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Shatter   Listen
noun
Shatter  n.  A fragment of anything shattered; used chiefly or soley in the phrase into shatters; as, to break a glass into shatters.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shatter" Quotes from Famous Books



... the stars anew, Shatter the heavens with a song; Immortal in my love for you, Because I ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke

... stable without a sacrifice of its excesses, without some barrier to its own omnipotence... . Under this miserable government... the people, soon weary of storms, and abandoned without legal protection to their seducers or to their oppressors, will shatter the helm, or hand it over to some audacious hand that stands ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... came suddenly two deafening explosions. Looking back, they saw the roof of the observatory tilt crazily; saw the whole building shatter, and erupt ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich

... the raciest stories; they hear of the death of people about their own age, or even younger, not as if it was a grisly warning, but with a simple childlike pleasure at having outlived some one else; and when a draught might puff them out like a guttering candle, or a bit of a stumble shatter them like so much glass, their old hearts keep sound and unaffrighted, and they go on, bubbling with laughter, through years of man's age compared to which the valley at Balaklava was as safe and peaceful as a village cricket-green on Sunday. It may fairly be questioned ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... spring is said to be tender and toothsome, but that overpowering smell of musk proved too much for our determination. You may break, you may shatter the rat if you will, but the scent of the musk-rose will cling to it still. There is a limit to every one's scientific research, and, personally, until insistent hunger gnaws at my vitals and starvation looms round the edge of the next iceberg, I draw the line at muskrat and am not ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... attempted to be described, nor even remembered. It was one of those tragedies of life which enfeeble the most faithful memories at a blow shatter nerves beyond the faculty of revival, cloud the mind for ever, or turn the hair grey in an instant. They carried Venetia delirious to her bed. The very despair, and almost madness, of her daughter forced Lady Annabel to self-exertion, of which it was difficult to suppose that even she ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... (akin to L. pondus, a weight) is to beat with a heavy, and pommel with a blunt, instrument. To batter and to bruise refer to the results of beating; that is battered which is broken or defaced by repeated blows on the surface (compare synonyms for SHATTER); that is bruised which has suffered even one severe contusion. The metaphorical sense of beat, however, so far preponderates that one may be very badly bruised and battered, and yet not be said to be beaten, unless he has got the worst of the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... across the moor. One of my shoes was found a furlong from the highway, and this had guided them. Of course they found no coffin beside me, and I was prudent enough to hold my tongue when I became convalescent. But the effect of that night was to shatter my health for a year and more, and force me to throw up my post of School Inspector. To this day I have never examined the school at Pitt's Scawens. But somebody else has; and last winter I received a letter, which I will give ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... waters! Come." And that invitation falls on no unwilling ears, but in to the Grindelwald and to the Lauterbrunnen and up to Muerren go those who love the majestic Jungfrau! What a wonderful trip this is! It may shatter some ideals in being taken to such a height in a railway train, but even against one's convictions as to the proper way of seeing a mountain, when all has been said, the fact remains that this trip is wonderful beyond words. There is a strangeness in taking a train which leaves a garden of green ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... Twenty thousand men and more. Thus to his dukes and his counts he said, "Hear ye, my lords, we are sore bested. The Emperor Karl of gentle France Hither hath come for our dire mischance. Nor host to meet him in battle line, Nor power to shatter his power, is mine. Speak, my sages; your counsel lend: My doom of shame and death forefend." But of all the heathens none spake word Save ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... by the force of desire and of pride, the refracting glass was being specially ground which would enable him, which would compel him, to see an ideal Hilda when he gazed at the real Hilda. He would not see the real Hilda any more unless some cataclysm should shatter the glass. And he might be likened to a prisoner on whom the gate of freedom is shut for ever, or to a stricken sufferer of whom it is known that he can never rise again and go forth into the fields. He was as somebody to whom ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... kind, calm Pastor of Einsiedeln sees at first only the splendour that hangs around the name of his early comrade, the hero of his hopes. And Paracelsus for a while would forbear with tender ruth to shatter his friend's illusion, would veil, if that were possible, the canker which has eaten into his own heart. But in the tumult of old glad memories and present griefs, it ceases to be possible; from amid the crew of foolish praisers he must find one friend ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... idolatry." There was certainly a good deal of unrest in the country during the period of the ex-monk's ascendency; no less than 13,783 persons had been banished to Siberia, and 3,756 executed at his orders. Yet nothing, it seemed, could shatter his position when, with appalling suddenness, a thunderbolt descended. Nobody knows to this day what took place. It was something Russian; some scandal in the Highest Spheres which may see the light of day, centuries hence, when the Imperial Archives are disclosed as musty court history to ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... looked at each other in dismay. "Count," whispered the marquis, "listen! he leaves and has threatened to shatter Austria. He is the man to fulfil his threat. My God, must we suffer him to depart in anger? Have you been authorized ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... in the meantime, had shut up and barred the great gate of the palace. At first, the knights tried to shatter it with their battle- axes; but, being shown a window by which they could enter, they let the gate alone, and climbed in that way. While they were battering at the door, the attendants of Thomas a Becket had implored him to take refuge in the Cathedral; in which, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... it had been impossible to see any one. And now she was positive she should take the fever. Her health was so delicate, her nerves so susceptible, and to hear the raving of delirium,—the laughs that were quite like a maniac,—would be sure to shatter her beyond any help. If it were not in the dead of winter, she should go to New York at once, and stay with Mrs. Minor until all danger of infection was over. She did not seem to comprehend the gravity of Irene's case, though she wept over her suffering ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... Thou hast destroy'd The beautiful world With violent blow; 'Tis shiver'd! 'tis shatter'd! The fragments abroad by a demigod scatter'd! Now we sweep The wrecks into nothingness! Fondly we weep The beauty that's gone! Thou, 'mongst the sons of earth, Lofty and mighty one, Build it once more! In thine own bosom the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... the world, once and again, through fear of adversity, and corruption of joy! Woe to the adversities of the world, once and again, and the third time, from the longing for prosperity, and because adversity itself is a hard thing, and lest it shatter endurance. Is not the life of man upon earth all trial: ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... angrily which was the heavier blow. But Stinky, whose blood was up, seized the mallet again, and forced every ounce of his strength into the blow. The manikin flew a foot higher than the previous mark. The contest went on, each striving to beat the other's mark, with blows that threatened to shatter the machine, till both were tired. But Stinky's second blow held the record. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... blinded him. He was possessed by the tragic fear that she was acting a dream; presently she would awake—and shatter the universe. His ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... us all the path is new and unknown by reason of the sudden surprises that may be sprung upon us, by reason of the sudden temptations that may start up at any moment in our course, by reason of the earthquakes that may shatter the most solid-seeming lives, by reason of the sudden calamities that may fall upon us. The sorrows that we anticipate seldom come, and those that do come are seldom anticipated. The most fatal bolts are generally from the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... it does now. The longest lived men and women have, as a rule, been those who have attained great mental and moral development. They have lived in the upper region of a higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the friction, and the discords which weaken and shatter most lives. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... sunlight; and any one willing to try could feel it like the child, reading new thought without end into the art he has studied a hundred times; but what is still more convincing, he could, at will, in an instant, shatter the whole art by calling into it a single ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... new imperial estate. There were the winged griffins with absurd scrolls for tails. They had voracious claws, had these droll beasts of prey, and they clutched at an oval frame ruthlessly, as though to shatter it and get at a certain bird within. Poor bird, his shelter looked very fragile, and he about to be smothered under an enormous diadem as under an extinguisher. He was none other than the Mexican eagle perched on his own native cactus, and he desired only peace ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... of the disastrous errors and abuses to which you were wont to call my attention; and yet I know that I am far from possessing the requisite strength to meet with success, however valiantly I might struggle to shatter the bulwarks of this would-be culture. I was overcome by a general feeling of depression: my recourse to solitude was not arrogance or superciliousness." Whereupon, to account for his behaviour, he described the general character ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... declaiming, Neal with his grey hair, his tall spare form, and his air of old-fashioned punctilium, would sit near, fixing the speaker with his pale-blue eyes,—a little threateningly; always ready to shatter an exuberance, to check an oratorical flow by some quick double-edged word that would make Manisty trip and stammer; showing, too, all the time, by his evident shrinking, by certain impregnable reserves, or by the banter that hid a feeling too ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that, the whole universe appears to be the very incarnation of injustice. The constellations as they come into manifestation shatter the heavens with their titanic combats; it is the vampirism of the greatest among them that creates the suns, thus inaugurating egoism from the very beginning. Everywhere on earth is heard the cry of pain, a never-ending struggle; sacrifice is ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... thy cell, old Socrates, Cheerily to and fro; Trust to the impulse of thy soul, And let the poison flow. They may shatter to earth the lamp of clay That holds a light divine, But they cannot quench the fire of thought By any such deadly wine. They cannot blot thy spoken words From the memory of man By all the poison ever was brewed Since time its course began. To-day abhorred, to-morrow adored, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... broad-mindness, and he stirred himself (and incidentally his tea) to still more liberality of expression. He said the state of the poor was appalling, simply appalling; that there were times when he wanted to shatter the whole system, "only," he said, turning to me appealingly, "What have we got to put in ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... to maintain their demands by force, if necessary; but no declaration of war was issued. Great Britain, in accepting the challenge, equally abstained from acts which would constitute a state of war; but she armed at once to shatter the coalition, before it attained coherence in aught but words. From first to last, until the Armed Neutrality again dissolved, though there was hard fighting, there ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... alone art able, Pierce our dungeon with Thy day; Shatter all the gates of Babel, Rend her iron bars away! Till, as billows thunder shoreward, All the Ransomed Ones ascend, Into freedom surging forward Without number, ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... to know, to understand, even though the seeing blind, though the knowledge sadden, though the understanding shatter the dearest hopes—such has ever been the craving of the upward-striving mind in man. Some regard it as a weakness, as a folly, but I am sure that it exists most strongly in some of the noblest of ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... the instrument for striking that, blow, led him to suppose Mr. Sowerby might be meditating on the extent of the young lady's fortune. He talked randomly of money, in a way to shatter Nataly's conception of him. He talked of City affairs at table, as it had been his practice to shun the doing; and hit the resounding note on mines, which have risen in the market like the crest of a serpent, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of stationing cleaning is one way not to shatter scatter and scattering. The one way to use custom is to use soap and silk for cleaning. The one way to see cotton is to have a design concentrating the illusion and the illustration. The perfect way is to accustom the thing to have a lining and ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein

... they dare not deride the noble and popular figments which lived but in the transports of the exalted. They write in whispers, as it were, embarrassed by a knowledge which they would communicate, but fear they may not. To shatter a cherished illusion, to expose the truth to a proud memory, that, I will confess, is always a task before which a sensitive man will hesitate. Yet it is also part of the test of a writer's courage; by his hesitation a soldier-author may know that he is in ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... the word that is foe to ambition, An enemy ambushed to shatter your will; Its prey is forever the man with a mission And bows but to courage and patience and skill. Hate it, with hatred that's deep and undying, For once it is welcomed 'twill break any man; Whatever the goal you are seeking, keep trying And answer this demon by ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... woman who would break or shatter it had not yet appeared on the horizon, nor do I know whether she ever appeared or not, since after leaving the neighbourhood I heard no more of the brothers ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... horror, my boundless despair, when the good woman slowly and sadly shook her head, saying, in a voice full of sympathy and commiseration, 'How loath I am to shatter your hopes and add more trouble to your already much overheavy sorrows, you cannot know, Monsieur, but I fear I ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... beloved old mother; 90 We've nought to complain of." "In what are you happy?" "In this!"—like a feather He swings the great hammer. "Beginning at sunrise And setting my back straight As midnight draws near, I can shatter a mountain! Before now, it's happened That, working one day, 100 I've piled enough stones up To earn ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... never known her to be unkind, uncharitable, unforgiving; he had never known her to be insincere, untruthful, or envious. But the decalogue is no stronger than its weakest link. Was it in the heart of such a woman—this woman he loved—was it in the heart of this young girl to shatter it? ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... bottom of the cup. He picked up a rock the size of his fist and drew back his arm for the throw, remembered what the supervisor had told him about throwing stones into the lake, and dropped the rock guiltily. It was queer how a fellow wanted to roll a rock down and shatter that unearthly blue mirror ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... ye Laurels, and once more Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear, I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude, And with forc'd fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... the reality of the powers conferred on him, all the gods shouted "Merodach is king!" and handed to him sceptre, throne, and insignia of royalty. An irresistible weapon, which should shatter all his enemies, was then given to him, and he armed himself also with spear or dart, bow, and quiver; lightning flashed before him, and flaming fire filled his body. Anu, the god of the heavens, had given him a great net, and this he set at ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches

... uttermost sacrifices upon either of two shrines; that of Mammon, or that of Eros. His was a temperament (truly characteristic of his race) which can build up a structure painfully, year by year, suffering unutterable privations in the cause of its growth, only to shatter it at a blow for a woman's smile. He was a true member of that brotherhood, represented throughout the bazaars of the East, of those singular shopkeepers who live by commercial rapine, who, demanding ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... to find her lying bow on. Now we rode the gentle swell without sound or motion. The slow paddles held us in the same place with regard to the ship, and minutes passed in which my nervousness rose to such a pitch that I felt as if I must scream or clap my hands simply to shatter that oppressive, tantalizing, almost unendurable silence. But when I started to turn and whisper to the cook, something sharp and cold pricked through the back of my shirt and touched my skin, and from that time on I sat as still as a ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... certainly going too far. I opened my mouth to voice the angry words but a look at her stopped me. I couldnt help but feel her imperviousness was fragile, that harsh speech might shatter a calm too taut to be anything but hysterical. I drove on without speaking until the hummocks gave way again to smooth desert. "We'll soon be in Yuma," I announced. "Arent you going to tell ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... You will not have to shatter my mocking dreams—they are already gone. But you may be sure that I, too, have been dreaming of a knight who was to lay a kingdom at my feet and talk to me of flowers and love—Olof, I want to be your wife! Here is my hand! But this much I must tell you: that you never ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... that which others' right denies, But march against the citadel of wrong. A glorious army this, that finds allies Wherever God hath built the heart of man With attributes that to Himself belong; By Him ordained to crown what He began, And shatter despotism, which is the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... he pleased in his own house; whereupon Sandro, in disdain, balanced on the top of his own wall, which was higher than his neighbour's and not very strong, an enormous stone, more than enough to fill a wagon, which threatened to fall at the slightest shaking of the wall and to shatter the roof, ceilings, webs, and looms of his neighbour, who, terrified by this danger, ran to Sandro, but was answered in his very own words—namely, that he both could and would do whatever he pleased in his own house. Nor could he get ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... means that he adopts, and he is no respecter of persons. He does not even respect the person of his wife. The love of Mariamne is the one sure rock upon which he can rest when the earthquake, threatening at every moment, comes to shatter his throne and engulf him. He loves her too with a passion which dreams of union so perfect that death cannot break it, so perfect that one of them would wish to die at the moment when the soul of the other left the body. This is Mariamne's dream also, but Herod cannot ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... ridden ahead and crowded the cattle down to the right of way again, the child's natural good sense and business instincts had combined to temporarily shatter the dream. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... your education—in your hands. There is something in the block for you, and it lives in your ideal. Shall it be angel or devil? What are your ideals, as you stand tiptoe on the threshold of active life? Will you smite the block and shatter it into an unshapely or hideous piece; or will you call out a statue of usefulness, of grace and beauty, a statue which will tell the unborn generations the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... Caseros, only as of spots upon the map; let it, therefore, suffice to say that Quiroga was beaten decisively, unmistakably, terribly. The serried veterans of Paz, schooled in the Brazilian wars, stood grimly to the death before the fiery onslaught of Quiroga; in vain did his horsemen shatter themselves against the Unitarian General's scanty squares; the tactics of civilized warfare proved for the first time successful on these plains against wild ferocity and a larger force; Quiroga was driven back at length with fearful slaughter, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... three another explosion took place, aggravated this time by the fact that, the window pulleys being worn, the sash flew up with enough force to shatter most of ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... troubles to his cousin, and to induce her, if he could induce no one else, to advise his immediate marriage. It was the first time he had been really engaged, and his affection had not only stood three months' absence, but had so much elevated his shatter-brained though frank and honest temperament, that Albinia conceived a high opinion of 'Emily,' and did her best to persuade him to be patient, and ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... our deeds in life, once done, are done forever. A vase may be broken, it is true, but the fragments are apt to reveal the form of the vessel from which they came. So the hand of jealousy, of envy, of persecution even, may shatter the results of our best efforts here; but God will gather up the pieces and be able to tell by their appearance and quality that they belonged to a vessel of honor in his sight. Seeds sometimes lie a long time in the ground before they grow and make a blade; ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... Alhamid. "It's not only sensitive, but it's unreliable. You might actually drop a jar of the stuff and do nothing but shatter the jar. Another jar, apparently exactly similar, might go off because it got jiggled by a seismic wave from a passing truck half a mile away. But the latter was a great deal more likely ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett

... old haunt behind the wind-shelter, and he had taken the opportunity, if not to "shatter her to bits," at least "to remold her nearer to the heart's desire." He had done it with consummate tact, and she had responded with adorable docility. He never admired himself more than in the role of cicerone to a young and trusting maid. By the subtlest methods he knew how ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice

... high-built galleons came, Ship after ship, the whole night long, with their battle-thunder and flame; Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame; For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no more— God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before? For he said, "Fight on! fight on!" Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck; And it chanced that, when half of the summer night was gone, With ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... of the earliest in England—dizzy thought! But the glimpses had been vain and tantalizing. She had been in the male world, but not of it, as though encircled in a glass ball which neither she nor the males could shatter. She had had money, freedom, and ambition, and somehow, through ignorance or through lack of imagination or opportunity, had been unable to employ them. She had never known what she wanted. The vision had never been clear. And she reflected: "I wonder if my daughter, supposing I had one, would be ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... hoped. Then a little breeze sprang up and the branches danced. Sounds began to rise from the road beneath me. Presently the colour deepened, the evening came on. From far below there rose to me the chatter of the boys returning home. The tea-bell rang,—last word of prose to shatter my mystical poetry. 'The Lord has not come, the Lord will never come,' I muttered, and in my heart the artificial edifice of extravagant faith began to totter and crumble. From that moment forth my Father and I, though the fact was long successfully ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... nature to shatter such illusions. Thereafter, the subject of the evening was more guardedly treated, pending her departure. Grandma Plympton, valiant as she was in the social cause, could seldom stay up for more than the first few numbers of a dance, and she could never, of late, remain to the end of an evening ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... must have The Machine. It is only in unskilled hands under ignorant direction that machinery is dangerous. We can no more govern modern communities without political machinery than we can feed and clothe them without industrial machinery. Shatter The Machine, and you get Anarchy. And yet The Machine works so detestably at present that we have people who advocate Anarchy ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... in my heart; and I could have told my lord to his face how little he had to do, bolstering up the image of the dead in Mrs. Henry's heart, and how much better he were employed to shatter that false idol; for by this time I saw very well how the land lay between my patron and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fatherland; I have taken leave of my wife and my children, and belong now only to the Tyrol and the emperor. If my blood were sufficient to deliver our country, I should joyously and with a grateful prayer throw myself down from this peak and shatter my bones; and dying, I should thank God for vouchsafing such an honor to me, and allowing me to purchase the liberty of the country with my blood. But I am but a poor and humble servant and soldier of the Lord, and my blood will not be sufficient; but many will have to spill theirs and die, that ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... the wall, not flat to the front, as in England; the roofs are steeper-pitched; even a hill farm will have a massy, square, cold and permanent appearance. English houses, in comparison, have the look of cardboard toys, such as a puff might shatter. And to this the Scotsman never becomes used. His eye can never rest consciously on one of these brick houses—rickles of brick, as he might call them—or on one of these flat-chested streets, but he is instantly reminded where he is, and instantly travels back in fancy to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... satisfaction, and perhaps with a slight inclination to make my grandparents envious of them, that he had suddenly become as charming as he could possibly be, and was never out of their house. My grandfather would not care to shatter their pleasant illusion, but would look at my grandmother, as he ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... Shatter all from this beggar's bowl: put out this lamp of the importunate watcher: hold my hands, raise me from the still-gathering heap of your gifts into the bare infinity ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore

... fresh meat, yet I hesitated to shatter the quiet and peaceful serenity of the view with the crack of a rifle and the death of one of those beautiful creatures before us. But it had to be done—we must eat. I left the work to Delcarte, however, and in a moment we had two antelope and ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... oil. When pop corn is gradually heated, and made so hot that the oil inside of the kernel turns to gas, being unable to escape through the hull of the kernel, the pressure finally becomes strong enough to burst the grain, and the explosion is so violent as to shatter it in ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... scared faces, learning to walk, They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,— Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride.... Men who went out to battle, grim and glad; Children, with eyes that hate you, broken ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... remains fearful each instant that I should find the dainty skull that would shatter my happiness for life; but though I searched diligently, picking up every one of the twenty-odd skulls, I found none that was the skull of a creature but slightly removed from the ape. Hope, then, still lived. For another three days I searched north and ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... open, my sails spread wide, And cleave like an eagle life's glassy tide; Gulls follow my furrow's foaming; Overboard with the ballast of care and cark; And what if I shatter my roaming bark, It is ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... stirred, invisible, great audience, rising row on row to the roof. At such moments I have experienced the creative joy of a mighty orator or a sublime actor; I have actually felt my pulses leap. And then the entrance of a stage-hand or a scrub-woman would shatter the illusion! ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... gesture and a glance—thrown my whole life into the crucible of passion? Why did I exult in the tremendous and impetuous act, like a martyr, and also like a girl? Was I playing with my existence as an infant plays with a precious bibelot that a careless touch may shatter? Why was I so fiercely, madly, drunkenly happy when I gazed into ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... readjust her manifest lines into a likeness of Harriet Walker's? And she knew that even if she hoodwinked the world, the miserable deception of it all, the nervous terrors, not only would wear love down, but shatter her ideals of herself and him. She would be infinitely more miserable ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... which she rewarded me that I vowed to myself that I really would forgive my old archenemy. A moment before it had been on my lips to speak of my confiscated letters, for I had no doubt that Rufus Blight had intercepted them. Now I realized that in them was a mine which I might fire only to shatter our new-found friendship. That treachery, too, I said, I should forgive. When Penelope set the light to the fuse, I with rare presence of mind stamped out the flames and prevented ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... out of harm's way, the standard at his masthead drew the hottest of the fire upon him. The San Martin's timbers were of oak and a foot thick, but the shot, he said, went through them enough to shatter a rock. Her deck was a slaughterhouse; half his company were killed or wounded, and no more would have been heard or seen of the San Martin or her commander had not Oquendo and De Leyva pushed in to the rescue and enabled him to ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... the object of this universal gaze would have sufficed to shatter both hypotheses. Here was neither a court of justice nor a tombola. It was instead the closing session of the annual Nedahma Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Bishop was about to read out the list of ministerial appointments for the coming year. This ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... was growing slowly from west to east. Before long thousands of carriages would roll along its line with the speed of birds, to enrich the powerful, shatter the poor, spread new customs and manners, multiply crime...all this is called 'the advancement of civilization'. But Slimak knew nothing of civilization and its boons, and therefore looked upon this outcome of it as ominous. The encroaching line seemed to him like the tongue ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... be sold in plenty in the market, and plenty in the streets. Grant that the potters may get great gain and grant me so to sing to them. But if you turn shameless and make false promises, then I call together the destroyers of kilns, Shatter and Smash and Charr and Crash and Crudebake who can work this craft much mischief. Come all of you and sack the kiln-yard and the buildings: let the whole kiln be shaken up to the potter's loud lament. As a horse's jaw grinds, so let the kiln grind to powder all the pots inside. And ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... shudder when I look up at the beautiful serenity of this autumn sky, and remember that my deed has loosened an immortal soul from its clay, and hurled it, unprepared, into its Maker's presence. My conscience would rebuke my hand, should it willfully shatter the sculptor's marble wrought into human shape, or deface the artist's ideal pictured upon canvas, or destroy aught that is beautiful and costly of man's ingenuity and labor. And yet these I might replace ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... man-made laws held guiltless—could not shatter the tie. That he, blinded by hope, had hoped to remake a life already made, and had dared to masquerade before his own soul as a man free to come, to go, and free to love, could not alter what had been done. Back, far back of it all lay the deathless ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... gumps ride hydras green, And utter sharp, a curdling curse, And wingless zimbs that storm each dell, Glare at each shatter'd dome and wall That speak of prowling apes in dream, Of dragons drawing Horror's hearse When bloody lanes of soulless hell ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... Saw never, such as Heav'n stoops down to see. Thus Heav'nward all things tend. For all were once Perfect, and all must be at length restor'd, So God has greatly purpos'd: who would else In his dishonor'd works himself endure Dishonor, and be wrong'd without redress. Haste then, and wheel away a shatter'd world, Ye slow-revolving seasons! we would see (A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet) A world that does not dread and hate his laws, And suffer for its crime; would learn how fair The creature is, that God pronounces good, How pleasant in ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... surround it. These walls inclose a considerable area, which by courtesy is called a fort. It was a formidable defense at one time, and has been the scene of much exciting history, but is obsolete now. The walls are of heavy masonry, but a shot from a modern gun would shatter them. They inclose the military headquarters of the Bombay province, or Presidency, as it is called in the Indian gazetteer, the cathedral of this diocese, quarters and barracks for the garrison, an arsenal, magazines and other military buildings and a palatial sailors' ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... rare word for shatter-(scatter) brained. cf. The Countess of Winchilsea, Miscellany ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... they knew little and thought less, in their charmingly egotistic absorption in student life. But a violent shock was finally to shatter this serene oblivion. Horace could remember the smallest details about that day. It was in the spring. The March sun had risen brightly over Hymettus, and the sky was cloudless. Marcus, meeting him at a morning lecture of Cratippus, had surprised him by ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... constructive danger to their freedom; that even if the cloud is no bigger than a man's hand, it is their right and duty to stake the national existence, to sacrifice lives and fortunes, to cover the country with a lake of blood, to shatter crowns and sceptres and fling parliaments into the sea. On this principle of subversion they erected their commonwealth, and by its virtue lifted the world out of its orbit and assigned a new course to history. Here or nowhere we have the broken chain, the rejected ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... point of rock, the thinnest, flakiest white clouds approached or hung round it, and the reflection shaded them with the most delicate, yet most perfect and richest hues of the rainbow. And while we watched and worshipped we trembled lest some rude fish or bubble should break our mirror and forever shatter the picture seemingly wrought for our special eyes that Sunday morning. Then and there, in that holy hour, I thought of you, dear mother, in the body, and of dear father in the beyond, with eyes unsealed, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... hitherward gan ride Arthur the mighty With numberless folk fated though they were. Upon the Tambre they came together, Drew their long swords, smote on the helmets, So that fire sprang forth. Spears were splintered, Shields gan shatter, shafts to break. They fought all together folk unnumbered. Tambre was in flood with unmeasured blood. No man in the fight might any warrior know, Nor who did worse nor who did better so was the conflict mingled, For each slew ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... crossed to the grand boulevard, and turned westward along the splendid, humming, roaring thoroughfare gay with flags and gleaming with such plate-glass as Nick the militant would have loved to shatter. Certainly there was nothing like this street in the Quarter. The Quarter could equal it neither in shops, nor in cafes, nor in vehicles, nor in crowds. It was an exultant thoroughfare, and Audrey caught its buoyancy, which could be distinctly ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... or of ivory, clad in gold and adorned with garments and jewels. The statue is often of colossal size; in the temple of Olympia Zeus is represented sitting and his head almost touches the summit of the temple. "If the god should rise," they said, "his head would shatter the roof." This sanctuary, a sort of reliquary for the idol, is concealed on every side from the eyes. To enter, it is necessary to pass through a porch formed ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... the fall; the blow of Carnaby's fist had killed him. There is one stroke which, if delivered with sufficient accuracy and sufficient force, will slay more surely than any other: it is the stroke which catches an uplifted chin just at the right angle to drive the head back and shatter the spinal cord. This had plainly happened. The man's neck was broken, and he died ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... it be my opponent, he has my full consent; then I will follow upon the very ground he shall have chosen and shall shatter him with a hail of new ideas and subtle fancies; if after that he dares to breathe another word, I shall sting him in the face and in the eyes with our maxims, which are as keen as the sting of a wasp, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... delicious night was falling. Could she not obey her instinct, and in one bright word, one word laden with the invitation and acquiescence of femininity, atone for her sin against him? Could she not shatter the images of Rose and Milly, who loved her after their hard fashion, but who would never thank her for her watchful affection—would even resent ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... protest that I am. I love you. Isn't that enough? I'm not worthy of you, maybe. Yet if trying to earn you by being loyal makes me worthy, then I am. Don't say no to me, Kate. It will shatter me—like an earthquake. And I believe you'll regret it, too. We can make each other happy. I feel it! I'd stake ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... end! He even went so far as to describe the scene of destruction, when all the elements would be put in motion to destroy mankind, when volcanoes would deluge the land with liquid fire, and earthquakes shake and shatter ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... him, as he is already in possession of her secret. Yet occasionally we find powerful and active medicines administered by these wretches; and it may be said here that all the medicines possessing sufficient power to expel the foetus prematurely, are also sufficiently powerful to, and invariably do, shatter a woman's system to an extent from which she rarely recovers. The majority of abortionists, however, prefer to use instruments for this purpose, although this is with them the most dangerous of all means of procuring abortion, many of their victims dying from such use of instruments. The most ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... myself,' said Miss Crofton. 'Indeed I know, by personal experience, that what you say of the laity is true. They do not break their hearts when disappointed. But Julia replies that for her to act as you and I would advise might be to shatter the young ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... speak, but he would know—as he seems so strangely, so wonderfully, so supernaturally to know and understand everything. And, oh, he means so much to me, to us all, for it is he, more than any one else, who has saved us from—from what we were. And he loves us. It would shatter his faith, ruin all that his life has meant to him, and—and we cannot bring him grief and sorrow like that. Oh, what can we do! What can we do! We cannot stop—and we cannot go on! We cannot stay here even if we returned the money successfully, and we ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... his sound and powerful judgment took in the position of Europe: France, exhausted by the lingering decay of her government and in travail with new and confused elements which had as yet no strength but to shatter and destroy; Spain, lured on by France and then abandoned by her; England, disturbed at home by parliamentary agitation, favorably disposed to the court of Russia and for a long while allied to Frederick; Sweden and Denmark, in the throes of serious events; there was nothing ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of a great buck in the Sixth. The Duffer had got it cheap, but he never used it. The lower boys remarked to each other that Duff didn't dare to look in it, because what he would see must not only break his heart but shatter the glass. Generally, it hung, folded up, close to the window, and the Duffer said that it would come in handy when ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... show Harold in a bad light. It was simply an expression of the inherent decency of the man: he knew that Virginia loved him, that she had plighted her troth to him, and as long as that love endured and the engagement stood, he would never try to shatter her ideals in regard to him. He knew it meant only heartbreak for her to love and wed a man she couldn't respect. He knew enough of human nature to realize that love often lives when respect is dead, and no possible good could come of showing up the unworthiness that he ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... discovery was that NOBODY KNEW, that to act therefore was to blunder, that to talk was to confess; and that the man who acted slowly and steadfastly and above all silently, had the best chance of winning through. Meanwhile one fed the men. Now by this same strategy he hoped to shatter those mysterious unknowns of the Central European command. Delhi might talk of a great flank march through Holland, with all the British submarines and hydroplanes and torpedo craft pouring up the Rhine in support of it; Viard might crave for brilliance with ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... mood, A stalwart man was placed, With veteran aspect, like a tower By war, not time, defaced, Whose shatter'd walls exhibit Power Contending still ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... curiosity and spirit may go adventuring. Extremes must meet, it is their urgent necessity; the reason for their distance, and the greater the distance between them, the swifter will be their return and the warmer their impact: they may shatter each other to fragments or they may fuse and become indissoluble and new and wonderful, but there is no other fertility. Between the sexes there is a really extraordinary freedom of intercourse. They meet each other something more than half way. A man and a woman may become quite intimate ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... the long days That will not bring me either Rest or Thee, This health I hack and ravage as with knives, These nerves I fain would shatter, and this heart I fain would break—this heart that, traitor-like, Beats on with foolish and elastic beat: If, after all, this life I waste and kill Should still be thine, may still be lived for thee! And this the dreadful trial of my love, This silence and this blank ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... quarter there was coming worry, to shatter the dreams, the hopes, the "castles in the air" of Kimberley. The Relief Column was approaching; this time for certain. We had heard like legends before, but they were only legends (before). The Column was really coming. A native had come in with the news. Now, of a white man's ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... the eye? Those who measure literary effect by the thousand words or by the hour are making a great mistake. The lightning flash is over in a fraction of a second, but in that time it may reveal a scene of beauty, may give the traveller warning of the fatal precipice, or may shatter the farmer's home into kindling wood. Intellectual lightning may strike the "browser" as he stands there book in hand before the shelf. A word, a phrase, may sear into his brain—may turn the current of his whole life. And even if ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... same ship, that Julio knew Had pass'd him, with her panic-stricken crew, She gleams amid the storm, a shatter'd thing Of pride and lordly beauty: her fair wing Of sail is wounded—the proud pennon gone: Dark, dark she sweepeth like an eagle, on Through waters that are battling to and fro, And tossing their ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... he said softly, is often in contradiction to the wishes of parents, and that is precisely the sign of the real vocation ... to shatter obstacles. Where is the great artist, the great man, the hero, the saint, the martyr, who has not had to struggle with his ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... strikes to-day at a new front," is becoming a standing headline. And this highly desirable "epidemic of strikes" is not confined to the Western Front. As Generalissimo of all the Allied Forces the great French Marshal has planned and carried out an ensemble of operations designed to shatter and demoralise the enemy at every point. The long inaction on the Salonika Front has been ended by the rapid and triumphant advance of the British, French, Serbians, and Greeks under General Franchet d'Esperey. Eight days sufficed ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... who but women Sigh at the deed? Hew down a withered tree, And none look grave but dotards. He may live To thank me for this service. Rainbow arches, Highways of dreaming passion, have too long, Young as he is, diverted wish and hope From the unpretending ground we mortals tread;— Then shatter the delusion, break it up And set him free. What follows? I have learned That things will work to ends the slaves o' the world Do never dream of. I have been what he— This Boy—when he comes forth with bloody hands— Might envy, and am now,—but he ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... awoke, slid cautiously and with infinite stealth from beneath the covers and closed the wide-flung window to within a bare two inches of the sill. Almost invariably she heard him; but she was a wise old woman; a philosopher of parts. She knew better than to allow a window to shatter the peace of their marital felicity. As she lay there, smiling a little grimly in the dark and giving no sign of being awake, she thought, "Oh, well, I guess a closed window ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... "Well, they'd better not. Here I've spent years building up my reputation to suit myself, and then they go and shatter me like that. They'd ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... incongruously, they got on together very well, I believe. The girl kept the name of Hasketh, and I do not suppose that many people knew her relation to Tedham. It appeared that our little romantic supposition of a love affair, which the reunion of father and child must shatter, was for the present quite gratuitous. But if it should ever come to that, my wife and I had made up our minds to let God manage. We said that we had already had one narrow escape in proposing to better the divine way of doing, and we should not interfere again. Still I cannot truly say that ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... when the Saint from Padua's graceless land In silent anguish sought the barren strand, High on the shatter'd beech sublime He stood, Still'd with his waving arm the babbling flood; "To Man's dull ear," He cry'd, "I call in vain, "Hear me, ye scaly tenants of the main!"— 250 Misshapen Seals approach in circling flocks, In dusky mail the Tortoise climbs the ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... to a certain extent allied, are two distinct things. Injury the most serious may occur without the premonitory warning, even without immediate subsequent suffering. A person in a perfect state of insensibility might doubtless receive, without experiencing any pain whatever, a blow that would shatter the bones of a limb, and render it powerless for life. Indeed, there is on record a well-attested case of a poor pedestrian, who, having laid himself down on the platform of a lime-kiln, and dropping asleep, and the fire having increased and burnt off one foot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... too, have pass'd over life's wild stream In a frail and shatter'd boat, But the pilot was sure and we sail'd secure When we seem'd ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... some weak point that might be attacked with a probability of success. He analyzed every answer, and weighed one expression after another, striving, as he did so, to find some flaw through which he might slip a question calculated to shatter the structure of defense. He worked thus, far into the night, and yet he was on his legs again at an early hour in the morning. By eight o'clock he was not merely dressed and shaved, he had not merely taken his matutinal chocolate and arranged his papers, but he was actually ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... finally resulted in the battle of the Metaurus and the triumph of Rome may be summed up as follows: To overthrow Rome it was necessary to attack her in Italy at the heart of her power, and shatter the strongly linked confederacy of which she was the head. This was the objective. To reach it, the Carthaginians needed a solid base of operations and a secure line of communications. The former was established ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan



Words linked to "Shatter" :   bust, damage



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