"Ruin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other, deluded by wealth. Then again, enemies in the guise of friends cause estrangements between ignorant and selfish men alter they become separated in wealth, and pointing out faults confirm their quarrels, so that the latter soon fall one by one. Absolute ruin very soon overtakes the separated. For these reasons the wise never speak approvingly of partition amongst brothers who, when divided, do not regard the most authoritative Sastras and live always in fear ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... Father. To know Him and His life, and to come to Him, and receive from Him an eternal life, which this world did not give us, and cannot take away from us; which neither man, devil, nor angel, nor the death of our bodies, the ruin of empires, the destruction of the whole universe, and of time, and space, and all things whereof man can conceive or dream, can alter in the slightest, because it is a life of goodness, and righteousness, and love, which are eternal as the God from whom they spring; eternal as Christ, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... they knew by the hate and dissension which followed from his claim that it was of supernatural force, and when the pillars of the old spiritual temple fell one after another under his blows, they exalted in the ruin as the foundation of a new sanctuary. They drove the worshipers out of the material Temple, Methodists and Moravians and Baptists who had used it in common. They met to dedicate it solely to the doctrine of the prophet who came teaching that neither ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... The earth and the waters under the earth seemed to call aloud for the infamy to be stayed. The rumbling noise of a vigorous agitation permeated the air. Strenuous efforts were made to block its progress. Charges of an attempt to ruin the staple industry of the country were vociferously proclaimed and contemptuously unheeded. Parliament was made the centre of intrigue, whereby it was expected to thwart the plans of the reformers, and throw legislation back a decade, but the torrent rushed along, with a spirit that broke ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... and Portugal: and after above thirty years studying state affairs, and many of them in the Spanish Court: so much are Ambassadors slaves to the public ministers at home, who often, through envy or ignorance, ruin them! ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... it renders us more unmanly? if we thereby lose the tranquillity and repose we should enjoy without it? and if it put us into a worse condition than Pyrrho's hog? Shall we employ the understanding that was conferred upon us for our greatest good to our own ruin; setting ourselves against the design of nature and the universal order of things, which intend that every one should make use of the faculties, members, and means he has to his own ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... course he had given up all thought of carrying out the horrible plan with which he had started from Santa Fe. Indeed, he began to have a horror of Garcia, as a man who had set him on a wrong track and nearly brought him into folly and ruin. One might say that Satan was in a state of mind to ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... developed, again disused; the hulks of great steamers rusting in harbours, the railway bridges collapsing and the tunnels choked; while a rural population, with a few necessary and perfected manufactures, would spread over the land and abandon the great cities to ruin, calling them seats of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... public visits to her, and like to come to Court: the other is to go to Barkeshire-house, which is taken for her, and they say a Privy-Seal is passed for L5000 for it. He believes all will come to ruin. Thence I to White Hall, where the Duke of York gone to the Lords' House, where there is to be a conference on the Lords' side to the Commons this afternoon, giving in their Reasons, which I would have been at, but could not; for, going ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... bare. We are constantly holding a stop-watch on time itself, fearful of losing a second; the scratch of a pen sealing the life of a Nation, commuting a death-sentence, defining the difference between a man's success and ruin can all be accomplished in a second. If we let that second get away from us, we have been deaf to Opportunity's knock. We stop at times to think; and then the object for which we give our all appears so petty and inadequate, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... a dream!" ejaculated Sir Rowland in a hollow voice, and as if speaking to himself. "I did see them on the platform of the bridge—the child and his preserver! They were not struck by the fallen ruin, nor whelmed in the roaring flood,—or, if they were, they escaped as I escaped. God! I have cheated myself into a belief that the boy perished! And now my worst fears ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... horrid monster! Hie away, our country's ruin! Hie thee from our plains and valleys! I will find thee fit conveyance, Find a horse for thee to ride on, One whose feet nor slip nor stumble On the ice or on the mountain; Get thee gone, I do conjure thee; ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... regarding the distant future, it must return after a while to face the minor troubles of the future that is immediate. The prospect of a visit to the dentist this afternoon causes us to forget for the moment the prospect of total ruin next year. Mr. Crocker, therefore, having tortured himself for about a quarter of an hour with his meditations on the subject of titles, was jerked back to a more imminent calamity than the appearance of his name in the Birthday Honours—the fact that in all probability he would be taken ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... speculations, maintained his family in modest comfort. The mason wished to make an architect of his son, and Marcelo was in the midst of his preparatory studies when his father suddenly died, leaving his affairs greatly involved. In a few months, he and his mother descended the slopes of ruin, and were obliged to give up their snug, middle-class quarters and ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Burrowes, just because of one unprepared lesson! Of course there had been other spreads before this fatal one; and of course there had been one or two unprepared lessons also—therefore the original twenty demerits. But why ruin a boy's happiness forever because of a ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... about 793, or a little earlier, when Highbald was abbot, the Danes burnt down the monastery and murdered the ecclesiastics; "most dreadful lightnings and other prodigies," says Simeon of Durham, "are said to have portended the impending ruin of this place; on the 7th of June they came to the church of Lindesfarne, miserably plundered all places, overthrew the altars, and carried away all the treasures of the church, some of the monks they slew, some they carried away captives, some they drowned in the ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the most magnificent ruin in Germany. The towers, turrets, buttresses, balconies, and fine statues still stand there, proud and bold, even in its ruins. And the portcullis of iron in one of its lofty gateways gave me the first idea how the balance of the enemy could be shut off, after a portion had been admitted ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... since interposed in their behalf, when ALMORAN would have stretched his prerogative to their hurt, or have left them a prey to the farmer of a tax. 'Shall HAMET,' said they, 'be deprived of the power, that he employs only for our benefit; and shall it center in ALMORAN, who will abuse it to our ruin? Shall we rather support ALMORAN in the wrong he has done to HAMET, than HAMET to obtain justice of ALMORAN? HAMET is our king; let him command us, and we will obey.' This was uttered with a shout that ecchoed from the mountains beyond the city, and continued near a full hour. In the ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... what do you want him to do? To lay all his cards on the table, and so ruin both himself ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... admit your insurance to be valid, whether you have anything on board the ship or not. It is not legal, but they know it when they sign the policy; and they know that it would ruin them if they refused to pay an 'honour policy.' I tell you they don't know their business and they have no combination. They all distrust each other, and tell lies to each other about their profits and their losses. If ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... persuaded the people to drop their resentment, to forget the faults which both those nations had committed in the confederate war, and to send a body of troops to their assistance. They did so, and it saved them from ruin. After this, he went ambassador to the states of Greece; and, by his animating address, brought them almost all to join in the league against Philip. . ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... ravages of the disease continued until but forty-three negroes, old and young, were left on the old homestead. The culminating point had arrived. He was in the grasp of Graspum, and nothing could save him from utter ruin. It had lately been proved that the Rovero family, instead of being rich, were extremely poor, their plantation having long been under a mortgage, the holder of which ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... a winter of bitter frosts came, and the Dark One awakened cold in His dwelling place and found the Sacred Fire stolen. His wrath moved beneath the city then, and Darion crashed in shattered ruin and death. ...
— Bride of the Dark One • Florence Verbell Brown
... transferred Florida to the British crown. No longer sustained by the terror of the Spanish arms and by subsidies from the Spanish treasury, the whole fabric of Spanish civilization and Christianization, at the end of a history of almost two centuries, tumbled at once to complete ruin and extinction. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... three fine devils eating my heart— They left me, my grief! without a thing; Sickness wrought, and Love wrought, And an empty pocket, my ruin and my woe. Poverty left me without a shirt, Barefooted, barelegged, without any covering; Sickness left me with my head weak And my body miserable, an ugly thing. Love left me like a coal upon the floor, Like ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... splendid crops, and the mowers always got an extra shilling an acre for cutting it, by Miss Winter's special order, which was paid by Simon in the most ungracious manner, and with many grumblings that it was enough to ruin all the mowers in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... by subtle and manifold links from the moral cause to the physical effect. There are historians who will prove to you that the ruin of Rome came of economic causes: which were, in fact, merely some of the channels through which Karma flowed. They were there, of course; but we need not enlarge on them too much. The secret of it all is this: a people without ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... plays with their opposition like the huge giant he is; till Night, with her terrific mace, angry with them for preventing the Sun from repose, repose which will make her Queen of the world, beats them into ruin. This is the passage: ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... the prospect of carrying supplies to America, and Jones at that time hoped fervently to get hold of the Serapis and other ships and make another warlike cruise against the coast of England. So Landais sailed away with the Alliance, but to his own ruin, as the clear-sighted Jones had predicted in a remarkable letter written a short time before the ship sailed to a mutinous officer on the Alliance. On the voyage Landais's eccentricity caused his friend Lee to put him under arrest, and on the arrival in America, a court of inquiry found him ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... had seen the terrible spectacle of Russia collapsing, falling into ruin and humiliation, because of what seemed to him a propaganda of treason which had been carried on in her armies; he realized that these "mad dogs" of Bolsheviki were deliberately conspiring to poison the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... to the world original and eternal beauty, is solved by the redemption of the soul. The ruin or the blank, that we see when we look at nature, is in our own eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of things, and so they appear not transparent but opake. The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is no horrible inconsistency here such as the critics strive and cry about. In spite of the ruin that Grendel and Beowulf had made within the hall, the framework and roof held firm, and swift repairs made the interior habitable. Tapestries were hung on the walls, and willing hands ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... he had shown a petty resentment, which, again, Saracinesca had treated with cold indifference. Little by little his fancied grievance had acquired great proportions in his own estimation, and he had learned to hate Giovanni more than any man living. At first it might have seemed an easy matter to ruin his adversary, or, at all event, to cause him great and serious injury; and but for that very indifference which Del Ferice so resented, his ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... time when I felt almost intoxicated by my wife's worship of me, and by my domination over the crowds who came to hear me preach. Domination! That was my fetish! That was what led me to—oh, sometimes I think it must end in my ruin!" ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... confess Mr. Surface I cannot bear to hear People traduced behind their Backs[;] and when ugly circumstances come out against our acquaintances I own I always love to think the best—by the bye I hope 'tis not true that your Brother is absolutely ruin'd— ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... the robbery had taken place, the town was alive with an excited populace, and numerous parties were scouring the country in all directions in eager search of the fugitives. All to no avail, however, the desperate burglars were not discovered, and the crest-fallen bank officers contemplated their ruin with sorrowful ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... has risked another perfectly good yellow-back in the mail. He'll ruin the morals of the mail clerks (I rote that word 'mail' wrong before) if he keeps on. Know how I seen the yellow-back in the letter? I punched a hole with a pin in the crease of the envelope at each end. Squeeze the sides of the envelope together ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... is safe on Sunday, and our Chevaliers d'Industrie may ruin a dozen families, and provoke suicide and murder,—"plate sin with gold" and it is protected, and the swindling shyster is protected too on Sunday, for no civil process can be served on that holy day; the rogue who is bothered on that day can get exemplary damages by this law of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... had not turned out of his way to injure; Siward had been in the way, that was all, and his ruin was to have been merely an agreeable coincidence with the purposed ruin of Amalgamated Electric before Inter-County absorbed the fragments. But here was a new phase; Mrs. Mortimer, whom he had expected to use, and if necessary sacrifice, had suddenly ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... slaughter, His princes and his peers to servitude, His subjects to oppression and contempt, And his whole kingdom into desolation. Touching our person seek we no revenge; But we our kingdom's safety must so tender, Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence, Poor miserable wretches, to your death, The taste whereof God of his mercy give You patience to endure, and true repentance Of all your dear offences! Bear ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... and believers in the divine rights of kings have, in view of the influx of discordant races and the jarring elements within, together with the cumbrous machinery of our government, prophesied that disintegration and ruin would ere long be ours. But they took no note of the harmony and fraternal feeling that must come between peoples so differing, when all have equal share in a government founded in justice, and on the broad principles of human right; ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... the audience in Court with him, in a hush of dreary silence. And then the dreary proceedings were resumed. For all the outside excitement it was the most dreary of all celebrated trials. The bankruptcy proceedings had exhausted all the laughter there was in it. Only the fact of wide-spread ruin remained; and the resentment of a mass of people for having been fooled by means too simple to save their self-respect from a deep wound which the cleverness of a consummate scoundrel would not have inflicted. A shamefaced amazement attended these ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... city walls, and these cannon may kill, not an enemy of your sovereign, but the wives or children of his most devoted servants. If your Highness prolongs the attempt to defend the place, his Majesty will be compelled to begin his preparations for attack; and the ruin of this immense capital will be consummated in thirty-six hours, by the shells and bombs from our batteries, as the outskirts of the town will be destroyed by the effect of yours. His Majesty does not doubt that these considerations ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... base, cowardly, and dull; I saw him, in every age, combine to pull down that which was immediately above and to prey upon those that were below; his dulness, I knew, would ultimately bring about his ruin; I knew his days were numbered, and yet how was I to wait? how was I to let the poor child shiver in the rain? The better days, indeed, were coming, but the child would die before that. Alas, your highness, in surely no ungenerous ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... will be the king. This civil list is to be composed of a tax of one per cent., levied on all who have property in favor of those who have nothing. But, says he, let no one imagine that all would be dissolution and ruin in this system, without law or government. Crimes and offenses will be tried by juries, that is to say, by a living code. Property will no longer be seizable for debt, and the courts will become useless. Everybody shall have the absolute right to buy land by paying its possessor ten per cent, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... year been largely instrumental in securing for Vespasian, who was besieging Jerusalem, the imperial throne of Rome.[82] With him ends our knowledge of Philo's family, and it ends significantly with one who has ceased to be a Jew. The ruin of the Jewish-Alexandrian community was completed by a desperate revolt in the reign of Trajan, 114-117 C.E., after which they were deprived of their chief political privileges; and finally, after incessant conflicts with the Christians, they were ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... make sin attractive. Vice is a horrible thing, anyhow. It is born in shame, and it dies howling in the darkness. In this world it is scourged with a whip of scorpions, but afterward the thunders of God's wrath pursue it across a boundless desert, beating it with ruin and woe. When you come to paint carnality, do not paint it as looking from behind embroidered curtains, or through lattice of royal seraglio, but as writhing in the agonies of a city hospital. Cursed be the books that try to make impurity decent, and crime attractive, and hypocrisy noble! ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Richards. Winning enough when he wants to get round you and wheedle cash out of you. I tell you what, partner: Jack's got all his father's aristocratic notions, all his father's pride and improvidence. Ay, and he'd ruin his dad ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... watched the noisy signs of an unintelligible civilization, were passing away. Of the rest, some, sullen and restless, were selling their homesteads and following the spirit of their forefathers into a new wilderness; others, leaving their small farms in adjacent valleys to go to ruin, were gaping idly about the public works, caught up only too easily by the vicious current of the incoming tide. In a century the mountaineers must be swept away, and their ignorance of the tragic forces at work among them gave ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... home early in the war, and had now found refuge among his friends in New Hampshire. But the houses of the southerners had not been exempt from the general devastation, and some who had sought refuge in Richmond had left their homes to ruin. The people were evidently strongly "secesh," although some of them professed to ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... know it. I have sufficient evidence to prove it in a law court and I shall not hesitate to get a divorce. Tear this up, please. Now, of all times, we must be extraordinarily careful. There has never been a whisper against us and there mustn't be. Jasper must not suspect. A counter-suit would ruin my life. I must talk it over with you. I'll see you once alone—just once—before I leave Jasper and begin the suit. We must have patience for just this last bit. It ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... except in our own defence: That he had repeatedly required them to make peace with us, which offer he now renewed, advising them no longer to continue their mad resistance, which must end in their own ruin and the destruction of their country: That our only object in coming among them, was to manifest the truths of our holy religion, and to put an end to human sacrifices, by command from God and our emperor. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... immediate orders or not, naturally flowed from his preceding baseness;] the sex dishonoured in the eye of the world, in the person of one of the greatest ornaments of it; the unmanly methods, whatever they were, [for I know not all as yet,] by which he compassed her ruin; all these considerations join to justify my warmth, and my execrations of a man whom I think excluded by his crimes from the benefit even of christian forgiveness—and were you to see all she writes, and to know the admirable talents she is ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... ruin, n. wreck, destruction, undoing, dilapidation, disorganization, perdition, ruination, subversion, shipwreck, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... before, struck its keynote in opposition to his Administration. Mr. August Belmont, Chairman of the National Committee, opened the proceedings with a violent speech. "Four years of misrule," he said, "by a sectional, fanatical, and corrupt party have brought our country to the very verge of ruin. . . . The past and present are sufficient warnings of the disastrous consequences which would befall us if Mr. Lincoln's re- election should be made possible by our want of patriotism and unity." In still more explicit terms ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... deprived Charles the Tenth of the throne of France, like all other great and sudden changes, proved the ruin of many individuals, more especially of many ancient families who were attached to the Court, and who would not desert the exiled monarch in his adversity. Among the few who were permitted to share his fortunes was my father, a noble gentleman of Burgundy, who ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... none but an insane man would have tried, without even the pitiable excuse of insanity. He had seen it all only too clearly from the very beginning, and he had deliberately and with open eyes brought disgrace, ruin, and death—unless he could escape—upon himself, and utter humiliation to her whom his love should have prompted him to save at all cost. If Mary could only have disguised herself to look like a man they might have succeeded, but that little "if" was larger than ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... of the great against the little. Besides, he gives a decent colouring—says he only wants the use of the stream three days a week, to make fountains at Luxmore Hall. But I see what it is—I have seen it coming a whole year. He is determined to ruin me!" ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... play the man, but he would have been less than man if the ruin of his home had not made him a changed man. The recovery of mental equipoise proved for a time quite beyond his power. He could do all that man could do, "who could do more is none." The light of his life had ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... He worries. He makes himself ill with his anxieties and apprehensions. He is unhappy. When disaster does happen, he takes it seriously, feels discouraged, thinks his efforts have been of no avail, can see nothing in the future but black ruin, and otherwise destroys not only his joy in his work, but his efficiency and usefulness ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... eye of the farmer looks only for his gun in such a case. To him the crow is an unmitigated nuisance, all the more maddening because it is clever enough to circumvent every means devised for its ruin. Nothing escapes its rapacity; fear is unknown to it. It migrates in broad daylight, chooses the most conspicuous perches, and yet its assurance is amply justified ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... presaging eye; Oft had the wealthy deacon with a frown Glared on the pile he longed to batter down, And reckoned oft, with sanctimonious air, What rents 'twould fetch if purified with prayer;[6] While through the green-room whispered rumors went, That heaven and earth were on its ruin bent. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... three strangers are all inharmonious. If allowed to remain here, they would ruin the color scheme of the country, where all ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... "Ruin yourself if you choose," she said, "you are the master of that, and you can do as you like; a fool and ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... fault, e'en one, To dim the fame of Raghu's son, That fault this hour, O lady, show, And Rama to the wood shall go. To drive the guiltless to the wild, Truth's constant lover, undefiled, Would, by defiance of the right, The glory e'en of Indra blight. Then cease, O lady, and dismiss Thy hope to ruin Rama's bliss, Or all thy gain, O fair of face, Will be men's hatred, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... present. But when he understood the truth of the matter, and that Timon wanted money, the quality of his faint and watery friendship showed itself, for with many protestations he vowed to the servant that he had long foreseen the ruin of his master's affairs, and many a time had he come to dinner to tell him of it, and had come again to supper to try to persuade him to spend less, but he would take no counsel nor warning by his coming. And true it was that he had been a constant attender (as he said) at Timon's feasts, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... instance, a native is tabooed for several days when his hair is cut; when he is tattooed; when he is building a canoe, or a house; when he is seriously ill, and when he is dead. If excessive consumption threatens to exterminate the fish of a river, or ruin the early crop of sweet potatoes, these things are put under the protection of the taboo. If a chief wishes to clear his house of hangers-on, he taboos it; if an English trader displeases him he is tabooed. His interdict has the effect ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... to such a movement, which are natural to a powerful hierarchy; and which in Archdeacon Denison, for instance, seem almost carried to such a pitch that they may become, one cannot but fear, his spiritual ruin. But seeing this does not dispose us, therefore, to lock up all the nation in forms of worship of the New Road type; but it points us to the quite new ideal, of combining grand and national forms of worship with an openness ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... to receive him. To lessen their Expence, their eldest Daughter (whom I shall call Amanda) was sent into the Country, to the House of an honest Farmer, who had married a Servant of the Family. This young Woman was apprehensive of the Ruin which was approaching, and had privately engaged a Friend in the Neighbourhood to give her an account of what passed from time to time in her Father's Affairs. Amanda was in the Bloom of her Youth and Beauty, when the Lord of the Manor, who often ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... wealth a continual anxiety to him: ay, he may make it, by ambition, covetousness, and wild speculation, the cause of his shame and ruin; if only his ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... something needing to be done if it's convenient," retorted Ma. "Your mania for auctions will be the ruin of you yet, Pa. A man of fifty-five ought to have grown out of such a hankering. But the older you get the worse you get. Anyway, if I wanted to go to auctions, I'd select them as was something like, and not waste my time on little one-horse ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lot of people will be delighted to see you back! First, dear old Dr. Marshall, who is in despair over the Institute, of which he declares only a melancholy ruin will be left if you do not speedily return. Indeed, it is pretty bad. The boys are quite terrible, and even my "angels" are becoming infected. Your special pet, Coley, after reducing poor Mr. Locke to the verge of nervous prostration, has "quit," and ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... want to ruin me?" cried the woman; then, with a supplicating gesture: "Spare me this shame; I will give you money, a large sum. See here!" and, opening her gold bag, she drew out some folded notes. "I'll give you ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... thought distinctly smart, for instance, if she should take the Princess, or even one of the unmarried daughters, to her own house for a few days, as a refuge from the sordid atmosphere of debt and ruin, and beyond the reach of vulgar creditors, one of whom, by the way, she knew to be her own excellent husband. The Princess was probably not aware of that fact, for she had always lived in sublime ignorance of everything connected with money, even ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... burned. Notwithstanding these disasters, the abbey increased in wealth and architectural splendour, and it was not till more severe damage and dilapidations befell it during the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI. and Elizabeth, that ruin began finally to impend. The approach of the Reformation influenced its downfall, and though donations for rebuilding were given by various individuals, the abbey never recovered the damage then suffered. In 1541 James V. obtained from the Pope the abbeys of Melrose ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... the 'principle was perfectly correct,' and that the 'instrument appears perfectly adapted to its intended uses.' Nevertheless he was not very sanguine of making it a commercial success. 'The electro-magnetic telegraph shall not ruin me,' he wrote to his mother, 'but will hardly make my fortune.' He was desirous of taking a partner in the work, and went to Liverpool in order to meet some gentleman likely to forward his views, and endeavoured to get his instrument adopted ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... American affairs, he did not, for an instant, cease to be formidable. To estimate rightly his worth we must contemplate his difficulties. We must examine the means placed in his hands, and the use he made of those means. To preserve an army when conquest was impossible, to avoid defeat and ruin when victory was unattainable, to keep his forces embodied and suppress the discontents of his soldiers, exasperated by a long course of the most cruel privations, to seize with unerring discrimination the critical moment when vigorous offensive operations might be ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... life, so that a remembrance of me would leave you in peace. All this is so sad that I have not the courage to continue. Adieu, Clemence! Once more, one last time, I must say: I love you! and yet, I dare not. I feel unworthy to speak to you thus, for my love has become a disastrous gift. Did I not ruin you? The only word that seems to be permissible is the one that even a murderer dares to address to his God: ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... moment Ossipon imagined the overlighted place changed into a dreadful black hole belching horrible fumes choked with ghastly rubbish of smashed brickwork and mutilated corpses. He had such a distinct perception of ruin and death that he shuddered again. The other observed, with an air of ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... rather say," was the reply. "The fact is, if Ellis goes to ruin, it will be his wife's fault. She has no sympathy with him, no affectionate consideration for him. A thoroughly selfish woman, she merely regards the gratification of her own desires, and is ever making home repulsive, ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... great curses of these latter days. When it once gets a firm grip upon its victim it quickly converts the honest, upright man into a conscienceless rogue, who soon becomes the centre of a widespread circle of ruin and untold misery! Look at this fellow Cuthbertson. He had an honest and honourable father; and, as I understand you, was, to start with, himself perfectly honest and honourable; yet look at him now! What is he? Why, simply a dishonoured corpse, hastily ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... M. du Sommerard, a zealous antiquary, who began the priceless collection of works of art which it contains. He died in 1842, and the Government then bought the house and museum, and united it with the Roman ruin at its back under the title of Muse des Thermes et de l'Htel de Cluny. Since that time many further objects have been added ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... I would break it off. But how else am I to pay that two thousand? And what won't he do if I fail to pay it? No, that would be ruin—unless I choke him off in some other way, and I don't see how I can do that. No, I must marry Ethel, I suppose, or go to the devil. And unless I could take bonny Lesley with me, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Africa, to be followed possibly by an ultimatum from a foreign coalition. In that event the Nation will have to choose between abandoning its Empire in obedience to foreign dictation, an abandonment which would mean National ruin, and a war for existence, a war for which no preparation has been made, which the Government is incompetent to conduct, and which would begin by a naval conflict during which it would be impossible to assist the Army in South Africa. That is the situation. It may take a turn for ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... I am bound to come to a sure ruin; and as every man in Kem is bound to sit meekly by and starve. But is a ruler no way bound? May he claim the life of his subjects for his profit? How long will they suffer such treatment? And if we are restrained by loyalty, how long will it ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... being, and one alone, felt the full force of what had happened. The Baron, by his fireside at Coburg, suddenly saw the tremendous fabric of his creation crash down into sheer and irremediable ruin. Albert was gone, and he had lived in vain. Even his blackest hypochondria had never envisioned quite so miserable a catastrophe. Victoria wrote to him, visited him, tried to console him by declaring with passionate conviction that she would carry on ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... sun, this immense walled-plain is by no means so striking an object as a glance at its representation on a chart of the moon would lead one to expect; for the border, in nearly every part of it, bears unmistakable evidence of wreck and ruin, its continuity being interrupted by depressions, transverse valleys, and gaps, and it nowhere attains a great altitude. This imperfect enclosure extends 97 miles from N. to S., and about 88 miles from E. ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... feet. With the exception of the tower, the building was very irregular, and gave the impression of having been erected at different periods. It combined the characteristics of a feudal castle and a fortress. It was old and gray, but by no means a ruin, yet it had a gloomy and forbidding appearance. The ladies looked at each other and hesitated, they did not speak for a few moments; the same idea possessed the mind of each. They thought that good people ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... be all he could do to keep from saying this—despite the fact that he knew it would ruin everything. Once little Jennie appeared in a new silk dress, brought to her by one of the rich ladies whose heart was touched by her dowdy appearance. It was of soft grey silk—cheap silk, but fresh and new, and Peter had never had anything so fine in his arms before. It matched ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... recently said still held true. It is remarkable, moreover, in possessing many antique carved stones from a city of Central America built into the walls of a temple modeled after the building from which the graven stones were brought. The "ruin" at the south end of the island is barely visible from the steamer, hidden as it is by foliage, but it is distinctly seen by New York Central travelers in the winter season. Colonel Cruger has spared no expense in the ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... cargo," said Dick. "And what a pity so much of it is going to ruin," and he pointed to some valuable mining machinery which was rusting in ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... and is stronger now, that every person ought to possess some especial knowledge of a profession, calling, or trade, by the practice of which he can maintain himself. If all boys and lads were impressed with this important practical truth, how many might be saved from ruin, from "going to the dogs," as the phrase is, simply because they have no honest means of supporting themselves. I say this here, because I may otherwise forget to say it elsewhere, and I am very anxious to impress it on the minds of my readers. We had two ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... produced a map of the well-known pleasure-ground, and an elevation of that house in which he had spent the happiest hours of his infancy, his heart was so touched, that he was on the point of paying down more for an old ruin than a good new house would cost. The attorney acted honestly by his client, and seized this moment to exhibit a plan of the stabling and offices, which, as sometimes is the case in Ireland, were in a style far ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... feel in the Greeks, and as in the Greeks, it is a spiritual waging of miraculous forces. There is, too, in Mr. Housman's poems, the singularly Grecian Quality of a clean and fragrant mental and emotional temper, vibrating equally whether the theme dealt with is ruin or defeat, or some great tragic crisis of spirit, or with moods and ardours of pure enjoyment and simplicities of feeling. Scarcely has any modern book of poems shown so sure a touch of genius in this respect: the magic, in a continuous glow saturating the substance ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... Andrew also on the quarterdeck; and what was the consequence? Why, they are now both post-captains, commanding fine frigates: so you see, going on board of a man-of-war, which they conceived as their ruin, was the means of their rising to rank and riches, for they have been very lucky in the service. I heard Captain Archibald tell the story himself one day as I helped at dinner in the cabin when I was coxswain with ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... he has energy of character and some business talents. But he is too confiding. And here is just the weakness that will prove his ruin. He will put too much faith in ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... and get into his own hands the care of the boy king and the government of the realm. It was a bold plot, and, if unsuccessful, meant attainder and death for high treason; but Seymour, ambitious, reckless, and unprincipled, thought only of his own desires, and cared little for the possible ruin into which he was dragging the unsuspecting and orphaned daughter of the king who had been ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... the dismal effects of the late hurricane (never to be forgotten) caution you never to plant them too near the mansion, (or indeed any other house) that so if such accident happen, their fall and ruin may ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Hyde saw a dramatic accompaniment of this happy consummation of a long and doubtful struggle, in the death, within three months, of the chief Ministers of France and Spain—Cardinal Mazarin and Don Lewis de Haro—whose schemes of policy it seemed to ruin, and who saw in it the failure ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... secret. He never let on he told it to any one else. And when I found that the man who killed him, Lance Harriott, had been hidin' here, had been sendin' spies all around to find out all about your son, had been foolin' you, and tryin' to ruin your gal as he had killed your boy, I knew that he knew ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... country; he retains, through life, a fond recollection, and a hankering after those places, which were the scenes of his first pleasures and of his first connections; he returns to his own country a foreigner, unacquainted with the practices of domestic economy necessary to preserve him from ruin, speaking and writing his native tongue as a foreigner, and therefore unqualified to obtain those distinctions, which eloquence of the pen and tongue ensures in a free country; for, I would observe to you, that what ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... train, Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away, To darkle in the trackless void; yet Time, Time the tomb builder, holds his fierce career, Dark, stern, all pitiless, and pauses not Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path, To sit and muse, like other conquerors, Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... will ruin us," he said. "Instead of arriving in proper order at the mouth of the passages, and occupying them before the Genoese wake up to a sense of their danger, we shall get there one by one, they will take the alarm, and we shall have ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... beyond asserting that Turkey and I had always hated and persecuted her, and had now told a pack of lies which we had agreed upon, to ruin her, a poor lone woman, with no friends ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... happened during this sad time to ruin you, dear father?" asked Gertrude gently, guessing that it would ease his heart to talk of his troubles. "Is it the sudden ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Mind. This our sovereign-Mind—had hitherto cherished with fond delight one lovely and only child, the Soul. He believed that she would survive and perpetuate him, and that for ever her heirs should sit on the throne of his kingdom. To part with her would be blight and ruin to all his hopes and aspirations. Better that he should never have drawn breath than that he should be forced to see the child he had brought into the world perish before his eyes. Still, with ominous persistence the terrible monster hangs about the gates of the city. All the air is filled ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... danger. Two hundred years ago a really great practical statesman in France [Colbert], by crude legislation in behalf, as he thought, of manufactures and commerce, brought his country into wars which at last led her to ruin. The history of the colonial policy of England also is fruitful in mistaken legislation on commercial, political, and social questions, which have produced the most terrible evils. Indeed, in all nations we have constantly to lament the short-sighted policies, ill-considered constitutions, crude ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... There were many men who opposed the movement west of the Alleghanies and the peopling of the lands which now form Kentucky, Tennessee, and the great States lying between the Ohio and the Lakes. Excellent persons then foretold ruin to the country from bringing into it a disorderly population of backwoodsmen, with the same solemnity that has in our own day marked the prophecies of those who have seen similar ruin in the intaking of Hawaii and Porto Rico. The annexation of Louisiana, including the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the years of poverty since the War. Yet it has still about it something of the dignity of an ancient ruin. It is a big frame structure with the Colonial pillars which belong to the period of its building. Many of the rooms are closed. My own suite is on the second floor—Cousin Patty's opposite, and adjoining her rooms those of an old ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... regard us; past the policeman at the Cross (slower at this point); up the steep gradient of the High Street; right through a flock of geese (illustrious bird! who not only warnest great cities of impending ruin, but keepest thyself out of harm's way better than any four-footed beast of the field), we drove our headlong course; and, in less time than this paragraph has taken to write I stood on the doorstep, of the doctor's house. In another minute I had seen ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... and you have done like us, and you have rebelled, and you obeyed his order, and they will punish you as men of blood.' And I am ill at ease. Lo! now Abdasherah sends for soldiers. I have remained alone—they will be rejoiced at it, and there is ruin before the city of Gebal, if there is no great man to gain me safety from his hands. And the chiefs of the government are expelled from the midst of the lands; and you relinquish all the lands to the men of blood, squandering the ...
— Egyptian Literature
... had corrupted his life; he already felt himself tainted to his very marrow by impurities hitherto undreamed of. Everything was now destined to rot within him, and in the twinkling of an eye he understood what this evil entailed. He saw the ruin brought about by this kind of "leaven"—himself poisoned, his family destroyed, a bit of the social fabric cracking and crumbling. And unable to take his eyes from the sight, he sat looking fixedly at her, striving to inspire himself with loathing ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... saved the whole band from ruin and he went on to say as much, while the warriors and squaws and smaller Indians crowded around the game so wonderfully brought within a few yards of their kettles. It was a grand occasion, and the Big Tongue was entitled to the everlasting ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... descended through the open rood-loft upon the now grass-grown graves of the abbots in the presbytery. Here and there the ramified mullions still retained their wealth of painted glass, and the grand eastern window shone gorgeously as of yore. All else was neglect and ruin. Briers and turf usurped the place of the marble pavement; many of the pillars were festooned with ivy; and, in some places, the shattered walls were covered with creepers, and trees had taken root in the crevices of the masonry. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... through the Ghetto, and all the desolated parts of the city, to see with his own eyes the ruin made; and then desired the city fathers to give to the poor the money they had set apart to make a splendid welcome ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... she is unable efficaciously to protect herself. It is a benefaction. But this casuistry fell upon deaf ears. What the people felt was the disesteem—the term in vogue was stronger—in which they were held by the Allies, whom they had saved perhaps from ruin. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... they say, "does not lie." Margaret was true to her traditions. She did not faint, she did not weep, over what was complete ruin to her expectations, if not of her hopes. She held her head a little more erect than usual, and looked Sir ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... meanwhile axe and lever Have manfully been plied; And now the bridge hangs tottering Above the boiling tide. "Come back, come back, Horatius!" Loud cried the Fathers all. "Back, Lartius! back, Herminius! Back, ere the ruin fall!" ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... bold height with trembling step he passed, And gained the fearful eminence he sought; As on surrounding scenes his eye was cast, His troubled spirit racked with frenzied thought, And urged by ruin on his empire brought, He uttered curses on the pale-faced throng, With whom in vain his scattered warriors fought And on the sighing breeze that swept along, He poured the fiery words that filled his ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various |
