"Crumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there among the gashed ground: the lane itself, now entirely grassless, is a deep-rutted, heavy-hillocked cart-road, diverging gatelessly into various brick-fields or pieces of waste; and bordered on each side by heaps of—Hades only knows what!—mixed dust of every unclean thing that can crumble in drought, and mildew of every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp: ashes and rags, beer-bottles and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery, shreds of nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen garbage, back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... interior. One of these stones, which was examined by an Englishman, to whom it was shown privately by a black, was of a substance like quartz, about the size of a pigeon's egg, and transparent, like white sugar-candy. The small particles of crystal which crumble off are swallowed in order to prevent illness. Many other instances of the like superstitious folly might very easily be gathered from the writings of those who have had the best opportunities of becoming acquainted with the manners of ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... inadaptability. The old code fails under the new needs. The only alternative to this profound reconstruction is a decay in human quality and social collapse. Either this unprecedented rearrangement must be achieved by our civilisation, or it must presently come upon a phase of disorder and crumble and perish, as Rome perished, as France declines, as the strain of the Pilgrim Fathers dwindles out of America. Whatever hope there may be in the attempt therefore, there is ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... castles, but he abideth not therein, lest they crumble about his ears and crush him. Castles built of air often fall of stone. Therefore, only the foolish man keeps revel in the great hall or slumbers in ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... of inspiration, the decline of taste, the decline of language, the decline of intellectual interest. Beneath it all and through it all there is spreading, gradually and silently, the insidious decay that will surely crumble the constitution of the ancient world. Pagan letters are uncreative, and, with few exceptions, without imagination and dull. The literature of the new religion, beginning to push green shoots from the ruins ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... man has hewn from stone or shaped from wood, put to the uses of his pleasure or his toil, and then at length abandoned to crumble slowly back into its elements of soil or metal, is fraught for the beholder with a wistful appeal, whether it be the pyramids of Egyptian kings, or an abandoned farmhouse on the road to Moosilauke, or only ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... on it, and horn cups, surrounding a barley loaf and a cheese, this meagre irregular supper being considered as a sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and horn before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than cut, his bread. His wife, a thin, pale, shrewish-looking woman, was warming her child's feet at the fire, before putting him to bed, and an old woman sat spinning and nodding on a settle at ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... car rested a minute, the light, dry earth began to crack and crumble away from under the tires, rolling in a miniature avalanche down the steep declivity into the water. And not until Wemple had backed fifty yards down the narrow road did he find solid resting for the car. He came ahead on foot and examined the acute angle formed by the two zig-zags. Together ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... he stood looking after her, fists clenched and his face very gray in the morning light. Some small inner voice told him that his new plan, and the others which he had built upon it, must crumble and fall as a castle of sand. He groaned and, turning aside, made his way through ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... something held him there—something hardened the grasp of his fingers. Newman's satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too deliberate and mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and comprehensive for this fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke. The very foundation seemed fatally injured, and yet he felt a stubborn desire still to try to save the edifice. He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever known, or than he had supposed it possible he should know. To accept his injury ...
— The American • Henry James
... crumble, The diadem shall wane, The tribes of earth shall humble The pride of those who reign; And War shall lay his pomp away;— The fame that heroes cherish, The glory earned in deadly fray Shall fade, decay, and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... though to show how nobles and commoners, lords and frontiersmen, monarchists and republicans, are equal in death—and that the last stones of old Fort Loudoun, built by Lieutenant, afterwards General, Washington, crumble into dust there, disappearing like a thousand other memorials of that noble period, and the giants who illustrated it:—this, and much more, might be said of Winchester, the old heart of the border, which felt every blow, and poured out her blood freely in behalf of the frontier. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... tasteless ornamentation. One result of all this has been a series of catastrophes of which a detailed account would appal grave men in other countries; another consequence is the existence of a quantity of grotesquely bad street decoration, much of which is already beginning to crumble under the action of the weather. It is sadder still, in many parts of Monti to see the modern ruins of houses which were not even finished when the crash put an end to the building mania, roofless, windowless, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... There jejune fossils lie to tell Of pleiocene days' garnered fold; Gray bones that pierce this weird waste Lie mounted on a torrid peak; Principalities of the past, Lie scatter'd in the mildewed dust; Serai's built in ages gone, Now crumble at a sound, a voice. And Boulders that the Djinnee cast As Vengeance swirl'd the heated dust, Now rock as devils rasp a son, And vampyres dance round and round. And where a dim, unstudded dome Leak odours strong and palsied light— Twins of the Gloom! as some ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... are often extremely faint. In some loose sands of recent date we meet with shells in so advanced a stage of decomposition as to crumble into powder when touched. It is clear that water percolating such strata may soon remove the calcareous matter of the shell; and unless circumstances cause the carbonate of lime to be again deposited, the grains of sand will not be cemented together; ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... straight as we can, but get driven at an angle by the strange ribs of rock which come straight down. These are most tiresome to deal with, getting worse the higher we go, and so rotten and weather-eaten are they that they crumble into dust and fragments under our feet. Head man gets half a dozen falls, and when we are about three parts of the way up Xenia gives in. The cold and the climbing are too much for him, so I make him wrap himself up in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... but it had the merit of placing man bare for the moment, and, by showing him what he was and what he was not, of setting him on the discovery of the real value of his duties and his rights. It was the cry of the revolt of nature against all tyrannies. This cry was destined to crumble into dust an old world used up in servitude, and to produce another new and breathing. It was to La Fayette's honour that ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretch'd out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... know how much money is in Grandaddy's keyster, that's his affair. But it's irksome and tragic not to know one's limitations. Tomorrow the whole structure may crumble and fall, for ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... pipe is put alight The smoke ascends, then trembles, wanes, And soon dissolves in sunshine bright, And but the whitened ash remains. 'Tis so man's glory crumble must, E'en as his ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... pudding, mind what you are taught: Take eggs, six in number, when bought for a groat; The fruit with which Eve her husband did cozen, Well pared and well chopped, take at least half a dozen; Six ounces of bread—let the cook eat the crust— And crumble the soft as fine as the dust; Six ounces of currants from the stalks you must sort, Lest they husk out your teeth, and spoil all the sport; Six ounces of sugar won't make it too sweet, And some salt and some nutmeg will make it complete. ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... on earth; in the fire shall our treasure Burn in the blast; brightly shall mount, The red flame, raging and wrathfully striding 810 Over the wide world; wasted shall be the plains; The castles shall crumble; then shall climb the swift fire, The greediest of guests, grimly and ruthlessly Eat the ancient treasure that of old men possessed While still on the earth was their strength and their pride. 815 Hence I strive to ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... rumbling of thunder, might then be heard many miles, and from its entrails vomited forth redhot stones, with a flood of liquid fire." The crater of the extinguished volcano is still visible, though shattered and powdered down by the tread under which Alps and Appennines themselves crumble away—that of Time. The only point on which we are sceptical is the late origin of the promontory. Nothing beyond a sandhill or a heap of ashes has been produced on the face of nature since the memory of man. That a rock, or rather a mountain chain, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... as every one can't entertain. Who could suppose that a sensible man could leave his house, France, his ward—a charming youth, for we saw him in the camp—to fly to the aid of a rotten, worm-eaten royalty, which is going to crumble one of these days like an old hovel. The sentiments you air are certainly fine, so fine that they ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... now rushed in a brigade of Tennessee mountaineers, and as they struck with all their weight, the new line of the South was compelled to give way. Success seen and felt filled the veins of the soldiers with fresh fire. Dick and the men about him saw the whole Southern line crumble up before them. The triumphant Union army rushed forward shouting, and the Confederates were forced to ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... foaming ocean. The refugees, the gypsies, the Jews, the Greeks, scampered in all directions. Then tremendous echoes awoke among the hills. Peal after peal echoed and re-echoed, until it seemed as if the cliffs must crack and crumble. Sheets of rain were blown by the mischievous winds now full upon the unhappy fugitives, or now descended with seemingly crushing force on the Servians in their dancing canoes. Then came vivid lightning, brilliant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... interrupted the girl, growing grave. "He is not a man like other men. If he asked to kiss me, I should crumble into dust, as ashes dried in the sun crumble if you touch them with a finger, and I should be as much afraid of his lips as of a lion's. Though you may laugh at it, I shall always believe that he is one of the Immortals. His own father told ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and knead it and make it into cracknels[FN118] for the convent; and thou must take also a bushel of lentils[FN119] and sift and crush and cook them. Then must thou fetch water in barrels and fill the four fountains; after which thou must take three hundred and threescore and six wooden bowls and crumble the cracknels therein and pour of the lentil-pottage over each and carry every monk and patriarch his bowl." Said Ala al-Din,[FN120] "Take me back to the King and let him kill me, it were easier to me than this service." Replied the old woman, "If thou do truly and rightly the service that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... field de second year of de war, 1862. It sho' made me hungry. I 'members now, how I'd git a big tin cupful of pot liquor from de greens, crumble corn bread in it at dinner time and 'joy it as de bestest part of de dinner. Us no suffer for sumpin' to eat. I go all summer in my shirt-tail and in de winter I have to do de best I can, widout any shoes. Ever since then, I just lak to go ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... truth. It had given the lie direct to the flippancy which she had assumed, and David determined to remain until he had fathomed its innermost meaning. A fear, indeed, lest the one single faith he felt as real should crumble to ashes made his resolve almost an instinct of self-preservation. The idea of accepting the situation never occurred to him, his training having effectually prevented any growth of respect for the status quo as such. Nor did he realise at ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... to be, of ebony, or some such close-grained black wood, and was bound in every direction with flat bands of iron. Its antiquity must have been extreme, for the dense heavy wood was in parts actually commencing to crumble from age. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... the last bastion of my creed, With shot and shell for Sabbath-chime, I watch the storming-party climb, Panting (their prey in easy reach), To pour triumphant through the breach In walls that shed like snowflakes tons Of missiles from old-fashioned guns, But crumble 'neath the storm that pours All day and night from bigger bores. 20 There, as I hopeless watch and wait The last life-crushing coil of Fate, Despair finds solace in the praise Of those serene dawn-rosy days Ere microscopes had made us heirs To large estates of doubts ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... where legal ghouls grow fat; Where buried papers, fold on fold, Crumble to dust, that 'thwart the sun Floats dim, a pallid ghost of gold. The day is dying. All about, Dark, threat'ning shadows lurk; but still I ponder o'er a dead girl's name Fast fading from a dead ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... were not so wild after all. Ten years later it was an accomplished fact in almost all its details. And what are ten years in politics? Frotte, Georges, Pichegru, d'Ache, would only have had to fold their arms. They would have seen the Empire crumble ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... called, from its shape, being made round like a wafer. Unleavened bread is used from a sense of reverence, using something specially made for so holy a purpose, and also because unleavened bread is not so likely to crumble as ordinary bread. It is also believed that this was undoubtedly the kind of bread our Lord used when ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... his eyes. And one day, beguiling him in the depths of the forest, she led him to a fair-seeming castle, and, bidding him enter its portals, offered to show him a realization of his dream. But, lo! even as he entered the stately corridor it seemed to crumble away before him, and disclosed a hideous abyss beyond, in which the whole of that goodly palace lay in heaped and tangled ruins—the fitting symbol of ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... now in England, although in France, where factions are constantly fighting against each other, it is well that every man should hold himself secure from attack. But now that cannon are getting to so great a point of perfection, walls are only useful to repel sudden attacks, and soon crumble when cannon can be brought against them. Me thinks the time will come when walls will be given up altogether, especially in England, where the royal power is so strong that nobles can no longer war with ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... is man's only justification for considering himself above the beasts—that we can love, and communicate with, God. For where otherwise is his superiority? He builds fine buildings which crumble and decay. He digs holes in the earth to take out treasures which he has not made; and if he makes himself the very highest tower of wealth or fame, he must come down from it and be buried in the ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... ledges of the windows, and chirp at the sight of the feast they are usually so ready to devour! It is not my presence that frightens them; I have accustomed them to eat out of my hand. Then, why this fearful suspense? In vain I look around: the roof is clear, the windows near are closed. I crumble the bread that remains from my breakfast to attract them by an ampler feast. Their chirpings increase, they bend down their heads, the boldest approach upon the wing, but without ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of victory and of defeat have swept again and again across its roadway. Leaning over its stone barriers we watch the river pursue its rapid course just as it has done for twenty centuries. Palaces, temples, shrines, may crumble, nations rise and fall, but the Guadalquiver still ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... wheat and other grains, yielded unlimited quantities. But even with this improvement the sun-dried bricks could not withstand the continued action of many rainy seasons, or many torrid summers, but had a tendency to crumble away when parched too dry, or to soak and dissolve back into mud, when too long exposed to rain. All these defects were removed by the simple expedient of baking the bricks in kilns or ovens, a process which gives them the hardness and solidity of ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... Numbers! All things change and glide, Corrupt and crumble, suffer wreck and decay, But, obstinate dark Integrities, you abide, And obey but them who obey. All things else are dyed In the colours of man's desire: But you no bribe nor prayer Avails to soften or sway. Nothing of me ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... with himself—his unseeing eyes fixed on the spot where Peter and the snowshoe rabbit had disappeared—he heard Nada's voice behind him, saying again that she was going with him and Peter. In those seconds he felt himself giving way, and the determined action he had built up for himself began to crumble like sand. He had made his confession and in spite of it this young girl he worshipped—sweeter and purer than the flowers of the forest—was urging herself upon him! And his soul cried out for him to turn about, and open his arms to her, and gather her into them for as long ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... perish with the body? Why have you ever bade me desire the light and seek it, if for ever you must thrust me into the darkness of negation? Shall I be Nothing?—like the muscle that rots, like the bones that crumble, like the flesh that turns to ashes, and blows in a film on the winds? Shall I die so? I?—the mind of a man, the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... him; women, children, and old men would come a distance of eight or ten leagues to line his route, and cheer and cry, "Vive l'Empereur! Vive l'Empereur!" One would think that he was a god, that mankind owed its life to him, and that, if he died, the world would crumble and be no more. A few old Republicans would shake their heads and mutter over their wine that the Emperor might yet fall, but they passed for fools. Such an event appeared contrary to nature, and no one ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... based her confidence of victory on the belief that, under the strain of war, the far-flung British Empire, with its heterogeneous elements and racial jealousies, would promptly crumble. It was a vital error. Instead of crumbling it hardened into a unity which is adamantine. Canada has already contributed half a million men to the British armies, Australia three hundred thousand. South Africa, by undertaking her own defense, released the imperial regiments stationed there. ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... flaming countenance of the Almighty, if they should be called before Him. Every fresh burst of thunder seemed to August to be the rocking of the world, trembling in the throes of dissolution. But the world might crumble or melt; there is something more enduring than the world. August felt the everlastingness of love; as many another man in a supreme crisis has ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... crass and flagrant character that if once the popular apprehension is touched by matter-of-fact reflection on the actualities of this businesslike policy the whole structure should reasonably be expected to crumble. If the present conjuncture of circumstances should, e.g., present to the American populace a choice between exclusion from the neutral league, and a consequent probable and dubious war of self-defense, on the one hand; as against entrance into the league, and security at the cost of relinquishing ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... your hand. You may put in a great good Onion or two. A pretty deal of Parsley, and if you will, and the season afford them, you may add what you like of other Porage herbs, such as they use for their Porages in France. But if you take the savoury herbs dry, you must crumble or beat them to small Powder (as you do the Coriander-seed) and if any part of them be too big to pass through the strainer, after they have given their taste to the quantity, in boiling a sufficient while therein, you put them away with the husks of the Pease. The Pint of Pease that you ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... hidden there in the ground; and advised them digging a hole there with their little spades, to try for it. Accordingly, to work they went, and by my return in the evening they had grubbed up a piece of a jawbone, with several teeth in it. The bone was very much decayed, and ready to crumble to pieces, but the teeth were quite sound. I could not tell whether they were human grinders; but I showed the fossil to one of the physicians I have mentioned, who came out the next evening, and he ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... hidden from us, a change from era to era. The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... paddles; indeed, when delineating the character of a bishop, he expressly names this as one feature of it, "no striker." Let masters give unto their servants that which is just and equal, and all that vast system of unrequited labor would crumble into ruin. Yes, and if they once felt they had no right to the labor of their servants without pay, surely they could not think they had a right to their wives, their children, and their own bodies. Again, how ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... admiration of the world, more venerable and majestic, and Bolvar, higher and brighter. Washington established a republic which later became one of the greatest countries on earth; Bolvar founded also a great country, but, less happy than his elder brother, saw it crumble down; and though he did not see his work destroyed, he saw it disfigured and diminished. The successors of Washington, great citizens, philosophers and statesmen, never dreamed of tearing up the sacred mantle of their mother ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... stuffed humming-birds which had delighted his childhood. They looked not a day older, suspended on wires above pampas-grass. If the case were opened the birds would not begin to hum, but the whole thing would crumble, he suspected. It wouldn't be worth putting that into the sale! And suddenly he was caught by a memory of Aunt Ann—dear old Aunt Ann—holding him by the hand in front of that case and saying: "Look, Soamey! Aren't ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his arm. "Fy, Harry, bid the daws seek their food elsewhere, for a gentleman may not wear his heart upon his sleeve. Empires crumble, and hearts break, and we are blessed or damned, as Fate elects; but through it all we find comfort in the reflection that dinner is good, and sleep, too, is excellent. As for the future—eh, well, if it mean little to us, it means ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... houses in a false and affected and unreal style of architecture, they are ugly from the very beginning; and they will become as old-fashioned as old Buckingham House or Strawberry Hill itself, perhaps in the life-time of him who owns them; or else, like Fonthill, they will crumble about your ears, and remain as monuments of your folly rather than of your taste. But go and build as Thorpe, or Inigo Jones, or Wren used to build. Or even, if you will travel abroad for your models, take Palladio himself for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... torpor, and for the imperfect harvest of imperfectly righteous acts, the attitude of receiving, which supersedes painful strife and weary endeavour. To seek after a righteousness which is 'my own,' is to seek what we shall never find, and what, if found, would crumble beneath us. To seek the righteousness which is from God, is to seek what He is waiting to bestow, and what the blessed receivers blessedly know is more than ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the mind gives way; All fails, all's lacking at the selfsame time. Therefore it suits that even the soul's dissolved, Like smoke, into the lofty winds of air; Since we behold the same to being come Along with body and grow, and, as I've taught, Crumble and ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought to be made him out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins, as members of that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of the foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind the pump and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and hootings take place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M. Melvilleson enter into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling that these unusual occurrences ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... "Grand Perhaps," which knows no defence against the critical understanding, and sinks dumb when questioned. If, in the form of a religious conviction, its assurance is more confident, then, too often, it rests upon the treacherous foundations of authoritative ignorance, which crumble into dust beneath the blows of awakened and liberated reason. Nay, if by the aid of philosophy we turn our optimism into a faith held by reason, a fact before which the intellect, as well as the heart, worships and grows glad, it still is for most of us only a general hypothesis, ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... the death of the King before the majority of her daughter. At the same time a great convulsion took place in the constitution of the State. The power of the Tories, who had dominated England for more than forty years, suddenly began to crumble. In the tremendous struggle that followed, it seemed for a moment as if the tradition of generations might be snapped, as if the blind tenacity of the reactionaries and the determined fury of their enemies could have no other ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... who pretend to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six hundred pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon eight, and as fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are renewed—from the sea, yes, from the sea. And all our thoughts are the thoughts of six-hundred-pounders, and all our speeches; and because we don't want to steal umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea people do want to steal ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... such as synodical minutes, are printed, several copies at least should be printed on durable paper and deposited in public libraries where they may be consulted by the historian. Ordinary paper is perishable. Within a few years it will crumble to dust. The records might as well be written on sand so far as their value for ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... proved their destroyers; and by the creation of a wealthy middle class, every day improving in education and numbers, he has formed a strong body who find that it is their interest to support him. When it is no longer their interest so to do, the whole fabric of Russian government will crumble ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... over the loess are altered by the rains. Two days of heavy rain will produce in some places seas of mud, often knee-deep, and this will again dry up quite as rapidly with the next sunshine. They become undermined, and crumble away from the action of even a trickling stream, so as to become always unsafe ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... stood up against the sky, sinking so slowly she could not see them sink: they stood mouldering away, biding their time. They were of those "who only stand and wait," fulfilling the will of him who set them to crumble till the hour of the new heavens and the new earth arrive. There was no visible life between her and the great silent mouldering hills. On her right hand lay a blue segment of the ever restless sea, but so far that its commotion seemed a ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... of cannon and muskets. The baron could no longer summon his vassals, at the moment, to abandon the plow, and seize pike and saber for battle, where the strong arm only was needed. Disciplined troops were needed, who could sweep the field with well-aimed bullets, and crumble walls with shot and shells. This led to the establishment of standing armies, and gave the great powers an immense advantage over their weaker neighbors. The invention of printing, also, which began to be operative about the middle of the fifteenth century, rapidly changed, by ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... oppressive priesthood must perish, for false prophets in the present as in the past stumble onward to their doom; while their tabernacles crumble with dry rot. "God is not mocked," and "the word of our ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds and to enjoy a great deal of happiness in this ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... uninjured as if they had been put down quite recently; but after they had been exposed to the air for a few days, the slabs of the upper part of the road, to the extent of some 10 feet, which had been exposed to the heat, began to crumble away, and they have now almost disappeared, while those of the lower portion of the road, which had not been touched by the fire, have remained uninjured, and seem to be indestructible. A further proof of the terrible catastrophe is furnished ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... awnings. She was continually starting up from confused dreams of the ground shaking under her, or she seemed to be standing on the brink of some dreadful abyss like the great chasm on the grain-field, when it began to tremble and crumble beneath her feet. It was near morning when, unable to endure it any longer, she managed without disturbing the sleeping Adele, who occupied the same curtained recess with her, to slip out from the awning. Wrapped in a thick shawl, she made ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... of followers. Yet because of these it was not long until there came from out the desert the sound of the marching of a mighty host, heralding the approach of the Arab, the despising and despised. Before these barbarous hordes the principalities of the East were doomed to crumble and yield up their accumulated treasures of the ages, and so triumphant were these invaders from the desert they decided to appropriate for themselves the whole world, and from this they were not dissuaded until Charles Martel sent ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... thing menaced by the touch of the real? Was this contribution of the real possibly the mission of the Pococks?—had they come to make the work of observation, as HE had practised observation, crack and crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms in which honest minds could deal with him? Had they come in short to be sane where Strether was destined to feel that he ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the empire of the Seljuks by the crusaders, and disputes respecting the succession, caused the once formidable sovereignty to crumble to pieces, only, however, to be replaced by others of equally rapid growth, destined to ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... only embarked in certainties," replied Danglars, with the air of a mountebank sounding his own praises; "to involve me, three governments must crumble to dust." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... purulence. Society was rotten, the state a pious criminal, the old truths tawdry lies. Everywhere the impotence of senility—except in young America. We faced the imminence of a vast breaking-up. The subtlest oligarchy of modern times was about to crumble. The revolution ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... mixture of clay and chaff and amurca, for amurca will serve to keep out mice and weevil and will make the grain solid and heavy. Some men even sprinkle their grain with amurca in the proportion of a quadrantal to every thousand modii of grain: others crumble or scatter over it, for the same purpose, other vermifuges like Chalcidian or Carian chalk or wormwood, and other things of that kind. Some farmers have their granaries under ground, like caverns, which ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... Tartar-power withstand, Let sweeping Vengeance lift her flickering brand; Rustem alone may stem the roaring wave, And, prompt as bold, his groaning country save. Meanwhile in flight we place our only trust, Ere the proud ramparts crumble in the dust." ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... and, my God! he has my telltale sensual lips. Here am I in the throes of a hell produced by infinite laws. What is to prevent him—the helpless replica of myself—from taking the way I took? The edge of the alluring abyss will crumble under his blind tread as it crumbled under mine, and this—this—this cloying horror which is on me to-night may be my gift to him—for whose sake ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... For whoso is minded to make him a house must repair to the King and say to him, 'I wish to make me a house in such a place.' Whereupon the King sends with him a band of the fish called 'Peckers,'[FN270] which have beaks that crumble the hardest rock, appointing for their wage a certain quantum of fish. They betake themselves to the mountain chosen by the intended owner and therein pierce the house, whilst the owner catcheth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... blue lightning divided Down the hillside scatters its course, So in twain their army is parted By the sabres sabring in force: They have striven enough for honour! . . . and now Crumble and shatter, and sheer o'er the bank Where torrent Danube hisses and swirls Slant and hurry in rankless rank:— There are sixty thousand the morn 'Gainst the Lions marching in scorn; But twenty, when even is here, Broken and brave and at bay, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... consider the matter very seriously before entering the chasm at all," suggested the doctor. "Remember that it is uncertain as to size and that the walls are liable to crumble." ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... impatience of his followers; to let the Government lose ground in public estimation gently and considerately, not violently and rancorously; to assist in putting them in a contemptible or inefficient point of view; to render their places as uneasy as possible; and to give them time to crumble to pieces, so that his return to power may be more in appearance the act of the Whig Ministry than any act of his own. Then he may demand, and would probably obtain, as the condition of his acceptance of office, the support of a large proportion ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... through? And look you, fair damsel, thou whose body is sweet, and comely to behold—wherefore should I not rejoice to depart? When I see my house lying in ruins about me, I look down upon this ugly overgrown body of mine, the very foundations whereof crumble from beneath me, and I thank God it is but a tent, and no enduring house even like this house of Raglan, which yet will ere long be a dwelling of owls and foxes. Very soon will Death pull out the tent-pins and let me fly, and ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... argument; Nor could the bricks it rests on serve to build The crowning finials. I abide her law: A different substance for a different end— Content to know I hold the building up; Though men, agape at dome and pinnacles, Guess not, the whole must crumble like a dream But for that buried labour underneath. Yet, Padua, I had still my word to say! Let others say it!—Ah, but will they guess Just the one word—? Nay, Truth is many-tongued. What one man failed to speak, another finds Another word for. May not all converge In some vast ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... smells that corrode the nostrils Crumble me, Eat me deep; And my garments disintegrate: First my nightgown, Leaving my naked arms and legs disjointed, Sprawled about the bed in postures meaningless to ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... covering cloud, 260 Till all the wild beasts of the darkness hear; Till the Czar quake, till Austria cower for fear, Till the king breathe not, till the priest wax pale, Till spies and slayers on seats of judgment quail, Till mitre and cowl bow down And crumble as a crown, Till Caesar driven to lair and hounded Pope Reel breathless and drop heartless out of hope, And one the uncleanest kinless beast of all Lower than his fortune fall; 270 The wolfish waif of casual empire, ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... on the hillside. Hardly knowing whether or not she had intended to go there, she seated herself on a mound covered with long grass, one of many. Before her stood the ruins of an old church which was taking centuries to crumble. Little remained but the gable wall, immensely thick, and covered with ancient ivy. The rays of the setting sun fell on a mound at its foot, not green like the rest, but of a rich red-brown in the rosy sunset, and evidently but newly heaped up. Her eyes, too, rested upon it. Slowly the sun ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... tests show that, in general, cracking quality of nut samples from the trees in this study is poor. When cracked, the kernels crumble badly, making extraction difficult and quarter recovery low. Variation in cracking quality can be seen by studying the values in Table 1. Nuts from trees 28 and 136 were extremely small, averaging 9 and 10 grams, respectively. Nuts ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... stimulants. The coffee habit is as easily formed, and as remorseless, as the alcohol habit. After a while, if excessively used, it produces its sure result; your faculties have been sharpened by this intellectual emery-wheel until the edges begin to crumble. Your mind becomes dull; you pass your hand wearily over your eyes; you don't know what is the matter with you and say so. Overwork, over-stimulation, and the worry these produce are what is ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... flat had become an island, between which and the slope where she stood the North Fork was rolling its resistless yellow torrent. As she gazed spellbound, a portion of the slope beneath her suddenly seemed to sink and crumble, and was swallowed up in the rushing stream. She heard a cry of warning behind her, but, rooted to the spot by a fearful ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... which cause a house to crumble far more than lack of scientific knowledge, however rude it be. [28] For if you will consider; on the one hand, there is a steady outflow [29] of expenses from the house, and, on the other, a lack of profitable works outside to meet ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... built in the early days of the Roman Empire," the guide continued. "The first and greatest of the Roman emperors was Augustus, for whom our month of August was named. During his reign many buildings were repaired which had begun to crumble to ruins in the days of the republic, when the Romans had devoted most of their time and money to wars, and many other beautiful buildings were erected. It was said of this emperor that he found Rome ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... flaming eyes upon him, she asked in a whisper, "I suppose you love Germany? You would not like to see her devoured by France as Italy was devoured by her? You would not like either to see her go to decay and crumble to pieces from ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... resemblance to water vanished. The warpings and Grumblings took the shape of earth as made by water and baked by fire. Moya compared it to a bit of the dead moon fallen to show us what we are coming to. They paced it soft-footed in tennis shoes lest they should crumble its talc-like whiteness. But they read no horoscopes, for they were shy of the future in speaking to each other,—and they made ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... Maria Echeandia, who arrived in San Diego late in October, 1825. While he and his superiors in Mexico were desirous of bringing about secularization, the difficulties in the way seemed insurmountable. The Missions were practically the backbone of the country; without them all would crumble to pieces, and the most fanatical opponent of the system could not fail to see that without the padres it would immediately fall. As Clinch well puts it: "The converts raised seven eighths of the farm produce;—the Missions had gathered ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... an injury done to us, and plant it in space, for mathematical measurement of its weight and bulk, is an art; it may also be an instinct of self-preservation; otherwise, as when mountains crumble adjacent villages are crushed, men of feeling may at any moment be killed outright by the iniquitous and the callous. But, as an art, it should be known to those who are for practising an art so beneficent, that circumstances must ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Kirchenzeitung, of the Ohio Synod, May 12, 1917: "The great and glorious work of Dr. Krauth in the Council has been nullified. The General Synod's practise of fraternizing with the sects will prevail. What is sound and good in the Council will crumble; the proposed union is a great victory for the lax portion of the General Synod and a pitiable defeat for the Council. Indeed, we shall be told about the 'salt' that the Council may be in the new body, but that is an old, old game, which cannot fool people any more. And this to celebrate ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... Mercedes said complacently. "And it's a fine bride old Barry'll have to come and lie beside him." She closed the lid and sighed. "Though I wish it were Bruce Anstey, or any of the pick of my young men to lie with me in the great dark and to crumble with me to the dust ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... it and then began working the pole as one would a pump handle. The tree began to rise at once. Tad saw that the outlaw was working a pneumatic jack, on which he figured a piece of timber had been placed so as not to crumble the dirt from the roots when the bulk was raised by the jack. From the outside the bandits no doubt used the same method that the Pony Rider Boys had used to gain ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... myriads, when they dare to pave their way With human hearts—to what?—a dream alone. Can despots compass aught that hails their sway? Or call with truth one span of earth their own, Save that wherein at last they crumble bone ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... of the remains of the train lunch which they had frugally saved. He brought that and added it to Applehead's impromptu meal. The sandwiches were mashed flat, and the pickles were limp, and the cake much inclined to crumble, but Applehead gave one look and took ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... worship better than horned moons.' Then a lean giant 'Is not a calyx needful?'— 'Because round grapes on statues well expressed Become the nadir of incense, nodal lamps, Yet apes have hands that cut and carved red crystal'— 'Birds molten, touchly talc veins bronze buds crumble Ablid ublai ghan isz rad eighar ghaurl ...' Words said too often seemed such ancient sounds That men forgot them or were lost in them; The guttural glottis-chasms of language reached, A rhythm, a gasp, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... face, John Avery," answered he, "and tell me what you mean. Think you this great palace of cruelty and injustice built up by him shall not crumble to dust along with ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... people, shape their own lives, in a great measure, my dear, and go to their reward when they are used up. The good ones sink into the earth and turn to silver, to come forth again in a new and precious form. The bad ones crumble away to nothing in cracks and dust heaps, with no hope of salvation, unless some human hand lifts them up and gives them a chance to try again. Some are lazy, and slip out of sight to escape service, some ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... And the long ranks rose to follow, Till their dancing banners shone more fair Than the brightest ray Of the Cuban day On the hill and jungled hollow; And to "Maryland" some in the days gone by Had fought through the combat's rumble And some for "Freedom's Battle-Cry" Had seen the broad earth crumble. ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... man shot, you know how it gets him. He'll stand for a time like he ain't hurt so bad. Then his face'll pucker, surprised, and he'll begin to crumble down slow. That was the way Old Man Wright done when he read the letter. It was like he was shot and trying to stand and couldn't, only ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... of His grace give them life and sustain them in life. And as the tree must die, or the rock fall, before a dissolution can be effected between them, so either the believer must lose his spiritual life, or the Rock must crumble, ere their union can ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody |
