"Wreck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crate abode slid down into the dust of the road with a great crash. I held my breath while, with a jolt and a bounce and a squeak of the heavy old springs, Uncle Cradd brought the ancestral family coach to a halt about ten feet away from the wreck, which was a melee of broken timber, squeaking voices, and flapping wings. As soon as I recovered from the shock I sprang from my cushions beside Mr. G. Bird, who was fairly yelling clucks of command ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... hunted foxes not a hundred miles from the "model borough" of Liskeard, and are told of him in my friend Mr. W. F. Collier's memoir of Harry Terrell, a bygone Dartmoor hero: and a true account of what followed the wreck of the Samaritan will be found in a chapter of Remembrances by that true poet and ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... He grasped it nervously, but firmly, in his right hand. Then he paused. Was it, after all, worth the pain he must suffer; had life anything in store for him in recompense for what he must endure? He could not expect to be again a power among his brethren. At the best he would be the mere wreck of what he had, till now, been to his followers. They might look to him for counsel and advice: as a leader he could be of no more use. Again, admitting he had the courage to do the deed, could his strength hold out until he reached a place of safety? Suppose he fell ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... all the particulars," retorted Rojanow, highly indignant now. "We were not aware that we were under such vigilant inspection. As to our manner of life, we lived as best pleased ourselves, upon the remnant of the fortune which was saved from the wreck." ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... or of more delicate treatment than the 'criteria' of miracles; yet none on which young divines are fonder of displaying their gifts. Nor is this the worst. Their charity too often goes to wreck from the error of identifying the faith in Christ with the arguments by which they think it is to be supported. But surely if two believers meet at the same goal of faith, it is a very secondary question whether they travelled thither by the same road of argument. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... no wreck, 'ceptin' you like to wrecked me. Come out heah till I helps you 'membeh ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... you," he continued addressing Ernestine, "I want to say before you see your father. I won't take up your time. I won't waste words. I take you back ten years to when I met him at Attra and we became partners in a certain enterprise. Your father at that time was a harmless wreck of a man who was fast killing himself with brandy. He had some money, I had none. With it we bought the necessary outfit and presents for my enterprise and started for Bekwando. The whole of the work fell to my share, and with great trouble I succeeded in obtaining the concessions we were ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from the city beneath, like shrieks or wailing breaking strangely on that fair peaceful May morn; but still that pair went on till Ambrose had guided the Dean to the yard, where, except that the daylight was revealing more and more of the wreck around, all was as he had left it. Aldonza, poor child, with her black hair hanging loose like a veil, for she had been startled from her bed, still sat on the ground making her lap a pillow for the white-bearded head, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his six months' imprisonment. The inquisition, the solitude, the trial, the deliberations of the jury, combined to fill him with a nervous fear. At night, he had been afflicted with terrible nightmares and haunted by weird visions of the scaffold. He was a mental and physical wreck. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... my father's house, at Stamford in Lincolnshire, there was, when I was a child, the wreck of a very large green silk umbrella, apparently of Chinese manufacture, brought by my father from Holland, somewhere between 1770 and 1780, and as I have often heard, the first umbrella seen at Stamford. I well remember also an amusing description ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... that flickered o'er his path, Sent for his good, he wove the lightning shaft That seared his heart, e'en as the stalwart oak, Soaring in pride of pow'r, falls 'neath the flash, And lies a prostrate wreck. Like one of old, Who, wrestling with the orb whose far-off light Gave beauty to his waxen wings, upsoared Where angels dared not go, came to his doom, And fell a molten mass; so, tempting Heaven, Saul died ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... evidently in the regenerative throes of a new birth, with its Gothic Arcade opposite the railway station, and the new circus at the foot of the hill, where for so many long years there has been nothing but a wreck and a ruin. In close neighbourhood, Constitution Hill, Hampton Street, and at the junction of Summer Lane, a number of handsome houses and shops have lately been erected by Mr. Cornelius Ede, in the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... into a thousand pieces. The mariners and passengers were all crushed to death, or sunk. I myself was of the number of the latter; but as I came up again, I fortunately caught hold of a piece of the wreck, and swimming sometimes with one hand, and sometimes with the other, but always holding fast my board, the wind and the tide favouring me, I came to an island, whose shore was very steep. I overcame that difficulty, however, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... millions of breakfast-tables every morning in the year is one of the wonders of the age. When great events happen, especially of a dramatic nature, we see newspapers at their best. Witness the recent wreck of the steamship Republic. Only a few wireless dispatches were sent out by the heroic Binns during the first few hours, and yet every paper the next morning had columns about the disaster, all written without padding, ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... a crash like thunder Fell every loosened beam, 460 And, like a dam, the mighty wreck Lay right athwart the stream; And a long shout of triumph Rose from the walls of Rome, As to the highest turret-tops 465 Was ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... and rituals, and no faith in anything that she could not touch, and who at times was indignant at the efforts wasted over the future of souls concerning which no one knew anything, when there were so many bodies, which had inherited disease and poverty and shame, going to worldly wreck before so-called Christian eyes—even she could scarcely keep herself from adoring this self-sacrificing spirit. The woes of humanity grieved him as they grieved her, and she used to say she did not care what he believed so long as he gave ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... threatened against others who had profited by the wreck of the fortune of Ravenswood; and Sir William Ashton, in particular, was menaced with an appeal to the House of Peers, a court of equity, against the judicial sentences, proceeding upon a strict and severe construction of the letter of the law, under which he held the castle and barony of Ravenswood. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... who feels more self-respect and true manliness than many of us with our family prestige, social position, and proud ancestral halls. After I had lived abroad for years, I returned a broken-down young man, prematurely old, my constitution a perfect wreck. A life of folly and dissipation was telling fearfully upon me. My friends shrank from me in dismay. I was sick nigh unto death, and had it not been for Marie's care I am certain that I should have ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... in the highest by royalty laboring to recover its public character, to become once more the head of a nation. It is no longer the case of free men in a vague and dubious position, unsuccessfully defending, against the nomination of the chieftains whose lands they inhabit, the wreck of their independence, whether Gallic, or Roman, or barbaric; it is the case of burgesses, agriculturists, and serfs, who know well what their grievances and who their oppressors are, and who are working to get free. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... he should in time come to rule the roast, and be lord paramount over kitchen and larder. His disappointment was therefore great at finding all the solid joys of red deer and moor-game, kippered salmon and mutton hams, "vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision," leaving not a wreck behind. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... of all brief and lovely things, The fine and futile passions that we bear, Haunt the bright wreck of your too fragile wings, And win a pity for you, ended there,— Like us, hurled backward to the final shade, From mad adventures for ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... was waves, Stood the less daughter of the ark, and tried (Innocent this temptation!) to recall With folded vest and casting arm the dove; Never so fearful, when amid the vines Rattled the hail, and when the light of heaven Closed, since the wreck of Nature, first eclipsed, As she was eager for his life's return, As she was fearful how his groans might end. They ended: cold and languid calm succeeds; His eyes have lost their lustre, but ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... conversation which Sir Andrew Ffoulkes had gleaned that same evening, it seemed to him that in order to hide their defalcations Heron and the four commissaries in charge of little Capet had substituted a deaf and dumb child for the escaped little prisoner. This miserable small wreck of humanity was reputed to be sick and kept in a darkened room, in bed, and was in that condition exhibited to any member of the Convention who had the right to see him. A partition had been very hastily ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... dictionary. He had supposed her to be a foreigner—Spanish, Polish, Czech, French, or something. He had not been able to judge her nationality from the two gruff words, but he had often wondered what had happened to her. She might have been killed in a train wreck or been married to the ape-trainer or gone to some other horrible conclusion. He had pretty well buried her among his forgotten admirations and torments, when lo and behold! she emerged from a crowd of ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... said Minnie, in a sweet voice. "He was so grand and so strong, and he never made any allusions to the wreck; and it was—the—the—very first time that any body ever—proposed; and so, you know, I didn't know how to take it, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings, and I couldn't deny that he had saved my life; and I don't know when I ever ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... a life at sea are not as great as fiction writers sometimes indicate, according to this old sea dog. He says that in all his voyages, he has been in only one serious wreck. That was on a reef of coral ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... coincidence that her earliest novel had portrayed the wreck of a great establishment such as her own. Of the scene in Gore House Mr. Madden, Lady ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... incursions of banditti into our territory. In her fate and in her fortune, in her power to establish and maintain a settled government, we have a far deeper interest, socially, commercially, and politically, than any other nation. She is now a wreck upon the ocean, drifting about as she is impelled by different factions. As a good neighbor, shall we not extend to her a helping hand to save her? If we do not, it would not be surprising should some other nation undertake the task, and thus force ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... yards inside the entrance to the harbor we passed the wreck of the Reina Mercedes, lying close to the shore, on the right-hand side of the channel, with her port rail under water and her masts sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees to the westward. Two brass-bound ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... split it into pieces. The mariners and passengers were all crushed to death or fell into the sea. I myself was of the number of the latter; but, as I came up again, I fortunately caught hold of a piece of the wreck, and swimming, sometimes with one hand and sometimes with the other, but always holding fast the plank, the wind and the tide favoring me, I came to an island, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... clear air. Then my horses climbed the long slope of the Monte St Andrea, where the steep road is cut through hills, while I walked. And then as evening came on we swept down into Itri. This too was gloomy, but not, like Fondi, built upon a flat. This shadowy wreck of ancient times lies on hills and among them. It has an air of mountain savagery. It looks like a ruined mediaeval fortress. Broken archways, once part of the Appian Way, are made into substructures for ragged, ruinous modern houses. The place is peaked and ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... chest come? That was the important question. Cyrus Harding and his companions looked attentively around them, and examined the shore for several hundred steps. No other articles or pieces of wreck could be found. Herbert and Neb climbed a high rock to survey the sea, but there was nothing in sight—neither a dismasted vessel ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... we take to conserve and strengthen the nerves of our children? Through what habits of life are we helping to wreck ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... it can well be imagined, the gayety of our company had been utterly checked by the coming of our sad guest. In the presence of such a wreck of human happiness, perhaps of human hope, what person of any sensibility could maintain a lightsome mood? Had it not been for one peculiarity,—a peculiarity, I am confident, all of us observed,—the depression of our spirits would have been as profound as it was universal. This ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... down his book, began one of those strange exhortations in the manner of his sect. Slow at first, full of unutterable pity. There was room for pity. Pointing to the human brute crouching there, made once in the image of God,—the saddest wreck on His green foot-stool: to the great stealthy body, the revengeful jaws, the foreboding eyes. Soul, brains,—a man, wifeless, homeless, nationless, hawked, flung from trader to trader for a handful of dirty shinplasters. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... see it play more freely, and partly from that inclination to activity which will animate, at times, the most inert and sluggish mortal, took a long pole which was lying on a bank, and pushed down several parcels of this wreck with painful assiduity, while I stood quietly by, wondering to behold the sage thus curiously employed, and smiling with an humorous satisfaction each time when he carried his point. He worked till he was quite out of breath; and having found ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... how to tell a story which preserved the simplicity and the vigor of the old ballad makers. His The Wreck of the Hesperus (1839) starts in the true fashion to make us wish to finish ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... a shrunken, withered creature brought to the state of those monsters we see preserved in museums, floating in alchohol. Jules fancied that he saw above that face the terrible head of Ferragus, and his own anger was silenced by such a vengeance. The husband found pity in his heart for the vacant wreck of what was ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... riches with another man, then come to me, darling, but never till then. You and I are not the sort to be satisfied with a half-and-half happiness, and we will not risk failure. I want to make your life beautiful, not to wreck it!" ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... crowded out of its bed by clay washed into it by a fury of rain, with the trout floating in it belly up, stunned by the shock of the sudden flood. But there were trout enough for what was left of the lake next year and the beginning of a meadow about its upper rim. What taxed me most in the wreck of one of my favorite canons by cloud-burst was to see a bobcat mother mouthing her drowned kittens in the ruined lair built in the wash, far above the limit of accustomed waters, but not far enough for the unexpected. After a time you get the point ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... part in the author's triumph. A peculiar end was to be reached in that narrative,—an end in which the writer had a deep personal interest. What is an opium-eater? Says a character in a recent work of fiction, of a social wreck: "If it isn't whisky with him, it's opium; if it isn't opium, it's whisky." This speech establishes the popular category in which De Quincey's habit had placed him. Our attention was to be drawn from these degrading ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... dying groans. And yet in principle that is exactly what those demand for this sinful, sin-injured human race, when they say that it is morally wrong for Jesus the Saviour to suffer the penalty of our sins. A son becomes a drunkard; his drunkenness and debauchery utterly wreck his health. Some night the father finds his drunken son down in the street, a helpless invalid. The son did the sinning; he deserves to suffer the penalty of his sins; but the father takes him to his home and cares for him and supports him. In principle that is the innocent bearing ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... the Society reach Manila, having been saved from a ship-wreck—through the intercession, as is devoutly believed, of our Blessed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... Carboneer, but I wish to be understood as meaning every word I have said; and I will wreck this enterprise, if I am shot for it, rather than allow my cousin to be carried off in connection with it," protested Corny stoutly. "I will do my duty faithfully; but I will not assist in robbing my uncle of ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... themselves the most frightful volcanoes, whose craters frequently issue destruction on every side. In short, the elements unloosed, have at various times, disputed among themselves the empire of our globe; this exhibits evidence of the fact, by those vast heaps of wreck, those stupendous ruins spread over its surface. What, then, must have been the fears of mankind, who in those countries believed he beheld the entire of nature armed against his peace, menacing with ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... swerved at once, and leaving the trail plunged into the deep snow. The frantic animals fell, recovered themselves, and floundered on, then with a great jolt the sleigh turned over. Peter shot clear of the wreck, but with experience of such capsizes, he clung tenaciously to the rein. He was dragged a few yards; then, trembling and ready to start off again at a moment's notice, the ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... is the matter! Outrageous, ungentlemanly snoring is the matter! give me my bedding, and my drop of brandy, and my pipe, and let me go on deck. Let me be a Chaldean shepherd, and contemplate the stars. Let me be the careful watch who patrols the deck, and guards the ship from foes and wreck. Let me be anything but the companion of men who snore like the famous Furies in the old Greek play." While I am venting my indignation, and collecting my bedding, the smiling and sleepy face of Mr. Migott disappears slowly from the side of the hammock—and ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... told very much the same story Tommy had told—that her son, Tommy's father, had sailed away to sea, and after many days a passing vessel had sighted the wreck of his. Broken lifeboats were floating about the surface of the ocean, but no one alive was found in them. As there was no trace of Captain Todd or any of the sailors, every one believed ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... What of them now? When honest Dan Loftus cited those lines from the 'Song of Songs,' did he not make her sweet epitaph? Had she married Captain Devereux, what would her lot have been? She was not one of those potent and stoical spirits, who can survive the wreck of their best affections, and retort injury with scorn. In forming that simple spirit, Nature had forgotten arrogance and wrath. She would never have fought against the cruelty of changed affections if that or the treasons of an unprincipled husband had come. His love would have ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... still, he said, a long way from the "Culgoa." There was no perceptible change in the aspect of the "Narran" as far as we had examined it, except that where we turned, there were flood-marks, and the dead logs and river wreck, deposited on the upper side of trees and banks, showing a current and high floods. The last of these, our guide said, had occurred about five moons before. In riding back to the camp we kept the castern bank, that the track might be available for our ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... at Arlingford" is unoriginal. Lady Ann Travers is only a more fortunate Hedda Gabler who in the end accepts the protection of her Chancellor Brack, the capitalist Baron Steinbach, after her Loevberg turned labor agitator, John Reid has, like his prototype, made a wreck of his life. "The Strike at Arlingford" has its excellences: its plot is logically unfolded; it is believable; it is true to human nature; it has moments of intensity. Had Mr. Moore power of dialogue it might have been a fine play, for the characterization ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... with him, but off this place we encountered a terrible storm, in which we were obliged to take to the boats, as the only chance of saving our lives. What became of him I know not, as the two boats parted company soon after leaving the wreck. I trust he managed to reach the land in safety, and is now in his own country, enjoying all the comforts that ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... appears certain that the change in level began to be manifest about the year 1817. The only sudden elevation of which there is any record occurred in 1822, and this seems to have been less than three feet. Since that year, I was assured by several competent observers, that part of an old wreck, which is firmly embedded near the beach, has sensibly emerged; hence here, as at Chiloe, a slow rise of the land appears to be now in progress. It seems highly probable that the rocks which are corroded in a band at the height of fourteen feet above the sea were acted ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... Nile, was not prepared to risk himself in a voyage across the Atbara in a sponging bath. He put off the desperate attempt until the last moment, when every other person of my party had crossed; I believe he hoped that a wreck would take place before his turn should arrive, and thus spare him the painful necessity, but when at length the awful moment arrived, he was assisted carefully imito the bath by his servant Achmet and a number ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... Welt!" and the ugly reality of the cripple man was an intrusion on the beautiful world in which I was walking. He could no more sing than I could; and his voice was cracked and rusty, and altogether perished. To think that that wreck may have walked the streets some night years ago, as glad at heart as I was, and promising himself a future as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seemed my only tie to life, a cherub, to whom I wished to be a father, as well as a mother; and the double duty appeared to me to produce a proportionate increase of affection. But the pleasure I felt, while sustaining you, snatched from the wreck of hope, was cruelly damped by melancholy reflections on my widowed state—widowed by the death of my uncle. Of Mr. Venables I thought not, even when I thought of the felicity of loving your father, and how a mother's pleasure might be exalted, and her care softened by a husband's tenderness.—'Ought ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the shape of a woman—a lovely woman, too, if she is nearer forty than twenty. Don't you remember I once told you of a girl whom my uncle brought home from the South, and who ran off with her music teacher, an Italian. Well, she is here—a wreck physically and mentally in one sense; not exactly insane, but with memory so impaired that she can tell nothing of her past, or perhaps she does not wish to. She always says, when questioned about it, 'I don't remember, and it makes my head ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... siezed me. Now that everything is over, I realize that it was madness. But "there is a divinity that shapes our ends etc." It was to be. It was Karma, or Kismet, or whatever the word is. It was written in the Book of Fate that I was to go ahead, and wreck my ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dread mystery of disproportionate anguish which a capricious fate had laid on it.... And what if she recovered, as they called it? If the flood-tide of pain should ebb, leaving her stranded, a helpless wreck on the desert shores of inactivity? What would life be to Bessy without movement? Thought would never set her blood flowing—motion, in her, could only take the form of the physical processes. Her love for Amherst was dead—even if it flickered into life again, ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... in affairs. But Machiavelli was the theorist of humanity in politics, not the observer only. He distinguished the two orders of research. And, during the Italian Renaissance such distinction was supremely necessary. With a crumbled theology, a pagan Pope, amid the wreck of laws and the confusion of social order, il sue particolare and virtu, individuality and ability (energy, political genius, prowess, vital force: virtu is impossible to translate, and only does not mean virtue), were the dominating and unrelenting factors ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... or does it lie stillborn in some cable unwritten? God knows—I don't! But one thing at least is true:—to steer a course between an optimism that deprives us of support and a pessimism that may wreck the whole enterprise, there indeed is a Scylla and Charybdis problem, a two-horned dilemma, or whatever words may best convey the notion ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... Wilson, who commanded the Vansittart, I was informed had just finished a survey of those Straits and was hoisting his boat in when the ship struck. Immediately on receiving the intelligence Captain Lloyd, in the General Elliot and another ship in company called the Nonsuch, sailed for the wreck. They found the ship had been burnt down to the water's edge by the Malays. They however saved 40 chests of treasure out of 55 which were said to have been on board. Most of the ship's company were saved: one man only was lost in the ship, and five others in a small ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... haven't been listening. I'm a wreck. All through violating man's primeval instinct by messing about in cold water. What ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... corner, was a portrait of the Dowager Countess of Glengower, as this former mistress of his appeared, conceived by the local photographer, laying the foundation-stone of the local almshouse. During the wreck of Creed's career, which, following on a lengthy illness, had preceded his salvation by the Westminster Gazette, these two household gods had lain at the bottom of an old tin trunk, in the possession of the keeper of a lodging-house, waiting to be bailed out. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... round the bend that had hidden us, and came on swiftly. Then the Danes saw us, and those on the fore deck shouted, and the oars plashed wildly, and many on the side next to us stopped altogether; and at the same time the steersman saw the stem of the wreck, and, as I think, lost his head between fear of it and the sudden appearance of the foe whom he thought he had escaped. The larboard oars were going yet, and the starboard had almost stopped. He paid ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... Alice had had in her memory my vision of the supper at Auriccio's, she would have been confirmed in her fears; but to me, in spite of the memory, they seemed absurd. My only apprehension was that she might be right as to the final outcome, to the wreck of Jim's hopes. I did not take the matter at all seriously, in fact. I think we men must usually have such an affair worked out to some conclusion, for weal or woe, before we regard it otherwise than lightly. That was the reason that Giddings's distraught condition was only a matter of laughter ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... me, in which the total amount of the shop account is entered to my debit (9, 13s. 4d.). The entry 'By amount from the 'Lessing' account, 6, 17s. 9d.,' which is put to my credit, means payment for lodging to workmen, and for work done by myself at the wreck of the 'Lessing' on Fair Isle. The owners or insurers, I suppose, were the employers of the men who worked at the wreck; but the money came through Mr Bruce. 'By cash, left as a deposit, 11th May 1868, 3,' was money I was ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end their days in. Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... hand on the newel-post, he looked down unmoved upon the mortal wreck of him who had been his life's bane. Brian Shaynon lay in death without majesty; a crumpled and dishevelled ruin of flesh and clothing, its very insentience suggesting to the morbid fancy of the little Irishman something foul and obscene. Brian Shaynon ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Confucius; something stands out in the one,—and compels attention; but all is even in the other. You had much better not have genius, if you are morally weak; or a very strong will, if you are a born fool. For the morally weak genius will end in moral wreck; and the strong-willed fool—a plague upon him! This is the truth, knowledge of which has made China so stable; and ignorance of which has kept the West so brilliant and fickle,—of duality such poles apart,—so lobsided ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... am your own Eugenia Ballantine! my more than mother! Or, the wreck of her, which a wave of life's ever restless ocean has heaved ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... It's a plain thing, you must be making haste to wreck another barge, eh?" said the old man, unable ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... I've been loafing around this club—nothing to do for a month. Bridge, handball, highballs, and yarns! I'm actually a nervous wreck because my nerves haven't had any ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... for a time lost sight of Richard Ashton and his family we will now return to them. He had become almost an imbecile, being a complete mental wreck, his family having to watch him as they would a child to keep him from obtaining liquor. He was now so weak in this respect that he would actually steal away, if he could do so without being observed not returning until he was brought ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... revolving wheels, voices in conversation, and now and then a calling voice, were all the sounds heard above the rustle of the mighty movement. Yet was there upon every countenance the look with which men make haste to see some dreadful sight, some sudden wreck, or ruin, or calamity of war. And by such signs Ben-Hur judged that these were the strangers in the city come up to the Passover, who had had no part in the trial of the Nazarene, and might be ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... youth, boy, child, baby. Some mother had loved him, cradled him, kissed his rosy baby hands, watched him grow with pride and glory, built castles in her dreams of his manhood, and perhaps prayed for him still, trusting he was strong and honored among men. And here he lay, a shattered wreck, dying for a wicked act, the last of many crimes. It was a tragedy. It made Joan think of the hard lot of mothers, and then of this unsettled Western wild, where men flocked in packs like wolves, and spilled blood like water, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... haste," muttered Bob, as he surveyed the wreck. "If I had taken time to make the whole affair complete before setting the mill to work, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... shopkeepers generally. Mr Twitter was one of the unspeculative unfortunates, but he had not come quite down. He had only been twisted uncomfortably to one side, just as a toy brick is sometimes seen standing up here and there in the midst of surrounding wreck. Mr Twitter was not absolutely ruined. He ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... people, expressed by its legitimate representatives, even when that will may have imposed upon her the sanction of changes which she did not approve. And that is much to say. We have seen young despots whose self-will has threatened to wreck a nation's prosperity. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wrought in one case proved another's safeguard, for the door opened and a miserable wreck of a man entered. As Dennis looked at his blotched, sodden face, trembling hand, shuffling gait, and general air of wretchedness, embodying and suggesting the worst ills of humanity, he decided not to drink for the sake of ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... our position for a number of days, burying the dead, picking up the fragments, and getting ourselves together. The after view of a battle field is a horrible sight—wreck, ruin and devastation are on all sides; fences removed, buildings more or less torn and demolished, wagons smashed, arms scattered about, artillery disabled, horses and mules piled up and swollen almost beyond recognition. ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... the wreck of the door after him and closing it as well as he could. Then, leaving his pony, he strode toward the Fashion saloon. As he came near he heard sounds of revelry issuing from the open door and he smiled coldly. A flashing glance through the window showed him that ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... awaited the shock with no little solicitude.[27] The two armies met on the banks of the Adda, which flows into the northern part of the Lake of Como. Suwarrow led sixty thousand Russians and Austrians. The French general, Moreau, to oppose them, had the wreck of an army, consisting of twenty-five thousand men, disheartened by defeat. On the 17th of April, 1799, the first Russian regiment appeared in sight of the bridge of Lecco. The French, indignant at the interference of the Russians ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... of a great and wonderful man. Some say it was suicide—others that he was merely leaning out too far in admiration of the view. Who knows what really inspired that sudden fierce rush to death? But whatever the cause there is one fact that remains—shining like a star above the squalid wreck of his latter years—he died happy. The indisputable proof of this can be obtained from perusal of the first line of a poem which was discovered in ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... and interesting as Dis-covery. Surely the glory of finally getting rid of and burying a long and troublesome matter should be as great as that of making an important discovery. The trouble is that the coverer is like Samson who perished in the wreck of what he had destroyed; if he gets rid of a thing effectually he gets rid ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... cutter was a wreck on the water, and the crew saved themselves by climbing up the bow of the steamer which had run down the boat. They received prompt assistance from those on board, and, as the cutter did not sink, and would not have done so, having no ballast, even if she had been cut in two, the crew ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... God! I have been too slack, too slack; There are Hot Gospellers even among our guards— Nobles we dared not touch. We have but burnt The heretic priest, workmen, and women and children. Wet, famine, ague, fever, storm, wreck, wrath,— We have so play'd the coward; but by God's grace, We'll follow Philip's leading, and set up The Holy Office here—garner the wheat, And burn the tares with unquenchable fire! Burn!— Fie, what a savour! tell the ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... concluding years of his administration, Wolsey was embarrassed with the divorce. Difficulties were gathering round him, from the failure of his hopes abroad and the wreck of his popularity at home; and the activity of the persecution was something relaxed, as the guiding mind of the great minister ceased to have leisure to attend to it. The bishops, however, continued, each in his own diocese, to act with such vigour ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... the features sharpened by death, yet still retaining the stern and energetic character, which had maintained in life her superiority as the wild chieftainess of the lawless people amongst whom she was born. The young soldier dried the tears which involuntarily rose on viewing this wreck of one, who might be said to have died a victim to her fidelity to his person and family. He then took the clergyman's hand, and asked solemnly, if she appeared able to give that attention to his devotions which befitted ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... made me that little compliment, certainly," I answered, amused at the suspicions that evidently tortured his mind; "and I accepted it as it was meant—in kindness. I am well aware what a battered and unsightly wreck of a man I must appear in her eyes when contrasted with ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... islands that sit like stately crowns upon the waters, were doubtless the wreck that remained of the valley; elevated spots, whose rocky basis withstood the force of the rushing waters, that carried away the lighter portions of the soil. The southern shore, seen from the lake, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... five miles. The reiterated and re-reiterated offer of goat's milk and poteen became exasperating; the bodyguard of these pertinacious women that could not be shaken off was most annoying. The tourists are to the inhabitants of Killarney what a wreck used to be to the coast ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... wreck and ruin and scarcely one stone upon another in the great desolation; they swept away all records of history, then and there, and the general destruction was absolute, so that the Rome of the Republic and of the Empire, the centre and capital of the world, began to exist from ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... southern end, we saw the wreck of a ship in the last stages of dilapidation. It had been a great vessel of three masts, but had lain so long exposed to the injuries of the weather that it was hung about with great webs of dripping seaweed, and on the deck of it shore bushes had taken root, and now flourished ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... scraps thrown to the dog she was hunger-bitten enough to aim for. Poor thing, was there anything in the future for her? Had not hunger and cruelty and prostitution done their work, and left her an entire wreck for life? It seems not. Freedom came, and with it dawned a new era upon that poor, overshadowed, and sin-darkened life. Freedom brought opportunity for work and wages combined. She went to work, and got ten dollars a month. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... appearing in the distance, and that, shapelessly outlined. The craft bore no light, and had it not been for a voice speaking, I doubt if I could have located even that. The rowboat could not be distinguished—it must have sunken, or else drifted away, a helpless wreck. The first sound my ears caught, echoing across the water, was an oath, and a question, "By God! a good job; do you see that ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... sinner is not the man who sets out in life to be wicked. Few men are born wicked; many are born weak. False ideas of manliness; false conceptions of good fellowship, which false ideas of the relationship of men and women give, wreck many a young man of otherwise good intentions. The sinner is the man who cannot say no. The fall through vice to sin is a matter of slow transition. One virtue after another is yielded up as the strain ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... I found myself confronted by such hardness in the woman whom I had spoilt by my leniency, that it was out of the question to expect her to acknowledge the injustice done to myself. Suffice it to say that the wreck of my married life had contributed not inconsiderably to the ruin of my position in Dresden, and to the careless manner in which I treated it, for instead of finding help, strength, and consolation at home, I found my wife unwittingly conspiring against me, in league ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the tears and sweat and blood of his torment Out of the wreck he rises past Zeus to the Potency o'er him, Pallid birth of my pain—where light, where light is, aspiring, Thither I rise, whilst thou—Zeus take thy godship ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... lashed together, their lurching broke them apart, and the Englishman gained a chance to use his broadsides. A fire broke out on the Constitution, but it was quickly extinguished, and the shot of the American soon made a complete wreck of the enemy. When it became clear that the Guerriere could make no further resistance, Captain Hull drew off to repair the damages to his own ship. Another English frigate was likely to appear at any moment, ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis |
