"Wreck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were included among those who departed from England on nine ships, comprising the largest expedition ever sent to Virginia. Reverend Richard Buck brought with him his wife, and although they were among those marooned for nine months on the Bermuda Islands following the wreck there of the Seaventure, both survived the hardships encountered, and established a home at Jamestown and reared a family. Temperance Flowerdieu, aged about fourteen years, arrived in 1609 on the Falcon, but presumably returned to England, ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... reach perfection's dizzy height, It should be centered on some special point, Fathered by energy, to reach the goal. How can I soar, upheld by wings of hope, When various projects, all demanding skill, Before me loom, as do the clouds of night All threat'ning storm which well may wreck the craft Unless the captain calls unto his aid Lieutenants by long school of action trained To guard from danger's shoals which are unknown Except to those who long the chart have scanned? My predecessor who first ruled these Isles ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... holding the horses. The carriage was tilted over. One of the hind wheels lay underneath, a shattered wreck. ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... write the things which your clear eyes are to read, I am wondering whether that friendship will be withdrawn. Will you when you have heard of my losing battle, find anything in me that is worthy—will there be anything saved out of the wreck of your ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... noon o'erspanned the bluer strait Which parts Icaria from Samos, fell, Amid the silent wonder of the air, Fell with a shock that startled the still wave, A shrivelled wreck of crisp, entangled plumes, A head whence eagles' beaks had plucked the eyes, And clots of wax, black limbs by eagles torn In falling: and a circling eagle screamed Around that floating horror of the sea Derision, and above ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... From the general wreck of property Monsieur S—— has been fortunate enough to save a considerable portion of his former fortune. A similar favourable circumstance has, in general, rewarded the fortitude and constancy of those who, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... chiefs who were struggling for a share of India, none could compare with him in the qualities of the captain and the statesman. He became a general; he became a sovereign. Out of the fragments of old principalities, which had gone to pieces in the general wreck, he formed for himself a great, compact, and vigorous empire. That empire he ruled with the ability, severity, and vigilance of Louis the Eleventh. Licentious in his pleasures, implacable in his revenge, he had yet enlargement of mind enough to perceive how much the prosperity ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... retaliation visit Heloise—for he still loved her tenderly. At length Abelard offered to marry Heloise —but on a shameful condition: that the marriage should be kept secret from the world, to the end that (while her good name remained a wreck, as before,) his priestly reputation might be kept untarnished. It was like that miscreant. Fulbert saw his opportunity and consented. He would see the parties married, and then violate the confidence of the man who had taught him that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a category, and be d—-d to it, Mr. Leach," he said, after taking a single whiff. "You are doing quite right, sir; cut away the wreck and force the ship free of it, or we shall have some of those sticks poking themselves through the planks. I always thought the chandler in London, into whose hands the agent has fallen, was a—rogue, and now I know it well enough to swear to it. Cut away, carpenter, and get ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... silence for Schuster Alois to repeat the tale, and he soon began: "It is the Tyroler Adolph Pichler who narrates it. He says that once in his rambles he came to a little chapel, over which hung a blasted larch—such a desolate wreck of a tree that he naturally asked the guide he had with him why it was not cut down. Now, the guide was an old man who knew every, tradition and legend, besides all the family histories in that part of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... of the cajolements witnessed this day, a suspicion that Victor was wearing a false face over the signification—of Jarniman's visit and meant to deceive the trustful and too-devoted loving woman he seemed bound to wreck, irritated the best of his nature. He had a resolve to pass an hour with the couple, and speak and insist on hearing plain words before the night had ended. But Fenellan took it out of him. Victor's show of a perfect contentment emulating ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ordered the ship to be headed up towards the stranger. As the Bellona approached, her battered condition became more clearly visible; her boats were gone, her bulwarks stove in, and she lay a mere wreck on the water; a few people only were seen on her deck, and even through the telescopes directed at them, their countenances appeared worn and haggard as they stood leaning over the bulwarks gazing at the approaching man-of-war. The Bellona's way was stopped, and a boat being lowered, ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... trap-door in the heavens had been suddenly closed. The wind had gone when the rain came, so that the moment the downfall was over the whole affair was ended. It had not occupied the space of more than four minutes, but it had managed to make as complete a wreck of the sleeping arrangements in the pine grove as if it had been ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... welcome; for life looked desolate to the Irish boy at this moment. He was out of a job, his father was a wreck, his family destitute and helpless. They would have to leave their home, of course; there would be no place for any Rafferty in North Valley. Where they would go, God only knew; Tim would become a wanderer, ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... Micawber, 'I wish I had had the honour of knowing you at an earlier period. I was not always the wreck ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the outlying cottages bordered the park wall. The most melancholy object in the place was the ruins of a windmill; the sails and arms had long disappeared, but the wooden walls, black and rotting, remained. The windmill had its genius, its human representative—a mere wreck, like itself, of olden times. There never was a face so battered by wind and weather as that of old Peter, the owner of the ruin. His eyes were so light a grey as to appear all but colourless. He wore a smock-frock ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... responded less readily than before; sharp lines began to reveal themselves, flanking his nostrils. His heart was bitter. The weeks had brought him to a fuller realization of the horrid blight upon his fair name; he had come to see the wreck in all its cold, brutal aspects. The realization that he was a hunted, branded thing, with a price on his head, sank deeper and deeper into his soul. Hunted! Chased as a criminal! He, a ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... on the lower shelf. But alas, for his greed! His weight on the board that formed the shelf was too much, and it flew up in the air sending the fruit in all directions and making such a racket that the fruit dealer heard it and turned around just in time to see the wreck of his stand. ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... but it is actually legible: all the ingenious faculty I had, and ten times as much would have been useful there, has been employed in elucidation; in saying, and chiefly in forbearing to say,—in annihilating continents of brutal wreck and dung: Ach Gott!—But in fact you will see it by and by; and then form your own conclusions about it. They are going to publish it in October, I find: I tried hard to get you a complete copy of the sheets ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... rather to give the accounts somewhat condensed which appeared in the New York Tribune at the time of the calamity. The first is from the pen of Bayard Taylor, who visited the scene on the day succeeding the wreck, and describes the appearance of the shore and the remains of the vessel. This is followed by the narrative of Mrs. Hasty, wife of the captain, herself a participant in the scene, and so overwhelmed by grief at her husband's loss, and that of friends she had learned so much to value, that she ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... when he said, as if he revered the place, "'Tis an ironbound show! 'Tis a shop! Poor devils, what gets throwed up here! But I know where ther's some fine copper bolts waiting for me. I'll hae 'em! I've had some on 'em, an' I'll hae the rest when they rots out o' the timbers. Year '63 that wreck was—lovely vessel, loaded wi' corn. I mind it ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... questions and the answers were as non-understandable. Altogether, Captain Dan, with the best intentions in the world, and with the happiness of his daughter and John uppermost in his mind, succeeded in laying a mine which might wreck ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wailing breaking strangely on that fair peaceful May morn; but still that pair went on till Ambrose had guided the Dean to the yard, where, except that the daylight was revealing more and more of the wreck around, all was as he had left it. Aldonza, poor child, with her black hair hanging loose like a veil, for she had been startled from her bed, still sat on the ground making her lap a pillow for the white-bearded head, nobler and more venerable ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for another test. In the air it did all that was asked for it, but it came to earth—or rather to the surface of the lake—with a shock that put it out of commission. When Count Zeppelin's company estimated the cost of further repairs it gave a sigh and abandoned the wreck. Thereupon the pertinacious inventor laid aside his tools, got into his old uniform, and went out again on the dreary task ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... introduced to the lady. From the manner and conversation of both parties, even a youth scarcely in his teens could draw conclusions of no favourable nature. By the side of the chimney hung my watch, which I had supposed lost in the general wreck of our property. It was enamelled with musical trophies, and very remarkable for a steel chain of singular beauty. The moment my brother described it my suspicions were confirmed; and Mr. Robinson did not even attempt to ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... years. Many of the streets were impassable, choked with debris. One side of the great Square was knocked to fragments. The huge belfry, Saint Rombaud's Tower, wherein hangs the famous carillon of more than thirty bells, was battered but still stood firm. The vast cathedral was a melancholy wreck of its former beauty and grandeur. The roof was but a skeleton of bare rafters; the side wall pierced with gaping rents and holes; the pictured windows were all gone; the sunlight streamed in everywhere upon the stone floor, strewn with an indescribable confusion of shattered glass, ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... Stevenson tells of a Welsh blacksmith who, at the age of twenty-five, could neither read nor write. He then heard a chapter of Robinson Crusoe read aloud. It was the scene of the wreck, and he was so impressed by the thought of what he missed by his ignorance, that he set to work that very day, and was not satisfied until he had learned to read in Welsh. His disappointment was great when he found all his pains had been thrown away, for he could only obtain an ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... probable that those who have so successfully pillaged all surrounding States will rest contented until you are involved in the same ruin. Union among yourselves only can preserve you from perishing in the universal wreck; by this you will at least gain time, and may hope to profit by probable ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... of the Two Oceans, as such, is a delusion, and that the golden future which once lay ahead of Givors now lies a long way astern. Yet the town has an easy and contented look: as though it had saved enough from the wreck of its magnificent destiny to leave it ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... barking waves, and hush the winds; And when the soul was toss'd in troubled seas, Wrapp'd in thick darkness and the howling storm, He, pointing to the star of peace on high, Arm'd it with holy fortitude, and bade it smile At the surrounding wreck.—— When with deep agony his heart was rack'd, Not for himself the tear-drop dew'd his cheek, For them He wept, for them to Heaven He pray'd, His persecutors—"Father, pardon them, They ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... destined to go down "full many a fathom deep," is every soul on board to perish? Ho! a sail! a sail! The weather-beaten, but staunch ship Abolition, commanded by the Genius of Liberty, is bearing toward the wreck, with the cheering motto, inscribed in legible capitals, "WE WILL NOT FORSAKE YOU!" Let us hope, even against hope, that rescue is not ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... he never forgot that sultry evening, with the close, noisome atmosphere of the hot mission-hall, and the confused buzzing of many voices, which after a short silence began to hum in his ears. The drunkard was still standing in the doorway, the very wreck and ruin of a man; and every detail of his loathsome, degraded appearance was burnt in on Felix's brain. He felt stupefied and bewildered—as if he had received almost a death-blow. But in his inmost soul a cry went up to heaven, "Lord, Thou ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... full minute Mary Jane stared at the wreck that had been her doll. Then she turned and ran screaming ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... his person all the money he possessed, a little over three thousand dollars. This had been saved from the wreck of his expedition to the West, and he was now resolved to spend every dollar of it, if necessary, in bringing the Rovers to ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... only one pair of them, that I know of. One went with the wreck, and this one Len Lewis held on to. Now ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... only visible at low water. On a stormy day, when the seas were high, I used to stand at the head of the beach and try to picture how she drove up on the shore, shuddering deliciously as each great wave came pounding down on all that was left of her oaken frame. When I read in the newspaper of a wreck I thought of her, and I think of her to this day on such occasions, thrusting up black and dripping ribs above the wet sands at low water, or vanishing beneath the pounding foam of ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... the captain at the first crack. "Axes!" yelled the mate as the spar reeled into the water. "Lay forward and clear the wreck," were the next orders; "cut ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... the temple itself, the colossal column discovered November 7, 1875, in the Conservatori garden, is not the only one saved from the wreck. Flaminio Vacca, the sculptor and amateur-archaeologist of the sixteenth century, says: "Upon the Tarpeian Rock, behind the Palazzo de' Conservatori, several pillars of Pentelic marble (marmo statuale) were lately found. Their capitals are so enormous that out of one of them I have carved the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... we came out of the Motor Parkway, and I must give up the wheel because of Mr. Goodrich, who fears I might snap in two pieces at the waist and wreck his family. But it was very pretty country still, so I was soon consoled. It is difficult, wishing to live in so many villages! If I had to choose, I do not see how I could; and Peter says it will be the same with me in New England. But, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... stopped. Down the bank plunged a heavy, gorilla-like figure, long arms pushing aside the frozen branches of trees. When he reached the car, O'Hara found Grace sitting unhurt on the ground. In the wreck of the car the lamps had not been extinguished, and by their light he ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of a lad who was found in his infancy on board a wreck, and is adopted by a fisherman. By a deed of true gallantry his whole destiny is changed, and, going to sea, he forms one of a party who, after being burned out of their ship in the South Pacific, and experiencing great hardship and suffering in their boats, are picked up ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... of this series, entitled, "Through the Air to the North Pole," was the bringing together of the two boys and the professor,—how the scientist and Washington White rescued Jack and Mark after a train wreck, took them to the professor's workshop, and made the lads his special care. In that workshop was built the Electric Monarch, in which flying ship the party actually passed over that point far beyond the Arctic Circle where the needle of the ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... and the currents, and all that, and then reckons up where he is. I travelled with a captain once, and so long as he stuck to dead-reckoning he was all right. He made out we were off Cairns, and that's just where we were; because we struck the Great Barrier Reef, and became a total wreck ten minutes after. With the cattle it's just the same. You'll reckon the cattle that you started with, add on each year's calves, subtract all that you sell,—that is, if you ever do sell any—and allow for deaths, and what the ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... a frenzied crowd with the strength of his personality and addressing them in tones that had carried to the furthest extent of the listening multitude. Crushing sorrow and the weight of years suddenly felt had changed him into a wreck that was ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... stretch forward to the hope beyond; did not rest and strengthen and ground itself in the confident belief that the death of the body is but the emancipation of the soul; did not feel the assurance that there is a power in the universe upon which it might confidently rely, through wreck of matter and crash of worlds. But the great concern of Moses was with the duty that lay plainly before him: the effort to lay foundations of a social state in which deep poverty and degrading want should be unknown—where ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... should breed a fatal quarrel between man and woman; as though there could be a want of harmony, a collision of rights, between the sexes. Sad visions are conjured up before us of family feuds, mutual hair-pullings, and a general wreck of all domestic bliss. Certainly, there are difficulties about settling some domestic questions. Marriage is a partnership between two; no third person to give the casting vote. Then they must "take turns"; the wife yielding to the husband in those cases where he is best qualified to judge, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... back, their home was quiet as a fortress the day after it has been blown up. The front-parlor was full of paving-stones; the carpets were cut to pieces; the pictures, the furniture, and the chandelier lay in one common wreck; and the walls were covered with inscriptions of mingled insult and glory. Over the mantel-piece had been charcoaled "Rascal"; over the pier-table, "Abolitionist." We did not fare as badly as several others who rejoiced in the spoiling of their goods. Mr. Tappan, in Rose Street, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... proved to be an error, it was a natural one for which it is not difficult to find an excuse. Fortunately for the cause of Reform, Wilmot's connection with the government did not last long at that time. A storm was gathering in an unexpected quarter which was destined to wreck the government, and to cause some of its Conservative members to reconsider their opinions with reference to some questions which until then they had regarded as fixed ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... as thine would go, With all its sweetness spilled: My God, why should one heart of two Beat on, when one is stilled? Through heart-wreck, or home-wreck, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... do, it was true, all that night. After getting back to the outskirts of Elmvale they could not drive the machine over the slime and mud in the roadway. There were deep washouts, too; and in some places the wreck of ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... Cyprien the current became swifter and the turmoil of the rapids so great that I prepared my mind here to being swamped by the waves. The question whether I would abandon or try to rescue my knapsack after the wreck was distressing. The risk being over, it was with a sigh of relief that I beached the boat, now half full of water, at the nearest spot to the small town. Having moored it and given the sculls in charge of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... them; and still the world, misjudging ever, looked upon his calm face and tearless eye, and said that all too lightly had he loved the gentle girl whose last thoughts and words had been of him. Ah, they knew not the utter wreck the death of that young girl had made, of the bitter grief, deeper and more painful because no tear-drop fell to moisten its feverish agony. They buried her, and then back from the grave came the two heart-broken men, the father and Harry ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... the Jesuits, who despatched an express to court to the king's confessor, who was of their order; but the dragoons were much more expeditious in plundering and doing mischief, than the courier in his journey: so that the Jesuits, seeing every thing going to wreck and ruin, thought proper to adjust the matter amicably, and paid the money before the return of their messenger. The Augustins and Carmelites, taking warning by what had happened to the Jesuits, prudently went and paid the money, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... shipping news may still remember the wreck of a German kerosene steamer on the wildest, most precipitous part of the coast of Newfoundland, in February, 1901. The steamer took fire during a heavy winter gale, and the captain ran her ashore, at the nearest point of land, with the hope of saving the lives of the crew. She struck on a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... children or females under like violent emotions, or seen the representation of it in sculptures or paintings? Those passions, so aptly styled by Gray the "vultures of the mind," frequently affect with wonderful rapidity the health of both the body and the mind, which wreck the hair soon sympathizes with and shares. Instances are recorded in which violent grief in a few weeks has blanched the hair and anticipated the effects of age; and others in which intense terror or horror ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... ruin. I beseech you in the name of her whom you have murdered, and whom you still love—I can see it—but whom you may never behold again. Believe me, but yesterday your family was a proud vessel, whose helm was in your hands; to-day it is a drifting wreck, without either sail or pilot—left to be handled by cabinboys, as friend Marcasse says. Well, my poor mariner, do not persist in drowning yourself; I am throwing you a rope; take it—a day more, and it may be too late. Remember that if the law gets hold ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... moment. "I say," he said, "there's a scene up there for you. A trench mortar gun had a premature burst, and exploded all the munition in the pit; blew the whole lot—men and all—to pieces. It's made a crater thirty yards across. It's a beastly wreck. Can't use that section of the front line. And to make matters worse, Fritz is pumping over tear-shells. Everybody is tickled to ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... mate, with two compasses which the mate had snatched from the binnacle. They shoved off, but had scarcely made two lengths from the ship when she fell over to windward and settled low in the water on her beam-ends, a total wreck. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... but youthfully ready to attribute the generous motive rather than the sinister, felt that he was getting a new light on Whitney's character. Perhaps Whitney wasn't so unworthy, after all. Perhaps, in trying to wreck the business and so get hold of it, he had been carrying out a really noble purpose, in the unscrupulous way characteristic of the leaders of the world of commerce and finance. To Whitney he said: "I haven't given any thought to these matters." ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... was agreeable; and now and then she would thrill us with reminiscences of that evening's entertainment—with wonderful accounts of railway accidents— and of one in particular that happened on a pitch-dark night when fires had to be made to light the workers as they toiled fearfully amongst the wreck of the trains, searching for the mangled and mutilated, the dying and the dead, while the air was filled with ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... in a moment. There was time enough for Lidgerwood to rush the little Tadasu to the forward vestibule, to fling him into space, and to make his own flying leap for safety before the crisis came. Happily there was no wreck, though the margin of escape was the narrowest. Williams stuck to his post in the cab of the 266, applying and releasing the brakes, and running as far ahead as he dared upon the loosened timbers of the culvert, for which the section gang's slowflag was out. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... the fourth day, Miss Georgie woke with the vague sense that something had gone wrong. True railroader as she had come to be, she thought first that there had been a wreck, and that she was wanted at the telegraph instrument. She was up and partly dressed before the steps and the voices which had broken her ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... elaborate invitations, the following distinctly original plan is suggested: Procure a number of small alarm clocks and a quantity of nitroglycerine or other high explosive. Insert in each clock a small amount of the nitroglycerine, being careful not to put too much; a quantity sufficient to wreck a room 20 X 30 Will generally suffice. Then arrange the alarm mechanism so that the explosion will occur at 12 midnight. Attach to the clock a card, neatly decorated with witches, goblins, etc., on ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... settle to anything until he entered and sank into a seat, often so exhausted that it was hard to rouse him to change his dripping clothes. His duties, always honourably performed whatever the risk to himself, were far too severe for him, and he was rapidly becoming a wreck;—nervous, liverish, a martyr to headache, and a slave to stimulants, although not a drunkard—he only took enough to whip him up to his work. His digestion too had become seriously impaired, and he had no natural appetite for anything. He was fond of his children, and proud of them, but had hitherto ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... her world, smiling, triumphant, prettier than ever, since she had begun to make up a little more. Or, as a woman who had passed through the Valley of the Shadow, with only her own rod and staff of vanity and pride to comfort her, she would emerge from that seclusion a nervous wreck, and take to pegging or chloral or spiritualism. Most rarely she would not emerge at all, and then her women friends would send wreaths for the coffin and carriages to the funeral, and would whisper mysteriously together in their boudoirs, and look askance upon the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... pebbles and bricks which gangs of slaves erected into a pyramid. I do not hold Sesostris in much higher estimation than those quieter lumps of matter. They, O Timotheus, who survive the wreck of ages, are by no means, as a body, the worthiest of our admiration. It is in these wrecks, as in those at sea, the best things are not always saved. Hen-coops and empty barrels bob upon the surface, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... promised letter from Captain Wentworth—so gloomy, so incomprehensible, so portentous, that it filled me with despair. In this letter he spoke of obstacles between us—in which blood bore part—of the wreck of all earthly happiness for him—perchance for me. Yet he conjured me to be calm and patient, as he could not be, and alluded to my silence as conclusive of his misery. He referred frequently to the letter he had intrusted to the care of Gregory as explanatory of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... himself for the fall. The carriage rolled over and over in its descent, and at last stopped. Lord Chetwynde, with Hilda in his arms, was thrown violently down. As soon as he could he raised himself and drew Hilda out from the wreck ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... await their coming with a certain restrained curiosity. I was not entirely unaware that something was ailing with my mind. Yet these illusions of sight I took for the work of detectives, who sat up nights racking their brains in order to rack and utterly wreck my own with a ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... be the largest reason that Trenholme had the first four weeks for remaining where he was. At any rate, he did remain; and from these unpromising materials, circumstance, as is often the case, beat, out a rough sort of friendship between the two men. The fact that Bates was a partial wreck, that the man's nerve and strength in him were to some extent gone, bred in Trenholme the gallantry of the strong toward the weak—a gallantry which was kept from rearing into self-conscious virtue by ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... faith be allowed such wide confidences as these; if it may carry up into the invisible and infinite so many precious relics from the wreck of time, so many human circumstances and associations, why may it not take with it, to hang up in its heaven, photographs of those earthly localities rendered immortal here by the lives of good and great men? Such ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... know whether my father, at such a time, and in such a state of loneliness, might not have been led to impart to his cousin and host and protector the dark mystery which lay at the bottom of his own conduct. Knowing how resolute and stern he was, and doubtless then imbittered by the wreck of love and life, I thought it more probable that he had kept silence even toward so near a relative, especially as he had seen very little of his cousin Herbert till he had found him thus. Moreover, my grandfather and the Dean had spent little brotherly love on each other, having ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... indifference, though she well knew that her doom was certainly at hand. She had her consolations even under this conviction. Her father was in safety in the camp of Bolivar. With her counsel and assistance he would save much of his property from the wreck of confiscation. The plot had ripened in her hands almost to maturity, and before very long Bogota itself would speak for liberty in a formidable pronunciamento. And this was mostly her work! What more was done, by her agency and influence, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... will surely come to you that you are no mere interloper between earth and sky; but that you are a necessary particle of the Whole. No harm can come to you that does not come to all, and if you shall go down, it can only be amid a wreck of worlds. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... rubbish. There were no human habitations, no hovels, no casemates. The inhabitants had burrowed at last in the earth, like the dumb creatures of the swamps and forests. In every direction the dykes had burst, and the sullen wash of the liberated waves, bearing hither and thither the floating wreck of fascines and machinery, of planks and building materials, sounded far and wide over what should have been dry land. The great ship channel, with the unconquered Half-moon upon one side and the incomplete batteries and platforms of Bucquoy on the other, still defiantly opened its passage ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... dozen or a dozen men were cast ashore from a wreck on an uninhabited island, and left to their own resources, one of course, according to his capacity, would be set to one business and one to another; the strongest to dig and cut wood, and to build huts for the rest: the most dexterous to make shoes out of ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... for the best. A man must go through the fire before he can write his masterpiece. We learn in suffering what we teach in song. What we lose on the swings we make up on the roundabouts. Jerry Garnet, the man, might become a depressed, hopeless wreck, with the iron planted irremovably in his soul; but Jeremy Garnet, the author, should turn out such a novel of gloom that strong critics would weep and the public jostle for copies till ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... those great hands picked up the harp more hastily than usual and with a war-song clashed the strings; and presently there came a sharp twang or two, and the singer looked at Blondel like a schoolboy caught in mischief for the harp lay a wreck ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... colonel, looking back over his shoulder, "you come as near being a wreck as anything that I've seen in a long time. It's ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... State of Russia, or the State of France, or that of England, or all of them, and to trample neutral Belgium, as it now would be, here, for the State of Pennsylvania to declare war on the States of New York and Connecticut and to wreck New Jersey as she sent her troops ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... won't do," he reflected. "I must pull up short, or I'll be a complete wreck." He remembered the brief, sad note—with more love than bitterness in it—which he had received from Madge in reply to his letter of explanation. "I owe something to her," he thought. "She forgave me, and begged me to face the future bravely. And, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... neither in the mountains of Samaria, nor in the temples of Jerusalem, or Rome, or London. 'The cloud-capt towers-the gorgeous palaces-the solemn temples-yea, the great globe itself, shall dissolve, and, like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind.' Or in language far more solemn and striking, because they are the unerring words of truth, 'The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Paul, quietly, "I don't have any fears for him. He has too good a mother to make a wreck ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... the upper waters of the Yellowstone, the steamer exploded her boiler, making a complete wreck of the boat and its contents. The hunter, with the others, was thrown into the water, but was so bruised and injured that he found it impossible to swim, and he would assuredly have been drowned but for the timely assistance of ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... of the potatoes was to develop a PENCHANT in the cat for being ill indoors, the cucumber frames were damaged by the catapulting of boys going down the lane at the back, and all your cucumbers were mysteriously embittered. That lane with its occasional passers-by did much to wreck the intensive scheme, because my father always stopped work and went indoors if any one watched him. His special manure was apt to arouse a troublesome spirit of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... through the snowdrift toward the middle of the street. With difficulty he lifted his little legs out of the deep snow; now and then he stumbled and fell into the soft mass. But he rose only the more determined upon his errand, and kept his eyes fixed on the wreck of the Flanton Dog. ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... good deal of "squabbling" among the company. Its members were not a happy family. They had been engaged by their principal to support her. Instead, however, of rendering such support, a number of them did all they could to wreck the tour. Thereupon, Lola, adopting strong measures, discharged the malcontents and left for Melbourne by the next steamer. That she was justified in her action is clear from a letter which her solicitors sent to ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... out over again. What the particular ingredients were, was still a secret. The man would not sell out; he wanted to organize a manufactory and take a certain per cent of the profits. David had saved a thousand dollars out of the wreck at East Aurora; but he knew if he could show certain men that the scheme was genuine, he would be able to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the use of liquor. He made good wages, and supported his little family for several years; but the vile habit grew upon him to such a degree that the people of Redfield lost all confidence in him. As his business decreased, his besetting vice increased upon him, till he was nothing but the wreck of the man he had once been. Poverty had come, and want stared him ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... arm round Esther; he was white to the lips. He knew now how near he had been to discovery and the wreck of all his hopes. He tried to pretend that he did not understand the cause of her agitation. He looked down ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... dives into the sea; the keel is up to the sun; our shrouds are almost all broke, and blown away. Alas! alas! where is our main course? Al is verlooren, by Godt! our topmast is run adrift. Alas! who shall have this wreck? Friend, lend me here behind you one of these whales. Your lantern is fallen, my lads. Alas! do not let go the main-tack nor the bowline. I hear the block crack; is it broke? For the Lord's sake, let us have the hull, and let all the rigging be damned. Be, be, be, bous, bous, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... wreck the whole thing if he accepts it," sighed Mr. Saunderson, "but at least it will be done legally, and in the regular course of things. If he'll only be sensible and see he's wanted just as a figurehead, everyone will be comfortable ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... a dream are all bound up! My father's loss, the weakness that I feel, The wreck of all my friends, or this man's threats, To whom I am subdued, are but light to me Might I but through my prison once a day Behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth Let liberty make use of, space enough Have I in such ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... idea, but it came back with mechanical obstinacy and he was compelled to consider it. His vows? Yes, it would be death to his soul to break them. But if she were lost who had no one but him to look to—if she went down to wreck and ruin, then the fires of hell would be as nothing ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... wreck of Richard's vessels, King Isaac had the law on his side, and all those who, in their theory of government, hold it as a principle that law is the foundation of property, and that what the law makes right is right, must admit that he had justice ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the descent must continually be saturated by the breaking waves and by the necessity of frequently jumping overboard in avoiding rocks, the danger of pneumonia is really greater than that from wreck. They had an abundance of warm clothing for winter, plenty of ammunition, two or three dozen traps, tools of various kinds, nails, screws; etc. In the line of scientific instruments there were two ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... six months after his arrival in Calcutta. Then he tried something else, and still something else, and was just beginning to feel some interest in his work and to hope for success, when a malarial fever seized upon him and reduced him to a mere wreck of ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... his means, he naturally began to look again towards India. The Company and the Government were eager to avail themselves of his services. A treaty favourable to England had indeed been concluded in the Carnatic. Dupleix had been superseded, and had returned with the wreck of his immense fortune to Europe, where calumny and chicanery soon hunted him to his grave. But many signs indicated that a war between France and Great Britain was at hand; and it was therefore thought desirable to send an able ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... From amid the wreck of broken oars and writhing limbs, a voice is shrieking in broadest Devon to the master, who ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... high in the sky, when she gently disengaged herself to give him the stimulants and nourishment he required. The utter helplessness of the wreck of him that lay cast ashore there, now alarmed her, but he himself appeared a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... annals, their commander was among the few who had the added misfortune of coming to earth within the Japanese lines. By fate's mercy, he just happened to escape by walking between the enemy outposts. Farther along, he saw the wreck of another of his planes. Then he came to a third; it was smashed beyond hope. But its crew had already heard from several other parties. They too had lost their B-25's to the fog, the night and the crags. Doolittle realized then that everything was gone, lives saved ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... catastrophe had produced a striking effect on me. My incessant broodings, and the corroding sense of my great irreparable loss and of my desolation had made a nerveless, listless wreck of me, a mere shadow of my former self. I ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Claribel grabbed "The Wreck of the Hesperus" between her pearly teeth and shook it to death. Then she got a half-Nelson on Poe's "Raven" and ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... the family is quite sufficiently represented, the derelict was unwelcome, save as a living proof of the practicability of natural transports. By what grace, indeed, could the creature which earned the Almighty's bitter curse be accepted as "wilsam"—goods of God's mercy driven ashore, no wreck or ship ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... banks, and the rank overhanging thickets and tangled trees. The frogs were croaking, and the rats were slipping in and out of the shadowy water, like live shadows themselves, as I got nearer to the marshy side of the lake. I saw here, lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten wreck of an old overturned boat, with a sickly spot of sunlight glimmering through a gap in the trees on its dry surface, and a snake basking in the midst of the spot, fantastically coiled and treacherously still. Far and near the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... kindly feeling for Lord Byron, or any tenderness for his memory; that the profession implied a certain hypocrisy: but, in this sad review, we may see how the woman who once had loved him, might, in spite of every wrong he had heaped upon her, still have looked on this awful wreck and ruin chiefly with pity. While she stood afar, and refused to justify or join in the polluted idolatry which defended his vices, there is evidence in her writings that her mind often went back mournfully, as a mother's ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... this was the Empire in a different aspect from any that he yet knew; the opportunism of his father and of Monsieur de Mauves, the bare worldliness of the Sainfoys, the military brutality of Ratoneau. The voice of this poor soldier, wandering back, a helpless, destitute wreck, to end his days in his old home, sounded like the bugle-call of all that generous self-sacrifice, that pure enthusiasm for glory, which rose to follow Napoleon and made his career possible. Angelot felt as if he too could march in such an ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... blessest my children 'in their basket and in their store;' and while the riches of many are making to themselves wings and flying away—while many are sinking from affluence to poverty, falling on the right hand and on the left, by thy most manifest providence thou hast preserved them from the wreck. O teach them to acknowledge thy hand in all this, and to say and feel, 'Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy name be the glory.' It is God that giveth power to get riches. O, enable them to honor thee with their substance, and with the first-fruits ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... trunk she had just packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem describing her sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came upon her husband and "another" flaunting in silks and diamonds. She pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow—a beautiful wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the editor of the AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle. And where was Colonel Starbottle all this while? Why didn't he come? He, at least, understood her. He—she laughed the reckless, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... back to town on 30th October. Our home was exceedingly small and cold, and its chilliness in particular made it very bad for our health. We furnished it scantily with the little we had saved from the wreck of the Rue du Holder, and awaited the results of my efforts towards getting my works accepted and produced in Germany. The first necessity was at all costs to secure peace and quietness for myself for the short time which ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... night. No wonder the wrecks were frequent. The superintendent of a division in those days was expected to run trains by telegraph at night, to go out and remove all wrecks, and indeed to do everything. At one time for eight days I was constantly upon the line, day and night, at one wreck or obstruction after another. I was probably the most inconsiderate superintendent that ever was entrusted with the management of a great property, for, never knowing fatigue myself, being kept up by a sense of responsibility probably, I overworked the men ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... with the wreck of his army, he found the Egyptians in glorious apparel celebrating a festival. They had found a new Apis and were rejoicing over the reappearance of their god, incarnate ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... are outcasts from society, unfortunately exerting a most harmful influence on all those who come into relation with them. Furthermore, they are centers for the dissemination of venereal diseases which wreck the health of all those who become infected. But for the uncontrolled passions of men, there would be no such women. So while we, individually, as men, may not be responsible for the ruin of any one woman, we must confess that men as a class are responsible ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... Islands, on the ground that he had taken the notary, De Vega [i.e., Diego?] Soto from the church, where he had taken refuge because of the criminal suit that was being prosecuted against him for the falsehoods and theft with which he is charged in regard to the silver lacking in the wreck of the ship "Sant Nicolas de Tolentino" (he being the notary of that ship), it was ordered that he be restored to the church under penalty of certain fines and censures. Notwithstanding that he appealed in due time and form, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... origin of the suspension bridge. But this is a miniature, a model, a suggestion of the big bridges. It affords ready access to the house on the other side. In winter, however, the boards are taken up, as the heavy snows that fall and accumulate might wreck it. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... see that we don't start out on track thirteen as we did when we went to Oak Farm, and had the wreck," the actor answered. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... with the advantage of a ghost that walked like a man ... Tom Hunter, to be exact ... they had reduced the Jupiter Equilateral orbit-ship to a smoking wreck in something ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... physical and mental development, that affects, favorably or unfavorably, his sense of feeling, of thought, and of action. Every day we see people, situated in favorable material conditions, going physically and morally to wreck, simply because, beyond the narrower sphere of their own domestic or personal surroundings, unfavorable circumstances of a social nature operate upon them, and gain such overpowering ascendency that they switch them on wrong tracks. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... Wreck of a dying race, The Red Man, half in scorn, Shall raise his haughty face, Inscrutable as the sky, To watch ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... days Elsmere's happiness was perhaps nearer wreck than it had ever been. All strong natures grow restless under such a pressure as was now weighing on Catherine. Shock and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lodging; a farm-house in Langdale, with a steep, stony lane leading up to it: this lane was entered by a gate out of the main road, and by the gate were a few bushes—thorns; but of them the leaves had fallen, and they offered no concealment: an old wreck of a yew-tree grew among them, however, and underneath that Susan cowered down, shrouding her face, of which the colour might betray her, with a corner of her shawl. Long did she wait; cold and cramped she became, too damp and stiff to change ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... had carried in his subconsciousness all day this visit to the footman's child. In one manner or another that inconvenient locality had been compassed in his circuit for the past three weeks. From it he passed to his daily ordeal, another rich patient, a nervous wreck, whose primary ailment—the lack of anything to do—had passed into the advanced stages of an inability to do anything, with its sad Nemesis of melancholia—the registered protest of the dying soul. It was a case which took more out of the Doctor ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... smoke became blacker and blacker, a heart-rending, almost maddening sound of shrieking and crying rang out from that devilish wreck, so loud and piercing that it drowned the clatter of stones, the crackling of the fast-kindling coals, and the crushing noise of the metals. At the cry for aid of the doomed victims, all who had escaped and hidden behind the bulwark ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... fingers of which showed white and transparent as a lady's; his eyes were bent on the ground, and a look of suffering or of moody thought hung over the whole of that face, once full of free and open cheerfulness. Tears filled Eustace's eyes as he beheld that wreck of manhood and thought of that bright day of hope and gladness when his brother had presented him ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... back in a little less than two hours, and he came back a wreck that babbled in delirium and could give no answer to the questions showered upon him along the echoing corridor of dungeons by the men who were yet to get what he had got, and who desired greatly to know what ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... but others indicate a former knowledge of our own America, and a few may relate to that score or so of rocks lying between New England and the Latin shores; bare, dangerous domes and ledges where sea fowl nest, and where a crumbling skeleton tells of a sailor who outlived a wreck to endure a more dreadful death from cold and thirst and hunger. Some of these tales reach back to the Greek myths: survivals of the oldest histories, or possibly connected America with the old world through voyages made by men ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness, Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess; The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain The shore to which their shiver'd sail shall never ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... sunset—although the moon shines bright to others, to me it is total darkness—and nearly blind during the day; my limbs so weak and painful that I am obliged to be carried about; my body reduced to that of a living skeleton, and my strength that of infantine weakness —a sad, sad wreck of former ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullability, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson |
