"Devastating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speeches lead us already to form the most unfavourable anticipations of his future conduct. He lowers obliquely like a dark thundercloud on the horizon, which gradually approaches nearer and nearer, and first pours out the devastating elements with which it is charged when it hangs over the heads of mortals. Two of Richard's most significant soliloquies which enable us to draw the most important conclusions with regard to his mental temperament, are to be found in ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Virginia, and Brazil, and down the St. Lawrence valley, it shone intermittently through a driving reek of thunder-clouds, flickering violet lightning, and hail unprecedented. In Manitoba was a thaw and devastating floods. And upon all the mountains of the earth the snow and ice began to melt that night, and all the rivers coming out of high country flowed thick and turbid, and soon—in their upper reaches—with swirling trees and the bodies of ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... of the Inner Saints, with their intrigues that centred in the ugly little meeting-house; the seaside parish with its spiritually-dead atmosphere, in which Maggie's hopeless married life is spent—all these and more are realised with an art that is almost devastating in its unforced effect. Sometimes I hoped that such universal drabness was too bad to be true; one caught touches of manipulation, times in which these poor Captives seemed bound less by the chains of circumstance than by the wires ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... Miss GLADYS GORDON with a nice sense of fun). Mr. HENRY CAINE, as "The Daisy," presented very effectively the rough-and-ready humour and the frank brutality of his type; but he perhaps failed to convey the devastating attractions which he was alleged to have for the frail sex; and his sudden spasms of tragic emotion seemed a little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... the body of a slain rival so that it could be "worn" by slipping the head through a hole made right in the middle of the body. There was also cannibalism on some of the islands, which of course laid people open to CJD and similar diseases that are slow to take effect, but very devastating when ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... I had witnessed the devastating effects of the whirlwind which passed through Guelph, and which I have described in a previous chapter, I had a dread of being exposed in the woods to the fury of such a tempest. In this instance, however, we had ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... of age," it said with devastating compassion, "and you can still trust a gentleman who ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... primary export. Transfers from the US Government add substantially to American Samoa's economic well-being. According to one observer, attempts by the government to develop a larger and broader economy are restrained by Samoa's remote location, its limited transportation, and its devastating hurricanes. Tourism, a developing sector, may be held back in 1998 by the ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... armament would provide a valuable contribution toward a durable peace in the years ahead. And we have been persistent in our effort to reach such an agreement. We are willing to enter any reliable agreement which would reverse the trend toward ever more devastating nuclear weapons; reciprocally provide against the possibility of surprise attack; mutually control the outer space missile and satellite development; and make feasible a lower level of armaments and armed forces ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... impossible amid the perpetual storm and stress of war—the young blood of the nation could be more gradually inured to the sea and tuned to fighting-pitch. Science had not yet linked hands with warfare. Steam, steel, the ironclad, the super-Dreadnought and the devastating cordite gun were still in the womb of the future; but the keels of a newer fleet were nevertheless already on the slips, and with the old order the press-gang, now for ever obsolete, went the way of ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... these words of Sthanu, the divine Brahman of restrained speech and mind himself suppressed that energy of his within his own heart. Suppressing that fire that had been devastating the universe, the illustrious Brahman, adored of all, and possessed of illimitable puissance, then arranged for both birth and death in respect of all living creatures. After the Selfborn had withdrawn and suppressed that fire, there came out, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... sea, and the Volga is claimed to be longer. No river in the Old or New World is surrounded by so many associations, or is so identified with the memories of discoverers and adventurers, warrior-priests and saintly soldiers, peaceful pioneers and devastating armies, as the Mississippi.... For half a century Lake Itasca has been accepted as the fountain-head of the Great River, but Captain Glazier having had reasons for doubting the correctness of that theory, undertook, in 1881, to verify or disprove it, and the book treats of his adventures ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Dalgard was conscious of a sense of urgency. Suppose that what Sssuri suggested was the truth, that Those Others were attempting to recover the skills which had brought on the devastating war that had turned this whole eastern continent into a wilderness? Equipped with even the crumbs of such discoveries, they would be enemies against which the Terran colonists could not hope to stand. The few weapons their outlaw ancestors had brought with them on their desperate ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... able to take Rome itself by assault. But when they saw the enemy drawn up in order, and learned before long from a prisoner what had happened, they abandoned the idea of attacking the city, and began devastating the country-side instead, and setting fire to the houses. In these first raids they collected an innumerable amount of booty, for the field of plunder upon which they were entered was one into which no one had ever expected an enemy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... of Russia are at their Eastern gates and will very soon be devastating their country ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... property of the Cebuanos to his heart's content, and as proof of the accomplishment of his gory mission he brought in and presented to his patron the ears which he had cut off the Cebuanos. North of Cebu City he and his retainers made a fresh start, slaying the people, burning villages, and devastating the standing crops. Having accomplished his task within three months Datto Mandi withdrew with all his men, except two who wished to settle at Pardo. He could not persuade them to leave, and after his departure they were cut to pieces ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... injured? Dead? The devastating loneliness that swept him at the sight of the still body was unnerving. He breathed a long sigh of relief as the lanky figure rose slowly to its feet. Winslow was alive! They would show these beastly, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... heavy thuds, and she put her hand to her head in stupefied fashion. For several minutes she sat motionless, unable to form any definite thought. She only felt a curious shattered sensation, as though she had come through some devastating experience, which had laid waste all her fondest delusions. What had Miss Briggs said? That the household arrangements had been managed better in her absence than when she was at home. That if she did not alter, she would end in being a hindrance ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the word. Remember it," warned the Bonnie Lassie. "She's a devastating whirlwind, that child, and she comes down here partly to get away from the wreckage. Now, if you play your ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Iroquois frequently attacked the annual fleet of canoes on its journey to Quebec, and on several occasions captured and carried off priests and their assistants. But during these years no large body of Iroquois invaded Huronia. The insatiable warriors of the Five Nations were busy devastating the St Lawrence and the Ottawa, pressing the tribes back and ever back, until scarcely a wigwam could be seen between Ville Marie and Lake Nipissing. The Algonquins who had not fallen had left their villages and had sought safety on the bleak shores and islands ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... midst of this devastating war while some states were fighting for separation, another new state was added to the Union. This was Nevada. Nevada is Spanish and means snowy, and the state takes its name from the snowy topped mountains ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... mercantile and industrial revolutions caused the country to fall behind Britain, France, and Germany in economic and political power. Spain remained neutral in World Wars I and II, but suffered through a devastating Civil War (1936-39). In the second half of the 20th century, it has played a catch-up role in the western international community. Continuing concerns are large-scale unemployment and ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Picts of Caledonia and the Scots of Ireland were their natural foes, but conflict with these enemies served only to stimulate the national life. But actual disaster threatened them when in the fifth and sixth centuries the heathen Angles and Saxons bore down in devastating hordes upon the land. It is at this critical period in the national history that Arthur must have lived. How long or how valiant the resistance was we cannot know. That it was vain is certain. A large body of Britons fled from annihilation ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... from indisputable authority," says The Miner's Light of Brandy Gap, "that when our esteemed fellow-citizen Hank Mulligan and twenty gallant shots and riders like himself went in a body to General—— at the cantonment and offered their services as volunteers against the Sioux now devastating the homesteads and settlements of the Upper Missouri and Yellowstone valleys, they were treated with haughty and contemptuous refusal by that bandbox caricature of a soldier and threatened with arrest if they did not quit the camp. When will the United States learn that its frontiers ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... of the Waters, now appeared; but Linda replied that the roaring of the waves was terrible, and the depth of the sea was awful; that the brooks only gave a scanty supply of water, and the river-floods were devastating. He was followed by the Wind, who rode the Horse of the Tempest, and, like all the other suitors, was attended by a cavalcade of fifty horses and sixty grooms; and he too asked the hand of Linda. But she replied that a delicate girl could never take pleasure in the howling ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... uncertainties of the weather, and the chances of cholera, war, and earthquake, we have added an artificial uncertainty worse than any of these—we have invented a series of financial cyclones, which sweep round the globe, devastating all lands, and no more to be predicted—despite theories of sun-spots, cyclones and financial crises—than wrecks at sea; indeed, far less predictable, for I believe with the ex-mayor quoted by Bonamy Price, that finance is a subject which no man can ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... near Mialet, and again descended upon the low country, marching through the villages along the valley of the Vidourle, carrying off arms and devastating churches. Broglie sent two strong bodies of troops to intercept them; but the light-footed insurgents ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... basis for their use, their promiscuous exercise could only result in chaotic confusion and the destruction of the entire race. To introduce the creative power of the Individual and at the same time avoid converting it into a devastating flood is the great problem of the transition from the Fourth Kingdom into the Fifth. For this purpose it becomes necessary to have a Standard of the Personal Factor independent of any individual conceptions, just as we ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... preceding year was still available. Numerous wild animals, including squirrels, deer, rabbits, raccoons, and others fed on the native chestnut. It was such an important staple in the diet of many animals that its passing is one of the most devastating blows to befall the wildlife of this continent. In order to compensate for the loss of the chestnut, and at the same time restore some of the food and cover destroyed through pasturing of woodlots, and the removal of fencerow ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... expressions of opinion. They would not even be admissible in evidence in legal proceedings as to the cause of a disaster. In themselves they do not alter the legal rights of the persons to whom they refer. Nevertheless they may greatly influence public and Government opinion and have a devastating effect on personal reputations; and in our judgment these are the major reasons why in appropriate proceedings the Courts must be ready if necessary, in relation to Commissions of Inquiry just as to other public bodies ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan
... City by daybreak. Then, while all the Oz people are sleeping, we will capture them and make them our slaves. After that we will destroy the city itself and march through the Land of Oz, burning and devastating ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... not help looking at her with curiosity. I tried to see what there was in her to have excited in Lawson such a devastating passion. But who can explain these things? It was true that she was lovely; she reminded one of the red hibiscus, the common flower of the hedgerow in Samoa, with its grace and its languor and its passion; but what surprised me most, taking into consideration the story I knew even then ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... the burned-over and arid barren land. To Carley these groves, by reason of contrast and proof of what once was, only rendered the landscape more forlorn and dreary. Why had these miles and miles of forest been cut? By money grubbers, she supposed, the same as were devastating the Adirondacks. Presently, when the driver had to halt to repair or adjust something wrong with the harness, Carley was grateful for a respite from cold inaction. She got out and walked. Sleet began to fall, and when she resumed her seat ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... Western Jew returning to his people—gripped their hearts and stirred their imagination. He was greeted by one of the Galician Zionist societies as the leader who, like Moses, had returned from Midian to liberate the Jews. Max Nordau, that devastating critic of art and literature, was swept off his feet and described the pamphlet as a revelation, Richard Beer Hoffman, the poet, wrote to Herzl saying "At last there comes again a man, who does not carry his Judaism ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... been our good fortune, even when we have seen the foot almost detached from the limb by the devastating inroads of the pus, to see the suppurative process by this means gradually overcome, a reparative anchylosis set in, and the animal restored to good health and usefulness, if not ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... 1875).] Thanks to the goats, Maltese fever has lately been introduced into Calabria. Man, with his charcoal-burning, has completed the disaster. What happens? The friable rock, no longer sustained by plant-life, crashes down with each thunderstorm, blocks up the valleys, devastating large tracts of fertile land; it creates swamps in the lowlands, and impedes the outflow of water to the sea. These ravenous fiumare have become a feature in Calabrian scenery; underneath one of the most terrible of them lies the birthplace ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Midian with a view to searching for gold. In ancient times gold and other metals had been found there in abundance, and remains of the old furnaces still dotted the country. Forty cities had lived by the mines, and would, Burton averred, still be living by them but for the devastating wars that had for centuries spread ruin and destruction. He, reasoned, indeed, much as Balzac had done about the mines of Sardinia as worked by the Romans, and from no better premises; but several of his schemes had a distinctly Balzacian aroma, [304] as ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... devastating clothes," he remarked. "D'you know, until now I always had an idea that furs weren't becoming to women. Make most of 'em look ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... unfortunate people as she has hitherto done. Not only has she forced Stan islaus Augustus upon them, but she has also compelled them to alter their constitution, and, in the face of all justice, her armies occupy Poland, devastating the country, and oppressing ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... fathomed fifty pockets, all in vain; I've spent in omnibuses half-a-crown; I've ransacked forty female reticules— And nothing found—some business must be done. By Jove—I'd rather turn Lascar at once: Allow the walnut's devastating juice To track its inky course along my cheek, And stain my British brow with Indian brown. Or, failing that, I'd rather drape myself In cheap white cotton, or gay colored chintz— Hang roung my ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... The devastating rush of the gray-clad hordes of Huns into the peace-loving lands of Belgium and France has demonstrated conclusively that to win this or any other war the one thing necessary is superiority in artillery. Without this, an enemy sufficiently strong in numbers ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... acquiesced again. But the shadow of lying was in your eyes, The mother in you, fierce as a murderess, glaring to England, Yearning towards England, towards your young children, Insisting upon your motherhood, devastating. ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... since anybody had asked him to take part in any service whatsoever, even a funeral service—for which, as is well understood, a man retains efficiency long after he has ceased to be of use in the pulpit, no matter how devastating may be the weather. But that fact did not seem to bear upon the ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... a tall young man, who carried a very delicate, tiny, blackdressed lady in his arms; she was thinking of a tall man, who steered his small ship in between cliffs and rocks in a devastating gale. She heard a whole conversation over again. She blushed: Eugene Carlson might have thought that you were paying court to him! With a little jealous association of ideas she continued: No one would ever run after Clara in a ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... being brought in by spies and scouts. The enemy was approaching fast; he was devastating all before him and covering the banks of the river with the slain, who were being swept down ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... whimsies to write always with quills), lying in a brass dish, and an office stationery case closed and aggressively new. The sight of this last monstrosity, I thought, would play the deuce with my imagination and send it on a devastating tour round the Tottenham Court Road, but not having the artistic temperament and catching a glance of challenge from Doria, I ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... and also for civil government—for rewards and punishments. It not only relieves the Divine attributes from the fearful suspicions and imputations with which Calvinism dishonors them, but surrounds them with a transcendent glory. It protects the morality of the Bible from the devastating incursions to which Calvinism exposes it, and presents the most powerful incentives to piety. It does not throw the protecting shield of the Divine decrees over every form of error and outrage with which earth is filled, or represent God as having ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... a piece of stiff ground about two miles in extent, which appeared to have been the scene of a devastating hurricane. It was covered with fallen timber, which rendered it very difficult to cross. The wind must have swept from the south-west to the north-east, and from the appearance of the saplings which were ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... is any reason on earth that has manifested itself for this devastating and terrible war it is that it has been a maker ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Bush McTaggart had become more than an incident—more than a passing adventure to the beast, and more than an irritating happening to the man. It was, for the time, the elemental raison d'etre of their lives. Baree hung to the trap line. He haunted it like a devastating specter, and each time that he sniffed afresh the scent of the factor from Lac Bain he was impressed still more strongly with the instinct that he was avenging himself upon a deadly enemy. Again and again he outwitted McTaggart. ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... French had been distracting the enemy by a demonstration to the south-east of Colesburg. Consequently the shells from nowhere began to pour into their laager during breakfast (January 12) with devastating results. The laager was instantly abandoned, and a second, two thousand yards farther off, suffered the same fate. When Butcher had finally been able to get a second 15-pounder up the hill, the Boers were compelled to shift every camp ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... to man is the ferret. This little creature has come into prominence more particularly during recent years, when the rat infested trenches have made his services invaluable. These Hun-like rats, devouring and devastating in their thirst for human blood, would have forced the abandonment of many a front line trench but for the aid of these trained ferrets, thousands of which have been daily ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... may be the only way of raising the standard of comfort among people who work with their hands; I take the standpoint of the wholly unpractical man, and say that such efforts do not concern me. From my point of view no movement can be tolerated which begins with devastating the earth's surface. You will clothe your workpeople better, you will give them better food and more leisure; in doing so you injure the class that has finer sensibilities, and give power to the class which not only postpones everything to material ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... we have one supreme and devastating study of the illiterate minor official in Bumble. That one figure lit up and still lights the whole problem of Poor Law administration for the English reading community. It was a translation of well-meant regulations ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... gave that general the desired opportunity to interfere in the politics of Constantinople; and having with energetic celerity arranged matters on the Gallic frontier, he marched overland through Illyricum and confronted Alaric in Thessaly, whither the Goth had traced his devastating path from the Propontis. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... to the dawn of history in the West, with its manners and customs so worn into the national character that they almost form the character itself, with its fertile plains, its sandy deserts, its lofty mountains, its mighty rivers, its torrid heat and arctic cold, its devastating floods, its cruel famines and loathsome epidemics, represents a mass, the contemplation of which staggers the mind and makes one ask, "What is Europe trying to do here? Does she hope to conquer, to change ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... to the glade of the columbines. She did not feel any longer the antipathy she once felt to the spot that had, in one devastating moment, revealed to her the fatuity of her dreams. Now she was in search of the old hopes that she had once revelled in, while she gathered armloads of columbines, and imagined they were ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... who had left their native land because of the victories gained over them by their rivals—the Pish de-danaans—a sect of Yoni worshippers; in other words, the sect which recognized the female element as the superior agency in reproduction, and who, therefore, worshipped it as divine. In the devastating wars which swept over Persia and the other countries of antiquity prior to the age of the later Zoroaster, the Pish-de danaans were victorious, and, driving from the country the Tuath-de danaans, or male worshippers, succeeded in re-establishing, and for a time maintaining, the old form ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... reasons." She was, clearly, evading that question. She went on quickly. "The psychological shock of awakening would have been devastating, if you were not prepared. So, while you were still under sedation, I used the hypnopedic method on you. Your unconscious was aware of the main facts of the situation before you awoke, and that cushioned ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... matter, as we have numerous examples from our observation and experience, in the case of windmills driven by the motive power of the winds, and also balloons urged along by the same cause; apart from the devastating effect produced in towns and country ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... Mrs. Gubling, as one devastating tableful rose lingeringly from the repast, and another flock began to gather in hungry expectancy at the door,—"I do declare, I'm near beat out. Is this a starvin' community? At this rate they'll ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... the Heart of Jesus sewed into his waistcoat, and a beautiful silk scarf in his wallet, one of those worked by white hands in the convents of the city. The son of the bell-ringer went with him. They joined one of the insignificant bands who were devastating Murcia, but they soon went on to Valencia and Catalonia, anxious to perform greater exploits for the cause of God than merely stealing mules and extorting contributions from ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... has made progress toward rebuilding its political institutions and regaining its national sovereignty since the end of the devastating 16-year civil war, which ended in 1991. Under the Ta'if Accord—the blueprint for national reconciliation—the Lebanese have established a more equitable political system, particularly by giving Muslims a greater ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... no doubt an inaccurate impression, but when I had listened to various brisk people telling me about the fires—the devastating one of 1877, and the minor ones of a variety of dates—and the improvements St. John has been able to accomplish after them; and when I had seen the city itself, I must confess I had a sneaking feeling that Providence had deliberately managed these things ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... Rodolph soon heard of the atrocities of his rival, who abandoned the country to fire, sword, and rapine. Old men and women, pale with fear, came crowding into camp with thrilling tales of the brutality of the Bohemians and their associates. The war had begun; and Henry was devastating the region bordering on the Danube and the Rhine, from Esslingen ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... music; the flare of royal banners, of pennons on the breeze; the smiling of beautiful Court Ladies and great, silken Nobles; the swaying of howdahs on camel and elephant, and the awesome shaking of the earth beneath the elephant's feet, and the gleam of his small but devastating eye (every one declared he looked the alarmed Mr. Snoddy full in the face as he passed, and Mr. Snoddy felt not at all reassured when Tom Martin severely hinted that it was with the threatening glance of a rival); then the badinage of the clown, creaking along in his donkey cart; the terrific ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... or any disgrace, to the defeated, that under such novel and appalling conditions the orderly and disciplined onslaughts of the legions of the League have in almost every case been completely successful? The sober truth is that the invention and employment of these devastating appliances have completely altered the face of the field of battle and the conditions of modern warfare. It is not in human valour, no matter how heroic or self-devoted it may be, to oppose itself with anything ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... rather like a bulldog's "crank" tail, but long and bushy. He was far from being a handsome dog; but he looked every inch a fighter, and there was a certain invincibility about his appearance which, combined with his swiftness in action and the devastating severity of all his attacks, served to win for him the submissive respect of almost every dog he met. Occasionally, and upon a first meeting, some careless, undiscerning dog would overlook these qualities. The same dog never made the ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... devastating row has many points of resemblance with a prairie fire. A man on a prairie lights his pipe, and throws away the match. The flame catches a bunch of dry grass, and, before any one can realise what is happening, sheets of fire are racing over the country; and the interested ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... the disputants till he is nearly mashed like a sandwich-filling between two argumentative slices of bread, but he is quite content. Peter Piper, the youngest rare-book collector in the country, who, if left to himself, would have gravitated naturally toward French and a devastating conversation in monosyllables on the pretty failings of prominent debutantes, is gradually warming Clark Stovall, the youngest star of the Provincetown Players out of a prickly silence, employed in supercilious blinks at all the large pictures of celebrated Harlequins by discreet, intelligent ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... liberty, forced to labor in the silver mines with inadequate food, and barbarously treated, finally rose, joined with tribes who had never been subdued, and gradually drove out or massacred their oppressors. A superior civilization disappeared before their devastating career, and to day there is scarcely a trace of it left, except scarcely visible ruins, evidence everywhere, of extensive and hastily-deserted mining operations, and the tradition of the country. The mission of San Xavier del Bac, and ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry
... his own, or lose it. But perhaps it was the indifference to the ruin of the women belonging to him that Harry Heathcote felt the strongest. The stranger cared nothing for the utter desolation which one unscrupulous ruffian might produce, felt no horror at the idea of a vast devastating fire, but could be indignant in his mock philanthropy because it was proposed to watch ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... Secretariat in a few years. He was just the type that goes there—all head, no physique and a hundred theories. Not a soul was interested in McGoggin's soul. He might have had two, or none, or somebody's else's. His business was to obey orders and keep abreast of his files instead of devastating the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... play with devastating force. One may be satisfied with what he has until some one else he knows gets more; that is to say, the causes of most of the dissatisfaction and discontent of the world are envy and jealousy. In many cases it may be a righteous sort of jealousy or envy. A woman, especially because ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... of Yucatan increased the previous worlds by one, making the present the fourth. Two cycles had terminated by devastating plagues. They were called "the sudden deaths," for it was said so swift and mortal was the pest, that the buzzards and other foul birds dwelt in the houses of the cities, and ate the bodies of their former owners. The ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... was in a fever; not a physical fever, but a mental fever that burned with devastating insistence. He could not lie still upon his bed, so he rose and stumbled about the city's streets. But nothing diverted him. Before his eyes a sheet of fire burned, and a blinding light seemed to shut out everything else from his vision. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... extraordinary cases, in which man, as an instrument in the hands of Providence, sometimes punishes great crimes, eradicates great evils, and accomplishes great national reforms by acts as sudden as the devastating career of the tempest in sweeping away pestilential vapors. Such may be the case with the revolted States, if they should persist in this wicked rebellion beyond the close of the period ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... others; his own words shall reveal the inner spirit. The beauty of the life to me was that he attained, unconsciously and gradually, to the very virtues which he most desired and in which he felt himself to be most deficient. He had to bear a series of devastating calamities. He had loved the warmth and nearness of his home circle more deeply than most men, and the whole of it was swept away; he had depended for stimulus and occupation alike upon his artistic ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The materialization of the fleets; the swift, devastating blow, then the instantaneous retreat into the fastnesses of the past. Terrific destruction, but not a ...
— Project Mastodon • Clifford Donald Simak
... Renaissance design was a natural consequence of the licence its features might assume, and in the progress of the sixteenth century it became thoroughly vitiated. The troubles which distracted Europe in the later part of that century, and which led to the devastating wars and revolutions of the earlier part of the following one, completed the debasement of art-workmanship. Louis XIV. had the glory, such as it was, of its resuscitation; but his taste was merely that of an over-wealthy display, which not unfrequently ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... flanks of Aetna, there are cones of long extinct or long slumbering volcanoes, which, though of at least triple the antiquity of the Noachian deluge, and though composed of the ordinary incoherent materials, exhibit no marks of denudation. According to the calculations of Sir Charles Lyell, no devastating flood could have passed over the forest zone of Aetna during the last twelve thousand years,—for such is the antiquity which he assigns to its older lateral cones, that retain in integrity their original shape; and the volcanic ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... shut out the sea, if you want to equalize society in a closet-civilization where all will have the same polish and all be of the same color. We have seen that entire flourishing lands which have been robbed of the protecting forests have fallen prey to the devastating floods of the mountain streams and the scorching breath of the storms. A large part of Italy, the paradise of Europe, is a land which has, ceased to live, because its soil no longer bears any forests under the protection of which it might become rejuvenated. And not only is the land ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... than that? How then, upon what conditions, in what sense, can a principle which is its own denial enter into science? How can it become an organic law of society? If competition is necessary; if, as the school says, it is a postulate of production,—how does it become so devastating in its effects? And if its most certain effect is to ruin those whom it incites, how does it become useful? For the INCONVENIENCES which follow in its train, like the good which it procures, are not accidents arising ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Scottish persistence and pride become knit and vested in the spleuchan, and your stiff Covenanter makes his covenant with Death, and your Old Mortality deciphers only the senseless legends of the eternal gravestone,—you get your weed, earth-grown, in bitter verity, and earth-devastating, in bitter strength. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... ore is From the cupola spurting, Tossing the flaming petals Over the silt and furnace ash— Blown leaves, devastating, Falling ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... was the cause of Northern interference in the Southern situation at this juncture. But when Congress intervened by its reconstruction measures to defeat the reactionary program of the South, there swept over that section a crime-storm of devastating fury. The old master class organized their purpose in respect to the Negro, and their hatred of everything Northern into a secret society known as the "Ku Klux Klan," which was nothing else than a gigantic conspiracy ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke
... of religion, the war of 1569, in which the Huguenots were defeated in the historic battles of Jarnac and Moncontour, had been so devastating that the government lost the disposition to go on fighting, and counsels of moderation prevailed. Coligny, summoned to advise, was listened to with attention, and a marriage was decided on between the king's sister, Margaret of Valois, and Henry of Bourbon, the young King ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... unhappy captain had prayed long and devoutly. The Philadelphia was in flames—red, devouring flames, pouring out of her hold, climbing the rigging, licking her topmasts, forming fantastic columns—devastating, unconquerable flames—the frigate was doomed, doomed! And every now and then one of her guns would explode as though booming out her requiem. ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... his niece, who lives with him. The man I allude to as Lord Bilberry, but is now Earl of Cockletown. He was raised to this rank for some services he rendered the government against the tories, who had been devastating the country, and also against some turbulent papists who were supposed to have privately encouraged them in their outrages against Protestant life and property. He was a daring and intrepid man when in his prime of life, and appeared to seek danger for its own sake. He is now an old ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... not love. He smiled exultantly. It was nobler and infinitely more rare. Love, as he had read of it and mistaken it in his experience, was a devastating energy, greedy and devouring. It was a continual, nagging contention between self-abasement and hostility. It was a humiliating attempt on the part of a man to barter something, which was persistently undervalued, for the feminine equivalent which was as ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... the birth of our own nation, not least among the benefits of which was the stern experience that has made Great Britain no longer the mistress, but the mother, of her dependencies. The control, to good from evil, of the devastating fire of the French Revolution and of Napoleon was due to the sword. The long line of illustrious names and deeds, of those who bore it not in vain, has in our times culminated—if indeed the end is ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... of the ivory needles and snapped it into accurate halves. "This is atrocious!" he said, with care and precision. His voice shook. "I shall not touch a cent of it and"—he embraced his uncle and aunt in the same devastating look—"neither will you if you have ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... expressly assuming the right of interfering in the affairs of a friendly nation further than to "emphatically affirm the unchangeable principles of international justice," adopted a resolution declaring that the responsibility for the war devastating South Africa fell upon that one of the two parties who repeatedly refused arbitration, that is, it was explained, upon the British Government; that the British Government, in ignoring the principles of right and justice, in refusing ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... complications of horse-cars, target companies, and barrels of everything, Mr. BENTHAM also amused his friends with circuits of several of the fine public markets of New York; explaining to them the relations of the various miasmatic smells of those quaint edifices with the various devastating diseases of the day, and expatiating quite eloquently upon the political corruption involved in the renting of the stalls, and the fine openings there were for Cholera and Yellow Fever in the Fish and Vegetable departments. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... We are not warmed, as yet, with any love for art. We are too much absorbed in the rapid accumulation of wealth, or the passing excitement of the hour, to attend to anything that is noble or honest or beautiful. And now that devastating war is sweeping through the land and clogging the wheels of progress, we are learning terrible lessons; but, with experience for our teacher, learning them well. Where war prevails, civilization for the time must stand still. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Julian crosses the Rhine and plunders and burns the towns of the Allemanni, repairs the fortress of Trajan, and grants the barbarians a truce for ten months.—II. He hems in six hundred Franks who are devastating the second Germania, and starves them into surrender.—III. He endeavours to relieve the Gauls from some of the tribute which weighs them down.—IV. By order of the Emperor Constantius an obelisk is erected at Rome in the Circus Maximus;—some ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... ninety-five South Carolina Rangers, forty picked men of the new "levies," and "a good number of guides," Montgomerie moved from Fort Ninety-Six on May 28th. On the first of June, crossing Twelve-Mile River, Montgomerie began the campaign in earnest, devastating and burning every Indian village in the Valley of Keowee, killing and capturing more than a hundred of the Cherokees, and destroying immense stores of corn. Receiving no reply to his summons to the Cherokees of the Middle and ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... disadvantage of that worst even from its own point of view is that society, with all its prisons and bayonets and whips and ostracisms and starvations, is powerless in the face of the Anarchist who is prepared to sacrifice his own life in the battle with it. Our natural safety from the cheap and devastating explosives which every Russian student can make, and every Russian grenadier has learnt to handle in Manchuria, lies in the fact that brave and resolute men, when they are rascals, will not risk their skins ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... posterity, for ages to come. But let us be warned in time. Even now the insidious movement of dissension is hailed with satisfaction and delight in the council meetings at Richmond, and no effort will be spared to aid its devastating progress. False rumors will be raised on the slightest and most insignificant grounds. Trivial mistakes and blunders in the cabinet and the field will be magnified; facts distorted, and the flame be blown by corrupting influences abroad and at home, in the hopes—let them be vain ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are swept as by a war, Our harvests are no longer blythe; Yonder the iron mower's-car, Comes with his devastating scythe. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... tell you, father, though I can tell no one else. Harold has ordered us to bring out our housecarls, and with them he means to deal a blow against the Welsh, who have been devastating our western counties. The expedition is to be secret and sudden, although against what point and in what manner the blow is to be struck Harold ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... fell upon my ear; No cloud arose to tell me it was near; But under skies all sunlit, and serene, I floated with the current of the stream, And thought life all one golden-haloed dream. When lo! a hurricane, with awful force, Swept swift upon its devastating course, Wrecked my frail bark, and cast me on the wave Where all my hopes had found a sudden grave. Love makes us blind and selfish; otherwise I had seen Helen's secret in her eyes; So used I was ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a matter so devastating to republican institutions as this if I quote further from the disclosures of Thomas Beet: "There is another phase," he says, "of the private detective evil which has worked untold damage in America. This is the private constabulary system by which armed forces are employed during ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... matter of that, short-range—bombardments of the Flanders littoral by warships I placed no trust. Mr. Churchill's "we could give you 100 or 200 guns from the sea in absolutely devastating support" of the 22nd of November to Sir J. French would not have excited me in the very least. In his book, the Field-Marshal ascribes the final decision of our Government to refuse sanction to a plan of operations which they had approved ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... enthusiastic Americans, engineers, health officers, executives, school teachers, Constabulary, labored on in the glory of service: eradicated cholera, built roads and bridges, brought six hundred thousand children into school that two score tribes might find a common tongue, fought the devastating cattle plagues, wiped out brigandage and piracy, brought order and first semblance of prosperity to eight millions ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... following story exhibits the influence of witchcraft among the followers of Odin. Towards the end of the tenth century, the dreaded Jomsburg sea-rovers had set out on one of their periodical expeditions, and were devastating with fire and sword the coast of Norway. A celebrated Norwegian Jarl, Hakon, collected all his forces, and sailed with a fleet of 150 vessels to encounter the pirates. Hakon, after trying in vain to break through the hostile line, retired with his fleet to the coast, ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... his embassy, but never returned. The conquests of Tschengis-Khan again attracted the eyes of Christian Europe to the East. The Mongol hordes were rushing in upon the West with devastating ferocity; Russia, Poland, Hungary, and the Eastern provinces of Germany had succumbed, or suffered grievously; and the fears of other nations were roused lest they too should taste the misery of a Mongolian invasion. It was Gog ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and morals of men, its influence has been felt even in the worst quarter of history—in war. The continual massacres of the Greek and Roman kings and chiefs, and the extermination of nations by them—the all-devastating warfare of the Timurs and Gengis Khans—are in general not more to be met with; only my own dear fatherland was doomed to experience once more the cruelties of the Timurs and Gengis Khans out of the sacrilegious ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... The devastating gold-fever had swept over the Conroyal and the Randolph ranchos; and had left, of all the grown-up males, only Thure and Bud, who, not yet being of age, had been compelled to stay, much against their wills, to care for the women folks and the ranchos, while their fathers ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... punishment of suspected insurgents was carried out. Cholera was prevalent in Italy that year, but Sicily, which had maintained stringent quarantine, entirely escaped until large bodies of troops were landed to quell the insurrection, when a devastating epidemic immediately ensued, and re-appeared in 1867. In after years, when serving on the Army Sanitary Committee at the India Office, Yule more than once quoted this experience as indicating that quarantine restrictions may, in some cases, have more value than British medical authority ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... against them should they once reach the open valleys of the Alf and the Moselle. His Lordship would also have you know that this campaign is as much in your own interest as in his, for the Hungarians, in their devastating march, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... wrecked gun was once more being made serviceable, the Englishman observed that two of the other guns were being slewed round until their muzzles pointed seaward, and he at once surmised that this must be the direction from which that devastating shell had come. But crane his neck as he might, although he could see a portion of the sheet of water forming Prince Jerome Bay, he could not see the whole of it. The entrance was clear, however, and it was therefore obvious that the vessel from which the shot ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... is!" scoffed Nance, derisively, but she let Monte run on at length, painting in burning terms the devastating extent of Mac's passion, his despair at losing her, his delight at finding her again, and ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... old acquaintance, Gaspard Caderousse. His wife, on the contrary, whose maiden name had been Madeleine Radelle, was pale, meagre, and sickly-looking. Born in the neighborhood of Arles, she had shared in the beauty for which its women are proverbial; but that beauty had gradually withered beneath the devastating influence of the slow fever so prevalent among dwellers by the ponds of Aiguemortes and the marshes of Camargue. She remained nearly always in her second-floor chamber, shivering in her chair, or stretched languid and feeble on her bed, while her husband kept his daily watch at the door—a ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... near the Straits of Babelmandeb, the conqueror proceeded to India, which he overran beyond the Ganges, and ascended the high table-land of Central Asia; then proceeding westward, he entered Europe, nor halted in his devastating career until he reached Thrace. From thence he marched to Asia Minor, conquering as he went, and invaded Assyria, seating himself on the throne of Ninus and Semiramis. Then, laden with booty from the Eastern world, he returned to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... Lancastrian party, or rather the party of Margaret of Anjou and her favourites, was the more reactionary, and it had the centre of its strength in the North, whence Margaret drew the plundering and devastating host which gained for her the second battle of St. Albans and paid the penalty of its ravages in the merciless slaughter of Towton. The North had been kept back in the race of progress by agricultural inferiority, by the absence of commerce with ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... assured me that I need not have burdened myself with the horrible key, I entered Jaffery's chambers. I found the small sitting-room in very much the same state of litter as when Jaffery left it. He enjoyed litter and hated the devastating tidiness of housemaids. Give a young horse with a long, swishy tail a quarter of an hour's run in an ordinary bachelor's rooms, and you will have the normal appearance of Jaffery's home. As I knew he did not want me to dust his books and pictures (such as they were) or to make order ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... other desired slave. The French Government, for forty thousand francs, licensed an opium farmer to sell the drug still faster, and not until alarmed by the results and shamed by the outcry in Europe, did it forbid the devastating narcotic. Too late! ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... inspiring courage as on the day before, passed here and there, strengthening the weak points, and sending many great guns to the crest of Missionary Ridge, whence they swept the front of the enemy with a devastating fire. ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mysterious space Are one by one subdued by lordly man. The awful lightning that for eons ran Their devastating and untrammelled race, Now bear his messages from place to place Like carrier doves. The winds lead on his van; The lawless elements no longer can Resist his strength, but yield with ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... advance culture, commonly bear the stamp of this unsophisticated sense of honour. Epithets and titles used in addressing chieftains, and in the propitiation of kings and gods, very commonly impute a propensity for overbearing violence and an irresistible devastating force to the person who is to be propitiated. This holds true to an extent also in the more civilised communities of the present day. The predilection shown in heraldic devices for the more rapacious beasts and birds of prey goes to enforce ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... they were in camp on the San Miguel water-hole a solitary horseman on the regulation fiery steed dashed in among them. The newcomer was of a portentous and devastating aspect. A beak-like nose with a predatory curve projected above a mass of bristling, blue-black whiskers. His eye was cavernous and fierce. He was spurred, sombreroed, booted, garnished with revolvers, abundantly drunk, and very much unafraid. Few people in the country drained ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... was his own, and went through Europe with him, giving expression to the voices within, which, to him, had been unutterable,—then we saw that the emotions which would have been safe, had they been suffered to well up gently from the first, could come forth now only as a fierce and perhaps devastating torrent. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... September day wore away with nothing untoward to alarm us, until late in the afternoon we saw smoke rising above the hills to the southwest. This meant that our devastating army was well on its way, and, as usual, laying waste the Indian towns and hamlets which its flanking riflemen discovered; and we all jumped up on our breastworks to ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... chargers—howled over the Steppe, the Volga, and the town. Elemental, all-devastating, as in the days of ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... in every society which was ever established, and, to all appearance, must strive for the victory in all that will be. Historians point to the greed and ambition of rulers, to the reckless turbulence of the ruled, to the debasing effects of wealth and luxury, and to the devastating wars which have formed a great part of the occupation of mankind, as the causes of the decay of states and the foundering of old civilizations, and thereby point their story with a moral. No doubt immoral motives of all sorts have figured ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of the fire no one knew. It had come as a devastating scourge. It had left the beautiful little city a ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... have been so few that I have never needed to ask direct aid of the host of good men and women who have cheered my life, though many a gift has come to me. And this late calamity, however rude and devastating, soon began to look more wonderful in its salvages than in its ruins, so that I can hardly feel any right to this munificent endowment with which you, and my other friends through you, have astonished me. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... retired on Petra Bona, and that too was taken. Then the Austrians rushed toward the bridge of the Bormida; but Carra-Saint-Cyr was there before them. The flying multitudes sought the fords, or plunged into the Bormida under a devastating fire, which did not slacken before ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... things that sadden a man as he grows older and reviews his life is the reflection that his most devastating deeds were generally the ones which he did with the best motives. The thought is disheartening. I can honestly say that, when George Mackintosh came to me and told me his troubles, my sole desire was to ameliorate ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... had gone, and he left her without breaking his silence more than was needed to wish her good night, she sat on for a time, reviewing what he had said. If love is a devastating fire which melts the whole being into one mountain torrent, Mary was no more in love with Denham than she was in love with her poker or her tongs. But probably these extreme passions are very rare, and the state of mind thus depicted belongs to the very last stages ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... of strife raged wildly there, 'Mid cries for help and struggles of despair; All human efforts powerless to assuage, The greedy fire-fiend's devastating rage. ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... great a fuss about the Borgoo robbers, and so manifest a dread of them, that a minder on the high-way is of very rare occurrence. When this crime was perpetrated, the whole nation seemed to be terror-struck, and the people rose up in arms, as if a public enemy were devastating their country, and slaughtering its inhabitants without mercy. This is the only instance they ever heard of a young man entertaining a strong attachment for a female. Marriage is celebrated by the natives as unconcernedly as possible. A man thinks as little of taking ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... all around in this forest paradise, our army was gathered, destroying, raging, devastating the fairest land that I had seen in many a day. All the country was aflame; smoke rolled up, fouling the blue sky, burying woodlands, blotting out the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Foz d'Aronce, the allies were successful; but the French still continued to retire, burning the towns and villages in their rear, and devastating the country along the whole line of march by every expedient of cruelty the heart of man has ever conceived. In the words of one whose descriptions, however fraught with the most wonderful power of painting, are equally marked by truth, "Every horror that ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... extremes of heat and cold, removed alike from the sultry, protracted summers of the more southern states, and the longer winters and devastating storm and cyclones of the North and Northwest. Its limits north and south correspond ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... the region of the great woods and the valleys of the higher peaks; and thin streams swell to raging floods which burst suddenly from the altitudes, rolling down rocks and trees and wreck of forests, uplifting crags, devastating slopes. And sometimes, down the ravine of the Roxelane, there comes a roar as of eruption, with a rush of foaming water like a moving mountain-wall; and bridges and buildings vanish with its passing. In 1865 the Savane, high as it lies above the river-bed, was flooded;—and all the bridges ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... Aside from the devastating wars which the tribe carried on with their new enemies west of the great river, whereby their numbers were steadily reduced, no serious shadow fell upon their life at and about Rock Island till the year 1804. A French trader had established himself a few miles below on the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... with vain hope, for the papers next morning blazoned the news to all the world. That they printed it under great staring head-lines was not surprising to me, for to me this fact transcended all others in importance. Beside it the rumblings of war in the Balkans, the devastating flood in China, or the earthquake which wrecked a southern city were trifles. So to my distorted view the papers were filled with the announcement of my overwhelming misfortune. Only by the greatest effort could I drag myself from reading ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... into his mouth a whole theodicy expressing an elaborate teleological view of nature. But that we dare not base anything upon this is now, I think, universally acknowledged. Plato, in the dialogue Euthyphron, makes him subject the popular notion of piety to a devastating criticism; but this, again, will not nowadays be regarded as historical by anybody. Everything we are told about Socrates which bears the stamp of historical truth indicates that he restricted himself to ethics and left theology alone. ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... them. A devastating blizzard enveloped them, and they lay huddled together behind a rock, chilled to the bone by the driving particles of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... peace was impossible "unless something happens, the evidence of which is not visible at present." But that "something" did happen—though it was something infinitely more dreadful, infinitely more devastating in its consequences, even though less dishonouring to the nation, than the alternative from which it saved us. Balanced, as it seemed, on the brink of civil war, Great Britain and Ireland together toppled over on the other side into the maelstrom ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... rock, outlined against the bluest of blue skies. There is one gray peak ahead, tinged with green. The trail is all washed away and our horses stumble and slide, slip and almost fall over the barren and rough rocks, and the scattered bowlders, a devastating ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... cyclone, resembling a solid wall of water, which at Diamond Harbour rose to the height of 34 feet; when it reached Calcutta it was 27 to 28 feet, rushing up the Hooghly from the sea at the rate of 20 miles an hour, destroying and overwhelming everything it encountered in its wild and devastating career. It was, of course, a matter of extreme difficulty to arrive at any very reliable estimate of the number who perished, owing to the vast area of country over which the storm raged. Happily the death rate in Calcutta itself was, comparatively speaking, ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... obstinate and dubious contest; sanguinary battles were fought; a brilliant array of heroes succeeded each other on the field of glory; and Flanders and Brabant were the schools which educated generals for the coming century. A long, devastating war laid waste the open country; victor and vanquished alike were bathed in blood; while the rising republic of the waters gave a welcome to fugitive industry, and out of the ruins erected the noble edifice of its own greatness. For forty years a war lasted, whose happy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... terrific bombardment the war had witnessed burst with devastating fury upon the German lines. Nothing had been heard like it, and men smiled grimly, knowing that ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... This is not an indictment of the whole German people; it is an indictment of the militaristic-bureaucratic ruling class, which, persuaded of its divine inspiration and intolerant of criticism,[432] has plunged the country into a devastating war. It is not unlikely that the end of the conflict will mark also the overthrow of the Hohenzollern dynasty. The spirit of the Germans of 1848, who labored unsuccessfully to make their country a republic, may awake again and realise its dreams. In concluding this chapter, ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... your article in No. 51, on the forest fires and drought following a very wet season, and remarking that we should have such extremes, is it not due—our irregularity of climate—to our careless devastating of whole portions of the country of trees? Many claim so. We are in sore need of national ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 53, November 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various |
