"Downfall" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to call Buckshot? I'm not so sure about him. At any rate he has had a downfall. When a man's had a downfall I don't care about lecturing against him. But I don't think it probable that the Speaker will have a downfall, and then ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... disaster than they turned to fly: the rout was as fatal as it was sudden. The Christian reserve, just brought into the field, poured down upon them with a simultaneous charge. Boabdil, too much engaged to be the first to learn the downfall of the sacred insignia, suddenly saw himself almost alone, with his diminished Ethiopians and a handful of ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... policy of Thorough. We have adopted the selfsame principle. Nobody and nothing must stand in the way of our ends. We stand up for humanity in the mass. Bourgeois society is bound to go under. And to hasten its downfall any one of our members is proud to offer himself as a sufferer, or as even a martyr to death, for the Cause. We aim at producing a state of society in which men may live together in harmony without laws. You must see that we are merely extreme ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... fighting with pen and sword for his none-too-clearly-defined principles. Even the Mendizbal ministry, the most advanced that Spain has ever had, does not satisfy him. His ideal is a republic and the downfall of "the spurious race of Bourbon." His love affairs are equally stormy. In literature he is attempting everything, plays, a novel, polemical articles, lyric poems, and one supreme work which is to be the very epic ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... could see and converse with supernatural powers more easily than others. In Ireland, evil relations caused Red Mike's downfall (q. v.). For Scotland Mary Avenel, in Scott's Monastery, is the ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... lad who was about to be killed, but further, to mark the day and the event, he declared that from that time no more human victims were to be killed for the oven, and that pigs were to be used instead. After this Polu was named Faaifoaso, or "Downfall-of-Cannibalism." ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... hundred miles from the volcano, it produced an effect not unlike that of a London fog. This began about seven in the morning of August 27th. Soon after ten the light had become lurid and yellow, and lamps were required in the houses; then came a downfall of rain, mingled with dust, and by about half-past eleven the town was in complete darkness. It soon after began to lighten, and the rain to diminish, and about three ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Cleo and Grace followed their leader through the now pouring shower. The rain seemed almost solid, its sheets were so dense in the downfall, and the terrific peals of thunder, that echoed and rolled over the hills, gave such monstrous volumes of sound as only the big canyons between solid rocks emit. It seemed the stones themselves would be torn out from their pits ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... written (Matt. 12:32): "He that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come": and Augustine says (De Serm. Dom. in Monte i, 22) that "so great is the downfall of this sin that it cannot submit to the humiliation of asking ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the mother," and it is certain that he had ample reason in his own remarkable career for making this important admission. He inherited from his mother all those attributes which made him great, and owed his sudden downfall to none of her teachings. She was noted for her sagacity and prudence, but possibly it required more than human sagacity and prudence to balance the mighty impulses which moved Napoleon Bonaparte. "A father may turn his back on his child," says Washington Irving, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... fresh protector to save them from this fresh evil. Hence that frequent recourse to the king, the great suzerain whose authority could keep down the bad magistrates of the commune or reduce the mob to order; and hence also, before long, the progressive downfall, or, at any rate, the utter enfeeblement of those communal liberties so painfully won. France was at that stage of existence and of civilization at which security can hardly be purchased save at the price of liberty. We have a phenomenon peculiar to modern times in the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... by exclaiming, "out of all question, my dear sir"—though he was absolutely ignorant that the other had just advanced a downright scientific heresy. At this critical moment a cry from Little Smash, that almost equalled a downfall of crockery in its clamour, drew every eye in ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... sad presentiments realized which she had felt when first she had heard Count Ville-Handry speak of the Pennsylvania Petroleum Company. But never, oh, never! would she have imagined so sudden a downfall. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... (ch. 3:7), but finds himself in a difficulty when he comes to the explanation of the stone broken off from the mountain that fell on the image and shattered it. According to the traditional interpretation, it portended the downfall of Rome, or maybe the coming of the Messiah, an idea equally hateful to the Roman conquerors. He excuses himself by saying that he has only undertaken to describe things past and present, and not things that are future. Later he ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... resulted in the resignation of Professor Ten Brook in 1851, because of the opposition of three other members of the Faculty. In after years he came to consider this action a mistake; particularly as he had the respect and friendship of the Board of Regents, who brought about the downfall of his opponents within six months. This began in an action against Professor Whedon, who had for some time aroused opposition by his pronounced anti-slavery views. As a result of this feeling, on December 31, 1851, at the last session of the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... about to celebrate my downfall, I perceive, by pouring a libation," Weir said. "Don't let me interrupt. Only I must request you to conduct the proceedings there where you're standing, Vorse, instead of at the rear of the room: Madden and I wish a good view of the ceremony. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... night's downfall and heavily misted by the day's rain. Its paths, usually like hard gray cement, were a slippery mosaic of clay and brown leaves, and on either hand arose a stockade-like effect of tree-trunks knowing no light beyond. Wind there was none to rustle the leaves, nor sound of bird or beast. ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... infidelity to herself would have been regarded as an additional claim on her affection. On the whole, however, it was a most unfortunate and ill-timed kiss, and, as is often the case under such circumstances, led to the downfall of the woman. In the vivacity of his embrace, Captain de Haldimar had drawn his guide so far forward upon the log, that she lost her balance, and fell with a heavy and reverberating crash among the leaves and dried sticks ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... all is taken into account, a very simple operation. As the diggers, underneath the corpse, deepen the cavity into which it sinks, tugged and shaken by the sextons, the grave, without their intervention, fills of itself by the mere downfall of the shaken soil. Useful shovels at the tips of their claws, powerful backs, capable of creating a little earthquake: the diggers need nothing more for the practice of their profession. Let us add—for this is an essential point—the art of continually jerking and shaking ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Fielding's company, for the statement that "Fielding in his Eurydice Hiss'd had brought on the Minister [Walpole] in a levee scene" [10]; and as Pillage is the "very great man" who holds the levee in the fragment, the above allusion to an expected downfall of Walpole's Ministry seems obvious. Passages of similar import to the advertisement occur in the piece itself. Thus the play is declared to convey a "beautiful image of the instability of human greatness"; and the spectacle is promised of the 'author of a mighty farce' ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... these adverse conditions did not sufficiently ensure the stock's downfall, the Shepler group of Federal Oil operators beat it down further with what was veritably a golden sledge. That is, they exported gold at a loss. At a time when obligations could have been met more cheaply ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... in flight. The troops which occupied a good position at the bridgehead of Gomi have abandoned it, carrying with them the men who were doing their duty. In Budapest preparations are going forward for equipping fifteen workmen's battalions." In other words, the downfall of Bolshevism had begun. The Rumanians were on the point of achieving it. Their troops on the bank of the river Tisza[147] were preparing to march on Budapest. And it was at that critical moment that the world-arbiters ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... a cold and gloomy Christmas Eve. The mass of cloud overhead was almost impervious to such daylight as still lingered on; the snow lay several inches deep upon the ground, and the slanting downfall which still went on threatened to considerably increase its thickness before the morning. The Prospect Hotel, a building standing near the wild north coast of Lower Wessex, looked so lonely and so useless at such a time as this that a passing wayfarer would have been led to forget ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... this moment as dark to the papal party as it was full of encouragement for the Huguenots and their sympathizers. Nothing but a resort to violence could avert the speedy downfall of the authority of the Roman pontiff in France. A few months more of peace, and everything might be lost.[1215] If the young king continued under the influences now surrounding him, he might become a Huguenot openly, as it was pretty well understood, by those who had ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... and Boland were jointly embarked. For three days she went about these tours of inspection undisturbed. In the evenings she had the women habitues of the place in her rooms, talking to them as if she were one of their own kind and learning from them the squalid stories of their downfall and the part Druce and Anson had played in it. Anna was not in sight during any of these interviews. She was seated at the little table with the dictagraph at her ear, her fountain pen in her hand and her stenographer's ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... unmixed with apprehensive terror, succeeded the turbulent excitement of the Normans; for well they knew that the consequences, if not condition, of negotiations, would be their own downfall and banishment at the least;—happy, it might be, to escape massacre at the hands of the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a diplomatic character. Russia had never viewed her ally's uncompromising hostility to King Constantine with enthusiasm. But the French thought that this attitude was due to dynastic ties and monarchic sympathies, and expected the downfall of the Tsar to change it: they could hardly {185} imagine that the Russian Republic would withdraw even that reluctant co-operation in the coercion of Greece which the Russian Empire had accorded; and, at any rate, the voice of a country in the throes of internal disintegration could have little ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... was, which we thought we had and had not. Its good points will endure, for evil has a comfortable habit of killing itself and those who work it. All that we are concerned with at this moment is the fact that its downfall has shaken an article in our economic faith which taught us that specialization was a cause of so much more good than evil, that its development by the free spreading of our capital all over the world, wherever the demand for it gave most ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... also here mentioned, as an extraordinary addition to this tale of calamity, that Josephine, the former wife of Bonaparte, did not long survive his downfall. It seemed as if the Obi-woman of Martinico had spoke truth; for at the time when Napoleon parted from the sharer of his early fortunes, his grandeur was on the wane, and her death took place but a few weeks subsequent to his being dethroned and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... a very real force in China, when it can be roused. It was, by all accounts, mainly responsible for the downfall of the An Fu party in the summer of 1920. This party was pro-Japanese and was accepting loans from Japan. Hatred of Japan is the strongest and most widespread of political passions in China, and it was stirred up by the students in fiery orations. The An Fu party had, ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... changing her tone, "thou shalt have neither answer, nor aid, nor obedience at their hands.—Listen to these horrid sounds," for the din of the recommenced assault and defence now rung fearfully loud from the battlements of the castle; "in that war-cry is the downfall of thy house—The blood-cemented fabric of Front-de-Boeuf's power totters to the foundation, and before the foes he most despised!—The Saxon, Reginald!—the scorned Saxon assails thy walls!—Why liest thou here, like a worn-out hind, when the Saxon ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Worst of all fools—an old fool! To think that a man, who had stood so many years in the eyes of all men as he had stood, should come to such a downfall. It would serve him no more than right, if it were possible, that all the consequences of what had been done should fall on his ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... is laughing in malicious glee over the downfall of his rival, Siegfried flings his body into the Neidhole, and rolls the dragon's carcass in front of the opening to protect the gold. He next pauses again to listen to the bird in the lime tree, which sings of a lovely maiden surrounded by flames, who can be won ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... he set an example which might have been followed with advantage by many of his colleagues. In the first place he abstained from hastening the downfall of representative institutions by asking questions and making speeches. In the second place, he was able to distinguish between the duty that he owed to his party, and the duty that he owed to his country. When the Legislature acted politically—that is to say, when it dealt ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... drama was about to be played, and Squire Marlowe went about with a gleam in his eye as he anticipated the final downfall of the man who had ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... to realize that he was, so to speak, anchored to the ground, he turned his thoughts to his usual remedy, his books on knighthood and chivalry, which, in fact, had been the cause of his downfall. He decided that the passage to fit his case was the one about Baldwin and the Marquis of Mantua when Carloto left him wounded on the mountainside—for that he had been wounded by brigands he had no doubt. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... difficult to find originals. In short, the whole thing is a feeler thrown out to see how far French impudence and French epicureanism in vice may carry themselves. It shall not be our fault if they do not experience an ignominious downfall, and beat a speedy retreat, to the tune of the "Rogue's March," arranged as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... the flag of the Confederacy, but simply the banner, the battle-flag, of the Confederate soldier. As such it should not share in the condemnation which our cause received, or suffer from its downfall. The whole world can unite in a chorus of praise to the gallantry of the men who followed where this ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... dissolution of her marriage and remained in England for twenty years, made no complaint of her treatment, and she has had no champions either among Catholic or Protestant writers. Her divorce is only remembered as the occasion of the downfall of the greatest statesman of his age, Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex. But in his eagerness to proclaim the truth, Froude went on to defend a paradox. Once free from the charge of lust,—and compared with Francis ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... He couldn't have been drinking to any extent since enlistment or he could not be where she said he was, and knew he was, on daily duty as clerk in the office of the adjutant at the barracks. So far from its indicating downfall, degradation, it was the one ray of hope of better days. She looked at him, joy and incredulity mingling in her swimming eyes. "Then why does everybody I've consulted, even our rector, urge me to leave no stone unturned to get him out of it, even if we have ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... which three hundred years of hypocritical puritanism have proved unable to tarnish. What creates the peculiar savagery of hatred which his name has still the power to conjure up among the enemies of civilisation has little to do with the ambiguous causes of his final downfall. These, of course, gave him up, bound hand and foot, into their hands. But these, though the overt excuse of their rancour, are far from being its real motive-force. To reach that we must look to the nature of the formidable weapon which it was his habit, in season and out of season, to ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... whose pleasure it is to torment men. Even the very dead may rise from the grave to confront you with horrid vengeance, should the body not have been buried with full rites as required for the laying of the spirit. Most subtly has the enemy caused many a man's downfall when his unmarried daughter has died, and he has found himself confronted with angry relatives and irate villagers, when he proposed to bury the body with the deceased of his own family. By the rule of ancient custom a spirit bridegroom should ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... by her introduced to a subordinate place about the person of Queen Anne. She rapidly acquired sufficient influence to supplant her benefactress. The intrigues of the Tory party received sufficient furtherance from this bedchamber official to effect ultimately the downfall of the Whig ministry; and the use of the term by Dean Swift, of which your original Querist MR. WARDEN speaks, would suffice to give currency and to associate the name of so famous an intriguante with the office which she filled. It must be matter of opinion whether the Dean (as MR. W. thinks) ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... here fast enough, no doubt," said Jean quietly, though there was a bitter feeling of downfall in his heart. "Meanwhile, perhaps it might be as well for me to tell you who ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... throb, and leaves many an enthusiastic spectator husky from howling. The strain was so great that it seemed an assured thing that something must give way. Oakdale had saved herself temporarily by changing pitchers, but shortly after the opening of the eighth inning it began to look as if the fatal downfall of the home ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... the Free! We've digested the turkey That gobbled oil thee. Sure as THANKSGIVING hastened, Cock-turkey! thy hour, Thanksgivings shall blazon Thy downfall, Slave-power! ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... downfall of such a man there must naturally be conflicting views. We give here the story from the pathetic Diaz side by a well-known English writer upon Mexico, Mrs. Tweedie. Then we give the warm picture of Madero's heroic struggle against tyranny, as it appeared to Dolores ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... offering to recite or play the violin. No one denies that a fixed and genuine moral rule could be drawn up for these cases, but no one surely need be ashamed to admit that such a rule is not entirely easy to draw up. And when a man like Sludge traces much of his moral downfall to the indistinctness of the boundary and the possibility of beginning with a natural extravagance and ending with a gross abuse, it certainly is not possible to deny his right to ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... to work to his own ultimate undoing was encouraged in the duke, wherever possible, by the crafty Louis XI, who had his own reasons for wishing the downfall of so powerful a neighbour. And thus it came that Arras, the great tapestry centre, was at first weakened, then destroyed by the capture of the town by Louis XI immediately after the tragic death of the duke ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... in the house. So with a merry heart the callous fellow (shamefully delighting in the imminent downfall of a fellow-creature—and that a woman!) went into the front room as he had been bidden. On one of the family of chairs, in a corner, was a black octagonal case. He opened this case, which was not locked, and drew from it a concertina, all ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... history of our great families, relative to the terrible curses uttered in cases of dire extremity against persons considered guilty of injustice and wrong doing. It is to such fearful imprecations that the misfortune and downfall of certain houses have been attributed, although, it may be, centuries have elapsed before their final fulfilment. Such curses, too, unlike the fatal "Curse of Kehama," have rarely turned into blessings, nor have they been thought to be as harmless as the curse of the ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... gratified as well. Wherefore Bud had deliberately done what he could do to stimulate and emphasize both the surprise and the gratification. Why is it that most human beings feel a sneaking satisfaction in the downfall of another? Especially another who is, or has been at sometime, a rival in love or ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... have received from Germany, and every printed circular, pamphlet, or book on the war which has come to me from German sources insists on the view that, for Germany, it is a question between world empire or utter downfall. There is no sense or reason in this view, but the German philosophers, historians, and statesmen are all ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the day when from this comfortable high estate a common adder, preserved in spirits of wine, was the cause of his downfall and Bully Harberth the means ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the silent but rapid downfall of. The development of merit prevented by the laws of. Her foreign policy and domestic institutions. Her government compared with ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that is seen to be manifesting itself since the downfall of the ancient institute of international law which, instead of causing the people on the other side of the Atlantic fear, ought to fill them with joy, because it tightens the international economic and commercial relations ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... still, his head almost touching the ceiling, listening as if to catch some sound. But for a minute he could only hear the tumultuous beating of his own heart and the occasional downfall of a fragment of clay or turf. At last he did hear something; or rather more felt than heard it. At intervals of a few seconds apart he felt the walls of his room vibrate as if under some powerful blow; and succeeding each vibration ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... at the Crown at Grantley that would run them over to Strides Cottage in half an hour. If it had been favourable weather, no doubt the long drive would have been much pleasanter; but with the chance of a heavy downfall of snow making the roads difficult, the short drives and short ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Antonines. All the senators and private individuals, men and women, without exception entertained so violent a hatred of him that all their words and actions relating to him were such as would befit the downfall of a most implacable foe. He was not officially disgraced, because the soldiers did not get from Macrinus the state of peace which they had hoped to secure by a change. Deprived of the profits which they ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... this paper money; but the concurrent testimony of five other credible witnesses of the fact, is perfectly conclusive that this paper money did actually exist during the first Mogul dynasty, the descendants of Zinghis, called the legal tribe of Yu by the Chinese. On the downfall of that race it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... together with the Thirteenth Legion of cavalry and two battalions of the Banlieu, were drawn up from the Church of the Madeleine to the Column of July. And, there, at the base of that column erected in commemoration of the Revolution which had made Louis Philippe King of the French, his downfall was commemorated, and on the ruins of the throne then established was now inaugurated ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... a good downfall plump would be the most wholesome thing that could happen to her; and besides, I never told her to take the man for her almoner and counsellor! I may have pointed to the gulf, but I never bade Curtia ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the excitement which prevailed during the session of the last Congress, when the Nullifiers were fulminating their doctrines of disunion and prophesying the downfall of the Republic, when he, who has not yet lost all his original brightness, was acting a part which Milton ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... a man checks all a woman's finer sentiments towards him by marrying her, it is only natural that it should find a vent somewhere. However, she probably does not know of my downfall since father's death. I hardly think she would have cared to do it had she known that. (I am assuming that it is Ethelberta—Mrs. Petherwin—who sends it: of course I am not sure.) We must remember that when I knew her I was a gentleman at ease, who had not the least notion that I should have ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... the fourteenth of May, nearly a year and a half previous to the sudden downfall and disappearance of Wilhelm Mencke and his wife, that a curious incident occurred which has an important ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... as a pundit inferior to any of his predecessors. Michizane ridiculed Fumio's panegyric of Kiyotsura, The pupils of these men endorsed their teachers' verdicts. Ajnong them all, Tachibana Hiromi occupied the most important position until the day of his downfall. He practically managed the affairs of the Court under Yozei, Koko, and Uda. Fujiwara Sukeyo, a greatly inferior scholar, served as his subordinate, and was the willing tool in contriving his degradation. It did not cause the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Debacle, Zola shows in a vivid and intelligible manner the downfall of Napoleon III. and his army, and paints in his usual matter-of-fact tints the actual condition of the great host led forth to destruction. He makes us read in the soul of the common French soldier and in that of his commanding officer. ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... the astute republican. Mazzini is an incarnation of the Sub Rosa, and we doubt whether he could live an hour, were it possible to fulminate a bull for the abolition of intrigue and secret societies. Dall' Ongaro was a co-laborer of Mazzini's in Rome in '48; and when the downfall of the Republic forced its partisans to seek safety in exile, he travelled about Europe with an American passport. "I could not be an Italian," he said to us, "and I became, ostensibly, the next best thing, a citizen of the United ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... proposed the consideration of the interruption experienced by the assembly of the commons, in consequence of the violence and audacity of the farmers of the revenue. They said, that "Marcus Furius Camillus, whose banishment was followed by the downfall of the city, had suffered himself to be condemned by his exasperated countrymen. That before him, the decemviri, according to whose laws they lived up to the present day, and afterwards many men of the first rank in the state, had submitted to have sentence passed ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... nation was now self-governing, defending itself gallantly behind the walls of Paris. And he had fled! . . . Months afterwards, the events of the Commune consoled him for his flight. If he had remained, wrath at the national downfall, his relations with his co-laborers, the air in which he lived—everything would surely have dragged him along to revolt. In that case, he would have been shot or consigned to a colonial prison like so ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had received at Borodino. The direct consequence of the battle of Borodino was Napoleon's senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat along the old Smolensk road, the destruction of the invading army of five hundred thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at Borodino for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... press himself on me. I use the word as expressive of those early resentful feelings,—I rather pictured him then as the personification of an hostile element in the universe that had brought about my miseries and accomplished my downfall; I attributed the disagreeable thwarting of my impulses to his agency; I did not wish to think of him, for he stood somehow for a vague future I feared to contemplate. Yet the illusion of his presence, once begun, continued to grow upon me, and I find myself utterly unable to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... youth picnicked in the "bush" and coasted down Pinkster Hill past the squat Dutch church; the Tontine Coffee House sprang from dust, and through its doors walked Hamilton and Burr, Jerome Bonaparte, and a comic-pathetic emigre marquis, who in poverty awaited the greater Bonaparte's downfall, cherishing his order of Saint Louis and powdering his poll with Indian meal; the Livingstons and Clintons divided the land between them; Van Buren and ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... of blankness, monuments were raised O'er regiments. And History, amazed, Could not record the ruin of this retreat, Unlike a downfall known before or the defeat Of Hannibal—reversed and wrapped in gloom! Of Attila, when nations met their doom! Perished an army—fled French glory then, Though there the Emperor! he stood and gazed At the wild ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... civilization had been created. There is a puzzling line in Homer which is applied once or twice to features in a landscape—for instance, to a river: 'The gods call it Xanthos, mankind Skamandros.' So we might say of the downfall of Greece: the Greeks attributed it to the malignity of God, but the divine oracles gave a ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... second period, and made important changes. First of all, in the great convulsion of European thought, the ascendancy of Aristotle was shaken. It is enough to mention two incidents in the downfall of the mighty Stagyrite. One was the attack on him by the renowned Peter Rainus, in the University of Paris. Our countryman, Andrew Melville, attended Ramus's Lectures, and became the means of introducing his system into Scotland. The other incident is still more notable. ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... loafed in the Shirra-Brae; he knew the flash houses of Leith and the Grassmarket. With Jean Johnston, the blowen of his choice, he smeared his hands with the squalor of petty theft, and the drunken recklessness wherewith he swaggered it abroad hastened his approaching downfall. ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... by his bearing and the manner of his services that she had been discovered, so to speak, in the character of a sort of accomplice; that her position was a perilously uncertain one, which would probably end in utter downfall, leaving her in her old and proper place as an elderly, insignificant, and unattractive poor relation, without a feature to recommend her. But being, as before remarked, a timid man, and recalling the interview between ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... (so we love to call him), it was Father Jahn who founded the 'Turnschulen', that the generations to come might return to simple German ways,—plain fare, high principles, our native tongue; and the development of the body. The downfall of the fiend Napoleon and the Vaterland united—these two his scholars must have written in their hearts. All summer long, in their black caps and linen pantaloons, they would trudge after him, begging a crust here and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "To Your Imperial Highness's downfall? Ah no, sire! Your Highness is no longer a factor. Your August Majesty will be eliminated absolutely before Napoleon can reply to my despatch. As I said, the Liberals around Queretaro will attend to that. Your Highness has merely ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the British people, for it was yet popularly disbelieved that motor-bombs existed. This disbelief the Syndicate was determined to overcome, not only for the furtherance of its own purposes, but to prevent the downfall of the present British Ministry, and a probable radical change in the Government. That such a political revolution, as undesirable to the Syndicate as to cool-headed and sensible Englishmen, was imminent, there could be no doubt. ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... portal that was shut. She went back. She thought again of this beautiful crescendo, of this gradual approach to the God from whom she had been if not entirely separated at any rate set a little apart. Could it have been only in order that her catastrophe might be the more complete, her downfall ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... have cut me for the last ten years because I got into trouble over a few accounts at the bank—and considering the sorry figure I cut now in consequence—I don't know why you should be so careless of the possibility of partaking my downfall! I should say that it would be rather worse for you than it has been for me; and it hasn't been very nice for ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Lyttelton, who became chancellor of the exchequer. The new government, however, lasted but one session of parliament-its own dissensions, the talents of its opponents, and the dissatisfaction of the King, who had been thwarted in his German subsidiary treaties, aiding in its downfall. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... upon the gross superstition which then darkened the heathen world. For some expressions which were deemed impious he was condemned to die. Indeed christian scholars particularly mark a passage in one of his tragedies in which he palpably predicts, the downfall of Jupiter's authority, as if he had foreseen the dispersion of heathenism. The multitude were accordingly going to stone him to death when they were won over to mercy by the remonstrances and intreaties of his brother Amynias ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... said, was an ambitious and dangerous man, and the audacious deed which he had performed was the prelude, they believed, to some deep ulterior design. They feared for the safety of Claudius; and as they knew very well that the downfall of the emperor would involve them too in ruin, they were naturally much alarmed. It was, however, very difficult for them to ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... men"—who, from one extravagance have gone on to another—wantonly squandering wealth which was not theirs—in order to keep up a worldly reputation, and cut a figure before their admiring fellows;—all ending in a sudden smash, a frightful downfall, an utter bankruptcy—to the ruin, perhaps, of thousands. They have finished up with paying a respectable dividend of sixpence in the pound! Indeed it is not too much to say, that five-sixths of the fraud and swindling that ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... have occurred since I saw you. The former favorite mistress of 826 B, who was displaced by Frederika, is a French girl, Celestine d'Aublay. She resented her downfall bitterly, and she hates Frederika with the characteristic vehemence of her race. She learned from the talk of the servants that a new victim—Estella—had been brought into the house, a girl of great beauty; and that Frederika was trying ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... bent before the storm and abandoned the measure; but Chesterfield was summarily dismissed from his stewardship. For the next two years he led the opposition in the Upper House, leaving no stone unturned to effect Walpole's downfall. In 1741 he signed the protest for Walpole's dismissal and went abroad on account of his health. He visited Voltaire at Brussels and spent some time in Paris, where he associated with the younger Crebillon, Fontenelle and Montesquieu. In 1742 Walpole fell, and Carteret was his real, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... all Jimmy could do to keep himself from asking Mr. McEachern whether he attributed his downfall to drink. He contented himself with a sorrowful shake of the head at the fermenting captive. Then, he took up the ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... England had not learned that trade when, fifteen years after this discourse was delivered, the conflict between the free and slave states threatened the ruin of the great Republic, and England forgot her Anti-slavery in the prospect of the downfall of "a great empire which threatens ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Play-houses, like men, have their vicissitudes. The Panorama-Dramatique suffered from competition. The machinations of its rivals, the Ambigu, the Gaite, the Porte Saint-Martin, and the Vaudeville, together with a plethora of restrictions and a scarcity of good plays, combined to bring about the downfall of the house. No dramatic author cared to quarrel with a prosperous theatre for the sake of the Panorama-Dramatique, whose existence was, to say the least, problematical. The management at this moment, however, was counting on the success of a new melodramatic comedy by M. du ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... his youth was in very good circumstances, was ruined by bad harvests, an epidemic disease in his cattle, and by other disasters that cause the downfall of many farmers. Nevertheless, and though his losses were great, he lived happy and even contented with his children, who, all three of irreproachable conduct and character, and excellent needlewomen, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... but too successful, for it nearly brought about the downfall of the rider. When those red eyes straining for death were suddenly shrouded in unexpected darkness the amazed horse propped on its forefeet and came to so dead a stop that Nigel was shot forward on to its neck and hardly held himself by ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... empire might be made our allies, and attack the Turk in his rear. I am chosen as his envoy, and shall sail so soon as I can make my way to Venice. I only knew of the appointment since I came hither, he having been led thereto by letters brought him this day; and mayhap by the downfall of my hopes. He was peremptory, as his mood is, and seemed to think it no small favour," added Wildschloss, with some annoyance. "And meantime, what of my poor child? There she is in the cloister at Ulm, but an inheritance ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... purchased in England and armed at a barren island near Madeira. Thence she went to Australia, and cruising northward in the Pacific to Bering Strait, destroyed the China-bound clippers and the whaling fleet. At last, hearing of the downfall of the Confederacy, she ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... other reward is offered for obedience than the continual happiness of an independent commonwealth and other goods of this life; while, on the other hand, against contumacy and the breaking of the covenant is threatened the downfall of the commonwealth and great hardships. Nor is this to be wondered at; for the ends of every social organization and commonwealth are (as appears from what we have said, and as we will explain more at length hereafter) security and comfort; a commonwealth can ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... as it may, it is very evident that the highest interest of the "poor whites" who bore the brunt of the fighting was to be conserved by the collapse rather than the triumph of the cause for which they fought with unsurpassed gallantry. For, with the downfall of the system of enforced labor, the work of the world became an open market, and the dignity of labor being restored, the "poor whites" had both a better opportunity and a more congenial atmosphere to begin their rise. Thus the stars in their ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... peculiarly dark and a strong gale began to blow, and distant sounds of thunder were heard. A sudden lull came, which meant that the storm was about to break; sheets of lightning of every description were followed by deafening peals of thunder, which made man and beast tremble. Then there came a downfall of huge hailstones; they were just like big lumps of jagged ice; some of them measured about six to eight inches round and weighed over half a pound. This storm did a fearful lot of harm; not a leaf was left on a single tree, and hundreds of birds lay dead all around. Though very ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... rejoicing in your sudden downfall,' said Captain Knox at length; 'I hear no moans now over your lost fortunes. It is the outside world that is pitying you. "Those poor girls," I hear on all sides, "after the very marked way in which old Miss Dane told everybody they ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... themselves, would of course resort to every artifice to exonerate the accused. To criminate the Queen was the only and the obvious method. Few are those nearest the Crown who are not most jealous of its wearers! Look at the long civil wars of York and Lancaster, and the short reign of Richard. The downfall of Kings meets less resistance than ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... and began to defy poor Don Juste Lopez in his Presidential tribune with an effrontery to which the poor man could only respond by a dazed smoothing of his beard and the ringing of the presidential bell. Then, when the downfall of the Ribierist cause became confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt, they have blossomed into convinced Liberals, acting together as if they were Siamese twins, and ultimately taking charge, as it were, of the riot in the name ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... it abroad that the goddess has vouchsafed me a dream. I will tell the Brahmins that they have been appointed her priests, and that their downfall has been due to their dereliction of duty in not seeing to the proper performance of her worship. Do you say I shall be uttering lies? No, say I, it is the truth—nay more, the truth which the country has so long been waiting to learn from my lips. If only I could get the opportunity to deliver ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... fortune, already much impaired, hung on chances as uncertain as those in a game of roulette? What nonsense! The failure of a great financial company had brought about a crisis on the Bourse. The news of the inability of Wermant, the 'agent de change', to meet his engagements, had completed the downfall of M. de Nailles. Not only death, but ruin, had entered that house, where, a few hours before, luxury and opulence had seemed ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... New France; they stopped the current of her arteries, and made all her early years a misery and a terror. Not that they changed her destinies. The contest on this continent between Liberty and Absolutism was never doubtful; but the triumph of the one would have been dearly bought, and the downfall of the other incomplete. Populations formed in the ideas and habits of a feudal monarchy, and controlled by a hierarchy profoundly hostile to freedom of thought, would have remained a hindrance and a stumbling-block in the way of that majestic ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... therefore they alone are sufficiently important to interest us in their behalf; nor, again, because internal elevation of sentiment must be clothed with external dignity, to call forth our respect and admiration. The Greek tragedians paint the downfall of kingly houses without any reference to its effects on the condition of the people; they show us the man in the king, and, far from veiling their heroes from our sight by their purple mantles, they allow us to look, through their vain splendour, into a bosom torn and harrowed with grief and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... is an oracle!" resumed Murray. "Allow me to be the happy knight that is to bear the surrender of Dumbarton to my sweet cousin. Prevail on Wallace to remain in this garrison till I return; and then full tilt for the walls of old Sterling, and the downfall of Hughie Cressingham!" ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... and dyspepsia preyed upon his vitals. He tried Boerhave's Holland Bitters and the Retired Physician's Sands of Life, and got well. He then married the lovely Countess D'Smith, and lived to a green old age, being the triumph of virtue and downfall ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... would have it, they were surrounded on every side by the Mount Vernon boys, many of whom were accompanied by pretty girls who had come to see the downfall of the invaders. Some of them knew very little of the game, but that did not dampen their enthusiasm, and they clapped their hands and waved their flags whenever that seemed ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... attached to it at Alexandria." He doubtless made the statement from memory, and unintentionally confounded two distinct facts, viz. that the Mexicans worshipped the cross, and had prophetic intimations of the downfall of their nation and religion by the oppression of bearded strangers from the East. The quotation by MR. PEACOCK at p. 549., quoted also in Purchas' Pilgrims, vol. v., proves, as do other authorities, that the cross was worshipped in Mexico ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... pleasantry had tied my garments into quite hard knots. This inconsiderate and thoughtless act so disturbed me that I did not repeat the experiment. Besides, on my returning home and repeating the entire incident in the family circle my mother admonished me that the downfall of countless youths properly dated from the day when they first went swimming with idle comrades without having previously procured the consent of their parents—a thing which from that hour forth I ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... expectation disappointed in the young Benjaminite, so far as courage and zeal were required in conducting the affairs of war. But the impetuosity of his character, and a certain indifference in regard to the claims of the national faith, paved the way for his downfall and the extinction of his family. The scene of Gilboa, which terminated the career of the first Hebrew monarch, exhibits a most affecting tragedy; in which the valour of a gallant chief, contrasted with his despair and sorrow, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... and revenge, I burn To quit Troy's downfall and exact the fee Such crimes deserve. Sooth, then, shall she return To Sparta and Mycenae, ay, and see Home, husband, sons and parents, safe and free, With Ilian wives and Phrygians in her train, A queen, in pride of triumph? Shall this be, And Troy have ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil |
