"Devastating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the smiling of beautiful Court Ladies and great, silken Nobles; the swaying of howdahs on camel and elephant, and the awesome shaking of the earth beneath the elephant's feet, and the gleam of his small but devastating eye (every one declared he looked the alarmed Mr. Snoddy full in the face as he passed, and Mr. Snoddy felt not at all reassured when Tom Martin severely hinted that it was with the threatening glance of a rival); then the badinage of the clown, creaking along in his donkey cart; the terrific ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... very little to Paul. She waited the right moment. Maggie's absence showed her how deep and devastating this fear had been. She saw that it embraced the whole life of Paul and herself in Skeaton. She had grown fond of Skeaton; she was a woman who would inevitably care for anything when she had become thoroughly accustomed to its ways and was assured that ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Turks were defeated, but Roger was found to be nearly as formidable an enemy to the imperial power. He was assassinated by Andronicus's son and colleague, the emperor Michael IX., in 1305. His adventurers (known as the Catalan Grand Company) declared war upon Andronicus, and, after devastating Thrace and Macedonia, conquered the duchy of Athens and Thebes. From 1320 onwards the emperor was engaged in war with his grandson Andronicus (see below). He abdicated in 1328 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... move wearily. It was as if his passions had been dammed up by the original influence of Valentine. Through the years, behind the height of the dam, the waters had been rising, accumulating, pressing. Suddenly the dam was removed, and a devastating flood swept forth, uncontrollable, headlong, and furious. Julian needed rescue, but the only way to rescue seemed to lie through Valentine, within whose circle of influence he was so closely bound. The mystery of Valentine must be ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... There were shirtings, murmurings, apologetic sneezes, and sudden unashamed devastating coughs. The lesson hour was almost over. Ushers were collecting exercises. Lazy children wanted to stretch. Good ones scribbled assiduously—ah, another day over and so little done! And now and then was to be heard from the whole collection of human beings a heavy sigh, after which the humiliating ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... and vanished, to bring back for the hundredth time darkness more shattering than their instantly renewed light over all Illinois. Then the tune and lights ceased together, and we heard one single devastating wail that shook all the horizon as a rubbed wet finger shakes the ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... caution than ever before he set upon his speech and bearing, while he sought to run down those devastating truths that had come to ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... speeches lead us already to form the most unfavourable anticipations of his future conduct. He lowers obliquely like a dark thundercloud on the horizon, which gradually approaches nearer and nearer, and first pours out the devastating elements with which it is charged when it hangs over the heads of mortals. Two of Richard's most significant soliloquies which enable us to draw the most important conclusions with regard to his mental ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... measures for the aid of the cause of freedom, and for depositing supplies for friends in the field. The Brushy Mountains were but a few miles distant, and were infested with Tories, who made predatory incursions into this part of Iredell, carrying off stock, devastating farms, and ambuscading and shooting Whigs, who were ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... war promising a sure result, but also inasmuch as the region to which they transferred the war was in dangerous agitation, and a good part of the army which they opposed to Caesar was likewise in a troublesome temper. The fearfully strict levy, the carrying off of the supplies, the devastating of the smaller townships, the feeling in general that they were being sacrificed for a cause which from the outset was foreign to them and was already lost, had exasperated the native population against the Roman republicans fighting out their last struggle of despair on ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... in our shelter, to regain our strength and to rest our horses. Thus deeply buried in the bosom of the earth, we were safe from the devastating elements. On the second day we heard tremendous claps of thunder; we knew that a storm was raging which would quench the fire, but we cared little about what was ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... of infectious disease. Surely that is of interest to all of us. Now the theory of infectious disease is rapidly being elucidated by biological study. It is possible to produce, from among the lower animals, examples of devastating diseases which spread in the same manner as our infectious disorders, and which are certainly and unmistakably caused by living organisms. This fact renders it possible, at any rate, that that doctrine of the causation of infectious disease which is known under the name ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... in naval warfare, have been somewhat overrated. Visions of air-ships hovering over a doomed city and devastating it with missiles dropped from above are mere fairy tales. Indeed the whole subject of aeronautics as an element in future human progress has excited far more attention than its intrinsic ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... of burnings of the dwelling in which he first saw the light, of endless gaming, and plentiful shedding of blood; but we hear nothing positive concerning him until the year 1818. Somewhere in that year he determines to join the band of freebooters under Ramirez, which was then devastating the eastern provinces. And here—O deep designs of Fate!—the very means intended to check his mad career serve only to accelerate its development. Dupuis, governor of San Luis, through which province he is passing on his way to join Ramirez, arrests the Gaucho ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... of to-day, rudeness to civilisation, ignorance to knowledge. I already foresee in imagination nations, strange in form, complexion, and costume, overwhelming Europe—like the Goths, Huns, Vandals, Lombards, Saracens of old—destroying our cities and palaces, burning our libraries, devastating all that is beautiful. I foresee in all countries wars, domestic and foreign, factions and heresies which will profane all things human and divine; famines, plagues, and floods; the universe approaching an end, world-wide confusion, and the return of things to ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... typical Oxford apartment: dark, a little faded, but redeemed by the grate of glowing coals. Behind the chimney two recessed seats looked out over the college gardens; long red curtains were drawn to shut out the winter draughts. It was the true English January— driving squalls of rain, dampness, and devastating chill. The east wind brought the booming toll from Magdalen tower very distinctly to the ear, closely followed by the tinny chime in Fellows' Quad. ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... deforestation; water pollution from sewage, industrial effluents, agricultural runoff natural hazards: frequent, devastating hurricanes (September to December) and coastal flooding (especially in south) international agreements: party to - Biodiversity, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Law ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... cheered myself with vain hope, for the papers next morning blazoned the news to all the world. That they printed it under great staring head-lines was not surprising to me, for to me this fact transcended all others in importance. Beside it the rumblings of war in the Balkans, the devastating flood in China, or the earthquake which wrecked a southern city were trifles. So to my distorted view the papers were filled with the announcement of my overwhelming misfortune. Only by the greatest effort could I drag myself from reading and rereading to my humdrum task. Before ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... New City, of that there was no doubt. This was the part of the great metropolis which had been built again since the devastating war that had nearly wiped the city from the Earth a decade before. These were the moving streets, the beautiful residential apartments, following the modern neo-functional patterns and participational design which had completely altered ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... Olaf the Saint, which carried sometimes 200 men. The Sea-kings, as they often called these adventurers, lived on the ocean, never settling on shore, passing from the pillage of a castle to the burning of an abbey, devastating the coasts of France, ascending rivers, especially the Seine, as far as Paris, sailing over the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople, establishing themselves later in Sicily, and leaving traces of their incursions or their sojourn ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... historian Thucydides. In that fratricidal conflict Greece tore herself to pieces. It was a struggle between the two leaders of the then civilized world, and it has a terrible likeness to the struggle that is going on now. From its devastating influence Greece never recovered. Historians still dispute, and always will, as to the exact proportion of praise and blame between the two. But Thucydides himself, a true-hearted Athenian, brings out the tyrannical side in the Athenian ...
— Progress and History • Various
... war of religion, the war of 1569, in which the Huguenots were defeated in the historic battles of Jarnac and Moncontour, had been so devastating that the government lost the disposition to go on fighting, and counsels of moderation prevailed. Coligny, summoned to advise, was listened to with attention, and a marriage was decided on between the king's sister, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the passionate, obstinate head stormed in motley confusion the combined thoughts of the other twelve: from the mightiest hope to the most crushing doubt, from the most humble resolves to the most devastating plans of revenge; and, meanwhile, he had eaten up all the loose flesh on his right thumb, and was busied now with his nails, sending large pieces across ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... incentive. She wanted to talk to Portia. They hadn't had a real talk since that devastating day—ages ago—when, yielding to an impulse of passionate self-revelation, Portia had exhibited her great sacrifice and her equally great, though thwarted desire; had said to Rose, "I am the branch they cut off so that you could grow. You're living my life as ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... remember is your spitfire rages—very vaguely, but they must have been rather devastating to have made an ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... see it all: The materialization of the fleets; the swift, devastating blow, then the instantaneous retreat into the fastnesses of the past. Terrific destruction, but not a ship lost nor ...
— Project Mastodon • Clifford Donald Simak
... the most terrific bombardment the war had witnessed burst with devastating fury upon the German lines. Nothing had been heard like it, and men smiled grimly, knowing that ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... religion. A crusade was set on foot; but the natives resisted with success, and began to destroy the monasteries established in the country. Consequently, in 1226 Duke Conrad invited some members of the Teutonic Order to help him. In 1230 came a large number of the knights, and a devastating war which lasted for more than fifty years (1230-83), ended in the nominal conversion ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... times, the tribes of Gaul crossed the Alps and established themselves in Northern Italy (see p. 223). While the Romans were conquering the towns of Etruria, these barbarian hordes were moving southward, and overrunning and devastating the countries of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Act I, after the prologue, in which Alfeo rises to pay compliments to Carlo Emanuele and his bride, we are introduced to Silvio and Linco, who are about to start in pursuit of a savage boar which has been devastating the country. Linco taxes his companion with his neglect of the softer joys of love, to which Silvio replies with long-drawn praise of the free life of the woods. The scene is parallel to the first of the Aminta, and the author has sought here and elsewhere ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... tried to get a regiment of ours sent to guard the place, and then sell the things by auction; but it is difficult to get things done by system in such a case, so some officers are left who are to fill two or three carts with treasures which are to be sold.... Plundering and devastating a place like this is bad enough, but what is much worse is the waste and breakage. Out of 1,000,000 l. worth of property, I daresay 50,000 l. will not be realised. French soldiers were destroying in every way the ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... his niece, who lives with him. The man I allude to as Lord Bilberry, but is now Earl of Cockletown. He was raised to this rank for some services he rendered the government against the tories, who had been devastating the country, and also against some turbulent papists who were supposed to have privately encouraged them in their outrages against Protestant life and property. He was a daring and intrepid man when in his prime of life, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Nome King, "we shall arrive at the Emerald City by daybreak. Then, while all the Oz people are sleeping, we will capture them and make them our slaves. After that we will destroy the city itself and march through the Land of Oz, burning and devastating ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Paderewski, who is working here in the interests of the Polish sufferers through the war: 'This means only more suffering for my people; it means that another army will be raised, and that there will be more killing and more devastating,' were reproduced by many newspapers and regarded as an authoritative statement of what might be expected from the German-Austrian proclamations. Many papers declared it to be simply a move to raise more recruits. Others sarcastically ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... tranquillizing antidote for all the ills of life. Splendid level alkali flats abound east of Rock Springs, and I bowl across them at a lively pace until they terminate, and my route follows up Bitter Creek, where the surface is just the reverse; being seamed and furrowed as if it had just emerged from a devastating flood. It is said that the teamster who successfully navigated the route up Bitter Creek, considered himself entitled to be called "a tough cuss from Bitter Creek, on wheels, with a perfect education." A justifiable regard for individual rights would seem to favor ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... by the flames devastating Cheapside, and on the other from those creeping steadily up from Blackfriars to this great centre, it was now impossible to save the venerable church, which Evelyn terms "one of the most ancient pieces of early Christian piety in the world." Seen by this fierce light, and ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... true that ill-bred and swinish nations can be roused to a serious consideration of their position and their destiny only by earthquakes, pestilences, famines, comets' tails, Titanic shipwrecks, and devastating wars, just as it is true that African chiefs cannot make themselves respected unless they bury virgins alive beneath the doorposts of their hut-palaces, and Tartar Khans find that the exhibition of a pyramid of chopped-off heads is ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... spreading it far and wide over the land—especially as it is peculiarly adapted to districts in which the bees do not readily and regularly swarm. His eminent success in re-establishing his stock after suffering so heavily from the devastating pestilence—in short the recuperative power of the system demonstrates conclusively, that it furnishes the best, perhaps the only means of reinstating bee-culture lo a profitable branch of ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... devastating war while some states were fighting for separation, another new state was added to the Union. This was Nevada. Nevada is Spanish and means snowy, and the state takes its name from the snowy topped mountains which run through it. It was formed out of part of the Mexican ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... say something, but I couldn't. The lion of my anger had me down, by this time, with his paw on my breast. The power of speech was squeezed out of my carcass. I could only stare at my husband with a denuding and devastating stare of incredulity touched with disgust, of abhorrence skirting dangerously close along the margins of hate. And he stared back, with morose and watchful defiance on ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires—to rush places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty. He sought to regain his lost dignity by announcing ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... of excessive rain and humidity, excessive heat, or excessive dryness and aridity. In the temperate and frigid zones, life was a seasonal battle with bitter cold, torrents of cold rain in early winter or spring, devastating sleet, and deep snow and ice that left ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... eternal One! whose presence bright All space doth occupy, all motion guide, Unchanged through time's all-devastating blight! Thou only God, there is no god beside! Being above all things, mighty One, Whom none can comprehend and none explore; Who fill'st existence with thyself alone,— Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er,— Being whom we call God, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... announcement of the marriage of Hambleton Durrett would be news of the first magnitude, to be absorbed eagerly by the many who had not the honour of his acquaintance, —comparable only to that of a devastating flood or a murder mystery or ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... well; but I did not give up my reading or my attempts to write. No doubt I was secretly proud to have been invalided in so great a cause, and to be sicklied over with the pale cast of thought, rather than by some ignoble ague or the devastating consumption of that region. If I lay awake, noting the wild pulsations of my heart, and listening to the death-watch in the wall, I was certainly very much scared, but I was not without the consolation that I was at least a sufferer for literature. At the same ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... refinements, its civilization; in a word, he dreaded the loss of the elegant, cultivated if somewhat indolent ease described by Horace. Would the graceful elegancies of life, the high culture of the arts, indeed be safe in the rude and devastating hands of the new barbarians? He followed at a distance the progress of events, and an acuteness of perception, which he would scarcely have been supposed to possess, often enabled him to predict occurrences which were not anticipated even by the best informed. But though such ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... a good joke, such as Mark Twain loved—a carefully prepared, harmless bit of foolery. He wrote Robert Collier, threatening him with all sorts of revenge, declaring that the elephant was devastating Stormfield. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... biscuits and maple syrup still lingering pleasantly against their palates, they went out and were confronted with sheep, blatting sheep, stinking sheep, devastating sheep, Dot sheep. On the south side of the coulee, up on the bluff, grazed the band. They fed upon the brow of the hill opposite the ranch buildings; they squeezed under the fence and spilled a ragged fringe of running, gray animals down the slope. Half a mile away though the nearest of them ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... whole of the Canada known to the French settlers and explorers was convulsed by the devastating warfare carried on by the Iroquois, who during that period destroyed the greater part of the Algonkin and Huron clans. The neutral nation of Lake Erie (the Erigas) was scattered, and between the shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... acrobats, the tallest man and the shortest man, the thinnest woman and the thickest woman, on the habitable globe; and no connection with any other show on earth, especially Sypher's Two-in-One Show now devastating ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... private sector, with canned tuna the primary export. Transfers from the US Government add substantially to American Samoa's economic well-being. Attempts by the government to develop a larger and broader economy are restrained by Samoa's remote location, its limited transportation, and its devastating hurricanes. Tourism, a developing sector, has been held back by the recurring financial difficulties in ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... will it be the just indignation of the holy monks in finding the true character of the refugees whom they have sheltered in ignorance, contrary to the canons of the Church? Or will the still more devastating and ruthless storm of religious persecution seek the sanctuary in the clouds to desecrate it, to scatter its inmates and ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... on a Sheraton table; in the immediate background was a portion of a low ornamental garden wall, in the distance was a ruin principally composed of Ionic columns in various positions—presumably the devastating work of the warrior in the foreground, "Look on that," he said bitterly, and as I returned it, "and on this, the backbone of the British Army," smiting his manly breast. I looked, and in the bronzed, unshaven face and raggedly-apparelled figure before me, recognised a certain semblance ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... an order of women, who consecrated themselves to field work, arose in the Catholic Church. They were called Beguines, and everywhere ministered to the sick and wounded of the armies of Continental Europe during its long period of devastating wars. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... who had so recently been, making their inglorious campaign in France had been excluded from that country at the close of 1587, and furious were the denunciations of the pulpits and the populace of Paris that the foreign brigands who had been devastating the soil of France, and attempting to oppose the decrees of the Holy Father of Rome, should; have made their escape so easily. Rabid Lincestre and other priests and monks foamed with rage, as they execrated and anathematized the devil-worshipper Henry of Valois, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... when I entered the building at nine, it was as though a devastating tornado had swept down every club boy, sparing only Sidney Price, who was preparing miserably ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... manners and customs so worn into the national character that they almost form the character itself, with its fertile plains, its sandy deserts, its lofty mountains, its mighty rivers, its torrid heat and arctic cold, its devastating floods, its cruel famines and loathsome epidemics, represents a mass, the contemplation of which staggers the mind and makes one ask, "What is Europe trying to do here? Does she hope to conquer, to ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... some of the big fruit farms that were becoming more and more a feature of the country. Spots of beauty in the wilderness, carved out of arid desert by patience and perseverance and threatened always by the devastating locust, though no longer subjected to the Arab raids that had been a daily menace twenty or thirty years before. The motley gangs of European and native workers toiling more or less diligently in the vineyards and among the groves of fruit trees invariably collected to watch ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... crushed beneath them, had they ever met in mortal combat. Between this part of the Prince's forces and the Irish auxiliaries there was a deadly animosity. Alas, there always is such in camps! The sons of Albion had not forgotten the day when the children of Erin had been subject to their devastating sway. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... least cause for some hesitation," said he. "St. Riok was only two years old when he overcame the dragon. Who says that nine or ten years later he could have done as much? Remember, father, that the dragon who is devastating our island has devoured little Elo and four or five other young boys. Brother Samuel is not go presumptuous as to believe that at nineteen years of age he is more innocent than they were at ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... the command of Hamilcar, passed over to Sardinia. At first it laid waste the territory of Olbia, and then Publius Manlius Vulso, with his army, making his appearance, it sailed round thence to the other side of the island, and devastating the territory of Caralis, returned to Africa with booty of every kind. Several Roman priests died this year, and others were substituted. Caius Servilius was appointed pontiff, in the place of Titus Otacilius ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... from the domination of Germany only by defeating her in her present undertakings; and that this defeat can be brought about only by using against her the same effective agencies of destruction and the same martial spirit on which Germany itself relies. Horrible as are the murderous and devastating effects of this war, there can be no lasting peace until Europe as a whole is ready to make some serious and far-reaching decisions in regard to Governmental structures and powers. In all probability the sufferings and losses of this widespread ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Hospital housed at the Heliopolis Palace Hotel, and the adjoining Luna Park. These men related their own experiences and impressions. Their auditors were able to appreciate the stupendous task of the landing parties and the heroism with which they had held on to the ground gained under devastating enemy fire and the ravages of disease. Of the relative positions of the opposing forces little of a definite nature was known, nor could anything be ascertained as to the plans for the future. The fact that so many troops were collecting in Egypt did, however, ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... merely looking over the estate, entered the forest, in order to visit his relatives there. His fellow monkeys, who knew of his marriage with the princess, believed him to be of some importance, and begged him to save them from the famine which was devastating the forest. This Amo-Mongo, with much boasting of his wealth, promised to do, declaring that at the time of harvest he would give ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... Poland—Grodno. To the south of it, by August 31, 1915, they had reached Kuznitsa, on the Bialystok-Grodno railway. The investment of Grodno may be said to have begun with that day. It was then that the first reports came that heavy artillery had been brought up by the Germans and was throwing its devastating shells into the fortress from the western front. Little hope was left to the Russians for a successful resistance. For whenever these heavy guns had been brought into play before, they had blasted their way to the desired goal, no matter how strong or modern had been the defenses ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the now darkening and deserted offices, it seemed to her that the roar of men's passions was a gale through the silence. Quite irrelevantly she was clutched with a terror of catastrophe. The possibility of fire! Only last week there had been a devastating one in a children's hospital out in Columbus, Ohio. She beat down these flames of fear. Yet what strange and horrible passions lay just a scratch beneath the surface of the day-by-days. A little girl aged four had once been found battered and dead beside a farm hand's dinner pail in ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... activities had not been limited she would have swamped the whole book. As it was she lay in bed, drank gin, directed various operations with her eye fixed rather upon this world than the next, and told her visitors precisely what she thought of them. I am thankful not to have met this devastating lady in the flesh, because to be called "a hookery-snidy, trundle-trailed king-crab," and then told to kiss her, would have been more than I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... existed as a nursery of tribes, some wandering with their herds, some dwelling in villages and tilling their fields, but all warlike and all barbarians. And over this plain at intervals swept conquering hordes from Asia, the terrible Huns, the devastating Avars, and others of varied names. But as yet the Russia we know did not exist, and its very name ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... from the city. After the Governor had had guards placed in all the villages in the vicinity, and also had sentinels stationed on the city walls to prevent a surprise, he himself set out on Saint Gervaise's day to capture the dragon who was devastating the land. The horse-dealer was clever enough to keep out of the way of this troop. By skilfully executed marches he enticed the Governor five leagues away from the city, and by means of various manoeuvres he gave the other the mistaken notion that, hard ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of time were of a sudden flung open. In the space of a few years something like five centuries poured over the land. Nikola stood on the rocks with his sons hoping to escape the devastating torrent. But there was no way of escape. They must swim with ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... man who preached the Gospel, which every Christian man is bound to do, the limitations of Christian service to the official class became an illogical survival, utterly incongruous with the fundamental principles of our conception of the Christian Church. And yet here it is, devastating our churches to-day, and making hundreds of good people perfectly comfortable, in an unscriptural and unchristian indolence, because, forsooth, it is the minister's business to preach the Gospel. I know that there is not nearly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the only vital necessity in a nation's life. But the one vital necessity in a man's spiritual life he had missed. If he had had this, he told himself, life's bludgeons, however searching, however devastating, he could have laughed at. A man must have the thought of some good woman's love to sustain him. But for Enoch, the thought of any woman's love, Luigi had tainted at its source. He had neither mother nor mate, and until he had evolved some philosophy which would ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... North called men with its lure of gold, an indomitable missionary led in all that made for the better life. When a devastating war had spent its fury and a helpless Africa, bound by heaviest chains of ignorance and superstition, waited, Home ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... motives of fear, curiosity or selfishness. In this manner, tribe will be arrayed against tribe throughout that vast continent; the tide of commotion, gathering fresh impetuosity in its headlong career, will rush from the mountains down to the ocean, devastating all that is beautiful, and swiftly defacing that which will require the labors of centuries to restore to its pristine excellence; there will be wars and rumors of wars, succeeded by deceitful and unstable treaties ratified only to be broken ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... of Britain after the withdrawal of the Roman troops is extremely obscure, but there can be little doubt that for many years the inhabitants of the provinces were exposed to devastating raids by the Picts and Scots. According to Gildas it was for protection against these incursions that the Britons decided to call in the Saxons. Their allies soon obtained a decisive victory; but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... smile upon him. Be that as it may, he suddenly found himself the husband of his late partner's daughter, a woman eight years older than he, and at least four inches taller; a silent, plain woman, of devastating common sense, who contradicted all those femininities and soft lovelinesses so characteristic, not only of his first wife but of ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... pretended insult, William refused to negotiate with the ambassadors through whom it came; and, furthermore, gave orders to his chancellor Scitinius, whom he had just made viceroy of Apulia, to attack the domain of the Church, which that officer accordingly did, by laying siege to Beneventum, and devastating its territory. But as this proceeding caused a number of disaffected crown vassals of Apulia, already secretly tampered with by agents of the Greek emperor, anxious to recover his lost sway in Italy, to revolt against the Sicilian government,—many of ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... carried. The enemy retired on Petra Bona, and that too was taken. Then the Austrians rushed toward the bridge of the Bormida; but Carra-Saint-Cyr was there before them. The flying multitudes sought the fords, or plunged into the Bormida under a devastating fire, which did not slacken before ten ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... thought never to be threatened by the Germans again. Dwellings damaged during their last visit had been repaired. New houses made of fine white stone, quarried in the district, had been built, and were building. The bitterness of it, if the foul devastating Boche were to come again! There were many evidences of the hurried flight of the last two days,—torn letters and papers, unswept fire-grates, unconsumed food and drinks, beds with sheets in them, drawers hurriedly ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... a rush that I was not only never going to be fit for a Vestal but that I wasn't fit for a Vestal and I hadn't been fit for a Vestal; that I not only was going to do harm, not only was doing harm, but had done harm. If the Parthians are devastating the frontier along the Euphrates and the Marcommani and the Quadi are storming the outposts along the Danube and the Rhine, perhaps that is because my presence in the Atrium is an offence in the eyes of Vesta, my prayers an affront to my Goddess, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... was so unexpected, so devastating to the human mind, that fear filled Millicent's heart. Instinctively she had drawn a little closer to Michael. She craved for arms to guard her, to protect her from the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... fortnight. Finally, on September sixteenth, Massena crossed the Portuguese frontier, and Wellington, who lay near by but had not ventured to assume the offensive, began a slow and cautious retreat down the valley of the Mondego, devastating the country as he went. At last he made a stand on the heights near Busaco, over against a gorge where the river breaks through the hills into the plains below. Massena attacked on September twenty-seventh and was repulsed with a loss of four thousand five hundred dead and wounded. His division ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... short months after this event, and the little town where it took place had something else to think of. The ill-advised step of the Prussian government, who, relying upon the aid of Russia, declared war against Napoleon, brought the devastating hordes of republican France among them. The battle of Jena placed the whole kingdom at the foot of the conqueror; and few towns suffered more, comparatively, than the little burgh which, by the decree of a very doubtful sort of justice, had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... place on the Syrian Coast, owing to the malaria from a marsh behind it. The inhabitants are a wretched pallid set, who are visited every year with devastating fevers. The marsh was partly drained some forty years ago by the Turkish government, and a few thousand dollars would be sufficient to remove it entirely, and make the place—which is of some importance as the seaport ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... war Greece, Montenegro, and Servia were joined by Roumania in the war against Bulgaria, who was also independently attacked by Turkey. What may happen in 1914 or 1915 no one can predict. But if this terrible conflagration, which is already devastating Europe and convulsing all the continents and vexing all the oceans of the globe, spreads to the Balkans, one may hazard the guess that Greece, Montenegro, Servia, and Roumania will stand together ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... goats, Maltese fever has lately been introduced into Calabria. Man, with his charcoal-burning, has completed the disaster. What happens? The friable rock, no longer sustained by plant-life, crashes down with each thunderstorm, blocks up the valleys, devastating large tracts of fertile land; it creates swamps in the lowlands, and impedes the outflow of water to the sea. These ravenous fiumare have become a feature in Calabrian scenery; underneath one of the most terrible ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... others, aggression, morbid and excessive ambition were all fruits from the same stem. The gloom which many have found in German life, and the pessimism in German philosophy, we may explain in part by the experiences of Germany as the scene of so many devastating wars. Upon the background of fear, in our interpretation of aggressive motives, is erected German autocracy, German ambition and the conception of the absolute State, which may be interpreted as almost a specific fear reaction. It comes in time to have other meanings, ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... off the sea from America, affecting the Bahama Banks, but not reaching to Jamaica or Cuba. The rollers set in terrifically in the Gulf of California, causing vessels to founder or strike in 7 fathoms, and devastating the coast-line. H.M.S. Lily foundered off Tristan d'Acunha in similar weather. In all the latter cases no satisfactory cause is yet ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... on deck was devastating, and in the engine-room the water, though really not great in quantity, rushed over the floor plates and frames in a fashion that gave ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... depends on a degree more or less of dryness or damp, heat or cold. In 1788, a year of severe drought, the crops had been poor. In addition to this, on the eve of the harvest,[1101] a terrible hail-storm burst over the region around Paris, from Normandy to Champagne, devastating sixty leagues of the most fertile territory, and causing damage to the amount of one hundred millions of francs. Winter came on, the severest that had been seen since 1709. At the close of December the Seine was frozen over from Paris to Havre, while ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... wherry would stir to take possession, and our newspapers would merely remark that there was always a strain of insanity in the Spanish branch of the Bourbons. Two hundred years ago such a will would have produced a prolonged and devastating war. Something is gained. We have eliminated royal dynasties from the ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... countries, how should we like to have specially trained and educated farmers drive us out of our homes and farms, such as they were, making use of the same argument, that God could never have intended such ignorant, unprofitable, devastating farmers as we were to occupy land upon which scientific farmers could raise five or ten times as much on each acre as we did? And I well remember thinking that Mr. Mair had the better side of the argument. It then seemed to me that, whatever the final outcome might be, it was at this stage of ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... forest cultivation is not neglected, but that the bark also is preserved and cared for? Of course, we can obtain all the bark necessary at present and for some time to come, but the time will come when we shall certainly regret not having taken these steps, if the lumbermen and bark peelers go on devastating magnificent forests. Below will be found a table of weight results. Sole leather tanned with these materials gives for every 100 lb. green hide the following quantities ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... naturally follow that, one fallible point having been revealed, others would be sought for. In other words, scepticism in regard to accepted methods would be aroused, and would lead naturally, as such scepticism usually does, to progress. The devastating effects of these plagues, despite prayers and incantations, would arouse doubt in the minds of many as to the efficacy of superstitious rites and ceremonies in curing diseases. They had seen thousands and tens of thousands of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... one supreme and devastating study of the illiterate minor official in Bumble. That one figure lit up and still lights the whole problem of Poor Law administration for the English reading community. It was a translation of well-meant regulations and pseudo-scientific conceptions of social ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... stands on the royal ship, nods approvingly. "That is right," he says. "To persecute and to be persecuted, that is my law. May storm and sea destroy the pirate fleet and take to itself the treasures of my royal servant! So much the sooner it will be our lot to set out on new devastating expeditions." ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... merely speculative questions about "the church," or about "religion," and the stream which, had it been directed into a right channel, and to a right point, would have been made a power for immense good, soon rushes over the land a wide-spread, muddy, devastating flood, oozes out into stagnant marshes, full of miasma and fever, or ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... Hollister was young, sanguine, clever in the accepted sense of cleverness. He had married for love,—urged thereto by a headlong, unquestioning, uncritical passion. But there were no obstacles. His passion was returned. There was nothing to make him ponder upon what a devastating, tyrannical force this emotion which he knew as love might become, this blind fever of the blood under cover of which nature works her ends, blandly indifferent ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was freshly made, and its meaning, had it possessed any, might have been repeated pat. But it was evident that the boy was putting a devastating strain upon an unexuberant and tardy wit when he endeavoured to ascribe to it a literary rendering. His hesitancy and contradictions were at ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... despotism in the obstinate and dubious contest; sanguinary battles were fought; a brilliant array of heroes succeeded each other on the field of glory; and Flanders and Brabant were the schools which educated generals for the coming century. A long, devastating war laid waste the open country; victor and vanquished alike were bathed in blood; while the rising republic of the waters gave a welcome to fugitive industry, and out of the ruins erected the noble edifice of its own greatness. For forty years a war lasted, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... within, which, to him, had been unutterable,—then we saw that the emotions which would have been safe, had they been suffered to well up gently from the first, could come forth now only as a fierce and perhaps devastating torrent. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... existed before love had come, and would flow, perchance, after it had departed. Now she understood his anger; it was like the anger of a fiercely rushing river striving to break a dam and invade the lands below with devastating floods. All these months the waters had been mounting ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... looking at her with curiosity. I tried to see what there was in her to have excited in Lawson such a devastating passion. But who can explain these things? It was true that she was lovely; she reminded one of the red hibiscus, the common flower of the hedgerow in Samoa, with its grace and its languor and its passion; ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... as if this mute companion and co-patriot which he had come to love, were sharing his utter dismay. Almost at his very feet rushed a boisterous torrent, melting the packed earth of the road like wax in a tropic sunshine, and carrying its devastating work of erosion to the very spot where ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... of God's anger be more plain if it were printed in fire upon the sky? Israel was the evil one for whose sin they suffered this devastating plague. The Lord was rebuking them for sparing him, even as He had rebuked Saul for sparing the king and cattle of the Amalekites. Seventeen years and more he had been among them without being of them, never entering a synagogue, never observing a fast, never joining ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... it an easy prey. The Mongols, moving as one man, took one principality at a time, its nobles and citizens alone bearing arms, the peasants, by far the greater part, being utterly defenseless. After wrecking and devastating that, they passed on to the next, which, however desperately defended, met the same fate. The Grand Principality was a ruin; its fourteen towns were burned, and when, in the absence of its Grand Prince, Vladimir the capital city fell, the ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... their use, their promiscuous exercise could only result in chaotic confusion and the destruction of the entire race. To introduce the creative power of the Individual and at the same time avoid converting it into a devastating flood is the great problem of the transition from the Fourth Kingdom into the Fifth. For this purpose it becomes necessary to have a Standard of the Personal Factor independent of any individual conceptions, just as we found that in order for us to attain ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... help," remarked his father, "thank Heaven I shan't be here. Your assistance, William, always seems to be even more devastating in ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... having as many as a hundred stacks of corn and beans in their stack-yards. After walking about seven miles we arrived at the dismal-looking village of Buchlyvie, where we saw many houses in ruins, standing in all their gloominess as evidences of the devastating effects of war. Some of the inhabitants were trying to eke out their livelihood by hand-loom weaving, but there was a poverty-stricken appearance about the place which had, we found, altered but little since ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... reduced the inhabitants to slavery. These were of a mixed Hellene and barbaric stock. From Cedreae he continued his voyage to Rhodes. The Athenians meanwhile, using Samos as their base of operations, were employed in devastating the king's territory, or in swooping down upon Chios and Ephesus, and in general were preparing for a naval battle, having but lately chosen three new generals in addition to those already in office, whose names were Menander, ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... or origin of the fire no one knew. It had come as a devastating scourge. It had left the beautiful little city a mass of blackened, ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... with poles and everything complete it barely weighs one man's load—I called up the men, and for hours held it so by strength of arm. Even the hippopotami, to judge by the frequency of their snorts and grunts, as they indulged in their devastating excursions amongst the crops, seemed angry at this unusual severity of the weather. Never from the 15th of November, when the rainy season commenced, had we experienced such ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... for France, and Champlain and his twenty-eight companions made ready for the winter. Frost and snow came early that year, and a devastating scurvy invaded the Habitation. The improvident Montagnais huddled in their birch tepees about the fort, raving for food, and perishing with disease; while of the twenty-eight Frenchmen there were only eight despairing survivors ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... thus he raised an army which grew in strength until it reached some hundreds of thousands strong; he then proclaimed himself the Heavenly King, The Emperor of the great place; and then with five wangs or warrior kings, chosen from amongst his kinsmen, he marched through China, devastating the country, and increasing his army ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... of America and American citizens might have been the subject of international adjudication but for the arrogance of the ruling forces of the Teutons. In a broad sense, Prussianism is credited with responsibility for the devastating war and for the policy which drew America ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... Bourbon monarchy, rallied likewise to the royal cause. "The French spirit triumphed over the masonic spirit in the greater number of the Brothers. Opinions as well as hearts were still for the King." It needed the devastating doctrines of Weishaupt to undermine this spirit and to turn the "degrees of vengeance" from vain ceremonial into ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... raising at Windsor marked the highest reach of the spurious "Chivalry" of the day. But it was at this moment of triumph that the whole colour of Edward's reign suddenly changed. The most terrible plague the world has ever witnessed advanced from the East, and after devastating Europe from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Baltic swooped at the close of 1348 upon Britain. The traditions of its destructiveness and the panic-struck words of the statutes passed after its visitation have been amply justified by modern research. ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... fresh start after the magnificent escape from the morass of the moribund father-in-law and the moribund school and the moribund Devonshire town proved to be but a stagger down into morass heavier and more devastating of ambition. He always jumped blindly and wildly into things. Blindly and wildly into the Church, blindly and wildly into marriage, blindly and wildly into the school, blindly and wildly, one might say, into fatherhood on a lavish scale. Blindly and wildly—the ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... pursuing them, cutting to pieces with their sharp swords, or running through with their pikes, all they overtook. Moretz and his grandson watched the fugitives and their pursuers. The latter, like a devastating conflagration or a fierce torrent, swept all before them, till ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... himself sets first in his life; he will follow those things no matter what other professions he may make. Business as a servant deserves our allegiance and devotion; business as a master is the most evil and soul devastating ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... rising and gathering strength, and in Virginia, and Brazil, and down the St. Lawrence valley, it shone intermittently through a driving reek of thunder-clouds, flickering violet lightning, and hail unprecedented. In Manitoba was a thaw and devastating floods. And upon all the mountains of the earth the snow and ice began to melt that night, and all the rivers coming out of high country flowed thick and turbid, and soon—in their upper reaches— with swirling trees and the bodies of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... coherent and indurate ledges the most valuble ores exist, but coal and fossils are searched for in vain. Many a change during the geological periods have these granite mountains looked upon. They have seen fire and water successively sweep over the surface of our globe. Devastating epochs passed, continents sunk and rose, and mountains were piled on mountains in the dread chaos, but these stood firm and undaunted, though scarred and seamed by glaciers, and washed by the billows of a primeval sea, presenting nearly the same contour that they ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... Lancastrian party, or rather the party of Margaret of Anjou and her favourites, was the more reactionary, and it had the centre of its strength in the North, whence Margaret drew the plundering and devastating host which gained for her the second battle of St. Albans and paid the penalty of its ravages in the merciless slaughter of Towton. The North had been kept back in the race of progress by agricultural inferiority, by the absence of commerce with the Continent, and by border wars with Scotland. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the Rhine and plunders and burns the towns of the Allemanni, repairs the fortress of Trajan, and grants the barbarians a truce for ten months.—II. He hems in six hundred Franks who are devastating the second Germania, and starves them into surrender.—III. He endeavours to relieve the Gauls from some of the tribute which weighs them down.—IV. By order of the Emperor Constantius an obelisk is erected at Rome in the Circus Maximus;—some observations ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... observe the bullying, he will have to see it for himself, if he doubts it. This is not an indictment of the whole German people; it is an indictment of the militaristic-bureaucratic ruling class, which, persuaded of its divine inspiration and intolerant of criticism,[432] has plunged the country into a devastating war. It is not unlikely that the end of the conflict will mark also the overthrow of the Hohenzollern dynasty. The spirit of the Germans of 1848, who labored unsuccessfully to make their country a republic, may ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... I sing on the branches early, And such my love of song, I sleep but half the night-tide rarely; No raven I, of greedy maw, no kite of bloody beak, No bird of devastating claw, but a woodland songster meek. I love the apple's infant bloom; my ancestry have fared For ages on the nourishment the orchard hath prepared: Their hey-day was the summer, their joy the summer's dawn, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... parts. Forgetting is the most wearisome of all pains to which we humans are subject; and for some of us there is so much to forget. For some of us there is Beatrice to forget, and Dora, and Christina, and the devastating loveliness of Isabel. For another thing, its atmosphere is so depressingly Slavonic. It is as dismal and as overdone as Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor. How shall I give you the sharp flavour of it, or catch the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... tailed men, Tdug,[6] overran the Agsan Valley as far south as Verula. They were tailed men from all accounts, the tail of the men being like a dagger, and that of the women like an adze of the kind used by Manbos. For 14 years they continued their depredations, devastating the whole valley till all the Manbos had fled or been killed, except one woman on the Argwan River or, as some ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... The devastating effects of these storm-waves is still further illustrated by the total destruction of Coringa, on the Coromandel Coast, in 1789. During a hurricane, in December of that year, at the moment when a high tide was at its highest point, and the north-west wind was blowing with fury, accumulating ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... experienced—first, two or three days of triumph, excitement, congratulations, a sort of sunburst of gladness, after a long night of gloom and anxiety; then two or three days of calming down, by degrees —a receding of tides, a quieting of the storm-wash to a murmurous surf-beat, a diminishing of devastating winds to a refrain that bore the spirit of a truce-days given to solitude, rest, self-communion, and the reasoning of herself into a realization of the fact that she was actually done with bolts and ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... adagio, and the conqueror of Rossbach drew tears from the author of Candide. But a moment later it was supper-time; and the night ended in the oval dining-room, amid laughter and champagne, the ejaculations of La Mettrie, the epigrams of Maupertuis, the sarcasms of Frederick, and the devastating ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey |
