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Crumble   /krˈəmbəl/   Listen
Crumble

verb
(past & past part. crumbled; pres. part. crumbling)
1.
Fall apart.  Synonyms: break down, collapse, crumple, tumble.  "Negotiations broke down"
2.
Break or fall apart into fragments.  Synonym: fall apart.  "The Sphinx is crumbling"
3.
Fall into decay or ruin.  Synonyms: decay, dilapidate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Crumble" Quotes from Famous Books



... straight as we can, but get driven at an angle by the strange ribs of rock which come straight down. These are most tiresome to deal with, getting worse the higher we go, and so rotten and weather-eaten are they that they crumble into dust and fragments under our feet. Head man gets half a dozen falls, and when we are about three parts of the way up Xenia gives in. The cold and the climbing are too much for him, so I make him ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... workers were filling and sealing small test-tubes with the contents of dishes. These tubes were extraordinarily delicate of structure, and Beale saw at least three crumble and shiver in the ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... proximity to my right ear. This is the one that probably came with Mr. Ruffin's compliments. In a moment the firing burst forth in one continuous roar, and large patches of both the exterior and interior masonry began to crumble and fall in all directions. The place where I was had been used for the manufacture of cartridges, and there was still a good deal of powder there, some packed and some loose. A shell soon struck near the ventilator, and a puff of dense smoke entered the room, giving me a strong ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday

... has already been privileged to see something of this house in the company of Lady Beach-Mandarin. At the top of the steps stood Mrs. Crumble, the new and highly recommended cook-housekeeper in her best black silk flounced and expanded, and behind her peeped several neat maids in caps and aprons. A little valet-like under-butler appeared and tried to balance Snagsby by hovering two steps above ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... seminary itself was in a falling state; the roof, from which Paget had given his orders, and where he was wounded, had fallen in. The French cannon had fissured the building from top to bottom, and it seemed only awaiting the slightest impulse to crumble into ruin. When we regarded the spot, and examined the narrow doorway which opening upon a flight of a few steps to the river, admitted our first party, we could not help feeling struck anew with the gallantry of that mere handful of brave fellows who thus threw themselves amidst ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six hundred pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon eight, and as fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are renewed—from the sea, yes, from the sea. And all our thoughts are the thoughts of six-hundred-pounders, and all our speeches; and because we don't want to steal umbrellas ourselves, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in ...
— Twilight Stories • Various

... life every impulse and desire which had been seething in the minds of the people; and the States-General no sooner met at Versailles in May 1789 than the fabric of despotism and privilege began to crumble. A rising in Paris destroyed the Bastille, and the capture of this fortress was taken for the dawn of a new era of constitutional freedom in France and through Europe. Even in England men thrilled with a strange joy at the tidings of its fall. "How much is this the greatest event that ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... Our Fortunes on earth; in the fire shall our treasure Burn in the blast; brightly shall mount, The red flame, raging and wrathfully striding 810 Over the wide world; wasted shall be the plains; The castles shall crumble; then shall climb the swift fire, The greediest of guests, grimly and ruthlessly Eat the ancient treasure that of old men possessed While still on the earth was their strength and their pride. 815 Hence I strive to instruct each steadfast man That he be cautious in ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... her stick against her heart as she stood looking at the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the once white cloth all yellow and withered; everything around in a state to crumble under ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... But here it is: you have sentiments, the devil knows what, such as every one can't entertain. Who could suppose that a sensible man could leave his house, France, his ward—a charming youth, for we saw him in the camp—to fly to the aid of a rotten, worm-eaten royalty, which is going to crumble one of these days like an old hovel. The sentiments you air are certainly fine, so ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... demon laughed at her tender conscience; deep in hell they had forged a terrible temptation. They knew the walls of the citadel of morality, built alone on natural virtue and unaided by divine grace, would soon crumble before their powerful machinations. In moments of sober reflection our resolutions are like prisms of basalt, that will not be riven by the lightning, but which in the hour of real trial prove to be ice-crystals that a sunbeam can ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... round until it has a diameter of 1.5 in.; if smaller it will sag, and not do good shooting. Putty balls should be used, and blown with a quick puff, which is easily acquired by practice. The putty is thickened with whiting until the pellets will roll hard, but they should not be dry enough to crumble. ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... hope, and against it all the powers of earth shall not prevail. It is just as certain that Virginia would come back to the unchallenged control of her white race—that before the moral and material power of her people once more unified, opposition would crumble until its last desperate leader was left alone, vainly striving to rally his disordered hosts—as that night should fade in the kindling glory of the sun. You may pass force bills, but they will not avail. You may surrender ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... like the look of things, at all," he had said to Bull and Ryan, the evening before the siege guns began their work. "In the first place the defences will crumble, in no time, under the French fire. In the second place, I don't think that the Portuguese, with the exception of our own men, have any fight in them. Da Costa, the lieutenant governor, openly declares that the place is indefensible, and that it is simply ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... have its hour of triumph, and treachery may march for a season to victory after victory; but all the while truth is secretly exercising her mastery, and in the long run the labor of falsehood will crumble into ruin. There is no permanent conquest for a lie. You can no more keep the truth interred than you could keep the Lord interred in Joseph's tomb. You cannot bury the truth, you cannot strangle her, you cannot even shake her! You may burn up the records of the truth, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... broke in again. "Notice that tall stack just over the plant—see how it's starting to tremble!... It's beginning to crumble!... This must be it!" ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... needs no epitaph to guard a name Which men shall prize while worthy work is known; He lived and died for good—be that his fame: Let marble crumble: this ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... New York at a third of the price they were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant, and said, this is the last feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself. In that moment—in that memorable moment, I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I was become just a mere moral sand-pile, and I lifted up my hand, along with those seasoned and experienced deacons, and swore off every rag of personal property ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... her to go without further notice. The whole world seemed to crumble beneath his feet, and above him the heavens were falling with ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... power to meddle in and obstruct all financial arrangements, that power, unsupported by real influence, is like a body whence the soul has fled, which may, indeed, be an offensive encumbrance, but must ultimately decompose and crumble into dust. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... words, we may almost ask, are memorable and worthy to be repeated than those which love has inspired? It is wonderful that they were ever uttered. They are few and rare, indeed, but, like a strain of music, they are incessantly repeated and modulated by the memory. All other words crumble off with the stucco which overlies the heart. We should not dare to repeat these now aloud. We are not competent to hear ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... good Tobacco, and spread them open; then dry them gently in the Sun, or before the Fire, and strip them from the Stalks; when the leafy part will crumble, between the Fingers; then put it into a Mill, and with a Pestle rolling about it, the Tobacco will presently be ground, as fine as Snuff; or else, if you have never a Mill, when your Tobacco will break between the Fingers, lay it on an oaken ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... war with the whole world—English, French, Dutch. It was almost a matter of life or death with her to keep her hold upon the New World. At home she was bankrupt and, upon the earthquake of the Reformation, her power was already beginning to totter and to crumble to pieces. America was her treasure house, and from it alone could she hope to keep her leaking purse full of gold and silver. So it was that she strove strenuously, desperately, to keep out the world from her American possessions—a bootless task, for the old order upon which her power ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... last charge is ordered, the final assault is given; and if God does not perform a real miracle to save that soul, the last walls crumble, the doors are beaten down! Then the confessor makes a triumphant entry into the place; the very heart, soul, conscience, and ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... punishment afraid, And by thy crimes a coward made, To every generous soul a curse Than Hell and all her torments worse, When crawling to thy latter end, Call on Destruction as a friend, Choosing to crumble into dust Rather than rise, though rise you must: 110 Thou hypocrite! who dost profane, And take the patriot's name in vain; Then most thy country's foe, when most Of love and loyalty you boast; Who, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... platform. Their windows are hung with white curtains, their doors are painted green, and on each door is written the use which it serves. Besides drawing water, the windmills do a little of everything: they grind grain, pound rags, crumble lime, crush stones, saw wood, press olives, and pulverize tobacco. A windmill is as valuable as a farm, and it takes a considerable fortune to build one and provide it with colza, grain, flour, and oil to keep it working, and to sell its products. Consequently, in many places the ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... fascination exercised over him by each of these women without being really dominated by any of the three. He had a vague sensation as of some empty space, in which heavy blows perpetually resounded followed by dolorous echoes. His thoughts seemed to break up and crumble away into a thousand fragments, and the images of the two women to melt into and destroy one another without his being able to disconnect them or to separate his feeling for the one from his feeling for the other. And above ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... could advance with confidence. But this mass of land-ice became narrower as they proceeded, till at last it dwindled to a mere narrow ledge, clinging to the high, perpendicular cliffs, and looking as if at any moment it might crumble off and fall with them into the open water between it and ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... little Grandad; Such warriors, surely, A tiny mouse nibbling Could crumble to atoms,' ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... a thousand scars, Shriek and struggle and beat its breast on its prison bars Thro' the night's long dark of despair till the dawning of ultimate day, Till the glow of that ultimate dawn transfigure the tortured face And the sacred fire within crumble the coarse clay clod. Till the Soul, breathed on by an unseen, unknown Grace, Stripped of its bonds of flesh, stand face to face ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner

... and whites; three-fourths cup butter; one and three-fourths cups each of sugar and rye bread. Let the rye bread dry so it can crumble. Baked in two layers with whipped cream between makes a ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various

... only to be feverishly recommenced. But of course, people round about, accustomed to the varying energy of workmen in general were not puzzled at this. At least this was the explanation given and, in truth, it began to look as if the old place would live its given quota of days and crumble away still unfinished. ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... church stood an old, one-story stone building that was built in its present form, eight hundred years ago. The roof was overgrown with moss and one corner had started to crumble in from old age. In this building Corporals James Cataldo and Michael A. Tito, the battery barbers, set up a barber shop. They did good business after they were able to convince the battery in general that the roof would not cave in ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman

... more of Autumn, the slow gold Of fruitage ripening in a world's decay, The falling leaves, the moist rich breath Of woods that swoon and crumble into death Over the gorgeous mould: Give us the flash and scent of keen-edged May Where wastes that bear no harvest yield their bloom, Rude crofts of flowering nettle, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... about to vanish From the day; And a brazen wrong to crumble Into clay! With the Right shall many more Enter, smiling at the door; With the giant Wrong shall fall Many others great and small, That for ages long have held us For their prey. Men of thought and men of action, Clear ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... Earth with great shocks shaketh, and the mountains crumble flat, Quick and Dead shall be divided fourfold:—on ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... day once more brings the blazing sun further to parch the land and plants. Day after day and night after night the drought gets worse. The rivers sink low; brooks run dry; the edges of the lakes become marshes. The marshes dry out to hardened mud. The dry leaves of the trees rustle and crumble. All the animals and wood creatures gather around the muddy pools that once were lakes or rivers. People begin saving water and buying it and selling it as the ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... some smooth hammer-stones. If you can find one with pits on either side, try both kinds and find out which one works the better. See if you can find a good stone for a knife. Strike the edge to see if it crumbles. Find one that will not crumble. Do you know whether stones have names? What stones have you that you would ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp

... stopped him—like the beast of prey that has caught its claws in the iron network it is trying to batter down, and cannot release them; and there he is still. Meanwhile, in June, seven to eight weeks before the expected moment, Brusiloff's attack broke loose, and the Austrian front began to crumble; just in time to bring the Italians ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... country, abounding in wheat and other grains, yielded unlimited quantities. But even with this improvement the sun-dried bricks could not withstand the continued action of many rainy seasons, or many torrid summers, but had a tendency to crumble away when parched too dry, or to soak and dissolve back into mud, when too long exposed to rain. All these defects were removed by the simple expedient of baking the bricks in kilns or ovens, a process which gives them the hardness and solidity of stone. But as ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... Dechert, when the great wall that held the body of water began to crumble at the top sent a message begging the people of Johnstown for God's sake to take to the hills. He reports no serious accidents at ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... out there really does fall, and great will be the fall thereof (about which I quite agree with you, yet I think it will last my time), there's nothing to fall here in Russia, comparatively speaking. There won't be stones to fall, everything will crumble into dirt. Holy Russia has less power of resistance than anything in the world. The Russian peasantry is still held together somehow by the Russian God; but according to the latest accounts the Russian God is not ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... no doubt, serious," the Resident said; "and the town is certainly in no position for defence. The walls are in a most dilapidated condition, and would crumble after a few hours' cannonade. Colonel Burns's force is wholly inadequate to defend a city of some ten miles in circumference. The irregular troops cannot be relied upon, in case of need. However, we must do what we ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... came through them; all was still. Never had the young duke looked handsomer. The haughty, fierce expression, habitual with him, had given place to a serenity that was wonderfully beautiful, though so like death. As the father contemplated the perfect face and form, so soon to crumble into dust, he forgot, in his overwhelming grief, that the soul of a demon had animated it, and he thought sorrowfully of the great name that had been revered and honoured for centuries past, but which could not go down to centuries to come. ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... uphold them in exercising their right. "Once accept a single abatement of right," he asserted, "and many other humiliations would certainly follow, and the whole fine fabric of international law might crumble under our hands piece by piece." Moreover he felt that the conduct of international relations lay in the hands of the executive and that divided counsels would embarrass him in dealing with Germany. He therefore asked the House to discuss the McLemore resolution at once ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... thy songs murmur over the earth, No forces can carry thy splendors away! Then live, ye dear songs of my country, forever, With voices eternal to utter her name, That cycles may never her liberty sever, Nor trample her greatness nor crumble ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller

... or heifer beef has a fine grain, a yellowish-white fat, and is firm. When first cut it will be of a dark red color, which changes to a bright red after a few minutes' exposure to the air. It will also have a juicy appearance; the suet will be dry, crumble easily and be nearly free from fibre. The flesh and fat of the ox and cow will be darker, and will appear dry and rather coarse. The quantity of meat should be large for the size of the bones. Quarters of beef should ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... police force behind them might win—but at a cost of great suffering. But Tommy nourished another and a preposterous dream. With Mr. Brown unmasked and captured he believed, rightly or wrongly, that the whole organization would crumble ignominiously and instantaneously. The strange permeating influence of the unseen chief held it together. Without him, Tommy believed an instant panic would set in; and, the honest men left to themselves, an eleventh-hour reconciliation would ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... field de second year of de war, 1862. It sho' made me hungry. I 'members now, how I'd git a big tin cupful of pot liquor from de greens, crumble corn bread in it at dinner time and 'joy it as de bestest part of de dinner. Us no suffer for sumpin' to eat. I go all summer in my shirt-tail and in de winter I have to do de best I can, widout any shoes. Ever since then, I ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... the bark, As the dove to the vision of those in the ark! What fairylike fancies appear'd to the view As nearer and nearer the haven we drew! What castles were built and rebuilt in the brain, To totter and crumble to nothing again! ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... Much of the old was still standing, but nothing of the old was whole. The Colosseum had not yet been turned into a quarry. The Septizonium of Septimius Severus, with its seven stories of columns and its lofty terrace, nearly half as high as the dome of Saint Peter's, though beginning to crumble, still crowned the south end of the Palatine; Minerva's temple was almost entire, and its huge architrave had not been taken to make the high altar of Saint Peter's; and the triumphal arch of Marcus Aurelius was standing ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... came. Something might have smote the old man with a conviction, that in this youth was strength and life, the spirit of the new generation then arising, before which the old worn-out generation would crumble into its natural dust. Dust of the dead ages, honourable dust, to be reverently inurned, and never parricidally profaned by us the living age, who in our turn must follow the same downward path. Dust, venerable and ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... Faraday never cared to experiment further on the source of electricity in the voltaic pile. The argument appeared to him 'to remove the foundation itself of the contact theory,' and he afterwards let it crumble down in peace.[1] ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall

... long hours when he stood gazing at her pictures,—all would be unknown to her. And when he died in his turn, the silence and loneliness would be still greater. The things which he had been unable to tell her would die with him and they would both crumble away in the earth, strangers to each other, prolonging their grievous error in eternity, unable to approach each other, or see each other, without a saving word, condemned to the fearful, unbounded void, over whose limitless firmament ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... fragile creature a woman is; and as I caught her arm to help her down the companion stairs, I was startled by its smallness and softness. Indeed, she was a slender, delicate woman as women go, but to me she was so ethereally slender and delicate that I was quite prepared for her arm to crumble in my grasp. All this, in frankness, to show my first impression, after long denial of women in general and of Maud ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... was never drawn before. And there were all the smallest incidents recorded, such as do really make up humble life, but which die out of all mere literary memoirs, as the houses where the Egyptians or the Athenians lived crumble and leave only their temples standing. I know, for instance, that on a given day of a certain year, a kindly woman, herself a poor widow, now, I trust, not without special mercies in heaven for her good deeds,—for I read her name on a proper tablet in the churchyard a week ago,—sent a fractional ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... am; and face circumstances, though I cannot conquer them. But it is defiance under defeat. The mountain- peak does not grow, but only decays. Fretted by rains, peeled by frost, splintered by lightning, it must down at last; and crumble into earth, were it as old, as hard, as lofty as the Matterhorn itself. And while it stands, it wants not only aspiration, it wants tenderness; it wants humility; it wants the unrest which tenderness and humility must breed, and which Mr. Ruskin so clearly ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... make it his capital, nor would any other lord of the East so favour it. If Alexander perhaps intended to revive its imperial position, his successor, Seleucus, so soon as he was assured of his inheritance, abandoned the Euphratean city for the banks of the Tigris and Orontes, leaving it to crumble to the heap which it ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... brosnian, w. v., to crumble, to become rotten, to fall to pieces: prs. sg. III. herepd ... brosna fter beorne, the coat of mail falls to pieces after (the death ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... than the music of the words. These are removed; this abides. And the thing in God which abides is all-gentle tenderness, that strange love mightier than all the powers of Deity beside, permanent with the permanence of His changeless heart. The mountains shall depart, the emblems of eternity shall crumble and change and pass, and the hills be removed; but this immortal, impalpable, and, in some men's minds, fantastic and unreal something, 'My loving kindness and the covenant of My peace,' shall outlast them all. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... Gentz, and fixing her large, flaming eyes upon him, she asked in a whisper, "I suppose you love Germany? You would not like to see her devoured by France as Italy was devoured by her? You would not like either to see her go to decay and crumble to ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... comparing them as to color; are they light or dark, are they moist or not? Test the soils for comparative size of particles by rubbing between the fingers (Fig. 19), noticing if they are coarse or fine, and for stickiness by squeezing in the hand and noting whether or not they easily crumble afterwards. ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... season now, still do those waters roll and leap, and roar and tumble, all day long; still are the rainbows spanning them, a hundred feet below. Still, when the sun is on them, do they shine and glow like molten gold. Still, when the day is gloomy, do they fall like snow, or seem to crumble away like the front of a great chalk cliff, or roll down the rock like dense white smoke. But always does the mighty stream appear to die as it comes down, and always from its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... act. The world's esteemed immortals have survived the shadows of oblivion only because of precious deeds they wrought for fellow men. The rags of yesterday are exchanged for purple robes as the centuries pass, while the crowns of today fade and crumble into forgetfulness. No man succeeds because he becomes a king or fails because he ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... appearances that mask reality, and see clearly the future over the high, frowning wall of the present. That man, that orator, that seer, seeks to warn his country; that prophet seeks to enlighten statesmen; he knows where the breakers are; he knows that society will crumble by means of these four false supports: centralized government, standing army, irremovable judges, salaried priesthood; he knows it, he desires that all should know it, he ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... things that crumble, waste, Our whole attention claim, We cause sweet Innocence in haste To ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum

... mentioned, the city is protected by the Floriana lines, and several other works. Indeed, it is said that there are sixty miles length of walls, which, in these economical times, are allowed slowly to crumble away. If our merchants value their trade with the East—if our rulers value our possession of India—if our philanthropists value the civilisation of the world, and the continuance of peace, let not Malta be neglected. ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... doubted of our success to the very end, and amid many mishaps, that either crippled or ruined our schemes and lengthened this short cut to fortune, I maintained my confidence until on that day down in blazing Rio, when the letter "c" in lieu of the "s" in indorse came to the front to crumble our "sure thing" into ruin. I remember that in the stupefaction which for a few minutes settled down on us, I felt we were really fighting against fate. A fate that like the fiat of Deity says "Thou shalt not," ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... Burtons, and the Larkins of such importance as their antiquity. The uninformed outsider, on hearing it descanted upon, might naturally have been betrayed into the momentary weakness of expecting to see Mr. Downing moulder away, and little old Doctor Burton crumble into dust. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... each side of him and patted him on the shoulders and glared across at me. I felt that if I was a rock, Jim's ship had struck on me and was sinking, as he said, because of me. I began to crumble. ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... are not scarce, as diamonds are, so that a pinch of them might measure the value of a city; nor are they as plenty as blackberries, so that a wagon-load could scarcely buy a fat goose for dinner. They cannot be washed away like a piece of soap, nor wear out like a bit of wampum, nor crumble like agate or carnelian in dividing. In short, they combine all the advantages that are needed, with few or none of the disadvantages that would be troublesome, in a substance which is used for money. They possess intrinsic utility, they are equably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... which common report affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume, and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... castles, but he abideth not therein, lest they crumble about his ears and crush him. Castles built of air often fall of stone. Therefore, only the foolish man keeps revel in the great hall ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... sinned, how did they fall and crumble before the anger of God! they had not power to withstand the terror, nor could there be worth found in their persons or doings to appease displeased justice. But behold here stands the Son of God before him in the sin of the world; his Father, finding him there, curseth and condemns ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... attention. Quickly she procured it and held it out to Drusilla. "Here is your crown, Queen," she said. And then, her voice changing, she said: "You'd better let me put it on, Drusilla, it's liable to crumble if you're not ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... Such occasions might remind the elderly citizen of that period, before the last war with England, when Salem was a port by itself; not scorned, as she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin while their ventures go to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New York or Boston. On some such morning, when three or four vessels happen to have arrived at once usually from Africa or South America—or to be on the verge of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... silence in particular—but the alarm of the vain thing menaced by the touch of the real? Was this contribution of the real possibly the mission of the Pococks?—had they come to make the work of observation, as HE had practised observation, crack and crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms in which honest minds could deal with him? Had they come in short to be sane where Strether was destined to feel that he ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... crumble like that, don't vanish like that!" She stared, astonished, at the scenes she had left behind her, the shining of the dark Cathedral, the ripple on the Moselle. "But they do, ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... of the Seljuks by the crusaders, and disputes respecting the succession, caused the once formidable sovereignty to crumble to pieces, only, however, to be replaced by others of equally rapid growth, destined ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... speedily filled by a law that is greater still. To attribute morality to fate is but to lessen the purity of our ideal; to admit the injustice of fate is to throw open before us the ever-widening fields of a still loftier morality. Let us not think virtue will crumble, though God Himself seem unjust. Where shall the virtue of man find more everlasting foundation than in the seeming ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... must have thought that we could start the old buildings to crumble about their ears, for they have been too much accustomed to the effects of rifles to be frightened by them so long as nobody falls. And I suppose if later on we are obliged to use small shot, those will only scare them for ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... every reform which society is now suffering for. I doubt whether even our public edifices—our capitols, state-houses, court-houses, city-hall, and churches,—ought to be built of such permanent materials as stone or brick. It were better that they should crumble to ruin once in twenty years, or thereabouts, as a hint to the people to examine into and reform ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... thou angel, ever wrestling on With a strong giant flinging his hundred hands About thy neck to strangle thee, wilt thou Battle with sword or lily? Oh, the world Will crumble ere thy struggle ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... that this is a lie of mine, when I tell you that the disturbance was so violent that no one could tell the tenth part of it: for it seemed as if the whole forest must surely be engulfed. The lady fears for her town, lest it, too, will crumble away; the walls totter, and the tower rocks so that it is on the verge of falling down. The bravest Turk would rather be a captive in Persia than be shut up within those walls. The people are so stricken ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... to the envoys of the Venetian Senate (April, 1797), Buonaparte threatened to "prove an Attila to Venice. If you cannot," he added, "disarm your population, I will do it in your stead—your government is antiquated—it must crumble to pieces."—Scott's Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, 1828, p. 230. Compare, too, Childe Harold, Canto IV. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... So swift (my love-pale groom) A white bird wings its flight. Then find you Death's cold room, Darker than darkest night; Then find you that dark door (And find it all men must) And love there nevermore But crumble back to dust, And kiss there nevermore In flower-drenched ecstasy; Too late then to implore, Too cold to ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson

... and still are healed; The tree whose rootlets drink of every river, Whose boughs drop Eden fruits on seaward isles; Christ's seamless coat, rainbowed with gems and hues Of all degrees and uses, rend, and tarnish, And crumble into dust! Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas! Oh! to have prayed, and toiled—and lied—for this! For this to have crushed out the heart of youth, And sat by calm, while living bodies burned! How! Gerard; sleeping! Couldst thou not watch with me one ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... patience for mankind, * Yet bitterer than the twain to me were Patience' treachery: My sere and seamed and seared brow would dragoman my sore * If soul could search my sprite and there unsecret secrecy: Were hills to bear the load I bear they'd crumble 'neath the weight, * 'Twould still the roaring wind, 'twould quench the flame-tongue's flagrancy, And whoso saith the world is sweet certes a day he'll see * With more than aloes' bitterness ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... up,' asseverated Lance; but Fulbert growled, 'If you bother any more, I shall crumble the whole lot ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to hesitate, too wise, also, for Prussian reaction is cracking and is going to crumble; even Americans of German origin would be acting against their own fatherland if they, by their sympathies, should sustain the regime of caporalism which ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... was happy, but still she lived on thorns. She felt that the fairy palace she had built over that sepulchre of the past might crumble at any moment. The lines of care on Bertram's brow gave her a sensation of fear. Was anything the matter? Was the courage of the bride-elect failing? At the eleventh hour could anything possibly injure the arrangements ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... crumble away. Either you sought support where it could not be found, or you built your house ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... insist on the variations from type due to that grouping. If he is convinced—as numbers of people appear to be—that society is just now in an extremely critical pass, and that if something mysterious is not forthwith done the structure of it will crumble to atoms—he will see mankind grouped under the different reforms which, according to him, the human dilemma demands. And so on! These tendencies, while they should not be resisted too much, since they give character to ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett

... The forceps may open to about three-quarters of an inch. If the Canada is more viscous, so that the thread does not break, the section when cemented by it will most probably slip on the slide. On the other hand, if the balsam is more brittle, it will crumble away during the grinding. ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... a trifle clumsily to Phobos. Miran radio-beams were forcing their way out toward the Miran station on Europa, to be relayed to the headquarters on Jupiter, just as Solarian radio beams were thrusting through space toward Luna. Said the Miran messages: "Their ships no longer crumble." Said the Solarian messages: "The ships no longer crumble—but ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell

... precious remains and specimens of an extinct planet; things transfixed in cold eternal night, icy and phosphorescent of hue. No atmosphere bathes them. Sap does not mount in them. Should we touch them, they would crumble. This, might have been a flower. But now it glistens with crystals of mica and quartz. These, are jewels. But their fires are quenched. These candied petals are the passage from "Music for Four Stringed Instruments" glossed in the score "un jardin plein des fleurs naives," while this vial of ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... On one side are the rich folk with "only" sons, who continually increase their fortunes; on the other, the poor folk, who, by reason of their unrestrained prolificness, see the little they possess crumble yet more and more. If labor be honored to-morrow, if a just apportionment of wealth be arrived at, equilibrium will be restored. Otherwise social revolution lies at the end ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... needs no long and fulsome epitaph carved in marble to tell his worth. Did his memory depend upon that alone, the marble would crumble into dust, mingle with his, and his name pass away with the stone that man vainly thought would preserve it. No; his monument is a world made free, and his memory as lasting as immortal mind. Wherever the light of freedom shall ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... yet, walls of brick and stone may crumble and split. The laws which endure come into being through the power ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... in which Christendom has embodied its conceptions of God's truth will crumble away. Many of the conceptions will have to be modified, neglected truths will grow, to the dislocation of much systematic theology, and the Word better understood will clear away many a portentous error with which the Church ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... Military and educational discipline go hand in hand.... Both are preserved and fortified by law and custom, and by administrative arrangements skilfully devised to attain that end. But behind all the forms of organisation (which would quickly crumble away unless upheld by and expressing some spiritual force), behind both military and educational discipline, lies the fundamental principle adopted by Scharnhorst's Committee on Military organisation in Prussia ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... largely formed of silting while they still constituted beds of lakes, have a deep soil of fine sand and mold resting on coarse gravel and bowlder drift. Ridges composed of brecciated lavas, which crumble easily under the influence of atmospheric agencies, are covered with soil two or three feet, or even more, in depth, where gentle slopes or broad saddles have favored deposition and prevented washing. The granite areas ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... crumble to pieces and give place to another. Such an intuition may melt into air under the shock of experience. The craving of the soul is not satisfied by the discovery that "matter" resolves itself into ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... himself rapidly. His clothes were quite dry; indeed the very atmosphere of this strange beautiful place was so dry that it seemed to crumble in the nostrils. As he finished dressing Adan reached him. The horses' heads were hanging listlessly. Adan's face had ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... this spectacle was, it proved merely the first of a series of calamities which were to overshadow the later years of the Liberator. His grandiose political structure began to crumble, for it was built on the shifting sands of a fickle popularity. The more he urged a general acceptance of the principles of his autocratic constitution, the surer were his followers that he coveted ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... words, at last, (The soul gone, that was once so sweet,) Should cease my eager heart to cheat, And crumble back into the past, And show the ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... against the sky, sinking so slowly she could not see them sink: they stood mouldering away, biding their time. They were of those "who only stand and wait," fulfilling the will of him who set them to crumble till the hour of the new heavens and the new earth arrive. There was no visible life between her and the great silent mouldering hills. On her right hand lay a blue segment of the ever restless sea, but so far that its commotion seemed ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... at the side of an archbishop; she was not crumbling bread in her nervous excitement. The company did not seem to remember Sydney Smith's remark to the young lady next him at a dinner-party: "My dear, I see you are nervous, by your crumbling your bread as you do. I always crumble bread when I sit by a bishop, and when I sit by an archbishop I crumble bread with both hands." That evening I had the pleasure of dining with the distinguished Mr. Bryce, whose acquaintance I made in our own country, through my son, who has introduced me to many agreeable ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... been unleavened, or wafer bread as it is sometimes called, from its shape, being made round like a wafer. Unleavened bread is used from a sense of reverence, using something specially made for so holy a purpose, and also because unleavened bread is not so likely to crumble as ordinary bread. It is also believed that this was undoubtedly the kind of bread our Lord used when He instituted the ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller

... washed your goose, dry it, and rub the inside with pepper and salt. Crumble some bread, but not too fine; take a piece of butter and make it hot; cut a middle-sized onion and stew in the butter. Cut the liver very small, and put that also in the butter for about a minute just to warm, and pour it over the head. It ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury

... pieces. Boil them separately. When the vegetables are thoroughly boiled, put them with the soup into the tureen, and then lay gently on the top some small squares of toasted bread without crust; taking care that they do not crumble down and disturb the brightness of the soup, which should be of a clear ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... souvenirs was unquenchable yet, and the masses of struggling humanity that seemed to drop from the clouds simultaneously with every missile to be in at its dismemberment, were as fierce as and more reckless than before in the fight for fragments. When the shells had been wont to crumble accommodatingly, as would a clay pipe, the winning of a curio had—I mix the metaphor advisedly—merely involved participation in a football scrimmage. But since the ball had, as it were, begun to turn "rusty" the popularity of the game, so far from diminishing, increased. All day long its ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... same. The report of a board of naval experts submitted to the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of Representatives had showed that the Collins steamers had not been built according to contract; that they would crumble to pieces under the fire of their own batteries, and that a single hostile gun would blow them to splinters. Yet they had been accepted by the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life today, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... he and his superiors in Mexico were desirous of bringing about secularization, the difficulties in the way seemed insurmountable. The Missions were practically the backbone of the country; without them all would crumble to pieces, and the most fanatical opponent of the system could not fail to see that without the padres it would immediately fall. As Clinch well puts it: "The converts raised seven eighths of the farm produce;—the Missions ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... who points out the objects and places of interest. And thus, through the alleys and by-ways, through the nooks and labyrinths of these underground temple-ruins, we get to the rear, where the ramparts and mounds crumble to a mighty heap, rising pell-mell to the ceiling. Here, one is likely to get a glimpse into such enchanted worlds as the name of a Dickens or a Balzac might suggest. Here, too, is Shakespeare in lamentable ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... still Divine; the other, the Mother lifted above all mothers in blessedness and suffering. Olive gazed long upon both. They seemed meet for the place. Looking at them, one felt as if all trivial earthly sorrows must crumble into dust before these two ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... it sinful to flog and to beat them with sticks and paddles; indeed, when delineating the character of a bishop, he expressly names this as one feature of it, "no striker." Let masters give unto their servants that which is just and equal, and all that vast system of unrequited labor would crumble into ruin. Yes, and if they once felt they had no right to the labor of their servants without pay, surely they could not think they had a right to their wives, their children, and their own bodies. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... the conduct of the negroes everywhere is an everlasting refutation of much of the bitter stuff which is said by the other side. This war would crumble like that, if, with all the white men gone, there were on the plantations faithlessness to trust, hatred, violence, outrage—if there were among us, in Virginia alone, half a million incendiaries! There aren't, thank ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... by blue lightning divided Down the hillside scatters its course, So in twain their army is parted By the sabres sabring in force: They have striven enough for honour! . . . and now Crumble and shatter, and sheer o'er the bank Where torrent Danube hisses and swirls Slant and hurry in rankless rank:— There are sixty thousand the morn 'Gainst the Lions marching in scorn; But twenty, when even is here, Broken and brave and at ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... camp, but many of the Shokas and Hunyas in my service were still scared out of their wits. It was quite sufficient for them to see a Tibetan to crumble ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... brain stimulants. The coffee habit is as easily formed, and as remorseless, as the alcohol habit. After a while, if excessively used, it produces its sure result; your faculties have been sharpened by this intellectual emery-wheel until the edges begin to crumble. Your mind becomes dull; you pass your hand wearily over your eyes; you don't know what is the matter with you and say so. Overwork, over-stimulation, and the worry these produce are what is the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... they were letting a whole crop of millionaires live in New York at a third of the price they were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant, and said: "This is the last feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself." In that moment—in that memorable moment—I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I had become just a mere moral sand-pile; and I lifted up my hand along with those seasoned and experienced deacons and swore off every rag of personal property I've got in the world, clear down to cork leg, glass eye, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... The greater part of the roof of the house was gone; and there were cracks in the solid stone walls through which the yellow sunshine found its way. One portion of the wall leaned in; another leaned out towards the water. At first Roger expected to see the whole building crumble down into the stream, and supposed that the inhabitants might be swept quite away. He gazed with the strange feeling that not a creature might be now left alive ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau

... paper bags quickly for use. I say dried quickly, because unless the sun is very hot much of the aroma will pass into the air; it is, therefore, better to dry them in a cool oven. When they are dry enough to crumble to dust, free the herbs from stems and twigs, and put them separately into tin boxes or wide-mouthed bottles, each labelled. The expense of herbs and spices is very slight, and they are certainly not neglected among ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen

... by judgment and experience, and depends to a considerable extent upon the nature of the soap, and also on the amount of perfume or medicament to be added, but speaking generally, a range of 11 to 14 per cent. gives good results. If the soap contains less than this amount it is liable to crumble during the milling, will not compress satisfactorily, and the finished tablet may have a tendency to crack and contain gritty particles so objectionable in use. If, on the other hand, the soap is left too moist, it is apt to stick to the rollers ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... very unwise to wait for an order, when anything was going to destruction without benefiting anyone. As the chateau is fast approaching the condition of the furniture, and my fortune does not permit me to repair it, I will sell it before the walls crumble away." ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... never dreamed that Jenny would ever be angry or disappointed. I wouldn't talk about her to anybody ever, because I was so absolutely certain of her. I knew, I thought, that the whole world might crumble away, but that Jenny would always understand, down at the bottom, and that she ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... raised it to his lips and tried to bite off a piece, but only to break off what felt like wood, which refused to crumble but gradually began ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... space, sink into relative torpor, or, as the astronomers say, die. The trees and plants diffuse their energy in the infinite, and, at length, when nothing but a shell remains, rot. Lastly, our fleshly bodies, when the union between mind and matter is dissolved, crumble into dust. When the involuntary partnership between mind and matter ceases through death, it is possible, or at least conceivable, that the impalpable soul, admitting that such a thing exists, may survive in some medium where ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... the only knife available between them, the boys began frantically cutting niches or steps in the dirt wall. Fortunately it was packed hard enough so that it did not crumble. They took turns at the desperate labor, one holding the torch, and the ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... opened again as accurately as before and twice as fast. The trench began to yawn in wide holes, and its sides to crumble and collapse. No. 2 Platoon occupied a portion of the trench that ran out in a blunted angle, and it caught the worst of the fire. One shell falling just short of the front parapet dug a yawning hole and drove in the forward wall of the trench in a tumbled slide of mud and earth. A dug-out and the ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... thou must love a woman—and worship with thy love, building for her an altar in thine heart. If altar crumble and heart burst, is she to blame who is but woman, or thou, who wouldst have made ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... swallowed under that name was the vegetable with all its exquisite characteristics vulgarized or destroyed. Picture the "ball of flour" (as old-fashioned housewives call it) lying in the dish, diffusing the softest, subtlest aroma, ready to crumble, all but to melt, as soon as it is touched; recall its gust and its after-gust, blending so consummately with that of the joint, hot or cold. Then think of the same potato cooked in any other way, and what ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... corruption could not put on incorruption. Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man, must needs have remained to an endless duration. And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more. O the wisdom of God! his mercy and grace! For behold, if the flesh should rise no more, our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell from before the presence of the eternal ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... covered his face with his hands. His wife's words were for Lyon the finishing touch; they made his whole vision crumble—his theory that she had secretly kept herself true. Even to her old lover she wouldn't be so! He was sick; he couldn't eat; he knew that he looked very strange. He murmured something about it being useless to cry over spilled milk—he tried to turn the conversation to other things. But it was ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... Woolworth was the first to crumble; it split into sections as it fell across the wreckage which already littered City Hall. Then the Bank of Manhattan Building, crumbling, partly falling sidewise, partly slumping upon the ruins of itself. Simultaneously the Chrysler Building toppled. For a second or two it seemed perilously ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... pitched out of bed by the sharp corner of a pantechnicon that was determined to be a pantechnicon. A pantechnicon whose ardour is fairly aroused may be capable of surpassing deeds. Whole thoroughfares might crumble before it. ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... himself looking into the muzzle of a revolver. A deep scowl overspread the face of the man as he pointed to the letter and then to the lamp. There was no mistaking his meaning. Lorry reluctantly held the note over the flame and saw it crumble away as had its predecessor. There was to be no proof of her complicity left behind. He knew it would be folly to offer a bribe to ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... self-interest, competing with others! Our differences of ideas arising from differences of race, training, occupation, country, fling us apart. Our differences of wealth and position alienate us. Our differences of conception of Christianity often separate and embitter us. But do these not crumble ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... the shrinking paper.] —All my bowels crumble up to dust. I am a scribbled form, drawn up with a pen Upon a parchment; and against this fire Do I shrink up. Shakespeare, K. John, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... on the sunny height—and declares to the "mad-cap treasury of glorious deeds" that laughing she will love him, laughing lose the light of her eyes, laughing they will accept destruction, laughing accept death! Let the proud world of Walhalla crumble to dust, the eternal tribe of the gods cease in glory, the Norns rend the coil of fate, the dusk of the gods close down,—Siegfried's star has risen, and he shall be, to Bruennhilde, for ever, everything! In equally fine and joyous ravings Siegfried's voice has been pouring forth alongside of hers; ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... all doomed," asserted Stanton, "unless something happens. They can crumble our cities with heat and bury us ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... doubt that you and I could carry it so far. Halloa, Watson, what's this? It's the man himself, by all that's wonderful and audacious! Not a word to show your suspicions—not a word, or my plans crumble to the ground." ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... us for himself, has preserved us for himself, and redeemed us for himself, we ought at once to acknowledge his claim and devote ourselves to his service. This self-surrender is the true foundation of all giving to the Lord. Any system of beneficence not built on this must crumble. Giving one's self is an earnest and pledge that everything else will be given; on the contrary, while self is withheld, there is no warrant that our possessions will be yielded, much less that God will accept the offering. But self being surrendered, all is virtually conveyed over ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark

... mass of purulence. Society was rotten, the state a pious criminal, the old truths tawdry lies. Everywhere the impotence of senility—except in young America. We faced the imminence of a vast breaking-up. The subtlest oligarchy of modern times was about to crumble. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... change of plan to determine to go to Grandfather's for a maple-sugaring instead of going to Egypt! But it seemed best. Egypt was not given up,—only postponed. "It has lasted so many centuries," sighed Mr. Peterkin, "that I suppose it will not crumble ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale



Words linked to "Crumble" :   rust, droop, change integrity, gnaw at, deteriorate, wear away, gnaw, ruin, change, eat at, corrode, wear, break, weather, wear out, disintegrate, erode, bust, wilt



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