"Ruination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nine o'clock, or thereabouts, when the breakfast things were removing from the bit table, I poppit out, in the first and foremost instance, to take a vizzy of the depredation the flames had made in our neighbourhood. Losh keep us all, what a spectacle of wreck and ruination! The roof was clean off and away, as if a thunderbolt from heaven had knocked it down through the two floors, carrying every thing before it like a perfect whirlwind. Nought were standing but black, bare walls, a perfect picture of desolation; some with the bit ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... every sack of charcoal two sous, and gone in a day. A pair of partridges five sous. What think you of that? Heard one ever the like? five sous for two little beasts all bone and feather? A pair of pigeons, thirty deniers. 'Tis ruination!!! For we may not raise our pricen with the market. Oh, no, I tell thee the shoe is trode all o' one side as well as pinches the water into our eyn. We may charge nought for mustard, pepper, salt, or firewood. Think you we get them for nought? ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... procession of jays driving smelly fish carts through that lane of yours, or be stared at by a gang of countrymen hanging over the fence. It's a nuisance. It is bad enough for me or my daughter and our guests, but it will be the ruination of my wife's nerves, and I can't stand for that. You see the position I'm in. You heard what I told that butler. I said I had bought the road. You wouldn't make me a liar, would you? I'll give you five hundred for that bunch of sand. ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with their bills. That, of course, would not have happened if he hadn't had to buy a new suit that winter. Ranny had found out that his bicycle, though it diminished his traveling expenses and kept him fit, was simply "ruination" ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... a weak moment I erred and did what I did on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in the brown scapular. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a working plumber was my ruination when I ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... it, provided only that such endeavour is unbiassed and sincere, ought without hesitation to be made the common property of all men, no matter in what direction the results of its promulgation may appear to tend. And so far as the ruination of individual happiness is concerned, no one can have a more lively perception than myself of the possibly disastrous tendency of my work. So far as I am individually concerned, the result of this ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... know what you're up against. They're after all the land in this section; they've clouded every title. It's a raw, dirty deal. I see now, why they haven't sold a foot of the land they own here; why they've shoved the cost of leases up until it's ruination to pay them. They're land thieves, commercial pirates. They're going to euchre ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... is leaving there, amen," I replied. I then turned to get on the plow when on the other side of the plow there stood a lady minister and the Lord said, "Some are contemplating getting her as the pastor and that will be the ruination of the work in Grand Forks." (Not because there was anything wrong with her as a minister but because she would not fit in the place). The vision disappeared and ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... keep it," replied Larkin, with a string of oaths. "It'd be ruination to pay one without paying all. Perhaps you can use some of it between ballots to-morrow." Then, sharply to ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... to grant me a certificate, signifying that you were present at the ceremony of my marriage with this unhappy woman." "You shall excuse us," replied the female orator; "people cannot be too wary in signing their names in this wicked world; many a one has been brought to ruination by signing his name, and my husband shall not, with my goodwill, draw himself ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... have her blamed. And I would tell folks,—some of the relations on her mother's side,—when they would say, "What a fool she wus to have him!"—I'd say to 'em, "Wall, when a woman sees the man she loves goin' down to ruination, and tries to unlove him, she'll find out jest how much harder it is to unlove him than to love him in the first place: they'll find out it is a tough ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... suitor, in a huff at being rejected. And he went and sheared all his sheep, and, with the multitudinous fleeces, dammed up the stream, caused the water to flow into other channels, and thereby rendered the widow's forty mills useless and unproductive. With nothing but ruination before her, and seeing no alternative, the widow's heart finally softened, and she suffered herself to be wooed and won. The fleeces were removed, the stream returned to its proper channel, and the merry whir of the forty mills henceforth ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... cried, "it's you that's afther bein' the ruination of me boy! It's you that set fire to the rick wid that ould mischeevious pipe o' yours! An' there, ye let him be sent to gaol an' the whole of us be disgraced for what you are afther doin'. 'Pon me word, I ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... known him to spend fifty dollars in one night, when he was only making nine hundred dollars a year. (We got married by special influence.) It just seems as though something draws him toward a debauch every little while. I'm afraid this small town will be our ruination." ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... hurry up Jeff" (this to the horse), "we must get home by five and we have only three minutes. I promised mother to be back at five, and punctuality is an unbreakable rule of our camp. We made it so because we have always found that tardiness is the ruination of all good summers; even camp life must have rules," and Cologne urged the steed to ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... agreements" in almost every line of Canadian industrial enterprise, by means of which the people of Canada—both urban and rural—have been shamefully exploited through the elimination of competition, the ruination of many of our smaller industries and the advancement of prices on practically all manufactured goods to the full ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... the lace aside with her foot, and tearing it on the buckle of her shoe, "with your perverse obstinacy—broken up the most splendid debut I ever saw on any stage, and making yourself and your failure the town's talk! if the critics had not been my friends, the whole thing would have been utter ruination; and here you are, with cheeks like flame, looking as haughty ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... that when he, as a young man, took his first glass, it was in a brilliantly-lighted place where, it seemed, the air was filled with good fellowship, and he thought he was happy. At that very moment, he was pursuing the glittering, attractive bait which later proved to be his utter ruination. He had not seen the hidden hooks. Ask the thief, confined in his lonely cell, how he happened to become an outcast, and he may tell you that it started in school when he thought it a very happy thing to cheat in his examinations and thus acquire the habit of being ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... had been telling to unlistening ears the tale of how the blacks had speared, in wanton mischief, a mob of two hundred cattle on Jinfalla, not fifteen miles from the home station, "old man, you see it would be just ruination to let this go on. Either they or we must clear out. We can't both ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... really decent, then she can give him his clearance papers without his knowing why she did it and everything will be a secret and kept so. Nobody else'll ever know. If she won't do that, then you tell me and I'll have a session with HIM. If THAT'S no good, then out he goes and she with him; and it's ruination for both of 'em, reputations and all. Why am I doing this? I'll tell you. I like him. He isn't orthodox enough to suit me, but I have liked him mighty well. And Annab—Humph! that's neither here nor there. What I'm fighting for is the ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... determined faces, knew they would soon be beyond control, and bloodshed would follow if the advancing Chinamen tried to come on to the field. But, nevertheless, he was thoroughly in sympathy with them. The advent of these Chinese—probably but an advance guard of many hundreds—would simply mean ruination to himself and his mates, just as their prospects were so bright. The men looked upon him as their leader, and he must ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... intentional or inevitable, one thing was certain, and that was that nothing could stand up against it—it meant utter annihilation as far as human lives were concerned, absolute ruination as ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... of needle): She don't give 'em a chance, Cora. You can't tell me there is not many a nice, sober young man wouldn't be glad to sit out a Saturday evening with her. She's that bashful she don't give 'em a chance. I tell her it's almost as much ruination to a girl to be too retiring as to be too forward. She don't seem to have a way with ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... time. Tomorrow morning early I'll go to your engraver and say to him: 'My dear fellow, you probably know by this time what girls are ... An old man has been talking to her, and she has changed her mind.' It would be ruination ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... been hit by a speeding automobile and knocked galley-west. The automobile had sped on—so we were excitedly informed by some other tourists who had witnessed the collision—leaving the wreckage bottom side up in the ditch. The mule was on her back, all entangled in the twisted ruination of her gaudy gear, kicking out in that restrained and genteel fashion in which a mule always kicks when she is desirous of protesting against existing conditions, but is wishful not to damage herself while so ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... trial; the sport of fortune. mishap, mischance, misadventure, misfortune; disaster, calamity, catastrophe; accident, casualty, cross, reverse, check, contretemps, rub; backset[obs3], comedown, setback [U.S.]. losing game; falling &c. v.; fall, downfall; ruination, ruinousness; undoing; extremity; ruin &c. (destruction) 162. V. be ill off &c. adj.; go hard with; fall on evil, fall on evil days; go on ill; not prosper &c. 734. go downhill, go to rack and ruin &c. (destruction) 162, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... business; through a series of years he methodically caused it to be harrassed and burdened by the exercise of his great political power; he thwarted its plans and secretly hindered it in its application for money loans or other relief. Other means, open and covert, were employed to insure its ruination. When at last he had driven its owners into a corner, he calmly stepped in and bought up its control cheaply, and then turned out many millions of dollars ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... murmured, ruffling Scraggs's thin blonde hair. "Forget them sordid monetary considerations. I'm somethin' like forty jumps ahead o' the devil an' ruination for the first time since me an' Bull McGinty organized the Brotherhood o' ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... girls as much as there is a trade in cattle or sheep or other products of the farm. If these parents had known the real conditions, had believed that there is actually a syndicate which does as regular, as steady and persistent a "business" in the ruination of girls as the great packing houses do in the sale of meats, it is wholly probable that their daughters would not now be in dens of vice and almost utterly without hope of release excepting by ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... notebook; we have wasted thirty-four hours standing still on the journey. If you go on like this, either the cattle will die, or they won't pay me two roubles for the meat when I do get there. It's not traveling, but ruination." ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... course I know. And it is because I know that I ask, could you keep a secret if I tell you? It may mean ruination to us all, you know, if ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... please, sir, he was that dirty and muddy to go scrimmaging over the house, and it's the ruination of the furniture—" ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... indispensable to mankind, all of them need the regulation of reason. When they are indulged immoderately or in unnatural ways, they become most copious sources of bodily diseases, of mental disorders, and moral degradation. Every one knows how the passion of drink, when abused, proves the ruination of millions; excessive eating, too, injures the systems of countless people. But no animal passion is more liable to become disorderly, none needs more firm control and habitual watchfulness, than the passion of lust. Reason ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... said, 'for ship subsidies for New York and New England!' And so all government protection of our shipping was withdrawn. And when the war ended, with forty per cent of our ships grabbed, sunk or sold, it was ruination to build any more, for the British and German governments were pouring millions of dollars a year into the Cunard and the North German Lloyd, and we ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... speaker. "Don't you believe it! A maniac like that would mean ruination for business if he was allowed to get away ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer |
