"Destructive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and moved also by anger discharged a celestial weapon saying, 'This is for the destruction of all the Pandavas'; then Krishna saying. 'This shall not be', neutralised Aswatthaman's speech. Then Arjuna neutralised that weapon by one of his own. Seeing the wicked Aswatthaman's destructive intentions, Dwaipayana and Krishna pronounced curses on him which the latter returned. Pandava then deprived the mighty warrior-in-chariot Aswatthaman, of the jewel on his head, and became exceedingly glad, and, boastful of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the chiefs of whom, always impatient of a long peace, were glad of any pretence for rebellion; it was therefore expedient, and serviceable to the crown, to find an employment abroad for this spirit, which could not exert itself without being destructive at home. And next, as he had obtained the grant of Ireland from the Pope, upon condition of subjecting it to Peter-pence, he knew that the speedy performance of this condition would greatly facilitate his recovering the good graces of the court of Rome. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to understand them," he said, "for I imagine they're pretty much the same as your own. I mean they are both founded on class consciousness. I feel that it will be destructive to the things I value most in David to be dependent on, or associated with, the capitalistic group. Just as you feel it will be destructive to your daughter to be married to a tutor—a fellow with radical views and a ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... the ignorant, indeed, only in the "villages," that Christianity, even in conscious triumph over paganism, was really betrayed into iconoclasm. In the final "Peace" of the Church under Constantine, while there was plenty of destructive fanaticism in the country, the revolution was accomplished in the larger towns, in a manner more orderly and discreet—in the Roman manner. The faithful were bent less on the destruction of the old pagan temples ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... the strongest is the universal tyranny. The vegetable kingdom feeds upon the mineral, and in its turn forms nourishment for the animal; the giants of the forests spread ruin in every direction, beneath their destructive influence the spent, exhausted soil can nourish nothing but weeds and shrubs of no importance. In the animal kingdom a war to the death is ever being waged, a terrible destruction in which those best armed for the fray pitilessly devour the weak and defenceless. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... in addition. Just count them: diseases, Caesar, Tigellinus, Caesar's poetry, cobblers who govern the descendants of ancient Quirites, freedmen who sit in the Senate. By Castor! there is enough of this. That is a destructive and disgusting sect. Hast thou tried to shake thyself out of this sadness, and make some little use ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... new appeal must, therefore, be made to all right-minded South Africans, irrespective of party or race, to join the new Party, which will be strong enough to safeguard the permanent interests of the Union against the disruptive and destructive policy of the Nationalists. Such a central political party will not only continue our great work of the past, but is destined to play a weighty role in the future peaceable ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... Feb. 4.-Regrets at their absence, and anxiety for their return. Destructive tempest. The rival Opera-houses. Taylor's pamphlet against the Lord Chamberlain— ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... produced even more destructive effects than had been caused by the earthquake. About twenty minutes after the first earth-shock the sea was seen to retire, as if about to leave the shores wholly dry; but presently its waters returned with ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... rebuke of such unmanly and ungodly plaints. With God's grace in the heart, and with the gleaming gates of his heaven brightening the horizon beyond the grave, we may be reformers; but it cannot be in the destructive spirit displayed by some who, in the prophet's language, amid darkness on the earth, "fret themselves, and curse their King and their God, and look upward." Poverty cannot degrade, nor ignorance bedwarf, nor persecution ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... struggle with the destructive struggle, symbolises them in the persons of two German men of science. One of these is Professor Haber, who has turned his knowledge to account for the manufacture of asphyxiating bombs, and who will doubtless not be forgotten. ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... torn the desecrated block from the niche in the Serapeum, hauled it through the courts on to the steps, and were now taking it to the arena where it was to be burnt. Others of their kidney, and some of the Christian citizens who had caught the destructive mania, had forced their way into the temple of Anubis, hard by the Serapeumn, where they had overthrown and wrecked the jackal-headed idols and the Canopic gods—four huge jars with lids representing respectively ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... flavour which smoke-drying imparts to meat is disliked by many persons, and it is therefore by no means the most general mode of drying adopted by mercantile curers. A very impure variety of pyroligneous acid, or vinegar made from the destructive distillation of wood, is sometimes used, on account of the highly preservative power of the creosote which it contains, and also to impart the smoke-flavour; in which latter object, however, the coarse flavour of tar is given, rather than that derived from the smoke from combustion ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... strip at the top, all the windows of the Dinkman house were smothered. Of the garage, only the roof, islanded and bewildered, was visible, apparently resting on a solid foundation of devilgrass. It sprawled kittenishly, its deceptive softness faintly suggesting fur; at once playful and destructive. My optimism of the night before was dashed; this voracious growth wasnt going to dwindle away of itself. It would have to be killed, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Spanish morning star; a destructive engine resembling the figure of a star, of which there were many thousands on board, and all of them with poisoned points; and were designed to strike at the enemy as they came on board, in case of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... fainting soul, which fain would rise To confidence in thee! But woes on woes O'erwhelm me. First my husband, now my son— Both dead—both slaughter'd by the bloody hand Of Barbarossa! What infernal power Unchain'd thee from thy native depth of hell, To stalk the earth with thy destructive train, Murder and lust! To wake domestic peace, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... then as not red, without one component of the thought being totally expelled from the mind by another. The law of the Excluded Middle, then, is simply a generalization of the universal experience that some mental states are directly destructive of other states. It formulates a certain absolutely constant law, that the appearance of any positive mode of consciousness can not occur without excluding a correlative negative mode; and that ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... were what the opposition party had again and again promised to do but had left undone. Indeed that is manifestly part of the business of this year of reckoning and assessment. There is no means of judging the future except by assessing the past. Constructive action must be weighed against destructive comment and reaction. The Democrats either have or have not understood the varied interests of the country. The test is contained ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... then, humbly supplicate the irradiations of wisdom, and follow Plotinus as our divine guide to the beatific vision of the Beautiful itself; for in this alone can we find perfect repose, and repair those destructive clefts and chinks of the soul which its departure from the light of good, and its lapse into a ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... Kat River, thirty men were attacked by a hundred and fifty Kafirs. The latter came on with fury, but five of the farmers brought down seven of the enemy at the first discharge, and thereafter poured into them so rapid and destructive a fire that they were seized with panic, and fled, leaving ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... mature in the favourable weather. From a clear emerald the landscape had changed to a yellowish green, and the huge leaves had crinkled at the edges like shirred silk. Here and there pale-brown splotches on a plant showed that it had too quickly ripened, or small perforations revealed the destructive presence of ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... lectures, without any active exercise of my own powers. As soon as I understood the principles, I relinquished for ever the pursuit of the mathematics; nor can I lament that I desisted, before my mind was hardened by the habit of rigid demonstration, so destructive of the finer feelings of moral evidence, which must, however, determine the actions and opinions of our lives. I listened with more pleasure to the proposal of studying the law of nature and nations, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... papers were separated from their cover and had finally fallen into the hands of the curiosity dealer of whom I bought them. And after surviving travels on land, risk of fire, the ravages of worms and the ruthlessness of man for four centuries, they finally fell a prey to the destructive fury of the waves; but my memory served me well as to the contents, and at my bidding was at once ready to aid me in restoring the narrative I had read. The copied portions were a valuable aid, and imagination was able to fill the gaps; and though it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... statues of the Athenian Acropolis (pages 151 f.). On one side we have one of the old stock subjects of the vase-painters, treated with unapproached vivacity and humor. Among the labors of Heracles, imposed upon him by his taskmaster, Eurystheus, was the capturing of a certain destructive wild boar of Arcadia and the bringing of the creature alive to Mycenae. In the picture, Heracles is returning with the squealing boar on his shoulder. The cowardly Eurystheus has taken refuge in a huge earthenware jar sunk in the ground, but Heracles, pretending ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... their view. The advanced guard, with about two-thirds of the whole force, had gained the elevated ground, the baggage-wagons had descended into the ravine—Col. Fisher's regiment was still on the east side—when the Indians arose, and with a dreadful yell poured a destructive fire upon them. The advanced guard was entirely cut off. Those who survived the first fire were immediately cut down with the tomahawk. The horror of the scene was increased by the personal appearance of the savages, who were almost naked and painted in a ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... same bacterial blight that is so destructive to tomatoes. The only way to prevent this disease is to plant in ground not lately used ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... variations in many instances is, of course, plain and intelligible enough; such, e.g., as those which tend to promote the destructive faculties of beasts of prey on the one hand, or to facilitate the flight or concealment of the animals pursued on the other; provided always that these minute beginnings are of such a kind as really to have a certain efficiency, however ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... poor Irish Catholic police detective to make of a proposition like that? Here stood an orator declaring: "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... because they are destructive to Religion; and if a Minister of the Gospel was to dissuade and deter Men from Duelling he would do it in quite another Manner. By a Minister of the Gospel I don't mean a Philosophizing Divine, or a polite Preacher, but a sincere ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... with the destructive sin of self-abuse. There can be little doubt that vast numbers of boys are guilty of this practice. In many cases the degrading habit has been taught by others, e.g., by elder boys at school, where association largely results in mutual corruption. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... asserted constitutional right. The North did not believe in slavery, or at least in the extension of slavery. But what the North at first undertook to subdue was not slavery in the States, but the altogether destructive doctrine of secession. ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... Judgment and Decree of the University of Oxford, passed in their Convocation, July 21, 1683, against certain pernicious books, and damnable doctrines, destructive to the sacred persons of princes, their State and Government, and ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... one moment the expenditure of vast sums; at another, looking into the merits of a barrack damage worth sixpence; then, field-officer of the day inspecting guards—next, making experiments on the destructive effects of gunpowder, commencing with a percussion-pistol, and ending with a mine; buying land, taking altitudes of the sun and of the moon, examining a Gunter's chain or a theodolite, sitting as member of a court-martial, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... certain men the philosopher regrets that thinkers are but perishable tissue, the artist that perishable tissue has to think. Thus to deplore, each from his point of view, the mutually destructive interdependence of spirit and flesh would have been instinctive with these in critically ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Cabinet we had a long discussion respecting the Regency question. Aberdeen started the objection that the proposed measure was destructive of the principle that the King could not die. On the other hand it was contended that we maintained that principle. We made a Regent for a King. We acknowledged a King; but we deferred taking the oath of allegiance till we knew who he was. The difficulties attending the unkinging ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... that you choose a good climate, not subject to destructive storms, and a soil that is naturally strong. If possible, your farm should be at the foot of a mountain, looking to the South, in a healthy situation, where labour and cattle can be had, well watered, near a good sized town, and either ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... arrogance. Three years ago she would have flinched before Mrs. Pletheridge's disdain, but in those three years she had passed beyond the variegated tissue of appearances to the bare structure of life—she had worked and wept and starved and suffered—and to-day her soul was invulnerable against even more destructive weapons than the contempt of a plutocrat. Perhaps, too, though she assured herself that she was without snobbishness, there was a secret satisfaction in the knowledge that one of her ancestors had been a general under Washington while the early Pletheridges were ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the educated and powerful to the miseries of the poor. Nothing happens, no result follows. The Juggernaut of society moves on, and the wretches are still crushed beneath the great wheels. These men who are really good at first, filled with sympathy, now become indignant—they are malicious, then destructive and criminal. I do not sympathize with these methods, but I do sympathize with the general object that all good and generous people seek to accomplish—namely, to better the condition of the human race. Only the other day, in Boston, I said that we ought ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... will probably do much for the country as regards commercial and intellectual improvement, will prove fatal in a degree to the picturesqueness which now renders Mexico so attractive. Radical progress in one direction must needs be destructive in another, and while some of the allurements of her strong individuality will disappear, her moral and physical status will be greatly improved. Her ragged, half-naked people will don proper attire, sacrificing the gaudy ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... the Land of Volcanoes; frequent and sometimes very destructive earthquakes and volcanic ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... feeling of being adrift in unmeasurable nothingness making him sick, to watch mistily as the blue beast came to a halt. Whimpering it turned, but before it reached the level of the woods, it sagged to its knees, fell face forward and was still, a destructive machine ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... cavalry. They had every quality but discipline, and resembled Prince Charming, whose manifold gifts, bestowed by her sisters, were rendered useless by the malignant fairy. Scores of them wandered about the country like locusts, and were only less destructive to their own people than the enemy. The universal devotion of Southern women to their cause led them to give indiscriminately to all wearing the gray. Cavalry officers naturally desired to have as large commands as possible, and were too much indulged ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... phenomenon was of considerable consequence in their selenographic studies. It proved that all heat had not yet disappeared from the bowels of this globe; and where heat exists, who can affirm that the vegetable kingdom, nay, even the animal kingdom itself, has not up to this time resisted all destructive influences? The existence of this volcano in eruption, unmistakably seen by these earthly savants, would doubtless give rise to many theories favorable to the grave question of the habitability of ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... if this is endured in only the hardships annexed to the spiritual administration, what must it not be when the destructive tempests of the persecutions of the Moros, the greatest part of which assail our laborers, happen to come? Then there is no other relief than to flee to the mountains in order to live in passes and caves, seeking their preservation, not so much ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... philosophy from Herbert Spencer. These great men are no longer regarded by anybody with the old credulity; their theories and their dogmas are mined, as were those of the early eighteenth century in France by the Encyclopaedists, by a select class of destructive critics, in whose wake the whole public irregularly follows. The ordinary unthinking man accepts the change with exhilaration, since in this country the majority have always enjoyed seeing noses knocked off statues. But if we are to rejoice in liberation from the bondage of the Victorian ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... beyond Kinston, at a place called Mosely Hall, the enemy have a battery of ten heavy guns, so planted as to deal a very destructive fire upon an ...
— Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862 • W. W. Howe
... the official stand of the farmers and they point out that their political platform[1] is constructive, not destructive. The farmers are not trying to sidestep their fair share of the expenses in connection with government and public institutions; where they have ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... attacks of vermin are constantly marring the planter's expectations. Among the latter plagues the "bug" stands foremost. This is a minute and gregarious insect, which lives upon the juices of the coffee tree, and accordingly is most destructive to an estate. It attacks a variety of plants, but more particularly the tribe of jessamine; thus the common jessamine, the "Gardenia" (Cape jessamine) and the coffee (Jasminum Arabicum) are more especially ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... had burned vividly till the explosion took place, when the force of the powder seemed to have scattered everything, but it had been saving as well as destructive, separating the brandy kegs, some of which burst and added fuel to the flames, but many ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... knows the North Sea will support these conclusions. Squalls and blizzards in winter, and thunderstorms in summer, rise with startling suddenness and rage with terrific destructive fury. Such conditions must react against the attempt of an aerial invasion in force, unless it be made in the character of the last throw by a desperate gambler, with good fortune favouring the dash to a certain degree. But lesser and more insignificant Zeppelin ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... drama of a wall about to fall beneath the united efforts of a squadron of workmen. Watch in hand, the great citizen was estimating the length of the resistance which that mass of freestone would present to the destructive labor of which it was the object. Precisely at the crucial moment of the impending catastrophe la Peyrade, lost in the tumult of his thoughts, was entering, heedless of the shouts addressed to him on ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... a one as sea-beasts love to haunt. Its weed-covered surface shows that the surge has not shifted it for years past. It lies on other boulders clear of sand and mud, so that there is no fear of dead sea-weed having lodged and decayed under it, destructive to animal life. We can see dark crannies and caves beneath; yet too narrow to allow the surge to wash in, and keep the surface clean. It will be a fine menagerie of Nereus, if ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... any ancient writer "has something to tell about" the Gospels, "any anecdote of interest respecting them," Eusebius will record it. This is the only information of the slightest value to this work which could be looked for in these writers. So far, therefore, from producing the destructive effect upon some of the arguments of Supernatural Religion, upon which he somewhat prematurely congratulates himself, Dr. Lightfoot's elaborate and learned article on the silence of Eusebius supports them in ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... hieroglyphics. In Mexico, about which Spanish historians of the time of Cortez and after, have written with more particularity, the vestiges of the civilization of the 16th or previous centuries have, in a great measure, been obliterated by the more complete and destructive subjugation suffered at the hands of the conquerors, and by the continuous occupation of the acquired provinces. Probably the early constructions of the Mexicans were not generally composed of so durable materials as those of the neighboring peninsula. Without discussing this point, ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... thou indeed have purposed to return, Noble Achilles! and such wrath retain'st That thou art altogether fixt to leave 540 The fleet a prey to desolating fires, How then, my son! shall I at Troy abide Forlorn of thee? When Peleus, hoary Chief, Sent thee to Agamemnon, yet a child,[13] Unpractised in destructive fight, nor less 545 Of councils ignorant, the schools in which Great minds are form'd, he bade me to the war Attend thee forth, that I might teach thee all, Both elocution and address in arms. Me therefore ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... our boast that we can quell The wildest passions in their rage, Can their destructive force repel, And their impetuous wrath assuage.— Ah, Virtue! dost thou arm when now This bold rebellious race are fled? When all these tyrants rest, and thou Art warring with ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... things in the mining districts the most appalling. Cruel oppressions were perpetrated by the mine owners and overseers, especially upon women and children; and frequently parents showed an utter callousness to the sufferings of their offspring. The work assigned to girls and young women was destructive of health, and was conducted under circumstances so indecent that it was difficult for the noble speaker to state the details to the house. The commons received the intelligence with amazement and indignation; they had no conception that such outrages upon ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and grating under the teeth. My ophthalmic patients generally suffered a relapse, and an unusual number of new cases soon after presented themselves. Were such heavy sand-storms of frequent occurrence, diseases of the visual organs would prevail to a destructive extent.' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... chiefly open prairies, or wheat fields, where it nibbles the young and tender blades, and cornfields, where it feeds upon the scattered grains. In California, Ridgway says, it is so numerous in winter as to be very destructive of the growing wheat crop, and it is said that in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, farmers often find it necessary to employ men by the month to hunt and drive them from the fields. This is most successfully accomplished by means ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... get rich quickly in Christ's earthly kingdom is to invent a kind of gun that can kill more Christians at one shot than any other existing kind. All the Christian nations are at it. The more advanced they are, the bigger and more destructive engines of war ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... increased productiveness and larger contributions of the people. Co-operation, in mercantile, industrial and stock-raising undertakings, assured the support and patronage of each community for its own particular enterprise, prevented destructive competition and checked the greed of the individual—for the more he toiled for himself, the larger the share of the general burden he ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... and all the men having collected on one side, discharged a volley which brought well nigh a score of Indians to the ground. The rest wavered, though they did not fly. Time was thus afforded to the garrison to reload, and another volley almost as destructive as the first was fired. Many sprang back and gazed around with looks of astonishment, supposing that the defenders of the house were twice as numerous as was the case. Still, urged on by their chiefs, they discharged another flight of arrows, but, shot at random, they caused ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... later that Henry VIII. threw off the papal dominion in England. But great crises in a nation's history never arrive without premonition;—there are no moral earthquakes without premonitory throes, and sometimes these are more decisive and destructive than that which gives electric publicity. Such distinct signs appeared in the age of Chaucer, and the later history of the Church in England cannot be distinctly understood without a careful ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... when all is said, though I owe more to Mr. Bradley than I can ever acknowledge adequately, I cannot help feeling that there are two men in Mr. Bradley, a great constructive thinker and a subtle destructive critic, and that the destructive Hyde is perpetually pulling to pieces all that the constructive Jekyll has built up. Of course it is obvious that the truth of mathematics, if mathematics are true, is a fatal stone of stumbling for ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... 168, 172, 174. No one, I think, who has perused all the documents, can doubt that the armistice was necessary for the preservation of the army in Ireland. But its real object did not escape the notice of the two houses, who voted it "destructive to the Protestant religion, dishonourable to the English nation, and prejudicial to the interests of the three kingdoms;" and, to inflame the passions of their partisans, published a declaration, in which, with their usual adherence to truth, they assert that the cessation ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... to be done in London, be sure that Jonas Hanway's hand was in it. One of the first Acts for the protection of chimney-sweepers' boys was obtained through his influence. A destructive fire at Montreal, and another at Bridgetown, Barbadoes, afforded him the opportunity for raising a timely subscription for the relief of the sufferers. His name appeared in every list, and his disinterestedness and sincerity were universally recognized. But he was not suffered ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... not improbable, that the charge of inhumanity may be made against experiments prosecuted upon defenceless animals, with a poison so painful and destructive in its operation as tobacco; the justice of this charge is freely admitted, if such experiments be made merely for the gratification of curiosity, and not with the object and reasonable hope of making them useful to mankind, and of influencing, at least, some few individuals, ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... make before I take leave of this celebrated mountain, which is, that the liquid lava which it ejects is far more dangerous and destructive than the eruption of stones and ashes; the lava flows from the flanks of the mountain in a liquid stream. Sometimes there will be an eruption and no lava flowing: at other tunes the lava flows from the flanks of the mountain, without ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the others killed to the limit with a fine unflagging lust for blood, giving a brilliant demonstration of the fact that civilized man is the most destructive and bloodthirsty of ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... bought the mills at Mrs. Boyle's death, but who had hitherto conducted them by an overseer. He had recently bought a little island in the middle of the river, just below the dam, and proposed erecting a new mill upon it; but as the Tunxis (the Indian name of our river) was liable to rapid and destructive freshets, the mill required a deep and secure foundation and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... there was no hope of redemption. Since then, thanks to the enlightened plans of Sir James Brooke, aided by the British ships of war in those seas, their depredations have been somewhat lessened; but much must be done before their destructive power is completely destroyed, and the surrounding people can enjoy to the full the blessings of unrestricted commerce. The night was sufficiently light to enable us to see a considerable distance. Our captain walked the ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... symmetrical form, and receive very little artificial treatment. Their extreme thinness makes it easy to trim off the projecting corners and angles, reducing them to such a form that they can be laid in close contact. Thus laid they furnish an admirable protection against the destructive action of the violent rains. The stones are usually trimmed to a width corresponding to the thickness of the walls. Of course where a projecting cornice is built, it can be made, to some extent, to conform to the width of available ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... were not yet convinced of their mistake. One night, a destructive little instrument, called a hand-grenade, was thrown into Cotton Mather's window, and rolled under Grandfather's chair. It was supposed to be filled with gunpowder, the explosion of which would have blown the poor minister to atoms. But the best-informed historians ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... toil. It was not until they had reached some natural boundary, as the river Douro, or the chain of the Guadarrama, that they were enabled, by constructing a line of fortifications along these primitive bulwarks, to secure their conquests, and oppose an effectual resistance to the destructive ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... certainly some constructive as well as destructive talent. Upon a sort of impromptu table covered with green cloth he had arranged all the toys in rough imitation of a town, with its streets and buildings. The relative proportion of the parts was certainly not good; but it was not Sam's fault ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... ordinary grape-shot, with very reduced charges, and a wad between the powder and the balls. One pound of powder will project a 200-lb. bomb 302 yards; the same weight of grape-shot thrown in among boats would prove destructive; and especially a lot of canister fired in this manner ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... teeth-powders, teeth-washes, and the like, advertised in the papers. They are often even more destructive to the teeth than the substances they are intended to remove. If any teeth-powder is required, pure powdered charcoal is the best thing you can procure; but if the teeth are kept clean, in the way we have directed, there will be little occasion for any other dentrifices than ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... arches of masonry, and entering the St. Lawrence at Point Callieres, within the modern city. He called it Place Royale; and here, on the margin of the river, he built a wall of bricks made on the spot, in order to measure the destructive effects of ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and the criminal acts which some committed in his name could have reparation made for them by others in his name. To malicious genii, genii still stronger were opposed; to harmful amulets, those which were protective; to destructive measures, vitalizing remedies; and this was not even the most troublesome part of the magicians' task. Nobody, in fact, among those delivered by their intervention escaped unhurt from the trials ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... inner life. Bunyan's unhappy mode of dealing with the Bible as a collection of texts, each of Divine authority and declaring a definite meaning entirely irrespective of its context, by which the words hide the Word, is also utterly destructive of the true purpose of the Holy Scriptures as a revelation of God's loving and holy mind and will. Few things are more touching than the eagerness with which, in his intense self-torture, Bunyan tried to evade the force ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... repudiated, referred to as "John Camden Hottentot," an unsavory person generally. Hotten also sent a letter to the Spectator, in which he attempted to justify himself, but it was a feeble performance. Clemens prepared two other communications, each worse than the other and both more destructive than the first one. But these were only to relieve his mind. He did not print them. In one of them he pursued the fancy of John Camden Hottentot, whom he offers as a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... will arise and threaten you; but if the cable of faith remains unbroken and the anchor of hope unshaken, your little bark can sail on sweetly at rest. Doubts are very destructive to soul-rest; therefore they must be dispelled at their first approach. By faith your soul can be kept in the precious realization of heavenly enjoyments; you can have sweet walks with God and tastes of his love all along your journey of life. By living in the vale of humble ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... opening their runways and placing well down in them a piece of carrot or potato in which has been placed a little strychnine we succeeded in getting rid of them entirely. Next came the woodchucks. They were very destructive with us, chewing the bark above the protectors as well as the roots. Trapping is the most successful method we have found, and by keeping a half dozen traps out all the time we held them in check. Eternal vigilance must be the ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... that human nature is inherently "bad," while true Christianity, endorsed by psychology, proclaims it inherently "good," which means that, properly guided, properly educated, it is creative and contributive rather than destructive. No more striking proof of this fact can be cited than the modern experiment in prison reform in which hardened convicts, when "given a chance," frequently become useful citizens. Unjust and unintelligent social conditions are the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... insect is very destructive to the petals of some kinds of delicate flowers. May it not have acquired the title of "couchbell" from its habit of couching or concealing itself for rest at night and security from small birds, of which it is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... the result of some strange back-stroke. But, on closer examination, we need not go so far. His grandfather, Robert Stevenson, the great lighthouse-builder, the man who reared the iron-bound pillar on the destructive Bell Rock, and set life-saving lights there, was very intent on his professional work, yet he had his ideal, and romantic, and adventurous side. In the delightful sketch which his famous grandson gave of him, does he not ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... of the Gipsey are very destructive to fruit trees, over which they wander during the day, but at night retire into a web like that of a spider. In 1731, they attacked and destroyed most of the ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... number in another, only one in each way came to a happy end and the rest to unhappy ones. Because it would have been useless and dangerous for Pertinax and Alexander, being new princes, to imitate Marcus, who was heir to the principality; and likewise it would have been utterly destructive to Caracalla, Commodus, and Maximinus to have imitated Severus, they not having sufficient valour to enable them to tread in his footsteps. Therefore a prince, new to the principality, cannot imitate the actions of Marcus, nor, again, is it necessary ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... mouth[1] which is noxious to the voice, the phlegm which is destructive to the ..., the pustules of the lungs, the pustule of the body, the loss of the nails, the removal (and) dissolving of old excrement, the skin which is stripped off, the recurrent ague of the body, the food which hardens in a man's body, the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... derive an artistic pleasure from watching the picturesque extreme of wrongheadedness into which an honest, almost sacred, conviction may drive a man. "It is like madness. It must be—because it's self-destructive," Decoud had said to himself often. It seemed to him that every conviction, as soon as it became effective, turned into that form of dementia the gods send upon those they wish to destroy. But he enjoyed the bitter flavour of that example with the zest of a connoisseur in the art ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... destructive attack upon the mount in the early years of the thirteenth century and caused much damage to the buildings, Jourdain the abbot of that time planned out "La Merveille," which comprises three storeys of the most remarkable Gothic halls. At the bottom are the cellar and almonry, then comes ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... on a farm never breaks down as they are managed on a scientific base with an understanding of their proper standards. Animals to-day live more happily than man. We don't allow animals to practice the "survival of the fittest," or "competition," which is far too destructive. Our present social system imposes these disastrous methods upon man alone, and the result is that the hideous proverb "Homo homini ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... then arrive at clear views with respect to the mental development of the human race, and the ways of Providence would be more plainly discernible. It would then be demonstrable, that the mind of nations is deeply affected by the destructive conflict of the powers of nature, and that great disasters lead to striking changes in general civilisation. For all that exists in man, whether good or evil, is rendered conspicuous by the presence of great danger. His inmost feelings are roused—the thought of self-preservation masters his ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... atrocious violence, of theft, of reviling or personal trespass,[53] where a cow is the subject, or a [malicious] charge of crime,[54] or an offence destructive of life or property[54] where a female [of the household] is the subject—[in each of these cases] the Court shall compel the parties to go to trial forthwith. In other cases, a day may be appointed ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... Pacific coast, volcanoes and destructive earthquakes in the center and south, and hurricanes on the Gulf ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... repeal or modification, is as much to be deprecated as rash innovation and unceasing experiment. Indeed it scarcely ever fails to defeat its own end, and though it may retard for a while, renders the course of reform more destructive than it otherwise would have been. True conservatism is gradualism—the movement onward by slow, cautious, and firm steps—but still movement, and that onward. The world, neither physically, intellectually, ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... went. There were no friends to go, for she had insisted on inviting none—for fear of the lynx eyes and the destructive influence upon her plans of Mr Thornycroft and Jim. She gained the one end she had schemed for throughout—to get past the risks of the public marriage and back to her struggle in obscurity, unmolested, unpitied, unshamed. The Urquharts wrote, and Mr Thornycroft, when he sent his present; ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... tenacity, were forced to fall back, after some hesitation, leaving fifteen corpses on the pavement. This momentary hesitation gave the insurgents time to re-load their weapons, and a second and very destructive discharge struck the company before it could regain the corner of the street, its shelter. A moment more, and it was caught between two fires, and it received the volley from the battery piece which, not having received the order, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... heart and made him hate a system of government which was capable of shedding blood without repugnance. His commercial interests showed him the death of trade in the Maximum, and in political convulsions, which are always destructive of business. Moreover, like a true perfumer, he hated the revolution which made a Titus of every man and abolished powder. The tranquillity resulting from absolutism could alone, he thought, give life to money, and he grew ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... more than doubled the proportion of disease and mortality, and increased the criminality more than tenfold. Of the numbers tried by court martial there were 120 times as many proportionally among the drinkers as among the temperate. The destructive effects of drink are far greater in hot climates, and perceptibly ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... dinner table. But matters grew worse in his old age, when his habits of intemperance kept him out of the sight of the ladies, and he got round him a set of ignorant and conceited young men, who thought they could set the world right by their destructive tendencies. One of his chief favourites was George Borrow. . ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... smash from below. He hesitated and went downstairs again. Suddenly the house resounded with heavy blows and the splintering of wood. He heard a smash and the destructive clang of the iron fastenings of the shutters. He turned the key and opened the kitchen door. As he did so, the shutters, split and splintering, came flying inward. He stood aghast. The window frame, save for one crossbar, was still intact, but only little teeth of glass remained in the frame. ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... There was no panic at that hour of supreme peril. The order to reserve fire until the enemy was within twenty yards was obediently regarded, and it was not until a pressure upon three faces of the redoubt forced the last issue, that the defenders poured forth one more destructive volley. A single cannon cartridge was distributed for the final effort, and then, with clubbed guns and the nerve of desperation, the slow retreat began, contesting, man to man and inch by inch. Warren fell, shot through the head, in the mouth of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... of the World, God, gave man an injunction against his eating of the Tree of Knowledge, as if knowledge were the bane of happiness; according to which also, St. Paul disallows it as puffing up and destructive; whence also St. Bernard seems in my opinion to follow when he interprets that mountain whereon Lucifer had fixed his habitation to be ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... civil magistrate very justly puts these sublime theorists on the same footing with common robbers, and teaches them by the severest discipline, that a rule, which, in speculation, may seem the most advantageous to society, may yet be found, in practice, totally pernicious and destructive. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... grounded, its unfortunate crew, busily employed to heave it into deep water, were saluted with irregular but heavy and continued discharges of musketry. So great was Lander's confidence in the sincerity and good will of the natives, that he could not at first believe that the destructive fire, by which he was literally surrounded, was any thing more than a mode of salutation they had adopted in honour of his arrival. But the Kroomen who had leaped into the boat, and who fell wounded by his side, soon convinced him of his mistake, and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... learned to read, he possesses the instrument of highest culture, but at the same time the instrument of greater danger. Bad books or bad methods of reading good books lead the reader's mind astray or stimulate a destructive imagination that affects character forever; but good books and right methods of reading make the soul sensitive to right and wrong, improve the mind, inspire to higher ideals ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... then only in accents of bitter self-reproach. "Why, why did not such thoughts come to me, instead of thee?" he said. "My youth had not wasted then in idle folly—worse, oh, worse—in slavish homage, coward indecision, flitting like the moth around the destructive flame; and while I deemed thee buried in romantic dreams, all a patriot's blood was rushing in thy veins, while mine ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... in the same hands. The human mind is naturally imitative, and the plagiarisms of commerce are infinitely more audacious than the small larcenies of literature. The joint-stock company market became day by day more crowded. No sooner did Philip Sheldon float the Non-destructive Laundry Company, the admirable organization of which would offer a guarantee against the use of chloride of lime and other destructive agencies in the wash-tub, than a rival power launched a colourable imitation ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... cargo of spices. Under the government even of the Portuguese, however, those islands are said to have been tolerably well inhabited. The English company have not yet had time to establish in Bengal so perfectly destructive a system. The plan of their government, however, has had exactly the same tendency. It has not been uncommon, I am well assured, for the chief, that is, the first clerk or a factory, to order a peasant to ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... it merely as destructive of social enjoyment, that the habits of the great world are unfriendly to happiness. It is not the place for those who have warm imaginations and tender hearts. There is scarcely any circumstance in which that sphere differs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... their snow-beleaguered cabins, began chasing and killing the starved deer by herds. It was easy work; the crust of the snow was strong enough to bear the weight of men and dogs, but the slender hoofs of the deer would after a few bounds pierce the treacherous surface. This destructive slaughter went on until the game grew too lean to be worth the killing. All sorts of wild animals grew scarce from that winter. Old settlers say that the slow cowardly breed of prairie wolves, which used ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... 3, and Paris on December 6—all in the same year, 1856. The first Violetta in New York was Mme. Anna La Grange, the first Alfredo Signor Brignoli, and the first Germont pere Signor Amodio. There had been a destructive competition between Max Maretzek's Italian company at the Academy of Music and a German company at Niblo's Garden. The regular Italian season had come to an end with a quarrel between Maretzek and the directors of the Academy. The troupe prepared to embark for Havana, but before ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... difficulties about the succession of the sister who, she knew, would seek to reverse her policy. It was not till November that she passed away—to be followed in a few hours by her one trused friend, Cardinal Pole: the most disastrous example on record of one who with conscientious and destructive persistence aimed at an ideal which her own methods made ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... a little north of west, but it winds about very much between high sand hills. The waterholes are not large, but deep, and well shaded, both by the steep banks and the numerous box trees surrounding them. The logs and bushes high upon the forks of the trees, tell of the destructive floods to which this part of the country has been subjected, and that at no very distant period, as may be seen by the flood marks on trees of not more than five ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... loaded with contagion, and underneath the scorching fervor of a terrible sun; that they indeed suffer; but, that their habits, constitutions, and their long practice enable them to labor, surrounded by such destructive ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... preparatory to a state of things which might eventually render the action of the State necessary in order to protect her rights and interest, and to stay a course of policy which we believed would, if not arrested, prove destructive of liberty and the Constitution."—Works, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... what looked like crumpled fragments of brown paper, which quivered in a breeze too light to move the surface of the stream. Here alone the fingers of the frost had left a blight, like that of flames, and had denied to their destructive work the glamour of a funeral pall, dealing ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... carried to the point which is now recommended, that is, to entire prohibition, seems to me destructive of all commercial intercourse between nations. We are urged to adopt the system on general principles; ... I do not admit the general principle; on the contrary, I think freedom of trade the general ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... a cable's length, the fresh pirate, to meet the ship's change of tactics, changed his own, luffed up, and gave the ship a broadside, well aimed but not destructive, the guns being loaded ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... Natural hazards: destructive earthquakes and cyclones; flooding and landslides common during rainy season (June to September); ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... which would enable us to advance with incredible rapidity and certainty into the arcana of those departments which he was then obliged to explore with the most tedious research, the most plodding patience, and the most destructive intellectual tension, in order to accumulate a limited array ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... only had they almost strangled their adversary, but likewise, through an aftereffect, their master: France which, after fourteen months of suffocation, was approaching physical suicide.[2319] Such success, too great, had obliged them to stop; they had abandoned one-half of their destructive creed, retaining only the other half, the effect of which, less imminent, was less apparent. If they no longer dared paralyze individual acts in the man, they persisted in paralyzing in the individual all collective acts.—There must be no special associations in general ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... acquired in childhood strong good habits to oppose the bad habits and to fight them with. An enemy must be met with his own weapons or stronger. The strongest weapons that can be given a human animal for combating the destructive forces of the struggle for existence are not good sentiments or good principles or even pious or moral practices—for, bad habits can make short work of all these—but are good habits in the practical, material matters of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... it is the lesson of history, that real wrongs, unredressed, grow into preposterous demands. Men are much like nature in action; a little disturbance of atmospheric equilibrium becomes a cyclone, a slight break in the levee a crevasse with immense destructive power. ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... land into sea would be different, according to the previous shape and varying elevation of the land and bottom of the sea. Lastly, denudation, marine and subaerial, has frequently caused the absence of deposits in one basin of corresponding age to those in the other, and this destructive agency has been more than ordinarily effective on account of the loose and unconsolidated nature of the sands ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... servants and the boy, who went with his mother's consent, for she knew he would be cared for, and she could see him often, the relation between slave and owner, being more commonly affectionate than otherwise. At its best, slavery is morally benumbing to the enslaved, destructive of the finer feelings, and when the old woman learned of her son's death,—and such a death—she did not go mad, as his playfellow had done. She lamented loudly, she said many prayers, she accepted condolences with seeming gratitude, but the tears had ceased ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... along the edge of the woods, and taking position on the creek below us, and about one mile ahead of our advance. Shortly after, they opened fire on the gunboats from batteries behind the cavalry and infantry. The boats not only replied to the batteries, which they soon silenced, but poured a destructive fire into their lines. Heavy skirmishing was also heard in our front, supposed to be by three companies from the Sixth and Eighth Missouri, whose position, taken the previous night to guard the creek, was beyond the point reached by the enemy, and consequently ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... ally and Massena's destructive foe. The great marshal, second in ability only to his imperial master, had succeeded to the command in the peninsula. The Imperial Guard was the mainstay of the reinforcements despatched thither in order to end the military conflict and inaugurate the new ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... means the production of young fish. It is well known that even under the best conditions now prevailing in our streams the eggs of anadromous fishes like the salmon and shad are liable to numerous destructive agencies; that only a small percentage of the eggs laid under natural surroundings ever hatch, and that the young are subject to heavy mortality up to the time when they leave the river and enter the salt water. Probably 5 per cent would be much too large an estimate ...
— The Salmon Fishery of Penobscot Bay and River in 1895-96 • Hugh M. Smith
... perilous it is to sink regard for the great conception of human brotherhood in a narrow, nationalistic concern for individual interests. In the Scottish conception of liberty, duties have always been rated as highly as rights; it has been a constructive, not a destructive formula; it has been an inspiration to raise men out of themselves, not to prompt them to indulge in antics of promiscuous leveling. The kind of democracy for which Scotsmen have deemed that the world should ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... upon the death of Decius, Gallus and 104 Volusianus succeeded to the Roman Empire. At this time a destructive plague, almost like death itself, such as we suffered nine years ago, blighted the face of the whole earth and especially devastated Alexandria and all the land of Egypt. The historian Dionysius gives ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... ancient inhabitants. As the Saxons came over at intervals in separate bodies, the Britons, however at first unwarlike, were tempted to make resistance; and hostilities being thereby prolonged, proved more destructive to both parties, especially to the vanquished. The first invaders from Germany, instead of excluding other adventurers who must share with them the spoils of the ancient inhabitants, were obliged to solicit fresh supplies from their own country; and a total extermination of the Britons became ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... being the same, and the speed of both fleets—that of their slowest ships—being equal, they turned, and, like two serpents pursuing each other's tails, charged around in a circle, each ship firing at the nearest or most important enemy. This fire was destructive. A ship a mile distant is a point-blank target for modern guns and gunners, and everything protected by less than eight inches of steel suffered. The Argyll had lost her military mast and most of her secondary guns. The flag-ship Cumberland, raked ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... a book of Rider Haggard's called "Lysbeth," and was deeply interested in the Haarlemmer-meer, where the "treasure" of that story lay hid; but it was news to her that the great inland sea had once sent a destructive flood to the gates of Amsterdam, and that as punishment it had been drained away. Miss Van Buren—whom I think of as "Nell"—knew all this, including the very day in 1840 when the work was begun, and how many months the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... here come whole tribes of people whose physical lives are but a deteriorated variety of life, and themselves a meaner species of mankind; so sad an effect has been wrought by the tainted breath of cities, scanty and unwholesome food, destructive modes of labor, and the lack of those moral supports that might partially have counteracted such bad influences. Behold here a train of house painters, all afflicted with a peculiar sort of colic. Next in place we will marshal ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the youth's eloquence by adding, "As well as you did the hanging over yonder bay? No, no—we can discriminate, by God's blessing, between the young of the plundering fox and the cub of a lion: both are destructive, but the one is mean and cowardly: the other—it shall be our care to train ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... met a company of traders from St. Louis, with a train of thirty-eight wagons. One of their wagons was loaded with pitch-pine wood for cooking purposes. It was raining, and a regular plains storm was coming on. These storms are sometimes tremendously destructive. A train had been overtaken at this same place the year before, and nearly all of the animals perished. I counted one hundred and ninety skeletons of mules that had died in that storm. Many of the men also died. The storm took place ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... surprising a few stragglers, from whom they extorted the information that a considerable number of the conspirators were making merry in the house of the officer, where they had taken their comrade prisoner. They immediately proceeded to this house, where they commenced a most destructive fire through the doors and windows, not taking any aim or making any discrimination between friend or foe. They then entered, killed the wounded, and took some prisoners. Unfortunately the good old host had received two serious shots, and now sent to the captain to request ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... lasted the whole day. Mr. Aislabie found few friends: his guilt was so apparent and so heinous that nobody had courage to stand up in his favour. It was finally resolved, without a dissentient voice, that Mr. Aislabie had encouraged and promoted the destructive execution of the South-Sea scheme with a view to his own exorbitant profit, and had combined with the directors in their pernicious practices, to the ruin of the public trade and credit of the kingdom: that he should ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... out by a bullet of air as well as one of lead, if the air only blows hard enough and to one point. Whatever its material, the edge of the thunder-axe is almost infinitely sharp, and its blow is as destructive as it is timeless. But it is always heat, not electrical discharge, which only sometimes causes heat, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... gallant style; until suddenly, from every wall and every clump of bushes on the slopes above them, a tremendous fire of musketry broke out, while the twelve field guns, six of which were posted on either side of Charlie's centre, poured a destructive fire into them. So deadly was the rain of iron and lead that the Mahratta horsemen instantly drew bridle and, leaving the ground strewn with their ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... 26. Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream. 27. Think not ambition wise because 'tis brave, 28. The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 29. What is ambition?—'tis a glorious cheat!— 30. Only destructive to the brave and great. 31. What's all the gaudy glitter of a crown? 32. The way to bliss lies not on beds of down. 33. How long we live, not years but actions tell; 34. That man lives twice who lives the first life well. 35. Make, then, while yet ye may, your God your friend, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... battle on his head He last put on—a helmet all ablaze From forty gems in each compartment set, Cruan, and crystal, carbuncles of fire, And brilliant rubies of the Eastern world. In his right hand a mighty spear he seized, Destructive, sharply-pointed, straight and strong:— On his left side his sword of battle swung, Curved, with its hilt and pommel of red gold. Upon the slope of his broad back he placed His dazzling shield, around whose margin rose Fifty huge ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... prospect that is presented on first entering this prairie is far the more sublime—the ideas expand, and the imagination is carried far beyond the limits of the eye. We saw some deer scouring the plains, and several "prairie wolves" skulking in the high grass—this animal is sometimes destructive to sheep. The size is about that of our fox. Most farmers keep three or four hounds, which are trained to combat the wolf. The training is thus—a dead wolf is first shewn to a young dog, when he is set on to tear it; the next process is ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... which, driven by the wind, leaped from one half-ruined building to another. Braxton Wyatt and his band would have enough to do sheltering themselves from the fierce winter, and the settlements could rest for a while at least. Undeniably he felt exultation as he witnessed the destructive work of his hand. The border, with its constant struggle for-life and terrible deeds, bred ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... other testifies to the presence of degeneration. If the paddle of Baptanodon had occurred in a whale, or the paddle of a whale had occurred in Baptanodon, either fact would in itself have been well-nigh destructive of the whole theory ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... this plate—"He here presents to us the picture of a young man, thoughtless, extravagant, and licentious; and, in colours equally impressive, paints the destructive consequences of his conduct. The first print most forcibly contrasts two opposite passions; the unthinking negligence of youth, and the sordid avaricious rapacity of age. It brings into one point of view what Mr. Pope so exquisitely describes in ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... The edifice remained in good preservation till the seventeenth century. In 1687 the Venetian, Morosini, besieged Athens and a shell from one of his guns ignited the powder which the Turks had stored in the Parthenon. A destructive explosion followed and thus the most magnificent structure of the ages, which twenty-one centuries had spared, was reduced to ruins. What remains of it is still most majestic and when seen by moonlight inspires the greatest reverence. There is ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... by which his abandonment is not destructive to himself, or he is converted, which is simply a convulsion of nature for the same end, to preserve his life and make it ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades |
