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Fatal   Listen
adjective
Fatal  adj.  
1.
Proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny; necessary; inevitable. (R.) "These thing are fatal and necessary." "It was fatal to the king to fight for his money."
2.
Foreboding death or great disaster. (R.) "That fatal screech owl to our house That nothing sung but death to us and ours."
3.
Causing death or destruction; deadly; mortal; destructive; calamitous; as, a fatal wound; a fatal disease; a fatal day; a fatal error.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fatal" Quotes from Famous Books



... fulfilment. She inspired Queen Helen with a growing discontent and restlessness of spirit. Menelaos had not noticed any change in her, and it was with an utterly unsuspicious mind that he received the fatal strangers and made them welcome guests in his ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... cottage, the naughty child had put her hand to the lid, and was on the point of opening the mysterious box. Epimetheus beheld her. If he had cried out, Pandora would probably have withdrawn her hand, and the fatal mystery of the box might never ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... an anti-climax, after this somewhat practical account of our little heroine, to inform the reader that Redbud was sitting down, crying. Such was, however, the fact; and as conscientious historians we cannot conceal it. Overwhelmed by Miss Lavinia's fatal logic, she had no choice, no course but one to pursue—to avoid Verty, and thus ward off that prospective "suffering;" and so, with a swelling heart and a heated brain, our little heroine could find no better resource than tears, and sobs, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... mercy that she is delirious; otherwise her unavoidable excitement and anxiety would probably prove fatal. She is very ill, of course; but, with careful nursing, I think you have little to apprehend. Above all things, Irene, suffer nobody to bolt into that room with the news—keep her as quiet as possible. I have perfect confidence in Whitmore's skill; he ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... people were not wanting to hint that the evil spirit, traditionally said to haunt one of the wings of the old manor, and to have manifested itself on more than one occasion to members of the Altham family, (and more especially to the late worthless proprietor of the Hall,) had acquired a fatal power over the two supplanters of the ruined family the moment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... the protests of the children, I often abused my editor's innocent confidence. I often interlarded remarks of a studied and felicitously atrocious character purposely to achieve the children's brief delight, and then see the remorseless pencil do its fatal work. I often joined my supplications to the children's for mercy, and strung the argument out and pretended to be in earnest. They were deceived, and so was their mother. It was three against one, and most unfair. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... its humiliations as if they had never been, and to come out intact when the fortune of war changes, more French than ever, almost unabashed and wholly uninjured, by the catastrophe which had seemed fatal. ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... driven all rivals from the field. Over the lyric its sway was undisputed. In narrative poetry, where its fitness was far more disputable, it maintained its hold till the closing years of Milton. In the drama itself, where its triumph would have been fatal, it disputed the ground inch by inch against the magnificent instrument devised by Surrey and ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment, The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism, In the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter'd horses for breastworks, The fall of Custer and all his officers ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... know. That is the hardest part. But be patient a little longer! So much depends on it. I was told only this morning that any agitation might be fatal. No one seems to understand how it is that he has managed to live at all. He is just hanging on, poor lad,—just ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... cocked, and the stock unbroken - raised my knee for a rest. We were only twenty yards apart (the shot meant death for one of the two), and just catching a glimpse of his shoulder-blade, I pulled. I could hear the thud of the heavy bullet, and - what was sweeter music - the ugh! of the fatal groan. The beast dropped on his knees, and a gush of blood spurted from ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... these can be charged to a vicious atmosphere and training, that I would rest the chief stress of my complaint. The whole tone and spirit of the school in its excess of scepticism must, I venture to think, be fatal to the ends of true criticism. A reviewer of Supernatural Religion compares the author's handling of the reconstructive efforts of certain conservative critics regarding the Fourth Gospel to Sir G.C. Lewis's objections to Niebuhr's 'equally arbitrary reconstruction ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... 22nd, 1790, to attack the Indians. Here it was that Major John Wyllys fell leading the charge. Along the southern bank of the Maumee the ground is elevated and crowning these elevations were the forests again. It was through these forests that Hardin's forces approached the fatal battlefield. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... Captain Bullen in the chest, and he instantly fell. When they saw this, the Pioneers dashed forward with a howl of rage, carried the fort, and bayoneted its defenders. The doctor of the party at once examined the wound, and saw that it would probably be fatal. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty

... discussion of Modals. To endeavour to determine the degree of certainty attaching to a problematic judgment is not, however, beyond the reach of Induction, by analysing circumstantial evidence, or by collecting statistics with regard to it. Thus, instead of 'The cobra's bite is probably fatal,' we might find that it is fatal 80 times in 100. Then, if we know that of those who go to India 3 in 1000 are bitten, we can calculate what the chances are that any one going to India will die of ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... the law of mine is. If a man were to present himself to me, I should rely on that instinct you so much despise, and I am certain that the balancing, see-saw method would be fatal. It would disclose a host of reasons against any conclusion, and I should never come ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... slavery. Nowadays, therefore, when the question is to replace salaried employment by something else, possibly by the participation of the workman in the profits of his work, why should not Christianity again seek a new principle of action? The fatal and proximate accession of the democracy means the beginning of another phase in human history, the creation of the society of to-morrow. And Rome cannot keep away from the arena; the papacy must take part in the quarrel if it does not desire ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... notions Beth had got into her head. As though she and Mr. Huntley and Blanche Kendall were responsible for all the poverty in Toronto. Well, there was no use discussing the matter further—it only made her nerves worse—and Dr. Ralston had said any more worry might prove fatal. But she felt that the sea-voyage would perhaps help her. Beth must write at once and say what she would do, for Madeline would come if Beth forsook her. Madeline had written, indeed, offering her services. There was more about the headaches and nerves, but it ended with ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... 1846, came the last great fire but one which has ravaged the colony. By great misfortune it broke out when a high wind was blowing, and spread with fatal rapidity all over the town. Buildings, public and private, wooden and stone, were involved in a common destruction, and the last touch of horror came when the large oil vats fringing the harbour caught fire. The Custom House, the Church ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... always, the drum player, through not observing the original time given by the conductor, is somewhat behindhand in striking his first stroke. This retardment, multiplied by the number of strokes which follow the first one, soon produces—as may be imagined—a rhythmical discrepancy of the most fatal effect. The conductor,—all whose efforts to re-establish unanimity are then in vain—has only one thing left to do; which is, to insist that the long drum player shall count beforehand the number of strokes to be given ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... naturally come over to Chessington and make full enquiries as to the reason. She would not be able to face her father's questions, and Dermot's secret would come out, after all. How might this most fatal consummation be avoided? ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... slight delay of cranking it the second car whizzed along the street. But that delay was fatal to the purpose of the pursuers, for ere they had reached the corner down which the first machine had turned the entire block was empty. Burke's driver ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... student at the university of Leipzic. From thence he travelled about, I know not how far. He wandered all over Germany, and, as he told me himself, barefoot and bareheaded, begging his bread from door to door. After five months, the fatal war between Prussia and Austria broke out afresh, and as he had no hopes left in this world, the fame of Frederick's victorious banner drew him to Bohemia. Permit me, said he to the great Schwerin, to die on the bed of heroes, for I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... for a month together to solicit the governor; sometimes beseeching him by the wounds of a crucified Saviour, sometimes urging him with the fatal consequences of a miserable eternity, and endeavouring to let him understand, what a crime it was to hinder the publication of the gospel; but these divine reasons prevailed as little with Don Alvarez, as the human had done formerly. This strange obduracy ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... the world does it. And whether it is the law of the land, or whether it is the law of society, or the law written in Scripture, or the law written in a man's own heart, they all come under the same fatal disability. They tell us what to do, and they do not put out a finger to help us to do it. A lame man does not get to the city because he sees a guide-post at the turning which tells him which road to take. The people who do not believe in certain modern agitations about the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... blood-relationship between them, there could be nothing criminal in their living together; he had not the moral courage to face the cold criticism of a narrow-minded and bigoted community, and, though mad with passionate love, he hesitated to take the fatal plunge. ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer

... place, as already implied, is in the matter of rudimentary organs; the almost universal presence in the higher organisms of useless, and sometimes even troublesome, organs is fatal to the kind of design he is trying to uphold; granted that there is design, still it cannot be so final and far-foreseeing as he wishes to make it out. Mr. Darwin's weak place, on the other hand, lies, firstly, in the supposition that because rudimentary organs imply no ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... This delay was fatal, or was destined to become so, but she did not know it; she had had colds before, and she had always got well. Why should'nt she now? It is a strange vagary of old people to consider themselves just as young as they used to be, notwithstanding their advanced years. To the majority of the old ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... branch of an ancient family in the county of Fife, stiling him in the charter, dilecto familiari nostro; and assigning, as the cause of the grant, pro bono et fideli servitio nobis praestito. Thomas Boswell was slain in battle, fighting along with his Sovereign, at the fatal field of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... which I have written since my confinement. You will have heard how our joy turned suddenly into deep sorrow by the death of my husband's mother. An unsuspected disease (ossification of the heart) terminated in a fatal way—and she lay in the insensibility precursive of the grave's when the letter written with such gladness by my poor husband and announcing the birth of his child, reached her address. "It would have made ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... spoke of an expansion of the story of Blue Beard, which he himself had either written or thought of writing, in which the contents of the several chambers which Fatima opened, before arriving at the fatal one, were to be described. This idea has haunted my mind ever since, and if it had but been my own I am pretty sure that it would develop itself into something very rich. I mean to press William Story to work it out. The chamber of Blue Beard, too (and this was a part of his suggestion), ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in the organic law, or urging new and untried theories of human rights. The latter are ever ready to engage in any wild crusade against a neighboring people, regardless of the justice of the enterprise and without looking at the fatal consequences to ourselves and to the cause of popular government. Such expeditions, however, are often stimulated by mercenary individuals, who expect to share the plunder or profit of the enterprise without ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... am going to give you all the exact dates, for this snow-storm will be a matter of history, during the present generation at all events: there is no tradition among the Maoris of such a severe one ever having occurred; and what made it more fatal in its financial consequences to every one was, that the lambing season had only just commenced or terminated on most of the runs. Only a few days before he left, F—— had taken me for a ride ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... two short years ago there had not been in all the wide land a more contented man than himself, a man with a conscience freer. God! Even yet he could hear the rolling, whirring ivory ball as it spun the circle that fatal night at Monte Carlo. Man does not recall the intermediate steps of his fall, only the first step and the last. In his waking hours the colonel always heard the sound of it, and it rattled through his troubled dreams. He could not understand how everything ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... Man.—A peculiarity of the sexual appetite in man, which is fatal for society, is his desire for change. This desire is not only one of the principal causes of polygamy, but also of prostitution and other analogous organizations. It arises from the want of sexual attraction in what one is accustomed ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... in the time of the Restoration. It commences with a fatal duel, and shows a new phase ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... would every Catholic buy it, but every Catholic must, as he was a good Catholic, as he hoped to be saved. It was a magnificent scheme, and it captivated me, as it had captivated Clemens; it dazzled us both, and neither of us saw the fatal defect in it. We did not consider how often Catholics could not read, how often when they could, they might not wish to read. The event proved that whether they could read or not the immeasurable majority did not wish to read the life of the Pope, though it was written by a dignitary of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... to trust myself," he said to Oswald, as they lay down side by side. "Never have I felt so free, since Otterburn—never, indeed, since that unfortunate day when I was wounded, and conceived the fatal idea of becoming a monk. Two or three times, the impulse to troll out a trooper's song was so strong in me, that I had to clap my hand over my ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty

... wearest doth appear; And if thy raiment do belie thee not, Thou should'st be some king's son. And well I wot, If that be true was prophesied of yore, A wondrous fortune is for thee in store; For though I be not read in Doomful Writ, Oft have I heard the wise expounding it, And, of a truth, the fatal rolls declare That the first mortal who shall hither fare Shall surely have our Maiden-Queen to wife, And while the world lives shall they twain have ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... a courier, who had had his horse killed, got on a mule he had captured, and in the last charge, before the final and fatal halt was made, just charged right ahead by his lone self, and the soldiers said, "Just look at that brave man, charging right in the jaws of death." He began to seesaw the mule and grit his teeth, and finally yelled out, "It arn't me, boys, it's this blarsted ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands of his partner. As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed that it contained a rough oblong box,—apparently made from a section of sluicing,—and half filled with bark and the tassels of pine. The cart was further decorated with slips of willow, and made fragrant with buckeye-blossoms. When the body was deposited in the box, Tennessee's ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte

... season had set in with bitterly cold wind. The rain was incessant, a pestilence had destroyed a vast number of their horses, and their encampment was flooded. Their forces were therefore obligated to spread themselves over the neighbouring fields, and a sudden attack by the English might have been fatal. ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... columns (two on the obverse and two on the reverse) and deals with the hero's wanderings in search of a cure from disease with which he has been smitten after the death of his companion Enkidu. The hero fears that the disease will be fatal and longs to escape death. It corresponds to a portion of Tablet X of the Assyrian version. Unfortunately, only the lower portion of the obverse and the upper of the reverse have been preserved (57 lines in all); and in default of a colophon we do not know the numeration of the tablet ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous

... many cordial attentions. But on the whole, women did not add much light or splendor to his life, and the cordial intimacy of family life hardly ever warmed his heart. In this direction his feelings were dried up. This was perhaps fortunate for his people, it was undoubtedly fatal to his private life. The full warmth of his human feelings was reserved almost exclusively for his little circle of intimates, with whom he laughed, wrote poetry, discussed philosophy, made plans for the future, and later discussed his military operations ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... growing thinner and paler ever since the birth of her first boy, became seriously ill. Consumption was hers by inheritance, and it now manifested itself in a form which too surely foretold the result. After the physician had gone, leaving his fatal verdict behind him, she called to Jonathan, who, bewildered by his grief, sank down on his knees at her bedside ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... garments, of the fluffy lace skirts beneath her gown, to which a single flash of fire would instantly prove fatal. ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... to be that they are made to burst a little lower. Their effect is very terrible. A heavy bursting charge is employed, and although the fragments are small they fly with such force that they make fatal wounds and even cut into the wood of rifle stocks. I observed the body of one German whose back had been pierced with about forty small particles of a shell which had burst close to him. These particles were as evenly spread as the charge of a shotgun. German wounded ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... had lain in her grave, the publication of an old diary revived some foul-mouthed slanders, which no one is too pure to escape. But the coarse malice and gross falsehood of the accusations were so evident, that their sole result was to rebound with fatal effect on the memory of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... discovered to have, instead of a liver, something very like a gizzard; a sow had chewed and swallowed the flowers with which it had been embellished for the sacrifice; and a calf, after receiving the fatal blow, instead of lying down and dying, dashed into the temple, dripping blood upon the pavement as it went, and at last fell and expired just before the sacred adytum. In despair the people took to fortune-telling ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... particulars of this scheme for Roger than he could obtain from any extraneous source, and rather puzzled to know whether he should interfere in the project or not. The state of the case was this:—Osborne's symptoms were, in Mr. Gibson's opinion, signs of his having a fatal disease. Dr Nicholls had differed from him on this head, and Mr. Gibson knew that the old physician had had long experience, and was considered very skilful in the profession. Still he believed that he himself was right, and, if so, the complaint was one which might continue for years ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... logical sequence, so that, as a matter of mere ratiocination, I am not likely ever to detect any serious flaws, especially as this has not been done by anybody else during the many years of its existence. But I now clearly perceive two wellnigh fatal oversights which I then committed. The first was undue confidence in merely syllogistic conclusions, even when derived from sound premises, in regions of such high abstraction. The second was, in not being sufficiently careful in examining ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes

... love, at least for pity. Twenty thousand pounds ought to have become the property of Walter Marrable, when some maternal relative had died. It had seemed hard that the father should have none of it, and, on the receipt in India of representations from the Colonel, Walter had signed certain fatal papers, the effect of which was that the father had laid his hands on pretty nearly the whole, if not on the whole, of the money, and had caused it to vanish. There was now a question whether some five thousand pounds might not be saved. If so, Walter would stay ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... to hail a man he was supposed not to know might be fatal; almost surely at this critical moment it would stir up suspicion in Hartridge's mind. Yet some way, somehow, at once, he must stop the word bearer. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... which were furled, blowing out of the gaskets, and getting adrift, which sent us up on the yards; and by getting tackles on different parts of the rigging, which were slack. Once, the wheel-rope parted, which might have been fatal to us, had not the chief mate sprung instantly with a relieving tackle to windward, and kept the tiller up, till a new one could be rove. On the morning of the twentieth, at daybreak, the gale had evidently done its ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... the cat, pressed by hunger, would have thrown himself upon the poisoned food; but Moumouth knew how to suffer. He put up with abstinence, lived on scraps and crumbs of bread, and recoiled with terror every time that his guardian offered him the fatal plate, which finally remained forgotten in a corner of the ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire

... well," having already been sent to the surface, Connell now notified the engineer to be ready to hoist for a blast, and the two set to work. In a few minutes the charge, that had so nearly proved fatal to both of them, was again ready for firing, and the hissing fuses were lighted. Then both men sprang into the skip, the signal to hoist was hurriedly sounded, and away they sped up the black shaft ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... up the wilderness of white water where the sea churned savagely amongst the sunken rocks; and it lit too the white face of a swimmer, now nearly spent, who rising and falling with each wave, drifted in the sea whose current bore him on towards the fatal rocks. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... was wrote Severity, as she ascended the fatal platform. (Not that that was anythink new.) Miss Whiff and Miss Piff sat at her feet. Three chairs from the Waiting Room might have been perceived by a average eye, in front of her, on which the ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... dark foul hold; hence the whole ship, fore and aft, is sweet and clean. Stores are kept in zinc lockers puttied down, and in cedar boxes lined with zinc. We of course distribute them ourselves; a hired steward would be fatal, because you can't get a servant to see the importance of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... absolutely silent on certain points; but it became more and more evident that the poor mother suspected something terrible. Dounia remembered her brother's telling her that her mother had overheard her talking in her sleep on the night after her interview with Svidrigailov and before the fatal day of the confession: had not she made out something from that? Sometimes days and even weeks of gloomy silence and tears would be succeeded by a period of hysterical animation, and the invalid would begin to talk almost incessantly of her son, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the park, Brian,' she pleaded gently, pitying him with all her heart, more tenderly inclined to him in his decay and degradation than she had been in his prime of manhood, before these fatal habits began. 'Do come with us, dear. We won't walk further than you ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... seize the reins then would simply have been to capsize the buggy, for the road was so rough that the least deviation from the beaten track, at the pace the horses were then going, would have been fatal, and Ralph was obliged to acquiesce in the flight by remaining ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis

... foretop, and at the order—"Away aloft!" he sprang at the rigging like a cat. We stood from under. There was a breathless hush as the second order was given—"Bear out on the yard-arm!" It was the fatal order at which the other men had lost their nerve and their lives! As it rang out over the old ship, we gulped down our lumps and secretly thanked Him in the hollow of whose hand lie the seas. The evolution was completed, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... indifference of the Kaffirs to chastity and their licentiousness, approved and even prescribed by national custom, were not the only obstacle to the growth of sentiments rising above mere sensuality. Commercialism was another fatal obstacle. I have already quoted Hahn's testimony that a Kaffir "would rather have big herds of cattle than a good-looking wife." Dohne asserts (Shooter, 88) that "a Kaffir loves his cattle more than his daughter," and Kay (111) ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... fruit must have caused entire consolation as it was so visible, and given greater earnestness to continue. That fatal interruption of missions in which no workers of our Recollect family passed to Philipinas from Espana from the year 1692 to that of 1710, having occurred, the province found it impossible to give, as it had done hitherto six or eight religious for those missions because their exhaustion made ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... I saw that if he went on thus he would throw himself into a fever, which might cause the operation to prove fatal. For the same reason I did not question him about many things I should have liked to learn. I lit my fire and boiled the instruments—he thought I was making magic. By the time that everything was ready the ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... additional weight for the soldier to carry, also, is no trifle, and will not be overlooked by those who appreciate the importance of every ounce that is saved. But apart from minor objections, a fatal one lies in the fact that every cartridge-box filled with this ammunition may be considered as a shell liable to explode by concussion and spread destruction around it. The powder and fulminating composition being always in contact in every cartridge, it is obvious that a chance shot may explode ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... his brothers, now slept soundly. Throughout the night my wife and I maintained our prayerful watch, dreading at every fresh sound some fatal change in the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... on the happiness I had lost. How I execrated the moment I had gone to the fair to sell horses! 'Would that I had never been to Horncastle to sell horses!' I would say; 'I might at this moment have been enjoying the company of my beloved, leading a happy, quiet, easy life, but for that fatal expedition;' that thought worked on my brain, till my brain seemed ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... disease. The wide-spread extension of this disease throughout Europe in recent years has given abundant opportunity to show that while it is distinctively an animal malady, it is also transmissible to man, although the disease is rarely fatal. The causal organism has not been determined with certainty, but it has been shown that the milk of affected animals possesses infectious properties[98] although appearing unchanged in earlier phases ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... the Merry Wives with the title of the Comical Gallant or the Amours of Sir John Falstaffe. The adaptation of Coriolanus, which was the occasion of the Letters given in this volume, appeared as the Invader of his country, or the Fatal Resentment. It was produced at Drury Lane in November, 1719, but ran for only three nights. It was published in 1720. An account of it will be found in Genest's English Stage, iii. 2-5. It is the subject of Dennis's letter to Steele of 26th March, 1719 ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... has paid a frightful penalty for the sins of her wayward life—more than she deserved. She must have been lying dead when I rapped on her door last night. Yes, and the fatal blow had been struck but a short time before! The assassin was the foreign-looking man who came down the stairs as I went up! There can be no doubt of it! But who was he? And what was his motive? A discarded lover, perhaps! What else could ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... the removal of the brain of a monkey and the subsequent testing of the animal's powers of reacting to certain treatment. The fact that the operation had been performed six months before the case came into court would alone have been fatal to the prosecution. Moreover, it was not performed by Dr. Ferrier, but by another observer, who was licensed under the Act to keep the monkey alive after the operation, which was performed under anaesthetics. Thus the prosecution completely ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... sleeping conscience was broad awake and plying its merciless dagger; now, indeed, he knew very well what he had done—what he had been doing since that fatal moment at the barrel-spring when he had fallen under the spell of Nan Bryerson's beauty; nay, back of that—how the up-bubbling of zeal had been nothing more than wounded vanity; the smoke of a vengeful fire of anger lighted by a desire to ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... nations, however, are bound together by more than ideals. They are a real community bound together also by the ties of self-interest and self-preservation. If they should fall apart, the results would be fatal to human freedom. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Adrian's barge, gazing across the green turbid Nile. You had leant over the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent silver the marvel of your own face. And it had all been what art should be, unconscious, ideal, and remote. One day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you as you actually are, not in the costume of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your own time. Whether it was the Realism of the method, or the mere wonder of your ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... this union were perfectly happy; the marquis was in love for the first time, and the marquise did not remember ever to have been in love. A son and a daughter came to complete their happiness. The marquise had entirely forgotten the fatal prediction, or, if she occasionally thought of it now, it was to wonder that she could ever have believed in it. Such happiness is not of this world, and when by chance it lingers here a while, it seems sent rather by the anger ...
— Widger's Quotations from Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas, Pere • David Widger

... Still he did not lose heart, but, calling his friend Iolaus, he bade him take a firebrand and burn the necks as fast as he cut off the heads; and thus at last they killed the creature, and Hercules dipped his arrows in its poisonous blood, so that their least wound became fatal. Eurystheus said that it had not been a fair victory, since Hercules had been helped, and Juno put the crab into the skies as the constellation Cancer; while a labor to patience was next devised for Hercules—namely, the chasing ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... the English columns out of the cotton-bale breast-work;—they had often in the Peninsula stormed stronger works than that,—without faltering for artillery, musketry, or bayonet. But here they were literally unable to reach the works; the fatal rifle-bullet drew a line at which bravery and cowardice, nonchalant veterans and trembling boys, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... treason had succeeded, and the hint with it, the goldsmith might be sent for to take measure of the head of John or of his son for a golden wig. In this case, the good people of Boston might have for a king the man they have rejected as a delegate. The representative system is fatal to ambition. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... going on at intervals all day, from seven o'clock this morning until dusk, when Bulwaan sent several shells on to Junction Hill, killing three men of the Liverpool Regiment and wounding eight. This is the most fatal half-hour we have experienced since the siege began, but there was one lucky escape from a shell which burst in the guard tent among four men without hurting any of them. For the depression caused by these serious casualties there is some consolation in the ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... map. Ho-nhi, or Ngo-ning (Anin) tribe (See Homi-cheu.). Hooker, Sir Joseph, on bamboo explosion. Horiad (Oirad, or Uirad) tribe. Hormuz (Hormos, Curmosa), trade with India; a sickly place; the people's diet; ships; great heat and fatal wind; crops, mourning customs; the king of; another road to Kerman from; route from Kerman to; site of the old city; foundation of; history of; merchants; horses exported to India from; the Melik of. —— Island, or Jerun, Organa of Arian. Hormuzdia. Horns of Ovis Poli. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... father, where he succeeded in obtaining considerable Government orders for iron made after his patents. To all ordinary eyes the inventor now appeared to be on the high road to fortune; but there was a fatal canker at the root of this seeming prosperity, and in a few years the fabric which he had so laboriously raised crumbled into ruins. On the death of Adam Jellicoe, the father of Cort's partner, in August, 1789,[8] ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... her hole a couple of times by a ferret will not again run into it when pursued. The tragedy of a rabbit pursued by a mink or a weasel may often be read upon our winter snows. The rabbit does not take to her hole; it would be fatal. And yet, though capable of far greater speed, so far as I have observed, she does not escape the mink; he very soon pulls her down. It would look as though a fatal paralysis, the paralysis of utter fear, fell upon the ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... curious natural outwork; and might easily have been barricadoed, but the deficiencies of Mr. Forster's generalship were fatal to so simple and obvious a plan of defence. He confined his exertions to the town, barricadoed the streets, and posted men in the bye-lanes and houses. The Jacobite troops formed four main barriers: one in the churchyard, commanded by Brigadier ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... that's impossible," said Clithering. "I quite agree with the Prime Minister there. Any sign of weakness on the part of the Government at the present crisis would be fatal, absolutely fatal. The Belfast people must understand that they cannot be allowed ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... of them out of their good instincts. You could not have made the directors of the Bank of England do the sort of business which 'Overends' at last did, except by a moral miracle—except by changing their nature. And the fatal career of the Bank of the United States would, under their management, have been equally impossible. Of the ultimate solvency of the Bank of England, or of the eventual safety of its vast capital, even at the worst periods of its history, ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... lesson. In a Form of twenty it was possible not to be chosen at all. Winona kept very quiet, so as not to attract the mistress' attention. Marjorie Kemp and Olave Parry had already translated half of the fatal page, with tolerable credit. Miss Huntley's eye was wandering in the direction of Irene Mills. Winona dared to breathe. Then, alas! alas! Some unlucky star caused the mistress to look back towards the middle of the room. In a spasm of nervousness, Winona jerked her elbow, and away went her pencil-box, ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... time and blood to acquire. The people were not only conquered, but cowed and crushed. England was as easily and effectually subdued as was Ireland, sometime after, by Henry II. But while the Conquest was for a season fatal to liberty, it was from the first favourable to every species of literature, art, and poetry. 'The influence,' says Campbell, 'of the Norman Conquest upon the language of England was like that of a great inundation, which at first buries ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... understands the spiritual possibilities in outcasts from the respectable world. If we look at things absolutely enough, and from their own point of view, there can be no doubt that each has its own ideal and does not question its own justification. Lust and frenzy, revery or despair, fatal as they may be to a creature that has general ulterior interests, are not perverse in themselves: each searches for its own affinities, and has a kind of inertia which tends to maintain it in being, and to attach or draw in whatever is propitious to it. Feelings are as blameless as so ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... dismal hour when Lisbon shook and fell, Or name the shuddering night that toppled down Our sister's pride, beneath whose mural crown Scarce had the scowl forgot its angry lines, When earth's blind prisoners fired their fatal mines? ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the combats between game-birds may seem disgusting, almost every one must admire the valor, grace, and address which such scenes exhibit. Except where the brutal custom of putting steel points on the spurs prevails, the birds rarely receive fatal wounds. The defeated cock is soon brought to confess his inferiority and takes himself away. At no other time in the life of these birds does their organic beauty appear to such advantage as when they are struggling ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... Inheritance Law is one, as we have seen; Biometry is another. It was proposed and advocated by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. He expected it to be a great prop to evolution; on the other hand, it is another proof of the unity of our race in Noah's day, and hence fatal to their theory. Biometry is defined to be the "statistical study of variation and heredity." It bears heavily against ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... the victims was by lot, and the black and white beans of Mexico (frijoles) were made use of as the expositors of the fatal decrees of destiny. A number of the beans, corresponding to the number of the captives, was placed within an earthen olla—there being a black bean for every nine white ones. He who drew ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... those members of the family who gloried in the sea and the seashore; for circumstances had arisen which had been productive, not only of great anxiety and trouble to us all, but which had involved bodily injury, and all but fatal consequences, to poor Jim. And although his name and character had come out scatheless from the trying ordeal of doubt and suspicion which had fallen upon them at that time, it had been otherwise with those of one who had been received as ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... expected it to gravitate? The answer suggests itself as readily as the question; namely, that it was an attempt to stem the torrent of reformed doctrines already surging over many an Alpine pass, and threatening a moral invasion as fatal to the spiritual power of Rome as earlier physical invasions of Northmen had been to her ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... alcohol bath, and you shall see his lordship when you come. As Dr. Paul says, they have been known to clear fourteen feet at a jump, perhaps you will feel happier to know that he is in alcohol, though their bite is not necessarily fatal if ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... now, by no man hired nor alien sword, By their own kindred are they fallen, in peace, After much peril, friendless among friends, By hateful hands they loved; and how shall mine Touch these returning red and not from war, These fatal from the vintage of men's veins, Dead men my brethren? how shall these wash off No festal stains of undelightful wine, How mix the blood, my blood on them, with me, Holding mine hand? or how shall I say, son, That am no sister? but by night and day Shall ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... carpenter by trade, and his former employer was glad to take him into his service again. Sam was a very respectable man of sincere religious feelings. Soon after his return he met with one or two rather severe accidents, and had a strong impression that a fatal one would happen him before long; and so it came to pass. A scaffolding gave way one day, and precipitated him on to a flagged stone floor. He did not die immediately, but his injuries proved fatal. He died ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... Herodotus. Leaders of forlorn hopes nowadays would be inclined to pick out as comrades the unmarried men, as having least to sacrifice and fewest duties to forego. Whereas Leonidas, in choosing the 300 men to make their famous and fatal stand at Thermopylae, is stated to have selected all fathers ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm

... "crabbed age and youth." I need not say that those three exceptions are the stolen and garbled work of Marlowe and of Barnfield, our elder Shelley and our first-born Keats; the singer of Cynthia in verse well worthy of Endymion, who would seem to have died as a poet in the same fatal year of his age that Keats died as a man; the first adequate English laureate of the nightingale, to be supplanted or equalled by none until the advent ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... came to the entanglement, he probed the barbed wire carefully with his wand, watching for an ensuing spark. For the Germans more than once had been known to electrify their wires, with fatal results to ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... our advantage. They probably themselves do not know it, but in the act of "drawing their inspiration" from alien scenes, or taking their own where they find it, are not they simply transporting to Europe "the struggle for material prosperity," which Sir Lepel supposes to be fatal to them here? ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... her for what he called her quixotism. The woman of passionate impulses—how dangerous she is, even when her impulses are generous, are noble! Action without thought, though the prompting heart behind it be a heart of gold—how fatal ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... After dinner the Bishop had candles placed on the piano, and begged the shrinking vocalist to give them an exhibition of her skill. The luckless victim protested that she could not sing at all, but presently, despite her objections, she was blushing on the fatal music stool, and was faltering out a desperate something which was at all events intended to be a song. "Thank you," said the Bishop, benignly, as soon as the performance was ended. "The next time you tell us you cannot sing we shall ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... mortal strife! All the more in its silence. Neither utters shout, or speaks word. They are too intent upon killing. The only sound heard is their hoarse breathing as they pant to recover it—each holding the other's arm to hinder the fatal stroke. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... for the expenditure of money, but how much he had got for his own district, and perhaps he might have to explain why he did not get more. Is it doubtful that this would lead to extravagance, if not to corruption? Nothing could be more fatal to the independence of the people and the liberties of the States than dependence for support upon the public Treasury, whether it be in the form of subsidies, of bounties, or restrictions on trade for the benefit of special interests. In the decline ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... of the enemy, was rather changed in its direction than abated by their defeat; and this constant wakefulness of thought, added to the effect of his wound, and the exertions from which it was not possible for one of so ardent and wide-reaching a mind to spare himself, nearly proved fatal. On his way back to Italy he was seized with fever. For eighteen hours his life was despaired of; and even when the disorder took a favourable turn, and he was so far recovered as again to appear on ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... a ghastly stare into his face. The boy,—it must have been a nervous impulse, without purpose, without thought, and betokening a sensitive and impressible nature rather than a hardened one,—the boy uplifted his axe and dealt the wounded soldier a fierce and fatal blow ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... part, this may be necessary; and the injury received from the medicine may not bear any comparison with the consequences which would follow, if the disease were left to take its course. In such cases, the physician should be called immediately, as delay may be fatal. But the great secret lies in avoiding such attacks, by a scrupulous attention to the laws of nature. Such attacks may generally be traced either to violent colds, or the interruption of some of ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... Tenchi's death, which took place at the close of 671, and after the accession of Prince Otomo—known in history as the Emperor Kobun—the conspirators began to concert measures for the destruction of Prince Oama, whom they regarded as a fatal obstacle to the achievement of their purpose. But the Emperor Kobun's consort, Toichi, was a daughter of Prince Oama, and two sons of the latter, Takaichi and Otsu, were also in the Court at Omi. By these three persons Yoshino was ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... that it was an unhappy accident, resulting from his own violence and not your intention, which deprived him of his life." Elliot stopped suddenly, and gazing down from the height which they had now reached into the valley, seemed to be searching for the spot where the fatal accident had taken place, as if to assist him in the train of thought which his friend's words had aroused. The dark group of human beings were seen dimly in the moonlight, moving with a slow pace along the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... being deceived by such conduct. Above all, if any are even surprised by a sudden volley at close quarters, let there be no hesitation; do not turn from it but rush at it. That is the road to victory and safety. A retreat is fatal. The one thing the enemy cannot stand is our being at close quarters with them. We are fighting for the health and safety of comrades; we are fighting in defence of the flag against an enemy who has forced war on us from the worst and lowest motives, by treachery, conspiracy, and deceit. ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne

... with his five thousand effectives, against nearly treble numbers, in the battle of Wilson's Creek, at daylight on August 10. The casualties on the two sides were nearly equal, and the enemy was checked and crippled; but the Union army sustained a fatal loss in the death of General Lyon, who was instantly killed while leading a desperate bayonet charge. His skill and activity had, so far, been the strength of the Union cause in Missouri. The absence of his counsel and personal example rendered a retreat to ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... right to fire. A skilful shot can tell whether he is shooting too high or too low just as he pulls the trigger. The brain, head, and eyes and trigger-finger must all work in harmony or you will never be a good shot. Never flinch as you shoot. This is a very common fault of beginners and it is fatal to becoming ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... to teaze you out of it. I mean to wait some more detailed accounts of what is going on in England before I give my opinion on what ought to be done in the case that the King's disease should take a more fatal turn. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... very thin and hollow-cheeked, but for the first time perhaps for many years his face was perfectly clean, and his hair had been clipped off very short; while now, after passing through a phase of illness which had very nearly had a fatal result, he was ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... out of the darkness—another thought pierced him. What if she were indeed of those who loved for a space and passed smiling on? What if the fatal taint of the world from which she had come to him had touched her also, withering the heart in her, making true love a thing impossible? What if she had indeed been fashioned in the same mould as the worthless woman whom ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... will range from 16 to 18 years. The 124 pupils who are of normal age, but slow, are also subjects for special attention, for they have repeated from one to three grades, or have failed to secure from two to six half-yearly promotions, and are in danger of acquiring the fatal habit of failure, if they ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... republican-complexion, which was then called of extreme opinions, as he had previously been editor of a legal newspaper called Journal du Palais. La Reforme had been originally conducted by Godefroy Cavaignac, the brother of the general, who continued editor till the period of the fatal illness which preceded his death. The defense of Dupoty, tried and sentenced under the ministry of Thiers to five years' imprisonment, as a regicide, because a letter was found open in the letter-box of the paper of which he was editor, addressed to him by a man said to be implicated in the conspiracy ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... at my ease—why I cannot tell, but he was the only person with whom, since the fatal day of Julia's death, I could speak in the same manner as I did before. There was something soothing to my wayward feelings in the thoughtless gaiety which he soon resumed. In the course of a few weeks I persuaded myself nearly, if not entirely, that fancy, allied with terror, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... days he had known women as the gallants in Boccaccio's romances knew them, and among them one enchantress whose sorceries had kindled in his heart one of those fatal passions which burn out the whole of a man's nature, and leave it, like a sacked city, only a smouldering heap of ashes. Deepest, therefore, among his vows of renunciation had been those which divided him from all womankind. The gulf that parted him and them was in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... were fought. The more clerical and mystic thinkers, like Anselm and Bernard, of course sided with Plato; but the more worldly, robust thinkers inclined to accept Aristotle, not seeing that his doctrine is fatal to the Trinity. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... his caution and proposed to meet me here. He said he was going on a long journey and wanted to say goodbye. If he had found me alone—well, he would have said goodbye. If there had been anyone with me, he would have suspected, and he mustn't suspect me. Mr Blenkiron says that would be fatal to his great plan. He believes I am like my aunts, and that I think him an apostle of peace working by his own methods against the stupidity and wickedness of all the Governments. He talks more bitterly about Germany than about England. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... to speak a telegram was handed in. It was Kent's wire from Juniberg, beseeching him to gain time at all hazards, and he settled himself to the task. For thirty dragging minutes he rang the changes on the various steps in the suit, knowing well that the fatal moment was approaching when—Kent still failing him—he would be compelled to submit his case without a scrap of an ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... said Ambrose. "'Tis a priest for a dying man I seek;" and in reply to the instant question, where it was, he explained in haste who the sufferer was, and how he had received a fatal blow, and was begging for the Sacraments. "And oh, sir!" he added, "he is a holy and God-fearing man, if ever one lived, and hath been cruelly and foully entreated by jealous and wicked folk, who hated him for his skill ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... passionately captivated by the externals of marriage and love. Is not this as much as to say that her feeling had birth like all the feelings of extreme youth—sweet but cruel mistakes, which exert a fatal influence on the lives of young girls so inexperienced as to trust their own judgment to take care ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac

... the bat should be swung overhand, in an almost perpendicular plane, and so, also, for a low ball, the batter should stand erect and cut underhand. If the bat is swung in a horizontal plane the least miscalculation in the height of the ball will be fatal. If it strikes above or below the centre line of the bat, it will be driven either up into the air or down to the ground. Whereas, if the bat is swung perpendicularly, the same mistake will only cause it to ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward

... prediction was used, bad weather might overtake the expedition. Yes; but if transports were used transhipment into boats for landing would in bad weather be fraught with the same and a greater peril. But transports could stand off and wait. Delay is fatal in any case; unswerving promptitude is the essence of such an enterprise. The lighters would be in danger of foundering? Beside the point; if the end is worth gaining the risks must be faced. Soldiers' lives are sacrificed in tens of thousands on battlefields. The flotilla ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... trail. The very cattle that impart it after a winter in the north catch the fever and die like sheep. It seems to exist, in a mild form, in through, healthy cattle, but once imparted to native or northern wintered stock, it becomes violent and is usually fatal. The sure, safe course is ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... no sign yet. There was a crisis somewhere abroad, and a colleague understood to be self-opinionated; there was a crisis in the Church, and a bishopric vacant. Lady Evenswood was of opinion that the least attempt to hurry Robert would be fatal. There were, after all, limits to the importance of Harry Tristram's case, and Robert was likely, if worried, to state the fact with his own merciless vigor, and with that to say good-by to the whole affair. The only person seriously angry at the Prime Minister's "dawdling," ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... following extract of an official letter transmitted by me to the Lords of the Admiralty, and dated the 28th October, 1818, containing a statement of the vexations inflicted upon Napoleon, will show that the fatal event which has since taken place at St. Helena was most distinctly pointed out by me to His ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... hours, dining and supping out and that sort of thing, a fact which the Rosies and Ruths of this world can't be expected to appreciate. So that it would be as well, think the ingenuous entrepreneurs, if The Fatal Murder were, so far as the ladies' parts are concerned, cast from members of the two households. Besides, what an excellent way of keeping the money in the family. However The Fatal Murder is a dud; Rosie and Ruth are not the right shape; and film acting, with the necessary pep, is not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various

... faces,—that howl for ever in their shuddering ears—"Too late." Had Dr. Hargrove received this letter only twenty-four hours earlier, the result of the interview on the previous night would probably have been very different; but unfortunately, while the army of belated facts—the fatal Grouchy corps—never accomplish their intended mission, they avenge they failure by a pertinacious presence ever after ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... influence in the American war, that a Sioux Indian was doomed to die for an offence which he had committed, and taking his station before the tribe, and drawing his blanket over his face, in expectation of the fatal shot, the Chief stepped forward and presented some water to him, as a token of pardon, when he was permitted again to join the party. They consider it also as a very bad omen in common with the Tartars, to cut a stick that has been burnt ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... wound by incisions, they drew out the barbed point. The soldiers were indignant that Alexander should expose his person in such a fool-hardy way, only to endanger himself, and to compel them to rush into danger to rescue him. The wound very nearly proved fatal. The loss of blood was attended with extreme exhaustion; still, in the course of ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... the heavy grave-clothes; but then I shall be at rest. Oh! how my aching, weary spirit pines for rest. Do not fancy that sorrow or disappointment has brought me to this. I fancied I loved Lucien Decker fondly, devotedly; and how happy was I when under the influence of that fancy. That fatal summer, at the time of his infatuation for that heartless girl, insensibly a chilling hardness crept over my feelings. I struggled against my awakening; and if Lucien had displayed any emotion before his departure, I might ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... Alexander, who had been made prisoner and dragged to Augusta tied to the tail of a cart. A reward was offered for information that would lead to the arrest of the man who shot Grierson, but the reward was never claimed. The whole army probably knew who had fired the fatal shot, and no doubt the commanders knew, but their knowledge was not official. No further notice was ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... was who with his forest-wisdom had planned all our moves, and had mapped our course through the blind forest, where a man could be lost as easily as on the open sea. He had proved himself a good leader, save for the fatal mistake in delaying our return, over-anxious as he was to render his employer, Coronel da Silva, full and faithful service. He was extremely capable, kind, and human, and a ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... even a top-dressing, which is sometimes given to plants of unquestionable hardiness, and they stood the winters as well as their kindred species—our common Cowslip. It was also said to be not more than biennial, as if it were a plant too good to be without some fatal fault for our climate. However, I can say emphatically that it is more than biennial, as the specimens from which the drawing (Fig. 78) is taken are three years old. Several correspondents have written me stating that their plants are dead. ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... he said, divining the desperate purpose of the other; adding, as an afterthought: "and if you should, you wouldn't have the courage to use it. That is the fatal lack in your makeup. It is what kept you from taking the train last night with the money belt which you emptied this morning. You'll never make a successful criminal; it takes a good deal more nerve than it does to be ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... projects of Louis Napoleon in Mexico, and the consequent sympathies of the United States with Russia against Poland and France, make an imbroglio fatal to Poland. Now that, if the Russian Empire were organized into States possessed of substantive interior nationality (as the French plan is), this would seem to be a very lamentable result. The two Western Cabinets have so acted as to ensure ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... said Billy. "The police came for me to start the current going again, but I said I was too ill. Then the president's own doctor came, old Gautier, and Gautier examined me with a lantern and said that in Hayti my disease frequently proved fatal, but he thought if I turned on the lights I might recover. I told him I was tired of life, anyway, but that if I could see three thousand francs it might give me an incentive. He reported back to the president and the three thousand francs arrived ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis

... second act, it made her laugh so, that he thrust the masterpiece into the fire in a pet. He projected an epic poem in blank verse, 'Cortez, or the Conqueror of Mexico, and the Inca's Daughter.' He wrote part of 'Seneca, or the Fatal Bath,' and 'Ariadne in Naxos;' classical pieces, with choruses and strophes and antistrophes, which sadly puzzled poor Mrs. Pendennis; and began a 'History of the Jesuits,' in which he lashed that Order with tremendous severity, and warned his Protestant ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... man, with failing health, had gradually acquired the use of the fatal drug known as "foreign smoke," which some years previously had been first introduced from distant lands, and was gaining ground every year as a profitable crop in the best soil. One ounce a day had become the necessary ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... been, it seems, unaccountably detained in port nearly a month after the period assigned for her departure, was early on the morning of the fatal calamity pursuing at a great distance ahead of us the same course with ourselves; but her bulwarks on the weather side having been suddenly driven in, by a heavy sea breaking over her quarter, ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor

... tact and that excellent prudence which seem never to have failed Jefferson in any of his enterprises for the disparagement of his associates, he here avoids, as will be observed, all mention of the name of the person for whose fatal promotion this classic conspiracy was formed,—leaving that interesting item to come out, as it did many years afterward, when the most of those who could have borne testimony upon the subject were in their graves, and when the damning stigma could be comfortably fastened ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... glittering eyes the anguished bird which, with fainter and fainter screams, striving to delay a fate it could not escape, kept flying round and round in constantly diminishing circles, until it fell into the jaws of the destroyer. The same fatal influence he had seen exercised upon rabbits and other small game, the prey of the snake, and he did not doubt that a like fascination was attempted to be practiced on himself, and that the man was a conjurer. The thought threw him into a rage, and he determined ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... a great many of the young men of rank, by the age of twenty-five, are debilitated, and have recourse to stimulants. The preparation of these forms a chief source of emolument to the medical men, and they are sometimes taken to a quantity that proves fatal. ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... for fatal creeds, For youth on folly bent, A steady tick for worthy deeds, And moments wisely spent; No warning note of emphasis, No whisper of advice, To ruined rake or flippant miss, For ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... would have us back to Aristotle, or back to our senses, which is roughly the same thing. At all events, it is certain that in Aristotle the present generation would find the beginnings of a remedy for that fatal confusion of categories which has overcome the world. It is the confusion between existence and value. That strange malady of the mind by which in the nineteenth century material progress was supposed to create, ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... as we crossed a little ravine, some twenty Indians jumped out of the long grass and fired on us. The first volley killed Mr. Cinnamon, a telegraph operator, who was a passenger, on his way from Plum Creek to some point up the river. He was riding on the box with the driver when he received the fatal shot, and the driver caught his body just as it was falling forward off the coach on the rear horses. He put Cinnamon's corpse in the front boot among the mail bags, where it ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... wilderness of gorges and mountains, it would take a guide who knew of its existence a long time to find it." This is striking, and shows up well above the levels of commonplace description; but it is confusing, and has the fatal fault of not being true. As well try to describe an eagle by putting a lark in it. "And the lark—ah, the lovely lark! Dumped down the red, royal gorge of the eagle, it would be hard to find." Each in its own place ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir



Words linked to "Fatal" :   disastrous, mortal, deadly, calamitous, decisive, deathly, fateful, fatality, inevitable, nonfatal, lethal, terminal, unfortunate



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