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Crumble   Listen
verb
Crumble  v. i.  To fall into small pieces; to break or part into small fragments; hence, to fall to decay or ruin; to become disintegrated; to perish. "If the stone is brittle, it will crumble and pass into the form of gravel." "The league deprived of its principal supports must soon crumble to pieces."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crumble" Quotes from Famous Books



... righteous acts, the attitude of receiving, which supersedes painful strife and weary endeavour. To seek after a righteousness which is 'my own,' is to seek what we shall never find, and what, if found, would crumble beneath us. To seek the righteousness which is from God, is to seek what He is waiting to bestow, and what the blessed receivers blessedly know is more than they ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the proud camps of Whig and Tory. If Mr. Hyndman were a man of keen humour, which is far from my conception of his character, he might rest from his troubling and look on: the walls of Jericho begin already to crumble and dissolve. That great servile war, the Armageddon of money and numbers, to which we looked forward when young, becomes more and more unlikely; and we may rather look to see a peaceable and blindfold evolution, the work of dull men immersed in political tactics and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and worthy of all honor. "Nothing," he says in one place, "is truer than the song of Beethoven. It is the song of life, the voice of truth, an infallible voice, which will create a world, and cause the old false world to crumble. Born of the people, the people sing in him, although they know him not." In painting, the heroes of the author are Ruysdael, Rembrandt, Claude-Lorraine, and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... guarantee that he would be shown fair play; for it was evident that unless in some way rights and obligations were fairly well balanced, and there was a fair return for service rendered, the whole system would soon crumble to pieces. ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... Creatures capable of Thought, who, in spite of every Argument, can form to themselves a sullen Satisfaction in thinking otherwise. There is something so pitifully mean in the inverted Ambition of that Man who can hope for Annihilation, and please himself to think that his whole Fabrick shall one Day crumble into Dust, and mix with the Mass of inanimate Beings, that it equally deserves our Admiration and Pity. The Mystery of such Mens Unbelief is not hard to be penetrated; and indeed amounts to nothing more than a sordid Hope that they shall not be ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... has been in other countries—and perchance to the mortification of some lordlings—that freedom is a mighty leveller of human distinctions. The pyramid of pride and prejudice which slavery had upreared there, must soon crumble ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... of water, and we are perfectly helpless. I was soon despatched; and my bones left to whiten on the sand. This was long ago; and, one by one, all my relics have been carried off or washed away. My jaw-bone has been used as a seat here, till it's worn out; but I couldn't crumble away till I'd told some one my story. Remember, child, pride goeth before ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... to a scarce less hideous reality. When midnight came, and the hammer clanged upon the great bell, a strange fancy took possession of my mind that it would this night strike Thirteen, and that at the thirteenth stroke the clock, the tower, the city, and the whole world, would crumble into atoms. Again I fell asleep and dreamt. I thought that my head was changed into a mighty bronze bell, and that I hung in the tower and heard the clock beside me strike Thirteen. Then came the old schoolmaster, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... extent upon the nature of the soap, and also on the amount of perfume or medicament to be added, but speaking generally, a range of 11 to 14 per cent. gives good results. If the soap contains less than this amount it is liable to crumble during the milling, will not compress satisfactorily, and the finished tablet may have a tendency to crack and contain gritty particles so objectionable in use. If, on the other hand, the soap is left too moist, it is apt to stick to the rollers and mill with difficulty, and during compression ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... the spot which falling drops decayed? For each betraying sound is deadened there. No yawning breach should in the walls be made, So treatises on robbery declare. Where does the palace crumble? Where the place That niter-eaten bricks false soundness wear? Where shall I 'scape the sight of woman's face? Fulfilment of my wishes waits me ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... know of any other way of applyin' 'em to her back, only to put 'em on it. But she insisted to the last that I didn't apply 'em right, and I didn't crumble the bread into the milk right, and the lobelia wuzn't picked right, ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... lagoon. Nearly all the grass is of a coarse sedge-like description, mixed, however, in places with grasses of a finer kind. Towards the end of the dry season, the grass, when not burnt off by the natives, presents a most uninviting, withered appearance, being so dry as almost to crumble into dust if rubbed between ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... if Greece also has been long hoping that when the Ottoman Empire did finally crumble—as it must—she might out of the wreck be able to bring together the long-separated fragments ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... annihilated into nothingness. Suns and worlds also die, after performing their allotted revolutions in the cycle of the universe. Suns glow for a time, and planets bear their fruitage of plants and animals and men, then turn for aeons into a dreary, icy listlessness and finally crumble to dust, their atoms joining other worlds ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... extinction of the nations involved, peace suddenly appeared. The debacle of the Teutonic alliance was both dramatic and unexpected, except to those who knew how desperate were the conditions in the nations that were battling for autocracy. Bulgaria was first to crumble, then Turkey fell, and Austria-Hungary deserted Germany. The Kaiser and his military advisers, left alone, appealed to the Allies through President Wilson, for an armistice during which peace terms might be negotiated. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... cast the die, and no matter what came of it he would n't back out. If he did, Honey would never believe in him again. His little kingdom would crumble. So he grinned. "I think I'll have a ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge

... be of religion, for my mother's faith was no dead thing that must be kept ever sheltered from the air, lest it crumble. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... suspected that it was worry rather than work, and that things were not going right in the bank. He did not know that the Golden Belt Wheat Company had sapped the money of the bank and had left it a husk, which at any time might crumble. The father knew this, and after the first of the year every morning when he opened the bank he feared that day would be the last day ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... "Things don't crumble like that, don't vanish like that!" She stared, astonished, at the scenes she had left behind her, the shining of the dark Cathedral, the ripple on the Moselle. "But they do, they ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... it. We should go forward and gain every inch of ground lost in the last campaign, make all that was possible out of our partial successes, drive the enemy out of our country wherever he had a foot-hold, otherwise the South would slowly but surely crumble away. So much had been expected of Longstreet's Corps in East Tennessee, and so little lasting advantage gained, that bickering among the officers began. Brigadier Generals were jealous of Major Generals, and even some became jealous or dissatisfied with ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... the country, I think it is wisest to buy opals in the real old Mexico for yourselves, often very cheaply. The prices rise rapidly here. A water opal, however beautiful, has no commercial value. It is but an imprisoned soap-bubble, and is apt to crumble. There are stores where pretty colored stones can be bought, but the majority get ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... hostages. But the commonalty disowned the agreement; notwithstanding the blinding of one of the hostages before the walls, they defended the city valiantly for eighteen days. It was only when the walls began to crumble away beneath William's mining- engines that the men of Exeter at last submitted to his mercy. And William's mercy could be trusted. No man was harmed in life, limb, or goods. But, to hinder further revolts, a castle was at ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... had sinned, how did they fall and crumble before the anger of God! they had not power to withstand the terror, nor could there be worth found in their persons or doings to appease displeased justice. But behold here stands the Son of God before him ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... for a woman never stops till she has told the whole of a thing, "as if I had seen an edifice built by a fairy crumble into ruins. Adolphe manifested not the slightest surprise. We got into the carriage. Adolphe noticed my sadness, and asked me what the matter was: I replied as we always do when our hearts are wrung by these petty vexations, 'Oh, nothing!' Then he took his eye-glass, and ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... the fragments of snow began to crumble down more rapidly; and, in spite of Melchior's efforts to keep the way clear, the snow rose about Saxe's face, so that very little more of it would have meant suffocation. The boy fought hard with his left hand to keep the snow clear, but there was no space sufficient for him to sweep it right ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... band of followers. Yet because of these it was not long until there came from out the desert the sound of the marching of a mighty host, heralding the approach of the Arab, the despising and despised. Before these barbarous hordes the principalities of the East were doomed to crumble and yield up their accumulated treasures of the ages, and so triumphant were these invaders from the desert they decided to appropriate for themselves the whole world, and from this they were not dissuaded until Charles Martel sent ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... cruciform outline of the church can be traced, and then its disjointed masses reduce themselves into connected details. The dark-red stone of which the building was constructed is friable, and peculiarly apt to crumble under the moist atmosphere and dreary winds of the northeast coast. The mouldings and tracery are thus wofully obliterated, and the facings are so much decayed as to leave the original surface distinguishable only here and there. At comparatively ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... thou art of the Aonides, whom to-morrow's dawn shall see saved from the world of the dead by my boon, I bid thee bear this message to thy chief: 'Raise mounds about the gates, forge new weapons, look to your walls that crumble with years, and above all be mindful to marshal thick and multiply thine hosts! Behold this plain smoking with the work of my sword. Such men are we when we enter ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... the remembrance of the wrong which she had done him made her faded charms at times almost repulsive. And then Josephine had never borne him any children; and without a son to perpetuate his dynasty, the gigantic achievements which he had wrought seemed futile in his eyes, and likely to crumble into nothingness when ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... chastening rod, Till every idol throne Crumble to dust, and Thou, O GOD, Reign in our ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... our Life with our Conscience:—however we may seek to justify our betrayal of humanity to ourselves, all our justifications will crumble into dust in the presence of the evidence. All around us, people are dying of excessive labor and of privation; we ruin the labor of others, the food and clothing which are indispensable to them, merely with the object of procuring ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... sense of impotence against the granite wall of some immovable calamity which she had felt before came on her. She had been always used to be obeyed, followed, and caressed; to see obstacles crumble, difficulties disappear, before her wish; she had not been tried by any sorrow, save when, a mere child still, she felt the pain of her father's death; she had been lapped in softest luxury, crowned with easiest victory. The sense ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... down, or even to repair it. But since the people of the South have risen in rebellion, let us believe that there is now an opportunity, nay, an imperative necessity, to remove from its foundations the rock of Oppression, that was sure to crumble in the refining fires of a Christian civilization, and establish in its place the stone of LIBERTY,—unchanging and eternal as its Author. Let us rejoice in the hope, already brightening into fruition, that out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... little Grandad; Such warriors, surely, A tiny mouse nibbling Could crumble to atoms,' I said ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... have gradually and quietly reorganized the army, the bureaucracy, the very palace Guard. We have undermined the government's power, until when the word is passed to strike the blow, a honey-combed system will crumble under its own weight. When Karyl calls on his troops, not one man will respond. Well—" Jusseret smiled dryly—"perhaps I overstate the case. Possibly one man will. I think we will ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... riven by the act? Shall the land that bears you be cursed; the young around you be sporting with hell; the awakened sinner be drowning conviction at his bottle; the once fair communicant be disgraced; the once happy congregation be rent; its ministry be driven from the altar, and its sanctuary crumble to ruin? Shall our benevolent institutions fail, and our liberties be sacrificed? Shall God be grieved? Shall wailings from the bottomless pit hereafter reproach and agonize you as the cause of ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... alone as the denier of God: he mourns, with an orphaned heart that has lost its great Father, by the corpse of Nature which no World-Spirit moves and holds together, and which grows in its grave; and he mourns by that corpse till he himself crumble off from it. The whole world lies before him, like the Egyptian Sphynx of stone, half-buried in the sand; and the All is the cold iron mask of a ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... under th' faandation o' that idol 'at tyranny an' fraud set up long sin, an' although fowk bow to it yet, they dooant do it wi' th' same reverence. Give it a drive wheniver you've a chonce, an' some day yo'll see it topple ovver, an' once daan it'll crumble to bits, an' can niver be put up agean. I' th' paper t'other day, aw saw a report ov a speech whear a chap kept mentionin his three thaasand hands. He sed nowt abaat three thasand men an' wimmen—they wor his 'hands'—his three thaasand ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... of finance, were old, spent, before they were fifty, broken by machinery and strain in mid-life, by a responsibility in which they were like pig iron in an open hearth furnace. What man would choose to crumble, to find his brain paralysed, at forty-five or six? Such labor was a form of desperation, of drowning, forgetting, an affair ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... eat away; And tombs, like their inhabitants, decay: But here Palm non lives, and so he must When marbles crumble to forgotten dust. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... face. It was very evident that we were slowly drifting upon this frightful object,—directly under this overhanging tongue. It was a fearful sight to behold, for it looked as if it was just ready to crumble to pieces; and indeed, at every instant, small fragments were breaking off from it, with loud reports, and falling ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes

... the great wall that held the body of water began to crumble at the top sent a message begging the people of Johnstown for God's sake to take to the hills. He reports no serious accidents ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... and while the deputy continued to look with dumb fascination at Andrew with swift side glances, Andrew finished his second cup. He bit off the end of his cigar, asked for his check, and paid it, and then felt his nerves crumble and ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... cloud's about to vanish From the day; And a brazen wrong to crumble Into clay! With the Right shall many more Enter, smiling at the door; With the giant Wrong shall fall Many others great and small, That for ages long have held us For their prey. Men of thought and men ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... water, frost, and ice; (3) a very low form of vegetable life; and (4) tiny animals—if such minute bodies can be called animals. In some cases these forces acted singly; in others, all acted together to rend and crumble the unbroken stretch of rock. Let us glance at some of the methods used by ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... could. The greater part of the roof of the house was gone; and there were cracks in the solid stone walls through which the yellow sunshine found its way. One portion of the wall leaned in; another leaned out towards the water. At first Roger expected to see the whole building crumble down into the stream, and supposed that the inhabitants might be swept quite away. He gazed with the strange feeling that not a creature might be now left ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau

... away, but freedom does not pass, Thrones crumble, but man's birthright crumbles not, And, like the wind across the prairie grass, A whole world's aspirations fan this spot With ceaseless panting after liberty, One breath of which would make dark Russia fair, And blow sweet summer through the exile's ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... travellers cannot tell the throne-room from the cow-house; Cashel's high rock is deserted and dismantled; and on the hill of Tara the palace of the ancient Irish kings is but a grass-grown mound. But, though palaces crumble and nations decay, the remembrance of truth and valor and glowing patriotism lives on forever, and to the boys and girls of this more favored time the stories of noble lives and glorious deeds come as a priceless legacy, bidding them ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... Figure which man from his infancy is ever striving to reach, and to imprison in his structures raised by hands, for ever enlarges and expands; it outsteps the narrow limits of temples, and leaves the altars to crumble into dust; and calls man to seek for it where alone it resides—in thought, in intelligence, in virtue, in nature, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... business. He drove around Wetona in a sagging, one-seated cart and never made any money because he did honest work and charged as little for it as men who did not. His mortar stuck, and his bricks did not crumble, and his lumber did not crack. Riches are not acquired in the contracting business in that way. Ed Sheehan and his daughter were great friends. When he died (she was nineteen) they say she screamed once, like a banshee, and dropped to ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... of man being duly observed—in short, that everything and everybody should be reduced to one level. Do we not observe that it is the law of nature— do not brooks run into rivers—rivers into seas—mountains crumble down upon the plains?—are not the seasons contented to equalise the parts of the earth? Why does the sun run round the ecliptic, instead of the equator, but to give an equal share of his heat to both sides of the world? Are we not all equally born in misery? does not ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... there I will keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in ...
— Twilight Stories • Various

... elastic to the touch; when pressed with the finger, no impression is left. It should be so dry upon the surface as scarcely to moisten the fingers. Meat that is wet, sodden, and flabby should not be eaten. Good beef is marbled with spots of white fat. The suet should be dry and crumble easily. If the fat has the appearance of wet parchment or is jelly-like, the beef is not good. Yellow fat is an indication of ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... in the depths of the forest, she led him to a fair-seeming castle, and, bidding him enter its portals, offered to show him a realization of his dream. But, lo! even as he entered the stately corridor it seemed to crumble away before him, and disclosed a hideous abyss beyond, in which the whole of that goodly palace lay in heaped and tangled ruins—the fitting symbol of his ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... upon the lamp, from the roof of the house, but the drop explained that he was a gift from those gray clouds, and perhaps the best of all gifts. "I shall penetrate you so thoroughly," he said, "that you will have the power of becoming rusty, and, if you wish it, to crumble into ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... heard many miles, and from its entrails vomited forth redhot stones, with a flood of liquid fire." The crater of the extinguished volcano is still visible, though shattered and powdered down by the tread under which Alps and Appennines themselves crumble away—that of Time. The only point on which we are sceptical is the late origin of the promontory. Nothing beyond a sandhill or a heap of ashes has been produced on the face of nature since the memory of man. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... and clean, and neat, Come and take your proper seat: Do not loiter and be late, Making other people wait; Do not rudely point or touch: Do not eat and drink too much: Finish what you have, before You even ask, or send for more: Never crumble or destroy Food that others might enjoy; They who idly crumbs will waste Often want a loaf to taste! Never spill your milk or tea, Never rude or noisy be; Never choose the daintiest food, Be content with what is good: Seek in all things that you can To ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... perish with the body? Why have you ever bade me desire the light and seek it, if for ever you must thrust me into the darkness of negation? Shall I be Nothing?—like the muscle that rots, like the bones that crumble, like the flesh that turns to ashes, and blows in a film on the winds? Shall I die so? I?—the mind of a man, the breath ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... flat had become an island, between which and the slope where she stood the North Fork was rolling its resistless yellow torrent. As she gazed spellbound, a portion of the slope beneath her suddenly seemed to sink and crumble, and was swallowed up in the rushing stream. She heard a cry of warning behind her, but, rooted to the spot by a fearful ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte

... and thus groundless and false. If they have all proceeded from the indefinite they must show this character when exposed to discerning criticism. All categories have to be shown to be so hopelessly confused and to be without any conceivable notion that though apparent before us yet they crumble into indefiniteness as ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... grass in the neighborhood is seen to be sprouting. Well-decayed manure should be spread at the rate of not less than a bushel nor more than double that quantity to the square yard, and as soon as the soil is dry enough to crumble readily it should be dug or plowed as deeply as possible without bringing up the subsoil. This operation of turning over the soil should be thoroughly performed, the earth being pulverized as much ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... builds tow'er and wall, to crumble at a touch of Time; How Earth on Earth from Shinar-plain the heights of Heaven ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... critical understanding, and sinks dumb when questioned. If, in the form of a religious conviction, its assurance is more confident, then, too often, it rests upon the treacherous foundations of authoritative ignorance, which crumble into dust beneath the blows of awakened and liberated reason. Nay, if by the aid of philosophy we turn our optimism into a faith held by reason, a fact before which the intellect, as well as the heart, worships and grows glad, it still is for most of ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds and to enjoy a great deal of happiness in this ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... and she saw the glow of pleasure kindle in his unclouded blue eyes. "Even rocks crumble when we put too much weight on them," he responded, "but since you have done so much for us, perhaps you may be able to convince Patty that nothing can make any difference between her and me. Won't you try to see ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... Halfoff. "We are close against the wall but we cannot shatter it. We are working to make a bomb. No bomb that we can make is hard enough. We can only try once. If it fails the noise would ruin us. There is no second chance. We try our bombs in the crucible. They crumble. They have no strength. We are ignorant. We are only learning. We studied it in the books, the forbidden books. It took a month to learn to set the wires to fire the bomb. The tunnel was there. We did not have to dig it. It was for my father, ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock

... damning silence had answered him. And yet something held him there—something hardened the grasp of his fingers. Newman's satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too deliberate and mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and comprehensive for this fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke. The very foundation seemed fatally injured, and yet he felt a stubborn desire still to try to save the edifice. He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever known, or than he had supposed it possible he should know. To accept his injury and walk ...
— The American • Henry James

... But I've found that I can pick out nuts and learn French verbs at the same time. If you and A.O. will come up to the Dom. Sci. this afternoon at four thirty, and not let any of the other girls know, I'll let you scrape the kettle and eat the scraps that crumble from the corners when I cut the squares. But I can not let any one in while I'm measuring and boiling. I couldn't afford ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... here used, means a soil containing enough particles of sand so that water will pass through it without leaving it pasty and sticky a few days after a rain; "light" enough, as it is called, so that a handful, under ordinary conditions, will crumble and fall apart readily after being pressed in the hand. It is not necessary that the soil be sandy in appearance, but it should ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... last, "to see Garthlaxton go up in flame—O blessed sight! Its blood-soaked walls crumble to ruin—ah, sweet, rare sight! But alas! 'tis a mighty place and strong, and we ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... live in New York at a third of the price they were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant, and said, this is the last feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself. In that moment—in that memorable moment, I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I was become just a mere moral sand-pile, and I lifted up my hand, along with those seasoned and experienced deacons, and swore off every rag of personal property ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... not knowing that the one beside the Duomo at Florence is higher than the one at Venice, and that the Leaning Tower at Pisa is a campanile, or bell-tower, also. When I told him that one of my friends saw the Campanile at Venice crumble to a heap of ruins on that Sunday morning back in 1907, and that another friend had been of the last party to go to the top of it the evening before, he became quite excited, and then I knew that I had succeeded in investing the subject with human interest, ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... delicacy, invalidation, decrepitude, asthenia[obs3], adynamy[obs3], cachexy[obs3], cachexia[Med], sprain, strain. reed, thread, rope of sand, house of cards. softling[obs3], weakling; infant &c. 129; youth &c. 127. V. be weak &c. adj.; drop, crumble, give way, totter, tremble, shake, halt, limp, fade, languish, decline, flag, fail, have one leg in the grave. render weak &c. adj.; weaken, enfeeble, debilitate, shake, deprive of strength, relax, enervate, eviscerate; unbrace, unnerve; cripple, unman &c. (render powerless) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... we need not To know how mortals fare, Of Bills that pass, or speed not, Time finds us unaware, Yea, creeds and codes may crumble, And Dilke and Gladstone stumble, And eat the pie that's humble, We neither ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang

... moment at the chain. Finally, it threw up its head and barked, although the distance was too great for them to hear any sound. The dog started in the direction the two men had gone, but, before it had taken three steps, the Minister was appalled to see the buildings suddenly crumble into dust, and a few moments later the thunder of the rocks falling into the deserted quarry came toward them. The whole ledge had been flung forwards into the chasm. There was no smoke, but a haze of dust ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr

... skillfully applied; it is not a mere matter of instinct, inertia, and routine. The Tite Barnacles of Dickens's satire were perfectly honest people according to their lights. They were sincerely convinced that the British Empire would crumble to pieces the moment its ligaments of red tape were in the slightest degree relaxed. Their strength lay in the fact that they represented an innate tendency in the nation, or at any rate in the dominant class at the period of which Dickens wrote. In America there is ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... confess. Undaunted then in answer here I cry, 'You wanton, that control the hand of him Who masquerades as wisdom in a sky Where holy, holy, sing the cherubim, I will not pay one penny to your name Though all my body crumble into shame.' ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... Sounding forth the sullen summons That may be our funeral knell, Once more let us meet together, Once more see each other's face; Then, like men that need not tremble, Go to our appointed place. God, our Father, will not fail us In that last tremendous hour,— If all other bulwarks crumble, HE will be our strength and tower: Though the ramparts rock beneath us, And the walls go crashing down, Though the roar of conflagration Bellow o'er the sinking town; There is yet one place of shelter, Where the foeman cannot come, Where the summons never sounded Of the trumpet ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... writing were finished she stood in the middle of it and repeated some verses from the Koran. Slowly the air grew dark, and we felt as if the earth was about to crumble away, and our fright was by no means diminished at seeing the genius, son of the daughter of Eblis, suddenly appear under the form ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... my head, in very unpleasant proximity to my right ear. This is the one that probably came with Mr. Ruffin's compliments. In a moment the firing burst forth in one continuous roar, and large patches of both the exterior and interior masonry began to crumble and fall in all directions. The place where I was had been used for the manufacture of cartridges, and there was still a good deal of powder there, some packed and some loose. A shell soon struck near the ventilator, and a puff of dense ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday

... thro out universal nature. Let that be suspended, cease its active operations for a moment, and our own earth will be decomposed into particles; the sun, moon and stars will dissolve and mingle with the common dust; all creation will crumble into atoms, and one vast ocean of darkness and chaos will fill the immensity ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... itself, now entirely grassless, is a deep-rutted, heavy-hillocked cart-road, diverging gatelessly into various brickfields or pieces of waste; and bordered on each side by heaps of—Hades only knows what!—mixed dust of every unclean thing that can crumble in drought, and mildew of every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp: ashes and rags, beer-bottles and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery, shreds of nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... square veranda. The building, which is two stories and a half high, was apparently a cheerful yellow color in the beginning, but it has become dingy with time and weather. The scars of its long battle with fate give it the appearance of being about to crumble and crash, after the fashion of the "House of Usher." It has windows with gloomy casements, opening even with the ground in the first story, and in the second upon a narrow balcony. A sign on the front of the building invites attention to a ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... hastily repaired. We passed into the town—into that part of it not included in the citadel. It is the queerest and most fragmentary little place in the world, as everything save the fortifications is being suffered to crumble away in order that the spirit of M. Viollet-le-Duc alone may pervade it and it may subsist simply as a magnificent shell. As the leases of the wretched little houses fall in, the ground is cleared of them; and a mumbling old woman approached me in the course of my circuit, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... for these corporal frames Bearing innate from birth the certain germs Of dissolution, whether by decay Or fire consumed, shall fall into the lap Of all-embracing nature. Thus if now Thou should'st deny the pyre, still in that flame When all shall crumble, (28) earth and rolling seas And stars commingled with the bones of men, These too shall perish. Where thy soul shall go These shall companion thee; no higher flight In airy realms is thine, nor ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... that tyrants cast away By myriads, when they dare to pave their way With human hearts—to what?—a dream alone. Can despots compass aught that hails their sway? Or call with truth one span of earth their own, Save that wherein at last they crumble bone by bone? ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... and the beginning of each thing grew frightfully near to its end. Augustus' throne just erected, crumbled down, and the void was already in the place of the throne and of Augustus. Noiselessly did Rome crumble down, and a new city stood on its site and it too was swallowed by the void. Like fantastic giants, cities, states, and countries fell down and vanished in the void darkness—and with uttermost indifference did the insatiable black womb of the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... there, too, as though to show how nobles and commoners, lords and frontiersmen, monarchists and republicans, are equal in death—and that the last stones of old Fort Loudoun, built by Lieutenant, afterwards General, Washington, crumble into dust there, disappearing like a thousand other memorials of that noble period, and the giants who illustrated it:—this, and much more, might be said of Winchester, the old heart of the border, which felt every blow, and ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... tools temper need not be drawn except for work where the edge tends to crumble on account of being ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... we work upon materials, immortal and imperishable, that they will bear the impress which we place upon them, through endless ages to come. If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it. If we rear temples, they will crumble to the dust. But, if we work on men's immortal minds—if we imbue them with high principles, with the just fear of God, and of their fellow men,—we engrave on those tablets, something which no time can efface, but which will brighten and brighten ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... said Lady Selina Farrell, looking at her neighbour, as she crumbled her dinner-roll. To crumble your bread at dinner is a sign of nervousness, according to Sydney Smith, who did it with both hands when he sat next an Archbishop; yet no one for a good many years past had ever suspected Lady ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Tennessee mountaineers, and as they struck with all their weight, the new line of the South was compelled to give way. Success seen and felt filled the veins of the soldiers with fresh fire. Dick and the men about him saw the whole Southern line crumble up before them. The triumphant Union army rushed forward shouting, and the Confederates were forced to give way at ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... obliterated. But the monuments of good last forever. After "Old Mortality" has worn out his chisel in reviving the epitaphs on old tombstones, the names of those who have helped others will be held in everlasting remembrance. The fires of the Judgment Day will not crumble off one of the letters. The Sabbath-school teacher builds her monument in the heavenly thrones of her converted scholars. Geo. Mueller's monument is the orphan-houses of England. Handel's monument was ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... do to keep his face judicially grave and unmirthful. Brannhard was almost purring, like a big tiger that had just gotten the better of a young goat; Leslie Coombes's suavity was beginning to crumble slightly at ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... night—every one who was in prison in the city before that time—will be liberated in an hour, and you have not soldiers nor policemen enough to stop the tide that will flow against you then. Your empire will crumble like dust, and your life will go out like the snuffing of a candle. For the present, I am the Czar of Russia, and you are only Alexander Alexandrovitch." He sat still and looked at me with staring eyes. "You are only a man, after all, monsieur," I continued more softly. ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... Their hold of Him is their guarantee; and the blessings of His grace give them life and sustain them in life. And as the tree must die, or the rock fall, before a dissolution can be effected between them, so either the believer must lose his spiritual life, or the Rock must crumble, ere their union can ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody

... severs Parent stems and sturdy branches, Springs a shoot of vital growing, Flows a blessed balm of healing. Thus may North and South uniting, Soothe the pangs of heartstrings broken, Leave the fierce and naming fires, In the crucible to smoulder. Let the ashes crumble, crumble, To the dust of buried vengeance. Let no moon wax o'er Lancaster, But may shed her beams in gladness; Let no moon wane o'er the city, But illumes with ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... world. It was not his lot—as it has been the lot of so many poets—to move amongst mankind at once as an intimate and a stranger; to travel from disillusionment to disillusionment and from regret to regret; to construct around him a world of ideal beings, who crumble into dust at his touch; to hope from them, what they can neither understand nor accomplish, to lavish on them what they can never repay. Such pain, indeed, may become a discipline; and the close contact with many lives may teach to ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... almost angry desire of "Progress," that no harm had been done by the creation of the reservoir, but that, on the contrary, it had benefited the temple. The action of the water upon the stone, they said with vehement voices, instead of loosening it and causing it to crumble untimely away, had tended to harden and consolidate it. Here I should like to lie, but I resist the temptation. Monsieur Naville has stated that possibly the English engineers have helped to prolong the lives of the buildings of Philae, and ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... less than a generation our country, shaken to its very foundations by the great social upheavals known as revolutions, has seen its old institutions crumble to pieces and other, entirely new institutions rise in their place; it has seen theories, beliefs, and codes of ethics, theretofore looked upon as immovable, give way to different principles and methods based upon democracy and liberty, ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma

... passed," said O'Malley in a voice that seemed to crumble in his mouth. "It is gone again into the mountains whence it came. We are safe. With me," he added, not without a secret sense of humor stirring in him, "you will always be safe. I can protect us both." He felt as ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... the table, drawing nearer to Gentz, and fixing her large, flaming eyes upon him, she asked in a whisper, "I suppose you love Germany? You would not like to see her devoured by France as Italy was devoured by her? You would not like either to see her go to decay and crumble ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... end of all? Will the land crumble and fall? Nay, for a voice replies Out of the hidden skies, "Thus far, O sea, shalt thou go, So long, O wind, shalt thou blow: Return to your bounds and cease, And let ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke

... consciousness, and died an hour after the operation. All details arranged. Please await letter." I raised my eyes to Barthrop's face, but saw that he could not speak. I could say nothing either: my mind and heart seemed to crumble ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life today, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shall have ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... sculptor's—sandstone will not carve like marble, its texture is too loose to retain a sharply moulded outline. The actions of men, if they are true, noble, and genuine, are strong enough to bear the form and bear the polish of verse; if loose or feeble, they crumble away into ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... half-shouted as he raised it to his lips and tried to bite off a piece, but only to break off what felt like wood, which refused to crumble but ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... Banawi district, south of the Bontoc area, there are terrace walls certainly 75 feet in height, though many of these are not stoned, since the earth is of such a nature that it does not readily crumble. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... Dead roses crumble to ashes in the gentle fingers that open the long folded pages—the violets of a forgotten spring impart a delicate fragrance to the yellowed spot on which they lay. The ink is faded and the letter much worn, as though it had lain next to some youthful breast, to be read in silence ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... Being inconvenient of access, it is not in a position for residence purposes. The skeletons, which were less than 2 feet below the surface, were probably those of Indian hunters. The material in which the little cave is formed will crumble easily in cold weather, being rather wet from the soil water soaking through ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... TRUTH can never be shaken. The force of disloyalty may have its hour of triumph, and treachery may march for a season to victory after victory; but all the while truth is secretly exercising her mastery, and in the long run the labor of falsehood will crumble into ruin. There is no permanent conquest for a lie. You can no more keep the truth interred than you could keep the Lord interred in Joseph's tomb. You cannot bury the truth, you cannot strangle her, you cannot even shake her! ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... words enlightened David: his sunburnt cheek reddened, but he only shook his head, saying: "She will find a brass farthing I'm afraid, sir," and began to crumble a handful of loam about the roots of a carnation that seemed to have sprung up by chance at the foot of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... irregular supper being considered as a sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and horn before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than cut, his bread. His wife, a thin, pale, shrewish-looking woman, was warming her child's feet at the fire, before putting him to bed, and an old woman sat spinning and nodding on a settle at ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... it sinful to flog and to beat them with sticks and paddles; indeed, when delineating the character of a bishop, he expressly names this as one feature of it, "no striker." Let masters give unto their servants that which is just and equal, and all that vast system of unrequited labor would crumble into ruin. Yes, and if they once felt they had no right to the labor of their servants without pay, surely they could not think they had a right to their wives, their children, and their own bodies. Again, how can it be said Paul sanctioned slavery, when, as though to put this matter beyond ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke

... the alarm of the vain thing menaced by the touch of the real? Was this contribution of the real possibly the mission of the Pococks?—had they come to make the work of observation, as HE had practised observation, crack and crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms in which honest minds could deal with him? Had they come in short to be sane where Strether was destined to feel that he ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... to his career! To have struggled and achieved for half a century, to have built up a reputation year by year, as a man builds a house brick by brick, only to see the whole crumble to his feet like dust! To have gained the respect of the country, to have made a name as the most incorruptible of public servants and now to be branded as a common bribe taker! Could he be dreaming? It was too incredible! What would his daughter say—his ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... roll it out several times, and, lastly, flour it, and roll it out the thickness of a half-crown, and divide it into pieces about an inch square; lay them in a Dutch oven, where they will dry so gently as not to get burnt: turn them every half hour, and when they begin to dry, crumble them; they will take about four hours to dry; then pound them fine, sift them, and put them into bottles, and ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... they were safe, and could advance with confidence. But this mass of land-ice became narrower as they proceeded, till at last it dwindled to a mere narrow ledge, clinging to the high, perpendicular cliffs, and looking as if at any moment it might crumble off and fall with them into the open water between it and ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... ponies, but well trained to the rocks and hills. The Galla Bedouins would oppose an invader with a strong force of spearmen, the approaches to the city are difficult and dangerous, but it is commanded from the north and west, and the walls would crumble at the touch of a six-pounder. Three hundred Arabs and two gallopper guns would take Harar in ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton



Words linked to "Crumble" :   rust, decay, crumple, disintegrate, gnaw, ruin, wilt, change integrity, break down, tumble, weather, dilapidate, change, droop, eat at, gnaw at, erode, wear out, fall apart, break, wear



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