"Direful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every kind which he not only attends at the quarters of the various regiments throughout the German domain, but which he very frequently arranges for or encourages himself, he has taught his army officers a direful lesson. Certainly, the old Spartan simplicity in food and drink which prevailed in German army circles during the days of William I., grandfather of the ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... stealthily, under a private imprint?[40] Simply because, as Mark frankly confesses, he "dreaded (and could not bear) the disapproval of the people around" him. He knew how hard his fight for recognition had been; he knew what direful penalties outraged orthodoxy could inflict; he had in him the somewhat pathetic discretion of a respectable family man. But, dead, he is safely beyond reprisal, and so, after a prudent interval, the faithful Paine begins printing ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... conscience molten into gold, No forged accuser bought or sold, No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey; For there Christ is the King's Attorney. And when the grand twelve-million jury Of our sins, with direful fury, Against our souls black verdicts give, Christ pleads his death, and ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... ah no, it is repentant tears, By those let fall who make their direful flight, And drop by drop the anguish of their fears Comes down around us all ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... steps by which the local governing system has been brought to its present high degree of democracy and effectiveness. Among the subjects to which the first reformed parliament addressed its attention was the direful condition into which had fallen the relief of the poor, and the initial stage of local government regeneration was marked by the adoption of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, abolishing outdoor relief for ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... judge's brow, And stern the threats he thundered forth. "What dost thou dare avow? Retract thy words, or, by the Gods! I swear that thou shall die!" Unmoved she met his angry frown—his fierce and flashing eye: "Nay, I have spoken—hasten now, fulfil thy direful task, The martyr's bright and glorious crown is ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... of wisdom, Thy praise I sing! Steadfast, all holy, sure ward of our city, Triton-born rule whom High Zeus doth bring Forth from his forehead. Thou springest forth valiant; The clangour swells far as thy direful ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the midst of the appalling spasmodic convulsions, with direful writhings on the soil, and with cries of bitter anguish, the Wehr-Wolf gradually threw off his monster-shape; and at the very moment when the first sunbeam penetrated the wood and glinted on his face he rose a handsome, young, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... fain they would, if die they could, But death will not be had; God's direful wrath their bodies hath Forever immortal made. They live to lie in misery And bear eternal woe; And live they must whilst God is just That ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... was the best form of Government possible in this age; so a worship based chiefly upon the incitements and terrors of retributive law—the holding out of inducements of reward for the good, and of determents of direful punishment for the wicked, in a future world—was the best religion for ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... small-pox, and his wife in an hospital—and he implored a payment on account. This sufferer succeeded in squeezing out of Titmouse seven shillings on account, and his landlady extorted ten; which staved off a distress—direful word!—for some week or two longer; and so they left him in the possession of eight shillings or so, to last till next quarter-day—six weeks off! He sighed heavily, barred his door, and sat down opposite ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... We hope the custom ne'er will alter, But wish its enemies a halter. Dissatisfaction great appear'd, In several places where they've heard Their preacher's bold, aloud disclaim That bundling is a burning shame; This too was cause of direful rout And talk'd and told of, all about, That ministers should disapprove Sparks courting in a bed of love, So justified the custom more, Than e'er was heard or known before. The pulpit then it seems must yield, And female valor take the field, In places where their custom ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... industrial "Lords," "Barons," and so on, have received their crowns and patents of nobility from the populace. President Roosevelt gives expression to the serious thought of our most conservative citizenry when he says: "In the past, the most direful among the influences which have brought about the downfall of republics has ever been the growth of the class spirit.... If such a spirit grows up in this republic, it will ultimately prove fatal to us, as in the past it has ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... displayed in their conflicts with the aborigines, we must take into account her natural repugnance to repulsive and horrid spectacles. The North American savage streaked with war-paint, a bunch of reeking scalps at his girdle, his snaky eyes gleaming with malignity, was a direful sight for even a hardened frontiers-man; how much more, then, to his impressionable and delicate wife and daughter. The very appearance of the savage suggested thoughts of the tomahawk, the scalping knife, the butchered relations, the desolated homestead. Nothing ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... there are all sorts of attempts," and I told him of model cottages, ragged schools, and the like, and promised to find him the accounts; but he gave one of his low growls, as if this were but a mockery of the direful need. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... First direful hate shall turn to peace, And love relent in deep disdain, And death his fatal stroke shall cease, And envy pity every pain, And pleasure mourn and sorrow smile, Before I talk ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... were chaste without being tame, and elevated without being extravagant. Alas! I little thought to have lived until their light should be hidden by a cloud of delirious bats who had left their native obscurity and madly rushed to uncongenial day, vermin which are likely to be of direful omen to our country unless the land be speedily ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... other's eyes, and the little space between was for both as an open grave filled with dead things—hopes, ambitions, future days and months and years—days and months and years when they should be for ever mindful of his crime! For henceforth they were to dwell in the chill of this direful shadow that would tower above all the concerns of life whether great or small; that would add despair to every sorrow, and take the very soul ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... bright-shining bucklers, and the voice of the trumpets and the waving of banners. Over the doomed host the poet of "Exodus" saw the vultures soaring in circles, hungry for the fight, when the doomed warriors should be their prey, and heard the wolves howling their direful evensong, deeming their food nigh them. Here is the description of the Destruction of the Egyptians. The translation is ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... forg'd a treason in my patron's name (I speak of things too far divulg'd by fame), My kinsman fell. Then I, without support, In private mourn'd his loss, and left the court. Mad as I was, I could not bear his fate With silent grief, but loudly blam'd the state, And curs'd the direful author of my woes. 'T was told again; and hence my ruin rose. I threaten'd, if indulgent Heav'n once more Would land me safely on my native shore, His death with double vengeance to restore. This mov'd the murderer's hate; and soon ensued Th' effects ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... comment, I took the wrapper, which was too handsome to trust to an inexperienced hand, like Mrs. Mitchell very well knew I was, and washed it, with the same direful results as chronicled before. But I could not help it, as heaven is my witness. I was entirely and hopelessly ignorant! But of course my mistress would not believe it, and declared over and over again, that I did it on purpose to provoke her and show ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... the worry over the life situation in general, that is to say, fear concerning business; fear concerning the health and prosperity of the household; fear that magnifies anything that has even the faintest possibility of being direful into something that is almost sure to happen and be disastrous. This constant worry over the possibilities of the future is both a cause of neurasthenia and a symptom, in that once a neurasthenic state is established, the liability to worry ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... with myself. Now hath he all my bones loathsomely broken; my limbs all dismembered; my life to me is odious! Now I have thee told, how we are led here. Flee now quickly, least he thee find; for if he cometh enraged, with his direful onsets, was he never born ...
— Brut • Layamon
... beings from a watery grave, shall we still leave them to their fate? Shall we hear unmoved of this widely-spread destruction, and not each contribute to those exertions, to which the common charities of human nature, and the certainty of the direful evils we might avert, and the sufferings we might assuage, ought to incite us to lend ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... Instantly Speed saw the direful consequences of such a procedure, and summoned his courage to say: "No. It's very kind of you, but I ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... creature, then, was not the Eleanore who could load, aim, and fire a pistol. Turning my head, I followed the guiding of that uplifted hand, now frozen into its place by a new emotion: the emotion of being interrupted in the midst of a direful and pregnant revelation, and saw—but, no, here description fails me! Eleanore Leavenworth must be painted by other hands than mine. I could sit half the day and dilate upon the subtle grace, the pale magnificence, the perfection of ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... will join with me in a lament for Al-Kyris? I will call upon the desert of the sea to hear my voice, . . I will pour forth my sorrows on the wind, and it shall carry the burden of grief to the four quarters of the earth,—all nations shall shudder and be astonished at the direful end of Al-Kyris, the city beautiful, the empress of kingdoms! Woe unto Al-Kyris, for she hath suffered herself to be led astray by her rulers! ... she hath drunken deep of the innocent blood and hath followed after idols, . . her abominations are manifold and the hearts of her young men ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... appointed for the beginning of this direful programme was the day when the senators and the troops should assemble to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas. The soldiers, who knew nothing of the plot, were incited to refuse to take the oath on the ground that Constantine's resignation was false, and that he was a prisoner ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... to take your death of cold?" she screamed. And Cass, to avoid this direful possibility, rebuttoned his coat again over the handkerchief and a ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... all along the river followed the tragedy; but after the bulk of wreckage was cleared away and the stream had dropped to normal, the Fernalds actually began to congratulate themselves on the direful event. ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... direful scourge of the Eastern hemisphere, the cholera, invaded his camp. Here was a new foe that had never yet been conquered. Victim after victim fell under its ravages. The general might have retired to some healthy clime, where he would have been freed from this pestilence, but not ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... incompetent to bear the royal standard in a religious festival which was shortly to take place. Excommunication was at least as serious then as bankruptcy is now, though in Spanish America it did not carry with it such direful ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... and good sense of the parties to the controversy and to place upon them the moral coercion of public opinion to agree to an arbitrament of the strike then existing and threatening consequences so direful to the whole country. He acted promptly and courageously, and in so doing averted the dangers ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... compilers of ancient song, than an Achilleid or an Olysseid. Could France have given birth to a Tasso, Tancred would have been the hero of the Jerusalem. If, however, the Homeric ballads, as they are sometimes called, which related the wrath of Achilles, with all its direful consequences, were so far superior to the rest of the poetic cycle, as to admit no rivalry,—it is still surprising, that throughout the whole poem the callida junctura should never betray the workmanship of an Athenian hand, and that the national spirit of a race, who have at a later period ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... nigrum. DEADLY NIGHTSHADE.—Webfer has given us an account of some children that were killed in consequence of having eaten the berries of this plant for black currants. And others have spoken of the direful effects of the whole plant so much, that, from the incontestable proofs of its deleterious qualities, persons cannot be too nice in selecting their pot-herbs, particularly those who make a practice ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... that the children may be left undisturbed in their crudities and occasional absurdities. The teacher, on the other hand, must avoid, with great judgment, certain absurdities which can easily be initiated by her. The first direful possibility is in the choice of material. It is very desirable that children should not be allowed to dramatise stories of a kind so poetic, so delicate, or so potentially valuable that the material is in danger of losing future beauty to ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... days! O direful deadly dump! O wicked world, and worldly wickedness! How can I hold my fist from crying, thump, In rue of ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... inmates, he stole quietly along, with his bootless feet buried at each step in the snow. Leaving the more frequented streets, and worming his way through bypaths and dark alleys; now turning a corner, under the direful apprehension of meeting some acquaintance, and now darting this way or that to avoid a random snow-ball, he pursued his painful way until he reached home, where he knocked and was admitted by ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... famine, by the common consent of mankind, are the three greatest calamities which can befall our species; and war, as the most direful, justly, stands foremost and in front. Pestilence and famine, no doubt for wise although inscrutable purposes, are inflictions of Providence, to which it is our duty, therefore, to bow with obedience, humble submission, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... men in that murderous fight 650 Of throwers-with-darts fallen in death Under the shield-hedge. Ye have the graves Under the stone-slopes, and likewise the places And the number of winters in writings set down." Judas replied (great sorrow he bore): 655 "That work of war, we, lady mine, Through direful need remember well, And that tumult of war in writing set down, The bearing of nations, but this one never By any man's mouth have we heard 660 Made known to men except here now." The noble queen gave answer to him: ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... the species is that known as "literati," because of the erratic scribblings decorating its valves. With others of the genera, it is to be found cast away at other times of the year, but the end of the wet season seems exceptionally direful. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Evidently, direful things might ensue from a meeting between Madeline Payne and this unknown Cora, for after a prolonged whistle, a brief moment of silence, and then a short ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... matron's room, adjoining the hospital, against which all present would willingly have closed their ears—the prolonged, heart-breaking, moaning cry of a woman robbed of all she held dearest—poor Mrs. Bennett waking once more to her direful sorrows, and filling the air with her hopeless wail. For a moment it dominated all other sound. "For heaven's sake, doctor," cried Archer to the assistant, "can't you and Bentley devise something to still that poor creature? Has she lost ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... spirit quailed. His kind friends, anxious that he should miss no feature of "local coloring" had thoughtfully conducted him to the very worst of the miner's boarding-houses, where they all cheerfully partook of strange and direful viands for his sake. Mr. Fetherbee, shrewdly suspecting the true state of the case, had unflinchingly devoured everything that was set before him, topping off his gastronomic martyrdom with a section of apricot pie, of a peculiar consistency ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... promised spurt, however, had not been made. Instead he had drifted along, studying only enough to keep his head above water and putting all his zeal into tennis or baseball until the present climax with its direful calamity ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... of yore, When folks were frugal, though not poor; An olio mixt of sweet and sour. Soon as this touch'd his laughing lip, That unmixt Nectar us'd to sip, He rose, and with a threat'ning frown Of direful Anger[11], dash'd it down, And swore, departing in a huff, I'll make your lives like ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... those who, stiff and mangled, Paid, upon that bloody field, Direful, cringing, awe-struck homage To the sword our heroes yield; And who felt, by fiery trial, That the men who will be free. Though in conflict baffled ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when the noon of the second day came, I was not unconscious ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... stricken, awestruck, awe-stricken, horror-struck; frightened to death, white as a sheet; pale, pale as a ghost, pale as death, pale as ashes; breathless, in hysterics. inspiring fear &c v.; alarming; formidable, redoubtable; perilous &c (danger) 665; portentous; fearful; dread, dreadful; fell; dire, direful; shocking; terrible, terrific; tremendous; horrid, horrible, horrific; ghastly; awful, awe-inspiring; revolting &c (painful) 830; Gorgonian. Adv. in terrorem [Lat.]. Int. angels and ministers of grace defend us! ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... now evening again. I left these desolate hills, the Ehrenberg Ranges of my map, and travelled upon a different line, hoping to find a better or less thick route through the scrubs, but it was just the same, and altogether abominable. Night again overtook me in the direful scrubs, not very far from the place at which I had slept the previous night; the most of the day was wasted in an ineffectual search ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... those stories may be such legends; but that was not what I intended to lead you to. I gave you that only as something like what I am going to say now. What if,—mind, I only suggest it,—what if the direful creatures, whose report lingers in these tales, should have an origin far older still? What if they were the remnants of a vanishing period of the earth's history long antecedent to the birth of ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... rocked, on Dobbin A matron rode to market bobbing, Indulging in a trancelike dream Of money for her eggs and cream; When direful clamour from her broke: 'A raven on the left-hand oak! His horrid croak bodes me some ill.' Here Dobbin stumbled; 'twas down-hill, And somehow he with failing legs Fell, and down fell the cream and eggs. She, sprawling, said, 'You rascal craven! You—nasty—filthy—dirty—raven!' ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... face, and, except when much perturbed, his link never blazes. On those occasions, however, as he goes his rounds, he ever and anon whirls it around his head, and it bursts into a dismal flame. This is a fearful omen, and always portends some direful crisis or calamity. It occurs, only once or twice in ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the croaking of the frog, By the howling of the dog, By the crying of the hog Against the storm arising; By the evening curfew bell, By the doleful dying knell, O let this my direful spell, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... will rather die than violate it." Then drawing his sword he offered it to the surrounding crowd and bade them plunge it in his bosom and devour his flesh if such an action could relieve them from their direful necessity. This extraordinary address filled the people with amazement and admiration and inspired them with a new courage. Their constancy was soon rewarded with deliverance. On the night of October 1st a fresh gale set in from the northwest; the ocean rushed furiously through the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... physician. The author's husband seeks health and business. Journey through deep snow, in midsummer, to reach Rich Bar. The revivifying effect of mountain atmosphere. Arrival of twenty-nine physicians in less than three weeks. The author's purpose to leave San Francisco and join her husband at the mines. Direful predictions and disapprobation of friends. Indelicacy of her position among an almost exclusively male population. Indians, ennui, cold. Leaves for Marysville. Scanty fare on way. Meets husband. Falls from mule. An exhausting ride. A midnight petit souper at Marysville. Dr. C. leaves ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... relatives and friends; and which, in the shape of a promissory curse, had held apart those who would have been husband and wife; and now, like the long stored up venom of a serpent, it burst out with the direful force given by concentration ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... when a man refers To thee, what direful, awful thing occurs? Though in itself thy name hath nought of wit, Yet—and this doth confound me to admit When I do hear it, I do smile; nay, more— I laugh, I scream, I cachinnate, I roar As Wearied Business Men do shake ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... cold November morning by a direful conglomeration of sounds;—strange, discordant shrieks, ominous groans, a clanking, as of iron chains and fetters, a slow, heavy, elephantine tread gradually growing on the ear, and a deep, continuous rumbling as of earthquakes in the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... Webster, at the head of the returns of office of the Interior Department, and for the last ten years the American Secretary to the Japanese Legation at Washington. A lover of social intercourse, Mr. Lanman has led the typical busy life of the American, untouched by the direful and disastrous ills it is supposed to bring. He is now engaged in editing fourteen of his books for reproduction in uniform style, and a new book, The Leading Men of Japan, is ready for issue." 12mo, $1.50. Boston: D. Lothrop, & ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... which she had been angry with before for choking her, protected from the pattering strokes. And soon the Brook heard a sound, like that made by her ambitious sister in the spring-time;—nearer and nearer it came; through the trees; over the rocks; tearing, splashing, dashing, and foaming at a direful rate. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... General von Zwehl would make the position untenable, and under cover of that appalling rain of death, the German infantry would creep back to reoccupy the positions from which they had been ousted by the bayonets only a few hours before. It was the German tactics of machine vs. men, a direful and cruel battle plan to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Nor direful rage, nor bois'trous tumult loud, Nor looks infuriate of the threat'ning crowd— Nor haughty tyrants, with their angry scowl, Like beasts that o'er the traveller's pathway prowl— Nor southern storm, that o'er the ocean raves, And swells in mountain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... morning. In order to make sure that any stones which they might succeed in getting from the diamond makers were real gems, a set of testing apparatus was taken along. Mr. Parker had had some experience in this line, and, in spite of the fact that he might make direful predictions, Tom was rather glad, after all, that the scientist was ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... The host of the Hebrews. The whole crowd imagined That the lord of despoilers and the spotless lady 255 Together remained in the gorgeous tent, The virtuous virgin and the vicious deceiver, Dreadful and direful; they dared not, however, Awaken the warrior, not one of the earls, Nor be first to find how had fared through the night 260 The most churlish of chieftains and the chastest of maidens, The pride of the Lord. Now approached in their strength The folk of the Hebrews. They fought remorselessly ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... aspect," exclaimed Donatello, "to know that she is but a jointed figure! When my eyes first fell upon her, I thought her arms moved, as if beckoning me to help her in some direful peril." ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... think that without anticipating any revelation, the man whose thoughts about God and holiness were those which the Psalms of David disclose, cannot have lost his best-loved son in the very act and deed of direful guilt, without an aggravation of his anguish because of this sad thing. If Absalom in the midst of upright walking and works of righteousness had been stricken by disease and had died in his bed, the tidings of this when it reached the father might ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... violently to the ground; "it seemed as if the rocky ribs of the mountains, and the granite walls and pillars of the earth were breaking up." At Kilauea the shocks were as frequent as the ticking of a watch. In Kau, south of Hilo, they counted 300 shocks on this direful day; and Mrs. L.'s son, who was in that district at the time, says that the earth swayed to and fro, north and south, then east and west, then round and round, up and down, in every imaginable direction, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... lower places. Two or three times lost in fancies as deep as sleep, Isabella had forgotten all about recess and bell, and remained on her perch, swinging and dreaming, till some one was sent to tell her that the arithmetic class had begun. And once, direful day! marked with everlasting black in the calendar of her conscience, being possessed suddenly, as it were, by some idle and tricksy demon, she stayed on after she was called, and, called again, she still stayed; and when, at last, ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... like to prove 610 An awkward sacrifice; but by the horns The quick priest pulled him on his knees, and slew him. No vein sprung out, but from the yawning gash, Instead of red blood, wallow'd venomous gore. These direful signs made Arruns stand amazed, And searching farther for the gods' displeasure, The very colour scared him; a dead blackness Ran through the blood, that turned it all to jelly, And stained the bowels with dark loathsome spots; The liver swelled with filth; and every vein 620 Did threaten ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... What time, more sweet than honey of the bee, Sleep courses through the brain some vision bright, To lift the veil which hides futurity, Fair Cypris sent a fearful dream to mar The slumbers of a maid whose frightened eyes Pictured the direful clash of horrid war, And she, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... like that of the Laocoon (sublime image of so many lives), Godefroid, who was now on his way on foot to the rue Marbeuf, was conscious in his heart of more curiosity than benevolence. This sick woman, surrounded by luxury in the midst of such direful poverty, made him forget the horrible details of the strangest of all nervous disorders, which is happily rare, though recorded by a few historians. One of our most gossiping chroniclers, Tallemant des Reaux, ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... by the feeding of chickens specially kept for this purpose. This was done just before sunrise by the pullarius or feeder, strict silence being observed. If the birds manifested no desire for their food, the omen was of a most direful nature. On the other hand, if from the greediness of the chickens the grain fell from their beaks and rebounded from the ground, the augury was most favourable. This latter augury was known as tripudium solistimum. "Any fraud practiced ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... the best part of it," said Peter, smiling; "you see, mother was so upset by this direful news, that another gypsy took pity on her and amended my cruel fate. The second seeress declared that I must meet the destiny number one had dealt me, but that to mitigate the family ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... the deities who watched over the fortunes of the Nederlanders having unthinkingly left the field, and stepped into a neighboring tavern to refresh themselves with a pot of beer, a direful catastrophe had wellnigh ensued. Scarce had the myrmidons of Michael Paw attained the front of battle, when the Swedes, instructed by the cunning Risingh, leveled a shower of blows full at their tobacco-pipes. Astounded at this assault, and dismayed ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... lived were dark and gloomy days. The words of Samuel to Agag may stand as their memorial, "As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women." Let us be thankful that we see no such direful scenes, and let us act worthy of our higher lot. Let us remember also that there is a destruction of life more terrible even than that which Rizpah witnessed—the destruction of the soul. If the mother's love within us prompts us to half the care of the spiritual life of our children, which ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... of Peleus' son, the direful spring Of all the Grecian woes, O goddess, sing; That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign The souls of mighty ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... has now been stated should be urged by the enemies of Christianity, as if its influence on the mind were not benignant, let it be remembered, that Johnson's temperament was melancholy, of which such direful apprehensions of futurity are often a common effect. We shall presently see that when he approached nearer to his aweful change, his mind became tranquil, and he exhibited as much fortitude as becomes a thinking man in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... which followed the terrible events in the house of the Beg of Rataj were like an evil dream to Marishka Strahni. She slept, she awoke, always to be hurried on by her relentless captors, too ill to offer resistance or any effort to delay them. Hugh Renwick was dead. All the other direful assurances as to her own fate were as nothing beside that dreadful fact. And Goritz—the man who sat beside her—Hugh's murderer! Fear—loathing—she seemed even too weak and ill for these, lying for the first part of their long journey, inert ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... duty, Worden, So helped you that in fame you dwell; You bore the first iron battle's burden Sealed as in a diving-bell. Alcides, groping into haunted hell To bring forth King Admetus' bride, Braved naught more vaguely direful and untried. What poet shall uplift his charm, Bold Sailor, to your height of daring, And interblend therewith the calm, And build a goodly ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... lightly knocked off with his little finger the ash from his cigar-end. This was a serious, a direful business; but he had no intention to let the Greek see that his words had any alarming or disturbing effect upon him, so ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... people of Virginia have ever had any thing to do with rendering their assent to the making of this new State within the territorial limits of that ancient Commonwealth." He declared this to be "a dangerous precedent which overthrows the Constitution and may be fraught with direful consequences." "Out of the one hundred and sixty counties that compose the State of Virginia," he continued, "less than one-fourth have assumed to act for the entire State; and even within the boundaries of the new State more ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... morning he went around to prepare Aun' Sheba for the ordeal, but she and Vilet had gone out upon their mercantile pursuits, and Uncle Sheba also had disappeared. To Sissy the direful intelligence was communicated. In spite of all Mr. Birdsall's efforts to console, she was left sobbing and rocking back and forth in her chair. When Kern came home, he heard the ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... four-fifths of those who were swept away by the late direful visitation of CHOLERA, were such as had been addicted to the use of intoxicating drink. Dr. Bronson, of Albany, who spent some time in Canada, and whose professional character and standing give great ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... harder teaching of the Christian belief. Whether unpopular with the people or not, this teaching may be unpopular with the preachers. We do not speak of these unpleasant things, for why be singular in direful prophecy? Of some preachers, to summarise, we will say that their need is a recovery of the sense of sin; of others that a deepened consciousness of every man's power to triumph over his inherited tendencies, ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... out of the yards with some difficulty. They had a spiked switch to look out for, and a missile from an old building smashed the headlight glass. At the limits a man tossed a folded paper into the locomotive cab. It was a poor scrawl containing direful threats to anyone opposing ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... that long week little else was thought of. This was just what Miss Brooks had hoped for, because in their looking forward to this extraordinary pleasure in their humdrum lives, they ceased to harass their teacher with mournful laments and direful prophecies, and even Tabitha's face lost some of ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... opened to loftier speculations; and religious dread, with all the phantoms of superstition in its train, came like a band of bravoes, and first chaining down my soul in the awe of stupefaction, ultimately loosened its bonds, and sent it to wander in all its childish wildness in the direful realms of horrible dreams, and of waking visions hardly less so. I ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... That heaven ever scowls on earth? The earth that laughs up to its blue, The earth that owes it joy and birth? Oh, may the wine from vines it warms, May holy love thence fluttering down, Lend my philosophy their charms, To drive away care's direful frown! So, firm let's stand, Full glass in hand, And all evoke ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... send the moment I land in London. I cannot boast of our health, our looks, our strength, but I hope we may recover a part of all when our direful fatigues, mental and corporeal, cease to utterly ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... astonishing. It seemed to be pretty evident, from Prof. Huxley's lectures here, that he had not before imagined what results had been obtained in America. This is not surprising. Few foreigners are able to keep along with the work performed in this country, where there is such a direful supposed lack of workers! It is a fact that at present there is no part of the world where the discoveries made in this science are of so general importance as here. The Rocky mountains owe their ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... came into the room. The three men knew that she brought momentous, perchance direful, intelligence. She was deathly pale. Her eyes were unnaturally brilliant, her mouth set in ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... its crown a fig's green branches rise, And shoot a leafy forest to the skies; Beneath, Charybdis holds her boisterous reign, Midst roaring whirlpools, and absorbs the main. Thrice in her gulphs the boiling seas subside; Thrice in dire thunders she refunds the tide. Oh! if thy vessel plough the direful waves, When seas, retreating, roar within her caves, Ye perish all! though he who rules the main Lend his strong aid, his aid he ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... am I; and these fellows are delightfully plump. But you spoke of eating your shoes, Jacques. When were you reduced to that direful extremity?" ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the wasp seemed almost to drop into her claws; she clutched him with such a tight grasp, that he had no possibility of escape; but in an instant, with a direful scream, Wishie unclosed her paw; and the wasp dropped on the floor. Wishie's paw was terribly stung. Her first trial of the Fairy's gift had not proved pleasant by any means. So, limping and mewing, Wishie went back to her mother, who ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... seen here and there making their little preparations to leave for the hills: the direful scourge to them was an evil spirit, sent as a visitation upon their bad deeds. This they sincerely believe, coupling it with all the superstition their ignorance gives rise to. A few miles from the mansion, among the pines, rude camps are spread out, fires ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... and away where ranks were now clashing the thickest, Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved Achaians. Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion, Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust- cloud, Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering horse- hooves) Hewed with the sword's sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon Followed, chasing and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... colonies (for a war it will be) is a national cause, when in fact it is a ministerial one." But he very rarely spoke thus. It was at once his official duty as well as his strong personal wish to find some other exit from the public embarrassments than by this direful conclusion. Therefore, so long as war did not exist he refused to admit that it was inevitable, and he spared no effort to prevent it, leaving to fervid orators to declare the contrary and to welcome it; nor would he ever ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... we believe the magnitude of the work in which we are engaged is by no means lessened, and that the alarming and direful consequences attendant in various quarters, on this unchristian and inhuman usurpation of power, call for our united vigilance, and redoubled exertions, in contributing our share towards the eradication of this evil ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... almost screamed the exasperated Basset, whom Tom's manner of treating the subject was not calculated to mollify. "Let him slip, you say. I'll see him, I'll see him"—but in vain he sought words to express the direful purpose; language broke ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... stationary engines on a railroad was completely exploded. He had picked up the fixed engines which the genius of Watt had devised, and set them on wheels to draw men and merchandise, against the most direful predictions of the foremost engineers of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... "Whence woe, so direful and so strange, ensued Cannot by me to you be signified: I saw on earth his sword and armour strewed, Doffed by that peer, and scattered far and wide; And I a pious knight and courteous viewed Those arms collecting upon every ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... have either the time or the skill necessary to adjust a cold shoe to the hoof so that it will fit, as we say, "air-tight." Though the opponents of hot fitting draw a lurid picture of the direful consequences of applying a hot shoe to the hoof, it is only the abuse of the practice that is to be condemned. If a heavy shoe at a yellow heat be held tightly pressed against a hoof which has been pared too thin, till it embeds itself, serious damage may be done. But a shoe at a dark heat may ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... localities as rash, unreasonable, and impracticable as the radicals of the North. The magnanimous spirit of Lincoln and the heroic, chivalric spirit of Lee could not prevail in the two sections; hence followed a direful period in American history. As E. L. Godkin said, "That the chapter which tells the story of reconstruction should have followed in American history the chapter which tells the story of the war and emancipation, is something over which many ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... duration. Grendel, the monster, is seized with hateful jealousy. He cannot brook the sounds of joyance that reach him down in his fen-dwelling near the hall. Oft and anon he goes to the joyous building, bent on direful mischief. Thane after thane is ruthlessly carried off and devoured, while no one is found strong enough and bold enough to cope with the monster. For twelve years he persecutes ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... so horrible, that 'tis ever marked, that when this direful ceremony occurs, the average deaths in cities greatly increase. 'Tis from the turning of the blood in the spectators, who yet from some ungovernable madness cannot refrain from hurrying to the scene. I speak with some authority. I speak ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... amongst us can regard war as anything but a direful necessity arising out of our present conditions; only the thoughtless and those who batten upon such disasters can rejoice in the idea of what I have heard termed 'a ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... wretchedly unsuited to his new occupation, managed to get through the performance without mishap. He followed instructions blindly but faithfully, barking his shins twice and tripping over an equestrian banner once with almost direful results. The audience laughed with glee, and Grinaldi congratulated him on ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... high officials, princes; all of them with field glasses in their hands, with which, since early morning, they had been watching every phase of the death-struggle of the army of Chalons, as if they were at the play. And the direful drama ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... of Garrison declared that the Administration had lost its strongest man and that it was now on the way to destruction. Neither the President nor his many friends, however, were disturbed by these direful predictions of disaster; and as the people pondered the President's letter of acceptance of Mr. Garrison's resignation, wherein he showed his own mind was open to the best method of preparing the country and that ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... riotous passions, may still make him zigzag in his future path of life is very probable; but come what will, I shall answer for him the most determinate integrity and honour. And though his evil star should again blaze in his meridian with tenfold more direful influence, he may reluctantly tax friendship with pity, but ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... sat still, dazed and helpless in the direful presence of a woman who, to his utter horror, had gone violently insane. He began silently but urgently to pray that the gasoline would give out, when he would find himself in a position to reason with her, gently or forcibly as the situation demanded. He broke into ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... grievously he was over-tasking his strength, and earnestly importuned him to give himself more intervals of relaxation—but in vain. For nearly two years before his death, his haggard countenance evidenced the direful havoc which he was making of a constitution never of the strongest. Sir William Follett and he were both sitting at the bar of the House of Lords, on one of the latest days of the hearing of Mr. O'Connell's case, each within a yard or two of me. Two death-doomed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... laughed and crowed, and made chirrupy sounds, she was abundantly satisfied. Peter, too, was most ingenious in keeping off the fatal sounds of baby's wailing: he would blow into a paper bag, and then when the baby had screwed up her face, and was preparing to let out a whole volley of direful notes, he would clap his hands violently on the bag and cause it to explode, thereby absolutely frightening the poor little creature ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... him that his philosophy was a very recent acquisition. When the news of their poverty first came he was the one who raved and sobbed and refused to contemplate anything less direful than slow starvation or quick suicide. She had soothed and comforted then. Since the previous evening, when he had gone out, in spite of her protestations, and left her alone, his manner had changed. He was ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... enormous quantity of it; it passes to the feet of the dancer; in fact, every one diffuses it at will, and may I see the Minotaur tranquilly seated this very evening upon my bed, if you do not know as well as I do how he expends it. Almost all men spend in necessary toils, or in the anguish of direful passions, this fine sum of energy and of will, with which nature has endowed them; but our honest women are all the prey to the caprices and the struggles of this power which knows not what to do with itself. If, in the case of your wife, this energy has not ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... him. Still he was sure to play the money-diggers some slippery trick. Some had succeeded so far as to touch the iron chest which contained the treasure, when some baffling circumstance was sure to take place. Either the earth would fall in and fill up the pit or some direful noise or apparition would throw the party into a panic and frighten them from the place; and sometimes the devil himself would appear and bear off the prize from their very grasp; and if they visited the place on the next day, not ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... great patience from any one coming in contact with her, was this same Julia. The pretty blue dress and white apron were covered with great patches of mud; morocco boots and neat white stockings were in the same direful plight; and down her face the salt and muddy tears were running, for her handkerchief was also ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... usurpation and military despotism at the close of the enlightened eighteenth century! Even so, in the very dawn of the late tempestuous day, when the revolutions of Corcyra, the proscriptions of the reformers Marius, Caesar, &c., and the direful effects of the levelling tenets in the peasants' war in Germany (differenced from the tenets of the first French constitution only by the mode of wording them, the figures of speech being borrowed in the one instance from theology, and in the other from modern metaphysics), ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... pictures, that exist in life, Of thousands waging direful strife With gaunt Starvation, in the holds Where Mammon vauntingly unfolds ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... their gravities and secrets of state: no such thing; that whisper from Lord Quintown, the handsome nobleman, to Mr. St. George, is no hoarded and valuable information which would rejoice the heart of the editor of an Opposition paper, no direful murmur, "perplexing monarchs with the dread of change;" it is only a recent piece of scandal, touching the virtue of a lady of the court, which (albeit the sage listener seems to pay so devout an attention to the news) is far more interesting to the gallant and handsome ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have sat on the floor, and what direful events might have transpired, I cannot pretend to say, for just at this juncture the further door opened, and Dr. Wilkinson entered, bearing a candle in his hand. Frank very speedily found his legs, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... safer, certainly not London, whence Clarence wrote accounts of formidable mobs who were expected to do more harm than they accomplished; though their hatred of the hero of our country filled us with direful prognostications, and made us think of the guillotine, which was linked with revolution in our minds, before we had I beheld the numerous changes that followed upon the thirty years of peace in which ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shall be told Of direful ruin, loss, and dearth, There shall be said with pride and joy: "But man survived, and proved ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... this meeting caused to both, she was witness to the eloquent language of the eyes that beamed into each other, and then she hastened from the spot, crazed with bitterness of feeling, and fall of direful purpose. Had she been observed at that moment, it would have been seen that there was danger in her. To her father's kind salute, she turned a deaf ear, and hastened into the dwelling ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... principal towns and cities were endangered. The thick-flying rumors of the past few days received terrible confirmation, and, while Lee's plans were still shrouded in mystery, enough was known to awaken apprehension, while the very uncertainty proved the prolific source of the most exaggerated and direful stories. There was immense activity at the various armories, and many regiments of the city militia expected orders to depart at any hour. The metropolis was rocking with excitement, and wherever men congregated there were eager ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... amongst rude burs and thistles? Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now, Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears. What if in wild amazement and affright, Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp Of savage hunger, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... broke and the sound of trumpets called each man to an appointed spot, direful was the outcry from the tents of all the chiefs, and though many heads were out-thrust in rage of indignation, no single person could be prevailed upon wholly to emerge. Only the lesser warriors, the slaves and the bearers of the loads ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... "Yes, a little," she said lightly; "for I hate the very word. But, if it must be spoken, it should always be short and staccato. Instead, he sat here, and we talked about Fate and wounds and all sorts of direful things." She shook herself and shivered slightly. Then she sat down in the chair which Weldon had just left vacant. "It is bad manners to have nerves, Captain Frazer. Forgive me first, and then tell me something altogether flippant, ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... fair their last have breathed, And now this world forever leaved; Their father, and their mother too, They sigh and weep as well as you; Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched, Into eternity theire laanched. A direful death indeed they had, As wad put any parent mad; But she was more than usual calm: She did not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... a disgrace! What a cruel, direful, dreadful disgrace!" moaned the Octopus, drooping his head in shame, and Trot could see great tears falling down ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... we are still so busy in contemplating, that the union of the two kinds of force now specified, was essential to the liberation of the world from that odious but scientific oppression, by which it had been so long held in misery, and which was repeatedly found, by very direful experience, to be too strong for either of them separately. It was not till the enthusiastic indignation of vulgar minds, and the cordial ferocity of some of the rudest of the allied tribes, had been amalgamated with the disciplined valour ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... we call it but a "play:" Whether the comic muse, or lady's love, Romance or direful tragedy it prove, The bill ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... make matter luminous, Filling the eyes with sweet felicity, And love, and peace, and all emotions pure. No sorrow there to make the vision dim, And wash the mellow ripeness from the cheek; No guilty deed to brand the heart with shame, And write its direful sentence on the brow; No rankling venom struggling through the veins, And blasting all the kindliness within, Till like a torrent bursting o'er restraint, It spread its desolation on mankind; But a pure regnant holiness and love, Directing impulse with most queenly sway To ends of ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... refrain from weeping. Wise Ebn Thaher, said he, when he had recovered his speech, I may well hinder my tongue from revealing the secrets of my heart, but I have no power over my tears upon such a direful subject as Schemselnihar's danger! If that adorable and only object of my desires be no longer in the world. I shall not be one moment after! Reject so afflicting an idea, replied Ebn Thaher; Schemselnihar is yet alive; you need not doubt the certainty of it. If you have heard nothing ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... said. 'We turn out five troopers. I hope you will be here when we go out, for going round to Northwold brought me into a direful scrape when I went to exhibit myself to the dear old Terrace world. My father said it was an unworthy ambition. What would he have thought, if he had seen Jane stroking me down with the brush on the plea of dust, but really on ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the sunshine; the little villages perched like eagles' nests on the cliffs, far, far above our heads; the deep rocky channels through which the torrents had madly broken a way, tearing through every obstacle till they reached the Rhone, and marking their course with devastation; the scene of direful ruin at Martigny; the cataracts gushing, bounding from the living rock and plunging into some unseen abyss below; even the shrubs and the fruit trees which in the wider parts of the valley bordered the road side; the vines, the rich scarlet barberries, the apples and ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... more serious evils amongst the poorer classes of society. It necessarily lowers the price of labor by reason of the supply exceeding the demand. It increases the dearth of provisions by making the demand greater than the supply, and produces direful consequences to a large class of persons who labor under the evils, physical and moral, of poverty. You find it, as described by a witness called yesterday, in the overcrowding of our cities and country villages, and the necessarily demoralising effects resulting ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... fare was of the most substantial kind —not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful manner. My boy, said the landlord, you'll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty. Landlord, I whispered, that aint the harpooneer, is it? Oh, no, said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don't—he eats nothing but ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... extreme and dreadful lengths A Boston man would dare go, Could ne'er include the direful thought Of DWELLING ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... ground between. Of course it was out of the question for Billy Louise to leave the Cove while the storm lasted, so she took care of Marthy and the pigs and chickens and cows, and between whiles she tormented herself with direful pictures of Ward up there alone on Mill Creek. Sometimes she saw him raving in fever and wanting a drink which he could not get, so that thirst tortured him; then calling for her, when she could not come. Sometimes she saw him trying to hobble somewhere on ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Day-star, and the glow of his beauty reminded one of his father. Halcyone, the daughter of Aeolus, was his wife, and devotedly attached to him. Now Ceyx was in deep affliction for the loss of his brother, and direful prodigies following his brother's death made him feel as if the gods were hostile to him. He thought best, therefore, to make a voyage to Carlos in Ionia, to consult the oracle of Apollo. But as soon as he disclosed his intention to his wife Halcyone, a shudder ran through her frame, and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Fate begrudges ears that would hear me. 170 Jupiter! Lord of All-might, Oh would in days that are bygone Ne'er had Cecropian poops toucht ground at Gnossian foreshore, Nor to th' unconquered Bull that tribute direful conveying Had the false Seaman bound to Cretan island his hawser, Nor had yon evil wight, 'neath shape the softest hard purpose 175 Hiding, enjoyed repose within our mansion beguested! Whither ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... gloom, which had been the scene of so much that was dark and direful, became the witness of a happiness which seemed to lift it out of the veil of reserve in which it had been shrouded for so long, and make of the afternoon sun, which at that moment streamed in through the western windows, a signal ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... rest upon thee." Which passages seem to imply a total desertion of them, and retraction of all gracious influence. And when it speaks of letting them be under the gospel, and the ordinary means of salvation, for the most direful purpose: as that, "This child (Jesus) was set for the fall, as well as for the rising, of many in Israel"; as that, "Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling, and a rock of offense"; and, "The stone which the builders refused, is made a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... probably thinks, from a direful experience," said Van Berg, "that this would be worse than all the other fractures put together; and perhaps it would. An additional cause for gratitude, Miss Burton, that you, and not I, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Fred repeat the story of his night adventure and his theft of her picture, of his narrow escape, and of his subsequent visit to the cottage. Only gradually had her mother revealed to her the circumstances of Jerrold's wager with Sloat, and the direful consequences; of his double absences the very nights on which Fred had made his visits; of the suspicions that resulted, the accusations, and his refusal to explain and clear her name. Mrs. Maynard felt vaguely relieved to see how slight an impression the young man ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... women who had been suffered to remain on deck was close enough to overhear the direful news. Her ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... interested me. The latter gives one the same sort of bewildering view of the abysmal extent of Time that Astronomy does of Space. I do not think I shall take your advice as to learning Portuguese. It is said to be very ill spoken here; and assuredly it is the most direful series of nasal twangs I ever heard. One gets on quite well ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... hemisphere she chose to curse: For reasons good she did not please To visit our antipodes— Folks rude and savage like the beasts, Who, wedding-free from forms and priests, In simple tent or leafy bower, Make little work for such a power. That she might know exactly where Her direful aid was in demand, Renown flew courier through the land, Reporting each dispute with care; Then she, outrunning Peace, was quickly there; And if she found a spark of ire, Was sure to blow it to a fire. At length, Renown got out of ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... avoid and abhor the errors of the Latins. The rising majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by the pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema, [10] which enumerates the seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and devotes the guilty teachers, and their unhappy sectaries, to the eternal society of the devil and his angels. According to the emergencies of the church and state, a friendly correspondence ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... taken his departure eastward early in the morning; the myriads of locusts followed, so that in a quarter of an hour not one was to be seen. The depredations of these devouring insects was too soon felt, and a direful scarcity ensued. The poor would go out a locusting, as they termed it: the bushes were covered; they took their (haik) garment, and threw it over them, and then collected them in a sack. In half an hour they would collect ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... heartily, Gwendolyn had little appetite. Furthermore, again she was turning over and over the direful statements made concerning her parents. She employed the dinner-hour in formulating a plan that was simple but daring—one that would bring quick enlightenment concerning the things that worried. Miss Royle was still indisposed. Jane was locked in her own room, from which issued ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates |
