"Ruinous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... column on the third of July, Lee had the choice of two courses—to either attack again or retire. Meade was evidently determined to remain on the defensive. To engage him, Lee must once more charge the Cemetery Heights. But a third failure might be ruinous; the Confederate ammunition was nearly exhausted; the communications with the Potomac were threatened,—and Lee ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... contains the potency of its solution; for evil, when understood, is on the way towards being overcome, and the good, when seen, contains the promise of its own fulfilment. It is ignorance which is ruinous, as when the cries of humanity beat against a deaf ear; and we can take a comfort, denied to Carlyle, from the fact that he has made us awake to our social duties. He has let loose the confusion upon us, and it is only natural ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... and more ruinous, and at last one day the old night-owl had quitted her nest and was gone. Nobody mourned for her. Who takes any count of the birds of the field or ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... the niches and the recesses were there,—the huge wall too along the face of the hill; all broken and gashed and ruinous, showing the fine reticulated brickwork that had been once faced with marble; alternately supported and torn by the pushing roots of the ilex-trees. The tunnelled passages too were there, choked and fallen in; no flash of the lake now beyond their cool darkness! ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Manifold are the ruinous phantasies which lead unhappy mortals to pandemonium. This one has a fancy for the turf, another patronizes the last imported choryphee. The turf is generally a settler—the stage is also a safe road to a safe settlement, and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... and renowned village of Communipaw, may have noticed an old stone building, of most ruinous and sinister appearance. The doors and window-shutters are ready to drop from their hinges; old clothes are stuffed in the broken panes of glass, while legions of half-starved dogs prowl about the premises, and rush out and bark at every passer-by; for your beggarly house in a village is ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... the high river-banks, No ambush by the cairns of men outworn, But empty stood the huts, in dismal ranks, Where men through all these many years had borne Fierce summer, and the biting winter's scorn; And here a sword was left, and there a bow, But ruinous seem'd all things and forlorn, As in some camp ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... to revolt against a system of slavery that even religion failed to make endurable; the neophyte turning his hand against his priestly instructor, equally his oppressor; revolt followed by a deluge of blood, with ruinous devastation, until the walls of both mission and military cuartel are left tenantless, and the redskin has ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... pious wish of Commynes, after so judicious a sketch, we may add another: Please God that people may no more suffer themselves to be taken captive by the corrupting and ruinous pleasures procured for them by their masters' grand but wicked or foolish enterprises, and may learn to give to the men who govern them a glory in proportion to the wisdom and justice of their deeds, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... return of prosperity, seem to have marked the commercial and financial history of this country during the last fifty years, more than that of any other nation under the sun, and given rise to the spirit of extravagant speculations, both disgraceful and ruinous. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... Godhead's inner Universe, Panted and pants with splendour of its love, The Eternal Sire rejoicing in the Son And Both in Him Who still from Both proceeds, Bond of their love. Moreover, king, that Son Who, Virgin-born, raised from the ruinous gulf Our world, and made it footstool to God's throne, The same is Love, and died for Love, and reigns: Loveless, His Church were but a corse stone-cold; Loveless, her creed were but a winter leaf Network ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... the Earls of Cornwall, one of whom protected David, Prince of Wales, during his revolt against Edward I. Later it was used as a kind of prison, a Mayor of London being confined within it. Elizabeth had some thought of restoring it, for it had already become ruinous; Leland says: "The residue of the buildings of the Castle be sore wetherbeten, and yn ruine; but it hath beene a large thinge." Its outworks extended to the mainland, but the great keep was on the isolated ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... professed object of civilising the inhabitants. It is not intended here to detail their proceedings or to describe at much length the squabbles and constant disorders, murders, and robberies which took place while they held possession of the Island. The speculation proved ruinous to the Adventurers, who in the end lost their estates, and were obliged to leave the islanders to their fate. A brief summary of it will suffice, and those who desire more information on the subject ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... leaves which are my house, these blooming plants which supply me with daily food, and the water which is my drink; while all other possessions which are amassed with anxious care are wont to prove ruinous to those who gather them, and cause only sorrow and vexation, with which every poor mortal is fully fraught. As for me, I lie upon the forest leaves, and having nothing which requires guarding, close my eyes in tranquil slumber; whereas had I anything to guard, that would banish ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... of giving are manifold, and he now felt a novel glow of sheer beneficence. He was a victim to the craze for philanthropy. Too young to realize its insidious character, he was to embark upon a ruinous career. Ever it is the first step that costs. That carelessly given knife—with something to dig stones out of a horse's foot—was to wipe out, ere night again shrouded Newbern Center, a fortune supposed to be as lasting as the eternal ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... that coin has not left them richer: many, very many Germans know the Kultur War to be ruinous: but Berlin must play the Game still, and assume that the tricks and aims cannot be understood! It is lack of regard for other nations carried into German Finance; and all because the bureaucratic military heart is a stone. The ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... these calamities the blinded King prepared for another exhausting war, in order to put his grandson on the throne of Spain. This last and most ruinous of all his wars might have been averted if he only could have cast away his ambition and his pride. Humbled and crippled, he yet could not part with the prize which fell to his family by the death of Carlos II. of Spain. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... The ruinous influence of machinery on social economy and the condition of the laborers is exercised in a thousand ways, all of which are bound together and reciprocally labelled: cessation of labor, reduction of wages, over-production, obstruction of the market, alteration ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... him at least ten years to pay off his college bills contracted during his father's lifetime. In the year 179-, when he was just clear of these incumbrances, he gave the odds of 100 to 1 (in twenties) against Kangaroo, who won the Derby. The Rector was obliged to take up the money at a ruinous interest, and had been struggling ever since. His sister helped him with a hundred now and then, but of course his great hope was in her death—when "hang it" (as he would say), "Matilda must leave me half ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... justification of woman's right to a share in the great governmental decisions which to-day are vital. No statesman or publicist could set forth more clearly than Mrs. Blatch the need of winning this war, in order to prevent either endless and ruinous wars in the future, or else a world despotism which would mean the atrophy of everything that really tends to the elevation ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... cried, and she gasped in her affright at this ruinous indiscretion, "I beg that you will stand aside." His voice was low and threatening, but his words were ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... this same Jaraicejo, a small ruinous town or village, situated on a rising ground, with a very wild country all about it. The road from Badajoz to Madrid passes through it; and about two leagues distant, in the direction of Madrid, is the famous mountain pass of Mirabete, from the top ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... did Pierola battery, facing Callao bay. Next to Pierola came the Torre del Merced, a revolving turret mounting two 10-inch rifled Armstrongs. Then came a brick fort called the Santa Rosa, containing two 11-inch rifled Blakely guns. The Castle, a very old and ruinous structure, the only strength of which consisted of two masonry towers, had four 11-inch rifled Blakelies. Seven large-bore guns were mounted on the mole, together with two small and very ancient 32-pounders. At the north end of the town itself was Fort Ayacucho, containing one 15-inch ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the kiss. Who knows what absorbing emotion, besides love's immediate impulse, may have been uttered in that shadowy embrace? There may have been some contrition for ill-temper or neglect, or some triumph over ruinous temptation, or some pledge of immortal patience, or some heart-breaking prophecy of bereavement. It may have been simply an act of habitual tenderness, or it may have been the wild reaction toward a neglected duty; the renewed self-consecration of the saint, or the joy of the sinner that repenteth. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... The lantern itself must, she thought, have been made when the invention was in its infancy, and its pictured slides seemed the remnants of various outworn series. Those of the Rake's Progress were something too hideous and lamentable to be dwelt upon. And the ruinous, wretched old man did not merely seem to have taken to this as a last effort, but to have in his dotage turned back upon his life course, and resumed a half-forgotten trade—or perhaps only an accomplishment of which he had made use for the benefit of his people when he was a clergyman—to ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... stood. He built and endowed 'the Hospital of Babwell;' built 'fit houses for the St. Edmundsbury Schools.' Many are the roofs once 'thatched with reeds' which he 'caused to be covered with tiles;' or if they were churches, probably 'with lead.' For all ruinous incomplete things, buildings or other, were an eye-sorrow to the man. We saw his 'great tower of St. Edmund's;' or at least the roof-timbers of it, lying cut and stamped in Elmset Wood. To change combustible decaying reed-thatch into tile or lead; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... generous expenditure, would serve to dispose of her without delay. A generous expenditure may be incurred once even by poor people, but cannot possibly be maintained over a dozen years. Now she had taken the matter into her own hands and had done that which would be ruinous if not successful. She was venturing her all upon the die,—with the prospect of drowning herself on the way out to Patagonia should the chances of the game go against her. She forgot nothing. She ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... irritation and rancour seething in the breast of the new plantocracy, of whom the majority was of the type that then also flourished in Barbados, Jamaica, and Demerara, were nourished and kept acute in order to crush the African element. Harm was done, certainly; but not to the ruinous extent sometimes declared. It was too late for perfect success, as, according to the Negroes' own phrase, people of colour had by that time already "passed the lock-jaw"* stage (at which trifling misadventures [255] might have nipped the germ of their progress in the bud.) In ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... gathering with delight the testimony of those who had themselves been actors in the events of the past quarter of a century. He accompanied the Black Prince to Aquitaine, and, later, the Duke of Clarence to Milan. The death of Queen Philippa, in 1369, was ruinous to his prospects. For a time he supported himself as a trader in his native place. Then other patrons, kinsfolk of the Queen, came to his aid. The first revised redaction of the first book of his Chronicles was his chief occupation while cure of Lestinnes; it is a record of events ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... writings a selfish or base-minded man. He is at his worst and weakest in the suppressed[12] part of 'De Profundis'; but in my opinion it had better be published, for several reasons. It explains some of his personal weakness by the stifling narrowness of his daily round, ruinous to a man whose proper place was in a large public life. And its concealment is mischievous because, first, it leads people to imagine all sorts of horrors in a document which contains nothing worse than any record of the squabbles of two touchy ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... unless I could pay him! I must keep him with me until I could devise some means of raising the six francs, which an hour later would be eight francs, and an hour later ten francs, and so forth. Every moment that I delayed payment swelled the debt; like a ruinous rate of interest, and diminished the possibility of ever being able to pay him at all. And of course I could not keep him with me forever,—go about the world henceforth in a hired coach, with a driver and span of horses impossible to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Steinmarc must know something of Ludovic's passion for herself, she had been in part quelled. She was not able now to stand up bravely before her suitor, and fight him as she had done at first with all the weapons which she had at her command. The man knew something which it was almost ruinous to her that he should know, something by which, if her aunt knew it, she would be quite ruined. How could it be that Herr Steinmarc should have learned anything of Ludovic's wild love? He had not been in the house,—he had been in the town-hall, ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... we put into a little place called Sâkeeah, a port of the island in the S.E. Here is nothing in the shape of a port town, only a small square ruinous hovel of mud and plaster, and a rude hut put up temporarily by a Maltese, who is building a boat. I often think the Maltese are the Irish of the South. Maltese enterprise is prevalent in all parts of the Mediterranean but in their own country. The port, such as it ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... last heard of Annesley Hall, it was ruinous and desolate, and we knew not in what condition it might now be found. Passing through an avenue of ancient oaks, the road winds down to an old picturesque gate-house, and, leaving the carriage, we walked onward. Looking through the arch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... none that thou lovest so, and that will love thee to mortal sorrow, if thou goest without care to thy end too soon?" The desert, the dark monastery, the acacia tree, the ancient palm, the ruinous garden, disappeared. He only saw a face which smiled at him, as it had done 'by the brazier in the garden at Cairo, that night when she and Nahoum and himself and Mizraim had met in the room of his house by the Ezbekieh ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... authority, religious, civil, and military. The Athenian populace not only enjoyed no political rights, but were reduced to a condition only a little above servitude; and it appears to have been owing to the anarchy that arose from the ruinous extortions of the nobles on the one hand, and the resistance of the people on the other, that Dra'co, the most eminent of the nobility, was chosen to prepare the first written code of laws for the government of the state ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... a Conservative administration, and immediately dissolved his Parliament. The new elections gave a small majority to the Conservatives, chiefly due, it was said, to the exertion of his personal influence; but the success was purchased at a ruinous cost, for he was now in the position, fatal to a governor, of a party man. Even from this situation he might perhaps have been able to extricate himself: so great was the respect felt for his rare qualities of mind and character. But a distressing malady almost ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... methinks the love I show For him I count my mortal foe. Soon as my trenchant steel is bare, Flashing its lightning through the air, I heed no foe, nor stand aghast Though Indra's self the levin cast. Then shall the ways be hard to pass, Where chariots lie in ruinous mass; When elephant and man and steed Crushed in the murderous onslaught bleed, And legs and heads fall, heap on heap, Beneath my sword's tremendous sweep. Struck by my keen brand's trenchant blade, Thine enemies shall fall dismayed, Like towering ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... apostles of Revolution, the commander allots shelter in the barracks at Forton, where for the present they exist on two pence a day each. Plymouth, which receives fewer of them, frowns on the newcomers as politically suspect and economically ruinous. The mayor assures Dundas that, if more priests arrive, or are sent there, they will be driven away by the townsfolk for fear of dearth of corn. In Jersey the food question eclipses all others; for 2,000 priests (so it is said) land there, until ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... pile which is at present under repair, was erected in the time of James I. Whitehall being in a most ruinous state, he determined to rebuild it in a very princely manner, and worthy of the residence of the monarchs of the British empire. He began with pulling down the banquetting rooms built by Elizabeth. That which bears the above name at present was begun ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... Gibson. "If Gourlay kens you're against him for the contract, he'll cut his estimate down to a ruinous price, out o' sheer spite—yes, out o' sheer spite—rather than be licked by you in public competition. And if he does that, Goudie and I may do what we like, but we canna help you. For it's the partners that decide the estimates ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the convent and the oldest and most ruinous part of the town. He did not disguise from himself the gloomy significance of this; even in the old days the crumbling adobe buildings that abutted on the old garden wall of the convent were the haunts of lawless Mexicans ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... the removal of the galilee as being an encumbrance. The roof was ruinous, the walls were in bad condition; it was "neither ornamental nor useful"; it would cost a large sum to put it into decent repair. Happily this advice was not followed. In the course of the renovation then undertaken it was discovered ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... provoking and inconvenient than this arrangement. Unless I take up every thing with me, I shall be miserably off, for nothing beyond eatables is to be had there; and in case I provide the requisites to make my abode in the winter in any way comfortable, and then be ordered back, the expense will be ruinous. But I must submit to all this without repining, and since I cannot get to Europe, I care little where I am placed. I have the most delightful garden imaginable, with abundance of melons and other good things, all which I ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... soul That one day in my nest death I shall know, And weary of heart woefully go hence, 555 Compassed with clay, on my closing journey, Mournful of mind, in the moldy earth. And through the gift of God I shall gain once more Like the Phoenix fowl, a fair new life, On the day of arising from ruinous death, 560 Delights with God, where the loving throng Are exalting their Lord. I look not at all Ever to come to the end of that life Of light and bliss, though my body shall lie In its gruesome grave and grow decayed, 565 A joy to worms; for the Judge of the world ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... are carried on, their returns admit of the expense of sending out agents to examine into the wants and tastes of distant countries, as well as of trying experiments, which, although profitable to them, would be ruinous to smaller establishments ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... of Verona suggests, must go round it, not through it. The first step within its walls is like the stroke of an enchanter's wand. The villa-begemmed city, with its ramparts and its cypress-trees, takes flight, and there rises before the traveller an old ruinous town, with dirty streets and a ragged and lazy population. It reminds one of what he meets in tales of eastern romance, where young and beautiful princesses are all at once transformed by malignant genuises into ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... being annexed to that kingdom, would be equally enabled from its situation to disturb, either by piracies or naval armaments, the commerce and peace cf England: and that if the duke rejected Henry's mediation, it proceeded neither from an inclination to a war, which he experienced to be ruinous to him, nor from a confidence in his own force, which he knew to be much inferior to that of the enemy; but, on the contrary, from a sense of his present necessities, which must engage the king to act the part of his confederate, not that of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... said Rachel, at length. "I was prepared for that. But I was not prepared for your father's acquiescence in the ruinous course upon ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... kind of external activity, because they are inactive within. Contrarily, if they are active within, they do not care to be dragged out of themselves; it disturbs and impedes their thoughts in a way that is often most ruinous ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... enormous deal since I have been away, and have walked several hundred miles. Amongst other places I have seen St. David's, a wonderful half-ruinous Cathedral at the western end of Pembrokeshire; but I shall be glad to ...
— Letters to his wife Mary Borrow • George Borrow
... I'm no prude. I like to overstep conventions, too. But this wholesale wrecking of the social structure would be ruinous for a ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... walking in some pleasant path that should have no unpleasant thing at the end—such as they felt their home to be. Presently they came to a bend in the road, and a few steps from the corner was a low-roofed house, a ruinous-looking place, with rags stuffed in the broken window-panes. There were green fields around it, and tall trees gracefully waving near it; but the old house spoiled the landscape by its slovenly, ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... about three miles out, with a small house on the grounds. Madame D—— (who was maid of honor to the Empress) told my mother that it was used simply as a resting-place for the huntsmen and a place of picnicking by the court. It is called "Casa del Campo." It is also in a ruinous state, is rented for $100 per year silver, and is used as a ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 11, March 17, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... After a week's hesitation, the Governor wrote to General Gage, who had promised inviolable secrecy, that to remove a portion of the two regiments would be detrimental to His Majesty's service; to remove all of these troops would be quite ruinous to the cause of the Crown; but that one regiment in the town and one at the Castle might be sufficient. Of course, General Gage, if he paid any respect to the Governor's advice, could do no less than order both regiments to remain. Thus was it that the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... You shall have it, 10 Such as this ruinous mansion may afford: Tis spacious, but too cold and crazy now For Hospitality's more cordial welcome: But as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... not willing to discuss whether Catholicism is true or is a lie; you consider it a ruinous doctrine which produces decadence. I have been told that you have stated ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... political system, like that of Sparta, with which he identifies Argos and Messene, dating from the return of the Heraclidae. But the aims of states should be good, or else, like the prayer of Theseus, they may be ruinous to themselves. This was the case in two out of three of the Heracleid kingdoms. They did not understand that the powers in a state should be balanced. The balance of powers saved Sparta, while the excess of tyranny in Persia and the excess of liberty at Athens have been the ruin ...
— Laws • Plato
... that gala colossus had been the outcome of the fervour of primitive faith! You found there a blossoming of that ancient sap, peculiar to the soil of Rome, which in all ages has thrown up preposterous edifices, of exaggerated hugeness and dazzling and ruinous luxury. It would seem as if the absolute masters successively ruling the city brought that passion for cyclopean building with them, derived it from the soil in which they grew, for they transmitted it one to the other, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... an infant, cast off his father, and only claims him in order to keep a disgraceful, ruinous secret hanging over his life for ever, ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which intimates the degree of affection and respect that he entertains for her. But should the lover's finances be slender, and his nuptials long delayed, he must find this elegant custom a very ruinous one, since the price of the best of these bouquets (and who durst for his own credit's sake present an inferior one?) is five or six francs. The Sposina appears everywhere and everyday with a bouquet in her hand, closely attended by her lover, and either or both ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... humour to be challenged, and he was conscious of making a very conspicuous mark upon the snow. Just on his left hand there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and a large porch before the door; it was half ruinous, he remembered, and had long stood empty; and so he made three steps of it, and jumped into the shelter of the porch. It was pretty dark inside, after the glimmer of the snowy streets, and he was groping forward ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... considerable peninsula: very bare and grassy; haunted by sheep, and, at night and morning, by the piercing cries of the shepherds; wandered over by a few wild goats; and on its sea-front indented with long, clamorous caves, and faced with cliffs of the colour and ruinous outline of an old peat-stack. In one of these echoing and sunless gullies we saw, clustered like sea-birds on a splashing ledge, shrill as sea-birds in their salutation to the passing boat, a group of fisherwomen, stripped to their gaudy underclothes. (The clash of the surf and the thin female ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and vines, that bore some resemblance to the usual uninhabited-looking exterior of a Spanish-American dwelling. Apertures that might have been lance-shaped windows or only cracks and fissures in the walls were choked up with weeds and grass, and gave no passing glimpse of the interior. Entering a ruinous corral they came to a second entrance, which proved to be the patio or courtyard. The deserted wooden corridor, with beams, rafters, and floors whitened by the sun and wind, contained a few withered leaves, dryly rotting skins, and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... change their costume, for which, as having been peculiar to themselves and their ancestors, they had a natural predilection, they have shown their obedience to this desire, though this was not done without considerable pecuniary sacrifice and ruinous loss to many whose warehouses were well provided with furs ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... hollow had its barn and out-buildings attached at right angles, with a cart-path leading thereto from the street; but at the top of the slope, on the other side of the schoolward path, stood a large, half-ruinous old barn, used only for storing surplus hay. The door of this great, gray, swaying structure usually stood open, and in it, on an old wreck of a wheelbarrow, sat Mindy Toggs, in ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... one practice more, by which the meanest instruments often succeed in doing public mischief; and this is by deceiving us with plausible arguments, to make us believe that the most ruinous project they can offer is intended for our good, as it happened in the case so often mentioned. For the poor ignorant people, allured by the appearing convenience in their small dealings, did not discover the serpent in the brass,[2] but were ready, like the Israelites, to offer incense ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... important. A fancy store, however well-furnished, would be a ruinous investment at a country crossroad. The fruit farm must be situated where there is quick and cheap access to good markets, and often the very best market may be found at a neighboring village, summer resort, or canning establishment. Enterprise and industry, however, seem to ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... souls were now one in the work, and, of course, they had many anxious consultations. It did not seem as though the work of the school could continue to be carried on in the forsaken church and half-ruinous shed which so far had ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... in the course of this narrative I have hinted at an idea corresponding to the above French heading, and now feel it incumbent upon me to devote a whole chapter to that idea, which was one of the most ruinous, lying notions which ever became engrafted upon my life by ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... system, through the suffering and loss it inflicted upon all the maritime countries of Europe, had caused murmurs of discontent all around the circumference of the continent. This ruinous policy had also involved the French emperor in a terribly wasteful war with Spain, which country was destined—more truly than Italy, of which the expression was first used—to become "the grave of the French." Napoleon after his downfall himself admitted that his passage ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... to rest, because the country, though pretty enough, has none of that exquisite richness and luxuriance which we had been led to expect as characteristic of the South of France. The houses, too, being all in a ruinous and dilapidated condition, reminded us more forcibly of the scenes of violence and outrage which had been lately acted among them, than of those ideas of rural contentment and innocence which various tales and melodramas had taught ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... time that the fisherman went down to the sea-shore. I believe my first impression of the sea came from that. The coming on of a storm is always associated with it. I always fancy that it is bringing with it something beside the tempest,—that there is something ruinous behind it." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... expect that a person occupying your elevated position in this community, would set such a ruinous example. A teacher of youth should look to the cultivation of the mind, not to the outward adorning of the person." Mrs. Dr. Little sailed away from the little group in as dignified a manner as a lady of nearly two hundred avoirdupois could ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... awaited a favorable occasion to dispatch him. On the whole, it may be said that differences which arose between Bisyas and their mountain compeers in eastern Mindano are to be attributed in no small degree to the ruinous, relentless exploitation of the unsophisticated, untutored Manbo by ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... As ruinous a place it was, Thought Peter, in the shire of Fife That served my turn, when following still From land to land a reckless will [95] I married my ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... who dissented from it came within the meshes of the Act of Uniformity, the Test Act, and the Corporation Act. By law, such a man as Priestley, being a Unitarian, could neither teach nor preach, and was liable to ruinous fines and long imprisonment. [17] In those days the guns that were pointed by the Church against the Dissenters were shotted. The law was a cesspool of iniquity and cruelty. Adam Smith was a new prophet whom few regarded, and commerce was hampered by idiotic impediments, and ruined by still ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Damascus cease to be a city And shall be a ruinous heap. Its cities shall be given up to flocks Which shall lie down, with none to make them afraid. Ephraim shall lose her bulwark, And Damascus her sovereignty, And the rest of Syria shall perish; Like the Israelites shall they be, Saith the Lord ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... promotive of virtue, could not be inculcated without them; that knowledge again, if it were to be acquired by the permission of occasional indulgences, or by being allowed to pass through scenes which might be dangerous to virtue, would be more ruinous than ignorance by a prohibition of vice; that ignorance of vice was an essential in Christian morals; and that prohibitions therefore were indispensably necessary, and better to be relied upon, than any corrupt knowledge, which might arise from an acquaintance with ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... of summer is often brought to a close by a storm which is accompanied by thunder and lightning, and which hides the light of the sun, so in the story Phaethon's ruinous drive is brought to an end by the thunderbolt of Jupiter; while the horses, trotting back home before their time, leave the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... me a few more words. I live here in a remote corner of an old ruinous house, where my ancestors have been very jovial. What a solemn idea rushes on my mind! They are all gone; I must follow. Well, and what then? Let me shift about to another subject. The best I can think of is a sound sleep. So good ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... opened the window, and called down softly, that I was awake. "Pst, pst!" was the answer from below. Without more ado, I thrust the note into my pocket, took my fiddle, got out of the window, and scrambled down the ruinous old wall, clinging to the vines growing from the crevices. One or two crumbling stones gave way, and I began to slide faster and faster, until at last I came down upon my feet with such a sudden bump that my teeth rattled ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the king. It is inconceivable that in this age of calculators there is no one to see that France would be much more powerful if Paris were destroyed. Not only is this ill-distributed population not advantageous to the state, it is more ruinous than depopulation itself, because depopulation only gives as produce nought, and the ill-regulated addition of still more people gives a negative result. When I hear an Englishman and a Frenchman so proud of the size of their capitals, and disputing whether London ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... considerable class who succeed in resisting the universal tendency to feudalise all landed property and to find for every man a lord. Even they are compelled to make large concessions to the spirit of the age. It is only at the cost of long and ruinous conflicts that bishops and other prelates establish some distinction between their position and that of the ordinary tenant-in-chief. Even so it remains the law that the principal endowments of every religious foundation are fiefs held under a feudal contract of service. More successful, ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... they had been before. The Golden Rule was no more a common practice than it had ever been. Yet the country was rich, bursting with money. Big business throve, even while it howled to high heaven about ruinous, ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to surrender, though he knew now that he had committed a woful blunder. In fact, the knowledge that he was dealing with Frank Merriwell aroused him to a fierce resistance. He felt that it would simply be ruinous to be held and recognized by Merriwell, and he began to fight like a demon ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... hardship, as far as possible, and preserve their food supply for themselves and their families, it was determined to establish zones of protection with limits sufficiently near all towns to enable the small garrisons thereof to give the people living within these zones efficient protection against ruinous exactions by insurgents. He accordingly, 'in order to put an end to enforced contributions now levied by insurgents upon the inhabitants of sparsely settled and outlying barrios and districts by ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... bench, he upon whom a corner of the great Caliph's mantle has descended, spake with kindness and discretion, seeking to know what evil had come upon the other, disturbing his soul and driving him to such ill-considered and ruinous waste of ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... girls, schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, had some of the Greek feeling of high admiration of physical perfection of form and grace and activity, we should not see so many boys and girls of very imperfect gracefulness, nor should we see fashions of dress so ruinous to all ideals of perfection and grace. We cannot make up for the want of this national artistic ideal of beauty of figure by artificial gymnastics, scientific posturings, and ladders and bars. They are better than nothing, they are a protest, they certainly remedy some defects ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... making one resigned and verbose. He couldn't smuggle style into a dictionary, but he could at least reflect that he had done his best to learn from the drama that it is a gross impertinence almost anywhere. He had knocked at the door of every theatre in London, and, at a ruinous expense, had multiplied type-copies of Nona Vincent to replace the neat transcripts that had descended into the managerial abyss. His play was not even declined—no such flattering intimation was ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... capital belonging to and employed in the trade of the Philippine Islands, does not at present exceed two and a half million dollars, with evident signs of rapid decline, if the merchants do not in time abandon the ruinous systems of chiefly carrying on their speculations with ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... regarded as a just restitution to himself; and all the sums which were struck off from their accounts he regarded as so much deducted from a theft. The less a Minister paid out of his budget the more Bonaparte was pleased with him; and this ruinous system of economy can alone explain the credit which Decres so long enjoyed at the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... pass this one night and no more." But as he was again refused he went forth into the thoroughfares where the street dogs barked at him, and thence he trudged on to the market where the watchmen and warders cried out at him, till at last he entered a ruinous house where he stumbled when walking and fell over something which proved to be a youth lately murthered, and in tripping he fell upon his face and his garments were bewrayed and crimsoned with blood. And as he stood in doubt as to what must be done the Wali and the watch, who were going round the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... what a miserable language is our English in some respects; so awkward, so incompact! Look at the phrase 'unheard of,' and compare it with the Latin 'inauditus.' What a pity we were not born Romans or Greeks, with Yankee notions! Tell your Gotham friends that if they are speaking of a ruinous brick wall, they must say dilaterated, from 'later,' a brick, and not 'dilapidated,' from 'lapis,' a stone. One might as well say a man is 'stoned' to death with brick-bats.' . . . WHAT sad and startling ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... to realise that no progress whatever had been made. I tried to check the craving for chloral, but I could as easily have checked the rising tide: and where the lifelong assiduity of older friends had failed to eradicate a morbid, ruinous, and fatal thirst, it was presumptous if not ridiculous to imagine that the task could be compassed by a frail creature with heart and nerves of wax. But the whole scene was now beginning to have an interest for me more personal and more serious than I have ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... for France. She was held fast by her treaty with Austria and at ruinous cost was ever sending more and more troops to help Austria against Prussia. The great plan of which Belle-Isle had written to Montcalm was the chief hope of her policy. England was to be invaded and London occupied. If this were done, all else would be right. It was ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... at their wits' end, came down, however, to the Campus Martius on the day of the election, where, turning towards the magistrates, they looked round at the countenances of their most eminent men, who were earnestly gazing at each other, and murmured bitterly, that their affairs were in so ruinous a state, and the condition of the commonwealth so desperate, that no one dared undertake the command in Spain. When suddenly Publius Cornelius, son of Publius who had fallen in Spain, who was about twenty-four years of age, declaring himself a candidate, took his ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... base, and bloody" government (these were Mr. Yorke's epithets). Madmen like Pitt, demons like Castlereagh, mischievous idiots like Perceval, were the tyrants, the curses of the country, the destroyers of her trade. It was their infatuated perseverance in an unjustifiable, a hopeless, a ruinous war, which had brought the nation to its present pass. It was their monstrously oppressive taxation, it was the infamous "Orders in Council"—the originators of which deserved impeachment and the scaffold, if ever public ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... in a ruinous condition, owing to the neglect of the magistrates, who had commonly been guilty of embezzlement, if not of wholesale plunder. I repaired the evil by means of aqueducts, beautified the city with noble buildings, and surrounded it with walls. The public revenues were easily increased by proper ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Shepherd, not perceiving that literature was his forte, resolved to embark further in farming speculations; he took in lease the extensive farm of Mount Benger, adjoining Altrive Lake, expending his entire capital in the stocking. The adventure proved almost ruinous. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... beer-shops," quoth Barnabas, speaking in alt, "Are ruinous,—down with the growers of malt!" "Too true," answers Ben, with a shake of the head, "Wherever they congregate, honesty's dead. That beer breeds dishonesty causes no wonder, 'Tis nurtured in crime,—'tis concocted in plunder; In Kent while surrounded by flourishing ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... betwixt confederate states and princes engaged in a war with a mighty monarch; as also of discipline in an army, and obedience in the several chiefs to the supreme commander of the joint forces. To inculcate this, he sets forth the ruinous effects of discord in the camp of those allies, occasioned by the quarrel betwixt the general and one of the next in office under him. Agamemnon gives the provocation, and Achilles resents the injury. Both parties are faulty in the quarrel, and accordingly they are both punished; the aggressor ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... which he sends his stuff to the surface to be washed. The rim of the pit is fringed with windlasses. The descending wire ropes stretch from them thick as gossamers on an autumn meadow. The system is as demoralising as it is ruinous. The owner cannot be ubiquitous: if he is with his working cradle, his servants in the pit steal his most valuable stones and secrete them. Forty per cent of the diamonds discovered are supposed to be lost in this way."* The ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... assertions of the Bowery merchants as set forth in their posters and hand bills, with which they cover the fronts of their shops, they are always on the verge of ruin, and are constantly throwing their goods away for the benefit of their customers. They always sell at a "ruinous sacrifice;" yet snug fortunes are realized here, and many a Fifth avenue family can look back to days passed in the dingy back room of a Bowery shop, while papa "sacrificed" his wares in front. Sharp ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... to live at Hare Street quietly and without anxiety, even if his powers had failed him; and it was strange to walk as I did, one day when I had nearly finished my task, round about the whole garden, which had been so tangled and weed-choked a wilderness, and the house at first so ruinous and bare, and to realise that it was all complete and perfect, a setting of order and peace. How insecure and frail the beautiful hopes of permanence and quiet enjoyment all seemed! I passed over the smooth lawn, under the leafless limes, through the yew-tree walk to the orchard, where the grave ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as if the large uncertainties which we have indicated detract in a ruinous manner from the value of the Poetics to us as a work of criticism. Certainly if any young writer took this book as a manual of rules by which to 'commence poet', he would find himself embarrassed. But, if the book is properly read, not as a dogmatic text-book but as ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... Who were they who endeavored to stay the violence of party, to arrest the hand of executive authority, and to convince the people that this experiment was delusive; that its object was merely to increase executive power, and that its effect, sooner or later, must be injurious and ruinous? Gentlemen, it is fair to bring the opinions of political men to the test of experience. It is just to judge of them by their measures, and their opposition to measures; and for myself, and those political friends with ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... a vast population, with whom they have neither language, nor religion, nor morals, nor manners, nor colour in common; they feel that any convulsion which should overthrow the existing order of things would be ruinous to themselves. Particular acts of the Government—especially acts which are mortifying to the pride of caste naturally felt by an Englishman in India—are often angrily condemned by these persons. But every indigo-planter in Tirhoot, and every shopkeeper in Calcutta, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... attack succeeded in breaking the French center, the French army would have been cut in two and both remnants would have been compelled to retreat in order to save themselves from ruinous flank attacks. In retreating they would have been obliged to leave Verdun and Paris each to take care of itself, and the German armies could have swung about to surround and lay siege to either ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... stayed! Since I first knew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it's useless. Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly. We never have a servant who don't drink. Ma's ruinous to everything." ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... was no lobby at the bottom of the tower, and scarce a landing-place opposite to the doors which gave access to the apartments. One or two low and dilapidated outhouses, connected by a courtyard wall equally ruinous, surrounded the mansion. The court had been paved, but the flags being partly displaced and partly renewed, a gallant crop of docks and thistles sprung up between them, and the small garden, which opened by a postern through the wall, seemed not to be in a much more orderly ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the site and designed the plan of this his residence with the double purpose of indulging a fancy for architectural novelty and of providing against disaster by lightning and earthquake. Never did it occur to him that fire and flood were the elements he had most reason to fear: each of these ruinous agents was destined, in turn, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... redden. arrogancia f. arrogance. arrojar throw, cast, cast off. arrojo m. daring, fearlessness. arrostrar face, fight, encounter. arroyuelo m. little brook, brooklet. arruinado, -a ruinous, crumbling. arrullar lull. arrullo m. lullaby. as m. ace. asaz adv. enough, sufficiently, very. ascender ascend, rise. as adv. so, thus. Asia f. Asia. asiento m. seat. asilo m. refuge, protection, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... them co-exist is suffered in no well- governed nation. If materials of foreign growth were at an easy rate, a high price might be the better borne in things of our own product, but to have both dear at once (and by reason of the duties laid upon them) is ruinous to the inferior rank of men, and this ought to weigh more with us, when we consider that even of the common people a subdivision is to be made, of which one part subsist from their own havings, arts, labour, ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... was about a half engagement, anyhow, it's the only one we ever had. She said it would be ruinous to our plans if I was seen with her then or afterward; and agreed to leave a note at the house for me by next trip, telling me her plan—which she should talk ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... the village, pathways lead through the woods and past many ruined and ruinous cabins. The latter are chiefly occupied by negroes, who enjoy the sweets of liberty in these sequestered nooks. It is questionable if emancipation in any way bettered their condition. The Dutch introduced slaves into Long Island immediately upon settling on its western extremity, but it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... emptiness and decay of his father's house, had bought it from Pontius Pilate; and, in process of repair, gates, courts, lewens, stairways, terraces, rooms, and roof had been cleansed and thoroughly restored; not only was there no reminder left of the tragic circumstances so ruinous to the family, but the refurnishment was in a style richer than before. At every point, indeed, a visitor was met by evidences of the higher tastes acquired by the young proprietor during his years of residence in the villa by Misenum ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... speaking rapidly. "For long years, they have suffered from the road and river taxes of Bel Menstal, as well as from the insults and blows of his officers. Many of them have been imprisoned, and held for ruinous ransom. Others have been tortured and killed. Under the serf, they would suffer additional taxes, until they were driven from the land, or themselves reduced to serfdom and even slavery." ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... Dynevor! He was, without exception, the most wrong-headed person I ever came in contact with, yet so excessively plausible and eager that he carried my poor father entirely along with him. Louis! nothing is so ruinous as ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... came a clear and piercing trill of feminine laughter from Miss Blossom. Merton angrily marched to the inner door, and shut his typewriter in with a bang. His heart burned within him. Nothing could be so insulting to clients; nothing so ruinous to a nascent business. He wheeled round to greet his visitors with a face of apology; his eyes on the average level of the human countenance divine. There was no human countenance divine. There was no human countenance at that altitude. His eyes ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... is ruinous, for every man is farming down his land and letting it deteriorate as fast as he can; and there is a most marked difference in the county between those who have bought their land and those who are tenants. When a judicial rent was fixed and ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... carried reasons of both kinds; yet he had never throughout his relations with Gwendolen been free from the nervous consciousness that there was something to guard against not only on her account but on his own—some precipitancy in the manifestations of impulsive feeling—some ruinous inroad of what is but momentary on the permanent chosen treasure of the heart—some spoiling of her trust, which wrought upon him now as if it had been the retreating cry of a creature snatched and carried out of his reach by swift horsemen or swifter ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... through some wonderful window. And he wanted her to be with him there, in this world of proud indifference. But what was the good of telling her he wanted this company in proud indifference. What was the good of talking, any way? It must happen beyond the sound of words. It was merely ruinous to try to work her by conviction. This was a paradisal bird that could never be netted, it must fly by ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... that the next time will bring him luck. There are clerks in New York and other large cities who have not only squandered all their own savings, but abstracted money from their employers, led on by this ruinous passion. ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... Sir Redvers' own view. On the other hand Botha, after the war, said that the loss of the guns and the mistakes as to Hart's brigade deprived him of the opportunity of inflicting a ruinous defeat upon the British army. He had hoped to induce his assailants to cross the river without a shot ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... roubles, she knew, was safe from his clutches. Her father had taken care to make that secure, but Milan's private fortune, large as it had been, had already been squandered in this and other forms of dissipation; and even the expenses of his wedding, she learned, had been met by a loan raised at ruinous interest. ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... silence of night, The ruinous moon Lifts on our faces her light, Whence all dreaming ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... said Quincy, "that we don't keep store to please our competitors, but to serve the public. I believe in low prices in sugar, tea, and coffee, to draw trade. But general cuts in prices are ruinous in the end, for our competitors will cut too, and ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Rome, may be in the attics of this inn." I gave him twenty guineas, and he disappeared again for ten days. At the end of that time he returned once more, horribly dishevelled, dirty and extended. He looked to be just out and about again after a ruinous debauch. He talked in hollow whispers, he trembled in the limbs, he started and turned pale at a shadow, or the sound of a mouse in the wainscot. He said he had been to Ancona, Gubbio, Rimini, Ravenna, Chioggia, Venice, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... believe that it was in the year 1451. They must have moved soon afterwards to the house in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello, No. 37, in which most of Christopher's childhood was certainly passed. This is a house close to St. Andrew's Gate, which gate still stands in a beautiful and ruinous condition. ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... turn." {96c} This was before the Perth riot had been reported (May 26) by Cecil to Throckmorton. Was d'Elboeuf intended to direct the persecution? The theory has its attractions, but Henri, just emerged with maimed forces from a ruinous war, knew that a persecution which served Cecil's "turn" did not serve his. To persecute in Scotland would mean renewed war with England, and could not be contemplated. If Sir James Melville can be trusted for once, the Constable, about June 1, told him, in the presence of the French ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... Vercelli. But, if the heavenly apparition of the "sign of Christ" on Monte Mario is historically without foundation, the existence of the oratory is not. Towards the end of the twelfth century it was in a ruinous state, and converted probably into a stable or a hay-loft. The last archaeologist who mentions it is Seroux d'Agincourt. He describes the ruins "on the slopes of the hill of the Villa Madama," and gives ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... the sinking sun brightened every nook and corner. It was a good-sized room, and on three sides of it—except where a space was left for the window—trunks and boxes were neatly stacked to the ceiling. Dust and cobwebs lent a disreputable and ruinous ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... truth about the whole squalid business. Almost any kind of amusement, not accompanied with betting, is, to an increasing number of people, as insipid as water is to the palate of a brandy-drinker. In the case of young men the habit does two things: it gives rise to false and ruinous impressions, and it murders the soul. As touching the former, it tempts a young man to think he can get a living, and a flourishing one, without working for it—a greatly coveted science in these days. It seems so much easier to put money in the pocket this way, than by honest ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... clerk, to sell both wholesale and retail; and by this economy received considerable profit and income. Afterwards, to unite my concerns in one spot, I bought a large house, which stood on a great deal of ground, but was ruinous, pulled it down, and built that your majesty saw yesterday, which, though it makes so great an appearance, consists, for the most part, of warehouses for my business, with apartments absolutely ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... north wall could be seen dimly to his right, but all were well removed from his way. He found, in due time, the ford in the creek, as Scott had advised, made it without mishap, scrambled up a steep and rocky path, and saw confronting him, not far ahead, a small, ruinous-looking cabin shack. Dismounting before this, he threw his lines, shook himself a little, and walked up to the cabin door. ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... which has been able to preserve its fortune. As to myself I shall not increase it, and at the same time I am not likely to squander it. My position is such that there is no necessity for me to enter into competition with struggling humanity. As to expensive and ruinous pleasures, I am a sceptic who knows how much they are worth, or rather, knows that ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... as a freight storeroom. This had been patched and propped, and a dangerous-looking veranda attached to it, over-hanging the water. Above the doorway was placed a sign whereon might be read the words, "Beaver Beach, Mike's Place." The shore end of the pier was so ruinous that passage was offered by a single row of planks, which presented an appearance so temporary, as well as insecure, that one might have guessed their office to be something in the nature of a drawbridge. From these a narrow path ran through a marsh, left by the receding river, to a country ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... private life, but to crush truths about public life. Representation had become mere misrepresentation; a maze of loopholes. This was mainly due to the monstrous presence of certain secret moneys, on which alone many men could win the ruinous elections of the age, and which were contributed and distributed with less check or record than is tolerated in the lowest trade or club. Only one or two people attacked these funds; nobody defended them. Through them the great capitalists had the handle of politics, as of everything ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... towards the aperture, throwing himself forward upon his hands, so as to look down through the hole. He had forgotten the ruinous condition of the Hotel de Poisson. His weight and the force of his movement were too much for the strength of the rotten wood; a timber gave way, and Mr. C. Augustus Ebenier was precipitated, head first, through the hole he had made, and struck between the two men, who sat each on ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... have sold him, or drawn him into a ruinous compromise with his adversaries, for a valuable consideration to themselves. But as no ties are binding among such a knot of villains, the rest of the conspirators were jockeyed by G—, who, in order to monopolize the advantage to himself, hurried his prize into the country, and secreted him ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... stone, which has been thus interpreted by Dr. Graves, Bishop of Limerick: "Bentire, or the Son of the Druid, lies here." "The Cross of Nordred's daughter is here placed." This stone was found by a labourer about 1851, while digging in a piece of waste ground near the ruinous church of Culbinsgarth at Bressay, Shetland. The design is said to be thoroughly Irish, and the inscription a mixture of Irish and Icelandic. The stone measures 4 ft. by 1 ft. 4-1/2 in. by 2 in. It is attributed to the ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge, that projects from the bank a little on the hither side of the castle, has the effect of making the scene appear more entirely apart from the every-day world, for it ends abruptly in the middle of the stream,—so that, if a cavalcade of the knights ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the simple ante-rooms for the use of servants and guards, that is not at least six feet or more wide; most of them are ten feet, and those decorated with sculptures even wider still." In their present ruinous state, it is more difficult to say for certain what their height may have been. Judging, however, from the ruins and from the usual proportions of height and width in the voids of Assyrian buildings, the doors at Khorsabad must have risen ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... the pride of his solitary dignity, would not honour King William with the title of Majesty, down to the smallest Margrave who could see his whole principality from the cracked windows of the mean and ruinous old house which he called his palace. It was not enough that England and Holland furnished much more than their contingents to the war by land, and bore unassisted the whole charge of the war by ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that manufacturers weigh the fuel used more carefully than hitherto; the extra trouble would soon lead to economy for all interested in sugar production at ruinous cost. Some chemists advocate that coal be purchased only after having been analyzed. Efforts to have a unification in methods of analysis of all products of factory is a move in the right direction; the Association of Sugar Chemists have adopted a series of methods that are in the future to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... continually down into demoniac wombs. Coming into demoniac wombs, deluded birth after birth, they, O son of Kunti, without attaining to Me go down to the vilest state. Three-fold is the way to hell, ruinous to the self, viz., lust, wrath, likewise avarice. Therefore, these three, one should renounce. Freed from these three gates of darkness, a man, O son of Kunti, works out his own welfare, and then repairs to his highest goal. He who, abandoning the ordinances of the scriptures, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... ruinous sweep, There shrieks are heard, there lamentations, moans, And blasphemies 'gainst the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri |
