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More "Ruinous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the temper and logical capacities of the mob, in all ages of the world alike, that within a few hours of their applauding to the echo this speech of Cicero's, Clodius succeeded in exciting them to a serious riot by appealing to the ruinous price of corn as one of the results ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... among English farmers, and agriculturists of other countries who have heard of Alderman Mechi's experiments, that they were impracticable and almost valueless, because they would not pay; that the balance- sheet of his operations did and must ever show such ruinous discrepancy between income and expenditure as must deter any man, of less capital and reckless enthusiasm, from following his lead into such unconsidered ventures. In short, he has been widely regarded at home and ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Hill and Newsham came to visit me, they were astonished at the ruinous condition of my ship, and could scarcely think it possible for her to have made so long a passage. The rottenness of her cordage, and the raggedness of her sails, filled them with surprise and pity for my condition. When I had given them a short history ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... name of this village?' said I to a woman, as we passed by five or six ruinous houses at the bend of the bay, ere we entered ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... amounting to one-third, and occasionally one-half, above the sum lent, upon which, in the meantime, interest is accumulating. For instance, if the accommodation be twenty pounds, property to that amount at a ruinous valuation is brought home by the accommodator. This perhaps sells for thirty, thirty-five, or forty pounds, so that, deducting the labor of preparing it for market, there is a gain of fifty, seventy-five, or a hundred per cent. besides, probably, ten per cent, interest, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... eight (or six or seven) hundred a year he required by sheer hard writing, turning out his History of England, his Voltaire, and his Universal History by means of long spells of almost incessant labour at ruinous cost to his health. On the top of all this cruel compiling he undertook to run a Review (The Critical), a magazine (The British), and a weekly political organ (The Briton). A charge of defamation for a paragraph in the nature of what would now ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... could be always walking in some pleasant path that should have no unpleasant thing at the end—such as they felt their home to be. Presently they came to a bend in the road, and a few steps from the corner was a low-roofed house, a ruinous-looking place, with rags stuffed in the broken window-panes. There were green fields around it, and tall trees gracefully waving near it; but the old house spoiled the landscape ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... legislation hostile to the coal combination was imminent. The price of Reading stock on the Stock Exchange immediately declined. Then, following up their advantage, this dual alliance inspired even more ruinous reports. The credit of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad was represented as being in a very bad state. As the railroad had borrowed immense sums of money both to finance its coal combination and to build extensive terminals and other equipment, large payments to ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... and promptly as an echo a voice returned the signal. Following the direction of the sound, her eyes discerned a dark shadow in the hollow forty rods away. She put Sunbeam into a canter, and as she approached the shadow, the outline defined itself, and she saw that it was a ruinous shed or hut. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Hadding was going to fall upon him, but while he was passing Norway in his fleet he saw upon the beach an old man signing to him, with many wavings of his mantle, to put into shore. His companions opposed it, and declared that it would be a ruinous diversion from their journey; but he took the man on board, and was instructed by him how to order his army. For this man, in arranging the system of the columns, used to take special care that the front row consisted of two, the second of four, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... followed the panic of 1873, Mr. Kloman, through an unfortunate partnership in the Escanaba Furnace Company, lost his means, and his interest in our firm had to be disposed of. We bought it at book value at a time when manufacturing properties were selling at ruinous prices, often as low as one third ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... North Pass & Yukon is paying a fabulous blackmail to the river-lines to escape a ruinous rate war." ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... continental empire; his armies had been gradually advancing, and, under various pretexts, taking possession of every fortress in Prussia, and towards the frontiers of Russia. Supposing himself in a position to enforce the ruinous demands which he well knew could not be granted, he looked forward with confidence to the subjugation of Russia, after which Sweden would become an easy conquest. Alexander saw that the existence of his empire depended on the exertions he was now compelled ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... his works on the site of an older fort, named Badalgarh, presumably of Hindu origin, 'which was of brick, and had become ruinous.' No existing building within the precincts can be referred with certainty to an earlier date than that of Akbar. The erection began in A.H. 972, corresponding to A.D. 1564-5, and the work continued for eight (or, according ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... course of his extended career Mr. Wintermuth had been called upon to face many serious and unexpected crises. Conflagrations; rate wars; eruptions of idiotic and ruinous legislation adopted by state senates and assemblies composed of meddlesome agriculturalists, saloon keepers, impractical young lawyers, and intensely practical old politicians;—all these he had lived through not once, but often, and had always piloted the Guardian's bark to port ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... the educated classes who are also biassed by their political predilections. The small trading and commercial classes are, on somewhat different grounds, equally dissatisfied with the present state of things. The one boon they desire, is a settled government and the end of this ruinous uncertainty. Now a priestly government supported by French bayonets can never give Rome either order or prosperity. For the sake of quiet itself, they wish for change. With respect to the poor, it is very difficult to judge what their feelings or wishes ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... supreme station by arms. To have left it unasserted, when once solemnly created in his favor by a reversionary title, would have been deliberately to resign it. This would have been a confession of weakness liable to no disguise, and ruinous to any subsequent pretensions. Yet, without preparation of means, with no development of resources nor growth of circumstances, an appeal to arms would, in his case, have been of very doubtful issue. His true weapons, for a long period, were the arts of vigilance and dissimulation. Cultivating ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... military expenditure two-thirds of the revenue of European States, can be appropriately called a state of peace. It is certainly not a pax romana. It is most certainly not a pax britannica. It may be a pax teutonica or, rather, a pax borussica, but such as it is, ruinous and demoralizing, it is also lamentably precarious and perilously unstable. And if Germany has kept this pax borussica for forty-two years, it has not been the fault of the German Government. Rather has it been kept because ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... again leave their convent, and remove to that of San Marco, in Florence. Most unwillingly the brethren submitted, and immediately Cosimo set architects and builders to work to erect a new convent, for the old one was in a ruinous state. The new cloisters offered a noble field to the genius of Fra Angelico, and he labored for their decoration with his whole soul; though the rule of the order was so strict that the pictures in the cells could be seen only by the monks, he put all his skill ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... was more than he had in the bank, and Uncle Regie thinks the bankers will undertake part of the loss if he will let them. It is more inconvenient than ruinous.' ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... foliage. It gave beauty to the old edifice, and seemed to make it a part of nature. The street having been widened about forty years ago, the front gable was now precisely on a line with it. On either side extended a ruinous wooden fence, of open lattice-work, through which could be seen a grassy yard, and, especially in the angles of the building, an enormous fertility of burdocks, with leaves, it is hardly an exaggeration to say, two or three feet long. Behind ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... a favourite month for native weddings. There was one going on last night. I looked into the courtyard of a ruinous building which was crammed with spectators. The Aissouyiahs were performing, in honour of ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Newton's death had already reached the family at Popham Villa, and had struck them all with awe. How it might affect the property even Sir Thomas had not absolutely known at first; though he was not slow to make it understood that in all probability this terrible accident would be ruinous to the hopes which his niece had been justified in entertaining. At that hour Mary had spoken not a word;—nor could she be induced to speak respecting it either by Patience or Clarissa. Even to them she could not bring herself to say that if the man really loved her he would still come to her ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... concealed behind it. These injudicious performances have tended to weaken instead of strengthen the tower. The interior walls above the main arches of the tower, up to the bases of the fifty-two pillars, which surround the bellringers' chamber, are in a very ruinous state, particularly at the four angles, where rude cavities, running in a diagonal direction, have been made large enough for a man to creep in,—these unaccountable holes have tended very much to increase the danger, as all the masonry connected with them is drawn off its bond, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... and Discussion. (1) Point out the different statements about the drouth and locusts that indicate their severity and ruinous effects. (2) Collect the passages referring to the Messianic age and try to see how or what each foretells of that age. (3) Point out all references to the sins of Israel. (4) Collect evidences of the divine control of the universe as seen ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... composed of three partitions in the form of a pyramid, and is ornamented with some statues; its appearance is exceedingly fine. One may still form an idea of the beauty of its architecture, in spite of its ruinous condition, and even the repairs ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... were planted and preserved; tradesmen set on work and encouraged, staple commodities, as silk, flax, pot-ashes, etc., of which I shall speak further hereafter, attempted on, and with good success brought to perfection; so that this country which had a mean beginning, many back friends, two ruinous and bloody massacres, hath by God's grace out-grown all, and is become a place of ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... the earl, in a voice of horrified astonishment, "how enough?—how can anything be enough after such a course—so wild, so mad, so ruinous!" ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the heroine of Rossini's immortal "Il Barbiere di Seviglia." She sang at various concerts in different cities, until she reached the age of twelve and a half, when her career was temporarily interrupted, for Maurice Strakosch, observing the ruinous effect the continuous strain upon her delicate voice was working, insisted upon her discontinuing singing altogether, which advice she happily followed. After this interval of two years' silence, and having emerged from the wonder-child ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... commissioners enlarged upon the advantages of Galway. It lay open for trade with Spain, the Straits, the West Indies, and other places; no town or port in the three nations, London excepted, was more considerable. It had many noble uniform buildings of marble, though many of the houses had become ruinous by reason of the war, and the waste done by the impoverished English dwelling there. No Irish were permitted to live in the city, nor within three miles of it. If it were only properly inhabited by English, it might have a more hopeful gain by trade than when it was in the hands ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... should frankly tell them that to all appearances their cause was desperate; that their Armies were beaten in all quarters; and that the time had arrived when they ought to come to some arrangement, which would put an end to a state of affairs ruinous to themselves and intolerable to Europe. It was useless to expect any countenance from the European Powers. Those Powers could but act on their avowed principles. They would recognize any people which established its independence, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... agony of breaking him to the copious use of water, Bivens found a doctor who boldly declared that excessive bathing was ruinous to the health—that water was made for fish and air for man. The little millionaire made him chief of the staff of his household doctors, but Nan refused to admit him when she learned his views. Bivens secretly built him a hospital, endowed it, and ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... of Fanny Kemble's husband had been left. But in one respect its disastrous effect was everywhere felt. By associating manual labor with the stigma of servitude, it bred, in free men, a strong disrelish for work,—a most demoralizing and ruinous influence. Inefficiency and degradation were the marks of the non-slaveholding whites. The master class missed the wholesome regimen of toil. Nature is never more beneficent than when she lays on man the imperative command "Thou shalt work." Of all ways of evading ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... diligence, he gave it the varnish and put it to dry in the sun, as is the custom. But, either because the heat was too violent, or perchance because the wood was badly joined together or not seasoned well enough, the said panel opened out at the joinings in a ruinous fashion. Whereupon Johann, seeing the harm that the heat of the sun had done to it, determined to bring it about that the sun should never again do such great damage to his works. And so, being ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... God pre-determined what his enemies should accomplish. "Hast thou not heard long ago, how I have done it; and of ancient times, that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps."[504] In reference to a Covenant people to be continued to discharge their peculiar duties, and to provisions of grace, described in terms most beauteous, it is applied.[505] "Thus saith the Lord, the maker thereof, ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... and did very considerable business; later they formed a fortified sub-agency at Armagaum, a good way down the coast, not far from Nellore. At first their fortunes went well; but local rulers exacted ruinous dues, and at Armagaum in particular the local ruler, alarmed at the influence that the English merchants had gained, set himself so seriously to the work of handicapping their trade that Mr. Francis Day, the Company's representative at Armagaum and a member ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... army—horse, foot, and ordnance—were visible beneath us. The gleam of the weapons, the waving of numerous banners, the plumes of the leaders, and the deep columns of marching men, made up a picture which stirred the very hearts of the citizens, who, from the housetops and from the ruinous summit of the dismantled walls, were enabled to gaze down upon the champions of their faith. If the mere sight of a passing regiment will cause a thrill in your bosoms, you can fancy how it is when the soldiers upon whom you look are in actual arms for your own dearest and most cherished ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "I thought the place miserable enough yesterday evening, while now, though the sun does give it a sort of golden glaze, the miserable huddle of shabby huts looks ten times worse, for the light exposes its ruinous state." ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... her and the ruinous state of the family finances completely broke the spirit of this younger Nicholas. He dismissed the servants and worked in the fields and gardens about his fine house as a common market gardener. On fair-days at Liskeard or St. Austell the ex-soldier, prematurely aged, might have ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... debt. Our own experience and also that of other nations have demonstrated the unavoidable and fearful rapidity with which a public debt is increased when the Government has once surrendered itself to the ruinous practice of supplying its supposed necessities by new loans. The struggle, therefore, on our part to be successful must be made at the threshold. To make our efforts effective, severe economy is necessary. This is the surest provision for ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... production is all along improved with the view of meeting future competition; but this only prepares the ground for new and still worse crises. After the crisis has lasted years, after the surplusage of goods has been gradually done away with through sales at ruinous prices, through retrenchment of production, and through the destruction of smaller concerns, society slowly begins to recover again. Demand rises, and production follows suit—slowly at first and cautious, but, with the continuance of prosperity, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... consists of some sixty convicts, sent from Goa to Mozambique, and then, after further misbehaving themselves, sent on to this place, so their character may well be supposed. There is a church, but it is in a very ruinous condition. Altogether the place is a very miserable one, and is evidently withering under the blighting curse of the slave-trade. The huts of the natives are built in a square form, instead of round, like those to be seen further south. ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... worth. Then treasure is abus'd, When misers keep it: being put to loan, In time it will return us two for one. Rich robes themselves and others do adorn; Neither themselves nor others, if not worn. Who builds a palace, and rams up the gate, Shall see it ruinous and desolate: Ah, simple Hero, learn thyself to cherish! Lone women, like to empty houses, perish. Less sins the poor rich man, that starves himself In heaping up a mass of drossy pelf, Than such as you: his golden earth remains, Which, after his decease, some other gains; ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... much money will the people have with which to transact business, employ labor, enter into new enterprises, and use 'cash payments' instead of 'inflating credit' to a ruinous degree, as in times past, under the system of specie payments, and convertibility ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... lovest so, and that will love thee to mortal sorrow, if thou goest without care to thy end too soon?" The desert, the dark monastery, the acacia tree, the ancient palm, the ruinous garden, disappeared. He only saw a face which smiled at him, as it had done 'by the brazier in the garden at Cairo, that night when she and Nahoum and himself and Mizraim had met in the room of his house by the Ezbekieh gardens, and she had gone out to her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to show my people how great a craftsman I was. They cared not, and it served me right, one split straw for my craft or my greatness. What a murrain call had I, they said, to mell with old St. Barnabas's? Ruinous the church had been since the Black Death, and ruinous she should remain; and I could hang myself in my new scaffold-ropes! Gentle and simple, high and low—the Hayes, the Fowles, the Fanners, the Collinses—they were all ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... there come and go, 'Twixt mountains draped and hooded night and morn, Elusive notes in wandering wafture borne, From undiscoverable lips that blow An immaterial horn; And spectral seem thy winter-boding trees, Thy ruinous bowers and drifted foliage wet— Past and Future in sad bridal met, O voice of everything that perishes, And soul ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... and in the year 18— belonged to another Abner Dimock, who kept tavern in Greenfield, a town of Western Massachusetts, and, like his father and grandfather before him, had one only son. In the mean time, the old house in Haddam township had fallen into a ruinous condition, and, as the farm was very small, and unprofitable chestnut-woodland at that, the whole was leased to an old negro and his wife, who lived there in the most utter solitude, scratching the soil for a few beans and potatoes, and in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... joy, so deep that it assumed the shade of melancholy; they pointed to each other the minutest objects about the homesteads, things in their hearts, and were now comparing them with the originals. But where hollow places by the wayside, grass-grown and uneven, with unsightly chimneys rising ruinous in the midst, gave indications of a fallen dwelling and of hearths long cold, there did a few of the strangers sit them down on the mouldering beams, and on the yellow moss that had overspread the door-stone. The ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... due time the dresses came home, the bills were paid, and Colonel Saville, blessing Providence that he had not six women to dress instead of two, hurried on the day of departure from a city of such ruinous fascinations. ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... adherents 'in terminos modestiae. But so long as France is keeping a suspicious eye upon England, and England upon France, everything will run to combustion, detrimental to their Majesties and to us, and ruinous to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... close by, across the glen—a little ruinous, perhaps, but we can soon repair it. Come to the window; you can see the place from here.' He pointed out a kind of thickset tower which crowned a pretty village set in orchards. 'If you care to see it we will go there when I ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the security, the greater will be the effective strength of the desire of accumulation. Where property is less safe, or the vicissitudes ruinous to fortunes are more frequent and severe, fewer persons will save at all, and, of those who do, many will require the inducement of a higher rate of profit on capital to make them prefer a doubtful future to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... went on. The assertion of their independence by the Colonies divided, and, so far, weakened, the advocates of their cause in Parliament, one section of whom, led by Lord Chatham, regarded any diminution of our dominion as not only treasonable, but ruinous; on the other hand, it procured them the alliance of France and Spain. But it cannot be said that either of these incidents produced any practical effect on the result of the war. Lord Chatham's refusal to contemplate their independence could not retard its establishment; and the alliance ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... half finished. To add to the difficulty, state stocks depreciated over twenty per cent., embarrassing the administration in its efforts to raise money. The Democrats pronounced such a policy disastrous and ruinous; and, although the Whigs replied that the original estimates were wrong, that the price of labour and material had advanced, and that when completed the canals would speedily pay for themselves, the people thought it time to call a halt, and in the election ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... animal, without chaffering, at double its value, having in addition borrowed a lot of money at cut-throat interest. In every turn-over of this sort don Jaime doubled his principal. New straits inevitably developed for the dupe; the interest kept piling up; hence new concessions, still more ruinous than the first, that don Jaime might be placated and give the purchaser ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... assimilated what he read, Mr. Morley says that it was as true of Florence in the Sixteenth Century as of Athens, Corinth, Corcyra in the Fifth Century before Christ, as set forth in Thucydides, that it was a prey to intestine faction and the ruinous invocation of foreign aid. "These terrible calamities," says Thucydides, "always have been and always will be, while human nature remains the same. Words cease to have the same relations to things, and their meanings are changed to suit ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... "the eye is often bigger than the belly," is often verified by the ridiculous vanity of those who wish to make an appearance above their fortune. Nothing can be more ruinous to real comfort than the too common custom of setting out a table, with a parade and a profusion, unsuited not only to the circumstances of the hosts, but to the number of the guests; or more fatal to true hospitality, than the multiplicity of dishes which luxury has ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... Faye how fearful he was of having "mistakes" laid to his charge by the Government in the course of his secret services. His former changes of party had exposed him, as he well knew, to suspicion. A false step, a misunderstood paragraph, might have had ruinous consequences for him. If the Government had prosecuted him for writing anything offensive to them, refusing to believe that it was put in to amuse the Tories, transportation might very easily have been the penalty. He had made so many enemies in the ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... expensive arrangement for the man that has a good claim. If he would save, there are agents of unsound financial schemes ready to take advantage of his ignorance. If he would borrow, there are {24} chattel-mortgage sharks ready to burden him with a debt at ruinous interest. If he would buy, there are instalment dealers ready to tempt him into buying more than he can afford, and ready to charge two prices for their wares. Whole industries are created to take advantage of his lack of shrewdness, and ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... of many doctrines of ruinous tendency to the cause of civil liberty, advanced by pro-slavery writers to sustain ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in the collection before me concerns one of Newman's brothers. Perhaps most of us can count a "Charles Robert" in our environment. Someone whose "worm i' the bud" of their character has so completely spoilt its early flower on account of the "one ruinous vice" of "censoriousness," of perpetual nagging, and fault-finding developed to such a pitch that it has eaten out at last the fair heart of human forbearance and kindness which is the birthright of everyone. Such a person ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... the science of bloodshed. Nations were to beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, and men were not to learn war any more. And this was on the eve of the Crimea—the most ruinous, the most cruel, and the least justifiable of all campaigns. In one corner of the world or another, the war-drum has throbbed almost without intermission from that ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... suffered considerably from it. I have had an addition to my stock since I left Augusta, having three fine little lambs; and I understand more are expected: it is fortunate I was well provided, as this increase would have proved ruinous to ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... ricks; they made common cause with their enemies instead of with their friends, and instead of leaguing themselves together with the labourers as forming together the true agricultural interest, they leagued themselves with the landlords against the labourers, and so made ruinous fratricidal strife instead of easy victory over the common foe. And, seeing all this, I learned some useful lessons, and the political education progressed while the theological ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Italy by Rome was attended by many interesting events, of which we propose to relate here some of the more striking. The capture and burning of Rome by the Gauls, and the dispersal of her army and people, ruinous as it seemed, was but an event in her career of conquest. The city was no sooner rebuilt than the old regime of war was resumed, and it was no longer a struggle between neighboring cities, but of Rome against powerful confederacies and peoples, such as the Volscians, the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... weary of the horrid strife. The Catholics were struggling to extirpate what they deemed ruinous heresy from the kingdom. The Protestants were repelling the assault, and contending, not for general liberty of conscience, but that their doctrines were true, and therefore should be sustained. Terms of accommodation were proposed, and the Catholics made the great concession, as they regarded ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... ingenuous eloquence with which she maintained her sentiments, or with the appeal to the memory of the first Lady Mar, the countess relaxed the frigid air she had assumed, and kissing her, with many renewed injunctions to bless the hand that might put a final stop to so ruinous an enthusiasm in her family, she ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... pillars and sinews by which antichristianism remains; and were these dispirited, the whole building would quickly become a ruinous heap. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... depravity; and the individual is no longer encouraged to struggle with vicious propensities, when he concludes them irresistibly inherent in his nature. Perhaps it was not possible to imagine principles at once so seductive and ruinous as those now disseminated. How are the morals of the people to resist a doctrine which teaches them that the rich only can be criminal, and that poverty is a substitute for virtue—that wealth is holden by the sufferance of those who do not possess ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... in the | |Government's suit to dissolve the | |Standard Oil Company ended with a | |dramatic incident. Mr. Kellogg sought to | |show that the Standard compelled a widow, | |Mrs. Jones, of Mobile, Ala., to sell out | |her little oil business at a ruinous ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... his castle of Champtoce he dwelt in almost royal state; indeed, his train when he went hawking or hunting exceeded in magnificence that of the King himself. His retainers were tricked out in the most gorgeous liveries, and his table was spread with ruinous abundance. Oxen, sheep, and pigs were roasted whole, and viands were provided daily for five hundred persons. He had an insane love of pomp and display, and his private devotions were ministered to ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... this, a necessity of 2,200,000 l. sterling will not support a confiscation to the amount of five millions. The imposition of 2,200,000 l. on the clergy, as partial, would have been oppressive and unjust, but it would not have been altogether ruinous to those on whom it was imposed; and therefore it would not have answered the real purpose of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... speech. It will lead to the open discussion of the general policy, the rural police, the trade regulations, the taxes, the desirability of maintaining superfluous expensive bureaux, the lavish (Manila) municipal non-productive outlay, and ruinous projects of no public utility, such as the construction of the Benguet road, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... There were ruinous buildings on it: barracks and storehouses and offices, an airship dock and an air-traffic control tower from which all the glass had long ago vanished, a great steel telecast tower that had fallen, crushing a couple ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... he well knew how to assume, commanded the attendance of the leading citizens and spoke with them in private. Finding them eager for the arrival of the Goths, to whom they looked rather than to the distant Greeks for protection against ruinous disorder (already they had despatched messengers to Totila entreating his aid), he made known to them that he was travelling to meet the Gothic outposts, and promised to hasten the king's advance. At present, there seemed to be no more danger, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... to these sordid and ruinous contentions, several of the principal merchants of Montreal entered into a partnership in the winter of 1783, which was augmented by amalgamation with a rival company in 1787. Thus was created the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... estate, alternating with the return of prosperity, seem to have marked the commercial and financial history of this country during the last fifty years, more than that of any other nation under the sun, and given rise to the spirit of extravagant speculations, both disgraceful and ruinous. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... great shame, though, for at heart Rand is one of the best fellows in the world. He's a man who has all the modern false notions of what a fellow ought to do to keep up what he calls his end. He plays cards and sustains ruinous losses because he thinks he won't be considered a good-fellow if he stays out. He plays bridge with ladies and pays up when he loses and doesn't collect when he wins. Win or lose he's doomed to be on the wrong side of the market just because of those very qualities ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... hulk and to look down into the west—and to feel all hope dying with the sight that I saw there. Far away, under the red mist, across the red gleaming weed and against a sunset sky bloody red, I seemed to see a vast ruinous congregation of wrecks; so far-extending that it was as though all the wrecked ships in the world were lying huddled together there in a miserably desolate company. And with sight of them the certain conviction was borne in ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... winding up of our catastrophe. If it lasts more than one year, it seems even to moderate West Indians to be totally ruinous to them. What seems to affect them most by the passing of this Bill is not the fear of starving, which they have their apprehensions of, but the danger there is of their being taken on false pretences ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... figures now much worn. There is another cross in the centre of the village. Opposite the church is an old pre-Reformation building, the basement of which served as an alms-house, and the upper floor as a school. It is now unfortunately quite ruinous. ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... the people he had got his sight again, and could see everything, although many knew he had been blind for a long time, for he had been there, before, going about among the houses of the neighbourhood. He said he first got his sight when he was coming out of a little ruinous hut which was all wet inside. "I groped in the water," said he, "and rubbed my eyes with my wet hands." He told where the hut stood. The people who heard him wondered much at this event, and spoke among themselves of what it could be that produced it: but Thorgils the peasant and his son Grim thought ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... Commynes, after so judicious a sketch, we may add another: Please God that people may no more suffer themselves to be taken captive by the corrupting and ruinous pleasures procured for them by their masters' grand but wicked or foolish enterprises, and may learn to give to the men who govern them a glory in proportion to the wisdom and justice of their deeds, and by no means to the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... passion now remains To keep life's fever still within his veins, Vengeance! dire vengeance on the wretch who cast O'er him and all he loved that ruinous blast." ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... such ruinous mistakes, that I'll never be able to stand it, sir. Give him Harper's place in the thread and tape, up here, then he'll be ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... demonstrations of peace, was Thor. After surveying the "ongoings" from the safe point of a masthead, he came to the conclusion that the proceedings interested him no more, and with a dismal croak he flew off to the skeoe, and, seating himself on the topmost point of its ruinous gable, commented in very uncomplimentary terms upon the ways of mankind. As his opinions were expressed aloud, and accompanied by many grotesque and expressive gestures, he created a good deal of amusement, although Mr. Adiesen remarked ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... we are at cross-purposes," said I. "The spirit is precisely what I came in quest of. I bought the Flying Scud at a ruinous figure, run up by Mr. Carthew through an agent; and I am, in consequence, a bankrupt. But if I have found no fortune in the wreck, I have found unmistakable evidences of foul play. Conceive my position: I am ruined through this man, whom I ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... replied the brother, with a sigh. "But it is a false step, a ruinous step, Clara; and we shall ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... Somerset well fortified on the Right and having the Raritan in front and Millstone on the Left. In this Scituation Genl W. did not think it prudent to attack them as it did not appear to him to be warranted by a sufficient prospect of Success and he thought it might be attended with ruinous Consequences. The Design then was to reduce the Security of his Army to the greatest Certainty by collecting all the Forces that could be drawn from other Quarters, so as to be in a Condition of embracing any ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... of conventual buildings on the southern side of the church, mean, and of a date some thousand years subsequent to that of the Basilica. They are nearly ruinous, but are still—or were till within a few years—inhabited by one Capucin friar, and one lay brother of the order, whose duty it was to mutter a mass, with ague-chattering jaws, at the high altar, and act as guardians of ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... their captive through a street which appeared to have been the principal way of the city. Nearly at its termination, they turned by a small Ionian temple, and, clambering over some fallen pillars, entered a quarter of the city of a more ruinous aspect than that which Alroy had hitherto visited. The path was narrow, often obstructed, and around were signs of devastation for which the exterior of the city had ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... concealment. "Important dispatches from our general for your gallant rear admiral. Besides much information concerning the Spanish fortifications and troops, there are details of our own plans and preparations which it would be ruinous to have fall ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... with your mode of life, unwise and ruinous as I may consider it," he said, "as long as it does not interfere with your discharge of duty. But to-day you are clearly incapacitated for labor, and I have a right to complain. If it happens again, I shall be obliged ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous to Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give way to her feelings. "Get out of this house!" she shrieked. "This is my father's house. Don't you dare speak ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... time, especially in the case of city girls. The body requires all its available resources for the growth and development which is so characteristic of this biological and psychological epoch; hence it may be ruinous for the future of the girl if at this time the same strain is put upon her as on the adult, whether in the direction of study, physical exertion, or social excitement, and of course the voice must suffer with all the rest. The farmer who would attempt to work the colt of a year or ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... Sposina every morning up to the period of their union, with a fresh bouquet, the size of which intimates the degree of affection and respect that he entertains for her. But should the lover's finances be slender, and his nuptials long delayed, he must find this elegant custom a very ruinous one, since the price of the best of these bouquets (and who durst for his own credit's sake present an inferior one?) is five or six francs. The Sposina appears everywhere and everyday with a bouquet in her hand, closely attended by her lover, and either ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... observations. At that time the advancement of the hierarchy was, in most countries, extraordinary; for the Church acquired treasures and large properties in land, even to a greater extent than after the crusades; but experience has demonstrated that such a state of things is ruinous to the people, and causes them to retrograde, as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... fashionable boarding school. Under its influence, mothers will not trust the souls of their children to the guardianship of irreligious nurses, nor expose them to the perils of a corrupted and heartless fashion. They will deny themselves the ruinous pleasures of a gay and reckless association with the world; and with maternal solicitude, attend upon the opening of those buds of life which God has committed to them. The pious mother will wield her power over her children, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... flurry could not mind it, he had no hindrance; and it was by good luck, not management of Broglio's, that these poor reinforcements did in part get through to him, and in part seek refuge in Eger again. Broglio has encamped under the walls of Prag; in a ruinous though still blusterous condition; his positions all gone; except Prag and Eger, nothing in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the wise and brave stratagem of the wife is brought to ruinous issue by the reckless impatience of her husband. In Winter's Tale, and in Cymbeline, the happiness and existence of two princely households, lost through long years, and imperilled to the death by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, are redeemed at last by ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... wherein I am safe. Thence to White Hall, and there to visit Sir G. Carteret, and there was with him a great while, and my Lady and they seem in very good humour, but by and by Sir G. Carteret and I alone, and there we did talk of the ruinous condition we are in, the King being going to put out of the Council so many able men; such as my Lord Anglesey, Ashly, Hopis, Secretary Morrice (to bring in Mr. Trevor), and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and my Lord Bridgewater. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Shall not that Western Goth, of whom we spoke, So fiercely practical, so keen of eye, 680 Find out, some day, that nothing pays but God, Served whether on the smoke-shut battle-field, In work obscure done honestly, or vote For truth unpopular, or faith maintained To ruinous convictions, or good deeds Wrought for good's sake, mindless of heaven or hell? Shall he not learn that all prosperity, Whose bases stretch not deeper than the sense, Is but a trick of this world's atmosphere, A desert-born mirage of spire and dome, 690 Or find too late, the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... painstaking in keeping up the reputation of the house, and yet the gardeners who supplied the kitchens complained of a ruinous delay. The agents for the supply of Spanish wines frequently sent drafts which no one honored; fishermen, whom the surintendant engaged on the coast of Normandy, calculated that if they were paid all that was due to them, the amount would enable them to retire comfortably for the rest of ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... from their separation from the common life of the people. It is the same still with very rich folk who are able to evade the harsh conscription of life; in evading the conscription of life they invariably deteriorate in physical and mental fibre. I can conceive nothing more ruinous to a young man than that he should have just enough money to make the toil for bread unnecessary. More lives have been spoiled by competence than by poverty; indeed, I doubt whether poverty has any effect at all upon a strong character, except as a stimulus to exertion. Life being what ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... himself of the benefits to be derived from the arts and sciences; but if this knowledge and these benefits are sought and gained only for worldly ends, only to add to worldly accomplishments or worldly treasure, they are dangerous for time and ruinous for eternity. What support can the soul have in its deep conflict with temptation, or in the dark hour of affliction or bereavement, when stayed on this world only? In all the tenderness of a father's heart I turn to the youth ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... I did not expect that a person occupying your elevated position in this community, would set such a ruinous example. A teacher of youth should look to the cultivation of the mind, not to the outward adorning of the person." Mrs. Dr. Little sailed away from the little group in as dignified a manner as a lady of nearly two hundred ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... happily prevails between the employers and the workmen in our great industry as another of the most important elements of its future prosperity. It confers honor on all concerned that by our Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration, ruinous strikes, and even momentary suspensions of labor, are avoided; and still more that masters like our esteemed Treasurer, Mr. David Dale, should deserve, and that large bodies of workmen should have the manliness and discernment to bestow on him, the confidence implied in choosing him ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... cacao planter from Santa Cruz called on me, and in conversation stated that the only place where he had anything like a crop of cacao at present, was where the hurricane of the 11th of October had devastated his estate most severely, and which he at that time considered a ruinous visitation. I hope the lesson will not be ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the issue of his life about as certain whether he jumped overboard or "stuck by the old tub." He considered again the enormous port-charges imposed in Havana, the nature of his cargo in regard to tariff, should his vessel be condemned, and the ruinous expenses of discharging, &c. &c. together with the cost of repairs, providing they were ordered. All these things he considered with the mature deliberation of a good master, who has the general interests of all concerned at heart. So, if he ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... brows and it seemed that her mind, so clear since she woke, was clouded as to all before that; only the feeling of some great trouble, some dusty hurry, some ruinous failure haunted her. Also for the first time that day she found ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... absolutely clear by the computations of the night before. The last four days of indifference to finance on one side, and pampering the heart on the other, had proved very costly. To use his own expression, he had been "set back" almost eight thousand dollars. An average like that would be ruinous. ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... until the hour of meeting in a public-house, and, desirous of securing a glimpse of the sort of enjoyment for which they sacrificed so much, I accompanied them. Passing not a few more inviting-looking places, we entered a low tavern in the upper part of the Canongate, kept in an old half-ruinous building, which has since disappeared. We passed on through a narrow passage to a low-roofed room in the centre of the erection, into which the light of day never penetrated, and in which the gas was burning ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... for France. She was held fast by her treaty with Austria and at ruinous cost was ever sending more and more troops to help Austria against Prussia. The great plan of which Belle-Isle had written to Montcalm was the chief hope of her policy. England was to be invaded and London occupied. If this were done, all else would be right. ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... a little difficulty with regard to the drawing, preserved in the library of the cathedral, of the West Front after the Fire. Evelyn, as we have seen, seems to describe it as far more ruinous than the picture before us shows. Perhaps the artist filled up some of the details from his memory, for the drawing hardly looks so desolate a ruin as Evelyn implies. The gable of the nave roof is striking enough, and evidently exactly according to fact; and the tower of St. Gregory's ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... in the hollow had its barn and out-buildings attached at right angles, with a cart-path leading thereto from the street; but at the top of the slope, on the other side of the schoolward path, stood a large, half-ruinous old barn, used only for storing surplus hay. The door of this great, gray, swaying structure usually stood open, and in it, on an old wreck of a wheelbarrow, sat Mindy Toggs, in fair ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to be corrupted with money.[1] In February the lord general was afflicted[a] with an ague, so ruinous to his health, and so obstinate in its duration, that in May he obtained permission to return to England, with the power of disposing, according to his judgment, of the chief command.[2] A rapid and unexpected improvement[b] ...
— 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
... shining eyes, close to the horse; and she laid her hand upon its belly and stroked it. And Cassandra saw her and reviled her, saying, "Thou shame to Ilium, and thou curse! The Ruinous Face, the Ruinous Face! Cried I not so in the beginning when they praised thy low voice and soft beguiling ways? But thou too, thou ...
— The Ruinous Face • Maurice Hewlett
... shadow cast by Edward III upon England was deepening. A ruinous war had drained her resources and arrested her liberties; and now the odium of defeat made the burdens it imposed intolerable. The temper of every class was strained to the danger point. The wretched government was held responsible, followed, as usual, by ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... highest of the ruinous masses; and, looking round at the park which unfolded its vast expanse of greenery, he sought the grey form of the pavilion through the trees. Albine was standing silent by his side, serious ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... majority, have just emphasized their determination to sustain the war, are firmly convinced that they are not laboring and suffering in vain. It is no spasmodic impulse of blind passion, or even of useless though just resentment against wrong, which impels them, after nearly three years of ruinous war, to redouble their sublime efforts to conquer the treason that still obstinately resists the lawful authority of the Union. Whatever else may be truly said of this great conflict and its terrible results, it cannot be questioned that the people of the loyal States are profoundly impressed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... of the State took note of the decaying stone-work. At last, in the time of Charles I., Dean Williams—afterwards Archbishop of York—took Abbot Islip as his pattern, and spent much of his own private income, since there were no funds available, in repairing the most ruinous parts of the church, notably the north-west, the west end, and the south-east chapels. He also remodelled the monks' dormitory, which he made into a library. So ungrateful was the public for these benefits that the Dean was ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... up to us, informing she had received many heavy seas, and that her ropes were continually failing, so that they knew not what to do; but, unable to afford her any relief; we stood on our course in view of a lee shore, continually dreading a ruinous end of us all. The 4th October the storm increased to an extreme violence; when the pinnace, being to windward, suddenly struck a hull, when we thought she had sustained some violent shock of a sea, or had sprung a leak, or that her sails had failed, because she did not follow us. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... of some kind; though it is by no means probable that the people have intended to sanction the extreme and mischievous views of some of the candidates, who, here and there, have secured their election. Factious divisions in the loyal States, at this critical period, would be ruinous to the cause of the Union. They would distract the public mind and weaken the arm of the Government, so as to endanger its success in the war. There is no indication of any such intention on the part ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... speak of this admirable, but not over-important pastime. They tend to make it almost as much of a fetich as, in the last century, the French and German nobles made the chase of the stag, when they carried hunting and game- preserving to a point which was ruinous to the national life. Fox- hunting is very good as a pastime, but it is about as poor a business as can be followed by any man of intelligence. Certain writers about it are fond of quoting the anecdote of the fox-hunter who, in the days ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the city in a ruinous condition, owing to the neglect of the magistrates, who had commonly been guilty of embezzlement, if not of wholesale plunder. I repaired the evil by means of aqueducts, beautified the city with noble buildings, and surrounded it with walls. The public revenues were easily increased by ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... black made it all the harder for the white to consider schemes for emancipation or manumission which meant economic and social chaos. The weight of accumulated traditions, the hardening of social habits and even the constantly increasing economic handicaps of the ruinous slave-labor made any change more difficult and dangerous. Many, who would gladly be rid of slavery, found themselves in the predicament described by Jefferson, "We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... political system, like that of Sparta, with which he identifies Argos and Messene, dating from the return of the Heraclidae. But the aims of states should be good, or else, like the prayer of Theseus, they may be ruinous to themselves. This was the case in two out of three of the Heracleid kingdoms. They did not understand that the powers in a state should be balanced. The balance of powers saved Sparta, while the excess of tyranny in Persia and the excess of liberty at Athens have been the ruin of both...This ...
— Laws • Plato
... to detail their proceedings or to describe at much length the squabbles and constant disorders, murders, and robberies which took place while they held possession of the Island. The speculation proved ruinous to the Adventurers, who in the end lost their estates, and were obliged to leave the islanders to their fate. A brief summary of it will suffice, and those who desire more information on the subject will find a full account of it in the History of the Macleods. [By the same author. ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... prosperous; their visits to that quarter were over frequent: not that an instance of inebriety occurred on board, but the stimulant, together with the quantity of tobacco they use, must, I am sure, be ruinous to both health and enjoyment. I found most of them complaining of dyspepsia, but had much difficulty to induce them to admit the possibility of their own habits being at least as much the cause ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... 'do for' the Vicar, who had taken solitary possession of the Vicarage, but would soon be joined there by one or more curates. He had been inducted into the ruinous chancel of the poor old church, had paid the architect of the Rat-house fifty pounds (a sum just equalling the proceeds of the bazaar) to be rid of his plans; had brought down a first-rate architect; and in the meantime was working the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the ruinous sweep, There shrieks are heard, there lamentations, moans, And blasphemies 'gainst ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... dread pest of the trees, drought of the waters, snares of the birds, and the hunter's net of the wild beasts, but ruinous to man is the love of a delicate maiden. O father, O Zeus, I have not been the only lover, thou too hast longed for a ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... have long been festering within. How many times in the history of "civilization" has a bigoted religious clique, or a swollen-headed military clique, or a greedy commercial gang—caring not one jot for the welfare of the people committed to its charge—dragged them into a senseless and ruinous war for the satisfaction of its own supposed interests! It is here and in this direction (which searches deeper than the mere weighing and balancing of Foreign policies and Diplomacies) that we must look for the "explanation" of ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... of this inn." I gave him twenty guineas, and he disappeared again for ten days. At the end of that time he returned once more, horribly dishevelled, dirty and extended. He looked to be just out and about again after a ruinous debauch. He talked in hollow whispers, he trembled in the limbs, he started and turned pale at a shadow, or the sound of a mouse in the wainscot. He said he had been to Ancona, Gubbio, Rimini, Ravenna, Chioggia, Venice, Udine, Trieste. He demanded money—fifty guineas; but this time I gave him ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... grew more and more ruinous, and at last one day the old night-owl had quitted her nest and was gone. Nobody mourned for her. Who takes any count of the birds of the field or the beasts of ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... Oldbuck; "I ought to have known what it was to give you advantage over meBut here is what will stop your career of satire, for you are an admirer of nature, I know." In fact, when they had followed him through a breach in a low, ancient, and ruinous wall, they came suddenly upon a ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Nicholas were as concise as usual. He liked his situation, liked his company, had as much work as he wished for, and had enjoyed good health. When Newton entered upon pecuniary matters, which he was the sooner induced to do by observing that his father's coat and smallclothes were in a most ruinous condition, he discovered, that although the old gentleman had provided himself with money from the bankers, during the first year, to purchase a new suit of clothes, latterly he not only had quite forgotten ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... no whit intimidated by the news that Mrs. Reade sowed abroad. The women exclaimed and chattered, the men gaped and shook their heads, the children hung about the ruinous gate that shut them out from the twenty-yard strip of garden which led up to Stott's cottage. Curiosity was the dominant emotion. Any excuse was good enough to make friendly overtures, but the baby remained invisible ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... fact, whether they be true or false, at the very heart of the social philosophy of the world; we have in the third place to detect the fundamental character of the blunder involved in them—to see clearly and coldly wherein they are wrong and why they are ruinous; we have, finally, to trace, if we can, their deadly effects both in the course of human history and in the present ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... water, and the outsides of the buildings were still belted with a broad stain extending upwards from the foundations. Stranded and discarded scows lay all about; plank sidewalks on stilts four feet high were still standing; the board sidewalks on the ground level were loose and ruinous,—a couple of men trotting along them could make a blind man think a cavalry charge was coming; everywhere the mud was black and deep, and in many places malarious pools of stagnant water were standing. A Mississippi inundation is the next most wasting and desolating ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was not ready to surrender, though he knew now that he had committed a woful blunder. In fact, the knowledge that he was dealing with Frank Merriwell aroused him to a fierce resistance. He felt that it would simply be ruinous to be held and recognized by Merriwell, and he began to fight like a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... desired advancement. Hadding was going to fall upon him, but while he was passing Norway in his fleet he saw upon the beach an old man signing to him, with many wavings of his mantle, to put into shore. His companions opposed it, and declared that it would be a ruinous diversion from their journey; but he took the man on board, and was instructed by him how to order his army. For this man, in arranging the system of the columns, used to take special care that ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... been, from the middle of the eighteenth century, the scene of a succession of ruinous civil wars. Competitors, with more or less right to the throne, had carried fire and sword everywhere, and converted that rich and fertile province into a desert, where the remains of ruined cities alone bore witness to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... pocket-compass stood me in good stead; and by it I steered for the open plain, in the centre of which stood the camp. But it was terribly hard work—this of plunging through an African jungle, ruinous to clothes, and trying to the cuticle. In order to travel quickly, I had donned a pair of flannel pyjamas, and my feet were encased in canvas shoes. As might be expected, before I had gone a few paces a branch of the acacia horrida—only one of a hundred such annoyances—caught ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... your Aunt Carabas, added to the twenty thousand francs that your husband earns, you must keep a carriage; and since you go to all the theatres without paying, since journalists are the heroes of all the inaugurations so ruinous for those who keep up with the movement of Paris, and since they are constantly invited to dinner, you live as if you had an income of sixty thousand francs a year! Happy Caroline! I don't wonder ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... and a host of other abominations; and that they should be made to give them up not from mere fear of European cannon, but of their own wills and consciences, seeing that such habits are wrong and ruinous, and loathing them accordingly; in a word, that instead of living as they do, and finding in a hundred ways that the wages of sin are death, they should be converted—that ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... the savings of our industry, the funds accumulated in many years of prosperity and peace, to increase that produce whose value had already fallen so much? He thought not. The permission given by the bill would lead to ruinous speculations. Everyone would purchase negroes. It was well known that those who dealt in this property would sell it at a very long credit. Our citizens would purchase at all hazards and trust to fortunate crops and favorable markets for making ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... partridges may be asleep then and there, but the katydids are awake, and, with the support of contralto and barytone tree-toads, manage to keep up a concert which cannot fail to impress on you a sense of familiar and friendly company. Don't talk of the loneliness of a deserted and ruinous castle;—the crickets have not left it, and, if you don't have a merry time with their shrill jokes, it will be your own fault. But if you would have a sense of being terribly alone, come from long residence in some quiet country-home on the border of a quiet country-village, into the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... a company for surveying and forming a railway, Mr. Pease had great difficulties to encounter. The people of the neighbourhood spoke of it as a ridiculous undertaking, and predicted that it would be ruinous to all concerned. Even those most interested in the opening of new markets for their coal, were indifferent, if not actually hostile. The Stockton merchants and shipowners, whom it was calculated so greatly to benefit, gave the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... cyclone every summer, and by open war or secret scalp-raid every month in the year; and then say that the racking nerve-strain of the commuter's time-table, the deadly clash of the wheat-pit, or the rasping grind of office-hours, would be ruinous to the uncivilized nervous system. Certainly, in those belated savages, the dwellers in our slums, hysteria, diseases of the imagination, enjoyment of ill health, and the whole brood of functional nervous disturbances are just as common as they ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... little bay of Port Gorey (just a lovers' paradise), where I let "Begum" have a run ashore while I sketched. Here are situate the mines which were abandoned many years ago as a dismal failure, leaving as a legacy to those fond of sketching some ruinous cottages and huge chimney shafts, which look down on the little Bay of Gorey, as Gog and Magog look down on the visitors to the ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... poverty? Or, which of us has not had experience of some unjust will, stealing our rights by evil influence? Or of the seemingly luckless accident killing off our intending benefactor just before that promised codicil? Or of the ruinous investment? Or of the bankrupt Life Assurance? Or of the unhappy fact of your autograph, "a mere matter of form," on the back of some dishonoured bill of one's defaulting friend? Yet all these are providences too,—lessons of life, and parts ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... as the morning advanced, I went again, accompanied by Hannah, to the police court and to the prison—a vast, ancient, in parts ruinous, and most gloomy pile of building. In those days the administration of justice was, if not more corrupt, certainly in its inferior departments by far more careless than it is at present, and liable to thousands of interruptions and mal-practices, supporting themselves upon ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... 120 miles to the wreck. It appears that Raouf Bey, with many other vessels, was in company with the lost noggur. To work in this country is simply heart-breaking; the material is utterly worthless, boats, officers, and men are all alike. The loss of invaluable time is ruinous, and the ignorance of the people is such that they can do nothing by themselves; thus I must be everywhere and ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... with a tragic solemnity, that the monster UTILITARIA, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth to do her work;—to tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples with her broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better might be built! Remarkable in this point of view are ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... competent French general must have converted into an absolute rout; whilst, had he followed the advice and wishes of Lord Raglan, we should probably have entered Sebastopol in a fortnight, instead of having to wait three years for an event which was afterwards accomplished at a ruinous waste of time, men, materiel, and money.[148] We had defeated the Russians at Inkerman without French assistance,[149] whilst the timidity and professional jealousy on that occasion of Marshal Canrobert ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... we might equally set at defiance the talents of Bonaparte and the blunders of his rival Mr. Canning: we could then support the ruinous and silly bustle of our useless expeditions, and the almost incredible ignorance of our commercial Orders in Council.[53] Let the present administration give up but this one point, and there is nothing which I would not consent ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... entrance-front of the palace—the wing of Louis XII. The restoration here has been lavish; but it was perhaps but an inevitable reaction against the injuries, still more lavish, by which the unfortunate building had long been overwhelmed. It had fallen into a state of ruinous neglect, relieved only by the misuse proceeding from successive generations of soldiers, for whom its charming chambers served as barrack-room. Whitewashed, mutilated, dishonoured, the castle of Blois may be ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... had its barn and out-buildings attached at right angles, with a cart-path leading thereto from the street; but at the top of the slope, on the other side of the schoolward path, stood a large, half-ruinous old barn, used only for storing surplus hay. The door of this great, gray, swaying structure usually stood open, and in it, on an old wreck of a wheelbarrow, sat Mindy Toggs, in fair ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... now there were other thoughts forcing their way to the front. How would their names live in history? How would Englishmen throughout the world regard this deed? Was it really the truth they were following, or some false and ruinous shadow? These were fugitive doubts, perhaps, but to more than one of those midnight toilers they presented themselves in the guise of a chill and ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her how, about a week ago, being caught by a wild flurry of rain in an outlying part of the island, behind the black cottages and Inn, he took shelter in a disused ruinous boat-house opening on the great reed-beds which here rim the shore. A melancholy, forsaken place, from which, at low tide, you can walk across the mud-flats to Lampit, with a pleasing chance of being sucked under by quicksands. Abram Sclanders' unhappy half-witted son haunted ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... as he did in that island of good elevated land in the great wild fen where inhabitants were scarce, everybody was looked upon as an intimate friend, and half the lad's time was spent at the bottom of the slope beyond the ruinous walls of the old Priory, watching the water to see how much higher it had risen, and to gaze out afar and watch for the ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... make haste to have them explained; but while we are young, life seems so spacious and so full of chances that we fetch a large compass round about such things, and wait for favoring fortuities, and hope for occasions precisely fit; we linger in dangerous delays, and take risks that may be ruinous. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... old gentleman. "You know that at present these shares are scarcely saleable except at a ruinous discount, and it would be a pity to part with them just now, seeing that there is some hope of improvement at this time. There is nothing for it but to sell my estate, and I don't think there will be enough left to buy butter ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... mechanism of money. Nothing is going to depart but the knots and tangles. There will be some readjustments, of course. Banks will no longer be the masters of industry. They will be the servants of industry. Business will control money instead of money controlling business. The ruinous interest system will be greatly modified. Banking will not be a risk, but a service. Banks will begin to do much more for the people than they do now, and instead of being the most expensive businesses in the world to manage, and the most highly profitable in ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... true story. A type still of progress triumphant through injustice, set on improving things off the face of the earth, Theseus took occasion to attack the Amazons in their mountain home, not long after their ruinous conflict with Hercules, and hit them when they were down. That greater bully had laboured off on the world's highway, carrying with him the official girdle of Antiope, their queen, gift of Ares, and therewith, it would seem, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... time in many years it seemed certain that the Conservatives had lost their hold upon the country. The times were ripe for a change of any sort. An ill-conducted and ruinous war had drained the empire of its surplus wealth, and every known industry was suffering from an almost paralyzing depression—Medchester, perhaps, as severely as any town in the United Kingdom. Its staple manufactures ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a sadly ruinous one, as, independently of the attempts to assimilate Assaroo, at five rupees four annas, with Jumowah, at nine rupees per biggah, which is very easily effected if the planter is not very vigilant, he is obliged to maintain an extensive and imposing establishment of servants, not only ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... countries, extraordinary; for the Church acquired treasures and large properties in land, even to a greater extent than after the crusades; but experience has demonstrated that such a state of things is ruinous to the people, and causes them to retrograde, as was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... kings." Through this door we enter the nave of the cathedral; this part of the building was erected towards the end of the fourteenth century; Lanfranc's nave seems to have fallen into an unsafe and ruinous state, so much so that in December, 1378, Sudbury, who was then archbishop, "issued a mandate addressed to all ecclesiastical persons in his diocese enjoining them to solicit subscriptions for rebuilding the nave of the church, 'propter ipsius notoriam et evidentem ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... too, should he choose to be vociferous; but the houses about him all stand within their own pleasant grounds. His nearest neighbor, on the one hand, has placed a fine orchard between them, and on the other hand, he has no neighbor at all; there is a vacant lot, well planted and pleasantly ruinous to see. A fine dwelling had once occupied the site, but fire had destroyed it, and the gaping cellar, a pile of burnt bricks, and some charred debris, are all that remain. In summer the place is one tangled growth of roses and flowering shrubs, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the traits of the old English hotel, which was dark, cold, grim, and silently rapacious, heavy In appointments and unwholesome in refection. The new sort of hotel is apt to be large, but it is of all sizes, and it offers a home reasonably cheerful on inclusive terms not at all ruinous. It has a table-d'hote dinner at separate tables and a fair version of the French cuisine. If it is one of the more expensive, it will not be dearer than our dearest, and if one of the cheaper, it will be better in every way than our cheaper. The supply ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... interestingly before a large audience. Keep your papers where you can get at them easily. Be careful not to lose your place so that you will have to shuffle them to get the cue for continuing. Pauses are not dangerous when they are made deliberately for effect, but they are ruinous when they betray to the audience forgetfulness or embarrassment on the part of the speaker. Anticipate your need. Get your help before you actually need it, so that you can ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... Nor do I mean to abuse the Americans and Nova Scotians who sometimes slink inside the three-mile limit. But I do mean to draw attention to the regrettable fact that the absence of all wild-life conservation is becoming ruinous to everyone concerned—even to the exterminating Newfoundlanders, who are now making our shores as bleak a desert as ...
— Draft of a Plan for Beginning Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... family that was thought worthy of their notice. The consequences of this association were, to some few of the visited, fortunate; to more, injurious, by exciting expectations which were never to be realized, and, unhappily, to no small number ruinous. The known wealth of the father and, possibly, the presence of a high-spirited brother, forbade any apprehension of the latter danger to the young ladies: but it was impossible that all the admiration ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Hall, and there to visit Sir G. Carteret, and there was with him a great while, and my Lady and they seem in very good humour, but by and by Sir G. Carteret and I alone, and there we did talk of the ruinous condition we are in, the King being going to put out of the Council so many able men; such as my Lord Anglesey, Ashly, Hopis, Secretary Morrice (to bring in Mr. Trevor), and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and my Lord Bridgewater. He tells me that this is true, only the Duke ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... pretences; or lauding some Richard Cromwell's choice of a quiet country life, before the turbulent honours of a proffered Protectorate; while Thales, with his all but old English proverb of "more haste, less speed," would apply admirably to Sultan Mahmoud's ruinous reforms; or to the actual injury gulled Britain has done to the condition of negroes in general by a vastly too precipitate abolition of the slave-trade: a vile evil, indeed, but a cancer of too long creeping ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... astronomer to calculate great distances. I quite compassionate those little fellows, our colleagues." His eyes twinkled behind his rimless spectacles. "Just amuse yourself with these photographs awhile. Not in your line, perhaps, but interesting to us glow-worms that flit about in ruinous places. I 'll be with you in a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... said the earl, in a voice of horrified astonishment, "how enough?—how can anything be enough after such a course—so wild, so mad, so ruinous!" ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... and inclination of the people, they will be resented as arbitrary and harsh; as, on the other side, too much deference, or encouragement, as too often it has been, to popular faults and errors, is full of danger and ruinous consequences. But where concession is the response to willing obedience, and a statesman gratifies his people, that he may the more imperatively recall them to a sense of the common interest, then, indeed, human beings, who are ready enough ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... meeting. That a person in their employ should differ from them boldly, and condemn their course openly, was an extraordinary event; that a young man in the outset of his career should dare so much was unprecedented. It would be a ruinous thing, they said among themselves, for so young a man to lose so important a position on the very threshold of his professional life, and they were convinced that his knowledge of this would restrain him. But they were astounded to find that it ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... paying them he regarded as a just restitution to himself; and all the sums which were struck off from their accounts he regarded as so much deducted from a theft. The less a Minister paid out of his budget the more Bonaparte was pleased with him; and this ruinous system of economy can alone explain the credit which Decres so long enjoyed at the expense of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and a passion for wild adventure lingered among the Eliots, Armstrongs, Kerrs, Rutherfords, Homes, Johnstons, and other marauding clans, who acknowledged no law but march law, and held slack allegiance to "the King of Lothian and Fife." Every owner of a half-ruinous "peel" or border keep had a band of retainers within call, like the nine-and-twenty knights of fame who hung their shields in Branksome Hall; and he could summon them at short notice, for a raid upon the English or a foray against ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to the rocket, adjusted the angle of the nozzle again, and advanced the firing time slightly, even at the risk of a ruinous explosion. ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... the laws, which are based upon long experience, and the wisdom of counsellors who have graciously recommended them and persuaded the multitude to pass them, would be a far greater and more ruinous error than any adherence to ...
— Statesman • Plato
... he was asked, told them, that a ruinous turret, lang disused, next to the clock-house, only accessible by a ladder, for the opening was on the outside, and far above the battlements, was called of ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... followed, hastily gathering a few treasured possessions. The warriors, awakening the forest echoes with their defiant war-cries, took up their position in an old fort which commanded the river. From the opposite side the Kentucky rifle-men assailed the fort, which, in its decayed and ruinous condition, offered but poor shelter. The Indians quickly evacuated it, but not before several had been killed. While the defenders were occupied by the attack from across the river, a detachment of the enemy crept round through the wood ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... system of long payments which exists here is a wholesome one as regards the habits of the fishermen?-I think it is most ruinous. I think I have had very good opportunities of judging of the effect of the system upon the people, being intimately acquainted with them, and having received the statements in private of a great many of them; and I cannot conceive any system which could be more ruinous in a moral point of view, ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... attempt to write verses, and the idle hours threw him again into evil company, similar to that from which he had escaped at Burghley Park. There were, among the labourers of Helpston, two brothers of the name of John and James Billings, who lived, unmarried, at a ruinous old cottage, nicknamed Bachelors' Hall. Both were given to poaching, hard drinking, and general rowdyism, and fond, besides, of meeting kindred spirits, of the same turn of mind, at the riotous evening assemblies in their little cottage. Hitherto, John Clare's ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... of which he would conceal until he entered the cavity. Once there, it could not be perceived by the sentinels above—it would guide him through all obstacles, preserve him through all dangers. Massive as it was, he felt convinced that the interior of the wall was in as ruinous a condition as the outside. Caution and perseverance were sufficient of themselves to insure to his efforts the speediest and ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... we get to Halle, within Prussian land; and then seven hundred more to our place there, in the utmost East. Men, women, infants and hoary grandfathers are here;—most of their property sold,—still on ruinous conditions, think of it, your Majesty. Their poor bits of preciosities and heirlooms they have with them; made up in succinct bundles, stowed on ticketed baggage-wains; "some have their own poor cart and horse, to carry the too old and the too young, those that cannot ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... ancient times lies on hills and among them. It has an air of mountain savagery. It looks like a ruined mediaeval fortress. Broken archways, once part of the Appian Way, are made into substructures for ragged, ruinous modern houses. The place is peaked and pined, desolate, hungry and savage. In it was born Fra Diavolo, who was brigand, soldier and political servant to Cardinal Ruffo when the French Republic, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... and in America, in my time, it was almost at the peril of reputation, both for model and sculptor, that an artist employed the living model, even if he could procure it. Now, I understand, a few models may be obtained in New York; but they are so rare and so expensive, that it is almost ruinous to employ them. It costs two or three dollars there to secure a model which here may be had for half a day for forty cents. There is no want of models here; but their history is a sad one, and makes one often seriously lament the necessity for employing ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... grew in favor with his employer. He walked daily from his chamber to the library without the aid of a crutch. He took his meals with the family. And oh! ruinous extravagance, he wore his Sunday suit every day! There was no help for it, since he must sit in the judge's library and eat at ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... incense to our own net, the mixture ruins the devotion. 'Obedience is better than sacrifice.' Temptations to take our own way will often appear as the dictates of sound policy, and to neglect them as culpable carelessness. But such paltering with plain commandments is as ruinous as sinful, and is not to be atoned for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... father held a croft then on the estate of Brough, of which Mrs. Sinclair was proprietor, and she bound him over to fish for Mr. Bruce at that time, although she did not take the fishing herself. That fishing came to be the most ruinous concern that ever happened to my family, because it brought my father into debt that he might otherwise have been ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... is best exemplified in the experiments with pigeons. Pasteur saved the silk industry of France, and perhaps of the whole world, by the application of this law of artificial selection. The disease of silkworms, known as Pebrine, was spreading with ruinous rapidity in France. Pasteur demonstrated that the germ of the disease could be detected in the blood of affected moths by the aid of the microscope. He proved that the eggs of diseased moths produced unhealthy worms, and he advised ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... residence dead drunk, in open daylight. But why spend a single breath in referring to such miserable specimens of humanity? The world knows what they are; and Canada ought to have some slight acquaintance with them: as they built her into the worthless Grand Trunk at a ruinous figure, and, like her present, leading, political juggler, Sir John A., fleeced her in every direction that a collop could be ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... place is this same Jaraicejo, a small ruinous town or village, situated on a rising ground, with a very wild country all about it. The road from Badajoz to Madrid passes through it; and about two leagues distant, in the direction of Madrid, is the famous mountain pass ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... to rest, because the country, though pretty enough, has none of that exquisite richness and luxuriance which we had been led to expect as characteristic of the South of France. The houses, too, being all in a ruinous and dilapidated condition, reminded us more forcibly of the scenes of violence and outrage which had been lately acted among them, than of those ideas of rural contentment and innocence which various tales and melodramas ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... sea, were orange orchards. Spring burst over the happy land with an explosion of color and perfume. Wild flowers grew among the rocks; branches of the trees were decked in waving green; poor habitations of the peasants concealed ruinous poverty beneath canopies of climbing roses. Rustic families from towns far and near gathered at the fiesta of Soller: the women in white rebocillos, heavy mantillas, and with gold buttons on their sleeves; the men in gay waistcoats, homespun woolen cloaks, and hats with colored bands. Concertinas ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Canons, were entitled to free quarters in the Abbey. During Byron's brief tenure of Newstead, and for long years before, these "huge halls, long galleries, and spacious chambers" (stanza lxxvii. line 1) were half dismantled, and in a more or less ruinous condition. A few pictures remained on the walls of the Great Drawing-room, of the Prior's Parlour, and in the apartments of the south-east wing or annexe, which dates from the seventeenth century (see the account of a visit to Newstead in 1812, in Beauties of England ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... carried Alexander into the East, or brought Caesar into Gaul? Are the nations of the world into which Christianity hath not found its way, or from which it hath been banished, free from contentions? Are their contentions less ruinous and sanguinary? Is it owing to Christianity, or to the want of it, that the regions of the East, the countries inter quatuor maria, peninsula of Greece, together with a great part of the Mediterranean ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... did very well with the other plays, Godolphin. Why do you want to touch the thing again? It's been ruinous to you so far. Give it up! Come! I can't let you ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... be the death of me! The cloth is never off the table. I quite expect Mary will give notice at the end of the month, and goodness knows what we shall do then, for it seems impossible to get hold of respectable girls. The milk-bill has just come in for the month. Ruinous! Ruinous! Now, my love, you must really cheer up and try to look more like yourself. Perhaps I shall find you on the sofa when I come back. Tell nurse not to use my best cushions; your own ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... philosophy and science, in politics and government, so here too there is an unbroken chain; the accumulated experience of centuries moulded us to be just such as we are; and this state of our taste can and must only be modified by degrees; nor could anything be more ruinous than a sudden revolution which should throw everything topsy turvy. In every field of human action history is ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... and sacred, and then see that home turned into a place of danger and torment under laws that these very preachers have made legal and respectable. A dog don't have to see its property taxed to advance laws it believes ruinous, and that breaks its own heart and the heart of other dear dogs. A dog don't have to listen to soul-sickening speeches from them that deny it freedom and justice, about its bein' a damask rose and a seraph, when it knows it hain't; it knows, if it knows ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... the world. I wish it may be written on our hearts to be zealous for that interest." The first step in such a struggle would necessarily be to league the Protestant powers together, and Cromwell's earliest efforts were directed to bring the ruinous and indecisive quarrel with Holland to an end. The fierceness of the strife had grown with each engagement; but the hopes of Holland fell with her admiral, Tromp, who received a mortal wound at a moment when he had succeeded in ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... personally in their report. He had spent the money no doubt, but had so spent it that at every election it appeared that he had not expected to spend it till the bills were sent to him. He frankly owned that the borough had been ruinous to him; had made a poor man of him,—but assured the Commission at the same time that all this had come from his continued innocence. As every new election came round, he had hoped that that would at least be pure, and had been urgent in his instructions ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... requisites are, to have the ground in good condition, from manure on the crop of the last season, and thoroughly subsoiled and drained. Pear-trees delight in rather heavy land, if it be well drained; but water, standing in the soil about them, is utterly ruinous. Pear-trees, well transplanted on moderately rich land, well subsoiled and well drained, will almost always succeed. By observing the following brief directions, any cultivator may have just such shaped tops on his pear-trees as he desires. Cut short any shoots that are too vigorous, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... money would trust them; and of course they were obliged to have recourse to Jews and other usurers, who did not afford them the temporary assistance they required, but upon the most exorbitant and ruinous conditions; so that these unfortunate people, instead of finding themselves at their ease upon coming into possession of the emoluments of their offices, were frequently so embarrassed in their circumstances as to be obliged to mortgage their salaries ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... cried a scoffing voice an ominous word: "Why doth a raving tongue of evil speech, Daughter of Priam, make thy lips to cry Words empty as wind? No maiden modesty With purity veils thee: thou art compassed round With ruinous madness; therefore all men scorn Thee, babbler! Hence, thine evil bodings speak To the Argives and thyself! For thee doth wait Anguish and shame yet bitterer than befell Presumptuous Laocoon. Shame it were In folly to destroy the ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... whole squalid business. Almost any kind of amusement, not accompanied with betting, is, to an increasing number of people, as insipid as water is to the palate of a brandy-drinker. In the case of young men the habit does two things: it gives rise to false and ruinous impressions, and it murders the soul. As touching the former, it tempts a young man to think he can get a living, and a flourishing one, without working for it—a greatly coveted science in these days. It seems so much easier to put money in the pocket this way, than by honest toil with ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... other side of the chateau, was making a constant tinkle and splashing in a wide marble basin, and the jet of water glimmered like a shower of diamonds in the broken moonlight. The very neglect and half-ruinous state of all this made it only the prettier, as well as sadder. I was too intently watching for the arrival of the lady, in the direction of the chateau, to study these things; but the half-noted effect of them was romantic, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... deal since I have been away, and have walked several hundred miles. Amongst other places I have seen St. David's, a wonderful half-ruinous Cathedral at the western end of Pembrokeshire; but I shall be glad to ...
— Letters to his wife Mary Borrow • George Borrow
... line 1. 'The ruinous castle of Norham (anciently called Ubbanford) is situated on the southern bank of the Tweed, about six miles above Berwick, and where that river is still the boundary between England and Scotland. The extent of its ruins, as well as its historical ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... to adapt an old building to the wants of the new civilization. He had placed his new erection beside it as a slightly attached structure, harmonizing with the old; heightening and beautifying, rather than subduing it. His work formed a palace, with a ruinous castle annexed as a curiosity. To Havill the conception had more charm than it could have to the most appreciative outsider; for when a mediocre and jealous mind that has been cudgelling itself over a problem capable of many solutions, lights on the solution of a rival, all possibilities in that ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... authority of these simple laws. The principles which are right in the administration of a few fields, are right also in the administration of a great country from horizon to horizon: idleness does not cease to be ruinous because it is extensive, nor labour to be ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... province are Tours, and Rouen, Evreux, and Troyes. The Grecian and Penine Alps have, besides other towns of less note, Avenche, a city which indeed is now deserted, but which was formerly one of no small importance, as even now is proved by its half-ruinous edifices. These are the most important provinces, and most splendid cities of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... funeral? or a fight? Soon the mob came up with profound salutations, and smiles of self- satisfaction, evidently thinking that they had done a fine thing; and disclosed, hanging on a long bamboo, their one church-bell. Their old church (a clay and timber thing of their own handiwork) had become ruinous; and they dared not leave their bell aloft in it. But now they were going to build themselves a new and larger church, Government giving them the site; and the bell, being on furlough, was put into requisition to ring in His Excellency the Governor ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... 18— belonged to another Abner Dimock, who kept tavern in Greenfield, a town of Western Massachusetts, and, like his father and grandfather before him, had one only son. In the mean time, the old house in Haddam township had fallen into a ruinous condition, and, as the farm was very small, and unprofitable chestnut-woodland at that, the whole was leased to an old negro and his wife, who lived there in the most utter solitude, scratching the soil for a few beans and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... at my ruinous state, Don't lift up your noses and sneer: I've a pitiful story I wish to relate, And, I pray you, believe ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... the life, with a tin crown upon her head. Neither the town nor the inhabitants had any thing of the appearance of French about them; every thing and every body looked so wild, and the place was in such a ruinous condition, that I could scarce believe I was not among the Arabs in Egypt, or the ruins of Persepolis. Without the town, in a fine beautiful lawn stands a most irregular high and rude rock, perpendicular ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... their separation from the common life of the people. It is the same still with very rich folk who are able to evade the harsh conscription of life; in evading the conscription of life they invariably deteriorate in physical and mental fibre. I can conceive nothing more ruinous to a young man than that he should have just enough money to make the toil for bread unnecessary. More lives have been spoiled by competence than by poverty; indeed, I doubt whether poverty has any effect at all upon a strong character, except ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... long years the little town of Fitchburg bore bravely and unflinchingly the hardships of the war. The burden to the inhabitants of furnishing their quota of men, money, and provisions, was a heavy one, the depreciation of the currency was ruinous; and they, in common with the rest of the people, found themselves in serious financial difficulties at the close of the war. Taxes were high and money scarce, and the efforts of the authorities to collect the sums levied on the inhabitants finally led to organized resistance, which has come ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... say, Jo has not yet died—in a ruinous place known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-Alone's. It is a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people, where the crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... papers, but from Cadell, Constable's partner, is that the losses were due partly to the absolutely unbusinesslike conduct of the concern, and the neglect for many years to come to a clear understanding what its profits were and what they were not; partly to the ruinous system of eternally interchanged and renewed bills, so that, for instance, sums which Constable nominally paid years before were not actually liquidated at the time of the smash; but most of all to a proceeding which seems to pass the bounds ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... was a dreary old craft, in a dirty and ruinous condition. It was carrying a heavy load of grain, and this made the journey so slow that, by sunrise, they were still within a distant view ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... Arnold, I have heard you to the end, though you have spoken insultingly of councils in which I have had my share. Will you look at this little clause in this paper, Sir. The excitement you speak of will come ere long, and that at a rate less ruinous than this whole army's loss. There's a line—there's a line, Sir, that will make null and void, very soon, if not on the instant, all the evil of these golden promises. There'll be excitement enough ere long; but better blood than that shed in battle fields ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... wise and brave stratagem of the wife is brought to ruinous issue by the reckless impatience of her husband. In Winter's Tale, and in Cymbeline, the happiness and existence of two princely households, lost through long years, and imperilled to the death by the folly and obstinacy ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... a continual ferment of expropriation and internal revolution. Yet it is difficult to conceive how a spiritual Power like the Papacy could have solved the problem set before it of becoming a substantial secular sovereignty, without recourse to this ruinous method. The Pope, a lonely man upon an ill-established throne, surrounded by rivals whom his elevation had disappointed, was compelled to rely on the strong arm of adventurers with whose interests his own were indissolubly ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... cease to be a city And shall be a ruinous heap. Its cities shall be given up to flocks Which shall lie down, with none to make them afraid. Ephraim shall lose her bulwark, And Damascus her sovereignty, And the rest of Syria shall perish; Like the Israelites shall they be, Saith the Lord ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... circular chapel, as in the churches of St. Georges, of St. Taurin at Evreux, of Fecamp, of Cerisy, and in several other ancient religious buildings in Normandy. Nor is England altogether without specimens of the same kind: a similar chapel, now in a ruinous state, and called by Blomefield, "the sexterie or ancient vestry," is joined to the north transept of Norwich cathedral; and near the eastern extremity of the same church, are four others. But the principal characteristic of those ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... that I should think in another year or so, at the rate she was going, she would have landed you in the bankruptcy court. Her books for the last ten years—I have gone through them carefully—show an expenditure that is positively ruinous. However, I think I have let her see that her housekeeping must be done upon very ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... artillery had occasioned during the siege were still uneffaced. Though the modern fortifications, built after the model of Vauban, have not the romantic or picturesque aspect which belongs to the aged towers of Montreuil, Abbeville, or Laon, or the more ruinous walls of the town of Conway in Wales, yet they present a pleasing spectacle, arising partly from the regularity of the forms themselves, and partly from the association with which they ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... disappeared centuries ago, and the land, once fertile, is now covered with aloe, cactus, and thorn, while an air of weary heat and desolation envelops it. Some idea of its size may be formed when I tell you that a thousand of its pagodas are known by name, while as many more are little but a heap of ruinous brickwork. ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... by the French and by Charles de Bourbon, Comte de Clermont, at the Battle of the Herrings. But of this I knew nothing—as, indeed, the battle was not yet fought—and only pushed on for France, thinking to take service with the Dauphin against the English. My journey was through a country ruinous enough, for, though the English were on the further bank of the Loire, the partisans of the Dauphin had made a ruin round themselves and their holds, and, not being paid, they ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... until he had avenged. He would drag you before a bench of magistrates and fine you. Your father, if I know him, would refuse to pay the fine; and to prison you would go, with the taint of it to lie upon your good name forever. The penalty would be wrong, outrageous, ruinous; no rich man would submit to it, but a poor man must. Is this the truth, Daniel, or is it what it ought to be—a scandalous misdescription of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Madmen like Pitt, demons like Castlereagh, mischievous idiots like Perceval, were the tyrants, the curses of the country, the destroyers of her trade. It was their infatuated perseverance in an unjustifiable, a hopeless, a ruinous war, which had brought the nation to its present pass. It was their monstrously oppressive taxation, it was the infamous "Orders in Council"—the originators of which deserved impeachment and the scaffold, if ever public men did—that hung ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... entirely until this evening. Fortunately, he can settle it to-morrow; those disagreeable publishers of his have telegraphed for him to come to New York at once, you know. Otherwise—dear, dear! but marrying a genius is absolutely ruinous to one's credit, isn't it, Rudolph? The tradespeople will refuse to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... A hovel represented what was still called the parsonage-house: it stood on a glebe of three hundred acres of the stiffest clay in Yorkshire: a brick-floored kitchen, with a room above it, both in a ruinous condition was the residence which, for a hundred and fifty years, had never been inhabited by an incumbent. It will not be a matter of surprise that for some time, until 1808, Sydney Smith, with the permission of the Archbishop of York, continued to reside in London, after having ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... proof of the efficacy of the improvements in the service was given, as in the twenty-two wrecks occurring that season on the Long Island and New Jersey coasts not a single life was lost. In a word, Mr. Kimball began successfully the seemingly hopeless task of converting the dirty, ruinous station-houses and their lazy, disorderly keepers and crews, scattered along the coast, to the order, discipline and efficiency of forts and drilled soldiers, and the result proved that order and discipline, when evolved out of the worst materials, can grapple with and conquer even the sea. In ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... iron heart of his will that it should go no further. Talkative young Hammerton had given him the hint how that might be accomplished; and if the method was extreme, it would be sure. Whatever the cost, it would be a small price to pay for keeping his name, and Uncle Elbert's, out of ruinous headlines ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... less ruinous than the big house, Pierre and Wilbur took their horses, and a series of whinnies greeted them from the stalls. To look down that line of magnificent heads raised above the partitions of the stalls ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... sale of intoxicating liquors to soldiers were all right, and an imperative military necessity. If the men had been allowed unlimited access to whisky, and the like, that would, in my opinion, simply have been ruinous to the good order, discipline, and efficiency of the army. That statement is based on events I saw myself while in the service, and which occurred when, in spite of the orders, the men managed to obtain liquor without ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... would be ruinous. Every society has a purpose, and the criminal population of Omega is bent upon its own self-destruction. Barrent, you look surprised. ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... "not only," "on the one hand," add clearness.*—Take the following sentence:—"You must take this extremely perilous course, in which success is uncertain, and failure disgraceful, as well as ruinous, or else the liberty of your country is endangered." Here, the meaning is liable to be misunderstood, till the reader has gone half through the sentence. Write "Either you must," &c., and the reader is, from the first, prepared for an alternative. ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... his beautiful little wife through half-closed eyes. He was puzzled. What curious change had been wrought in this exponent—this almost symbol—of thrift that she should actually encourage him in the pursuit of the ruinous course into which he'd been thrust by the wonderful dress suit! He said nothing, but he jotted down in ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... and irremediably overtake him if he had the hardihood to carry out his wicked purpose against Antonio and Marianna's peace and happiness. He depicted in startling colours the folly and madness of amorous old men, who call down upon their own heads the most ruinous mischief which Heaven can inflict upon a man, since all the love which might have fallen to their share is lost, and instead hatred and contempt shoot their fatal darts at ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... we had entered the gorge, we passed by a small farm-house on our right hand, with a hawthorn hedge before it, upon which seems to stand a peacock, curiously cut out of thorn. Passing on we came to a place called Pandy uchaf, or the higher Fulling mill. The place so called is a collection of ruinous houses, which put me in mind of the Fulling mills mentioned in "Don Quixote." It is called the Pandy because there was formerly a fulling mill here, said to have been the first established in Wales; which is still to be seen, but which is no longer worked. Just above the old mill there ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... He was not in the humour to be challenged, and he was conscious of making a very conspicuous mark upon the snow. Just on his left hand there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and a large porch before the door; it was half ruinous, he remembered, and had long stood empty; and so he made three steps of it, and jumped into the shelter of the porch. It was pretty dark inside, after the glimmer of the snowy streets, and he was groping forward with outspread hands, when he stumbled over some substance which ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... is the foreign element in our lives that runs away with the money. The foreign houses, foreign clothes, foreign food, are ruinous. In selecting missionaries, physique able to stand native houses, clothes, and food, should be as much a sine qua non as health to bear the native climate. Native clothes are, I believe, more safe for health than foreign clothes; they are more suited to ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... "Captain Wer," was found in congenial company at the Goletta by Monsieur de Breves, the French ambassador.[65] The causes of the change were twofold: first, Christian slaves were not always to be caught, and to hire rowers for the galleys was a ruinous expense; and secondly, the special service for which the smaller galleots and brigantines were particularly destined, the descents upon the Spanish coasts was to some degree obstructed by the final expulsion ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... have been subject to considerable variations from session to session. A bad harvest would sometimes tell seriously on the attendance, and a great crisis like that of 1772, when the effects of a succession of bad harvests were aggravated by ruinous mercantile speculations, deprived Adam Ferguson in the Edinburgh Moral Philosophy chair of half his usual income from fees. It may also be mentioned as a curious circumstance that in those days a professor used to lose regularly many pounds a year by light money. When ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... and mellowed brick, making a bright patchwork among the softening trees, thin wreaths of blue smoke, like airy ribbons, tangled through it all. Rising over the rest was a house of some dignity. It had been an old manor-house, now it was half ruinous and the village inn. Some generations back the squire of the day had dismantled it, jealous that so big a house should exist in the same parish as the Hall, and the spoils of it had furnished the rectory; so that the homely house was ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "you helped us at the last stage of our ascent. A mistake here had been ruinous, not only to myself and friends, but to the safety of the whole Government. You spoke wisely and practically. Sir, if I can ever in all my life serve you, command me, and at whatever price you name. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, took up ruinous obligations, dealt with usurers and all the race of lenders. He compromised all the rest of his life, risked signing a note without even knowing whether he could meet it; and, frightened by the trouble yet to come, by the black misery that was about to fall upon ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... with politics, and he assimilated what he read, Mr. Morley says that it was as true of Florence in the Sixteenth Century as of Athens, Corinth, Corcyra in the Fifth Century before Christ, as set forth in Thucydides, that it was a prey to intestine faction and the ruinous invocation of foreign aid. "These terrible calamities," says Thucydides, "always have been and always will be, while human nature remains the same. Words cease to have the same relations to things, and their meanings are changed to suit the ingenuities of enterprise and the atrocities ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... some resemblance to the usual uninhabited-looking exterior of a Spanish-American dwelling. Apertures that might have been lance-shaped windows or only cracks and fissures in the walls were choked up with weeds and grass, and gave no passing glimpse of the interior. Entering a ruinous corral they came to a second entrance, which proved to be the patio or courtyard. The deserted wooden corridor, with beams, rafters, and floors whitened by the sun and wind, contained a few withered leaves, dryly rotting skins, and thongs of leather, as if undisturbed by human care. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... very first had been guilty of a fatal error in the education of his pupil. He had governed him throughout on the ruinous principle of concession. Nero was not devoid of talent; he had a decided turn for Latin versification, and the few lines of his composition which have come down to us, bizarre and effected as they are, yet display a certain sense ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... he had the ill luck to push his sport too far, and did accidentally kill a knight in the open lists. To save the boy, I had to sell my lands and mortgage my ancestral castle; and this not being enough, in the end I have had to borrow money, at a ruinous interest, from my lord ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... sheltering him slightly from the cold blast with my body, as I walked before him. Presently the way turned abruptly, to zig-zag up a gap in the rock face, and I shouted a warning to Joseph to look after Innocentina and the animals, so steep and ruinous was the path. But I need not have been alarmed. A backward glance showed me that Joseph had anticipated my instructions, so far as Innocentina ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... This is implied in his doctrine that art can be good only if it is intelligible to most men. "The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time incomprehensible to a great number of people, is extremely unjust; and its consequences are ruinous to art itself." The word unjust implies the moral factor. I am not to enjoy a work of art if I know that others cannot enjoy it, because it is not fair that I should have a pleasure not shared by them. If I ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... wood we cried; Ah, Circe, Circe! but no voice replied; No voice from bowers o'ergrown and ruinous As fallen rocks upon ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... this church, and which were first commenced in Georgia, are a tradition there now. Here and there through the country yet remains, in ruinous decay, the old stand or extemporized pulpit from which the impassioned preacher addressed the assembled multitude of anxious listeners; and around the square now overgrown with brush-wood and forest-trees, prostrate and rotten, the remains of the cabin tents may be seen, where once ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... ruinous to sacrifice intellectual efficiency to the dogma of promotion from the ranks, and the statesmen of 1870 were perhaps right in thinking that promotion from the second to the first division of the service would be in their time so rare as to be negligible. But things have changed since then. ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
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