"Go to pieces" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... snapping metal rang out sharp as a pistol report. A bright blade of metal flashed past the wing-struts, to fall in a flashing arc. The motor broke abruptly into a mad, deep-voiced roar. Terrific vibration shook the ship, until I feared that it would go to pieces. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... to be done, however, had to be done quickly. The vessel had struck on a great rock, the billows were sweeping over her, and she might go to pieces any minute. The storm, although it had not yet reached its full height, was rapidly rising, the wind blew louder and louder, until we could scarcely hear each other speak. The men we had saved were battered and bruised ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... star near it?—by its sinking, at times, in the ocean. Now observe the hummock, a little north of it, looking like a shadow in the horizon—'tis a hill far inland. If we keep that light open from the hill, we shall do well—but if not, we surely go to pieces." ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... boat, and were even now heading toward the wreck on the reef; though the chances of finding a single living soul aboard seemed small indeed, for the billows were breaking completely over her, and she must soon go to pieces. ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... uninhabited wilderness, devoid even of vegetation other than moss and low growing shrubs. One of my first discoveries was this cavern with its subterranean stream of water, and two openings, one of which gives easy access to the sea. Knowing that our ship must, sooner or later, go to pieces, and desirous of saving what property I might, I rigged up a derrick at the mouth of the cavern, and, with the aid of my brave wife, transferred everything movable from the wreck; a labour ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... was absurd for Bonfire to go to pieces in that fashion. You can ship a Missouri Modoc around the world and he will finish almost as sound as he started. But Bonfire had blood and breeding and a pedigree which went back to Lady Alice of ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... began the latter slowly, "the Apostles, the angels, and the Saviour are most beautiful too. But there is one thing troubling me. That slender pillar cannot support that heavy vault much longer; it will soon totter and fall down, and all will go to pieces." ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... cut him short. "I know that's true! Ye're only tryin' to save my feelin's. I know ye're better than me! I've tried hard to hold me head up, I've tried a long time not to let meself go to pieces. I've even tried to keep cheerful, telling meself I'd not want to be like Mrs. Zamboni, forever complainin'. But 'tis no use tellin' yourself lies! I been up to the church, and heard the Reverend Spragg tell the people that the rich and poor are the same in the sight of the Lord. And maybe ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... worthy of his hire,' she said, brightly. It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... But they shut him up, and the dignified military machine ground on. Anybody could see that discipline would go to pieces if the word of a jailer did not prevail over that of a prisoner, the word of a loyal and tried subordinate over that of a traitor and conspirator, an ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... decay which we term "Old Age." It is one of the most frequent and fatal of what Flexner described a decade ago as "terminal infections." Very few human beings die by a gradual process of decay, still less go to pieces all at once, like the immortal "One-Hoss Shay." Just as soon as the process has progressed far enough to lower the resisting power below a certain level, some acute infection steps in and mercifully ends the scene. This is peculiarly true ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the telephone left her little doubt of the truth. She had the self-control to answer quietly; then, when she had hung up the receiver, she let herself go to pieces. She raged up and down the room, swearing in Spanish, tears tracing red stains on her magnolia complexion. She dashed a vase full of flowers on the floor, and felt a fierce thrill as it ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... wheel; still, we managed to get the vessel round, but scarcely were the braces belayed and the ship on the starboard tack, when she struck the ground broadside on. She was a soft-wood built ship, and she trembled, sir, as though she would go to pieces at once like a pack of cards. Sheets and halliards were let go, but no man durst venture aloft. Every moment threatened to bring the spars crushing about us, and the thundering and beating of the canvas made the masts buckle and jump like fishing-rods. ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... comes in. The French know there's a sort of diplomatic credo at the London Foreign Office to the general effect that England and France have got to stand together or Europe will go to pieces. The French are realists. They bank on that. They tread on British corns, out here, all they want to, while they toss bouquets, backed by airplanes, across the ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... be able to carry along smoothly all the easily entangling threads of detail; he must not only have a capable brain, but he must have the untiring nervous energy that can "hold out" through any crisis. Such men may go to pieces after incredible effort, but they are on the way to success first. Danger only quickens the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... day after day, from daybreak to dark, most of the time through spruce bogs where the water was sometimes ankle-deep, and at times up to our thighs. We were wet all the time, and our shoes began to rot and go to pieces. ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... you did. I thought I heard you mutter something about Sanger. That fellow has developed, hasn't he? But we'll get onto him yet. When these strike-out twirlers go to pieces, they're liable to blow up completely. The boys will pound him ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... to discharge her cargo in boats as soon as another tide should raise her into an upright position. We felt little hope of being able to save the ship, but it was all-important that her cargo should be discharged before she should go to pieces. Captain Tobezin, of the Russian steamer Saghalin, offered us the use of all his boats and the assistance of his crew, and on the following day we began work with six or seven boats, a large lighter, and about fifty men. The sea still continued to ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... every thoughtful man among us feels that a great danger to our faith to-day comes from the force with which that current swings us round, and threatens to make some of us drag our anchors, and drift, and strike and go to pieces on the sands. For one man who is led by the sheer force of reason to yield to the intellectual grounds on which modern unbelief reposes, there are twenty who simply catch the infection in the atmosphere. They find that their early convictions have evaporated, they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... would never again be forced to go to war; that they had seen the folly of it, and the misery of it, and would devote themselves thereafter to the delightful pursuits of peace. Gradually the fighting ships of the ironclad class were allowed to go to pieces; gradually even the larger ships of the wooden sailing class fell into disrepair; gradually the idea of war faded from the minds even of naval officers; gradually squadrons and fleets, as such, were broken ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... Sancho moved on in a gentle trot, and Willie and Helen and Richard went into the house, where Curlypate had already gone, and where they found her on tiptoe, with her short little fingers in the sugar-bowl, trying in vain to find a lump that would not go to pieces in the vigorous squeeze that she gave in her desire to ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... "I know that Cal Warren would rather see the Three Bar go to pieces from its own pressure, fighting from the inside to grow, than to see it whittled down from the outside without ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... to me," said Miss de Lisle, laughing. "If I can't manage to worry out a fish course without you, I don't deserve to have half my diplomas. Run away: the house won't go to pieces in ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... it make if it all went to the devil," one of them philosophizes—"I should like to see the earth go to pieces suddenly, provided that I should perish the last, after having seen the others die.... I'm an ex-man, am I not? I am a pariah, then, estranged from all bonds and duties.... I can ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. Make haste, sir, if you want to see her! It's thought, down on the beach, she'll go to pieces every moment.' ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... mind slip like sand through the grasp of an infirm purpose; Othello, that the perpetual silt of some one weakness, the eddies of a suspicious temper depositing their one impalpable layer after another, may build up a shoal on which an heroic life and an otherwise magnanimous nature may bilge and go to pieces. All this we may learn, and much more, and Shakespeare was no doubt well aware of all this and more; but I do not believe that he wrote his plays with any such didactic purpose. He knew human nature too well not to know that one thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning,—that, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... field after him as he went. He was welcome nowhere—deserted and forsaken on every side. Even in his work, he was the most unfortunate of labourers. Ill-luck ever attended it. If he ploughed, either the ploughshare would go to pieces, or the furrows would turn over so often, that he could not stir. If he sowed in the serenest weather, when not a breath of air was moving, a whirlwind would arise as soon as he had begun, carrying the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Thursday or Friday, I think. He'd been laid off for a day or so and I thought he'd gone a bit fine, although he's rather too phlegmatic to suffer much from nerves. Some of the high-strung chaps do go to pieces about this time and you have to nurse them along pretty carefully. But Gilbert! Well, on Saturday—yes, that was the day—he'd been reported perfectly fit by the trainer and just as a matter of form I asked him if he was ready to play. And, by Jove, he had the cheek to face me and say ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a moment, smiling at them. Then her eyes wandered aimlessly around the room. She must do something quick, or she would go to pieces. She saw the piano, and fairly ran to it. Crash! went the chords. Rippling and tumbling on one another came the notes under her nervous fingers. Out of the jumble of unrelated sounds presently emerged a gay and ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... I'll make them organise instead of bickering. I'll swing the controlling vote myself. If fifty thousand won't do it I'll put the rest in. And then we'll buy you and your crowd out or we'll sell you water or you'll go to pieces so badly that the sheriff ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... retorted the other. "I thought you'd hev been half a sailor by this time, judgin' by your smart lad of a brother! Why, the wind is jest choppin' round to the west'ard, I reckon; an', as I don't kinder like to let the ship go to pieces on them thaar cliffs to loo'a'd, I guess we're goin' to make tracks into the offin' an' give the land a ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... as he lifted his glass. "Time for everything but work, Crowther. She has developed beastly loose morals in her old age. Some day there'll come a nasty bust up, and she may pull herself together and do things again, or she may go to pieces. I ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... brainy speech, straight from the shoulder, and it got to everybody in that crowd. I know. I've watched crowds for years." He cleared his throat as if tempted to digress on his knowledge of crowds—then continued. "But, Mr. Dalyrimple, I've seen too many young men who promised brilliantly go to pieces, fail through want of steadiness, too many high-power ideas, and not enough willingness to work. So I waited. I wanted to see what you'd do. I wanted to see if you'd go to work, and if you'd stick to what ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... judged him an' I'd judges him harsh; but when I saw him go to pieces there on the padded bench I just seemed to go to pieces with him. When I saw the strength leave him like the steam from an engine as the flood reaches its fire-box; when I saw the hands that thought they was strong ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... waists modify to the last his visions of Greek ideal. His foregrounds had always a succulent cluster or two of greengrocery at the corners. Enchanted oranges gleam in Covent Gardens of the Hesperides; and great ships go to pieces in order to scatter chests of them on the waves.[122] That mist of early sunbeams in the London dawn crosses, many and many a time, the clearness of Italian air; and by Thames' shore, with its stranded barges and glidings of red sail, dearer to us than Lucerne ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... was not sailing in a false direction. No, he could not find fault with himself on that point. The sun, even though he could not perceive it in the fogs, always rose before him to set behind him. But, then, that land, had it disappeared? That America, on which his vessel would go to pieces, perhaps, where was it, if it was not there? Be it the Southern Continent or the Northern Continent—for anything way possible in that chaos—the "Pilgrim" could not miss either one or the other. What had happened since the beginning of this frightful tempest? What was still ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... won't," grumbled Giraffe. "The blame old tub is just about ready to go to pieces on us, the first chance she gets; and ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... very—terrible, Honor," she said. "I never imagined you could be as terrible as that." Then her lips quivered, and she caught at the girl's skirt, drawing her nearer. "You must go on helping me, or everything will go to pieces." ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... that good shoes, for instance, are more economical than cheap ones; for the cheap shoes soon go to pieces, soon get shabby; one good pair would outlast three or four of ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons
... I do that somebody has to take the throne seat after—after your Aunt Mary dies—I mean, after Holiest Mother is translated to eternity. Ask her, beg her, for some advice. We can't let the great undertaking go to pieces—" ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... thrilling moment in the midst of the worst hour on Friday when we were realizing that the fires must be drawn, and when every pump had failed to act, and when the bulwarks began to go to pieces and the petrol cases were all afloat and going overboard, and the word was suddenly passed in a shout from the hands at work in the waist of the ship trying to save petrol cases that smoke was coming up through the seams in the afterhold. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... he, "I take it to be conceded that unless the Trescott paper is cared for, things will go to pieces here. That's the same as saying that it must be ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... didn't. She had on a black Ernani dress, and a nice silk underskirt; and as she lifted herself along with her hands, hoist after hoist sidewise, of course the thin stuff dragged on the rocks and began to go to pieces. By the time she came to where she could stand, she was a rebus of the Coliseum,—"a noble wreck in ruinous perfection." She just had to tear off the long tatters, and roll them up in a bunch, and fling them over into a hollow, and throw the two or ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... capitalistic production. Its very basis is the necessity of constant expansion, and this constant expansion now becomes impossible. It ends in a deadlock. Every year England is brought nearer face to face with the question: either the country must go to pieces, or capitalist production must. ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... But you mustn't go to pieces when we all want every bit of pluck and steadiness. We're getting used to it now, too—and I'm sure your brother would like to think you were being as brave as—as he. . . ." She turned her head and stared out of the window. Was she a hypocrite, she wondered, to try to preach to anyone ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... good deal of likelihood that the steamer might go to pieces on the reef if a storm blew up, it was decided to take the two injured men to the Miami, where the doctor could give them better attention. Owing to the difficulty of the steamer's position on the reef, with the surf breaking ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... it would be better to go to a big talk completely unarmed. They were lying on the rail but he didn't pick them up. Four shots didn't matter. They could not matter if the world of his creation were to go to pieces. He said nothing of that to Mrs. Travers but busied himself in giving her the means to alter her personal appearance. It was then that the sea-chest in the deckhouse was opened for the first time before the interested ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... However, to show the unaccountable workings of Providence, that which often appears to be the greatest evil, proved to be the greatest good! That unmerciful sea lifted and beat us up so high among the rocks, that at last the ship scarcely moved. She was very strong, and did not go to pieces at the first thumping, though her decks tumbled in. We found afterwards that she had beat over a ledge of rocks, almost a quarter of a mile in extent beyond us, where, if she had struck, every soul of us ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... novice in sleigh-travelling. Those which we now encountered were certainly the worst I ever travelled over, rising in succession like the waves of the sea, and making our conveyance plunge sometimes so roughly that I expected it to go to pieces. Indeed, I cannot understand how wood and iron could stand the crashes to which we were exposed. In this way we jolted along, sometimes over good, sometimes over bad roads, till about nine o'clock, when we stopped at a neat, comfortable-looking ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... sea will come, do what you will, and the best boat ever built would go to pieces on those Akimiski rocks," Katherine said, trying to cheer him because he seemed ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... be more than attempts," he said quietly. "It's in you to do something really big. And you must do it. If not, you'll go to pieces. You don't understand yourself." ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... is by oneself; and such a panic I now suffered. Whither was I drifting? The red-faced man had said that the tide was ebbing through the Golden Gate. Was I, then, being carried out to sea? And the life-preserver in which I floated? Was it not liable to go to pieces at any moment? I had heard of such things being made of paper and hollow rushes which quickly became saturated and lost all buoyancy. And I could not swim a stroke. And I was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... long, long time the white hose lacked reinforcements, so that they began to grow thin from top to toe. Martha feared that they would go to pieces in one irremediable catastrophe, like the one-hoss shay. Evidently Eddie's job did not warrant unnecessary expenditures. Then the holes began to appear. Martha tucked them grimly under the glittering needle of the Klinger darner and mender but at the first incision she snapped the thread, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... laid bare. You have several times run against these breakers, your hopes have been often shipwrecked upon them, more than once your desires—those of a young marrying man—(where, alas, is that time!) have seen their richly laden gondolas go to pieces there: the flower of the cargo went to the bottom, the ballast of the marriage remained. In short, to make use of a colloquial expression, as you talk over your marriage with yourself you say, as you look at Caroline, "She is not what I ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... "Bob—see that note?" And when the young man answered, the other returned: "We had to do that, and several other things, this spring to tide us over. I didn't bother you with it—but we just had to do it—or close up, and go to pieces with the wheat scheme." ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... straws. After all are cut, mix them lightly together, and to prevent them sticking, keep them floured a little until you are ready to drop them into your soup which should be done shortly before dinner, for if boiled too long they will go to pieces. ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... should be facing the problem, to which the representative Mr. Richter referred with much concern, of the organization of labor. If a business, employing twenty thousand laborers and more, goes to pieces, and if the big industries go to pieces, because they have been denounced to public opinion and to the legislature as dangerous and liable to heavier taxes, we could not let twenty thousand, and hundreds of thousands of laborers starve to death. In such a case we should have to organize a genuine State-socialism, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... would be good if the young man could be got to break his neck out hunting;—or good if the yacht could be made to founder, or go to pieces on a rock, or come to any other fatal maritime misfortune. But these were accidents which he personally could have no power to produce. Such wishing was infantine, and fit only for a weak woman, such ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... me on the spot; you certainly will." Julia felt anxious, for her mother showed signs of going into hysterics. But she put her foot out and shook her head in a way that said that all her friends might die and all the world might go to pieces before she would yield. Mrs. Anderson had one forlorn hope. She determined to order that forward. Leaving Julia alone, she ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... you ain't takin' no count of the feelin's of the men—an' of mine an' yours.... I'll bet you my hoss thet in a day or so this gang will go to pieces." ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... spruce and creosote. Everything, in short, has the flavor of the wilderness and a free life. It is idyllic. And yet, with all our sentimentality, there is nothing feeble about the cooking. The slapjacks are a solid job of work, made to last, and not go to pieces in a person's stomach like a trivial bun: we might record on them, in cuneiform characters, our incipient civilization; and future generations would doubtless turn them up as Acadian bricks. Good, robust victuals are what ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and their sympathy with his difficulties. The troops all wore alpargatas—a species of sandal, of which the sole is of plaited hemp. These are admirably adapted for long marches in dry weather, but the wet destroys them, and they go to pieces directly. Of these sandals, as of every other description of equipment, there was sometimes great difficulty in obtaining a sufficient supply. One day that it rained heavily, Zumalacarregui was going to pass, with several battalions, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... shoes of London. Already in some provincial towns a great business is done by the conversion of old shoes into new. They call the men so employed translators. Boots and shoes, as every wearer of them knows, do not go to pieces all at once or in all parts at once. The sole often wears out utterly, while the upper leather is quite good, or the upper leather bursts while the sole remains practically in a salvable condition; but your ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Adelantado and Ojeda talked alone together in the Viceroy's house. But next day was held a great council, all our principal men attending. There it was determined to capture, if possible, Caonabo, withdrawing him so from the confederacy. The confederacy might then go to pieces. In the meantime use every effort to detach from it Gwarionex who after Guacanagari was our nearest great cacique. Send a well-guarded, placating embassy to him and to Cotubanama. Try kindness, kindness everywhere, kind words and good deeds!—And ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... lose sight of Christ and begin to consider our past, we simply go to pieces. We must turn our eyes to the brazen serpent, Christ crucified, and believe with all our heart that He is our righteousness and our life. For Christ, on whom our eyes are fixed, in whom we live, who lives in us, is Lord over Law, sin, death, and ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... ugly night, my lads, and we're on a rotten boat. The carpenter says, unless we run before the wind, we shall go to pieces in half-an-hour. I say, if we do run, we shall be on Slyne Head in two hours. Which shall it be? ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... and ease, and with precisely the same design, to make a rose no rose. Leaf after leaf fell under Mr. Stackpole's touch, as if it had been a black frost. The American government was a rickety experiment; go to pieces presently,—American institutions an alternative between fallacy and absurdity, the fruit of raw minds and precocious theories;—American liberty a contradiction;— American character a compound of quackery and pretension;—American society (except at Mrs. Evelyn's) an anomaly;—American destiny ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... brought about will be of long duration. It is their conviction that the natives are at heart hostile to the present Government, that such of them as profess loyalty to it do so from fear of the powers, and that it would speedily go to pieces if the war ships were withdrawn. In reporting to his Government on the unsatisfactory situation since the suppression of the late revolt by foreign armed forces, the German consul ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... which was shown by Captain Savage could have saved the ship and her crew. We had chased a convoy of vessels to the bottom of the bay: the wind was very fresh when we hauled off, after running them on shore, and the surf on the beach even at that time was so great, that they were certain to go to pieces before they could be got afloat again. We were obliged to double-reef the topsails as soon as we hauled to the wind, and the weather looked very threatening. In an hour afterwards, the whole sky was covered with one black cloud, which sank ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... knowing that enchanting part of London. I made acquaintance with it in a fog, in that sight-seeing visit I paid to town; and its beauty, I must confess, did not impress me. From St. Katherine's Docks you will reach Antwerp in about eighteen hours—always provided the ship does not go to pieces." ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... discriminations, any equivalent to his own rules? Might not her taste for the best and rarest be the very instrument of her undoing; and if something that wasn't "trash" came her way, would she hesitate a second to go to pieces for it? ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... shortstop, who muffed it. The third hitter reached his base on another error by an infielder. Here the bases were crowded, and the situation had become critical all in a moment. Wayne believed the infield would go to pieces, and lose the game, then and there, if another hit went to short ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... threw the pistol at the bear when you pulled the trigger," laughed Jerry. "Sure as you are born, Blumpo, that pistol will go to pieces if you try to ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... how many more circlings of the clock-hands were measured off before the break came. I lost count of the time by days and was no longer able to think clearly. In perfect physical condition when I was arrested, I began to go to pieces, both mentally and physically, under the strain of suspense. Then insomnia came to add its terrors; I could neither eat nor sleep. I had an ominous foreboding of what the total loss of appetite meant, and kept telling myself over and over that for Polly's sake I must ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... plan of removing the ship, that increased in number and magnitude the more he thought on the subject. Security to the fresh water was one great object to be attained. Should it come on to blow, and the ship drift down upon the rocks to leeward of her, she would probably go to pieces in an hour or two, when not only all the other ample stores that she contained, but every drop of sweet water at the command of the two seamen, would inevitably be lost. So important did it appear to Mark to make sure of a portion of this great essential, at least, that he would have proposed towing ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Hakmesser[*] Is there, that's founder'd many a gallant ship. If they should fail to double that with skill, Their bark will go to pieces on the rocks, That hide their jagged peaks below the lake. The best of pilots, boy, they have on board. If man could save them, Tell is just the man, But he is manacled both ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... There was almost an open clash. The Governor, a Unionist, threatened even to recall the Kentucky troops from the field to come back and protect their homes. Even the Home Guards got disgusted with their masters, and for a while it seemed as if the State, between guerilla and provost-marshal, would go to pieces. For months the Confederates had repudiated all connection with these free-booters and had joined with Federals in hunting them down, but when the State government tried to raise troops to crush them, the Commandant not only ordered his troops to resist the State, but ordered ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... show anything," he assured himself, pleadingly, when alone. "It only showed that it was going to show in the morning. I knew that. I knew all the time I was going to know in the morning. I'll not go to pieces. I'll not be a fool about ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... it's obviously my fault," said Mark. "I expect I go to pieces in examinations, or perhaps I'm not intended to ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... of mail. You will call forth reaction. Even that is the least. But reaction will come about in your own mind; after a long time, I mean. Still, you are strong; it will be a reaction of the kind that keeps aloof in order to spring farther and better. Your unity will not go to pieces. You are a kind ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his "mug." Take the man, for instance, who deals in the mathematical sciences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up against it, it never yields a hair's breadth; everything must go to pieces that comes in collision with it. What the mathematician knows being absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering question, it should tend, in the nature of things, to breed a despotic way of thinking. So of those who deal with the palpable and often unmistakable facts of external nature; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... some misunderstanding among the Saints, the Lord did not intend his Church should go to pieces because its leader had been taken away. The Church had been set up never to be thrown down or left to other people. The Gospel had been given to the earth "for the last time and for the fullness of times." The Saints had a promise that the kingdom was theirs "and the enemy shall not overcome." ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson
... an external necessity for obeying social laws which must be respected, or society would go to pieces; and there is just as great an internal necessity for obeying spiritual laws to gain our proper self-control and power for use; but we do not recognize that necessity because, while disregarding the laws ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... on deck again and called the men to him. "Look here, lads; you see that steamer ashore on the Paternosters. In such a sea as this she may go to pieces in half an hour. I am determined to make an effort to save the lives of those on board. As you can see for yourselves there is no lying to weather of her, with the current and wind driving us on to the reef; we must beat up from ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... duty. Horsham ... here you have Cantelupe who won't stand in with the man, and Percival who won't stand in with his measure, while I would sooner stand in with neither. Isn't it better to face the situation now than take trouble to form the most makeshift of Cabinets, and if that doesn't go to pieces, be voted down in the House ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... (hanging out that bleached rag of a sympathetic smile), the Upper River was not the Lower River, you know. (That really did seem remarkably true, and we became alarmed.) The Upper River, mind you, was terriffic. Why, those frail ribs and that impossible planking would go to pieces on the first rock—like an egshell! Of course, we were free to do as we pleased—they would not discourage us for the world. And the engine! Gracious! Such a boat would never stand the vibration of a four-horse, high-speed engine driving ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... But Bill shore did," replied his father. "Reckon I would have squealed, though. Mother an' Lucy have a lot more nerve than me. Fact is, though, Bill didn't give 'em time to go to pieces. He just busted out with news of Blake's escape. Say, boy, you should ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... that any attempt to settle Europe on the basis of the present hemming in of a consolidated Germany and German Austria by a hostile combination of Russia and the extreme states against it, would go to pieces by its own inherent absurdity, just as it has already exploded most destructively by its own instability. Until Russia becomes a federation of several separate democratic States, and the Tsar is either promoted to the honourable position ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... confirmation of Samson's words the Rajput team seemed rather to go to pieces in the third chukker. There was the same brilliant individual hitting, and as much speed as ever, but the genius was not there. In vain Utirupa took the ball out of a scrimmage twice and rode away with it. He was not backed up in ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... sort of thing, it is, go for a governess, go for a companion, go here, go there, in search of what? Independence? No; dependence. Besides all this going is bosh. Families are strong if they stick together, and if they go to pieces they are weak. I learned one bit of sense out of that mass of folly they call antiquity; and that was the story of the old bloke with his twelve sons, and fagot to match. 'Break 'em apart,' he said, and each son broke his stick as easy as shelling peas. 'Now break the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... it was at this point that the two men began to go to pieces. They were in an excited frame of mind, and this thing unmanned them. You will no doubt recall Keats's poem about stout Cortez staring with eagle eyes at the Pacific while all his men gazed at each other ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... with it the most upright, consistent, and disinterested body of men then in public life. "You say," the Duke of Richmond wrote to him (November 15, 1772), "the party is an object of too much importance to go to pieces. Indeed, Burke, you have more merit than any man in keeping us together." It was the character of the party, almost as much as their principles, that secured Burke's zeal and attachment; their decorum, their ...
— Burke • John Morley
... here bluff themselves and everybody else just so long and then suddenly go to pieces. It's a wonderful state, but what a life! What a life! Surely I was made for something better. ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... a thing would be quixotic. Society doesn't rest upon any such basis. It can't; it would go to pieces, if people acted ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... this new London School of Economics which is close at hand? Make up your mind to be Lord Chancellor some day ... even if it only carries you as far as the silk gown of a Q.C. I suppose I ought now to write "K.C." A few years ago we all thought the State would go to pieces when Victoria died. Yet you see we are jogging along pretty well under King Edward. In the same way, you will soon get so used to the new Head Clerk, Mrs. Claridge, that you will wonder what on earth you saw to ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... London!" thought Letty to herself, "spending piles of money, running shamefully into debt, and letting the house go to pieces. Why, the linen hasn't been ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a ball and chain attached to wrist and ankle; "and yet we bear it for her sake and for Freedom's. Who of us regrets that we did not stay at home in inglorious ease, and leave our grand old ship of state to founder and go to pieces ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... Italy, France are not diverse phenomena; they are different phases of the same phenomenon. All Europe will go to pieces if new conditions of life are not found, and the economic equilibrium profoundly shaken ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... to say without having to think daily and hourly about money. I don't over-estimate what money can do, but it is foolish to under-estimate what the want of it can do. I have seen more fine natures go to pieces under the stress of poverty than under any other stress that I know. Money is perfectly powerless as a shield against many troubles—and on the other hand it can save a man from innumerable little wretchednesses and horrors which destroy the beauty and dignity of life. I don't ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... helping those who, from exhaustion, were least able to help themselves. The air became so foul in the cabin as to cause the ship's lanterns to burn dimly, so that we feared they would soon be extinguished. Thus we lived amid the raging elements, shut up in a storm-tossed coffin which we knew might go to pieces at any moment. ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... best-known bankers in Berlin has lamented to me that he must change his people in South America every few years, as they soon go to pieces there. Army officers came home from China indignant to find their compatriots there speaking English and unwilling even to speak German. Even as long ago as the time of the Thirty Years' War a forgotten chronicler, Adam ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... he, in a quick, firm tone, "we are ashore. Perhaps we shall go to pieces in a few minutes. God knows. May He in His mercy spare us. You cannot do much on deck. Ailie must be looked after till I come down for her. Glynn, I ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... surgeon smiled. "But I've seen a medical man himself go to pieces over his own child. This is a simple matter," he went on lightly. "Luckily, boiling water is a more potent antiseptic than all the drugs on the market—and alcohol's another. I shall want a new hairpin or two—if Juliet has a wire one.—That the alcohol? Thank you. ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... at grandeur, but due to a feeling that if he once got into chaotic ways he would go to pieces. Probably he felt the necessity all the more from the fact that he was a widower and might the more easily have dropped into untidy and slovenly ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... will be riddled by one destructive internal change after another. In such a case the secondary stage of the disease may pass with half a dozen red spots on the body and no constitutional symptoms, and the patient go to pieces a few years later with locomotor ataxia or general paralysis of the insane. On the other hand, a patient may have a stormy time in the secondary period and have abundant reason to realize he has ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... a graver tone, "that if I had my way, I'd leave some of the ships out of the production. After you've once seen some big craft go to pieces on the shoals, you rather lose your liking for ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... air, as if it brooded solemnly on the wrong done to it by taking away its original name, and calling it Bowdoin; but as if, being a very conservative street, it was resolved to keep a cautious silence on the subject, lest the Union should go to pieces. Sometimes it wears a profound and mysterious look, as if it could tell something if it had a mind to, but thought it best not. Something of the ghost of its father—it was the only child he ever had!—walking there all the night, pausing at the corners to look up at the ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... been useful as a kind of buyer and seller, who was ever all things to all men, and ready with quip and jest, and not a little uncertain as to truth—to which the old man shut his eyes when there was a "deal" on—had, in the end, been of no use at all, and had seemed to go to pieces just when he was most needed. His father had put it all down to Cassy Mavor, who had unsettled things since she had come to Lumley's, and, being a man of very few ideas, he cherished those he had with an exaggerated care. Prosperity had not softened him; it had given him an arrogance ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... indoors," declared Dorothy. "I should go to pieces! The only thing that will save me is action. Let me help ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... is growing old, like all the rest of us," her husband interposed. "He is growing old quite fast, indeed. I believe, however, that bachelors usually go to pieces suddenly. Their breaking-up comes more abruptly than ours. He ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... everything to it. Divide the twenty-four hours between work, recreation, sleep, and mental culture according to a scheme that suits your judgment and circumstances. Then make things go that way. The scheme will quickly go to pieces 10 unless backed ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... despair, "is it possible—is it thrue—that my manly husband—the best father that ever breathed the breath of life—my own Denis, is lying dead—murdhered before my eyes? Put your hands on my head, some of you—put your hands on my head, or it will go to pieces. Where are you, Denis—where are you, the strong of hand, and the tender of heart? Come to me, darling, I want you in my distress. I want comfort, Denis; and I'll take it from none but yourself, for kind was your word to me in ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... could see," said Maxime to himself, "if they could only see!... their whole society would go to pieces,... but they will always be blind, they do not want ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... deliver us from evil, Amen.' And with that he struck his hand on his breast, and sighed deeply several times. At last he rose, his whole body shook as if he had swallowed down a bitter medicine; then he struck his head against the wall, and there was such a noise that I thought his skull would go to pieces; then he bent over me, listened to my breathing, and covered me carefully; then he went to his own room and shut the door behind him. Before, he always left the door open to hear me wake. I got up quietly and slipped to the door to watch what ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai |
