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Ruin   /rˈuən/  /rˈuɪn/   Listen
Ruin

noun
1.
An irrecoverable state of devastation and destruction.  Synonym: ruination.
2.
A ruined building.
3.
The process of becoming dilapidated.  Synonym: dilapidation.
4.
An event that results in destruction.  Synonym: ruination.
5.
Failure that results in a loss of position or reputation.  Synonyms: downfall, ruination.
6.
Destruction achieved by causing something to be wrecked or ruined.  Synonyms: laying waste, ruination, ruining, wrecking.



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"Ruin" Quotes from Famous Books



... the gambler's enemy, Beguiled them to their ruin; "These ugly sprites, they say, are rich, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... they understand better. They have therefore nothing to struggle against, but the common casualties of nature. The Irish do not prosper so well; they love to drink and to quarrel; they are litigious, and soon take to the gun, which is the ruin of everything; they seem beside to labour under a greater degree of ignorance in husbandry than the others; perhaps it is that their industry had less scope, and was less exercised at home. I have heard ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... dream, and that Timon had sent him such a present. But when he understood the truth of the matter, and that Timon wanted money, the quality of his faint and watery friendship showed itself, for with many protestations he vowed to the servant that he had long foreseen the ruin of his master's affairs, and many a time had he come to dinner to tell him of it, and had come again to supper to try to persuade him to spend less, but he would take no counsel nor warning by his coming. And ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... idea had come to him, he began to work out all sorts of possibilities. He thought of a hundred different things that might happen. He could see, all at once, the usefulness Bray Park might have. Why, the place was like a volcano! It might erupt at any minute, spreading ruin and destruction in all directions. It was a hostile fortress, set down in the midst of a country that, even though it was at war, could not believe that war might come borne ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston

... in the language of the parable, empty. To no purpose of our salvation is the Spirit of God present in the house, when the light of his presence does not flash forth from every part of it, when it is not manifest, not only that he has not quite cast it off to go to ruin, but that he has been pleased to ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... last resource, he tried to get into the next parliament at several places, and spent near 5000 l. in unsuccessful attempts, which compleated his ruin. And from this period he began to behave and live in a very different manner from what he had ever done before; wrote libellous pamphlets against Sir Robert Walpole and the ministry; and did many unjust things with respect to his relations; being ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... he owed his recovery in part, and the whole of what alleviation his disease admitted, to his benevolent care. Another had displeased Mr Gardiner, it was feared irremediably; and the young man would have gone to ruin, if Charles had not with indefatigable patience brought down his high and perverse spirit to the tone of apology and due humiliation; and, moreover, ventured to moderate his master's somewhat unreasonable anger. He got no thanks from either of them at the time: but he ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau

... is? He told me to tell anybody who come along that he was out. I didn't know you was cops. Oh, I hope there ain't nothin' goin' to ruin the reputation of this place! There ain't a woman in town who runs a decenter ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

... dramatic about all your chances depending on me," he said. "I might hold back your reports, or send on forged ones instead, or ruin you in about a hundred different ways." All Gerrard's communications with Ranjitgarh were to pass through Darwan, lest Partab Singh should intercept them on the shorter route. "When I am inclined to feel hipped, ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... had declined fighting, he would accommodate Joshua'; a kind and benevolent reply, which does equal honour to his head and heart. The editor of this little volume, like Goldfinch in the 'Road to Ruin,' 'would not stay away for a thousand pounds.' He has already looked about for a tall horse and a taxed cart, and he has some hopes of compassing a drab coat and a white hat, for he has no wish to appear ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... "I must not ruin my best attire," she said lightly, gathering it up. "Now Ninitta has spoiled my bas-relief, it may be long before I get more. I owe you a good deal, Will, for letting me ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... expressions left out; which he fears the Papists and other enemies of the Church of England will make ill use of." Is anything known of this "privately printed" volume? In the Life of Pepys (4th edit., p. xxxi.), mention is made of his having preserved from ruin the mathematical foundation at Christ's Hospital, which had been originally designed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... said Bella gloomily. "She's young and flighty, but there's wan thing, she has no money. I kent a minister—he was a kinda cousin o' ma father's—an' he mairret a heiress and they had late denner. I tell ye that late denner was the ruin o' that man. It fair got between him an' his jidgment. He couldna veesit his folk at a wise-like hour in the evening because he was gaun to hev his denner, and he couldna get oot late because his leddy-wife wanted him to be at hame efter denner. There's ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... the searching gaze of those pure eyes. She quailed under them for a moment, afraid that the question might have some reference to Beaumanoir, but reassured by the words of Amelie, that her interview had relation to Le Gardeur only, she replied: "I have done nothing to make Le Gardeur ruin himself, soul or body, Amelie. Nor do I believe he is doing so. Our old convent notions are too narrow to take out with us into the world. You judge ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... living was to be left within its walls. If in Judea there were others desperate enough to think of assassinating a Roman governor, the story of what befell the princely family of Hur would be a warning to them, while the ruin of the habitation would keep ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... though true love to the vessel she bore, Since she first laid its keel in the days that were gone— Saw it plunge madly on to the wild billows' roar, And rush to destruction and ruin forlorn. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... shaving countries a barber is held in high respect. He would be all right there. But no, no, I cannot be weak over so vital a thing as this. Just think, you two, of the consequences if through some inept act on his part he should ruin all our prospects." ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... a corner of the tent would be pushed open admitting a stream of light; the electric flash lamp might refuse to work, leaving us in complete darkness to finish the developing "by guess and by gosh," or any number of other accidents occur to ruin the film. At most we could not develop more than three hundred feet in an afternoon and we never breathed freely until it finally was dried and safely stored away in the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... with Mr. Woodbourne upon his daughter's misbehaviour, and declaring that her dear girls would never dream of taking a single step without her permission, but that learning was the ruin of young ladies. ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... going to lie down like a yellow dog and quit, that you'll let this wolf take that lamb and ruin her life! ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... the ballot a contest ensued, which lasted for several days, producing the most implacable and bitter animosities; a contest which terminated in the election of Mr. Jefferson and the ruin of Colonel Burr. Until within a few years that scene has been completely enveloped in mystery. A part of the incidents connected with it, however, in a fugitive form, are before the world. But the period has arrived when the question should be met ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... this evil plight, he found any friends at all must be recorded in his favour and in that of his subjects. When he arrived he had no escort—was, indeed, unarmed. The fugitives had good reason to be savage. Their leaders had led them only to their ruin. To cut the throat of this one man who was the cause of all their sufferings was as easy as they would have thought it innocent. Yet none assailed him. The tyrant, the oppressor, the scourge of the Soudan, the hypocrite, the abominated Khalifa; ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... was it to go back to Rome in the Temple of Diana, so beautiful in ruin and so little changed except by time, as to bring to the heart a pang of mingled joy and pain, of sadness which women love and men resent—unless they are poets. Doves were cooing softly there, the only oracles of the temple in these days; and what they said to each other and to ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... that the action I have taken will spell my financial ruin, but I propose to ascertain if a gentleman cannot take a modest flyer in Wall Street without being marked as "a come-on," which is the term used by ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... 'll see her, it will smooth matters vastly; though to tell the truth she 'll need all her courage to face you, for she considers you an agent of the foul fiend. She does n't see why you should have come here and set me by the ears: you are made to ruin ingenuous youths and desolate doting mothers. I leave it to you, personally, to answer these charges. You see, what she can't forgive—what she 'll not really ever forgive—is your taking me off to Rome. Rome is an evil word, in my mother's vocabulary, to be said in a whisper, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... instruction, its faculty, its equipment, and its daily life; but it must not be supposed that all was plain sailing. On the contrary, there were many difficulties, some discouragements, and at times we passed through very deep waters. There were periods when ruin stared us in the face—when I feared that my next move must be to close our doors and announce the suspension of instruction. The most serious of these difficulties were financial. Mr. Cornell had indeed endowed the institution munificently, and others followed his example: ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... said to be the dramatic climax in the story of rubber. It celebrated the hour when the science of invention turned a raw product—which had tantalized by its promise and wrought ruin by its treachery—into a manufacture adaptable to a thousand uses, adding to man's ease and health and to the locomotion, construction, and communication of ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... [82] The ruin of Crockston Castle is situated on the brow of a gentle eminence, about three miles south-east of Paisley. The Castle, in the twelfth century, was possessed by a Norman family, of the name of Croc; it ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... Uzziah, and continued till the first year of Manasseh. Jeremiah flourished a few years before the great captivity, and lived to witness the fulfilment of his own predictions. Ezekiel, who had been carried into the Babylonian territory some time before the ruin of his native country in the days of Zedekiah, began to perform his office among the Jewish captives in the land of the Chaldees, in the fifth year after Jehoiakim was made prisoner. Daniel, the youngest of the four, was only twelve years of age when ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... we are quite wrong about free trade: as the world is, it should be fair trade, or England will continue to lose, as she is now losing, every year. The Canadians are obliged to have Protection on account of the United States, who would send their manufactured goods by English vessels and so ruin Canadian workshops. No country can grow and prosper which only produces the raw article of food, &c. Land alone cannot make a people rich or great; he thinks the Conservative party are not half, active or energetic ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... Starr which from the ruin'd roofe Of shak't Olympus by mischance didst fall; Which carefull Jove in natures true behoofe Took up, and in fit place did reinstall? Or did of late earths Sonnes besiege the wall Of sheenie Heav'n, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... straggling ditches, where culverts had given way and the dammed streams had spread the track with wasting pools, where sometimes time-honoured weeds blotted the very memory of the trail into oblivion; when they stood before an old grey mansion, with what had once been lawns about it and the ruin of a great cedar hard by its side, its many windows surveying with a grave stare the wreck and riot of the court it kept—then for the first time Anthony Lyveden heard ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... it in this country," said Blendershin. "Don't you go corrupting your mind with pedagogueries. They're the ruin of assistants. Put down ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... to Mrs. Bowen, and assuring her that though an accident had kept him in Florence till Monday, she need not be afraid of seeing him again. But he could not go back to his room yet; he wandered about the town, trying to pick himself up from the ruin into which he had fallen again, and wondering with a sort of alien compassion what was to become of his aimless, empty existence. As he passed through the Piazza San Marco he had half a mind to pick a pebble from the gardened margin of the fountain there and toss it against the Rev. Mr. ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... all his grass, but the beasts will be lighter at the end of three months than when they were put into the field. Let me not, however, be misunderstood. I do not mean to say that a few weeks of a little cake or corn will ruin a beast for grazing; but you may depend upon it, that the less artificial food given during winter the better. When kept upon the food I have specified for months and months, they are perfectly unfit for ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie

... over I was on my knees praying beside the girl whom I had designed to ruin. I went into the streets a converted man, filled with the grace of God. I resolved to devote my life to saving souls for Christ. My old habits of sin fell away from me like a garment. I studied for the ministry. I am now in ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... very quick. She had arranged in her own mind how much and how little she was going to tell Margaret. It was to be enough to ruin her happiness and trust in her lover, enough to rob Michael of the woman who had robbed her of him; but not enough to let her know why she, Millicent, had ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... would not take bullying kindly. He had also the advantage of being acquainted with most of those ingenious devices by which the proverbial inconstancy of fortune is steadied to something more nearly approaching fixed laws, and the dangerous risks which have so often led young men to ruin and suicide are practically reduced to somewhat less than nothing. So that Mr. Richard Veneer worked off his nervous energies without any troublesome adventure, and was ready to return to Rockland in less than a week, without having lightened the money-belt ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... have made a tyrant of your son, Mrs. Bogardus. He's the Universal Spoiler! He'll ruin my striker, Jephson. I shall have to send the fellow back to the ranks. I don't know how you keep a servant good ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... able to check? The failure of crops which depend for their success upon the knowledge and activity of the principal; and the necessary and constant outlay, which is great beyond the conception of a novice, may ruin even him who farms his own land, when the care of it is only a secondary object; and this it will generally ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... themselves by grinding the taxpayer to the uttermost. They defrauded the public in such monopolies as that of tobacco, which was grossly adulterated; and they enforced payments not only with harshness and violence, but with complete disregard for the ruin which their exactions entailed. The government increased the yield of the ferme in a little less than a century from 37 to 180 millions of livres or francs,[1] and yet the sixty farmers continued to increase in wealth. They formed the most conspicuous group of plutocrats when the Revolution ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... arches had crumbled to ruins, and of all its old splendor there were only two little rooms left; and it was here that John the blacksmith had set up his forge. He was too poor to live in a proper house, and no one asked any rent for the rooms in the ruin, because all the lords of the castle were dead and gone this many a year. So there John blew his bellows and hammered his iron and did all the work which came his way. This was not much, because most of the trade went to the mayor of the town, ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit

... he didn't mind that much, he was so sure of his uncle's inheritance repairing his lost fortunes, but suddenly this difficulty of identification springs up, and he is literally on the verge of ruin." ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... recalled to Court, and it is supposed that, besides the jealousy which his brilliant deeds had awakened, he was also in disgrace on account of his warm friendship for Charles de Bourbon, who was now being driven to despair and ruin through the ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare

... nation is, "NO!" Let it be registered in the archives of Heaven!—Ere the religion we profess, and the privileges we enjoy are sacrificed at the shrines of despots and demagogues, let the pillars of creation tremble! let world be wrecked on world, and systems rush to ruin!—Let the sons of Europe be vassals; let her hosts of nations be a vast congregation of slaves; but let us, who are this day FREE, whose hearts are yet unappalled, and whose right arms are yet nerved for war, assemble before the hallowed temple ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... second on the surface of the water as if, in her death agony, she had for a moment thought of her old life when, under press of sail, she flew bounding over the billows, defying the very elements which at last had worked her ruin. Only for a moment she hung there, then with a dull crash she broke her back. The bow plunged downward with a sullen plunge, but the stern still held poised. Then, quite suddenly, the air imprisoned in the hull broke free and ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... Christophe went on, as he seemed determined to do, with his aggressive refusal to compromise with the prejudices of German art and German mind, he would turn everybody against him, even his patrons: he was courting inevitable ruin. She did not understand why he so obstinately held out against himself, and so took pleasure in digging his ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... then," said Mrs. Parry triumphantly. "The sexton and your gardener quarrelled, and have not been on speaking terms for months. Thomas, the sexton, won't let Williams do anything to the grave, and out of spite won't touch it himself, so it went to rack and ruin. The grass is long—or rather was long—and the flowers all gone to ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume

... bed-side like a fury, she flew to my sword, and with much ado I prevented her doing me or herself a mischief. Having disarmed her, in a gust of passion she left me, and in a resolution, confirmed by a thousand curses, not to close her eyes till they had seen my ruin. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... it is called—in this temple of the god Chance to be Rich is worth more than a seat in the Cabinet. It is not only true that a fortune may be made here in a day or lost here in a day, but that a nod and a wink here enable people all over the land to ruin others or ruin themselves with celerity. The relation of the Chamber to the business of the country is therefore evident. If an earthquake should suddenly sink this temple and all its votaries into the bowels of the earth, with all its nervousness ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... ashamed of you for imagining that I would lend myself to base treachery, and robbery, or piracy rather, on the high seas, laying us open, as you, a lawyer, must know, to penalties that would blast our reputations and ruin our lives. No, sir, we must face our misfortune like men. In the meanwhile, I will find out, from the captain, where his niece and her ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... This was a ruin of a different character; one of the old strongholds of the rough time when men lived by the might of hand. No delicate arches and graceful mouldings had ever been here; all was, or had been, grim, stern strength and massiveness. The strength was broken long ago; and grace, in the ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... discovery becomes known,' he said, 'the closing of the hotel and the ruin of the Company will be the inevitable results. I feel sure that I can trust your discretion, ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... valley? You must study this book for that. What can geologists tell you of the Rock of Ages, or mere astronomers about the Bright Morning Star? In those pages we find all knowledge unto salvation; here we read of the ruin of man by nature, redemption by the blood, and regeneration by the Holy Ghost. These three things run all through ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody

... with trembling step he passed, And gained the fearful eminence he sought; As on surrounding scenes his eye was cast, His troubled spirit racked with frenzied thought, And urged by ruin on his empire brought, He uttered curses on the pale-faced throng, With whom in vain his scattered warriors fought And on the sighing breeze that swept along, He poured the fiery words that filled his ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... will make his escape; stay six weeks or a couple of months (that his Mother be not suspected); and will then proceed to England. Hopes England will take such measures as to save his Sister from ruin." These are his fixed resolutions: what will England do in such abstruse case?—Captain Dickens speeds silently with his Despatch; will find Lord Harrington, not Townshend any more; [Resigned 15th May, 1730: Despatch to Hotham, as farewell, of that date.] will copiously ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... determining factor in the ruin of Rumania was the failure of the Allies to foresee the number of troops the Germans could send against them. Their reasoning up to a certain point was accurate. In July, August, and for part of September it was, I believe, almost impossible for the Germans to send troops to ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... Dauphine and Normandy. He urged upon the count the importance of the undertaking, and explained the best means of regulating it, claiming that the disorders which had hitherto existed threatened to ruin the enterprise, and to bring dishonour to ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... England and the United States will bless; but with as many British born in her boundaries anchored to freehold of land as made England great in the days of Queen Elizabeth, unless history reverse itself and fate make of facts dice tossed to ruin by malignant furies, then Canada's destiny can be ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... though a cyclone had struck Camp Surprise. Ruin and desolation surrounded them on all sides. Trees had been blown down in many instances, and everywhere were signs of a tempest such as none of these lads had even known in ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... so, do you? Well, I'll tell you what I think. It would mean getting rid of one troublesome passenger, as you call yourself, and taking a dozen worse ones on board in the shape of a prize crew. Why, young Burnett, it would mean ruin to me and to my friends, whose money has been ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... only the hasheesh. But, Skinski, on the level, I do wish you'd quit smoking those No. 4's; they'll ruin your imagination." ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh

... capital matter of religion. He ratted from his Protestant faith; and according to the literal origin of that figure he ratted; for he abjured it as rats abjure a ship in which their instinct of divination has deciphered a destiny of ruin, and at the very moment when Popery wore the promise of a triumph that might, at any rate, have lasted his time. Dryden was a Papist by apostasy; and perhaps, not to speak uncharitably, upon some bias from self-interest. Pope, on the other hand, was a Papist by birth, and by a tie ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... we remained motionless, hardly daring to move, for fear that one false step would lead us to our ruin; but, after listening for a while, we heard the dog as he reached the bottom of the ravine, and then we determined to ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... concentrated peril to mankind. I've seen trouble caused in this world by kitten faces, by pure, classic faces, by ox-eyed-Juno faces, by vivid blond faces, by dreamy, poetic faces, by passionate Southern faces, but for real power of catastrophe, for earthquake and eclipse, for red ruin and the breaking up of laws, commend me to the humanized, feminized monkey face. I'll wager that when Antony first set eyes on Cleopatra, he said, 'And which cocoa palm did she fall out of?' Phryne was of the beautified baboon cast of features, and as for Helen of ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... says the apostle, is the old man's course and nature. He will do naught but ruin himself. The longer continued, the greater his debasement. He draws down upon himself his own condemnation and penalty for body and soul; for in proportion as he becomes unbelieving and hard-hearted, does ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... also been compelled to make use of an inferior solder for the tubes, and thus the saving of a few hundred dollars frustrated the success of a great object. The consequence to poor Goldsack was utter ruin, though of his capability there could be no question, he having for many years been one of the principal assistants of Sir W. Congreve ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... reflections come too late. The colony is planted, whatever may be its influence. What do you recommend? Its immediate abandonment to want and ruin? Shall we not bestow upon it our charities, and commend it to ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... in crossing over with the army under him. It was known that he had been altogether opposed to the expedition, which had prevented the one he desired from sailing to Spain, and that he was minded to bring ruin upon it by delaying, under many false pretences, from crossing to France. He had been extremely unpopular before, but this added very greatly to the ill-feeling with which he ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... (1) Ruin warehouse stock by setting the automatic sprinkler system to work. You can do this by tapping the sprinkler heads sharply with a hammer or by holding a match ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services

... saying 'Mon Dieu,'" said she, "the thing has to be done. The gulls and the rabbits will ruin everything if we leave things about. ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... prevailed during the address of the head of the house. Cowels, the recognized leader of the war party, sat silently in his place, though frequently called upon to defend the fighters. As their chief went on telling them of the inevitable ruin that awaited the strikers, the more noisy began to accuse him of selling them out. One man wanted to know what he got for the job, but the master, feeling secure in that he was doing his duty, gave ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman

... the purpose of hunting, for the renewal of these provisions so necessary to his life, only the few charges contained in his portable powder-horn, and in the barrels of his guns. The blow which has just struck him is his ruin! and still the hardest trial appointed for him is yet ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine

... remembrance of me would leave you in peace. All this is so sad that I have not the courage to continue. Adieu, Clemence! Once more, one last time, I must say: I love you! and yet, I dare not. I feel unworthy to speak to you thus, for my love has become a disastrous gift. Did I not ruin you? The only word that seems to be permissible is the one that even a murderer dares to address to his ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... were conditioned against killing? Could our butchers operate; must our housewives live among a horde of flies? Theft? Well, it's harder to justify, James, but it would change the game of baseball as in 'stealing a base' or it would ruin the game of love as in 'stealing a kiss'. It would ruin the mystery-story field for millions of people who really haven't any inclination to go out and rob, steal, or kill. Treason? Our very revered Declaration of Independence is an article of Treason in the eyes of King ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... dearer land to our hearts is too to be regenerated. A wretched class, cursed with ineffectual freedom, is to be made free indeed, and an outlet is to be opened to those who will voluntarily disencumber themselves of the evil and the threatening ruin of another domestic pestilence. Public opinion must be the only agent in this: the most reluctant shall not be forced; the most timid shall not be alarmed by any thing we are to do. Hitherto and henceforward our plan has ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown

... your modest dispatches, you have enforced a most important truth—that the most independant conqueror felt, in the most intoxicating point of time, the influence and protection of Him whom our enemies, to their shame and ruin, had foolishly and impiously defied. May that same Power, my lord, ever protect and reward you! May it long, very long, spare to this empire so illustrious a teacher, and so ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... a terrible ruin here and there," said the captain, as Jack handed him the glass to try; "but changes take place quickly out here, and the sun's hard at work already repairing damages. Those heaps will soon rot away, and fresh growth cover the bare patches. ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... you," he said with grave simplicity. "Unless you come to her aid there must be ruin and dismemberment. You will ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... probably. Certainly it was the most exhilarating place in the world today, with its atmosphere of invincible security and prosperity, its surging tides of life. No wonder it was impossible for the intensive New Yorker to realize that four thousand miles away a greater world was falling to ruin. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... Strand. Perhaps the most dreadful effects produced by the aerial torpedoes were those which resulted from the breaking of the gas mains and the destruction of the electric conduits. Save for the bale-fires of ruin and destruction, half London was in darkness. Miles of streets under which the gas mains were laid blew up with almost volcanic force. The electric mains were severed, and all the contents dislocated, and if ever London deserved the name which James Thompson gave it when he ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... between two families, dividing the state into hostile, embittered factions. Morality was undermined, law trodden under foot, duty neglected, justice violated, the promptings of good sense disregarded. So it came about that the land was flooded by ruin as by a mighty stream, which, a tiny spring at first, gathers strength and volume from its tributaries, and overflowing its bounds, rushes over blooming meadows, fields, and pastures, drawing into its destructive depths the peasant's every joy ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... can always see 'em? Sure, sure you don't need to ask yourselves even. Jim Thorpe's been a straight man all his days in Barnriff. 'Honest Jim Thorpe' you've all many a time called him. I tell you this thing is a put-up job. Some dirty, mean skunk has set out to ruin him for some reason unknown. There are mean folks," he went on, with his keen eyes fixed on Smallbones, "here in Barnriff. They're mean enough to do this if they only hated Jim enough. I'd hate to cast reflections, but I ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... the English merchants trading with America, representing that, in consequence of the duties and taxes, the discontents of the Americans, and their combinations to prevent the importation of goods from England, their trade had gone to ruin; and praying for the intervention of the legislature. In consequence of this, a bill was proposed by Lord North, to repeal all the American taxes and duties except tea. In proposing this repeal he censured the Revenue Act only as an inexpedient or unproductive impost, and not as an illegal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... This was my darling haunt a long time past! Here, when a boy, in pleasing awe, I sate, Wistfully silent, with uplifted eye, And heart attun'd to the sad, lulling sound They made descending. Far below my feet, Near where yon little, ruin'd cottage lies, Oft, at the pensive hour of even-tide I saw young Osborne bearing on his harp, And, trusting to an aged mother's care, His darkling steps: Beneath that falling beech, Whose wide-spread branches touch the water's edge, He lov'd to sit, and feel the freshen'd gale ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham

... that matter were anything but novel—which it sought to propagate, nor in the institutions which it sought to found. The people cares very little for institutions and even less for doctrines. That the Revolution was potent indeed, that it made France accept the violence, the murders, the ruin and the horror of a frightful civil war, that finally it defended itself victoriously against a Europe in arms, was due to the fact that it had founded not a new system of government but ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... kindness, and attached himself closely to Charles, paying him much the same sort of respect and deference that he himself had affected for Andre, when the thought was first in his mind of causing his ruin. But the Duke of Durazzo was by no means deceived as to the devoted friendship shown towards him by the heir of the house of Tarentum, and pretending to be deeply touched by the unexpected change of feeling, he all the time kept a strict guard ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... standard, here it is. But I speak of Bancroft, and am advised to be silent on that subject, for he is "a black sheep—a Democrat." I speak of Bryant, and am entreated to be more careful, for the same reason. I speak of international copyright, and am implored not to ruin myself outright. I speak of Miss Martineau, and all parties—Slave Upholders and Abolitionists, Whigs, Tyler Whigs, and Democrats, shower down upon me a perfect cataract of abuse. "But what has she done? ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... nearly strangling him with stout ropes, after which the scoundrels robbed him of every stiver he possessed. The following midnight but one they descended on Furstenberg, a fief of my own, and not contenting themselves with robbery, brought red ruin on the Margrave by burning his ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... a happy life; but anxious as the sultan was, as well as myself, that I should present him with an heir, that happiness was denied me, and was eventually the cause of my ruin. The queen mother, and the Kislar Aga, both of whom I had affronted, were indefatigable in their attempts to undermine my power. The whole universe, I may say, was ransacked for a new introduction into the seraglio, whose novelty and beauty might seduce the sultan from my arms. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... reckoned, but shares to the value of L400,000 (on which L219,094 was paid up) were subscribed in Scotland. At first the company was a prosperous trading concern, but its only attempt at colonization involved it in ruin. Paterson wished his fellow-countrymen to found a colony in the Isthmus of Panama, and to attract thither the whole trade of North and South America. The ports of the colony were to be open to ships of all nations. In the ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... light in his oi. 'Sahib,' sez he, 'there's a reg'mint an' a half av soldiers up at the junction, knockin' red cinders out av ivrything an' ivrybody! They thried to hang me in my cloth,' he sez, 'an' there will be murdher an' ruin an' rape in the place before nightfall! They say they're comin' down here to wake us up. What will we do wid ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... within our Universe out of Hell, and alighted on our central Earth near Eden, and gazing up to Heaven and the Sun blazing there in meridian splendour. He had imagined Satan, in this pause of his first advent into the Universe he was to ruin, thus addressing the Sun as its chief ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... "I shall not ruin my life," replied Genevieve, with a quiet firmness that brought a profound sigh of relief ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... ex-Republicans made use of the South African Constitution — a Constitution which Lord Gladstone says is one after the Boer sentiment — to ruin the coloured population, they should at least have confined their persecution to the male portion of the blacks (as is done in a milder manner in the other three Provinces), and have left the women and children alone. According to this class legislation, no native woman in the Province ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... expect they're different really. Then there's the middle-class like Mr. Thurston and Miss Avies who pretend to believe all that Mr. Warlock says, but of course, they don't believe a word of it, and they hope that this will prove his ruin. They know there won't be any Second Coming on New Year's Eve, and then they think he will be finished and they'll be able to get rid of him. So they're encouraging him to believe in all this, and then when the moment comes they'll turn ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... general appearance into an aspect so outrageously raffish, that but for the expression of his countenance the contrast between the boast and the man would have been ludicrous even to Mr. Poole. The countenance was too dark to permit laughter. In the dress, but the ruin of fortune—in the face, the ruin of man. Poole heaved a deep sigh, and extended ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of blackmailers. He wanted us to take action, but he absolutely refused to go into the witness-box to give evidence. I pressed him, pointing out that that was the only way in which we could bring home anything against them. 'It will ruin me,' he declared. 'Is there no other way it can be put a stop to?' I replied that we were helpless. 'What can I do?' he cried. 'Is the thing they accuse you of true?' I asked. He flushed and admitted ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... of whalers are often involved in disputes with the natives. This want of Government support has also frightened other vessels away; their commanders preferring going on to Port Jackson, where they half ruin themselves by the unavoidable expenses they incur. Even when their vessels have anchored here, the thoughtlessness and eccentricity of this class of men, when they are under no restraint or control, has sometimes not only led to disputes with the natives, but with each ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... say, though, that I was swimmy in my head and now and then had a noise as of the sea in my ears, so I might not have heard it. The woman of granite, built to last for ever, continued to look at the glowing logs which made a sort of fiery ruin on the white pile of ashes. "I will tell you how it is," I said. "When I have you before my eyes there is such a projection of my whole being towards you that I fail to see you distinctly. It was like that from the beginning. I may ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... ruin, n. wreck, destruction, undoing, dilapidation, disorganization, perdition, ruination, subversion, shipwreck, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... with us. By conceit and carelessness, we may ruin ourselves in a moment, once and for all. When a man has made up his mind that he is quite worldly-wise; that no one can take him in; that he thoroughly understands his own interest; then is that man ripe and ready to commit some enormous folly, ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... myself wondering if a modern Athenian would thus carelessly direct you to the Acropolis. Is the comparison faulty? Surely a ruin is sacred only for what men did there. We are indeed a headlong race. We keep our ruins behind us. Perhaps that is why we get somewhere. And yet, what beauty blooms flowerlike to the backward gaze! Music and poetry—all the deepest, purest sentiments ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... do you remember how you wouldn't let me make Godfrey hate him? Angel dear, I'm just wondering how soon I and Godfrey and Penny and this house altogether would go to rack and ruin without you.' ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham

... into the marsh from the south-east, Lot would have directed his flight straight to the mountains of his sons Moab and Ammon, and would not have made the detour by Zoar, which only serves to explain why this corner was not included in the ruin to the area of which it properly belongs. The pillar of salt into which Lot's wife was turned was still pointed out in the days of Josephus; perhaps the smoke of the furnace which Abraham saw from the Jewish shore the morning after the catastrophe has some connection ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... men, who in their furious haste, defeated their own efforts to escape. It was pitiful, it was shameful, to see ambulances full of the wounded shoved to one side and left by the cowardly thieves who had galloped away on the horses. It was one long scene of wreck and ruin, through which pressed a struggling, sweating, cursing throng. Horses with their traces cut, and carrying two and even three men, were urged on and over everybody that could not get out of the way. Everything was abandoned that would ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... horses; narrates the collision with a steamboat coming down the stream, which drags the animals into the water, setting the boats adrift in the current, destroying them and their cargo, and typifying as it were the ruin of the old traffic on the Rhone. The river itself is described, its dangerous shoals, its beautiful banks, its towns and castles. We learn how the boats were manoeuvred; the life on board and the ideas of the men are set before us minutely. Legends ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... Worthies before the two Courts. The farce of their performance is heightened by ragging from the courtiers. When it is at its height, two of the members of the sub-plot begin to quarrel. One blow would ruin the play by making it real. At the crisis the violence is avoided; the reality is brought unexpectedly, by beauty. A messenger enters to tell the Princess ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... briskly. "Carpenters have small patience with women and their housekeeping habits. They think we're interfering when we only want to keep 'em from driving nails in the mahogany tables. And if they're going to ruin the hall rug with their bricks and mortar I, for one, don't want to be here to ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... those which we had still to cross raised their foaming waves to a prodigious height, then sunk with a hollow and monstrous sound, sweeping along a long line of the coast.—Our boat sometimes greatly elevated, and sometimes engulfed between the waves, seemed, at the moment, of utter ruin. Bruised, battered and tossed about on all hands, it turned of itself, and refused to obey the kind hand which directed it.—At that instant a huge wave rushed from the open sea, and dashed against the poop; the boat plunged, disappeared, and ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... got to be attended to at once. Under no possible consideration must it leak out that a Cabinet Minister had been speculating so heavily, and lost to such an extent, that nothing but an immense sum of money could save him from disgrace, bankruptey, and ruin. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... and confederation complotted far the subversion and ruin of religion upon the subsistence whereof his Majesty doth judge the main welfare of your realms and of these Provinces ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... give Smudge great satisfaction. He, probably, took some malicious pleasure in scoring up the delinquencies of his staff, mentally consigning the underliners, most likely, to irretrievable ruin, both in this world ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... are divided like their minds, and thus the form of the small society is rent asunder; wherefore to preserve order, and thereby to take care of themselves and at the same time of the house, or of the house and at the same time of themselves, lest they should come to hurt and fall to ruin, necessity requires that the master and mistress agree, and act in unity; and if, from the difference of their minds (mentium) this cannot be done so well as it might, both duty and propriety require that it be done by representative conjugial friendship. ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... all this, their army was very efficient, in spite of its limited numbers, and it was the most expensive in Europe. Yet when the day of trial came, all this imposing force was of no use whatever, and might as well have not existed. Their ruin could not have been more complete or more rapid if they had not possessed an ironclad or a regiment. And all this was accomplished by me, Captain John Sirius, belonging to the navy of one of the smallest Powers in Europe, and ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... care. He had received orders to blow up the arsenal in Berlin. This noble and handsome building, which rose in proud splendor in the midst of a populous town, was to be destroyed without reference to the fact that the blowing up of this colossal edifice would scatter death and ruin throughout unfortunate Berlin. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... was, of course, in utter ruin. Not even the cooking utensils remained: and of his men there was left but Ali, whose leg still caused him to limp a little. So Bruce was commanded by no less person than Kathlyn to be her father's ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... season? No weekend shooting with the Duke of Norfolk for any of us. But that is not the kind of labor they are going to cut down. They are going to cut down productive labor—builders and gardeners—and they are going to ruin their property so that it shall not be taxed. All I can say is this: the ownership of land is not merely an enjoyment, it is stewardship. It has been reckoned as such in the past, and if they cease to discharge their functions, which include the security and defense of the country ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... device of glass, Till all of soul that's left be dry and dark; Till even the burden of some ninety years Hath crashed into them like a rock; shattered Their system as if ninety suns had rushed To ruin earth—or heaven had rained its stars; Till they become like scrolls, unreadable, Through dust and mold. Can they be cleaned and read? Do human spirits ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... did not see her lover again until the sun rose on a scene of desolation and ruin. Smoke and sparks still came from the blackened heaps of the destroyed buildings. The cordon of sentries had apparently been withdrawn; but when Daleham climbed up on the barricade to get a better view a shot was fired from somewhere and ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... "It will ruin his reputation, send him to the state prison, and spoil his prospects forever. Now, don't you think it would be better for him to give up the money, if I should say to him that I ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic

... dreary proceedings were resumed. For all the outside excitement it was the most dreary of all celebrated trials. The bankruptcy proceedings had exhausted all the laughter there was in it. Only the fact of wide-spread ruin remained; and the resentment of a mass of people for having been fooled by means too simple to save their self-respect from a deep wound which the cleverness of a consummate scoundrel would not have inflicted. A shamefaced amazement attended these proceedings in which de Barral ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... alas! had hollowed out under their very feet a gulf of ruin and of mourning. Poverty had brought the women to rags, the privations of the siege had lowered the vitality of the children, and the shame of the defeat had ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... income my father left me." He laid great stress on the last sentence; he wanted to impress her with the fact that he had plenty of money. "She must never know," he told himself, "that he had so riotously squandered the vast inheritance that had been left him, and he was standing on the verge of ruin." A marriage with the wealthy heiress would save him at the eleventh hour. "I will trust you, Pluma," he continued. "I know, you will keep ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... city an heap, of a defenced city a ruin ...Their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there,'" he quoted softly; adding after a pause, "Mother had a great weakness for old Isaiah. She used to say he and the minor prophets knew ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... Thou art the garden of the world, the home Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree; Even in thy desert, what is like to thee? Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste More rich than other climes' fertility; Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced With an immaculate charm ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... out of a lunatic asylum? Why, you haven't even the grace to carry out your own wicked deception—you haven't even gone to bed!" There the voices grew less angry, and we missed what followed. Soon the lady burst out again, piteously entreating him this time. "Oh, Marmy, don't ruin me! Has anybody offended you? Is there anything you wish to have altered? Do you want more money? It is too cruel to treat me in this way—it is indeed!" He made some answer, which we were not able to hear; we could only suppose that he had ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... expectation, to match our real emotions in view of any great occasion with the ideal emotions which we have taught ourselves that we ought to feel. This is all the truer when the occasion is tragical: we surprise ourselves in a helplessness to which the great event, death, ruin, lost love, reveals itself slowly, and at first wears the aspect of an unbroken continuance of what has been, or at most of another incident ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... than her reputation, and would have willingly helped her young saleswoman into a different sort of life. But Emeline's little streak of shrewd selfishness saved her. Emeline indulged in a hundred little coarsenesses and indiscretions, but take the final step toward ruin she would not. Nobody was going to get the better of her, she boasted. She used rouge and lip red. She "met fellers" under flaming gas jets, and went to dance halls with them, and to the Sunday picnics that were her father's especial abomination; she shyly told vile stories and ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... as is expedient, the name of friendship lives, Just as in dicing, Fortune smiles or lowers; When good luck beckons, then your friend his gleeful service gives But basely flies when ruin o'er you towers. The strollers act their farces upon the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... artificial and accidental causes, which kept a noble, a proud, an acute but a diseased mind, in acquirements much below another every way its inferior, excepting in the happy circumstance of wanting those very excellences, the excess and indiscreet management of which proved the ruin instead of the ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... train of circumstances, in face of which his mere word was hopelessly—and, he was compelled to acknowledge, justly—inadequate. The secret of his identity—most crushing fact of all—was lost. He was the Michael Cranbourne whom Christine Manderson, then Thea Colville, had drawn on to ruin and disgrace. He had threatened her, in the presence of witness, with just such an end as she had met with. He had been seen lurking in the garden at the time of the crime. He had been beside himself. And to all that he had no more convincing answer than the plea of not guilty. He placed ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... the present discussion the origin of such practices, rather than the ceremonies with which they were attended, have an interest. The savage knew that fire was necessary to his life. Were it lost, he justly foreboded dire calamities and the ruin of his race. Therefore at stated times with due solemnity he produced it anew by friction or the flint, or else was careful to keep one fire constantly alive. These not unwise precautions soon fell to mere superstitions. If the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... Ask even those who are most solicitous for its welfare, and they will tell you that the church can no longer be safe or free from troubles unless it be strengthened by the removal of abuses. If this, then, is a measure of absolute necessity unless we would see the whole church go to ruin; if all men confess that this should be done, if facts themselves call with a loud voice that some care should be taken to relieve the labouring [bark of the] church, to purify her depraved doctrine, and to reform her whole administration,—why, I demand, are those maligned and ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... preach—in greatness is no trust. Here's an acre sown indeed With the richest, royal'st seed, That the earth did e'er suck in Since the first man died for sin: Here the bones of birth have cried, Though gods they were, as men they died: Here are wands, ignoble things, Dropp'd from the ruin'd sides of kings. Here's a world of pomp and state Buried in dust, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... the destructive paws, he leaped in and away, and then in, all the while employing the thing in his hand until Obe's life-stuff had run its course in crimson ruin. ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse

... was revealed. Out of the ruin and bleak suffering of the past had sprung the flaming splendour of heroic life and death—a glory of achievement that, but for those arid years of silence, had been thwarted and frustrated by the deadening knowledge ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... officer, General John E. Smith, at Cartersville, requiring him to furnish them an escort and an ambulance for the purpose. I invited them to take dinner with our mess, and we naturally ran into a general conversation about politics and the devastation and ruin caused by the war. They had seen a part of the country over which the army had passed, and could easily apply its measure of desolation to the remainder of the State, if necessity should compel ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... could see his mother's face, he could hear her voice saying, "And so because of this sudden infatuation for a swindler's daughter, a girl who runs about the roads with a couple of retrievers hunting for a man, you must spoil all my plans, ruin my year, tell me a lot of pretentious stuffy lies...." And Mrs. Skelmersdale too would say, "Of course he just talked of the world and duty and all that ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... so bravely they hung back themselves, fearful of passing that mysterious barrier. Others of the crowd answered them back, warmly: "No, no; not so. Be careful what you do. Anger not the gods. Don't ruin Boupari. If the Taboo is not indeed broken, then how dare we break it? They are gods. Fear their vengeance. They are, indeed, terrible. See what happened to us when they merely ate of the storm-apple! ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... "Il Pensiero." The sullen strength of the attitude gives one a vague ominous impulse to get away. Some one has said that it fulfils Milton's conception of Satan brooding over his plans for the ruin of mankind. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... and numbers the very hairs of our head. Events, the most trivial in their nature, are the objects of his notice, as well as those of the most momentous character. Were not this the case, universal disorder and ruin would soon find their way into his works, break the chain of events, and reduce all, that we now admire, from its present harmony and glory, down to its general confusion and chaos. This conclusion is unavoidable, because some of the greatest events that have transpired in the world, owe their ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... Lord!" he said, "the ruin one man's life can bring about, the heartbreak, and the shame! 'Tis enough to make even a sinner as old as I, repent, to come upon them face to face. Eh, my lady?" looking at her suddenly, "thou must get back ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the Eden of which the sacred legends of the Semites tell, so in the folk-thought does some evil sprite or phantom ever and anon intrude itself in the Paradise of childhood and seek its ruin. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... once so fertile, was now almost depopulated and in a sad state of ruin, showing plainly the savage ravages of war; for the Arabs and their slaves, when they take the field, think more of plunder and slavery than the object they started on—each man of the force looking out for himself. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... the Town of Wolgast," p. 42, &c. The riots were caused by the successor of Philippus Julius (d. 6th Feb. 1625), who was also the last Duke of Pomerania, Bogislaus XIV., choosing to reside in Stettin. At the present time the castle is a mere ruin, and only several large vaulted cellars remain, wherein some of the tradesmen of the present day keep their shops.] At this sight my heart was sorely grieved; but I presently inquired for the merchants, who sat at the table drinking their parting cup, with their ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... that nobody is convinced by it; as if a man wanted to make a body-slave of anybody with whom he had played single-stick. But the real female prejudice on this point is not without a basis; the real feeling is this, that the most masculine pleasures have a quality of the ephemeral. A duchess may ruin a duke for a diamond necklace; but there is the necklace. A coster may ruin his wife for a pot of beer; and where is the beer? The duchess quarrels with another duchess in order to crush her, to produce a ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... fate to suffering worth is giv'n, Who long with wants and woes has striv'n, By human pride or cunning driv'n, To mis'ry's brink. Till wrench'd of ev'ry stay but Heav'n, He, ruin'd, sink! ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway

... a prison for the fallen, the Chevalier trussed up in royal Caen, and his aunt the Countess prostrated by the hag's recapture of and disappearance with the noblewoman's long-lost daughter, blind Louise, 'twould seem as if our characters faced indeed blank walls of ruin, misery and despair, from which ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... the chain that led her to her own dark fate. For though she held the cards long in her hands after that, and played for high stakes, as she had done before, fortune failed her at the last, and she came to unutterable ruin. ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... not fail to be struck with the appalling scenes of distress there exhibited. In describing these, his object is not to reflect shame on the misguided philanthropy of Great Britain; but only to urge the adoption of other measures, in order to rescue the West Indies from the utter ruin and desolation which must otherwise soon overtake them. We might easily adduce many impressive extracts from his work; but, for the sake of brevity, we shall confine our attention to one or ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... or other. Now my idea was, and is stronger now, that every person ought to possess some especial knowledge of a profession, calling, or trade, by the practice of which he can maintain himself. If all boys and lads were impressed with this important practical truth, how many might be saved from ruin, from "going to the dogs," as the phrase is, simply because they have no honest means of supporting themselves. I say this here, because I may otherwise forget to say it elsewhere, and I am very anxious to impress it on the minds of my readers. We had two men on board the Bussorah ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... the Solemn League and Covenant. The seeds of disunion were, therefore, thickly sown in this ill-fated party; and Balfour, however enthusiastic, and however much attached to the most violent of those tenets which we have noticed, saw nothing but ruin to the general cause, if they were insisted on during this crisis, when unity was of so much consequence. Hence he disapproved, as we have seen, of the honest, downright, and ardent zeal of Macbriar, and was extremely desirous to receive the assistance ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... have been exhausted in a vain effort to convey to those fortunately not in San Francisco on the morning of April 18, 1906, what terrible things resulted from the earthquake and the fire which left that city a complete ruin; likewise has the kodak and the camera—though busy at work while the flames roared around the operator driving him, from one vantage point to another, before its resistless power—failed to depict in its entirety the horrors, the tragedies that followed in the wake of the crumbling walls, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... way through the hosts of rebels at Montlhery, he conceded to them everything they demanded. By the treaty of Conflans (1465) he might seem to have flung up the game in despair, and to have signed the ruin of France. But his high Court of Justice (Parlement), by refusing to register the treaty, gave him an excuse for evading its performance, and by negotiating with the princes separately he broke up their coalition. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... so many inconsistencies in life that at times one is appalled. Take marriage, for instance:—A young woman marries a man who is tottering on the brink of the grave; old, blaze, a worn-out roue; but with money enough to gild and gloss the antiquated ruin. She goes before a clergyman and promises to love, honour and obey. Yes; she loves the luxury with which she will be surrounded, the glitter of diamonds, the equipages, the great house, all the paraphanalia of wealth, but she hates the trembling, tottering, ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt

... hesitated. Possibly ruin stared them in the face, but not one flinched. Their heads drew closer together. They discussed the ways and ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... that which he might have kept up with a small charge: it frequently happens, that the same house which one person built at a vast expense, is neglected by another, who thinks he has a more delicate sense of the beauties of architecture; and he suffering it to fall to ruin, builds another at no less charge. But among the Utopians, all things are so regulated that men very seldom build upon a new piece of ground; and are not only very quick in repairing their houses, but show their foresight in preventing their decay: so that their buildings are preserved ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... understand—that's part of the tragedy of it. Peter, I love you so that my love for you is my centre, it's my all in all, it's my hope of salvation, Peter. Do you hear, my darling?—my love, it's my one hope! If I can't keep that pure and clean, Peter, I ruin both of us. I love you so, Peter, that I won't ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... mind must be clarified and set free from the blasphemous superstitions engendered by the crude beliefs taught by theologians. The developed mind, and reason must arouse to rage and resistance in view of the wreck and ruin of untold millions of lives, the result ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... hardy of all this original's positions were these: That commerce would, sooner or later, prove the ruin of every nation, where it flourishes to any extent — that the parliament was the rotten part of the British constitution — that the liberty of the press was a national evil — and that the boasted institution of juries, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... his appetite only and enkeen his desire. Nay, it help him to grow as to his brain. For it all prove to him how right he was at the first in his surmises. He have done this alone, all alone! From a ruin tomb in a forgotten land. What more may he not do when the greater world of thought is open to him. He that can smile at death, as we know him. Who can flourish in the midst of diseases that kill off whole peoples. Oh! If such an one was to come from God, and not the Devil, what a force ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... Fenton responded; "I am too frank. It will be the ruin of me sooner or later. It all comes of being born with a habit of being ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates



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