither was it the result of disappointment. It was unvarnished truth, and more's the pity, but truth it was none the less. It was one of those hard facts, which he of all men, needed to know at the threshold of his experience with the world. Such a revelation proves disastrous to the many who go down to do business in that world. Ordinary and weak and neutral moral constitutions are wrecked on this reef set in the human sea. Like a true mariner he had written it boldly on his chart. There at such and such a point in the voyage ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... would have to belie the best traditions of the party, and discredit the cardinal principles of their once powerful and still deeply revered chief—the late Lord Beaconsfield—to whom Home Rule meant "veiled rebellion," and presented a danger "scarcely less disastrous than pestilence and famine." The Liberals are equally unlikely to risk the integrity and unity of the party by the concession of a claim which even an advanced Radical like Mr. Chamberlain has condemned as unwarrantable, unwise, and impossible ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... essayed by a wealthy firm of American merchants (Russell & Sturgis) with very disastrous results to themselves. They distributed capital all over the Colony, and the natives abused their support in a most abominable manner. A native, alleging that he had opened up a plantation, would call on the firm and procure advances ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... inspired by and in imitation of one which at the time of his arrival in San Francisco had just been brought to a disastrous end. This was the De Boulbon expedition into Mexico. The Count Gaston Raoulx de Raousset-Boulbon was a young French nobleman and Soldier of Fortune, a chasseur d'Afrique, a duellist, journalist, dreamer, who came to California to dig gold. Baron Harden-Hickey, ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... The disastrous effect upon the people of such a Press as I have described is obvious. It excites the nerves of the feeble, it presents a hideously false standard of life, it suggests that nobody is secure from the omnipotent eavesdropper, and it preaches day after day ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... effect upon them has been so disastrous. They were women of intelligence previous to this, one of them quite markedly so, but from that day they have given evidence of mental weakness which can only be attributed to their continual brooding over this mysterious topic. The house, whose ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... will over a very wide, if desolate territory, practice monogamy and polygamy.[1356] The sedentary population, on the other hand, is restricted to tillable lands so small that each farm produces only enough for one family. Subdivision under a divided inheritance would be disastrous to these dwarf estates, especially owing to possible complications growing out of irrigating rights.[1357] Polyandry leaves the estate and the family undivided, and by permitting only one wife to several fraternal husbands restricts the number ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... protection against the cold in winter, but I know none against early frosts, in fall, and late spring frosts; and the grape grower should therefore avoid all localities where they are prevalent. The immediate neighborhood of large streams, or lakes, will generally save the grape grower from their disastrous influence; and our summers, here, along the banks of the Missouri river, are in reality full two months longer than they are in the low, small valleys, only four to six miles off. Let the grape ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... it—but with no other intention than that of hospitality—that I felt rather queer. It was strong wine, and I was not used to it.' After years of almost total abstinence from intoxicating drink, the effect was disastrous. For a whole day, the poet was confined to his little room at the inn, feeling very ill, and wishing himself back at Helpston. But the men of Boston had not yet done with him, and seemed determined to have as much lionizing as the occasion allowed. ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... systems has led to such disastrous results that it is now more easy to learn botany than the terminology which has ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... many and disastrous were the losses of life and property in Table Bay. Gales from the N.W. and the NN.E. are frequent in the winter, and blow occasionally with resistless fury. In the old sailing days ships caught at anchor in the bay by one of these terrible storms were doomed to destruction. ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... to oblige us immensely, Mr. X, you will consent to give just one extra performance of an operation which, in fact, you accomplish three hundred and sixty-five times every year without any disastrous results. ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... of her experiences, Ruth was sent home, only to meet, as related in the fifteenth volume of the series, "Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; Or, A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils," an experience which seemed at first to be disastrous. In the end, however, the girl reached the Red Mill in a physical and mental state which made any undue excitement almost a ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... make a personal survey of the arsenal workshops at Sebastopol. It would, no doubt, have been a delightful trip, but it was not to be. The unfortunate disruption occurred between our Government and that of Russia, which culminated in the disastrous Crimean War. One of the first victims was Admiral Kornileff. He was killed by one of our first shots while engaged in placing some guns for the defence of the entrance to the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... to do in elections, I fear with too much truth. But then let us inquire who first trained and familiarized them to it? Why, the old landlords of Ireland; and now their descendants, and such of themselves as survive, may behold, in the crimes which disgrace the country, the disastrous effects of a bad system created by their forefathers ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... ships, the Cornwall and Lion, from being nearer the enemy than those about them (for the rear division had not then formed into line), drew upon themselves almost the whole of the enemy's fire." No words can show more clearly the disastrous, precipitate disorder in which this attack was conducted. The Grafton, White says, was similarly situated. In consequence, these three were so crippled, besides a heavy loss in men, that they dropped far to leeward and astern (c', c"), ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... is an acute observer. He perceives the growing interest which Hamersley takes in the sister of his host. He knows the story of the Chihuahua duel; and thinks that the other story—that of the disastrous revolution—told in detail, might retard the convalescence of his patient. Counselled by him, Colonel Miranda has ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... most charming of companions, was exactly Sir Walter's contemporary, and, like him, first attracted notice by a version of Buerger's Lenore. Like him, too, this remarkable man fell into pecuniary distress in the disastrous year 1825, and he was now (1826) an involuntary resident in Paris, where he died in October 1834, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... followers had taken refuge from the Moors. Some of the Portuguese imagined it to be the abode of their lost king Sebastian. The Spaniards pretended that Roderick, the last of their Gothic kings, had fled thither from the Moors after the disastrous battle of the Guadalete. Others suggested that it might be the seat of the terrestrial paradise, the place where Enoch and Elijah remained in a state of blessedness until the final day; and that it was made at times apparent ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... led out of the salt sea, were taboo. "Taboo," as word or sound, had no place in Jerry's vocabulary. But its definition, or significance, was there in the quickest part of his consciousness. He possessed a dim, vague, imperative knowingness that it was not merely not good, but supremely disastrous, leading to the mistily glimpsed sense of utter endingness for a dog, for any dog, to go into the water where slipped and slid and noiselessly paddled, sometimes on top, sometimes emerging from the depths, ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... which should have been their happiest he invariably, and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and modes of feeling that it became the central point of all. With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's face and recognized ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... policy of distinct customs and excise for Ireland as apart from Great Britain. This would involve a customs barrier between the two islands. The inconvenience of such a course would be immeasurable and disastrous under modern conditions. It would certainly come sooner or later under Home Rule, but it would be a reversal of the ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... eloquence! Do I not remember how notably a late Lord Mayor raised the echoes of the Egyptian Hall to an explosion of laughter, by commencing grandiloquently, "When hi survey the dignity of my 'igh position," &c. &c.; and similarly what a disastrous effect a certain preacher caused in church by the announcement, "This is the hare, come let us kill him?" But we all know the mysteries of H and W: AEsop Smith wrote a fable about them, whereof this is the finale: "H," said King Cadmus, "one of my oldest ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... customs, manners, prejudices, predilections, and antipathies. Nor had they common interests. What would be good and suitable in one State might, by no means, be adapted to the requirements of another; might even in some cases prove disastrous. The Grand Dukes had, by their mild and liberal rule, endeared themselves to the Tuscan people. Piedmont and Naples were alike devoted to their respective monarchies. The people of the Papal States, with the exception of the populace of Rome, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... their crafts were needed. But several boats were owned by Tories and royalist sympathizers and these people must be deceived for, although the scouts were doubtless well armed and determined enough to take the boats without saying "by your leave," such a proceeding might be disastrous to the expedition. ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... had offered with others to help it by a gift of money at starting. The Beacon served any purpose but that of directing the public mind in the path desired. The management of the paper, with which by the way the law officers of the Crown foolishly connected themselves, was in all respects disastrous. The proprietors shrank from the responsibility which the bitter invective and satire of the more youthful and unscrupulous editors hourly accumulated on their shoulders; the articles of the paper were made the subject of Parliamentary discussion; and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... on anything great seems to involve danger, since to fail in such things is very disastrous. Wherefore although magnificence and confidence are referred to the accomplishment of or venturing on any other great things, they have a certain connection with fortitude by reason ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... confidence, with eager anticipation, of a sortie that was to be made on the morrow, with the object of obtaining possession of the Boer gun at Game Tree Fort, the fire from which had lately been very disastrous to life and property in the town. He was fated in this very action to meet his death, and afterwards I vividly recalled our conversation, and reflected how bitterly disappointed he would have been had anything occurred to prevent ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... had another reason for silence. She feared, if she told him all, his impetuous nature might prompt him to make a premature disclosure of the information, and that would be disastrous to her future plans. But since he was vitally concerned in Blake's and Peck's agreement, it was at least his due that he be warned; and so she decided to tell him, without giving her source of information, that Blind Charlie proposed to ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... In spite of his years, he still followed blindly where Patience led, though the consequences were frequently disastrous. ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... several passengers sailed for Cape Town on what proved to be my last voyage (excepting the return trip) as a ship-master. We had rough weather most of the way out, and a long passage, but nothing occurred which would interest you now. The season was a disastrous one to shipping on that route, and before leaving the Cape I had the vessel thoroughly overhauled, and was fortunate enough to secure three or four good seamen to make up a full crew. My first officer was an old salt, a strict disciplinarian, but kind to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... after the citizens of London had seen their gallant king, at the head of such forces as were collected in haste in the metropolis, depart from their walls to the encounter of the rebels. Surprising and disastrous had been the tidings in the interim. At first, indeed, there were hopes that the insurrection had been put down by Montagu, who had defeated the troops of Robin of Redesdale, near the city of York, and was said to have beheaded their leader. But the spirit of discontent was ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Avenger leads to many sad reflections. The last of the wrecks described in this volume, one of yesterday, as it were, was more disastrous than many others. It is painful to contemplate the scene of dismay, when the ship struck, so unlike the presence of mind and calm deportment which we have recorded on similar occasions. But every allowance is to be made for the panic which followed a catastrophe ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... a reputed son of Maximian, was roused by emulation with Constantine to assume the purple; and being joined by his father, they jointly attacked and destroyed Severus. Galerius, to revenge the death of his own Caesar, advanced towards Rome; but being compelled to a disastrous retreat, he resorted to the measure of associating another emperor with himself, as a balance to his new enemies. This was Licinius; and thus, at one time, there were six emperors, either as Augusti ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Another is the juvenility of Mildred:—a serious infraction of dramatic law, where the mere tampering with history, as in the circumstances of King Victor's death in the earlier play, is at least excusable by high precedent. More disastrous, poetically, is the ruinous banality of Mildred's anticlimax when, after her brother reveals himself as her lover's murderer, she, like the typical young Miss Anglaise of certain French novelists, betrays her incapacity ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... was seventeen years of age at the death of that prince [567], and as soon as that event was made public, he went out to the cohort on guard between the hours of six and seven; for the omens were so disastrous, that no earlier time of the day was judged proper. On the steps before the palace gate, he was unanimously saluted by the soldiers as their emperor, and then carried in a litter to the camp; thence, after making a short speech to the troops, into the senate-house, where he continued ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... had constantly stopped at. He knew, too, the inns in the Boro'. The large legal element and its odd incidents and characters he had learned and studied during his brief apprenticeship to the Law. The interior economy of the Fleet Prison he had learned from his family's disastrous experiences; the turnkeys, and blighted inhabitants he had certainly taken from life. But he shifted the scene from the Marshalsea to the King's Bench Prison—the former place would have been too painful a reminiscence for ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... the Rev. Henry Glynne, Rector: the organ and singers were removed from the west to the east end, the pews converted into open seats, and the cumbrous "three decker" pulpit and reading desk {24a} exchanged for simpler furniture. Unfortunately on the 29th October, 1857, a disastrous fire occurred, almost entirely destroying the roof and fittings of the Church. Its restoration was at once placed in the hands of Sir Gilbert Scott, architect, who improved the occasion by adding the small spire which now with excellent effect ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... were, however, some who were not so confident; among these was the old Duke of Berri, who had fought at Poitiers sixty years before, and remembered how confident the French were on that occasion, and how disastrous was the defeat. His counsel that the English should be allowed to march on unmolested to Calais, had been scouted by the French leaders, but he had so far prevailed that the intention that Charles should place himself at the head of the ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... had to take the risk. When morning came the snow was falling so heavily that we could not see more than a few score yards ahead, and I decided not to strike camp. A path over the shattered floes would be hard to find, and to get the boats into a position of peril might be disastrous. Rickenson and Worsley started back for Dump Camp at 7 a.m. to get some wood and blubber for the fire, and an hour later we had hoosh, with one biscuit each. At 10 a.m. Hurley and Hudson left for the old camp in order to bring some additional ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... the reactions. I can't speak of what I have been through with him. We have been together so long, I really do know him, I DO know what he is. And I feel I must say it; I feel it would be perfectly DISASTROUS for you to marry him—for you even more than for him.' Hermione lapsed into bitter reverie. 'He is so uncertain, so unstable—he wearies, and then reacts. I couldn't TELL you what his re-actions are. I couldn't TELL you the agony of them. That which he affirms and loves one day—a ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... words to the fifteen minutes. Trollope, we know, wronged himself by the tone and manner of his reminiscences; but that tone and manner indicated an inferiority of mind, of nature. Dickens—though he died in the endeavour to increase (not for himself) an already ample fortune, disastrous influence of his time and class—wrought with an artistic ingenuousness and fervour such as Trollope could not even conceive. Methodical, of course, he was; no long work of prose fiction was ever brought into ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
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