"Earthquake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the village, she could not look up at a single house without picturing to herself how the coming earthquake would shake it and crumble it into dust and ashes. And when she met people along the way, she thought of how the monsters of hell would soon hunt ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... of split and flattened bamboo, tied together with the long fibres of a dried climbing plant; the roof was of palm-leaves, and the ceiling of reeds. When an earthquake shook the district—for earthquakes were frequent—the inmates of such a fabric merely felt as if shaken in a basket, without sustaining any harm. In front of the cottage lay a woody ravine, extending almost to ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... with miraculous food by a heavenly messenger, and bidden to go to Horeb, the mount of God. He arrived there after a long journey, and withdrew into a cave; a rushing wind sweeps past; the wind and the earthquake and the lightning are the forerunners of Jehovah; and after them He comes Himself in the low whispering that follows the storm. His head covered, Elijah steps out of the cave and hears a voice ask what ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... month of April the needle kept up its persistent registering, and the Honourable Hilary continued to smile. The Honourable Jacob Botcher, who had made a trip to Ripton and had cited that very decided earthquake shock of the Pingsquit bill, had been ridiculed for his pains, and had gone away again comforted by communion with a strong man. The Honourable Jacob had felt little shocks in his fief: Mr. Tooting had visited it, sitting ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the day when those two pistol shots were fired at an Austrian Archduke in the streets of Serajevo that the Masters' match was played out at Kensingtowe. By the early evening the reverberation of the revolver reports had been felt like an earthquake-shock in all the capitals of Europe; and in a failing light the last wicket had fallen at Kensingtowe. So it happened that, while the Emperors of Central Europe were whispering that the Day had come and the slaughter of the youth of Christendom might begin, there was a gathering ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... antiquity was destroyed by an earthquake fifty-six years after its erection, B.C. 256. The fragments remained on the ground for many centuries, until Rhodes was conquered by the Turks, and they were eventually sold by one of the generals of Caliph Othman IV. to a merchant of Emesa for ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... CROMWELL, it was sent with somebody's compliments at a later date to Jamaica, and placed on the Parliament table. What became of it nobody knows. It is supposed that this ensign of ancient British Royalty was swallowed up by an earthquake of republican tendencies. Jamaica, of course, is a great place for spices; but, in spite of all the highly spiced stories, the origin of which is more or less aus-spice-ious, it is to be regretted that, up to the present moment, what gave them ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... the wine, and so much on the meat—when they are able to enjoy that luxury. They grumble, though not very bitterly, regarding the taxes as a sort of periodical hailstorm falling on their year's harvest. If they were to learn that Rome had been swallowed up by an earthquake, they certainly would not put on mourning. They would go forth to their fields as usual, they would sell their crops for the usual price, and they would pay less taxes. This is what all towns inhabited by peasants think ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... still at this time under the stress of the emotion caused by the terrible earthquake of 1663. Father Lalemant has left us a striking description of this cataclysm, marked by the naive exaggeration of the period: "It was February 5th, 1663, about half-past five in the evening, when a great roar was heard at the same ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... flowery, sleeping in loveliness, have been unheaved, and piled in somber, jagged masses, against the sky, by the fingering of an earthquake; and gentle, loving, trusting hearts, over whose altars brooded the white-winged messengers of God's peace, have been as suddenly transformed by a manifestation of selfishness and injustice, into gloomy haunts of misanthropy. Had Mrs. Grayson been arraigned for cruelty, or hard-heartedness, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the peoples of Europe, create by our ignorance and temper, by the nursing of old and vicious theories, by the poorness and defects of the ideas our intellectual activities have developed during the last generation or two, but something that "comes upon us" like the rain or the earthquake, and against which we can only protect ourselves by one thing: more arms, a ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... city of bigger constellations which in turn have still lonelier suns to swing about, until I go on and on, and wonder with a gasp what is beyond the end of space. But I can't go on thinking about it. I simply can't. It upsets me, the same as an earthquake would, when you look about for something solid and find that even your solid old earth is going ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... in earthquake-throes, With mountain-roots He bound her borders close; Turkis and ruby in her rocks He stored, And on her green ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... this earth would be If that uplifting thought, Born of some vast world accident, Into our daily lives were blent, And in each action wrought. But while we let the old sins flock Back to our hearts again, In flame, and flood, and earthquake shock, Thy voice must speak ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... view, appears from this point to be choked up with an almost impenetrable labyrinth of houses. This is, however, now the most regular portion of the capital. Having been that part which suffered most severely from the great earthquake of 1755, it has since been rebuilt upon a uniform plan, with its streets intersecting each other at right angles. In this quarter also are the two principal pracas, or squares, in the city. The largest of these ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... the palace-yard a loud report was heard. The palace shook as with an earthquake. Loud cries of soldiery were heard without, and Mark's heart ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... him that our visitor is sure to be interested in pictures, and that it would be a pretty attention, on his part, to paint her a landscape to hang up in her room. Owen brightens directly, informs me in his softest tones that he is then at work on the Earthquake at Lisbon, and inquires whether I think she would like that subject. I preserve my gravity sufficiently to answer in the affirmative, and my brother retires meekly to his studio, to depict the engulfing of a city and the destruction of a population. ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... mutual conflict, whirling in circles with intense velocity, and accompanied by winds, impetuous beyond all conception; while flashes of awful brilliancy, and murky, lurid flames incessantly broke forth. From these confused clouds, furious winds, and momentary fires, sounds issued, of which no earthquake or thunder ever heard could afford the least idea; striking such awe into all, that it was thought the end of the world had arrived, that the earth, waters, heavens, and entire universe, mingling together, were being resolved into their ancient chaos. ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... and instinct of life, is wonderfully recuperative. Whether earthquake or famine, fire or pestilence has blotted out a thousand lives, those who are left, like ants when their house is disturbed, waste but little time after the damage has been done in vain lamentations, but, slaves to the force of life, begin almost instantly ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... was not new to me, a remembered fear, had me fast; a remembered voice seemed to speak clearly incomprehensible words that had moved me before. The sheer faces of the enormous buildings near at hand seemed to topple forwards like cliffs in an earthquake, and for an instant I saw beyond them into unknown depths that I had seen into before. It was as if the shadow of annihilation had passed over them beneath the sunshine. Then they returned to rest; motionless, but with a ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... wish to hear about the earthquake at Misenum. After my uncle had left us on that day, I went on with my studies until it was time to bathe; then I had supper and went to bed. But my sleep was broken and disturbed. There had been many slight shocks, which were very frequent in Campania, but on this night they were so violent ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... lakes! fling out Thy mighty wave to breeze and sun, And let the rainbow curve above The foldings of thy clouds of dun. Uplift thy earthquake voice, and pour Its thunder to the reeling shore, Till caverned cliff and hanging wood Roll back the echo of thy flood, For there is one who slumbers now Beneath thy bow-encircled brow, Whose spirit hath a voice and sign More strong, more terrible ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... system of public education—in cultivating the military spirit, and training the children and youth of a nation to science and skill in the arts of carnage. The kind and gentle-hearted find little consolation in being reminded that war is one of God's agencies. They acknowledge that the earthquake, the pestilence, the tornado, are His agencies. They find no difficulty in saying, with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... run-about he did not realize that it was to be the speediest car on the road, but so it proved, and he was able to save the bank with it. In the book called "Tom Swift and His Wireless Message," I told you how he saved the castaways of Earthquake Island, among whom were Mr. and Mrs. Nestor, the parents ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... crashing, and huge rocks were tumbling. They felt sure that something horrible was going to happen. They all gathered together in one place to see what terrible thing this could be. They waited and they waited, but nothing came. At last there was a still more violent earthquake, and a huge gap appeared in the side of the Mountains. They all fell down upon their knees and waited. At last, and at last, a teeny, tiny mouse poked its little head and bristles out of the gap and came running down towards ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... Justinian great scourges devastated the world. In A.D. 526 Antioch was destroyed by an earthquake, and it is said that 250,000 people perished, but the most dreadful visitation on mankind was the great plague which raged in A.D. 542 and the following years, and, as Gibbon writes, "depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his successors." ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star, The cauldrons of the sea in storm, Have felt the earthquake's lifting arm, And trodden where ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... of this dry work at last, Crayon and chalk aside I cast, And gave my brush a drink! Dipping—"as when a painter dips In gloom of earthquake and eclipse,"— ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the nation in the prosecution of the war. On the 7th of April, King Ferdinand, putting himself at the head of this formidable host, quitted the fair city of Cordova amid the cheering acclamations of its inhabitants, although these were somewhat damped by the ominous occurrence of an earthquake, which demolished a part of the royal residence, among other edifices, during the preceding night. The route, after traversing the Yeguas and the old town of Antequera, struck into a wild, hilly country, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... settlement, and has ever remained the most conspicuous and distinguished quarter of the colony. The first building erected on this rock was a block-house, which was afterward burned. A second building, reared on the ruins of the first, was destroyed by an earthquake; but a third, the colonial castle and residence of the governors, stands to this day. It crowns the summit of the rock, is one hundred and forty feet in length, seventy feet in depth, two stories with basement and attic, and has a lookout that commands one of the most romantic and ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... caught in distressed circumstances, as neither having their weapons with them, nor being assembled there in order to fight. But things so fell out, that they would hardly have been credited though they had been foretold by anybody: for, in the first place, God disturbed their enemies with an earthquake, and moved the ground under them to such a degree, that he caused it to tremble, and made them to shake, insomuch that by its trembling, he made some unable to keep their feet, and made them fall down, and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... happen. Nobody would face and handle the rather intricate truth of the business. The whole effect upon the mind of a cool observer was of a covey of unsubstantial jabbering minds drifting over a series of irrational economic cataclysms, prices and employment tumbled about like towers in an earthquake, and amidst the shifting masses were the common work-people going on with their lives as well as they could, suffering, perplexed, unorganized, and for anything but violent, fruitless protests, impotent. You cannot hope now to understand the infinite want of adjustment in the old order ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... restraint cease to operate with effect. At the period which our narrative has now reached, and for a considerable time before it, those low rumblings which stunned and frightened the ear of civilized society, like the ominous sounds that precede an earthquake, were now followed by those tremblings and undulations which accompany the shock itself. But before we describe that social condition to which we refer, it is necessary that we should previously raise the vail a little, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his Temple the Ark of the Testament. By the Ark, we may know that this was the first Temple; for the second Temple had no Ark. And there were lightnings, and voices, and thundrings, and an earthquake, and great hail. These answer to the wars in the Roman Empire, during the reign of the four horsemen, who appeared upon opening the first four seals. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the Sun. In the Prophecy, the affairs of the Church begin to be considered ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... died there was a great earthquake, which made the earth tremble and the rocks rend, so that the ancient graves were opened, preparatory to the rising of the bodies of the saints on the Resurrection morning, following the Lord from the ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... balusters are gone, and the arch-stones have so slipped out of place that they seem to cling together by the will of Providence rather than by any physical law. The stairs themselves, although of fine stone that has almost the polish of marble, are cracked as if an earthquake had tormented them, and worn by the tread of innumerable feet into deep hollows. I reach a landing where a long corridor stretches away into semi-darkness. The floor is black with dirt, and so are the doors which once opened into rooms where luxury ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... thing that is great and terrible in Nature, Milton has filled his Fight of good and bad Angels with all the like Circumstances of Horrour. The Shout of Armies, the Rattling of Brazen Chariots, the Hurling of Rocks and Mountains, the Earthquake, the Fire, the Thunder, are all of them employ'd to lift up the Readers Imagination, and give him a suitable Idea of so great an Action. With what Art has the Poet represented the whole Body of the Earth trembling, even ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Astonishment Smote them at last. Through all those serried ranks, Compact so late, sudden confusions ran Like lines divergent through a film of ice Stamped on by armed heel, or rifts on plains Prescient of earthquake underground. Their chiefs Sounded the charge;—in vain: Distrust, Dismay, Ill Gods, the darkness lorded of that hour: Panic to madness turned. Cadwallon sole From squadron on to squadron speeding still As on a winged steed—his snow-white hair Behind him blown—a mace ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... defence of your crown and people." [142] He next approached the bed of the Queen: "M'amie" he said tenderly, "rejoice! God has given us what we asked." [143] Mezeray and Matthieu both assert that the birth of the Dauphin was preceded by an earthquake, which, with the usual superstition of the period, was afterwards declared to have been a forewarning of the ceaseless wars by which Europe was convulsed ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... of music, as I sat and listened with my mouth open to this wonderful display, my CAFFY grew cold, and I wondered the windows did not crack and the chandelier start out of the beam at the sound of this earthquake ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Heliobas. "No earthquake has crumbled it, no sea has invaded it, and no house has been 'builded' thereon. It is, as it was then, a waste field, lying about four miles west of the Babylonian ruins, and there is nothing whatever to hinder you from journeying thither when ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... terrestrial magnetism and the processes of the atmosphere. Noises, subterranean thunder without any perceptible concussion. The rocks which modify the propagation of the waves of concussion. Upheavals; eruption of water, hot steam, mud mofettes, smoke, and flame during an earthquake — ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... billiards in the Lonja,[8] the Merchants' Exchange; and Pepe described to us the feeling of utter astonishment with which he saw his ball, after striking the other, go suddenly off at an absurd angle into a pocket. The shock of an earthquake had tilted the table up on one side. While we were in Mexico there was a slight shock, which set the chandeliers swinging, but we did not even notice it. In April, a solemn procession goes from the Cathedral, on a day marked in the Calendar as the "Patrocinio de Senor San Jose", to implore the ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... rolling rumble beneath them, and the house quivered. They all started up in affright, and rushing to the hall found the gentlemen-at-arms in consternation also. They had sent to wake their captain, who said from their description that it must have been an earthquake, an occurrence which, although very rare in that country, had taken place almost within the century; and then went to bed again, strange to say, and fell fast asleep without once thinking of Curdie, or associating the noises they ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... with his hand. It groaned and squeaked under the weight. "Chairs don't seem to be made for me," he said simply. "Besides I'm more used to sitting on the floor." He dropped to the floor accordingly, with the effect of a small earthquake. The proprietor stared, but he swallowed his astonishment. "What you'd like to eat ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... though sky and sea and mountains seemed to be seething together, as if in the convulsions of an earthquake. ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... length I would not touch a mouthful of food in a week,—I presume from the want of fresh air and exercise, neither of which I could be said to enjoy. I had been about two months in this hole, when a violent shock like that of an earthquake took place, and I fell from the top of the cave to the bottom, and for a minute was knocked about like a pea in a rattle. I had almost lost my senses before it was over, and I found myself lying upon what was before the top of the cave. From these circumstances I inferred ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... any rate, you have heard it talked about. Do you know what takes place in such cases? Now and then, in consequence of some violent emotion, but how or why I cannot tell you, all the blood rushes suddenly back towards the heart, as during an earthquake a river will sometimes flow back towards its source, leaving its bed dry. Thereupon the face turns white, as if to give notice that there is no longer anything red below the skin. The organs, no longer stimulated by the blood, leave off work altogether. The brain goes ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... their hearts, were bowing with the utmost affability to the troubled sea of heads that inundated the open space in front; and from whence arose a storm of groans, and shouts, and yells, and hootings, that would have done honour to an earthquake. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... wrote. But both preached charity, chastity, poverty, humility, and abnegation of self. Both fasted in a wilderness. Both were tempted by a devil. Both announced a second advent. Both were transfigured. Both died in the open air. At the death of each there was an earthquake. Both healed the sick. Both were the light of a world which both said ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... being; and he, lifting up his voice to repeat it among men from that inward hearing, invariably astounds, and it may be infuriates his contemporaries. The simple proposition, GOD IS, could it once be wholly received, would shake our sphere as no earthquake ever did, and would leave not one stone upon another, I say not merely of some city of Lisbon, but of entire kingdoms and systems of civilization. The faintest inference from this cannot be vigorously announced in modern senates without sending throbs of terror over half a continent, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... young Lieutenant to drink tea with us at eight o'clock, and were enjoying a little music after a very sociable fashion, when a noisy excitement seemed to shake the house like a shock of an earthquake, and M. le General was announced in Dominique's most ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... further, we came to a narrow pass, on the east side of which was an inaccessible mountain, almost perpendicular, and entirely covered with snow; and on the west, a tremendous precipice, of several thousand feet in depth, as if the mountain had been split in two, or rent asunder by an earthquake: the path is not more than a foot wide, over a solid rock of granite. Here the whole army dismounted, and many prostrated in prayer, invoking the Almighty to enable them to pass in safety; but, however, notwithstanding all possible precaution, two mules missed their footing, and were ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... speak I would have done so, but I felt that a word would be like dynamite, and would tear the silent house into a pile of smoking bricks and plaster. I felt sure it would act like an earthquake, toppling the house over into the street. I felt that a word would be like the roaring voice of some strange god that would send everything off in thin vapor. I felt I must shut the door, and I went away remembering ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... colour to the affair, but decided not to on account of the noise. I had put my lantern on the table, and was just reaching out for it, when something happened. What it was for the moment I couldn't have said. It might have been an explosion of some sort or an earthquake. Some solid object caught me a frightful whack on the chin. Sparks and things occurred inside my head and the next thing I remember is feeling something wet and cold splash into my face, and hearing a voice that sounded like old ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... disturbance would themselves be sufficiently complex. Besides the numberless dislocations of strata, the ejections of igneous matter, the propagation of earthquake vibrations thousands of miles around, the loud explosions, and the escape of gases; there would be the rush of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to supply the vacant space, the subsequent recoil of enormous waves, which would traverse both these oceans and produce myriads ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... a phenomenon connected with volcanic eruptions, and arising from the same great cause; but while the latter are confined to certain mountains, and restricted within narrow limits at the present day, an earthquake is sometimes found to prevail over a very large portion of the earth's surface. To omit the more usual phenomena of earthquakes, we shall speak of but one, which has in some cases been observed, that throws a great light upon the manner in which the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... moment when he rejoins us that we hear in front of us, coming from a sort of ground swelling, the crackle of a machine-gun. It is a moment of agony—more serious even than when we were passing through the flaming earthquake of the barrage. That familiar voice speaks to us across the plain, sharp and horrible. But we no longer ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... that terrible tragedy in the country's history, the execution of John Brown for the raid on the United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry. The nation was shaken as by a great earthquake. Its dreadful import was realized perhaps by none so strikingly as by that little band of Abolitionists who never had wavered in their belief that slavery must ultimately disrupt the Union. When the country was paralyzed with horror and uncertainty, they ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... another topic of interest from the United States—namely, the earthquake that was felt over a wide extent of country on the 29th of April last. Our geologists are expecting to derive from it some further illustration of the dynamics of earthquakes, as the Smithsonian Institution has addressed a circular to its numerous staff ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... the earthquake of 1812, the writer has followed the commonly received assumption, derived from Bancroft, that it occurred December 8, and that this date fell on a Sunday. From later research, it is now believed to have occurred October 8, which was a Thursday. This seems more likely than the date given by Bancroft ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... We have presented to us, in the same incongruous manner, the settlement of Maryland—of Nova Scotia—sketches of English history under Oliver Cromwell—an account of the hooping cough in Quebec—and an earthquake in Canada. The cough was supposed to be the effect of enchantment,—"and many of the faculty did, or affected to believe it." "It was said a fiery crown had been observed in the air at Montreal; lamentable cries heard at Trois Rivieres, in places in which there was ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... it. On the contrary, I rather dislike the human race, taking it altogether, and including the Australian bushmen; and I don't believe any man who tells me that he would grieve half as much if ten millions of human beings were swallowed up by an earthquake at a considerable distance from his own residence, say Abyssinia, as he would for a rise in his butcher's bills. As to posterity, who would consent to have a month's fit of the gout or tic-douloureux in order that in the fourth thousand year, A. D., posterity should enjoy ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... glow shone in so many open chinks, that we enjoyed, at the same time, some of the comforts of a roof and much of the gaiety and brightness of al fresco life. A single shower of rain, to be sure, and we should have been drowned out like mice. But ours was a Californian summer, and an earthquake was a far likelier accident than a shower ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was terrific. The earth shook as if rocked by an earthquake, and the havoc wrought was so great that out of the 1,000 Austrians who held ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... China, and this huge bulwark, built in sterile places, on the summits of mountains, through the abyss of ravines—bear witness to the gigantic iron will, and the unlimited power, of the ancient kings. Neither time, nor earthquake, nor man, transitory man, nor the footstep of thousands of years, have entirely destroyed, entirely trodden down, the remains of immemorial antiquity. These places awake in me solemn and sacred thoughts. I wandered over the traces of Peter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Kemac, where the Euphrates trends to the south, towards Halapia, or Aleppo. We here passed to the north-west side of the river, and went over very high mountains, and through deep snow, to the west. There was so great an earthquake that year in this country, that in one city called Arsingan, ten thousand persons are said to have perished. During three days journey we saw frequent gaps in the earth, which had been cleft by the convulsion, and great heaps of earth which had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... family, I was custodian of all these priceless heirlooms, and for their safe keeping had constructed in the basement of my dwelling a strong-room of massive masonry, whose solid stone walls and single iron door could defy alike the earthquake's shock, the tireless assaults of Time, and Cupidity's ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... everywhere like starlings, and Bong, the little elephant, swinging good-naturedly up the broad white track with all the load he had room for on his back, there came an ominous jar and rumble, like the first of an earthquake, which ran along the front of Last ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... upon the varying classes. Red marks, and black marks, medals and prizes, all was luck and lottery. The pride of the fifth standard was laid low; one of its girls was attacked, two others were kept at home through parental panic. A disturbing insecurity as of an earthquake vibrated through the school. In Bloomah's class alone—as if inspired by her martial ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... recent model by Prince Galitzin of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg. The seismograph, as you know, was devised to register earthquakes at a distance. This one not only measures the size of a distant earthquake, but the actual direction from which the earth-tremors come. That is why there are ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... loath to do! But since indeed to Here and thyself I must subserve, And follow you quick, with a whizz, as the hounds a-hunt with the huntsman, —Go I will! and neither the sea, as it groans with its waves so furiously, Nor earthquake, no, nor the bolt of thunder gasping out heaven's labor-throe, Shall cover the ground as I, at a bound, rush into the bosom of Herakles! And home I scatter and house I batter, Having first of all made the ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... Chilterns. Most of the flocks over a very large area took a panic and burst from their folds, and next morning thousands of sheep were wandering all over the hills. I feel certain that there must have been an earthquake shock that night. Nothing else could have accounted for such a wide and general stampede. The last authenticated earthquake shock in the South Midlands took place hereabouts in 1775, and was noted at Lord Macclesfield's Castle of Shirbourne, where ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... was that terrible roar?" asked Mr. Gale. "We were badly frightened until Miss Nell came to us. We feared it was an earthquake." ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... now breaking through and scattering,—now hand in hand with,—the fierce or fantastic group of human passions, crimes, and anguishes, reeling on the unsteady ground, in a wild harmony to the shock and the swell of an earthquake. But my present subject was Troilus and Cressida; and I suppose that, scarcely knowing what to say of it, I by a cunning of instinct ran off to subjects on which I should find it difficult not to say too much, though certain after all that I should still leave the better part unsaid, and the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... of the world, Thy holy church, O God! Though earthquake shocks are threatening her, And tempests ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... in the breach which his valor has made, sleeps in a nameless grave. The subaltern whose surname is scarcely heard beyond the roll-call on parade, bears the colors of his company where the fight is hottest. And the corporal who heads his file in the final charge, is forgotten in the "earthquake shout" of the victory which he has helped to win. The victory may be due as much, or more, to the patriot courage of him who is content to do his duty in the rank and file, as to the dashing colonel who heads the regiment, or even to the general who plans the campaign: and yet unobserved, unknown, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the other. Trampling recklessly over the fallen, amid groans and oaths and prayers and sudden shrieks, the enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the numerous passages. Whither should they fly? Some, anticipating a second earthquake, hastened to their homes to load themselves with their more costly goods and escape while it was yet time; others, dreading the showers of ashes that now fell fast, torrent upon torrent, over the streets, rushed under the roofs of the nearest houses, or temples, or ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... her safe and well," thought Sir Norman, emphatically, "nothing short of an earthquake or dying of the plague will ever induce me to leave her again, until she is Lady Kingsley, and in the old manor of Devonshire. What a fool, idiot, and ninny I must have been, to have left her as I did, knowing those two sleuth-hounds were in full chase! What are all the Mirandas and midnight ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... destructible papers ever used in book production. The native worms and insects thrived on it, and the heat and dampness took their slower but equally certain toll. Add to these enemies the acts of providence of which the Philippines have received more than their share—earthquake, fire and flood—and the man-made devastations of war, combined with the fact that there was no systematic attempt made in the Philippines to preserve in archives and libraries the records of the past, and it can ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... this of which we speak, seems a sort of stony growth out of the hillside, or a fossilized town; so ancient and strange it looks, without enough of life and juiciness in it to be any longer susceptible of decay. An earthquake would afford it the only chance of being ruined, beyond ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... irrepressible,— which no force can stay, no violence restrain, like love, that wins its way and cannot be withstood by any human power, because itself is divine power. If spring came but once a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with a sound of an earthquake and not in silence, what wonder and expectation would there be in all hearts to behold ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... to me at the time of their trouble about Eric. I had been fond of the poor fellow, for his own sake as well as hers, but I never disguised his faults from her. I often told her that I feared for Eric's future; he had no ballast, it wanted a moral earthquake to steady him, and it was no wonder that his caprices and extravagant moods angered his brother. She used to be half offended with me for my plain speaking, but she was too gentle to resent it, and she would beg me to use ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... mere metaphor does the apostle of Love see in his visions of the world's future no Arcadian shepherd paradises, not even a perfect civilisation, but an eternal war in heaven, wrath and woe, plague and earthquake; and amid the everlasting storm, the voices of the saints beneath the altar crying, 'Lord, how long?' Shall we pretend to have more tender hearts than the old man of Ephesus, whose dying sermon, so old legends say, ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... was a railroad accident that she lost her mind in. Some said it was because she'd studied too hard in Europe. Some said it was an earthquake. Everybody said something. ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... succeeding year, and was received with the most flattering distinction. Having reposed for some months from their fatigues, Humboldt and Bonpland proceeded, in the first instance, to survey the country which had been devastated in 1797 by the dreadful earthquake, so frequent in those regions, and which swallowed up in a minute forty thousand persons. Then he set out, in June 1802, to visit the volcano of Tungaragno and the summit of Chimborazo. They ascended ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... of April 18, 1906, San Francisco was visited by one of the most dreadful disasters of modern times. An earthquake shock destroyed many of the important buildings in the business part of the city. Other cities and towns along the coast and in the Santa Clara Valley suffered greatly and a number of the buildings of Leland Stanford University, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... incredible after the day that I've had? Where do the things join? What's all that got to do with the horrors I've been through to-day, with the Forest, the cholera, Marie, Semyonov.... With all that's happening in Europe? With this mad earthquake of a catastrophe? And yet one thinks of such silly things. I can see them doing Othello with their cheap ermine, bad jewellery and impossible wigs. I expect Othello's black came off as he got hotter and hotter; and the Rev. I. R. Glass on "Fools".... ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... me—but I know thee now. Ask me not how I know it sooth; Enough, I know the bitter truth. I felt forebodings of this hour; It did my happiest thoughts o'er power, With a dark weight; but then I thought, 'Twas by my foolish fancy wrought. 'Twas like the omen which precedes The earthquake when the summer reeds Are strangely still, until the shock The central earth shall wildly rock. Thou dost not love me, child of Spain! Thy heart can love no thing but gain; The paltry dust I tread above, To thee, is more ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... earthquake and fire. The next few years San Franciscans were busy clearing away the debris and rebuilding. It was predicted that the city might recover in ten years, and might not recover in ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... once established the electric current between the threads; a loud explosion followed; the house shook as if in an earthquake; the walls fell in. Hatteras, Altamont, and Bell hastened out of the magazine, ready to fire. But their guns were not needed; four of the five bears fell about them in fragments, while the fifth, badly burned, ran away ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... conversation one day with some Makololo gentlemen with the advice "not to believe them, for they were only a set of thieves;" and it was taken in quite a good-natured way. It is remarkable that none of the ancients here had any tradition of an earthquake having occurred in this region. Their quick perception of events recognizable by the senses, and retentiveness of memory, render it probable that no perceptible movement of the earth has taken place between 7 Deg. and 27 Deg. S. in the centre of the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... lingering pulsation of the earthquake quivered through the ground. A heavy tile, shaken from the roof, fell and struck the old man on the temple. He lay breathless and pale, with his gray head resting on the young girl's shoulder, and the blood trickling from the wound. As she bent over him, fearing that he ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... villagers can never be easy that it will not tumble on top of them; and once a year regularly, and at odd times when the panic takes them, they march up and tie it with ropes. This very thing they were doing as we arrived, and all because some old woman had dreamed of an earthquake. We took notice that in the crowd and in the gang binding the stone there was no man the right side of fifty (barring a cripple or two); the reason being that all their young men ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... stone image. Living less and less well, doing without fires, sitting often in the dark at night to save the expense of gas, Cuckoo had managed to pay her rent until a week ago. Then money had failed, and the great earthquake had at length tossed and swallowed the wretched Mrs. Brigg. The scene had been tropical. Mrs. Brigg was really moved to the very depths of her being. For days she had been, as it were, eating and drinking apprehension. Now ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Bithynia is the author of twenty-two epigrams in the Anthology. One of them is on the destruction of Sardis by an earthquake in A.D. 17. He is fond of sentimental treatment, which sometimes touches pathos but often ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... such an immense distance that the sky above would have the appearance of nothing more than a narrow streak of blue. Yet these huge chasms have not been made by any violent breaking apart of the rocks or convulsion of an earthquake. No, they have been gradually, silently, and steadily cut through by the river which now glides quietly in the wider chasms, or rushes rapidly through the narrow gorges ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... how Tripolis has been ruined by the late earthquake (July 9, 551); how silk and various woven stuffs are sold at Tyre; how the pilgrims scratched their names on the relics shewn in Cana of Galilee—"and here I, sinner that I am, did inscribe the names of my ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... it sinks, tugged and shaken by the sextons, the grave, without their intervention, fills of itself by the mere downfall of the shaken soil. Useful shovels at the tips of their claws, powerful backs, capable of creating a little earthquake: the diggers need nothing more for the practice of their profession. Let us add—for this is an essential point—the art of continually jerking and shaking the body, so as to pack it into a lesser volume and cause it to pass when passage is obstructed. We shall presently see that ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... not compelled to face the scorching furnaces; we do not have to forge the iron that resists the invading cyclone and the leveling earthquake. We could quit cold and let wild nature kick us about at will. We could have cities of wood to be wiped out by conflagrations; we could build houses of mud and sticks for the gales to unroof like a Hottentot ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... propel men and nations. A tame and limping similitude would fail to accomplish the object. While there are times when He employs in the Bible the gentle dew and the morning cloud and the dove and the daybreak in the presentation of truth, we often find the iron chariot, the lightning, the earthquake, the spray, the sword, and, in ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... personal notice to a nonresident defendant be effective. Insofar as jurisdiction is thus required over a nonresident, it does not extend beyond the property involved.[726] Consistently with such principles, San Francisco, after the earthquake of 1906, had destroyed nearly all records, permitted titles to be reestablished by parties in possession by posting summons on the property, serving them on known claimants, and publishing them against unknown claimants ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Constantinople would not let him go. They drove away his enemies from the city; they raised a sedition and a seasonable earthquake, as Gibbon might call it, and having excited superstitious fears, the empress caused him to be recalled. His return, of course, was a triumph. The people spread their garments in his way, and conducted him in pomp to his archiepiscopal throne. Sixty bishops ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord |
