"Fatal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... selected to burn the French fleet lying at anchor in the Basque Roads, he was successful by means of fire-ships in destroying several vessels, but complained he was not supported by Lord Gambier, the admiral, a complaint which was fatal to his promotion in the service; disgraced otherwise, he went abroad and served in foreign navies, and materially contributed to the establishment of the republic of Chile and the empire of Brazil; in 1830 he was restored by his party, the Whigs, to his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... plant, which she immediately did and prepared according to his direction, which he took and readily recovered. He then went through a series of diseases, directing her as before to get the different kind of medicines for the different diseases. Lastly, he became sick with that fatal disease, consumption. This he said was incurable, and he must die. He then told her he was a messenger from Tarenyawagon, to show them the diseases that they should be subjected to, and also the medicine to cure them. And also to tell them the predictions of their fate and doom. Said he could ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... of the senate expired on the first Monday of the present month. It is clear that if there were no intrinsic objections to the bill itself in relation to purposes to be accomplished this objection would be fatal, as, it is apparent that the provisions of the third section of the bill to admit Colorado have reference to a period and a state of facts entirely different from the present and affairs as they now exist, and if carried into effect ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... I held constant and friendly intercourse I met the man, whom I did not regard with perfect indifference. Though I struggled to conquer by every means the passion, I at length yielded to his solicitations, and in a fatal moment for my own peace I became his wife. In a few years his conduct fully justified my demand for a separation, and I fondly hoped to escape the fatal prophecy. Under the delusion that I had passed my forty-seventh birthday, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... bunch of bachelor's buttons he held in his hand, augury of the future, had he known it,—and she accepted them with a smile. She dropped her memorandum; he picked it up, and she smiled again, doing still more fatal damage than in the first instance. No words were spoken, but Rose, even at ten, had less need of them than most of her sex, for her dimples, aided by dancing eyes, length of lashes, and curve of lips, quite took the place of conversation. The dimples tempted, assented, denied, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Penellan felt despair taking possession of them. They did not dare to return to their companions. They did not dare to announce this fatal news to their comrades in misfortune. They climbed upon the block of ice in which the hut was hollowed, and could perceive nothing but the white immensity which encompassed them on all sides. Already the cold was beginning ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... occasionally baking it in an oven. The other is the coat in which he received his death-wound at Trafalgar. On its breast are sewed three or four stars and orders of knighthood, now much dimmed by time and damp, but which glittered brightly enough on the battle-day to draw the fatal aim of a French marksman. The bullet-hole is visible on the shoulder, as well as a part of the golden tassels of an epaulet, the rest of which was shot away. Over the coat is laid a white waistcoat with a great blood-stain on it, out of which all the redness has utterly ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... large space left for him, while Claud Dalzell, in his London riding clothes, and with his air of a reigning prince, warily turned with him. Guthrie Carey, in the waiting pony-carriage, had but one interest in the performance—his hopeful anticipation of a fatal, or at least ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... infinitesimal elements of the complex and permanent life of society determine by their normal growth the development of the state. But this individual growth must be normal. A huge and disproportionate development of the individual of classes, would prove as fatal to society as abnormal growths are to living organisms. Freedom therefore is due to the citizen and to classes on condition that they exercise it in the interest of society as a whole and within the ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... secretly passed at Paris (May 20th, 1802), which prepared to re-establish slavery in the West Indies; but Decres warned Leclerc that it was not for the present to be applied to St. Domingo unless it seemed to be opportune. Knowing how fatal any such proclamation would be, Leclerc suppressed the decree; but General Richepanse, who was now governor of the island of Guadeloupe, not only issued the decree, but proceeded to enforce it with rigour. It was this which caused ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Many fatal mistakes in the choosing of friends come from unfit haste. We would better take time to know our possible friends, and be sure that we know them well, before making the solemn compact that seals ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... mountain defiles, where their progress was continually impeded by rocks and precipices. Often they had been obliged to travel along the edges of frightful ravines, where a false step would have been fatal. In one of these passes, a horse fell from the brink of a precipice, and would have been dashed to pieces had he not lodged among the branches of a tree, from which he was extricated with great difficulty. These, however, were not the worst ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... a poisoned arrow out of the darkness—another thought pierced him. What if she were indeed of those who loved for a space and passed smiling on? What if the fatal taint of the world from which she had come to him had touched her also, withering the heart in her, making true love a thing impossible? What if she had indeed been fashioned in the same mould as the worthless woman whom she ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... against its being carried into execution. Every class devised some objection against it, but the physicians bade the fairest to interest the king in the preservation of the ancient privileges of his people; for they remonstrated, that if the filth was not, as usual, thrown into the streets, a fatal sickness would probably ensue, because the putrescent particles of the air, which such filth attracted, would then be imbibed by the human body. But this expedient, with every other that could be thought ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... before us a month or two ago the case of a gentleman living in a country town—a quiet, shy, studious recluse—born on this fatal day. By some mischance he happened to pick up a journal in which was an article on the Government by Mr. ARNOLD WHITE. He read it. He was so terrified that he expired from heart failure. That sounds to you incredible, but real life is often incredible. That is one of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... pride of England and of Europe, I believe no man is so strangely wicked as to desire to see destroyed by a conflagration or an earthquake, though he should be removed himself to the greatest distance from the danger. But suppose such a fatal accident to have happened, what numbers from all parts would crowd to behold the ruins, and among them many who would have been content never to have ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... lightning-swift motion of the wrist to avoid the fatal issue, but it was too late, and without a sigh or groan, scarce a tremor, the Vicomte de ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... great variety of theories, did but strengthen in her "the idea and sentiment of liberty, which can alone conduct society to its true aim." Finally, from the Italian revolution of 1848, which awoke her warmest sympathies, she learned to understand the fatal consequences of despotic government, as well as the inevitable mistakes of freedom, when first unfettered ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... creeping towards a powder magazine. And my love shone fiercely in my heart, like a southern star; it held me, hypnotized, in a thrilling and exquisite entrancement, so that if my secret, silent lover was away from me, as on that fatal night in my drawing-room, my friends were but phantom presences in a shadowy world. This is not an exaggerated figure, but the truth, for when I have loved ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... commonly received, concerning the original corruption of human nature, and the necessity of divine grace to enlighten the understanding and purify the heart, as prejudicial to the progress of holiness and virtue, and tending to establish mankind in a presumptuous and fatal security. He maintained the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... separate a thousand times in a year and a half. But I am so unhappy! Though it's such nonsense, it's a great blow to me. I feel like Famusov in the last scene of Sorrow from Wit. You are Tchatsky and she is Sofya, and, only fancy, I've run down to meet you on the stairs, and in the play the fatal scene takes place on the staircase. I heard it all; I almost dropped. So this is the explanation of her dreadful night and her hysterics of late! It means love to the daughter but death to the mother. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the man who dishonored my sister that fatal night of the 16th of May, 1804, at Sachemont, was not alone. He was accompanied by the Count of Karlstein, the man whom you have just seen. I cannot dwell upon the terrors of that night. I escaped—but my poor sister! Nor did I ever speak of that man to you. I felt that Talizac was enough ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... she has succumbed, it is because she has committed faults. All defeats have their geneses. Before the enemy we were not a unit. There were too many discussions, and not enough action; such a state of affairs is always fatal." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... unfastened all through the night. We have that from the butler's testimony. He didn't lock them last night; they were found unlocked this morning. Therefore, I hold that an intruder, either man or woman, may have come in during the night, accomplished the fatal deed, and departed without any one being the wiser. That this intruder was a woman, is evidenced by the bag she left behind her. For, as Mr. Crawford has said, if Miss Lloyd denies the ownership of that bag, it ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... it. Death ever rose between me and all I loved; I can remember how the thought of it poisoned the happiest moments I spent with Marguerite. During the first months of our married life, when she lay sleeping by my side and I dreamed of a fair future for her and with her, the foreboding of some fatal separation dashed my hopes aside and embittered my delights. Perhaps we should be parted on the morrow—nay, perhaps in an hour's time. Then utter discouragement assailed me; I wondered what the bliss of being united availed me if it were to end ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... astonished. All at once the men-at-arms stood round like walls. Sintram felt that no hope remained for him. He determined to die as it became a bold warrior; and without giving one sign of emotion, he looked on the fatal weapon with a ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... other voluminous writers, wrote very much that cannot be called equal to his best: and it cannot be denied that the inferior pieces hold a rather large proportion of the whole. Nothing is less fatal to true criticism than the popular habit of blindly overvaluing the inferior work of men of genius, unless it be the habit of undervaluing them by looking at their worst instead of at their best. Great men are to be judged by their highest; and it is not ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... you can find a place between the throne of God and the dust to which man's body crumbles, where the fatal responsibilities of law do not weigh upon him, I will find a vacuum in nature. They press upon him from God out of eternity and from the earth out of nature, and from every department of life, as constant and all-surrounding as the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... impatient at the seeming success which marked everything that the red-skins undertook. He looked and listened for some evidence that the Irishman was "there;" but no dull, subterranean report told him of the fatal rifle-shot, while the three Apaches continued steadily lowering their comrade with as much coolness and deliberation as if not the slightest particle of danger threatened. Minute after minute passed, and the lad was in deep despair. It could ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... to gain wish and need, * But vain was the end of this journey vast. I have stolen through life, and my death in strife * Was doomed by the Lord who doth all forecast And I've toiled these toils to their fatal end * For an orphan, a pauper ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the letter, one of the most violent of his utterances, and it was used against him with fatal effect when he ran for governor, and also when ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... must allay it now. We must lead men to discuss points of difference with respect, forbearance, and courage, to find a consistent way of life for all that will inspire confidence in all. At present we inspire confidence in no one; it would be fatal to hide the fact. This is a necessary step to bringing matters to a head. We cannot hope to succeed all at once, but we must keep the great aim in view. There will be objections on all sides; from the blase man of the world, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... It is a spot of ill repute even amongst the barbarous inhabitants of these regions; and more Turks have received their death-wounds from behind the boulders, which have served to screen the assassins, or from the knives of the ever-ready Greeks in that fatal gorge, than in any other spot of these disordered lands. The Pass is formed by the extremities of Banyani and Pianina, and is of much strategical importance. It was one of the first points subsequently occupied by Omer Pacha. Many a disaster has been brought about by ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... very illogical impulse, Julien de Buxieres had hardly concluded the arrangement with Claudet which was to strike the fatal blow to his own happiness when he began to forestall the possibilities which the future might have in store for him. The odor of the wild mint and meadow-sweet, dotting the banks of the stream, again awoke vague, happy anticipations. Longing to reach Reine Vincart's ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... seemed to augur badly for the welfare of our expedition, gave me much concern and anxiety. My two blacks, the companions of my reconnoitring excursions, began to show evident signs of discontent, and to evince a spirit of disobedience which, if not checked, might prove fatal to our safety. During my recent reconnoitre, they both left me in a most intricate country, and took the provisions with them. They had become impatient from having been without water at night; and, in the morning, whilst I was following the ranges, they took the opportunity of diverging from the ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... and intensely democratic—in the best sense of that abused adjective. The British critics were greatly displeased with the book:—and we are reminded of the fact that the Spanish still somewhat resent 'Don Quixote' because it brings out too truthfully the fatal gap in the Spanish character between the ideal and the real. So much of the feudal still survives in British society that Mark Twain's merry and elucidating assault on the past seemed to some almost an insult to ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... fighting in this fatal war, where on both sides the prisoners were shot—on the one side, because Chouans and Vendeans were considered brigands; on the other, because they knew not where ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... complaints lasting several weeks and which brought about his discharge from the staff of a local newspaper, awoke one July morning, picked up his infant child and, throwing it against the opposite wall of the room, inflicted fatal injuries upon it. After this he turned his face to the wall and remained quietly in bed. There was no ascertainable cause present for this act. The child was in the habit of entering the patient's room every morning and playing with him before he arose from bed. It was apparently ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... had dressed Dick's wounds, Doctor Bertmann said he would go down and see the governor. He had already told the lads that he had received fatal injuries, and was unconscious, and that he might, or might not, recover his senses before he died. It was an hour before he returned, accompanied by the ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... tarnishes his own fame than would the virtuous character and noble actions of the other. Thus the king fosters division and emulation among his sons, putting so much power into the hands of the younger, which he believes he can undo at his pleasure, that the wisest here foresee much fatal division in this mighty empire when the present king shall pay the debt of nature, expecting that it will then be rent in pieces ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... whom the Spaniards found in Cuba and St. Domingo had withered before them as if struck by a blight. Many died under the lash of the Spanish overseers; many, perhaps the most, from the mysterious causes which have made the presence of civilisation so fatal to the Red Indian, the Australian, and the Maori. It is with men as it is with animals. The races which consent to be domesticated prosper and multiply. Those which cannot live without freedom pine like caged eagles or disappear like ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... before she could carry out any rash project, Aunt Myra's palpitations set in so alarmingly that they did good service for once and kept Rose busy taking her last directions and trying to soothe her dying bed, for each attack was declared fatal till the patient demanded toast and tea, when hope was again allowable and the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Earthquakes in our Dayes. Accordingly, we read, Great Earthquakes in divers places, enumerated among the Tokens of the Time approaching, when the Devil shall have no longer Time. I suspect, That we shall now be visited with more Usual and yet more Fatal Earthquakes, than were our Ancestors; in asmuch as the Fires that are shortly to Burn unto the Lowest Hell, and set on Fire the Foundations of the Mountains, will now get more Head than they use to do; and it is not impossible, that the Devil, who is ere long to be punished in those ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... place the episode which has so often and variously been described. The Countess Delphine Potocka, between whom and Chopin existed a warm friendship, and who then happened to be at Nice, was no sooner informed of her friend's fatal illness ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the walls many had been killed outright, being struck on the head by bullets through the loopholes, behind which they were firing; but of those hit during the retreat, or when at last they took the offensive, many of the wounds, though of a disabling, were not of a fatal nature. The company on the other side of the village had not been pressed so severely, but the Prussian shell had fallen thickly there, and a large proportion of the wounds were caused by fragments of shell or ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... and when towards morning I threw myself exhausted on my bed, I seemed to feel my earlier life, so smiling and so full, go out like a fire, and before me another life opened, sombre and unpeopled, where in future I must live alone, alone with my fatal thought which had exiled me thither, and which I was tempted to curse. The days which followed this discovery were the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... sunk, and the log had stopped at the third, less than a hundred yards away. As it came on, the sergeant climbed to the top of the chimney, and shortly afterwards returned with the report that he had seen the prostrate body of a warrior revealed beyond—good evidence that his first shot had been fatal. If the next two stones should be as rapidly removed as the others, we feared the Indians would reach us, unless the rescuing party prevented, at ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... had originally been selected by Captain Wollaston for a trading post. Imbued with the same mercenary motive which had proved fatal in the case of Weston and Gorges, Captain Wollaston, whose name is perpetuated in Mount Wollaston, brought with him in 1625 a gang of indented white servants. Finding his system of industry ill suited to the climate, he carried his men to Virginia, ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... was so high that it was impossible to see those who propelled it. These were moments of painful suspense on both sides; even the enemy's fire ceased; every eye was fixed on the fearful vehicle which was to bring the bitter conflict to a fatal close. At length the backs of the hindmost men at the pole came into sight. Two flashes from Fink's rifle, two yells, the wagon stood still; those who were pushing it crowded closer. Two dark bodies lay on the ground. Fink loaded again, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... and had come to Edward's own knowledge by that indirect channel, that Manston, as a married man, conscientiously avoided Cytherea after those first few days of his arrival during which her irresistibly beautiful and fatal glances had rested upon ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... matter; they make no pretension. The frank confession, that they are not good, seems to serve some men as a substitute for goodness. By comparing themselves complacently with fellow-sinners of a different class, they contrive to rivet the fatal error more firmly on their own hearts. Observing among their neighbours here and there a rank hypocrite, they compare his sanctimonious profession with his indifferent sense of honesty, and congratulate themselves that they are ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... you have read me strangely if you think that. I talked to her with my lips, yes—but it was of you I was thinking. I was thinking that you were born to play a part in many dramas, that you have the fatal beauty which is rare in all ages." The Vicomte bent towards her, and his voice became caressing. "You cannot realize how ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... foible which the delicate Amelia possessed was an unsuspecting breast to lavish esteem. Unversed in the secret villanies of a base degenerate world, she ever imagined all mankind to be as spotless as herself. Alas for Amelia! This fatal credulity was the source of all her misfortunes." It was. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... worthy reign. Being at a feast one day, with many guests, on the Island of Stord, sudden announcement came to him that ships from the south were approaching in quantity, and evidently ships of war. This was the biggest of all the Blue-tooth foster-son invasions; and it was fatal to Hakon the Good that night. Eyvind the Skaldaspillir (annihilator of all other Skalds), in his famed Hakon's Song, gives account, and, still more pertinently, the always practical Snorro. Danes in great multitude, six to one, as people afterwards computed, springing swiftly to ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... Shepherd already determined. But, speaking as thy sister, Sergius, thy garments appear strange. Doubtless they were well enough in the Bielo-Osero, where the Rule of the Studium is law instead of fashion; but here we must consult customs or be laughed at, which would be fatal to the role I have in mind for thee." Then with a smile, she added, "Observe the dominion I ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... England, might for the moment be deferred, but that if England thought it a safe policy to ruin Henry by throwing on his shoulders the whole burthen of a war with the common enemy, she would discover and deeply regret her fatal mistake. The time was a very ill-chosen one to summon France to pay old debts, and his Christian Majesty had given his ambassador no instructions contemplating ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... delicate, soft and white, And yet so strong in love's strange might; Clasp them around the kneeling form, Fold them tenderly close and warm, And who can tell But such slight links may draw her back, Away from the fatal, fatal track; ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... of all his actions he Was brought from Newgate to the fatal tree; And there his life resigned, his race is run, And Tyburn ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... West Indies." In the dedication to William, Earl of Pembroke, and Robert, Earl of Lindsay, he says it was written at the request of Sir Robert Cotton, the learned antiquarian, and he the more willingly satisfies this noble desire because, as he says, "they have acted my fatal tragedies on the stage, and racked my relations at their pleasure. To prevent, therefore, all future misprisions, I have compiled this true discourse. Envy hath taxed me to have writ too much, and done too little; but that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a half hour passed. Lavretsky still stood there, clenching the fatal note in his hand, and gazing unmeaningly on the floor. A sort of dark whirlwind seemed to sweep round him, pale faces to glimmer ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... orders, or what remained of them, the true party of reaction, eager to fan the first misgivings and alarms of Sovereigns, and to arrest a development more prejudicial to their own power and importance than to the dignity and security of the Crown. Further, there existed throughout Europe the fatal and ineradicable tradition of the convulsions of the first Revolution, and of the horrors of 1793. No votary of absolutism, no halting and disquieted friend of freedom, could ever be at a loss for images of woe in presaging ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of ages. Now, if I am right in my definition of Pantheism as absolutely identifying God with the Universe,[3] so that, in fact, there cannot be anything but God, the inconsistency here noted must be regarded as fatal to the genuineness of the Indian or indeed of any other ancient Pantheism. For the defect proved during many centuries to be incurable, and was not indeed fully ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... Christian, religion; boldly declares that he himself, and every true believer, would eagerly dispute with the bishop of Callinicum the merit of the deed, and the crown of martyrdom; and laments, in the most pathetic terms, that the execution of the sentence would be fatal to the fame and salvation of Theodosius. As this private admonition did not produce an immediate effect, the archbishop, from his pulpit, [93] publicly addressed the emperor on his throne; [94] nor would he consent to offer the oblation of the altar, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... so once, fool that I was, but I know better now. No matter how dear another child may become, and John means much to me, it is not one's own flesh and blood. No one but a mother who has suffered can fully understand this. During the twenty years that have passed since my fatal mistake, my baby girl has been ever with me. If alive, she is a young woman now. She goes by some other name, and calls another woman 'mother.' She does not know of my existence, and even if she heard my name or met me face to face, I would mean ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... childhood in the islands, but appear suddenly in that narrow horizon, life-sized apparitions. For these no bond of humanity exists, no feeling of kinship is awakened by their peril; they will assist at a shipwreck, like the fisher-folk of Lunga, as spectators, and when the fatal scene is over, and the beach strewn with dead bodies, they will fence their fields with mahogany, and, after a decent grace, sup claret to their porridge. It is not wickedness: it is scarce evil; it is only, in its highest power, the sense of isolation and the wise disinterestedness ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had another scare. In Lincoln's Inn Walks, Thomas Winter met Tresham, who told him in a terrified whisper that Lord Salisbury had been to the King, and, there was grave reason to fear, had shown him the fatal letter. Winter hastened away to Catesby, to whom he communicated the news. For the first ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... but made him merely "governor" or "deputy;" in Sacia he maintained as tributary king the monarch who had resisted his arms. Policy may have dictated the course pursued in each instance, which may have been suited to the condition of the several provinces; but the variety allowed was fatal to consolidation, and the monarchy, as Cyrus left it, had as little cohesion as any of those by which it ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... importance than a free activity of thought, untrammelled by forms or precedents, and ever alert to novel combinations of ideas. Give a race this and it will guide it to civilization as surely as the needle directs the ship to its haven. It is here that ideographic writing reveals its fatal inferiority. It is forever specifying, materializing, dealing in minutiae. In the Egyptian symbolic alphabet there is a figure for a virgin, another for a married woman, for a widow without offspring, for ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Obligez-moi de me dispenser de la commission. Monsieur traite avec vous de sa ruine. Vous ne l'aimez point, Madame, j'en ai connoissance, et ce mariage ne peut etre que fatal: je me ferois un reproche d'y avoir part. Je parle en conscience. Si mon scrupule deplait, qu'on me dise: "Va-t'en." Qu'on me chasse, je m'y soumets: ma ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... were eager to give up control of their destinies to a parliament in which they would have only one-tenth of the representation. The responsible politicians did not at any time endorse the scheme. Sir John Macdonald, as a practical man, saw at once a fatal objection {145} in the sacrifice of Canadian self-government which it involved.[3] Some of the members of the Imperial Federation League urged with plausibility that political federation would bring the colonies ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... Nauvoo. In the ranks of their assailants were many outraged men—fathers who looked for a lost child—angry brothers, seeking revenge for a sister lured from her home—lovers, who lamented a sweetheart beguiled by that fatal faith—and no doubt the blood of the pseudo-Saint's, there and then shed, was balm to many a ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... deliver on horseback, but such is the lax custom that everything will do to-morrow. That fatal word is ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... no fatal error. No hurry about 'em, but a most alarmin' regularity. They was all pitchin' plumb on that road, an' each one about fifty to a hundred yards nearer our procession, an' us walkin' straight into the shower too. The swoosh-bang o' each one kep' ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... happened to be STIRRUP. 'No, I don't seem to remember that word, Mr. Anne,' he would say: 'it don't seem to stick to me, that word don't.' And then, when I had told it him again, 'Etrier!' he would cry. 'To be sure! I had it on the tip of my tongue. Eterier!' (going wrong already, as if by a fatal instinct). 'What will I remember it by, now? Why, INTERIOR, to be sure! I'll remember it by its being something that ain't in the interior of a horse.' And when next I had occasion to ask him the French for stirrup, it was a toss-up whether ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lincoln in the dust. He, if any one, could have averted the mistakes which delayed by fifteen years the very beginning of the process of reconciliation. His wise and kindly influence removed, the North committed what is now recognised as the fatal blunder of forcing unrestricted negro suffrage on the South. This measure was dictated partly, no doubt, by honest idealism, partly by much lower motives. Then the horde of "carpet-baggers" descended upon the "reconstructed" States, and there ensued ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... well-shaped, and indubitably water-proof. He had them hung up all round the factory, and invited every one to come and inspect them. They were universally admired, and the maker was congratulated upon his success. It was in the summer that these fatal bags were finished. Having occasion to be absent for a month, he left them hanging in the factory. Judge of his consternation when, on his return, he found them softening, fermenting, and dropping off their handles. The aquafortis did indeed "cure" the surface of his India-rubber, but only ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... very cattle that impart it after a winter in the north catch the fever and die like sheep. It seems to exist, in a mild form, in through, healthy cattle, but once imparted to native or northern wintered stock, it becomes violent and is usually fatal. The sure, safe course is to fear and ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... effect, and, for the first time since childhood, the soul of the latter was moved. God and judgment passed before his imagination, and he gasped for breath in a way that induced the two seamen to suppose the fatal moment had come, even sooner than they expected. The cold sweat stood upon the forehead of the patient, and his eyes glared wildly from one to the other. The paroxysm, however, was transient, and he soon settled down into a state of comparative calmness, pushing away the glass that Captain ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... you after. But this I say, my curse on the grandson of mine who shall try to seize that fatal crown, which cost the life of my fairest, my noblest, my wisest, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... gentleman, who, as the playbill of the night untruly stated, had never before appeared on any stage, undertook the part of Richard III. in Cibber's version of Shakespeare's tragedy. The gentleman's name was David Garrick. Had he failed the theatre might have lived on. But his success was fatal to it. The public went in crowds from all parts of the town to see the new actor. "From the polite ends of Westminster the most elegant company flocked to Goodman's Fields, insomuch that from Temple Bar the whole way was covered with ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... spare thee my disconsolate trouble. The fatal moment has come. I must tear myself from thee; but how can I utter this dreadful word? And yet I must! Heaven commands it. An unavoidable cruelty forces me to leave thee in this fatal spot. Farewell, I ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... down to Columbus with all the rich tapestry of a daring past unrolled before the youthful reader. Nor does the author stand on the letter of his title; he tells the story of the Quest both backward and forward, tying up the past with the present and avoiding, with singular success, the fatal effect which makes a child feel: "All this was a long time ago; it hasn't anything to do ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... remiss, that in the moment when they least expected it, they were surprised by the active conduct of Galerius, who, attended only by two horsemen, had with his own eyes secretly examined the state and position of their camp. A surprise, especially in the night time, was for the most part fatal to a Persian army. "Their horses were tied, and generally shackled, to prevent their running away; and if an alarm happened, a Persian had his housing to fix, his horse to bridle, and his corselet to put on, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... everything. It was the frequency and the hardihood of his falsehoods in this respect that made the King and Madame de Maintenon look upon him as their sole resource; for he never said anything disagreeable, and never found difficulties anywhere. Now that he had raised this fatal curtain, the aspect appeared so hideous to them, that they found it easier to fly into a rage than to reply. From that moment they began to regard Villars with other eyes. Finding that he spoke now the language which everybody spoke, they began to look ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... act that brought death upon them, did they show their pride, for they asked permission of neither Moses nor Aaron whether they might take part in the sacrificial service. What is more, Nadab and Abihu did not even consult with each other before starting out on this fatal deed, they performed it independently of each other. Had they previously taken counsel together, or had they asked their father and their uncle, very likely they would never have offered the disastrous sacrifice. For they were neither in a proper condition for making ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... fatal name again! It administered a nervous shock all round, and the dead silence which ensued showed that every boy present was alive to the critical nature ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... had, in some passionate moment, urged on by slighted love and jealousy, been the murderer. And he was strongly inclined to believe, that Mary was aware of this, only that, too late repentant of her light conduct which had led to such fatal consequences, she was now most anxious to save her old playfellow, her early friend, from the doom awaiting the shedder ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... reasons as proprietor of the country, felt this interest. The autocratic form of government, solely on that account, had always a certain rough sort of efficiency. It had been, on the other hand, the fatal weakness of democracy, during its negative phase previous to the great Revolution, that the people, who were the rulers, had individually only an indirect and sentimental interest in the state as a whole, or its machinery—their real, main, constant, and direct interest ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... disagreeable days they would take out the pack of dogs and beat the thickets for the javeline. It was exciting sport to bring to bay a drove of these animals. To shoot from horseback lent a charm, yet made aim uncertain, nor was it advisable to get too close range. Many a young dog made a fatal mistake in getting too near this little animal, and the doctoring of crippled dogs became a daily duty. All surplus game was sent to the ranchito below, where ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... dashed down the hall where the elevator man waited uncertainly, not sure whether to dispute the right of way or not. His indecision was fatal. Dennis wrapped an arm around his neck, pulled his head back and cut his throat with one slash of ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... a Devil nor miserable. . . . All Sin and Wickedness in man's spirit hath the Central force and energy of Hell in it, and is perpetually pressing down towards it as towards its own place. There needs no fatal necessity or Astral influences to tumble wicked men down forcibly into Hell: No, Sin itself, hastened by the mighty weight of its own nature, carries them down thither with the most swift and headlong motion."[30] "Would wicked men dwell a little more at home, and descend ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... urged that this testimony, even if fully established, is purely circumstantial, for that none saw the accused commit the fatal deed. To this I ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... aware that you thought yourself alarmingly sick, or I certainly should; for such an opinion on your part would do more to bring about a fatal result than could be counteracted by the most skilful treatment. A physician does not hold the issues of life and death; he can only assist nature, as the patient may by a cheerful view of his case. This is not your old complaint; ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... fourth. So in four portions parted is man's year Ruled by these Queens in turn—but of all this Be Zeus himself the Overseer in heaven. And of those issues now these spake with her Which baleful Fate in her all-ruining heart Was shaping to the birth the new espousals Of Helen, fatal to Deiphobus— The wrath of Helenus, who hoped in vain For that fair bride, and how, when he had fled, Wroth with the Trojans, to the mountain-height, Achaea's sons would seize him and would hale Unto their ships—how, by his counselling Strong Tydeus' son should with Odysseus scale The great ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... of this jewel that the faultless Sita had been able to support her existence. And the daughter of Janaka further told me as a token from her, that by thee, O tiger among men, a blade of grass (inspired with Mantras and thus converted into a fatal weapon) had once been shot at a crow while ye were on the breast of the mighty hill known by the name of Chitrakuta! And this she said as evidence of my having met her and hers being really the princess of Videha. I then caused myself to be seized by Ravana's soldiers, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... good breeding; and, I verily believe, if it had ever been her lot to officiate in Calcraft's place, she would have asked the culprit, whom she was about to hasten on his way to "kingdom come," whether he found the fatal noose too tight, or comfortable and easy, around his doomed neck! She would do this, too, I'm sure, with the most charming ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Lord. This was sufficient to alarm the poor Woman; she lay till his Spirits were composed, and as she thought asleep, then stealing out of Bed, got the Keys and opened his Bureau, where she found the fatal Account. In the Height of her Distractions, she flew to her Daughter's Room, and waking her with her Shrieks, put the Letters into her Hands. The young Lady, unable to support this Load of Misery, fell into a Fit, from which it was thought she never could have been recovered. However, ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... as payment for my debt. I found the place in a wretched condition, and, in order to oversee its management to any advantage, I resolved to transfer my business in the mission to an agent, and move on the place with my wife. Then came a fatal hour for me. Into my darkened soul, into the comfortless, emptiness of my life, entered the ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... never shall I see her equal for pure feminine beauty, for form and outline, for passionless grace, and sweet, gentle, womanly softness. All her sad tale was written upon her brow; and its sadness and all its poetry. One could read there the fearful, all but fatal danger to which her childhood has been exposed, and the daily thanks with which she praised her God for having ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... exceptions. The extent to which all interposing obstacles were excluded, or rather, had been considered and calculated upon beforehand, appears especially from 2 Sam. vii. 14, 15, according to which, even the most fatal of all interpositions—the apostasy of the bearers of the covenant—should not destroy the covenant,—should not annul the gracious promise made to the race. Kept, i.e., firm, inviolable, because given ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... sentiment, lessen the sense of obligation, and suggest a general uncertainty as to the validity of the maxims which, in their relations to one another, men usually take for granted. Hence, though it would be almost fatal to moral progress to discourage speculation on moral topics, the moralist must always bear in mind that his task is one which is not lightly to be undertaken, and that, with an exception to be noticed presently, the presumption should ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... think the matter over in cold blood, I could see that my proper course would have been to lead the losing card before drawing my partner's trump. I merely made a mistake (a fatal one I grant) in the order of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... Mr. Bossolton, who was the victim of a most fiery Mrs. Boss at home) "went into foreign lands or parts, or, as it is vulgarly termed, the Continent, immediately after an event or occurrence so fatal to the cup of his prosperity and the sunshine of his enjoyment, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... has no design: but when he has given you so much money, and speaks so kindly to you, and praises your coming on; and, oh, that fatal word! that he would be kind to you, if you would do as you should do, almost ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... the first link. It tore me from my son: else, reared by me, Formed in thy court, and schooled by my example, My son must sure have proved thy truest subject, Oh! learn from this, how weighty is the charge, A monarch bears; how nice a task to guide His power aright, to guide it wrong, how fatal. If subjects sin, with them the crime remains, With them the penance; but when monarchs err, The mischief spreads swift as their kingdom's rivers, Strong as their power, and wide as ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... anger against her for what he called her quixotism. The woman of passionate impulses—how dangerous she is, even when her impulses are generous, are noble! Action without thought, though the prompting heart behind it be a heart of gold—how fatal may it be! ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... able to make his first feeble trial of them. He was fain to content himself with being carried to an easy-chair, to sit for a few hours, wrapped in blankets, with the leopard-skin rug about his legs. No man could have been more completely a prisoner than this man had become by the result of the fatal ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon |
