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More "Direful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... promised victory to themselves without eyeing of God, by the rapacity and oppression exercised by the soldiery, and by the carnal self-seeking of men in power, that God had been provoked to visit his people with so direful and ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... Harrison Peterson, the subject of this sketch, is a native of the State of Florida. He was born of slave parents, just in time to be spared the horrible experiences of that slave system which swept over this country with such direful results. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... so much of fable mingled with the traditionary biography of this "Devonshire worthy," that most persons probably will dismiss the claim altogether. He became weary of his life, and, being determined to rid himself from the direful apprehensions of dangerous approaching evils, he adopted this strange mode of suicide: having given strict orders to his keeper to shoot any person at night who would not stand when challenged, he threw himself into the keeper's way, and was shot dead upon the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... I purpose lighting will, from any accident, or by any other hand after I shall have lighted it, be made to burn my neighbor's house; am I not in some degree participant or accessary to the consequence if I persist in the intention? Why is man to be made subject to consequences more direful to him than if he had never been born at all into this world of evil? He has had no voice in determining his mission into it, nor has his will been consulted in the creation of his spirit, nor in the qualities with which that ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... wrath of Peleus' son, the direful spring Of all the Grecian woes, O goddess, sing; That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign The souls of mighty ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... prepared to oppose them for both technical and practical reasons. And the cause of intolerance derived much warmth and comfort at this juncture from that great luminary of theology and political philosophy, the King of Great Britain. Direful and solemn were the warnings uttered by James to the republic against permitting the old religion, or any religion save his own religion, to obtain the slightest foothold ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... which grew rarer as North and South fell apart. Intercourse like this broke down many of those prejudices unconsciously cherished by Northerners. Slavery in the concrete, on a North Carolina plantation, with a kindly master like Colonel Martin,[297] bore none of the marks of a direful tyranny. Whatever may have been his mental reservations as to slavery as a system of labor, Douglas could not fail to feel the injustice of the taunts hurled against his Southern friends by the Abolitionist press. As he saw the South, the master was not a ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... puma, which immediately fled, roaring loudly. When severely wounded and driven into a corner, this animal frequently commences a combat of despair, and sometimes kills the hunter. The puma measures in length about four feet, and in height more than two feet. More direful than any of the felines mentioned above is the sanguinary ounce,[81] which possesses vast strength, and is of a most savage disposition. Though the favorite haunts of this animal are the expansive Pajonales, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... that (sultan jeraad) the king of the locusts had taken his departure eastward early in the morning; the myriads of locusts followed, so that in a quarter of an hour not one was to be seen. The depredations of these devouring insects was too soon felt, and a direful scarcity ensued. The poor would go out a locusting, as they termed it: the bushes were covered; they took their (haik) garment, and threw it over them, and then collected them in a sack. In half an hour they would collect a bushel. These they would take home, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... reasons good she did not please To visit our antipodes— Folks rude and savage like the beasts, Who, wedding-free from forms and priests, In simple tent or leafy bower, Make little work for such a power. That she might know exactly where Her direful aid was in demand, Renown flew courier through the land, Reporting each dispute with care; Then she, outrunning Peace, was quickly there; And if she found a spark of ire, Was sure to blow it to a ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... those stories may be such legends; but that was not what I intended to lead you to. I gave you that only as something like what I am going to say now. What if,—mind, I only suggest it,—what if the direful creatures, whose report lingers in these tales, should have an origin far older still? What if they were the remnants of a vanishing period of the earth's history long antecedent to the birth of mastodon and iguanodon; ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... things too far divulg'd by fame), My kinsman fell. Then I, without support, In private mourn'd his loss, and left the court. Mad as I was, I could not bear his fate With silent grief, but loudly blam'd the state, And curs'd the direful author of my woes. 'T was told again; and hence my ruin rose. I threaten'd, if indulgent Heav'n once more Would land me safely on my native shore, His death with double vengeance to restore. This mov'd the murderer's hate; and soon ensued Th' effects ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... merit and valour were denied to them, they stood upon a vantage ground, which gave them a direful and incalculable preponderance in the state. They surrounded the throne. Soon did their insolence announce that they had craftily availed themselves of the advantages which they possessed; and we foresaw with affliction that inveterate prejudice, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the errors of the Latins. The rising majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by the pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema, [10] which enumerates the seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and devotes the guilty teachers, and their unhappy sectaries, to the eternal society of the devil and his angels. According to the emergencies of the church and state, a friendly correspondence was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... names shall never fade away: Emblazoned in the sacred Hall of Fame, They shall remain till dawns that direful Day, The valid seal beneath thy sacred name. Deft Tanner, artist, ever blazing flame, With Pickens, Bruce and Locke of classic dell, Old Truth and Harper, Yates and Ruffin came, And Walker, Terrell, Williams, known so well Long ere Marie had taught ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... of Angles lord, protector of friends, author and framer of direful deeds. o'erran with speed the Mercian land. whete'er the course of Whitwell-spring, or Humber deep, The broad brim-stream, divides five towns. Leicester and Lincoln. Nottingham and Stamford, and Derby eke. In thraldom long to Norman Danes they bowed through ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when the noon of the second day came, I was not unconscious of those ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Instantly Speed saw the direful consequences of such a procedure, and summoned his courage to say: "No. It's very kind of you, but ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... like his own, together with the predisposing belief that this was to be a night of events, stopped his consciousness that all had been thwarted; that there was nothing but plot, plot, counterplot and tangle, disunion, silly subtlety, jealousy, vanity, a direful congregation of antagonistic elements; threads all loose, tongues wagging, pressure here, pressure there, like an uncertain rage in the entrails of the undirected earth, and no master hand on the spot to fuse and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dignitaries with as much boldness as did Savonarola. He denounced the gluttony of monks, the avarice of popes, and the rapacity of princes. He held heresy in mortal hatred, like the Fathers of the fifth century. His hostility to Abelard was direful, since he looked upon him as undermining Christianity and extinguishing faith in the world. In his defence of orthodoxy he was the peer of Augustine or Athanasius. He absolutely abhorred the Mohammedans as the bitterest foes of Christendom,—the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... performed by the feeding of chickens specially kept for this purpose. This was done just before sunrise by the pullarius or feeder, strict silence being observed. If the birds manifested no desire for their food, the omen was of a most direful nature. On the other hand, if from the greediness of the chickens the grain fell from their beaks and rebounded from the ground, the augury was most favourable. This latter augury was known as tripudium solistimum. "Any fraud practiced by the 'pullarius'," writes the Rev. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... rang the bell. When the school had come to order, she had the desks and chairs picked up, while she herself brought wet cloths to sop the ink from the floor. This was done in profound silence; and the expression of Mrs. Knight's face was so direful and solemn, that a fresh damp fell upon the spirits of the guilty Rivers, and Father Ocean wished ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... the gentleman who first made use of the plant in South America, as an antidote to that scourge of human nature, hydrophobia; his words are, "I shall simply state, that during my residence in South America, I had frequent opportunities of witnessing the direful effects of hydrophobia, without having in any one case that came under my care been successful in its cure by the usual modes prescribed in Europe. It fortunately occurred to me, that the guaco, so celebrated for curing the bite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... and most intimate friend, and she is one to whom they can never speak of the thing that interested them most. No doubt "our best plays mean secret plays"; but Charlotte, at any rate, suffered from this secrecy. There was nothing to counteract Miss Nussey's direful influence on her spiritual youth. "Papa" highly approved of the friendship. He wished it to continue, and it did; and it was the best that Charlotte had. I know few things more pathetic than the cry that Charlotte, at twenty-one, sent out of her solitude (with ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... was the best form of Government possible in this age; so a worship based chiefly upon the incitements and terrors of retributive law—the holding out of inducements of reward for the good, and of determents of direful punishment for the wicked, in a future world—was the best religion for which the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the winds, and most perfectly did this king and queen love one another. Their happiness was unmarred until there came a day when Ceyx had to mourn for the loss of a brother. Following close on the heels of this disaster came direful prodigies which led Ceyx to fear that in some way he must have incurred the hostility of the gods. To him there was no way in which to discover wherein lay his fault, and to make atonement for it, but by going to consult ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... The candle had burnt itself out, that was all. He crept softly across the floor; in the darkness he found her, and touched the garments she wore—and drew back enthralled. A strange joy filled him; she was his for the time being. They were equals in this direful, unlovely place; royal prejudice stood for nothing here. The mad desire to pick her up in his arms and hold her close came over him—only to perish as quickly as it flamed. What ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... baby laughed and crowed, and made chirrupy sounds, she was abundantly satisfied. Peter, too, was most ingenious in keeping off the fatal sounds of baby's wailing: he would blow into a paper bag, and then when the baby had screwed up her face, and was preparing to let out a whole volley of direful notes, he would clap his hands violently on the bag and cause it to explode, thereby absolutely frightening the poor little ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... pass an act to end the slave-trade, he wrote to a friend in that State, "I must say that I lament the decision of your legislature upon the question of importing slaves after March 1793. I was in hopes that motives of policy as well as other good reasons, supported by the direful effects of slavery, which at this moment are presented, would have operated to produce a total prohibition of the importation of slaves, whenever the question came to be agitated in any State, that might be interested in the measure." For his own State he expressed the "wish from ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... bodies, with different industrial, educational, civil, religious, and political rights; has maintained this separation for the benefit of the superior class, and sedulously taught the doctrine that any change in existing conditions would be a sin of most direful magnitude. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... DEADLY NIGHTSHADE.—Webfer has given us an account of some children that were killed in consequence of having eaten the berries of this plant for black currants. And others have spoken of the direful effects of the whole plant so much, that, from the incontestable proofs of its deleterious qualities, persons cannot be too nice in selecting their pot-herbs, particularly those who make a practice of gathering from dunghills and gardens Fat-Hen, &c. as there is some ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... aggressiveness which is at the bottom of the present war will push the yellow mass toward Europe. Russia, as comparatively western, will have to bear their first onset; for this she will require Occidental assistance, and in the turmoil of that direful conflict—or, let us hope, in order to avoid it—she will readily give up all designs against her western neighbors, and she may become really western by the necessities which impel her ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... let him through the wall gate with its weighted rope. The gate flew back in place with a loud report as if to give emphasis to the old man's direful ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... quickly, "let me take your portrait. I have quite a collection here, you see." And as he spoke he did not remove his eyes from the stranger—he had come to the conclusion that he was mad, or in some direful strait that made him almost irresponsible, and his first purpose ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... post is at the seventh gate Is thine own brother; hear his direful prayers, His imprecations on our commonwealth. He prays that he may mount our battlements, Be there proclaimed our king, shout victory, Meet thee, and slay thee, and insult thee slain, Or, living, drive thee forth a banished man, Disgracing thee as thou hast him disgraced. With such fell words and ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... 'Miss Jenny'; trusting to her wraps and to the darkness to disguise the creature sufficiently. I will not repeat the language of the guard and coachman on discovering the trick played; but after direful threats as to what the showman might 'expect' as the result of his device, matters were amicably arranged. The owner of the bear made most abject apologies all round (I fancy giving more than civil words to the coach officials), I interceded for him, and the mail set off at ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... death rate of the American Negro does not exceed that of the white race in other parts of the civilized globe. If race traits are playing such havoc with the Negroes in America, what direful agent of death, may we ask the author, is at work in the cities of his ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... Reformed doctrines gained numerous converts among the middle-class. The growth of Calvinism in Germany was seriously handicapped by the religious settlement of Augsburg in 1555 which officially tolerated only Catholicism and Lutheranism. It was not until after the close of the direful Thirty Years' War in the seventeenth century that German Calvinists ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... shall realize that they are properly partners and not enemies. To approach the questions which inevitably arise between them solely from the standpoint which treats each side in the mass as the enemy of the other side in the mass is both wicked and foolish. In the past the most direful among the influences which have brought about the downfall of republics has ever been the growth of the class spirit, the growth of the spirit which tends to make a man subordinate the welfare of the public as a whole to the welfare of the particular class ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... utter dismay. Then he read in full the manifesto which Amidon and Elizabeth had prepared; and, folding up the paper, he stuck it in a drawer, which he locked, as if thereby to seal up the direful news. For a moment he felt betrayed and utterly defeated. Then he straightened himself for a resumption ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... hardship upon their frames, but the change in the looks of these men, since last they parted, was a type of the famine and desolation of the land; and they now began to indulge the horrible presentiment that they would all starve together, or be reduced to the direful alternative of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... more is the best part of it," said Peter, smiling; "you see, mother was so upset by this direful news, that another gypsy took pity on her and amended my cruel fate. The second seeress declared that I must meet the destiny number one had dealt me, but that to mitigate the family ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... piece, with the news that Silvia has been slain while pursuing a wolf in the forest. Thereupon Aminta, with a last reproach to Dafne for having prevented him from putting an end to his miserable life before being the recipient of such direful news, rushes off the scene at a pace to mock pursuit. In the next act, however, Silvia reappears and narrates her escape. Here we arrive at the dramatic climax of the play. Dafne expresses her fear that the false report of Silvia's death may indeed prove the death of Aminta. The nymph ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... family, coiled by misfortunes like that of the Laocoon (sublime image of so many lives), Godefroid, who was now on his way on foot to the rue Marbeuf, was conscious in his heart of more curiosity than benevolence. This sick woman, surrounded by luxury in the midst of such direful poverty, made him forget the horrible details of the strangest of all nervous disorders, which is happily rare, though recorded by a few historians. One of our most gossiping chroniclers, Tallemant des Reaux, cites an instance of ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... I never heard it before, dame!" remarked Caroline, with a shudder. She felt instinctively that the name was one of direful omen to herself. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... savages of the North: their letters, in the Scythian character and language, announced a people who had attained the rudiments of science: [36] they enumerated the conquests, they offered the friendship and military aid of the Turks; and their sincerity was attested by direful imprecations (if they were guilty of falsehood) against their own head, and the head of Disabul their master. The Greek prince entertained with hospitable regard the ambassadors of a remote and powerful monarch: the sight of silk-worms and looms disappointed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... squall of such violence as even he had never before experienced, but, thanks to his friend the King of France, he had been forewarned. He sent at once to his master, Soliman the Magnificent, at Constantinople, to impart to him the direful intelligence; then the bagnios were thrown open, and, under pitiless lash and scourge, the Christian captives toiled from dawn till dark to repair the fortifications of Tunis. Silent and unapproachable, conferring with none, the grim old Sea-wolf ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... displayed in their conflicts with the aborigines, we must take into account her natural repugnance to repulsive and horrid spectacles. The North American savage streaked with war-paint, a bunch of reeking scalps at his girdle, his snaky eyes gleaming with malignity, was a direful sight for even a hardened frontiers-man; how much more, then, to his impressionable and delicate wife and daughter. The very appearance of the savage suggested thoughts of the tomahawk, the scalping knife, the butchered relations, the desolated homestead. Nothing can better ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... at her in surprise, even meditated a word of excuse, because her attitude was so unfriendly towards these neighbours who had been in such direful peril. But the word was not spoken, for Katherine's face was too stern for the elder sister to even suggest any change in her manner. Miles tied two of the dogs on a leash while the men put on their snowshoes, then he carefully drew their sledge inside the door of the store, which ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... been handed down from earliest times; and when one of those mysterious visitors, travelling from out the depths of space, became visible in our skies, it was regarded with apprehension and dread as betokening the occurrence of calamities and direful events among the ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... other's eyes, and the little space between was for both as an open grave filled with dead things—hopes, ambitions, future days and months and years—days and months and years when they should be for ever mindful of his crime! For henceforth they were to dwell in the chill of this direful shadow that would tower above all the concerns of life whether great or small; that would add despair to every sorrow, and take the very soul and substance ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... any thing to do with rendering their assent to the making of this new State within the territorial limits of that ancient Commonwealth." He declared this to be "a dangerous precedent which overthrows the Constitution and may be fraught with direful consequences." "Out of the one hundred and sixty counties that compose the State of Virginia," he continued, "less than one-fourth have assumed to act for the entire State; and even within the boundaries of the new State more than half the voters have declined ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... direful scourge of the Eastern hemisphere, the cholera, invaded his camp. Here was a new foe that had never yet been conquered. Victim after victim fell under its ravages. The general might have retired to some ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... poison-dispensers!— do you imagine that I am altogether passive; a mean worm, organized to feel sensations of pain, but having no emotion of resentment? Did you imagine that there was no danger in inflicting on me pains, however great; miseries, however direful? Do you believe me impotent, imbecile, and idiot-like, with no understanding to contrive my escape and thy ruin, and no energy to perpetrate it? I will tell the end of thy infernal works. The country, in justice, shall hear me. I would that I had the language of fire, that my words ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... in a direful fix, and often I wondered why They did not take the chance that was left and leave me alone to die, Or finish me off with a dose of dope—so utterly lost ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... Charles George Mahon, whom he addressed personally as "a rack-renting landlord," and otherwise held up to scorn and derision. Perched on his crutches, the cripple defied him, and poured out a torrent of eloquence on "the fiery dthragon of hunger" and other direful creatures, including landlords, which would have set at defiance Canon Dwyer's "exploded shaft of Greek philosophy." The scene afforded, at least to many there present, as much amusement as astonishment. That a nephew of a county member should be publicly attacked before ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... he should be branded as a rebel. Even Gilbert and Henry of Stramen were crestfallen in the blight of all their budding hopes. Of all our Suabian friends, Father Omehr was the only one who rejoiced in this amicable termination of the council, and who devoutly returned thanks to God for averting a direful war, and proclaiming, in the favorite language of heaven, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... their last have breathed, And now this world forever leaved; Their father, and their mother too, They sigh and weep as well as you; Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched, Into eternity theire laanched. A direful death indeed they had, As wad put any parent mad; But she was more than usual calm: She did not give ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... at home, all ill of the small-pox, and his wife in an hospital—and he implored a payment on account. This sufferer succeeded in squeezing out of Titmouse seven shillings on account, and his landlady extorted ten; which staved off a distress—direful word!—for some week or two longer; and so they left him in the possession of eight shillings or so, to last till next quarter-day—six weeks off! He sighed heavily, barred his door, and sat down opposite his little table, on which was nothing ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... parcels of oatmeal and hominy, sticky and dripping. Swiftly corking the jug, he lifted it out of the carryall, together with the oilcloth strip, and deftly stood both against a fence by the roadside. Flint watched him with admiration. He felt himself supremely helpless in the presence of the direful calamity. How was he ever to get these bundles into condition to be put back into the wagon? How cleanse the oilcloth ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life, I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes:— O, cursed be the hand that made these holes! Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it! Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence! More direful hap betide that hated wretch That makes us wretched by the death of thee, Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads, Or any creeping venom'd thing that lives! If ever he have child, abortive be it, Prodigious, and untimely brought to light, Whose ugly and unnatural ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of the Tuscan poet and wondered if it were possible that his bitter experience had called forth that direful inscription— ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... devices for lighting were evolved. For example, in England in the seventeenth century man was already burrowing into the earth for coal and of course encountered coal-gases. These inflammable gases were first known for the direful effects which they so often produced rather than for their useful qualities. Although they were known to miners long before they received scientific attention, the earliest account of them in the Transactions of the Royal Society was presented in the year 1667. A description of early gas-lighting ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... matrons and the fast young ladies of the imperial city had become, it was not from such as these, he continues, that the noble youth sprang "who dyed the seas with Carthaginian gore, overthrew Pyrrhus and great Antiochus and direful Hannibal," concluding in words which contrast by their suggestive terseness at the same time that they suggest comparison with the elaborated fulness of the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... corrupted voices brawl; No conscience molten into gold, No forged accuser bought or sold, No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey; For there Christ is the King's Attorney. And when the grand twelve-million jury Of our sins, with direful fury, Against our souls black verdicts give, Christ pleads his death, and then ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... and there making their little preparations to leave for the hills: the direful scourge to them was an evil spirit, sent as a visitation upon their bad deeds. This they sincerely believe, coupling it with all the superstition their ignorance gives rise to. A few miles from the mansion, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... is comprehended in that single word. What mind is there that does not shrink from its direful effects? Unless the image of God is obliterated from the soul, all men cherish the love of Liberty. The nice discerning political economist does not regard the sacred right, more than the untutored African ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... death, white as a sheet; pale, pale as a ghost, pale as death, pale as ashes; breathless, in hysterics. inspiring fear &c v.; alarming; formidable, redoubtable; perilous &c (danger) 665; portentous; fearful; dread, dreadful; fell; dire, direful; shocking; terrible, terrific; tremendous; horrid, horrible, horrific; ghastly; awful, awe-inspiring; revolting &c (painful) 830; Gorgonian. Adv. in terrorem [Lat.]. Int. angels and ministers of grace defend ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hungry look in the blue eyes before her. "Yes, a little," she said lightly; "for I hate the very word. But, if it must be spoken, it should always be short and staccato. Instead, he sat here, and we talked about Fate and wounds and all sorts of direful things." She shook herself and shivered slightly. Then she sat down in the chair which Weldon had just left vacant. "It is bad manners to have nerves, Captain Frazer. Forgive me first, and then tell me something altogether flippant, to ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... spring of 1801 he is under the "fearful slavery," as he was to call it, of opium. "My sole sensuality," he says of this time, "was not to be in pain." In a terrible letter addressed to Joseph Cottle in 1814 he declares that he was "seduced to the accursed habit ignorantly"; and he describes "the direful moment, when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such a dreadful falling abroad, as it were, of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness, and incipient bewilderment ... for my case is a species of madness, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... excite against one another, may be allayed by one soothing word, and the most discordant elements be brought to unite in tranquil harmony at their feet. 'Tis thus with her; and since she cannot accomplish her object, why she has no resource left but to lose her temper, to menace us with direful prospects for the future, and to threaten to ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... farriers have either the time or the skill necessary to adjust a cold shoe to the hoof so that it will fit, as we say, "air-tight." Though the opponents of hot fitting draw a lurid picture of the direful consequences of applying a hot shoe to the hoof, it is only the abuse of the practice that is to be condemned. If a heavy shoe at a yellow heat be held tightly pressed against a hoof which has been pared too thin, till it embeds itself, serious damage may be done. But a shoe ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... at the foot of a tree, leaning against it. Despite her weariness she had retained some spirit until this direful revelation broke her courage. What worse could have happened? Mordaunt had led her, for some reason that she could not divine, into the clutches of Brandt, into the power of Legget ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... relief of the half-choked Albinia, little Mary Ferrars, with whom her cousin had been carrying on a direful warfare all day, fitted on the cap, shook her head gravely at him, and after an appealing look of indignation, first at his mamma, then at her own, was overheard confiding to Nora Nugent that Maurice was ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... miserable youth rushed frantically to his lodgings, without any definite intentions, but more than half inclined to sink on his knees before his desk, and look up to the moon, or stars, or; failing these, to the floating light for inspiration, and pen the direful dirge of something dreadful and desperate! He had even got the length of the first line, and had burst like a thunderbolt ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... His impassioned arraignment of the disunionists was loudly applauded by the galleries, and clearly indicated the part he would have played in the late Rebellion had his life been spared to witness that direful event. "So long," said he, "as it pleases God to give me a voice to express my sentiments, or an arm, weak and enfeebled as it may be by age, that voice and that arm will be on the side of my country, for the support ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... the vigilance of the slave-breaker and made his way back to his own master to seek protection. The master, who would have lost his slave's wages for a year if he had broken the contract with Covey before the year's end, sent Douglass back to his taskmaster. Anticipating the most direful consequences, Douglass made the desperate resolution to resist any further punishment at Covey's hands. After a fight of two hours Covey gave up his attempt to whip Frederick, and thenceforth laid hands on him no more. That Covey did not invoke the law, ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Only after several days did Fred repeat the story of his night adventure and his theft of her picture, of his narrow escape, and of his subsequent visit to the cottage. Only gradually had her mother revealed to her the circumstances of Jerrold's wager with Sloat, and the direful consequences; of his double absences the very nights on which Fred had made his visits; of the suspicions that resulted, the accusations, and his refusal to explain and clear her name. Mrs. Maynard felt vaguely relieved to see how slight an impression ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... friend, and observes that Sam takes to wearing his old clothes for a twelvemonth, and never seems to have any ready money. We shall see some day whether or no this horse will carry Sam ten miles, if required, on such direful emergency, too, as falls to the lot of few men. However, this is all to come. Now in holiday clothes and in holiday mind, the two noble animals cross the paddock, and so down by the fence towards the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... hour and as many hours as you please, but especially at the twilight hour before I light my lamp. I bid you at that particular time, because I can see visions more vividly in the dusky glow of firelight than either by daylight or lamplight. Come, and let me renew my spell against headache and other direful effects of the east wind. How I wish I could give you a portion of my insensibility! and yet I should be almost afraid of some radical transformation, were I to produce a change in that respect. If you cannot grow ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... another day the same; Her only sustenance, sobs, sighs, and flame Still unappeased; she murmur'd 'gainst her fate; But nothing could her direful woes abate. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... 'tis ever marked, that when this direful ceremony occurs, the average deaths in cities greatly increase. 'Tis from the turning of the blood in the spectators, who yet from some ungovernable madness cannot refrain from hurrying to the scene. I speak with some authority. I ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... below, and crowds on deck With ashen faces and wild questionings Rushed to her fated side; another crash Succeeded, then a pause, an awful pause Of terror and dismay. They see it all! There floats the direful cause 'longside them now! "Ahoy!" the seamen cry; "Ahoy! ahoy! Four hundred souls aboard! Ahoy! ahoy!" "All will be well!" "No, no, she heeds us not!" And shrieks of awful frenzy fill the air— "We sink! we sink!" but ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... thy likeness on her. Time hath spun Fresh raiment all in vain and strange array For earth and man's new spirit, fain to shun Things past for dreams of better to be won, Through many a century since thy funeral chime Rang, and men deemed it death's most direful crime To have spared not thee for very love or shame; And yet, while mists round last year's memories climb, Our father Chaucer, ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... was not a frequent caller. She had almost earned among the Wallencampers the direful ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... attached to me: I am as free from culpability as any one of you three. Miserable I am, and must be for a time; for the catastrophe which drove me from a house I had found a paradise was of a strange and direful nature. I observed but two points in planning my departure—speed, secrecy: to secure these, I had to leave behind me everything I possessed except a small parcel; which, in my hurry and trouble of mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to Whitcross. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Evidently, direful things might ensue from a meeting between Madeline Payne and this unknown Cora, for after a prolonged whistle, a brief moment of silence, and then a short laugh, ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... taking a thigh bone in her hand, fell in among the flying ranks, and dealing her blows with great liberality on either side, overthrew the carcass of many a mighty hero and heroine. Recount, O muse, the names of those who fell on this fatal day. First Jemmy Tweedle felt on his hinder head the direful bone. Him the pleasant banks of sweetly winding Stour had nourished, where he first learnt the vocal art, with which, wandering up and down at wakes and fairs, he cheered the rural nymphs and swains, when upon the green they interweaved the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Dumfries. He had become a lion, and the tables of the neighboring gentry were soon open to him, as the houses of the great had been in Edinburgh. Those were the days of conviviality, and Burns took his part in the hilarity of the table, soon with very direful consequences to himself and his family. He made many resolutions of amendment; but temperance was a very rare virtue in those days, and Burns, who could not bear it, was expected to drink just as much as those who could bear it, and who could afford it. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... on the hearth of Now in a drawer the direful cane, That sceptre of the . . . reign, And the long hawser, that on the back Of Marsyas fell with many a whack, Twice hardened out of Scythian hides, Now sleep ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... true to strain. As explorers the whalemen rambled into every nook and corner of the Pacific before merchant vessels had found their way thither. They discovered uncharted islands and cheerfully fought savages or suffered direful shipwreck. The chase led them into Arctic regions where their stout barks were nipped like eggshells among the grinding floes, or else far to the southward where they broiled in tropic calms. The New Bedford ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... not at such a direful strait yet. There is one man at least whom I am convinced is not altogether a knave; and I have determined to throw in my lot with him. Do ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... all sorts of attempts," and I told him of model cottages, ragged schools, and the like, and promised to find him the accounts; but he gave one of his low growls, as if this were but a mockery of the direful need. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spirit that a war broke out. The real desire of France was to obtain the much-coveted frontier of the Rhine, and the Emperor heated their armies with boastful proclamations which were but the prelude to direful defeats, at Weissenburg, Woerth, and Forbach. At Sedan, the Emperor was forced to surrender himself as a prisoner, and the tidings no sooner arrived at Paris than the whole of the people turned their wrath on him and his family. His wife, ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... past or present, might wish for association's sake it could actually have been Datchet-wards) from under the shadow of good Sir Hugh's probably not over formidable though "threatening twigs of birch," at all risks of being "preeches" on his return, in fulfilment of the direful menace held out to that young namesake of his over whose innocence Mrs. Quickly was so creditably vigilant. On the other hand, no student of Jonson will need to be reminded how closely and precociously familiar the big stalwart Westminster boy, Camden's favoured ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... labourers, we believe the magnitude of the work in which we are engaged is by no means lessened, and that the alarming and direful consequences attendant in various quarters, on this unchristian and inhuman usurpation of power, call for our united vigilance, and redoubled exertions, in contributing our share towards the eradication of this evil so portentous ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... officials are fighting the flames, and began cutting the hose so as to stop the supply of water. The fire raged furiously. A strong wind sprung up adding intensity to the flames. Over $200,000 worth of property was soon swept away in this direful storm of fire. After a fearful conflict the prisoners were overpowered and driven into ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... the sea at its foot; accelerated in wet seasons by the marle being rendered soft and yielding,—it is evident that, sooner or later, such a foundation would give way to the immense superincumbent pressure, and be attended with all the direful ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... body was hooped into a very low and deep armchair, his thin hands clasped his knees; his immense dark eyes, fixed on Christian's face, gave her the impression that what he was saying was without relation to what he was thinking. In the direful gloom of the hall, with the rain and wind threshing on the half-shuttered windows, and the inconstant light of the burning logs the sole illuminant, his pale face, with the wing of black hair on his forehead, looked like the face of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... enormous quantity of it; it passes to the feet of the dancer; in fact, every one diffuses it at will, and may I see the Minotaur tranquilly seated this very evening upon my bed, if you do not know as well as I do how he expends it. Almost all men spend in necessary toils, or in the anguish of direful passions, this fine sum of energy and of will, with which nature has endowed them; but our honest women are all the prey to the caprices and the struggles of this power which knows not what to do with itself. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... with all its horrors; under Alva and Requesens, had only furnished the "preludia" of that which was to ensue. For these desperate views his main reason, as usual, was the comet; that mischievous luminary still continuing to cast a lurid glare across the Landgrave's path. Notwithstanding these direful warnings from a prince of the Reformation, notwithstanding the "olla podrida" and the "comet," Count John had nevertheless accepted the office of Governor of Gelderland, to which he had been elected by the estates of that province on the 11th of March. That ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... characterized as a temple-building people, as history proves the Israel of ancient times to have been. In the days of their infancy as a Church, while in the thrall of poverty, and amidst the persecution and direful threats of lawless hordes, they laid the cornerstone, and in less than three years thereafter they celebrated the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, a structure at once beautiful and imposing. Even before this time, however, populous settlements of Latter-day Saints had been made in Jackson ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... and sixty, Rolls its direful weight upon us; Now the horoscope of nations, Opens wide its omens to us. In the mystic stars of fortune, Of the western constellation, Of the grand, united countries, On the continent of freedom, The astrologer ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... with the east side of the road at present. This is lined with shops, varying in quality and increasing in size towards the Marble Arch. There are no buildings of importance. The road ends in Oxford Street, the ancient Tyburn Road, a name associated with the direful history of ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... hostility, he created Lucius Cinna consul, one of the adverse party, having first bound him under oaths and imprecations to be favorable to his interest. For Cinna, ascending the capitol with a stone in his hand, swore solemnly, and prayed with direful curses, that he himself, if he were not true to his friendship with Sylla, might be cast out of the city, as that stone out of his hand; and thereupon cast the stone to the ground, in the presence of many people. Nevertheless Cinna ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... all along the river followed the tragedy; but after the bulk of wreckage was cleared away and the stream had dropped to normal, the Fernalds actually began to congratulate themselves on the direful event. ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... he went on a good while, yet still the flames would be reaching towards him; also, he heard doleful voices, and rushings to and fro, so that sometimes he thought he should be torn in pieces, or trodden down like mire in the streets. This frightful sight was seen, and these direful noises were heard by him for a long while together; and coming to a place where he thought he heard a great company of fierce opponents (as it were a numerous and influential Deputation, or a prodigious Procession) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... have sat on the floor, and what direful events might have transpired, I cannot pretend to say, for just at this juncture the further door opened, and Dr. Wilkinson entered, bearing a candle in his hand. Frank very speedily found his legs, and retired into a corner to giggle ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... pauses which seemed so terribly long to Johnnie, and so fraught with direful possibilities. Then, "I might," agreed the scoutmaster, carelessly; "but again ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... the Elbe, and would know how to conciliate his subjects, while ever mindful of his most sacred duties. Saxony had recovered her independence, the peoples of Dantzic and the duchy of Warsaw their country and their rights. All nations rejoiced to see the direful influence of England destroyed. France was united to the Confederation of the Rhine by its laws, by the federative system to the countries of Holland, Switzerland, and Italy; her new relations with Russia were cemented by reciprocal esteem. In all this, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... whatever, at any moment, might seem to be the relative positions of the two different bands of workers, they must at last come together, for truth is one. But logic is not history. History is full of interferences which have cost the earth dear. Strangest of all, some of the most direful of them have been made by the best of men, actuated by the purest motives, seeking the noblest results. These interferences and the struggle against them make up the warfare of science. One statement more to clear the ground. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Rizpah lived were dark and gloomy days. The words of Samuel to Agag may stand as their memorial, "As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women." Let us be thankful that we see no such direful scenes, and let us act worthy of our higher lot. Let us remember also that there is a destruction of life more terrible even than that which Rizpah witnessed—the destruction of the soul. If the mother's love within us prompts us to half the care of the spiritual life ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... play the money-diggers some slippery trick. Some had succeeded so far as to touch the iron chest which contained the treasure, when some baffling circumstance was sure to take place. Either the earth would fall in and fill up the pit or some direful noise or apparition would throw the party into a panic and frighten them from the place; and sometimes the devil himself would appear and bear off the prize from their very grasp; and if they visited the place on the next day, not a trace would be seen of their labors ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... to swing toward him. He and his so-called followers were vindicated. It was his gloomy, dejected contention that if Providence had not intervened he and his honest fellows undoubtedly would have been placed in the most direful position, so strong and so bitter was the prejudice that conspired against him. He was constantly thanking Providence. And presently other people undertook to thank Providence too. They began to regard Manuel as a ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... later Miss Talbot came into the room. The three men knew that she brought momentous, perchance direful, intelligence. She was deathly pale. Her eyes were unnaturally brilliant, her mouth set in ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... indicated that the children may be left undisturbed in their crudities and occasional absurdities. The teacher, on the other hand, must avoid, with great judgment, certain absurdities which can easily be initiated by her. The first direful possibility is in the choice of material. It is very desirable that children should not be allowed to dramatise stories of a kind so poetic, so delicate, or so potentially valuable that the material is in danger of losing future ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... murderous fight 650 Of throwers-with-darts fallen in death Under the shield-hedge. Ye have the graves Under the stone-slopes, and likewise the places And the number of winters in writings set down." Judas replied (great sorrow he bore): 655 "That work of war, we, lady mine, Through direful need remember well, And that tumult of war in writing set down, The bearing of nations, but this one never By any man's mouth have we heard 660 Made known to men except here now." The noble queen gave answer to him: "Thou resistest too much both truth and right ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... pedantry and pedants' ignorance, to fear a repetition of usurpation and military despotism at the close of the enlightened eighteenth century! Even so, in the very dawn of the late tempestuous day, when the revolutions of Corcyra, the proscriptions of the reformers Marius, Caesar, &c., and the direful effects of the levelling tenets in the peasants' war in Germany (differenced from the tenets of the first French constitution only by the mode of wording them, the figures of speech being borrowed in the one instance from theology, and in the other from modern metaphysics), were urged ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... windows in the public square were lighted up from within. The citizens of Boulogne wanted to think over the strange events which had occurred without their knowledge, yet which were apparently to have such direful or such joyous consequences ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... honey of the bee, Sleep courses through the brain some vision bright, To lift the veil which hides futurity, Fair Cypris sent a fearful dream to mar The slumbers of a maid whose frightened eyes Pictured the direful clash of horrid war, And she, Europa, was the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... they promptly proceed to do, while she stands by with averted eyes. It is with unconscious sarcasm that Apollonius exclaims on the same page where all these details of "romantic love on the higher side" are being unfolded: "Accursed Eros, the world's most direful plague." ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... cottage at Weybridge was covered at the back with a vine, which bore with the utmost luxuriance a small, black, sweet-water grape, from which, I remember, one year my mother determined to make wine; a direful experiment, which absorbed our whole harvest of good little fruit, filled every room in the house with unutterable messes, produced much fermentation of temper as well as wine, and ended in a liquid product of such superlative nastiness, that to drink it defied our ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... gray-eyed queen of wisdom, Thy praise I sing! Steadfast, all holy, sure ward of our city, Triton-born rule whom High Zeus doth bring Forth from his forehead. Thou springest forth valiant; The clangour swells far as thy direful ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... their royal services, and thenceforth became the common jail to that city and the county of Middlesex. Nothing material occurred to Newgate, until the memorable year 1666, when it was utterly destroyed by the Great Fire. It is with the building raised after this direful calamity that ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... as I am, to love is dangerous. For such as I am, nor fire nor meteor hurls a mightier bolt than Aphrodite's shaft, or marks its passage by more direful ruin. But you do not know Euripides?—a fidgety-footed liar, Messire the Comte, who occasionally blunders into the clumsiest truths. Yes, he is perfectly right; all things this goddess laughingly demolishes ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... what had happened, thus making his confession for the first time. The good Fernanda mingled her tears with his, distressed at the fate of the unhappy little creature, and at the misery of her lover. They spent some time talking over the terrible events, and seeking means of thwarting that direful revenge. Fernanda at last persuaded him to try gentle means. To think of compassing anything by force was absurd, for the count, not having yet acknowledged his sin, he had no legal right over the child. To provoke a scandal ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... Adriatic. Nor Cybele, nor Apollo, the dweller in the shrines, so shakes the breast of his priests; Bacchus does not do it equally, nor do the Corybantes so redouble their strokes on the sharp-sounding cymbals, as direful anger; which neither the Noric sword can deter, nor the shipwrecking sea, nor dreadful fire, not Jupiter himself rushing down with awful crash. It is reported that Prometheus was obliged to add to that original clay [with which he formed mankind], some ingredient taken from every animal, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... applauding world amaze, And the loud clarion labour in your praise." This band dismissed, behold another crowd Preferred the same request, and lowly bowed; The constant tenour of whose well-spent days No less deserved a just return of praise. But straight the direful Trump of Slander sounds; Through the big dome the doubling thunder bounds; Loud as the burst of cannon rends the skies, The dire report through ev'ry region flies; In ev'ry ear incessant rumours rung, And gath'ring scandals grew on ev'ry tongue. From ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... to the old duke's private room the day after his overthrow, and questioned sharply by the adjutant, who, with pardonable incredulity, suspected that bribery alone could have brought about so direful a catastrophe. The duke was from the first convinced of the soldier's, honesty and bravery, and presently broke in upon the adjutant's examination with—"Well, well! speak to me now. What have you to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... patriotism and good sense of the parties to the controversy and to place upon them the moral coercion of public opinion to agree to an arbitrament of the strike then existing and threatening consequences so direful to the whole country. He acted promptly and courageously, and in so doing averted the dangers to which ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... you fancy some direful calamity has befallen me, because I have not written to you for more than a week? Away with your fears, then, for nothing worse has come upon me than a badly broken limb, which will probably keep me a prisoner here for two months or more. Now don't be ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... favor and revolted from the Covenant. He therefore hid His countenance, withdrawing the assistance and protection which they so gratefully accepted in distress, but deceitfully rejected when prosperity returned. The relapse threw them suddenly into direful conditions of misrule, oppression, and profuse bloodshed, which ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... ah no, it is repentant tears, By those let fall who make their direful flight, And drop by drop the anguish of their fears Comes down around us ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... caliph lavished his promises in the utmost profusion, and by arranging for the celebration near the chasm of some juvenile sports, which were not concluded till twilight, was able to make the direful libation. As the boys came up one by one to receive their prizes, he pushed them into the gulf, the dreadful device being executed with so much dexterity that the boy who was approaching him remained unconscious of the fate ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... "what people would say" if one of "our boys" married a nobody's daughter. And Aunt Myra not only seconded her views by painting portraits of Phebe's unknown relations in the darkest colors but uttered direful prophecies regarding the disreputable beings who would start up in swarms the moment the girl made a ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... the scene was far more direful than in the day. The cheerful light of the sun was gone; there was nothing but the flashes of artillery or the baleful gleams of combustibles thrown into the city, and the conflagration of the houses. The fire kept up from the Christian batteries ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... be allayed by one soothing word, and the most discordant elements be brought to unite in tranquil harmony at their feet. 'Tis thus with her; and since she cannot accomplish her object, why she has no resource left but to lose her temper, to menace us with direful prospects for the future, and to threaten ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... their way Into the brain, unless beforehand we Of water 've drunk. But when a burning fever, O'ermastering man, hath seized upon his limbs, Then odour of wine is like a hammer-blow. And seest thou not how in the very earth Sulphur is gendered and bitumen thickens With noisome stench?—What direful stenches, too, Scaptensula out-breathes from down below, When men pursue the veins of silver and gold, With pick-axe probing round the hidden realms Deep in the earth?—Or what of deadly bane The mines of gold exhale? O what a look, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... to boil and foam with horrific fury. Awakened as if from a dream, the astonished Oloffe bawled aloud to put about, but his words were lost amid the roaring of the waters. And now ensued a scene of direful consternation. At one time they were borne with dreadful velocity among tumultuous breakers; at another hurried down boisterous rapids. Now they were nearly dashed upon the Hen and Chickens (infamous rocks!—more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... occasion the town was fired by a defender, Savaric de Mauleon, on the approach of a French army under Louis the Dauphin. When the other, and junior, capital was receiving its cleansing by fire in 1666, Winchester was being more than decimated by the plague, which was as direful here ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... mutiny of his troops in Campania (B.C. 46). [Footnote: See page 245.] Left as governor, Sallust seems to have pursued the methods common to that class, for he became immensely rich. Upon his return from Africa, he retired to an extensive estate on the Quirinal Hill, and lived through the direful days which followed the death of Csar. He died in the year 34 B.C., his last years being devoted to diligent pursuits of literature. His two works are Catilina, a history of the suppression of the conspiracy of Catiline, and Jugurtha, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... the beginning of this direful programme was the day when the senators and the troops should assemble to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas. The soldiers, who knew nothing of the plot, were incited to refuse to take the oath on the ground that Constantine's resignation ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... time may decide that it is not quite "the correct thing" to lay too much emphasis on the harder teaching of the Christian belief. Whether unpopular with the people or not, this teaching may be unpopular with the preachers. We do not speak of these unpleasant things, for why be singular in direful prophecy? Of some preachers, to summarise, we will say that their need is a recovery of the sense of sin; of others that a deepened consciousness of every man's power to triumph over his inherited tendencies, his circumstances, his training and the temptations of his age, must precede ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... seemed as if the rocky ribs of the mountains, and the granite walls and pillars of the earth were breaking up." At Kilauea the shocks were as frequent as the ticking of a watch. In Kau, south of Hilo, they counted 300 shocks on this direful day; and Mrs. L.'s son, who was in that district at the time, says that the earth swayed to and fro, north and south, then east and west, then round and round, up and down, in every imaginable direction, everything crashing about them, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... ready to save you. What's the good of killing a man for his religion?" I thanked the Prince for his noble feelings of tolerance, and left him and his clown to their tête-à -tête. Khanouhen is one of the few of those strong-minded and right-thinking men, who see the utter folly and direful mischief of forging a creed for the consciences of his fellows. Had he been a Christian prince of the times of Charles V., he would not, like that celebrated monarch, have passed all his life in binding the religious opinions of men in fetters, and then ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... First direful hate shall turn to peace, And love relent in deep disdain, And death his fatal stroke shall cease, And envy pity every pain, And pleasure mourn and sorrow smile, Before I ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... send the moment I land in London. I cannot boast of our health, our looks, our strength, but I hope we may recover a part of all when our direful fatigues, mental and corporeal, cease to utterly weigh upon and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... of state: no such thing; that whisper from Lord Quintown, the handsome nobleman, to Mr. St. George, is no hoarded and valuable information which would rejoice the heart of the editor of an Opposition paper, no direful murmur, "perplexing monarchs with the dread of change;" it is only a recent piece of scandal, touching the virtue of a lady of the court, which (albeit the sage listener seems to pay so devout an attention to the news) is far more interesting to the gallant and handsome informant ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Hostess, who had vainly tried The force of ridicule to cure his pride, Fertile in plans, a surer method chose, To make him see the error of his nose; For till he view'd that feature with remorse, The Enchanter's direful ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... desired that no arrests in that connection should be made public until the significance of the fact that at the time of the tragedy the child was wearing the coat—afterward found hanging loose, without a rent or a blemish, on the tree in the valley—should be fully exploited. If it were indeed a direful instance of murder and abduction, as the sheriff now believed, he wished the miscreants to rest unwitting of the activity of the officers and the ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... fuel consumed, so many powers worn out, so much money made. But, less inexorable than iron, steal, and brass, it brought its varying seasons even into that wilderness of smoke and brick, and made the only stand that ever was made in the place against its direful uniformity. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... that I had her here. My heart is now So full of anger, malice, and fierce hate, With all those direful and envenom'd passions By which the breasts of demons are infected; If I but even look'd upon her face, My scorching breath would wither up her charms Like adder's poison. Would I ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... here and there making their little preparations to leave for the hills: the direful scourge to them was an evil spirit, sent as a visitation upon their bad deeds. This they sincerely believe, coupling it with all the superstition their ignorance gives rise to. A few miles from the mansion, among the pines, rude camps are spread out, fires burn to absorb the malaria, to ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... example at the many "love feasts" (Liebesmaehler) and anniversary celebrations of every kind which he not only attends at the quarters of the various regiments throughout the German domain, but which he very frequently arranges for or encourages himself, he has taught his army officers a direful lesson. Certainly, the old Spartan simplicity in food and drink which prevailed in German army circles during the days of William I., grandfather of the ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... Radiate, and make matter luminous, Filling the eyes with sweet felicity, And love, and peace, and all emotions pure. No sorrow there to make the vision dim, And wash the mellow ripeness from the cheek; No guilty deed to brand the heart with shame, And write its direful sentence on the brow; No rankling venom struggling through the veins, And blasting all the kindliness within, Till like a torrent bursting o'er restraint, It spread its desolation on mankind; But a pure regnant holiness and love, Directing impulse with most queenly sway To ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the deities who watched over the fortunes of the Nederlanders having unthinkingly left the field, and stepped into a neighboring tavern to refresh themselves with a pot of beer, a direful catastrophe had wellnigh ensued. Scarce had the myrmidons of Michael Paw attained the front of battle, when the Swedes, instructed by the cunning Risingh, leveled a shower of blows full at their tobacco-pipes. ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... when, goose as I was, I presented it where two seemed to be an essential by the sign of the habitation and the dangers of the gate,—I was aroused by a crash, something like the noise of the machine which accompanies the falling of an avalanche or a castle, or some such direful affair at "Astley's;" and starting up, I thought,—had the coach upset? but, much to my gratification, found myself a safe "inside." Still came crash after crash, until I thought it high time to see as well as hear. "What on earth is the matter?" said ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... friends, anxious that he should miss no feature of "local coloring" had thoughtfully conducted him to the very worst of the miner's boarding-houses, where they all cheerfully partook of strange and direful viands for his sake. Mr. Fetherbee, shrewdly suspecting the true state of the case, had unflinchingly devoured everything that was set before him, topping off his gastronomic martyrdom with a section of apricot pie, of a peculiar ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Red Cross in America, many direful calamities have afflicted the country. In each of these visitations the Red Cross has acted in some degree as the Almoner—the distributer and organizer—of the bountiful measures of relief that have been poured out by the ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... President, I implore, as the best blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me on earth, that if the direful and sad event of the dissolution of the Union shall happen, I may not survive to behold the melancholy and heart-rending ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... to the end of the chapter and her old whaling families were true to strain. As explorers the whalemen rambled into every nook and corner of the Pacific before merchant vessels had found their way thither. They discovered uncharted islands and cheerfully fought savages or suffered direful shipwreck. The chase led them into Arctic regions where their stout barks were nipped like eggshells among the grinding floes, or else far to the southward where they broiled in tropic calms. The New Bedford lad was ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... back to his own master to seek protection. The master, who would have lost his slave's wages for a year if he had broken the contract with Covey before the year's end, sent Douglass back to his taskmaster. Anticipating the most direful consequences, Douglass made the desperate resolution to resist any further punishment at Covey's hands. After a fight of two hours Covey gave up his attempt to whip Frederick, and thenceforth laid hands on him no more. That Covey did not invoke the law, which ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... twenty-four years are fully expired; for night beginning, my hour-glass is at an end, the direful finishing whereof I carefully expect; for out of all doubt, this night he will fetch me to whom I have given myself in recompense of his service, body and soul, and twice confirmed writings ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... crowds on deck With ashen faces and wild questionings Rushed to her fated side; another crash Succeeded, then a pause, an awful pause Of terror and dismay. They see it all! There floats the direful cause 'longside them now! "Ahoy!" the seamen cry; "Ahoy! ahoy! Four hundred souls aboard! Ahoy! ahoy!" "All will be well!" "No, no, she heeds us not!" And shrieks of awful frenzy fill the air— "We sink! we sink!" but ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... and language, announced a people who had attained the rudiments of science: [36] they enumerated the conquests, they offered the friendship and military aid of the Turks; and their sincerity was attested by direful imprecations (if they were guilty of falsehood) against their own head, and the head of Disabul their master. The Greek prince entertained with hospitable regard the ambassadors of a remote and powerful ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... dead things—hopes, ambitions, future days and months and years—days and months and years when they should be for ever mindful of his crime! For henceforth they were to dwell in the chill of this direful shadow that would tower above all the concerns of life whether great or small; that would add despair to every sorrow, and take the very soul ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... geographical questions connected with the subject, we recognize at once the work of an acknowledged master in his chosen field. It is work, too, of the first order of importance. It would be hard to mention a subject on which so many reams of direful nonsense have been written as on the discovery of America; and the prolific source of so much folly has generally been what Mr. Freeman fitly calls "bondage to the modern map." In order to understand what the great mariners of the fifteenth ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... to ensue. For these desperate views his main reason, as usual, was the comet; that mischievous luminary still continuing to cast a lurid glare across the Landgrave's path. Notwithstanding these direful warnings from a prince of the Reformation, notwithstanding the "olla podrida" and the "comet," Count John had nevertheless accepted the office of Governor of Gelderland, to which he had been elected by the estates ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of things too far divulg'd by fame), My kinsman fell. Then I, without support, In private mourn'd his loss, and left the court. Mad as I was, I could not bear his fate With silent grief, but loudly blam'd the state, And curs'd the direful author of my woes. 'T was told again; and hence my ruin rose. I threaten'd, if indulgent Heav'n once more Would land me safely on my native shore, His death with double vengeance to restore. This mov'd the murderer's ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... subjects, while ever mindful of his most sacred duties. Saxony had recovered her independence, the peoples of Dantzic and the duchy of Warsaw their country and their rights. All nations rejoiced to see the direful influence of England destroyed. France was united to the Confederation of the Rhine by its laws, by the federative system to the countries of Holland, Switzerland, and Italy; her new relations with Russia were cemented ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Aurora joined the Toulon fleet. When she was first seen it was imagined by those on board of the other ships that she had been in action, but they soon learnt that the conflict had been against more direful weapons than any yet invented by mortal hands. Captain Wilson waited upon the Admiral, and of course received immediate orders to repair to port and refit. In a few hours the Aurora had shaped her course for Malta, and by sunset the Toulon ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... NIGHTSHADE.—Webfer has given us an account of some children that were killed in consequence of having eaten the berries of this plant for black currants. And others have spoken of the direful effects of the whole plant so much, that, from the incontestable proofs of its deleterious qualities, persons cannot be too nice in selecting their pot-herbs, particularly those who make a practice of gathering from dunghills and gardens Fat-Hen, &c. as there is some distant similitude ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... them were so favorable to peaceful social revolution as were those of the United States, and the experience of most was longer and harder, but it may be said that in the case of none of the European peoples were the direful apprehensions of blood and slaughter justified which the earlier reformers seem to have entertained. All over the world the Revolution was, as to its main factors, a ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... rest upon thee." Which passages seem to imply a total desertion of them, and retraction of all gracious influence. And when it speaks of letting them be under the gospel, and the ordinary means of salvation, for the most direful purpose: as that, "This child (Jesus) was set for the fall, as well as for the rising, of many in Israel"; as that, "Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling, and a rock of offense"; and, "The stone which the builders refused, is made a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense, even to them ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... of Hamelin, well known in the version of Robert Browning, leads to the same conclusion. In 1284 the good people of Hamelin could obtain no rest, night or day, by reason of the direful host of rats which infested their town. One day came a strange man in a bunting-suit, and offered for five hundred guilders to rid the town of the vermin. The people agreed: whereupon the man took out a pipe and piped, and instantly all the rats ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... and leafless trunks of gigantic pines coming up stirless and distinct almost to the surface; and do you remember the little island there, and the old tradition that it was the feasting-place of a tribe of red men, who displeased the Great Spirit by their crimes, and in direful punishment, one day, when they were assembled on their mountain, it suddenly gave way beneath them, and all were drowned in the flood of waters that rushed up, except one good old squaw who occupied one of the peaks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... above them towered dark green masses of pine, and occasionally the madrono shook its bright scarlet berries. As they toiled up many a steep ascent, Father Jose sometimes picked up fragments of scoria, which spake to his imagination of direful volcanoes and impending earthquakes. To the less scientific mind of the muleteer Ignacio they had even a more terrifying significance; and he once or twice snuffed the air suspiciously, and declared that it smelt of sulphur. So the first day of their journey wore away, and at night ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... A direful theme has our king allotted us for to-day's discourse seeing that, whereas we are here met for our common delectation, needs must we now tell of others' tears, whereby, whether telling or hearing, we cannot but be moved ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... contemplating, that the union of the two kinds of force now specified, was essential to the liberation of the world from that odious but scientific oppression, by which it had been so long held in misery, and which was repeatedly found, by very direful experience, to be too strong for either of them separately. It was not till the enthusiastic indignation of vulgar minds, and the cordial ferocity of some of the rudest of the allied tribes, had been amalgamated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... And yet I think that without anticipating any revelation, the man whose thoughts about God and holiness were those which the Psalms of David disclose, cannot have lost his best-loved son in the very act and deed of direful guilt, without an aggravation of his anguish because of this sad thing. If Absalom in the midst of upright walking and works of righteousness had been stricken by disease and had died in his bed, the tidings of this when ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... at the seventh gate Is thine own brother; hear his direful prayers, His imprecations on our commonwealth. He prays that he may mount our battlements, Be there proclaimed our king, shout victory, Meet thee, and slay thee, and insult thee slain, Or, living, ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... O doleful days! O direful deadly dump! O wicked world, and worldly wickedness! How can I hold my fist from crying, thump, In rue ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... saw the deadly omen, and a venerable prophet among them stood up and said: "Noble youths, I advise you seriously to depart from this royal house, for this is a sign that Odysseus is coming home. Woe to you if he finds you in his palace. You will all meet a direful end." ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... the world's history that was when the ladies had no nerves! Alas! I was born too late instead of too early, as the complaint of some is. I am cursed with nerves, and, as a consequence, am ever and anon distressed with nervous fears of some direful calamity or painful affliction. I am a simpleton for this, I know; but then, how can I help it? I try to be a woman of sense, but my nerves are too delicately strung. Reason is not sufficient to subdue the fears of impending evil that too often ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... it, fearing that if the savages were to abandon their village the English would advance from the westward towards the River St. John. He apprehended that if only a small number of Indians remained at Penobscot, and these without a missionary, the enemy would win them to their side and, as a direful result, the English would presently establish themselves at Matsipigouattons, advancing to Peskadamokkanti (or Passamaquoddy) and so by degrees to the ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... of the old faith"; further, that "the Venice scheme comes very near, if it does not amount to, an offence which the law had anticipated and actually forbidden, and it would have exposed its author to the direful penalties of Pramunire, which by a Statute of 27 Elizabeth were denounced against any person contributing to the support of any College of Jesuits, or Seminary, erected, or hereafter to be erected, beyond the sea": and finally, Mr Jackson dwells ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... the worry over the life situation in general, that is to say, fear concerning business; fear concerning the health and prosperity of the household; fear that magnifies anything that has even the faintest possibility of being direful into something that is almost sure to happen and be disastrous. This constant worry over the possibilities of the future is both a cause of neurasthenia and a symptom, in that once a neurasthenic state is established, the liability ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... AEolus, ruler of the winds, and most perfectly did this king and queen love one another. Their happiness was unmarred until there came a day when Ceyx had to mourn for the loss of a brother. Following close on the heels of this disaster came direful prodigies which led Ceyx to fear that in some way he must have incurred the hostility of the gods. To him there was no way in which to discover wherein lay his fault, and to make atonement for it, but by going to consult the oracle of Apollo at Claros, in Ionia. When he told ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... But with that direful courage which is the last gift to the hopeless, she stooped down again, and her fingers touched Valmond's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the news that Silvia has been slain while pursuing a wolf in the forest. Thereupon Aminta, with a last reproach to Dafne for having prevented him from putting an end to his miserable life before being the recipient of such direful news, rushes off the scene at a pace to mock pursuit. In the next act, however, Silvia reappears and narrates her escape. Here we arrive at the dramatic climax of the play. Dafne expresses her fear that the false report of Silvia's death may indeed prove the death ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... to say whether despotic power exerts its worst and most direful influences on those who wield it, or on those who have it to bear; on its masters, or on ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... is it, Comrades! in this direful day— That noble zeal for academic lore, That reverence due for discipline, in which He used to shine conspicuously o'er The Brainless Athlete and the Idle Rich? O, does he now display That ample breadth of calm impartial view, That sober judgment and that balanced mind, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... found a young woman belonging to the Mantatees, whose whole appearance denoted direful want. Food was given her, and some tobacco, and she was sent with a message to her people that the strangers wanted to speak with them and not to fight. An old man and a lad were also found dying of starvation, these ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... men He does with justice view, (1) That's no great And their iniquity mark of viewing them With direful vengeance can pursue, with justice. God has Or patiently (1) pass by: wiser ends for passing by His vengeance on the wicked, you ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... would not have complained of his sufferings, for who can be in those most trying sufferances of miserable sensations and not complain of them, but his groans for the pain would have been blended with thanksgivings to the sanctifying Spirit. Even under the direful yoke of the necessity of daily poisoning by narcotics it is somewhat less horrible, through the knowledge that it was not from any craving for pleasurable animal excitement, but from pain, delusion, error, of the worst ignorance, medical sciolism, and when (alas! too late the plea of error was removed ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... a volume larger than the present one to the descriptive analysis of none but the poems inspired by Italy, Italian personages and history, Italian Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and Music. From Porphyria and her lover to Pompilia and all the direful Roman tragedy wherein she is as a moon of beauty above conflicting savage tides of passion, what an unparalleled gallery of portraits, what a brilliant phantasmagoria, what a movement of ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... seemed to be pretty evident, from Prof. Huxley's lectures here, that he had not before imagined what results had been obtained in America. This is not surprising. Few foreigners are able to keep along with the work performed in this country, where there is such a direful supposed lack of workers! It is a fact that at present there is no part of the world where the discoveries made in this science are of so general importance as here. The Rocky mountains owe their name "to great and widely spread ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... hall called Brimir, which is also in heaven in the region Okolni. There is also a fair hall of ruddy gold called Sindri, which stands on the mountains of Nida, (Nidafjoll). In those halls righteous and well-minded men shall abide. In Nastrond there is a vast and direful structure with doors that face the north. It is formed entirely of the backs of serpents, wattled together like wicker work. But the serpents' heads are turned towards the inside of the hall, and continually vomit forth floods of venom, in which wade all those who-commit murder, ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... and no mistake," he remarked to Fogg, as they started out from the depot that evening. "We haven't had any of the direful mishaps, though, that those old ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... common life, in which this drama commences, with the direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the opening of Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar;—there is no poetic description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker to another of what both had immediately before their senses—(such as the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... misery is comprehended in that single word. What mind is there that does not shrink from its direful effects? Unless the image of God is obliterated from the soul, all men cherish the love of Liberty. The nice discerning political economist does not regard the sacred right, more than the untutored African who roams ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... suffice to mention but the principal steps by which the local governing system has been brought to its present high degree of democracy and effectiveness. Among the subjects to which the first reformed parliament addressed its attention was the direful condition into which had fallen the relief of the poor, and the initial stage of local government regeneration was marked by the adoption of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, abolishing outdoor relief for the able-bodied, providing for the regrouping of parishes in "poor-law ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... hotbed of Carlism), where the people were ignorant and brutal and refused to the stranger a glass of water, unless he were prepared to pay for it. At Leon he was seized by a fever that prostrated him for a week. He also experienced marked antagonism from the clergy, who threatened every direful consequence to whosoever read or purchased "the accursed books" which he brought. A more serious evidence of their displeasure was shown by the action they commenced in the ecclesiastical court against the bookseller whom Borrow had arranged with to act as agent for his ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... and falls rhythmically from negligibility to the highest efficiency, nobody had been able even to conjecture why the various serums that were from time to time introduced as having effected marvellous cures, presently made such direful havoc of some unfortunate patient that they had to be dropped hastily. The quantity of sturdy lying that was necessary to save the credit of inoculation in those days was prodigious; and had it not been for the devotion ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... the slave-trade, he wrote to a friend in that State, "I must say that I lament the decision of your legislature upon the question of importing slaves after March 1793. I was in hopes that motives of policy as well as other good reasons, supported by the direful effects of slavery, which at this moment are presented, would have operated to produce a total prohibition of the importation of slaves, whenever the question came to be agitated in any State, that might be interested in the measure." For his own State he expressed the "wish ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... at air-drawn daggers; she sees no imagined spectres rise from the tomb to appall or accuse her.[115] The towering bravery of her mind disdains the visionary terrors which haunt her weaker husband. We know, or rather we feel, that she who could give a voice to the most direful intent, and call on the spirits that wait on mortal thoughts to "unsex her," and "stop up all access and passage of remorse"—to that remorse would have given nor tongue nor sound; and that rather than have uttered a complaint, she would have held her breath and died. To have given her ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... nigh, at the third watch of night, What time, more sweet than honey of the bee, Sleep courses through the brain some vision bright, To lift the veil which hides futurity, Fair Cypris sent a fearful dream to mar The slumbers of a maid whose frightened eyes Pictured the direful clash of horrid war, And she, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... children may be left undisturbed in their crudities and occasional absurdities. The teacher, on the other hand, must avoid, with great judgment, certain absurdities which can easily be initiated by her. The first direful possibility is in the choice of material. It is very desirable that children should not be allowed to dramatise stories of a kind so poetic, so delicate, or so potentially valuable that the material is in danger of losing future beauty to the pupils through its present ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... Nor direful rage, nor bois'trous tumult loud, Nor looks infuriate of the threat'ning crowd— Nor haughty tyrants, with their angry scowl, Like beasts that o'er the traveller's pathway prowl— Nor southern storm, that o'er the ocean raves, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... of the Latins. The rising majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by the pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema, [10] which enumerates the seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and devotes the guilty teachers, and their unhappy sectaries, to the eternal society of the devil and his angels. According to the emergencies of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... beings from a watery grave, shall we still leave them to their fate? Shall we hear unmoved of this widely-spread destruction, and not each contribute to those exertions, to which the common charities of human nature, and the certainty of the direful evils we might avert, and the sufferings we might assuage, ought to incite us to lend our ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... sought them in vain; for every one carried within him a heart tormented in flames. Shunned by these various sufferers, who seemed by their looks to be upbraiding the partners of their guilt, they withdrew from them, to wait in direful suspense the moment which should render them to each other ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... only one way was left open. He must plead with Reginald himself, confront at all risks that snatcher of souls. To-night he would not fall asleep. He would keep his vigil. And if Reginald should approach his room, if in some way he felt the direful presence, he must speak out, threaten if need be, to save his friend from ruin. He had fully determined upon this course when a cry of joy from Ethel, who had just returned from her walk, interrupted his reverie. But her gladness changed to anxiety when she saw how pale ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... warns th' approaching day, Awakes me up to toil and woe: I see the hours in long array, That I must suffer, lingering slow. Full many a pang, and many a throe, Keen recollection's direful train, Must wring my soul, ere Phoebus, low, Shall kiss the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... suggested. He went below, took a lamp that was always suspended, lighted in the main cabin, and, without ceremony, proceeded to Rose's state-room, where he soon found that the bird had really flown. A direful execration followed this discovery, one so loud as to awaken Mrs. Budd and Biddy. Determined not to do things by halves, he broke open the door of the widow's state-room, and ascertained that the person he sought was not there. A fierce explosion of oaths and denunciations ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... relative positions of the two different bands of workers, they must at last come together, for truth is one. But logic is not history. History is full of interferences which have cost the earth dear. Strangest of all, some of the most direful of them have been made by the best of men, actuated by the purest motives, seeking the noblest results. These interferences and the struggle against them make up the warfare of science. One statement more to clear the ground. You will not understand me at all to say ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... this communication, and you must regard it as final. Farewell, unhappy Leon Dexter! I would have saved you from this calamity, but you would not let me! May He who has permitted you thus to drag down the temple of domestic happiness, and bury yourself amid the ruins, give you, in this direful calamity, a higher than human power of endurance. May the fierce flames of this great ordeal, find gold in your character beyond the reach of fire. Farewell, forever! and may God bless and keep you! The prayer is from a heart yet free from guile, and the lips that ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... impose upon themselves some other penance, equally ridiculous. By such means the Cree warrior becomes godlike; but unless he kills an enemy before his return, his newly-acquired powers are estimated to be productive in future of some direful consequence ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... judicial tone. Sophy's sin had been present to Mrs. Bolton for so many months, and she had grown so accustomed to analyze it, and argue about it, that she could not enter into the sudden and direful shock the discovery had been to her nephew. An antagonism had risen in her mind about it, not only against Mr. Warden, but against some faint, suppressed reproaches of conscience, which made her secretly cleave to the idea that ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... his heart, the doctor sat beside the altar of the chapel during all the direful strife without, shielding his little charge from the clouds of fine sand and rubbish that every few minutes came swirling within the temple, dashing the padre's candlesticks into battered lumps of brass on the pavement, and tearing to atoms the votive offerings ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... uncleannesses, and afflictions inseparably connected with existence. Volumes would be required to furnish an adequate representation of the vivid and inexhaustible amplification with which they set forth the direful disgusts and loathsome terrors associated with the series of ideas expressed by the words conception, birth, life, death, hell, and regeneration. The fifth chapter in the sixth book of the Vishnu Purana ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... jug, he lifted it out of the carryall, together with the oilcloth strip, and deftly stood both against a fence by the roadside. Flint watched him with admiration. He felt himself supremely helpless in the presence of the direful calamity. How was he ever to get these bundles into condition to be put back into the wagon? How cleanse the oilcloth ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... valour were denied to them, they stood upon a vantage ground, which gave them a direful and incalculable preponderance in the state. They surrounded the throne. Soon did their insolence announce that they had craftily availed themselves of the advantages which they possessed; and we foresaw with affliction that inveterate ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... before him, and marvelled at the countless buildings he beheld, that, ere fifteen months had elapsed, the whole mass, together with the mighty fabric on which he stood, would be swept away by a tremendous conflagration. Unable to foresee this direful event, and lamenting only that so fair a city should be a prey to an exterminating pestilence, he turned towards the north, and suffered his gaze to wander over Finsbury-fields, and the hilly ground beyond ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... whence my master's friend had dated his letter, we were informed, with little ceremony or preparation, that he expired the day but one after he had despatched the messenger to the castle. Too soon we learned the direful cause, a malignant epidemic disorder was raging in the place, and daily sweeping off scores of its inhabitants. The poor gentleman, they told us, when he found himself dying, sent for a priest to pray by him, to whose care he consigned a parcel, with a charge to deliver it in safety to the ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... wrought for him, there was danger that the malady might act on the entire substance of the organ, and change his fleshy heart to stone. Many, indeed, affirmed that the process was already near its consummation. Richard Digby, however, could never be convinced that any such direful work was going on within him; nor when he saw the sprigs of marble foliage, did his heart even throb the quicker, at the similitude suggested by these once tender herbs. It may be that this same insensibility was a symptom of ...
— The Man of Adamant - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... eyes the whole scene exhibited at the secret sacrifice, the armed priests, the promiscuous carnage of men and cattle, the altars besmeared with the blood of victims and of their murdered countrymen, the dreadful curses, and the direful form of imprecation, drawn up for calling down perdition on their family and race. Prevented by these shackles from running away, they stood, more afraid of then countrymen than of the enemy. The Romans pushed on both the wings, and in the centre, and ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when the noon of the second day came, I was not unconscious of those movements ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... member of the family unvisited by the ghost was the Rev. Samuel, and upon learning that he had heard none of the direful sounds his wife and children made up their minds that his death was imminent; for a local superstition had it that in all such cases of haunting the person undisturbed is marked for an early demise. ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... instinctively imitated his motions, but at the same time their eyes were yet riveted on the dimly burning match. A small flash was observed to illumine the trench—another and a larger one succeeded! The first train of powder was ignited—the Indians were bursting through the snow-crust with direful yells—the blaze ran quickly along the plank—it reached the end of the reed—a shrill whizzing sound succeeded—a sharp crash under the snow—and then all was involved in a tremendous chaotic explosion! An enormous circular cloud of smoke enveloped the scene for a moment, and then ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... wrath to Bonynge, direful spring Of blows unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing— That wrath which hurled to Hellman's office floor Two heroes, mutually smeared with gore, Whose hair in handfuls marked the dire debate, And riven coat-tails testified their ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... and recovery from it tedious. Frequently the respiration is seriously disturbed, thus the blood is imperfectly aerated, and so in turn the nutrition of the entire system is impaired. The cigarette is the defiling medium through which these direful results frequently invade the system, and the easily moulded condition of youth yields readily to the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... exclaimed Polly, springing up quickly; "don't be afraid; we're going to have that cake! There, you ugly old thing, you!" (this to the stove) "see what you've done!" as two big tears flew out of Phronsie's brown eyes at the direful prospect; and the sorrowful faces of the two boys looked up into Polly's own, for comfort. "I can fix it, I most know; do get some paper, Joe, as ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... doctrine to ourselves remains now to be attended. Let it be for solemn warning and awakening to all of us that are before the Lord at this time, and to all others of this whole people, who shall come to the knowledge of these direful operations of Satan, which the holy God hath permitted ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the east side of the road at present. This is lined with shops, varying in quality and increasing in size towards the Marble Arch. There are no buildings of importance. The road ends in Oxford Street, the ancient Tyburn Road, a name associated with the direful history of ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... no!' said she; 'you must not go! You should not trust a kitten's word. Her claws are sharp: she is our foe— The direful foe of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... more probable that extreme poverty and hopeless indigence, the frequent experience of direful famines, and the scenes of misery and calamity occasioned by them, acting on minds whose affections are not very powerful, induce this unnatural crime which common custom has encouraged, and which is not prohibited ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... wielded by brute force, was the best form of Government possible in this age; so a worship based chiefly upon the incitements and terrors of retributive law—the holding out of inducements of reward for the good, and of determents of direful punishment for the wicked, in a future world—was the best religion for which the time ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... them, and when they came before him, he recounted how many Roman towns he had previously enslaved and in what manner he had accomplished it; then he threatened that the inhabitants of Edessa would receive more direful treatment at the hands of the Persians, unless they should give them all the wealth which they had inside the fortifications; for only on this condition, he said, would the army depart. When the envoys heard this, they agreed that they would ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... warfare increases, and {all} moderation departs, and direful fury reigns {triumphant}. And {yet} all their weapons would have been conquered by his music; but the vast clamour, and the Berecynthian pipe[1] with the blown horns, and the tambourines, and the clapping of hands, and Bacchanalian ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... followed by a yell almost as horrible; and then there was nothing but death, and terror, and darkness, and anguish, and bewilderment; masses of shattered woodwork and iron heaped in direful confusion upon the blood-stained snow; human groans, stifled under the wrecks of shivered carriages: the cries of mothers whose children had been flung out of their arms into the very jaws of death; the piteous wail of children, who clung, warm and living, to the breasts of dead mothers, ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to a similar window leading into the top storey of 94, the office of Mr. Algernon Mainwaring, Hygienic Corset-maker. This office at the time of their unexpected entry was fairly full of Suffragettes planning all sorts of direful things. So the plain-clothes policemen had a rare haul that day and certainly had Mrs. Rossiter to thank for rising to be Inspectors and receiving some modest Order of later days. It was about the worst blow the W.S.P.U. had; before the outbreak of War turned suddenly ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... those who, stiff and mangled, Paid, upon that bloody field, Direful, cringing, awe-struck homage To the sword our heroes yield; And who felt, by fiery trial, That the men who will be free. Though in conflict baffled often, Ever will ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... is here before us? America, I start at your situation! These direful effects of slavery demand your most serious attention. What! shall a people who flew to arms with the valor of Roman citizens when encroachments were made upon their liberties by the invasion of foreign powers, now ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... where the officials are fighting the flames, and began cutting the hose so as to stop the supply of water. The fire raged furiously. A strong wind sprung up adding intensity to the flames. Over $200,000 worth of property was soon swept away in this direful storm of fire. After a fearful conflict the prisoners were overpowered and driven ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... hemisphere she chose to curse: For reasons good she did not please To visit our antipodes— Folks rude and savage like the beasts, Who, wedding-free from forms and priests, In simple tent or leafy bower, Make little work for such a power. That she might know exactly where Her direful aid was in demand, Renown flew courier through the land, Reporting each dispute with care; Then she, outrunning Peace, was quickly there; And if she found a spark of ire, Was sure to blow it to a fire. At length, Renown got out of patience At random hurrying o'er the nations, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... week little else was thought of. This was just what Miss Brooks had hoped for, because in their looking forward to this extraordinary pleasure in their humdrum lives, they ceased to harass their teacher with mournful laments and direful prophecies, and even Tabitha's face lost some of its ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... they and their sister have drawn my affections to them as a magnet draweth iron: and the voice of blood crieth to me and compelleth me to confess the tie and to acknowledge that they are my true children, borne in the womb of my Queen, whose direful Destiny I have been the means of carrying out." Then turning to the Princes and their sister he said with tearful eyes and broken voice, "Ye are my children and henceforth do ye regard me as your father." At this they ran to him with rare ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Protestant, ought to have been the most striking sign and the surest pledge of peace between Catholicism and Protestantism. The political expediency of such a step appeared the more evident and the more urgent in proportion as the religious war had become more direful and the desire for peace more general. Charles IX. embraced the idea passionately. At the outset he encountered an obstacle. The young Duke of Guise had already paid court to Marguerite, and had obtained such marked favor with her that the ambassador of Spain wrote to the king, "There ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Do you want to take your death of cold?" she screamed. And Cass, to avoid this direful possibility, rebuttoned his coat again over the handkerchief and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... seen. The gardener reported, that (sultan jeraad) the king of the locusts had taken his departure eastward early in the morning; the myriads of locusts followed, so that in a quarter of an hour not one was to be seen. The depredations of these devouring insects was too soon felt, and a direful scarcity ensued. The poor would go out a locusting, as they termed it: the bushes were covered; they took their (haik) garment, and threw it over them, and then collected them in a sack. In half an hour they would collect a bushel. These they ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... fast young ladies of the imperial city had become, it was not from such as these, he continues, that the noble youth sprang "who dyed the seas with Carthaginian gore, overthrew Pyrrhus and great Antiochus and direful Hannibal," concluding in words which contrast by their suggestive terseness at the same time that they suggest comparison with the elaborated fulness ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... boy of my own age, and I seriously discussed the prospects and dangers of the journey. Direful tales of the tomahawk and scalping knife were recounted by the older children. But Tant's fears were allayed by the assurance that the "Injuns" would not kill and scalp a black boy with a woolly head. For once in my life I envied that imp ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... that the tide soon turned; and those who had refused at first to heed, or even to listen to, the words of warning uttered by Dr. Ryerson in this crisis, were afterwards glad to profit by them, and thus saved themselves in time from the direful consequences which followed during the sad ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... had the greatest difficulty in finding my way about. It is composed of three of the oldest houses in Quebec, and has no end of long passages, dark winding staircases, and queer little rooms. It is haunted to a fearful extent by rats; and direful stories, "horrible, if true," were related in the parlour of personal mutilations sustained by visitors. My room was by no means in the oldest part of the house, yet I used to hear nightly sorties made in a very systematic manner by ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... life I led for ten years! If any one had known the suffering of this poor, calumniated little woman! To be watched by a mother jealous of her daughter! Heavens! You who make dramas, you will never invent anything as direful as that. Ordinarily, according to the little that I know of literature, a drama is a suite of actions, speeches, movements which hurry to a catastrophe; but what I speak of was a catastrophe in action. It was an avalanche fallen in the morning and falling again ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... however) on account of its valuable oil. It frequents the Brisbane river and the mudflats of the harbour, and is harpooned by the natives, who know it under the name of Yung-un. The other is an undescribed porpoise, a specimen of which, however, I did not procure, as the natives believed the most direful consequences would ensue from the destruction of one; and I considered the advantages resulting to science from the addition of a new species of Phocoena, would not have justified me in outraging their strongly expressed superstitious feelings on the subject. We observed that whenever a drove of ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... brawl; No conscience molten into gold, No forged accuser bought or sold, No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey; For there Christ is the King's Attorney. And when the grand twelve-million jury Of our sins, with direful fury, Against our souls black verdicts give, Christ pleads his death, and then ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... is so much of fable mingled with the traditionary biography of this "Devonshire worthy," that most persons probably will dismiss the claim altogether. He became weary of his life, and, being determined to rid himself from the direful apprehensions of dangerous approaching evils, he adopted this strange mode of suicide: having given strict orders to his keeper to shoot any person at night who would not stand when challenged, he threw himself into the keeper's way, and was shot dead ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... into rest because of unbelief," "they limited the Holy One of Israel": in these words the Bible, like the New Thought, traces all the sorrow of the world—that terrible Weltschmerz which expresses itself with such direful influence through the pessimistic literature of the day—to the one root of a false belief, the belief in man's limitation. Only substitute for it the true belief, and the evil would be at an end. Now the ground of this true belief is that clear apprehension of "the ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Patroclus' body rag'd The stubborn conflict, direful, sorrow-fraught: From Heav'n descending, Pallas stirr'd the strife, Sent by all-seeing Jove to stimulate The warlike Greeks; so changed was now his will. As o'er the face of Heav'n when Jove extends His bright-hued bow, a sign to mortal men Of war, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... mothers, did the same; We hope the custom ne'er will alter, But wish its enemies a halter. Dissatisfaction great appear'd, In several places where they've heard Their preacher's bold, aloud disclaim That bundling is a burning shame; This too was cause of direful rout And talk'd and told of, all about, That ministers should disapprove Sparks courting in a bed of love, So justified the custom more, Than e'er was heard or known before. The pulpit then it seems must ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing! 2117 POPE: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... untenable, and under cover of that appalling rain of death, the German infantry would creep back to reoccupy the positions from which they had been ousted by the bayonets only a few hours before. It was the German tactics of machine vs. men, a direful and cruel battle plan to the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... have run alongside his opponent, and the fate of the little 36 would have been sealed. On the other hand it must be remembered that it was only the bursting of the gun on board the President, causing such direful confusion and loss, and especially harmful in disabling her commander, that gave the Belvidera any chance of escape at all. At any rate, whether the American frigate does, or does not, deserve blame, Captain Byron and his crew do most emphatically deserve praise for ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... army which had set out in such splendor, four hundred thousand strong, one heathen king alone remained. And he, King Margaris, sorely wounded, his spear broken, his shield pierced and battered, fled with the direful news to ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... nature of Don Pedro was roused by these suspicions to intensity of action, and he resolved upon direful revenge. As the new governor was hourly expected, he could not venture upon any open act of assassination or violence, for he knew that in that case summary punishment would be his doom. Calling M. Codro before him, he assumed his ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... so horrible, that 'tis ever marked, that when this direful ceremony occurs, the average deaths in cities greatly increase. 'Tis from the turning of the blood in the spectators, who yet from some ungovernable madness cannot refrain from hurrying to the scene. I speak with some authority. ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... echoes of Eradicate's direful warning cry had died away, Tom was on his way out of the house, pausing only long enough to slip on a pair of shoes and his trousers. There was but one thought in his mind. If he could get the Humming-Bird safely out he would ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
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