"Ruined" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from which he had risen, in order to free himself from his son's clutches, "if I lost the money, I also made it. This was a flourishing concern before you were born. If the worst comes to the worst you are only where I started. But we are far from being absolutely ruined as yet." ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... your youthful sway, Ye deem secure your citadels of sky, Beyond the reach of sorrow or of fall! Have I not seen two dynasties of gods Already flung therefrom? and soon shall see A third, that now in tyranny exults, Shamed, ruined, in an hour! What sayest thou? Crouch I and tremble at these stripling powers? Small homage unto such from me, or none! Betake thee hence, sweat back along thy road— Look for no answer from me, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... uprights remained of it; and fifty yards away he thought he could make out the crumpled shape of the roof. Nor was that all. Quite a quarter of the great oaks which were the glory of the place were down, or splintered and ruined. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... men consists in saving themselves by the very means that have ruined them; Gavroche took in the whole situation at a glance. It was the cart which had told against him, it was the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... roofless, and indescribably swallowed up in the pitiless scrub. And then, near by, I descried another such ruin, and still another—all, as it were, sunk in the terrible gloom of the vegetation, as sometimes, at low tide, one can discern the walls of a ruined village at ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... she demurred, being a very sane, intelligent girl, with an imagination which produced no more alluring mental picture than a cold and draughty drive, a colder and draughtier and even more depressing inspection of a ruined factory, and such small ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... the air. Thermometer at ten degrees above zero to tone up the system. December and January just as important as May and June. I tell you we need the storms of life as much as we do the sunshine. There are more men ruined by prosperity than by adversity. If we had our own way in life, before this we would have been impersonations of selfishness and worldliness and disgusting sin, and puffed up until we would have been like Julius Caesar, who was made by sycophants ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... possible; it is certain. Neither you nor your son knew the true character of this man when you admitted him into your family circle. He is one of the most dangerous men in England—a ruined gambler, an absolutely desperate villain, a man without heart or conscience. Your niece knew nothing of such men. When he breathed his vows to her, as he had done to a hundred before her, she flattered herself that she alone ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... destroyed, bureaus, desks, closets, receptacles of all kinds had been broken open, and their contents stolen or rendered worthless; the carpets, soaked with a trampled conglomerate of mud and water, oil and filth, the debris left by the feet of the maddened, howling crowd, were entirely ruined; beds and bedding, mirrors, and smaller articles had been carried away, the grand piano had had a fire kindled on the key-board, as had the sofas and chairs upon their velvet seats, fires that were, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... of guilt! Oppression's sword is buried to the hilt In unoffending blood—what want'st thou more, Thou sanguinary pest of an unhappy shore? Far as thy sight can stretch, look round, and see All Sweden piled with monuments of thee; Behold her provinces with slaughter strown, Her ruined fields, her castles overthrown; Behold—But ah! more glaring than the rest, In me thy brightest trophy stands confess'd! Yes—prompt each fatal mandate to fulfil, Perpetual slave of thy tyrannic ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... was universal: and no sooner was one party away, than another came, and still another; and often the same house was three or four times plundered. Branderode, a Village two leagues from this [stands on the Field of Rossbach, if we look], is so ruined out, that nobody almost has anything left: Chief Inspector Baron von Bose's Schloss there, with its splendid appointments, they ruined utterly; took all money, victuals, valuables, furniture, clothes, linen and beds, all they could carry; what could not be carried away, they cut, hewed and smashed ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Ages come and go, The Centuries pass as Years; My hair is white as the snow, My feet are weary and slow, The earth is wet with my tears The kingdoms crumble, and fall Apart, like a ruined wall, Or a bank that is undermined By a river's ceaseless flow, And leave no trace behind! The world itself is old; The portals of Time unfold On hinges of iron, that grate And groan with the rust and the weight, Like the hinges of a gate That hath fallen to decay; But the evil doth not ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... people in New York who wanted to go to the opera, but were excluded from the Metropolitan by the extent of the subscription, to support a second house. If this was so it marked a marvelous change from the time of the last operatic rivalry, which ruined both Mapleson and Abbey, and destroyed the prestige of the Academy of Music forever. Perhaps the city's growth in population and wealth furnished the explanation; I can scarcely believe from a study of the doings at the two houses that a growth ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the cushion. "This cake is now what you might call a flat failure. And the cushion is likewise ruined. Never tell me that Friday ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... but blind men, and they follow their noses; and there's not a nose among twenty but can smell him that's stinking."—Here is a succession of reasoning. You ask, why the king has no more in his train? why, because men who are led by their eyes see that he is ruined; and if there were any blind among them, who, for want of eyes, followed their noses, they might by their noses discover that it was no longer fit to follow ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... on the pile of burnt and ruined meat in disgust. "I knowed you chillen's would go an' spoil de best part ob my bear. Now you-all jis get out ob de way an' dis nigger goin' to show you ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... if this talk sounded from a vague distance, Warburton was suddenly reminded of what had befallen himself; for as yet he had thought only of his mother and sister. He was ruined. Some two or three hundred pounds, his private bank account, represented all he had in the world, and all prospect of making money had been taken away from him. Henceforth, small must be his charities. If he gained his own living, he must ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... brooches, diamonds.... Everybody in love with her: to listen to her you could have followed her traces like the passage of a cyclone ... men gone mad ... others blinded through weeping ... millionaires ruined in chocolates and ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... ruined walls of the hut before Lady Helen awoke. But when she did, she was refreshed; and opening her eyes-hardly conscious where she was, or whether all that floated in her memory were not the departing vapors of a frightful ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... his arms as though handing out possessions to an imaginary James. And every word he spoke smote Scipio, goading him and lashing up the hatred which burnt deep down in his heart for the man who had ruined his life. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... had been ruined. What had made this little plot of ground green and sweet and fragrant was now no more. Belding's first feeling was for the pity of it. The pale Ajo lilies would bloom no more under those willows. The willows themselves would soon wither and die. He thought how many ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... She proposed a governess now and a good boarding-school later on. She had heard such dreadful stories of public schools! It was terrible to be compelled to send her darlings to one; they would be ruined in ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... absolutely necessary for you, my dear, to make a good match, or you will all be ruined. I, of course, can always support my declining years with ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... him into the river for asking foolish questions, and laughed when the water ruined his pasteboard head before he could swim ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... during the Winter, and I fancy that this upsets them a trifle. For hundreds of generations they have been accustomed to nest in the pinions of certain roofs, to locate in a determined chimney, and it is a most amusing sight to see them cluster about a ruined spot and discuss ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... carried us eastward to Cracow, the old capital of Poland, scattered in ruined grandeur within its brick walls. Beyond it I remember a stronghold of the Middle Ages called the ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... turned out to be the mother of several fine families, but no vocalist, and the generous young man brought it back for an exchange some days afterwards; not only that, but he came three times during the next week and nearly ruined his nervous system ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... gentleman, and the duties of a large landowner. But the young man of our class, who does not take to business, is almost certain to go in for reckless dissipation, or gambling. I have seen numbers of young men, sons of old friends of my own, who have been absolutely ruined by being left the fortunes their fathers had made, simply because they had nothing with which ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... and vivid perception of their usefulness and value, they should not be used at all. De Quincey is so successful because his mind comprehends every detail of the scene, and through the images we see the bottom truth as through a perfect crystal. A clouded diamond is no more ruined by its ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... acquainted with him, to this effect, viz. that he was a conveyancing lawyer, and a bencher of the inner temple, and had raised himself from a low beginning, to very great eminence in that profession; that he was eloquent and learned, of spotless integrity; that he supported an aged father, who had ruined his fortunes by extravagance, and by his industry and application, reedified a ruined family; that he supported Butler, who, but for him, must literally have starved; and received from him, as a recompense, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... friends. The women said he was idle and vain like his mother, who had been, they said, a silly lazy thing with little to boast of but blue eyes and a white skin, of which she was too proud to endanger it by work, and that she had married the Sergeant for his pension, and would have ruined him if she had lived, and that Pierre ...
— "A Soldier Of The Empire" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... stung and startled, but caught a single glimpse of Jim Hooker's face that made him forget his own mortification. In its hopeless, heart-sick, and utterly beaten dejection—the first and only real expression he had seen on it—he read the dreadful truth. Jim's REPUTATION had ruined him! The one genuine and striking episode of his life, the one trustworthy account he had given of it, had been unanimously accepted as the biggest and most consummate lie of ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Tommy were to drive with the Ralstons to the ruined palace in the jungle of Khanmulla where the picnic was to take place. She had never seen it, but had heard it described as the most romantic spot in Markestan. It had been the site of a fierce battle in some bye-gone age, and its glories had departed. For centuries it had lain ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... at Charmouth, to which the road from Morecombelake now descends round the northern slopes of Stonebarrow; on the far side of this hill is the derelict parish of Stanton St. Gabriel, with a ruined church and two or three cottages in a superb situation under the shadow of Golden Cap. Charmouth is one long street running up the hill on the Lyme side of the Char. It is one of those pleasantly drowsy places that even the advent of the public motor from Bridport ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... that, wearing the costume of my sex, I should never dare to utter such words. Yet, dearest friend, it does not prevent my being your Henriette—that Henriette who has in her life been guilty of three escapades, the last of which would have utterly ruined me if it had not been for you, but which I call a delightful error, since it has been the cause of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... but here's something I can understand. Why did I quit my job? Because of you. Who has brought us down to this? You! Who makes Fanny work harder than any hired girl in the city? You! Who has ruined my career? You! You and ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... children did what they could, everything that they had read of in books as suitable to such occasions, but it is extremely difficult to do the right thing with an invisible housemaid in strong hysterics and her best clothes. That was why the best hat was found, later on, to be completely ruined, and why the best blue dress was never quite itself again. And as they were burning bits of the feather dusting-brush as nearly under Eliza's nose as they could guess, a sudden spurt of flame and a horrible ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... accomplishment; but beyond this there are other things which, if she neglects them, the boy or girl could reproach her for afterwards and with reason. One is the fore-thought for beauty. How many boys' whole personal appearances are ruined by standing-out ears! How many little girls' complexions are irretrievably spoilt by unsuitable soap having been used which has burnt red veins into their tender cheeks. These two small examples are entirely the fault of the mother and do not lie ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... said Valerie, smiling. "Louis XVIII. and his friends lived here as long as they pleased, and as sumptuously as they could; their visits half ruined the owner, who is the model of a gentilhomme and preux chevalier. He went to Paris to witness their triumph; he expected, I fancy, the order of the St. Esprit. Lord Doningdale has royal blood in his veins. His Majesty asked him once to dinner, and, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no relative of yours," replied Herne. "I will now clear up the mystery that hangs over your birth. You are the offspring of one who for years has exercised greater sway than the king within this realm, but who is now disgraced and ruined, and nigh his end. His priestly vows forbid him to own you, even if he ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... provided for? Not she! She notices me now only because she thinks that I am the only Luttrell in existence. When she knows that there is a son of her's still living, I shall go to the wall. I shall be ruined. There will be no Netherglen for me, no marriage with an heiress, no love-making with pretty little Kitty. I shall have to disappear from the scene. I cannot hold my ground against a son—a son of the house! Curses on him! ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... "having such a score to settle with yonder Maldon! A man may forget his love, especially if he deems her buried. But as he stayed foreign to fight the Turk, who wronged him, so he'll come home to fight the Abbot, who ruined him and slew ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... hills are built of stones taken from the beds of the streams, and are so completely of one colour with the background of rock, that in many instances it is difficult to determine whether a distant mass of grey is a village or not. Ruined castles and towers abound; and these, and still more the walls which surround many of the villages, point unmistakeably to times of great disturbance. The valley of the Drome, up which the road after a time ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... that God became all and in all to this feeble band of captives, journeying across the desert back to their ruined life and land. God had taken away earthly things from them, that He might be their all and in all. When the earth is made poor for us, sometimes the heavens become rich. God closed the eyes of Milton to the beauty in land ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... beheld what took place in the hippodrome, for he was exceedingly stupid, very much like a dull-witted ass, which follows whoever holds its bridle, shaking its ears the while. This behaviour on the part of Justinian ruined everything. ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... either side, the river was bounded by gloomy forests, whose trees feathered down to the river's bank, the water reflecting their shadows with peculiar distinctness. Occasionally the scene was diversified by a cleared spot amidst this wilderness, where, perchance, a half-ruined hut, apparently not inhabited for years, the remains of a canoe, together with fragments of household utensils, were to be seen, proving that once it had been the abode of those who had been cut off by some native attack, and probably the heads of ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... between childhood and manhood is full of difficulties and dangers, under the most favourable circumstances; and, even among the well-to-do, who can afford to surround their children with the most favourable conditions, examples of a career ruined, before it has well begun, are but too frequent. Moreover, those who have to live by labour must be shaped to labour early. The colt that is left at grass too long makes but a sorry draught-horse, though his way of life does not bring him within the reach of artificial temptations. Perhaps ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... of man's moral nature? Or, if revolting angels were assumed, why degrade their agency in so vulgar and unnecessary a way, by adopting the vilest relation to man which can be imputed to a demon—his function of secret calumnious accusation; from which idea, lowering the Miltonic "archangel ruined" into the assessor of thieves, as a private slanderer (diabolos), proceeds, through the intermediate Italian diavolo, our own grotesque vulgarism of the devil; [Footnote: But, says an unlearned man, Christ uses the word devil. Not so. The ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... tide was rising. He could see the great waves swirling white around the rocks. Several land-slips were visible from this post of observation. The village was out of sight, tucked away behind a great shoulder of cliff; but an old ruined cottage that had been uninhabited for some time had entirely disappeared. Stacks of seaweed had been thrown up upon the deserted shore, and lay in great masses above the breakers. The roar of the incoming tide was like ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... nothing. She did not attempt to improve upon her advantage. A less consummate general might have tried to do so, and ruined all. She stood silent and submissive, noting the quick play of thought which peeped from his eyes and lip. There was a sparkle in the one and a twitch of amusement in the other, as he at last glanced ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... young girl, who was a summer guest at this place, sat down on an overturned canoe which this chief (now known as James Meuse) had just completed; and, as the bark bent with her weight, the wily Indian pretended that the boat was irretrievably ruined. The girl's father, asking what amount would compensate for the damage, received reply, "Ten, twenty, dollar"; and receiving thirty dollars from the generous stranger, Redskin remarked afterwards that he "wished more girl come sit on boat", and probably turned the ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... boasting that she would have to marry me, which she only half believed, she was afraid I would think her forward and immodest. This set me thinking how it had all ended. How through misunderstandings our lives had been ruined, until life seemed a tragedy, and Providence only a dream. But no relief came to me, the burdens which I had myself made still crushed me to the earth, and I could see no brightness ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... who is not so frightfully fond of her as Hella and I are, said: "Frau Doktor, please tell us whom you are going to marry." "There's no secret about it, I am going to marry a professor in Heidelberg." That is why she has to leave the High School. It's simply ruined my holidays. Hella has such lovely ideas. The girls would not leave Frau Doktor alone, and they all wanted to walk home with her. Then she said: "My darling girls, that's impossible, for I am going to Purkersdorf to see my parents." And then Hella had her splendid idea. The others said: ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... Geoff, "how did you know? I have got Black. But there is more in it than that. Would mamma have ruined me, if she had kept on always coddling me, Mrs. Warrender? that is what the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... luminary, like a youth on the Fourth of July, has its first quarter; like a ruined spendthrift its last quarter, and like an omnibus, is occasionally full and new. The evenings on which it appears between these last stages are beautifully illumined by ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... a deeper sense of the public disgrace. [155] The repeated intelligence of invasions, defeats, and rebellions, he received with a careless smile; and singling out, with affected contempt, some particular production of the lost province, he carelessly asked, whether Rome must be ruined, unless it was supplied with linen from Egypt, and arras cloth from Gaul. There were, however, a few short moments in the life of Gallienus, when, exasperated by some recent injury, he suddenly appeared the intrepid soldier ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... the Peasant. "I am utterly ruined. You have reduced me to beggary. For a whole year I have worked to buy this dear little cow. I could hardly bear to wait for ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... deposit of sludge, from one to four feet deep. This was the debris or crushings which the rain had washed down from the large mining claims above: and as it was barren stuff, mere crushed quartz, it ruined for the time every bit of land it covered. The scene which the track along the creek presented was most pitiable. Fences had been carried away; crops beaten down; and huge logs lay about, with here and there bits of furniture, houses, ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... their premises and return to them, in order that they might be the sole proprietors of the affair, the opulent farmers who garnered the whole harvest. Abbe Peyramale lay buried in the crypt of his unfinished, ruined church, and Bernadette, who had long since dragged out her life of suffering in the depths of a convent far away, was now likewise sleeping the eternal sleep under a flagstone ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... ruined walls of castles ancient as hills, on whose massive tops time had sown sturdy oaks and cedars. They lent a distinct air of romance to the landscape at all times; but when in summer graceful vines clambered over their rugged sides, and underbrush softened their broken lines, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of this paragraph, my heart turned over. In a moment I saw my castle in the air ruined; myself changed from a mere military fugitive into a hunted murderer, fleeing from the gallows; my love, which had a moment since appeared so near to me, blotted from the field of possibility. Despair, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... picture better than color. Gaunt, naked, ruined cathedrals, homes, towers, and forests are better pictured in black silhouettes than any other way. There is nothing much left in some places in ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... agin him. Human nature invariably goes wrong; and this a wise man will never forget. Next, if you have the playing mania, never play with anybody but gentlemen. You will thus have the consolation of reflecting that you have been ruined in good company, and, in addition, had your pleasure;—blacklegs ruin a man with a vulgar rapidity which is positively shocking. Next, my dear boy—though this I need'nt tell you—never look at Greek after leaving college, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... "and I've no girl to assist me, and my house will be turned topsy-turvy, new parlor carpet ruined,—and, besides, they'll eat us out of house and home, and Mr. Sykes ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... of the Moros are defeated on the coast of Panay, but they meet with enough success to embolden them to make further raids; these go unpunished by the Spaniards, and thus the islands are being devastated and ruined. The Christian and friendly Indians are at the mercy of these cruel foes, from whom the Spaniards do not defend them; accordingly, they demand freedom and arms, that they may defend themselves against the invaders. All would ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... no tongue could describe. There was a cousin of Lord Westport's, subsequently created Lord Oranmore, distinguished for his horsemanship, and always splendidly mounted from his father's stables at Castle M'Garret, to whom our stormy contests with ruined tempers and vicious habits yielded a regular comedy of fun; and, in order to improve it, he would sometimes bribe Lord Westport's treacherous groom into misleading us, when floundering amongst bogs, into the interior labyrinths of these morasses. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... want me to tell you why I can't agree with those people being shut up in prison, and being totally ruined, because they cut down ten trees in a forest which is considered ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... therefore should be used. I beg to differ with you; happiness arises not from the animal impulses of human nature stimulated by intoxicating liquor. Use it moderately you say. Alas, how many millions have been ruined forever by the taking of only one single glass at first, only one glass! Think of it! It is the magnet that attracts material akin to itself; alas, what a world of wretchedness and crime is reflected from that ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... no harm by it now; nevertheless, it was acting. Could it be otherwise, with what was behind her life—a husband who had ruined her youth, had committed homicide, had escaped capture, but who had not subsequently died, as the world believed he had done, so circumstantial was the evidence. He was not man enough to make the accepted belief in his death a fact. What could she do but act, since ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... were right. Nothing could appear so decidedly calculated to fix the power of Louis XIV. on an immovable foundation. But how vain are the calculations of the greatest human intellects, when put in opposition to the overruling will of Omnipotence! It was that very English alliance which ruined Louis XIV., as the Austrian alliance and marriage, which seemed to put the keystone in the arch of his greatness, afterwards ruined Napoleon. By the effect, and one of the most desired effects, of the English ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... decline which it will evidently only take about ten or fifteen more years to complete. You may perhaps object that it is the march of progress, that the old order must give place to the new, and you might be right if roads had been run through these ruined woods, or if factories and schools had taken their place. The people then would have become better educated and healthier and richer, but as it is, we have nothing of the sort. We have the same swamps and mosquitoes; the same disease and want; the typhoid, the diphtheria, ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... there," said the doctor, "that Burton and Speke were seized with violent fevers, and for a moment thought their expedition ruined. And yet they were only a short distance from the coast, but fatigue and privation were beginning to tell ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... storeys, each of which forms the cell of a larva. Others, less well-endowed with strength and implements, avail themselves of the old galleries of other insects, galleries that have been abandoned after serving as a home for their builder's family. Their only work is to make some slight repairs in the ruined tenement, to clear the channel of its lumber, such as the remains of cocoons and the litter of shattered ceilings, and lastly to build new partitions, either with a plaster made of clay or with a concrete formed of pith-scrapings ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... several directions, and in the end, with the lessening fortunes of the Confederacy, grew more moody, and yet more ruined by the consciousness that after once suffering the agony of expatriation, they had not improved the added chance to make of themselves ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... shadow. He had never felt so strongly before the peculiarity of her fascination—perhaps because he had never seen her in a setting which seemed so entirely a part of herself. The distant music, the hum of voices, and that strange charm which permeates an Indian nightfall—above all, the ruined bungalow with its shattered door and silent memories—these things, with their sharp contrasts of laughter and tragedy, had formed themselves into a background which belonged to her, so that ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... and did much mischief there; and he got among the mountains of Moriella, and beat down every thing before him, and destroyed the Castle of Moriella. And King Zulema sent to bid him build up the ruined Castle of Alcala, which is upon Moriella; and the Cid did so. But King Abenalfange being sorely grieved hereat, sent to King Pedro of Aragon, and besought him to come and help him against the Campeador. And the King of Aragon gathered together a great ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... extending in a long curve from the river above to the river below the city; the hot return fire of the defendants; the equally fierce exchange of fire between the gunboats and mortars and the intrenchments on the bluffs; the bursting of shells in the city streets; the ruined habitations, and the cave-like refuges in which the citizens sought safety from the death-dealing missiles. It was a scene never to be forgotten, a spectacle of ruin, suffering, and death. And the suffering was not alone from the terrible enginery ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... dancer. There was a ruined uncle in the family group—ruined by his brother, the Father of the Marshalsea, and knowing no more how than his ruiner did, but accepting the fact as an inevitable certainty—on whom her protection devolved. Naturally a retired and simple man, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... believe, is the name they give her," replied the captain. "I have often heard of her; but it never was my fate to fall in with her before, and I hope it never will be again, for I am a ruined man, and must begin the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... river Volturno, which conducts its waters into the moats. It is still a place of some strength in modern war. The approach to the old Capua is obstructed by an ancient bridge of a singular construction, and consists of a number of massive towers half ruined. We did not pass very near to them, but the site seems very strong. We passed Sinuessa or Sessa, an ancient Greek town, situated not far from shore. The road from Naples to Capua resembles an orchard on ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... out they are like to be ruined," said Percy; "the roads are cloyed and pestered, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... dare even to think as yet. "It rests with man to say whether his soul shall be housed in a stately mansion of ever-growing splendor and beauty, or in a hovel of his own building,—a hovel at last ruined ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... a canvas of unrelieved gloom, immorality and drunkenness, ignorance, superstition and violence. Thus the story which opened with the bright colours of the fifteenth century closes in deep shadows, and the moral is drawn that Germany was ruined not by the Thirty Years War but ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... in the course of the winter Mrs. Oliver gave a little musical party, at which Clarissa met the small gentry of Holborough, who pronounced her a very lovely girl, and pitied her because of her father's ruined fortunes. To her inexperience these modest assemblies seemed the perfection of gaiety; and she would fain have accepted the invitations that followed them, from the wives of Holborough bankers and lawyers and medical men to whom she had been introduced. Against this degradation, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... common people go quite naked, with the exception of a piece of cloth about their middle. The king wears a cap of gold brocade two spans long.... His horse is worth more than some of our cities on account of the ornaments which it wears."[188] Calicut, he says, was ruined in consequence of its wars ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... no thing was to be seen but flying crowds, burning houses, and young men, (alas! too often,) hanging upon the trees like dogs, and old men wringing their withered hands over their murdered boys, and women and children weeping and flying from their ruined plantations into the starving woods! When I think, I say, of these things, oh my God! how can I ever forget Marion, that vigilant, undaunted soldier, whom thy own mercy raised up to scourge such monsters, and avenge his ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... anyone else, because it was the One and Only Love of his Life, and he hoped he (William) would realise, when he was old enough to realise, what it meant to have your life spoilt and your happiness ruined all through coffee and tongue, because someone you'd never speak to again had hidden the lunch. Whence it came that William, optimist though he was, felt that any appeal to Robert for funds would be inopportune, to say the ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... to reach Los Robles before Yeager the prizefighter had ruined the horse he rode. He picked up another one cheap and got for Ruth her brother's pony. Within an hour of his arrival the two animals were ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... eagerly to her proposal. He acclaimed her a marvel of intelligence, and assured her that in Vienna he would be able to find the very article—a ruined nobleman ready to sell ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... a review of my whole situation—my circumstances ruined, my health half destroyed, my person imprisoned, and the prospect of imprisonment still staring me in the face, can you wonder at the agony of my feelings? You lie down in safety and rise to plenty; it is otherwise with me; I am deprived of more than half the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... child; she who was alone near her when she died. Ask her, and she will tell you the wretch, who has prejudiced all minds against the good, the pure, the noble; the villain, the cruel despicable villain, who rested not till his base arts had ruined the—the—virtuous; that Jefferies, the canting hypocrite, the wretched miscreant, who has won all hearts because he speaks so fair, he, he alone is guilty. Put the question to him; let Nurse Langford ask him if the dying spoke ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... partisans to bring into the field, ambushes to set, towns to take. Most men of this stamp are so close upon the borders of politics, that in the end they are drawn into public life, and thereby lose their fortunes. The firm of Necker, for instance, was ruined in this way; the famous Samuel Bernard was all but ruined. Some great capitalist in every age makes a colossal fortune, and leaves behind him neither fortune nor a family; there was the firm of Paris Brothers, for instance, that helped to pull down Law; there was Law himself (beside ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... 6 months, the finest climate in the world, but 2 1/2 of these are ruined by the malignancy of the fly plague. Yet it is certain that knowledge will confer on man the power to ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the general standard of literature was very low. There are three chief causes to account for this: (1) the long war with France and the civil Wars of the Roses distracted attention from books and poetry, and destroyed of ruined many noble English families who had been friends and patrons of literature; (2) the Reformation in the latter part of the period filled men's minds with religious questions; (3) the Revival of Learning set scholars and literary men to an eager ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... is not dead! Although the spoiler's hand Lies heavy as death upon her; though the smart Of his accursed steel is at her heart, And scarred upon her breast his shameful brand; Though yet the torches of the vandal band Smoke on her ruined fields, her trampled bones, Her ravaged homes and desolated fanes, She is not dead but ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... democratic. In 1851 Marx wrote to the Socialists: "The forces opposed to you have all the advantages of organization, discipline, and habitual authority; unless you bring strong odds against them you are defeated and ruined." (The italics are mine.) ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... time I returned to a place near the ruined city by the two rivers; and in the rocky palisades above one of the streams, I made out some small circular holes barely large enough to admit a man. And, borne onward by some impulse of curiosity and despair, I entered one of these holes, and went downward, far downward into the dim ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... walk out on to the open rampart, where the sheep now graze; the cattle are driven into one of the ruined towers. We see the palace-yard, and look from it up to a window. Come, thou birch-wood's thrush, and warble thy lays; sing, whilst we recal the bitterness of love in the rude—the ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... bridge and smashed its masts. Agents were to secure goodly numbers to visit her; but for three months scarcely any one paid for a ticket, until at length the vessel was admitted into the grounds of the Exhibition. Finally, the ruined Captain ran away to England, but cleverly contrived to carry his ship with him. Whatever may be thought as to the wisdom or advantage of making such a voyage and in such a boat, it is a very great pity that when it has ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... assistance and reinforcements from the Romans, but as Vitellius, the Governor of Syria, had not yet arrived, he was consumed with impatience and anxiety. Perhaps Agrippa had ruined his cause with the Emperor, he thought. Philip, his third brother, sovereign of Batania, was arming himself clandestinely. The Jews were becoming intolerant of the tetrarch's idolatries; he knew that many were weary of his rule; and he hesitated now between adopting ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... veritable fact. Notwithstanding the extreme cold of this inhospitable climate, the rats in the ship increased to such a degree that at last they became a perfect nuisance. Nothing was safe from their attacks; whether substances were edible or not, they were gnawed through and ruined, and their impudence, which seemed to increase with their numbers, at last exceeded all belief. They swarmed everywhere—under the stove, about the beds, in the lockers, between the sofa-cushions, amongst ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... not a cottage nor the curling of smoke to be seen; only here and there a cross on a projecting eminence to mark the spot of a murder; and all this in gentle slopes, dry and fertile plains, and up to the gates of great city."[17] The sight of the long lines of ruined aqueducts traversing the deserted Campagna, of the tombs scattered along the lines of the ancient chaussees across its dreary expanse, of the dome of St Peter's alone rising in solitary majesty over its ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... "You have ruined yourself, Mr. Frank, that's all. When your father talks in that quiet determined manner, there will be no more change in him than ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... But this, I realize, is forbidden me. I have forfeited my home, my parents, my reputation, my native State even, and all to gratify a petty grudge. I wish you would see Fred Worthington and tell him how I have wronged him, and ask him if he can forgive me. He has won the contest while I am ruined—ruined so far as my old life goes—but now, my dear father and mother, I have commenced ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... party—having ruined your life! I'm talking about working like a slave all your days and having nothing but a mortgaged farm at sixty-one! I'm talking about playing a losing game! I'm saying, What's the use? Father, I'm telling you that I'm ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... especially to her [Miss Fenwick] who has perseveringly taken them down from my dictation. Towards the close of the 1st book, stand the lines that were first written, beginning 'Nine tedious years,' and ending 'last human tenant of these ruined walls.' These were composed in 1795, at Racedown; and for several passages describing the employment and demeanour of Margaret during her affliction, I was indebted to observations made in Dorsetshire, and afterwards at Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, where ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... dear sister," answered he, "what can I do to prevent it? and who, if I too am ruined, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... general outburst of feeling was that all those who had been, openly or secretly, in alliance with Elfrida now hastened to dissociate themselves from her. She was told that by her own rash act in killing the king before the world she had ruined ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... Paris is yet in the stage of lusty growth. Time after time, like a young giantess, she has burst her cincture of walls, cast off her outworn garments and renewed her armour and vesture. Hers are no grass-grown squares and deserted streets; no ruined splendours telling of pride abased and glory departed; no sad memories of waning cities once the mistresses of sea and land; none of the tears evoked by a great historic tragedy; none of the solemn pathos of decay and death. Paris has more than once tasted ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... associate without degradation, Viney and Watchorn became intimate. Watchorn sympathized with Viney, and never failed to take a glass in passing, either at exercise or out hunting, to deplore that such a nice-looking house, so 'near the station, too,' should be ruined as an inn. It was after a more than usual libation that Watchorn, trotting merrily along with the hounds, having accomplished three blank days in succession, asked himself, as he looked upon the surrounding ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... five minutes of any man—a little longer with a woman—and I'll know where his sympathies incline to.' This was a constant boast of his, and not altogether a vain one. He might be an archaeological traveller eager about new-discovered relics and curious about ruined temples. He might be a yachting man, who only cared for Salamis as good anchorage, nor thought of the Acropolis, except as a point of departure; or he might be one of those myriads who travel without knowing where, or caring why: airing their ennui now at Thebes, now at Trolhatten; ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... illumined my darkest hour, was thus pitilessly excluded, and for the first time since my arrest I began to realise my true position. When I learnt that my arrest and incarceration in jail was noticed in all the newspapers, I felt that I was utterly and hopelessly ruined. No language could describe the anguish I endured as I thought of my wife and my friends, of the disgrace and humiliation which I had brought upon them, and of the separation, worse than death itself, which was in store for us. Yet, strange as it ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... is on this side of the Tigris towards Arabia, about seven or eight miles from Bagdat, being now ruined on all sides, and with the ruins thereof hath made a little mountain, so that no shape or form of a tower remains. It was built of bricks dried in the sun, having canes and leaves of the palm-tree laid between the courses of bricks. It stands in a great plain between the Tigris and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... the appointment of Governor and Lieutenant-General for the King in all New France. "He was," says Saint-Simon, "a man of excellent parts, living much in society, and completely ruined. He found it hard to bear the imperious temper of his wife and he was given the government of Canada to deliver him from her, and afford him some means of living." Certain scandalous songs of the day assign a different motive for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... or record of Nietzsche caught smiling, which would have preserved the state of his teeth for us. At any rate, considered as checks to my interpretation, his physiognomy and physique, the nature of his genius and the attacks which finally ruined his life, all fit into the conception of him as one whose life centered, like Napoleon's, around what was happening ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... and ruined in fortune, Mordecai accompanied by the faithful Becky, bade farewell to Colonel Hawkins and journeyed further into the wilderness. For the Indian agent prudently refused to erect a second gin while the Indians still planned to injure Mordecai, and the adventurer himself felt that it would be ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... the country was devastated. The prosperous farming region was laid waste, and the labor of years utterly destroyed. Of the survivors of the awful holocaust the majority found themselves utterly ruined; their homes destroyed; their possessions gone. Many were wounded, and all were ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... ruined my home for me! Almost every other hour in it has been corrupted—and I cannot ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... which runs through the ruined city of Petra and finally disappears in the sands of Wadi el Araba, is a considerable stream in winter, and the inhabitants of that town were obliged to excavate a tunnel through the rock near the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh |
