"Burn down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... want anything, however small, it seems to me," exclaimed Genestas. "There is even a boot-jack. Only an old trooper knows what a boot-jack is worth! There are times, when one is out on a campaign, sir, when one is ready to burn down a house to come by a knave of a boot-jack. After a few marches, one on the top of another, or above all, after an engagement, there are times when a swollen foot and the soaked leather will not part company, pull as you will; I have had to lie down in my boots more than once. One can put ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... always in a dream. Now, obviously there can be no positive proof given to him that he is not in a dream, for the simple reason that no proof can be offered that might not be offered in a dream. But if the man began to burn down London and say that his housekeeper would soon call him to breakfast, we should take him and put him with other logicians in a place which has often been alluded to in the course of this chapter. The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... to bed, when the servants ran out of the cook-house, which was a stone's-throw from the cottage, crying out, "Fire!" and in a few minutes we saw it wrapped in flames. Of course a house built of sticks and leaves does not take long to burn down to the ground, but we were distressed to hear the bleatings of the little kid which could not be got out in time. The ducks, too, were still in the long basket coop in which they were carried up, and were literally roasted ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... her brogue an' headed for an inhabited community, an' then the Chink concluded that all he saw was his'n. She finally took a brace a' told him to hit the trail, an' he had gone off, vowin' to come back an' burn down the whole place. This was her first year there, an' the closest neighbor was seven miles across ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... wisdom in the grave, and it is nothing to them now that I remember them so kindly. Some of them went to the making of boxes, I suppose, some to the kindling of kitchen fires. In like noble spirit did the illustrious Bobo, for the love of roast pig, burn down his ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... by disease and by famine, thought that this had happened to them for no other reason than that they did not have Augustus for consul this time also. They accordingly wished to elect him as dictator, and shutting the senate up within its halls they forced it to vote this measure by threatening to burn down the building. Next they took the twenty-four rods and accosted Augustus, begging him both to be named dictator and to become commissioner of grain, as Pompey had once been. He accepted the latter duty under compulsion and ordered ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... in a scrap—and there's few scraps going that I don't butt into sooner or later—I like to feel that I've got a bit of right on my side. But how can you feel that when you over-run Belgium and burn down Louvain—that's the place that made your heart bleed, bah!—and when you shoot down Belgian hostages and do to death an English nurse? All that never seems to strike you. You go on thinking of yourself as a holy humble man whom everybody wilfully mistakes for a bully ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... sympathies, and the whites rarely made forays against their foes avowedly for horses and plunder, while the Indians on their side were continually indulging in such inroads. Every year parties of young red warriors crossed the Ohio to plunder the outlying farms, burn down the buildings, scalp the inmates, and drive off the horses.[12] Year by year the exasperation of the borderers grew greater and the tale of the wrongs they had to avenge longer.[13] Occasionally they took a ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... extravagant and impossible fiction; but, really, Professor Galvani comported himself very much in the manner of that great discoverer. It was no more necessary to employ the frog's nerves in the production of the electricity, than it was necessary to burn down a house in roasting pig for dinner. The poor frog contributed nothing to it but his dampness,—as every boy in a telegraph office now perceives. He was merely the wet in the small galvanic battery. Professor Galvani, however, exulting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... find its way up through every class which rests upon them. You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... had come to assassinate him? Lesseps told him his name, and a long conversation followed. One thing, at least, that Lesseps said in this interview was strictly true, namely, that Mazzini must not count on the French republican soldiers objecting to fire on republicans: 'The French soldier would burn down the cottage of his mother if ordered by his superiors to do so.' The discipline of a great army is ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... so nobly bore as noble a thing As this my son was: such a birth God sent And such a grace to bear it. Then came in Three weaving women, and span each a thread, Saying This for strength and That for luck, and one Saying Till the brand upon the hearth burn down, So long shall this man see good days and live. And I with gathered raiment from the bed Sprang, and drew forth the brand, and cast on it Water, and trod the flame bare-foot, and crushed With naked hand spark beaten out of spark And ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... these three did I, last night, burn down Black Ivo's mighty gallows that stood without Belsaye town, and, thereafter set wide the dungeon of Belsaye and delivered thence certain woeful prisoners, and sent them abroad with word that I—Beltane, son of Beltane the Strong, Duke of Pentavalon, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... in which these women and children found themselves. But in the name of common sense, how could one expect that people who had run away before what they believed to be an invasion of barbarians determined to burn down and destroy all their belongings—how could one expect that these people in their flight would have thought about taking with them their winter clothes, which, in the hurry of a departure in a torrid summer, would only have proved a source ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... for their good, but, my dear dolt, what of that? So everything is for the good of grownup people; but does that make us contented? It is doubtless for our good in the long run that we lose our pocketbooks, and break our arms, and catch a fever, and have our brothers defraud a bank, and our houses burn down, and people steal our umbrellas, and borrow our books and never return them. In fact, we know that upon certain conditions all things work together for our good, but, notwithstanding, we find some things a great bore; and we may talk to our children of discipline ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... say, "Tobacco is death to you," because the dislike of death can be taken for granted, being a highly democratic institution; and it is the same with the dislike of the indubitable exception called madness. The doctor can say, "Jones has that twitch in the nerves, and he may burn down the house." But it is not the medical detail we fear, but the moral upshot. We should say, "Let him twitch, as long as he doesn't burn down the house." The doctor may say, "He has that look in the eyes, and he may take the hatchet and brain you all." ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... Santa Barbara and Santa Inez. When something to this effect was one day said in the Senora Moreno's presence, two scarlet spots sprang on her cheeks, and before she bethought herself, she exclaimed, "That day, I burn down my chapel!" ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... far are cases where the proximate cause of the loss was intended to be produced by the defendant. But it will be seen that the same result may be caused by a choice at different points. For instance, a man is sued for having caused his neighbor's house to burn down. The simplest case is, that he actually intended to burn it down. If so, the length of the chain of physical causes intervening is of no importance, and has no bearing ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... de Mason's sign up day, kaze dat wuz de Mason's lodge hall up over de mill. De sojer boss, he meks de udder sojers put out de fire. He say him er Mason hisself en he ain' gwine see nobuddy burn up er Masonic Hall. Dey kinder tears up some uv de fixin's er de Mill wuks, but dey dassent burn down de mill house kaze he ain't let 'em do nuthin' ter de Masonic Hall. Yar knows, Miss Sarah, Ah wuz jes' 'bout two years ole when dat happen, but I ain't heered nuffin' 'bout no time when dey didden' take cotton ter Jools ever year twel de ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... and when he saw them both interred, he cried out that he was well rid of such good-for-nothing children, but that he should be perfectly happy only when the remaining five were buried with the first two, and that when he had got rid of the last he himself would burn down his palace as a bonfire to celebrate ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... make a last attempt to regain his old ascendency over the minds of the fickle people. As he leaves her to follow her advice, Adrian enters the hall, wildly imploring her to escape while there is yet time, for the infuriated Romans are coming, not only to slay Rienzi, but to burn down the Capitol which has ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... long enough for the wood to burn down nearly to his hand. When he came out, and flung the burning fragment from him, his face was flushed deeply, his eyes sparkled. He leaped carelessly on to the heath, over the bushes through which he had threaded his way so warily but a few minutes ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... burn down the house," implored Grace. "My, that's worse than the fish cake Cleo burned in the mud hole in the woods. You don't make starch solid, Margy, you have to make it runny, all ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... their former insolent practices; but that they, instead of concord, had chosen sedition; instead of peace, war; and before satiety and abundance, a famine. That they had begun with their own hands to burn down that Temple which we have preserved hitherto, and that therefore they deserved to eat such food as this was. That, however, this horrid action of eating an own child ought to be covered with the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... was still in an ecstasy of apprehension. Feeling reasonably sure of the principal actors, he had centred his fears on incidental possibilities. The clergyman might have a stroke, or the church might burn down, or there might be something wrong with the license. He did all that was humanly possible to avert such contingencies, but there remained that incalculable factor known as the hand of God. Lethbury seemed to ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... "He's fool enough for anything. The place runs him into eight thousand a year as it is—not including Ada Lester, the lady manager—so he might just as well hand it over to her altogether. I wish to goodness the wretched building would burn down! 'Pon my word, I shall set it alight ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... learn that, although London contains tenfold the inflammable matter that it did in 1666; though, not content with filling our rooms with woodwork and light draperies, we must needs lead inflammable and explosive gases into every corner of our streets and houses, we never allow even a street to burn down. And if he asked how this had come about, we should have to explain that the improvement of natural knowledge has furnished us with dozens of machines for throwing water upon fires, anyone of which would have furnished the ingenious Mr. Hooke, the first "curator and experimenter" of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... not to borrow the money. The railroad may go through in another year, and all the standing wood in the county may burn down," said Means, quietly. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hath made herself ready, 'the marriage of the Lamb is come' (Rev 19:7). That is, the Lord will then wait upon the world no longer, when his saints are fit to receive him. As he said to Lot when he came to burn down Sodom, 'Haste thee' to Zoar, 'for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither' (Gen 19:20-22). So concerning the great day of judgment to the world, which shall be also the day of blessedness and rest to the people of God, it cannot come until the Lamb's wife hath made ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bitterly. "Yes, and Baby Rennsdale's aunts. If the house'd burn down, I bet they'd say Penrod Schofield did it! Anybody does anything at ALL, they say, 'Penrod Schofield, shame on you!' When you and ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... young Daniel disliked this toil very much, and was among the earliest to devise "niggering," as it was called. In this process a stick of wood was laid across the log and lighted with fire, so it would burn down through the larger log, when fanned by the breeze, cutting ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... salt, and water baked in the clay oven heaped over with blazing wood ought to beat Mrs. Beeton at her own game. She and young Andrew, both covered in flour because he loved to smack his hands in it and watch it rise round them in curly white clouds were watching beside the fire for the sticks to burn down. When she read the doctor's letter she sat down immediately to write to him. She knew so well that sense of inadequacy that trying to help Louis always gave her, and she wanted to cure him of it. The jam tarts got burned; she forgot about them. It was only ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... that the blaze of light occurred which made her think the paper shade had caught fire and that the house would burn down. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... smell it," replied his sister. "But come now and help me gather tules. Father is going to burn down our house and build a new one for winter, and I must make a tule rug for each one of you for beds in the new home. It will take a great ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... the tears of the people whose houses have been burnt, but they will burn down the town. It's all the work of four scoundrels, four and a half! Arrest the scoundrel! He worms himself into the honour of families. They made use of the governesses to burn down the houses. It's vile, vile! Aie, what's he about?" he shouted, suddenly noticing ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... when he hurled the heart of Bruce in front of him in his last battle, cried out, 'Pass first, great heart, as thou wert ever wont.' A Spanish nobleman, when commanded by the King to receive a high-placed and notorious traitor, said: 'I will receive him in all obedience, and burn down my house afterwards.' This is literature without culture; it is the speech of men convinced that they have to assert proudly the poetry ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... demanded was Ivan Narishkin, who they were sure was somewhere concealed in the palace. Not finding him, they threatened to burn down the building unless he were delivered into their hands. At this terrifying threat the young man was taken from his place of concealment and brought to them by the patriarch, who held in his hands an ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... do our best by them kids other ways, an' the good Lord'll see they don't turn out bad. But there's one thing dead sure, an' you can tell Susan Winters, and the Dook, too—I ain't a-goin' to raise my hand to no motherless child; no, not if they burn down the mill; and may the Lord help me ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... in which I now found myself, was of a good size and good proportions; potted plants occupied the corners; the paved floor was soiled with muddy footprints and encumbered with straw; on a mahogany hall-table, which was the only furniture, a candle had been stuck and suffered to burn down—plainly a long while ago, for the gutterings were green with mould. My mind, under these new impressions, worked with unusual vivacity. I was here shut off with Fenn and his hireling in a deserted house, a neglected garden, and a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Smash your roulette and faro. Burn down the Blue Goose, first taking out your whisky that'll burn only the throats of the fools who drink it. Do that same, and you'll see fat grow on lean bones, and children's pants come out of ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... the old fisherman-chief. "We saved your building for ye, Mr. Ringold. Ain't no use in buyin' a shack an' then havin' it burn down—no matter if it ain't wuth much. We saved her for you, though at one time it looked pretty dubious. This is the first fire we've had in some time, an' I reckon we got ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... as to make it quite plain who was meant by the youth; and Socrates himself was evidently represented by an actor in a hideous comic mask, caricaturing the philosopher's snub nose and ugly features. The play ended by the young man's father threatening to burn down the house of Socrates, with him in it. This had been written twenty years before, but it had been acted and admired again and again, together with the other comedies of Aristophanes—one about a colony of birds who try to build a city in the ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... burn down the schoolhouse right before his face and eyes, and then mebbe the State Board'll git our ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... veil of ignorant, indifferent incredulity over the whole. But as we grow up, printed words take on new life. The latent fire in them lights up and glows. The mystic words throb with vital heat, and burn down into our souls to an answering fire. As we stand, on this soft summer day, by the old tree which tradition declares to have witnessed that fateful scene, we go back into a summer long ago, but fair and just like this. Jane McCrea is no longer a myth, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... extremely well for the Romans that he remained. For Lentulus made preparations to burn down the city and commit wholesale slaughter with the aid of his fellow conspirators and of Allobroges, who chanced to be there on an embassy: these also he persuaded to join him[24] and the others implicated in the revolution in their undertaking. The consul learning ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... of broken limbs rolling down against them to make hot fires, while only leaves and twigs accumulate on the lower side and are quickly consumed without injury to the tree. But green, resinless Sequoia wood burns very slowly, and many successive fires are required to burn down a large tree. Fires can run only at intervals of several years, and when the ordinary amount of fire-wood that has rolled against the gigantic trunk is consumed, only a shallow scar is made, which is slowly deepened by recurring fires until far beyond the centre of gravity, and when at last the tree ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... exclaimed the general. "I really do not much care for any thing else. They say the Savoyard is not a bad comrade, and at any rate he can charge like a soldier. But those priests? I fluttered them once! Why did I spare any? Why did I not burn down St. Peter's? I proposed it, but Mirandola, with his history and his love of art and all that old furniture, would reserve it for a temple of the true God and for the glory of Europe! Fine results we have accomplished! And now we are here, hardly knowing ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... heart desires to promulge. Behold the Archbishop [Laud], that great incendiary of this kingdom, lies now like a firebrand raked up in the embers; but if ever he chance to blaze again I am afraid that what heretofore he had but in a spark, he will burn down to the ground in a full flame. Wherefore let us begin, for the kingdom is pregnant with expectation on this point. I confess there are many more delinquents, for the judges and other knights walk in querpo; but they are only thunderbolts ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... never forget that, if we would shine, we must burn. Too many of us want to shine, but are not prepared to pay the cost that must be faced by every true man that wants to illuminate his time. We must burn down until there is but an eighth of an inch left in the candlestick, till the light flickers a little and drops, makes one more eager effort, and then ceases to ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... duty demanded by the government, and with the delays and difficulties raised by the officers charged with the valuation, who were Bavarian forest inspectors, the most economical plan was to purchase foreign timber. The consequence of this is, the Greeks burn down timber as unprofitable, and convert the land into pasturage. We have seen many square miles of wood burning on Mount Pentelicus; and on expressing our regret to a Greek minister, he shrugged up his shoulders and said: "That, sir, is the way in which the Bavarian foresters ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... upon bread and water has tamed you. I will come once more, but it will be the last time; and, mark you, should your people be defeated—the Danes I mean—still your escape would not necessarily follow; the house might take fire, it is of timber, and would soon burn down; a sad misfortune ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... nice [dear] people, and he managed it so as to drive them all away, and put them out of the moon. And when the mass of the folk were gone, he said, "Now those stupid dogs have gone, I will live comfortably and well, all alone." But after a bit the fire began to burn down, and that man found that if he did not want to be in the darkness [night] and die of cold he must go all the time for wood. And when the other people were there, they never did any carrying or splitting wood in the day-time, but now he had to take it all on ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... a la Staten Island, to burn down our yellow-feverish neighbor's house. We will give everybody time to pack up. We will make up a little purse for any specially hard case which the removal may show. But stay and be plague-stricken we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... not set fire to the woods, and burn down the nice trees after we are gone. Always put out your camp fire when you leave it," said the rabbit, as he threw water on the ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... rule, when the Prince shuts his eyes and his agents ruin and destroy. Three nations who have intrigued against my work see their chance, and are at Kaid's elbow. The fate of the Soudan is in the balance. It is all as the shake of a feather. I can save it if I go; but, just as I am ready, my mills burn down, my treasury dries up, Kaid turns his back on me, and the toil of years is swept away in a night. Thee sees it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... grand woods to burn down," went on the young major. "Besides, the wind is rising and it is blowing towards the gym and the stables! The burning embers might set fire ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... beings had such a strange system of arranging their affairs that if anyone were to go and burn down a lot of the houses he would be conferring a great boon upon those who had built them, because such an act would 'Make a ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell |
