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Ruin   Listen
verb
Ruin  v. i.  To fall to ruins; to go to ruin; to become decayed or dilapidated; to perish. (R.) "Though he his house of polished marble build, Yet shall it ruin like the moth's frail cell." "If we are idle, and disturb the industrious in their business, we shall ruin the faster."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ruin" Quotes from Famous Books



... one know that he had ever said or done any thing about helping her, let what would happen, he would take her over without any thing, in the night, whenever she could get away; but if it was ever known there it would ruin him. She promised; and as no one was near, and the three children playing at a little distance, he pointed her to a large root on the bank, under which she could hide, and there wait until she heard a low whistle near the root, when she could come out and step into a skiff without saying a word, ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... large estates of certain individuals who are placed without the ordinary social categories by the magnitude of their fortunes, preventing anything from becoming absolutely settled, as respects them. In Turkey, and in America, the possession of great wealth is very apt to ruin their possessors; proscription, in some form or other, being pretty certain to be the consequences. In Turkey, such has long and openly been the fact, the bow-string usually lying at the side of the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... cargo," said Dick. "And what a pity so much of it is going to ruin," and he pointed to some valuable mining machinery which was ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield

... precariousness, slipperiness; instability &c. 149; defenselessness &c. Adj. exposure &c. (liability) 177; vulnerability; vulnerable point, heel of Achilles[obs3]; forlorn hope &c. (hopelessness) 859. [Dangerous course] leap in the dark &c. (rashness) 863; road to ruin, faciles descensus Averni [Lat][Vergil], hairbreadth escape. cause for alarm; source of danger &c. 667. rock ahead[Approach of danger], breakers ahead; storm brewing; clouds in the horizon, clouds gathering; warning &c. 668; alarm &c. 669. [Sense of danger] apprehension &c. 860. V. be in danger ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... am I," replied Braddock, nodding. "As you very truly observed, my child, the house would have gone to rack and ruin without a woman to look after my interests. Well," he took the arms of the two young people, "I really think that we must have a bottle of champagne on ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... although she heard Esther following close behind her. "Please don't disappoint us, dear," Esther pleaded. "I know Miss Martha will be willing to let me do your work to-night, if we ask her again, and it will quite ruin our Council Fire if you are not with us. What will Polly say when you and she have planned the whole ceremony? And I—I shall be so disappointed, for I am to be made a Fire-Maker to-night. Besides, you know ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook

... that is lonelier than ruin; A sea that is stranger than death: Far fields that a rose never blew in, Wan waste where the winds lack breath; Waste endless and boundless and flowerless But of marsh-blossoms fruitless as free: Where earth lies exhausted, as powerless To strive ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... he had left with the command of the troops, instead of employing them prudently to keep the natives in awe, as he had been directed by the admiral, quartered them among the towns in the Royal Plain, where they lived at free quarters, to the utter ruin of the Indians, one of them eating more in a day than would suffice an Indian for a month. They besides lived in a most disorderly manner, devoid of discipline, and gave infinite offence to the natives by their licentiousness. The council to which the admiral had confided the government ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... rest either night or day until they break it. And now for the inference: be on your guard against this pandemonial squad. Whatever your object may be in cultivating and keeping society wid them, theirs is to ruin you—fleece was the word used—an I then to cut and run, leaving Mr. Hycy—the acute, the penetrating, the accomplished—completely in the lurch. Be influenced, then, by the amicitial admonitions of the inditer of this correspondence. ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... will ruin the rarest of jokes. As the weeks went on and Jock's attitude persisted, the twinkle in Emma McChesney's eye died. The glow of growing resentment began to burn in its place. Now and then there crept into her eyes a little look of doubt and bewilderment. You sometimes ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber

... straightforward manner; and the black man looked into his eyes. B returned the glance. Perhaps he saw in that honest ebony face something of the expression of the faithful servants of wartime who refused to leave their masters even after utter ruin had come upon them. The porter drew forth a ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... records:—'In my upper study hung my picture taken by the life; and coming in, I found it fallen down upon the face, and lying on the floor, the string being broken by which it was hanged against the wall. I am almost every day threatened with my ruin in Parliament. God grant this be no omen.' Perhaps there was nothing superstitious in Johnson's entry. He may have felt ill in mind or body, and dreaded to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... all good and honest men: he can trust no one and can read in the faces of his subjects the expectation of his fall. 'As despotisms rise, grow, and are consolidated, so grows in their midst the hidden element which must produce their dissolution and ruin.' But the deepest ground of dislike has not been stated; Florence was then the scene of the richest development of human individuality, while for the despots no other individuality could be suffered to live and thrive but their own and that of their ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... interest, high and low, though chiefly, no doubt, the middle and smaller proprietors and tenants, will be compelled to curtail their expenses to the lowest sum, and those who have already but a narrow margin of surplus, be reduced to beggary and ruin. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... hear what fell to me * For love of you gazelle to dree! Shot me a white doe with her shaft * O' glances wounding woundily. Love was my ruin, for was I * Straitened by longing ecstasy: I loved and woo'd a young coquette * Girded by strong artillery, Whom in a garth I first beheld * A form whose sight was symmetry. I greeted her and when she deigned * Greeting return, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... English Ambassador at the Persian Court, seasonably interposed when there were powerful combinations to effect the ruin of the mission, headed by the bigoted Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Papal party had seized upon the Nestorian church at Ardeshai, and rebuilt it; and the Shah, upon the representation of Mr. Alison, granted a site for a new church, and ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... the Southern portion of the Democratic party, and contained whatever of sense and force belonged to the South. It was made up of men who were firmly resolved upon one thing, namely, that they would ruin the Union, if they should forever lose the power to rule it; but they had the sagacity to see that the ends which they had in view could be more easily achieved in the Union than out of it. They were not disunionists per se, but were quite ready to become disunionists, if the Union was to be governed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... not only does those dreadful things himself," went on Nora, "but inveigles others into doing them, too. The idea of coming here among us as a friend, and then leading Phil off,—trying to ruin his life!" Nonie's cheeks were scarlet; she was getting madder and madder with every ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... delirious seeking, the princeling rubbed sleeves with the scoundrel and the clod, and each man's ability was his only protection. Fortune played no favorites. The tale is told of the judge who drove home in his coach through a shallow creek. Ruin faced him for the lack of a few thousand dollars. He took out his derringer and ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... jury is going to take enough expert testimony to outweigh the tragedy of a beautiful woman? Do? Why, they can ruin me, even if I get a verdict of acquittal. They can leave me with a reputation for carelessness that no mere ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... it," said Bartley. "Well, I want to thank you, Halleck. You've saved me from disgrace,—from ruin, for all I know. Whew! how my head aches!" he said, making an appeal to Halleck's pity, with closed eyes. "Halleck," he murmured, feebly, "I wish you would do me ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... it, so she told herself over and over again. No one knew, or ever would know. That advantage, at least, was hers, and she would carry it to her grave. But yet she longed passionately, vindictively, to punish him for the ruin he had wrought, to humble him—this faultless knight, this regimental hero, at whose shrine everybody worshipped—as he had once dared to humble her; to make him care, if it were ever so little—only to make him care—and then to trample him ruthlessly ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... tactics pursued by the British military authorities has led to the entire ruin of the territory of both Republics, with burning of farms and towns, destruction of all means of subsistence, and exhaustion of all sources necessary for the support of our families, for the maintenance of our forces in the field, and for the ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... Vibray was not assassinated, she committed suicide," interrupted Fandor sharply. "Most certainly, I do not wish to make you responsible for that, gentlemen; but when you wrote, announcing her ruin, you dealt ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... in the annals of the Carthews, and Singleton was prepared to make the most of it. It had been long his practice to prophesy for his second son a career of ruin and disgrace. There is an advantage in this artless parental habit. Doubtless the father is interested in his son; but doubtless also the prophet grows to be interested in his prophecies. If the one goes wrong, the others come true. Old Carthew drew from this source esoteric ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... people: it was with them, naturally enough, that the Roman world had to deal, and the price of their failure to keep the peace between the populace and Rome was their political extinction and their personal ruin. The populace demanded that the leaders should secure national independence; Rome required that they should induce the people to cease from asking it. The task was an impossible one, but history does not accept impossibility ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake

... whom the call had come. Probably each of the ten often thinks with amusement of the suspicious glances with which they regarded one another. As a participant, I may say that the company had the air of a band of conspirators. Had we convened consciously to plot the ruin of our domestic life, which opponents predict as the result of woman's enfranchisement, we could not have looked more guilty or have moved about with more unnatural stealth. That demeanor I explain as an unconscious tribute to what ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... fleet and the army should advance together, the one by sea and the other on the land, and complete their conquests as they went along. He advised the king, too, to beware of Demaratus's advice. He was a Greek, and, as such, his object was, the admiral believed, to betray and ruin ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... the youths, like me, by love deceiv'd, Not quench the ruin, but applaud the doom, And when thou dy'st, may not one heart be griev'd: May not one tear bedew the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... school, and if Hughie had possessed his soul in patience he might have enjoyed the spectacle of Foxy's overthrow without involving himself in the painful consequences which his thirst for vengeance and his vehement desire to accomplish Foxy's ruin brought upon him. ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor

... because he would not abide in them; for in the former state there would have been no death nor sin nor sinful will, in the latter there was both death and sin and every desire to transgress, and a general tendency to ruin and a condition helpless to render possible a rise after the Fall. But that middle state from which actual death or sin was absent, but the power for both remained, is situate ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... balmy, he took me for a walk, smoking cigarettes innumerable. We wandered up to that old convent picturesquely perched against the slope of the hill and down again, across the rivulet, to the inevitable castle-ruin overhanging the sea. Like all places along this shore, Levanto lies in a kind of amphitheatre, at a spot where one or more streams, descending from the mountains, discharge themselves into the sea. Many of these watercourses may in former times have been larger and even navigable up to a point. Their ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... the highest measure of possibility. Error, ignorance, and sin, must be met and vanquished; they must be met and vanquished by light and love. The eye of angels is upon us,—the eye of God is upon us,—and shall we fetter, and palsy, and ruin our intellectual capabilities, for the paltry pleasure of using one of the most poisonous, loathsome, and destructive weeds found in the whole vegetable kingdom? Let us rather shake off this abominable practice, and rise, as individuals and as a nation, in all our intellectual potency,—and ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler

... more than lovers of God. They are eager for enjoyment and obtain it in dissipated behavior, thought and feeling. Lawless pleasure is the idol of the sinner's heart and the rule of his life; it often leads him to shame, infamy and ruin. The religion of Christ gives, in the place of this, the love of God and duty. The pleasures of the Christian are much broader and brighter than the pleasures of the disobedient; they are far superior to the sinner's day dreams and pleasures of sense. The spirit of the world rejects ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various

... Grecian heroes, some had fallen And some survived, when Priam's towers had blazed In the tenth year, and to their native shores The Grecians with their ships, at length, return'd, 20 Then Neptune, with Apollo leagued, devised Its ruin; every river that descends From the Idaean heights into the sea They brought against it, gathering all their force. Rhesus, Caresus, Rhodius, the wide-branch'd 25 Heptaporus, AEsepus, Granicus, Scamander's sacred current, and thy stream Simoeis, whose banks ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... deeply enough!" said the man. "Suppose, knowing her as I do, I agreed to her coming to my house. Suppose I filled it with servants to wait on her, and ruin and make snobs of the boys; it could only result in a fiasco all around, and bring me again to the awful thing I have been through once, in forcing a separation. The present is too good for the boys, and now they are ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... extend from Goat Island, one beyond another far out into the furious channel. Three pretty suspension-bridges connect them now with the larger island, and under each of these flounders a huge rapid, and hurls itself away to mingle with the ruin of the fall. The Three Sisters are mere fragments of wilderness, clumps of vine-tangled woods, planted upon masses of rock; but they are part of the fascination of Niagara which no one resists; nor could Isabel have been persuaded from exploring them. It wants ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... to depict the consequences of it, because they would appear like a gross and malignant caricature; but it may be said that there was never a system, or want of system, which was better calculated to ruin the students who came under it, or to degrade the profession as a whole. My memory goes back to a time when models from whom the Bob Sawyer of the Pickwick Papers might have been drawn were ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... vitality of interest and attraction drove the older lore into neglected shade. To stir men's vivid curiosity and hope about the earth was to make their care much less absorbing about the kingdom of heaven. To awaken in them the spirit of social improvement was ruin to the most scandalous and crying social abuse then existing. The old spiritual power had lost its instinct, once so keen and effective, of wise direction. Instead of being the guide and corrector of the organs of the temporal power, it was the worst of their accomplices. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... seeing Baligant, Summoned two Spanish Saracens, and bade His body to be raised that he might sit. With his left hand he took a glove, and thus He spoke:—"Sir King and Emir, all my lands And kingdoms, Sarraguce, domains and fiefs But wreck and ruin—Subjects, wealth—all lost." Answered the Emir:—"I, so much the more, Grieve for thy sorrow; but for longer speech I can not stay; for Carle, I know, will not Be still. But, nathless, I receive the glove." O'erwhelmed with ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier

... allied themselves to political power, and gathered therefrom the means of coercion, their permanency is but little improved thereby; for, sooner or later, the population on whom they have been imposed, following the external variations, spontaneously outgrows them, and their ruin, though it may have been delayed, is none the less certain. For the permanency of any such system it is essentially necessary that it should include with its own organization a law of change, and not of change ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... their utter ruin, the gentlemen who held lands under Lord Lovat determined upon resistance; after twenty-seven years of bondage they resolved to free themselves. They met together, and unanimously resolved to unite their arms, and to deliver themselves by ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... can withhold his belief in this revelation, or refuse to adore its celestial light? For is it not more clear than day that we feel in ourselves the ineffaceable traces of divine excellence? And it is equally clear that we experience every hour the effects of our fall and ruin. What, then, comes to us from all this chaos and wild confusion, in a voice of irresistible conviction, but the irrefragable truth of both those ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... had been extravagant, but careless (as Felipe had said). In their lust of robbing, firing, murdering, they had followed no system; and so it happened that a few houses, even wealthy ones, stood intact, like islands, in the general ruin. For the most part, to be sure, there were houses which hid their comfort behind mean walls. But once or twice we were fairly staggered by the blind rage which had passed over a mansion crowded with valuables and wrecked a dozen poor habitations all ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... you absolutely free, you know," she continued, as she went on arranging the papers. "I don't want to wear the breeches, as the saying goes. You are the master, and you are at liberty to endanger your position, compromise our credit, and ruin our business." ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... always consistent in their use of their mythic materials. Thus, Paris, the night-demon, is—to Max Muller's perplexity—invested with many of the attributes of the bright solar heroes. "Like Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus, and Cyrus, he is doomed to bring ruin on his parents; like them he is exposed in his infancy on the hillside, and rescued by a shepherd." All the solar heroes begin life in this way. Whether, like Apollo, born of the dark night (Leto), or like Oidipous, of the violet ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... furnished abundance of victims for the pilgrims who landed and came to sacrifice—for without preliminary sacrifice no man could consult the oracle; while the entire prohibition of tillage was the only means of obviating the growth of another troublesome neighbor on the seaboard. The ruin of Cirrha in this war is certain: though the necessity of a harbor for visitors arriving by sea, led to the gradual revival of the town upon a humbler scale of pretension. But the fate of Crissa is not so clear, nor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... steeped in bitter infamy to the lips. More need was there I should be innocent, More need that I should be most true and kind, 115 And much more need that there should be found one To share remorse and scorn and solitude, And all the ills that wait on those who do The tasks of ruin in the world of life. He fled, and I have ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... murmurs were heard in society against the absolutistic regime which had led Russia to the brink of utter ruin. From the southern part of the Empire, where opinion, since the days of Cossack and Ukraine independence, had always been the most advanced, threatening tales came up of a spirit of rebellion among the peasantry, upon whom the relay duties ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... at this fire; but do as if the King were nobody; nor ne'er a priest comes to give the King and Court good council, or to comfort the poor people that suffer; but all is dead, nothing of good in any of their minds: he bemoans it, and says he fears more ruin hangs over our heads. Thence away by coach, and called away my wife at Unthanke's, where she tells me she hath bought a gowne of 15s. per yard; the same, before her face, my Lady Castlemayne this day bought also, which I seemed vexed for, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... cost. This is the process by which specie is banished by the paper of the banks. Their vaults are soon exhausted to pay for foreign commodities. The next step is a stoppage of specie payment—a total degradation of paper as a currency—unusual depression of prices, the ruin of debtors, and the accumulation of property in the hands of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... cries the orator, "that is another matter. And to be sure, to ruin a poor man is the greatest of sins. And being a lawyer too makes it so much the worse. He shall go before the justice, d—n me if he shan't go before the justice! I says the word, ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... that I adore you as the statesman who holds the future happiness of Prussia in his hands, and that I abhor the French, who have brought Prussia to the brink of ruin." ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... Oak, another, And sturdier village took its place; One that the gentle Virgin mother Has kept from ruin by her grace. She saved it from the dusky foes Who thirsted for its heroes' blood, And when December waters rose About its ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir

... platforms, built by some islanders he has imported from the Kingsmill group to work his plantations. They are a wild, savage-looking set, very inferior to the Tahitians in appearance. The cotton-mills, which formerly belonged to a company, are now all falling to ruin; and in many other parts of the island we passed cotton plantations uncleaned and neglected, and fast running to seed and waste. So long as the American war lasted, a slight profit could be made upon Tahitian ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... people will hate me most relentlessly; so much so, that under their smiles they'll harbour daggers, and much though we two may then be able to boast of having four eyes and two heads between us, they'll compass our ruin, when they can at any moment find us off our guard. We should therefore make the best of this crisis, so that as soon as she takes the initiative and sets things in order, all that tribe of people may for a time lose sight of the bitter feelings they cherish ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... there being no entry to the well nor maids to milk the cows. Daily comes Old Gillman to tell us how, from morning till night, he is forced to drink cider and ale, and so the farm goes to rack and ruin, and all because he has a lovesick daughter. What is your remedy? He would give you gold and ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... money on board—but there is much more than this—the intense rivalry among railroads and railroad men, the working out of running schedules, the getting through "on time" in spite of all obstacles, and the manipulation of railroad securities by evil men who wish to rule or ruin. ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman

... that justify this war upon the Union, and insist that it shall submit to dismemberment without a struggle, and permit slavery to be extended over nearly one half the national territory, purchased by the blood and treasure of the nation. Such a submission to disintegration and ruin—such a capitulation to slavery, would have been base and cowardly. It would have justly merited for us the scorn of the present, the contempt of the future, the denunciation of history, and the execration ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... powerful engine of war. Fill them with tears and sighs, lament separation and suffering, dwell on your loneliness and fears, mourn over the dishonesty of contractors and the incompetency of leaders, doubt if the South will ever be conquered, and foresee financial ruin, and you will damp the powder and dull the swords that ought to deal death upon the foe. Write as tenderly as you will. In camp, the roughest man idealizes his far-off home, and every word of love uplifts him to a lover. But let your tenderness unfold its sunny side, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... signs of an unintelligible civilization, were passing away. Of the rest, some, sullen and restless, were selling their homesteads and following the spirit of their forefathers into a new wilderness; others, leaving their small farms in adjacent valleys to go to ruin, were gaping idly about the public works, caught up only too easily by the vicious current of the incoming tide. In a century the mountaineers must be swept away, and their ignorance of the tragic forces at work among them gave them an unconscious ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.

... shrouded in darkness to a degree that would make you ruin your eyes in ancient books; but it was certainly something of great importance. Nevertheless, let us put on our spectacles, and search it out. Douille signifies in Brittany, a girl, and coque means a cook's frying pan. From this word has come ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... intently the lower gulch with its flood-wracked, water-twisted skeleton laid bare. Could it be that in the destruction there figured forth he caught the symbol of his own condition? That the dreary gloom of that ruin typified the chaos of sombre thoughts that occupied his own remorseful mind? If so, the fancy must have absorbed him. The moments slipped by one by one, the shadows grew longer, the bird songs louder, and still the figure with the rifle ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... of persuasion, to induce him to part with his mistress, and even proceeded so far as to assure him, according to his instructions, that an immediate interruption of all correspondence with his most powerful friends in England, and, in short, that the ruin of his interest, which was now daily increasing, would be the infallible consequence of his refusal; yet he continued inflexible, and all M'Namara's entreaties and remonstrances were ineffectual. M'Namara stayed in Paris some days beyond the time ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... thee this moment and go to thy wife and lie with her and know her carnally, for she shall indeed conceive of thee at this very hour and bear thee a child which, an it be a boy shall become thine aider in all thine affairs but will, an it prove a girl, cause thy ruin and thy destruction and the uprooting of thy traces.' When Al-Mihrjan heard from the Speaker these words and such sayings, he left his couch without stay or delay in great joy and gladness and he went to his wife and slept with her and swived her and as soon as he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... historical reference in any other book except Exodus. Only four or five years ago a Genovese explorer unearthed, near the route of the Suez Canal, this very city; found several ruined monuments with the name of the city plainly inscribed on them, "Pi Tum," and excavating still further uncovered a ruin of which the following is Mr. Rawlinson's description: "The town is altogether a square, inclosed by a brick wall twenty-two feet thick, and measuring six hundred and fifty feet along each side. Nearly the whole of the space is occupied by solidly ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... This affection foretells the ruin of the natural functions, by that peculiar sympathy it has with the liver, and that, therefore, kathydria, or general dropsy ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... is," said he; "you don't know how many rivals I have, who would take all advantages against me. I would not balk the impatience of her passion for the world—the least appearance of coldness or indifference would ruin all; and such ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... who could not teach their menials to "cook a dinner which was not a disgrace to any decent household." When not virulently aspersing the mutton, he was expressing his opinion of muddle-headed weakness which would permit household bills to mount in a manner which could only bring ruin and disaster upon a minister of the gospel who throughout a protracted career of usefulness had sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in silly idleness a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia had heard her character, ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... other world was disquieting his uncle's thoughts. With his mother's milk, the boy had fed on hatred of his enemies. With his training, he had been reared to feudal animosities. Disaffection might ruin his usefulness. Besides the sketching outfit, Samson carried his rifle. He led the painter by slow stages, since the climb proved hard for a man still somewhat enfeebled, to the high rock ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... overtaking him at the moment, drew him into the room opposite. 'If you will be quiet and reasonable, there is yet a possibility left you,' said Guiberto in his ear, although perhaps he did not think it. 'But if you utter a voice or are seen by any one, you ruin the fame of her you love, and obstruct your own prospects for ever. It being known that you have not slept in Florence these several nights, it will be suspected by the malicious that you have slept in the villa with the connivance of Monna Tita. Compose yourself; ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... memorials of some dreadful deforming havoc. The songs of gladness that formerly resounded through it were no longer heard, for the voice of misery had hushed them. Nothing broke upon the ear but the accents of distress; the eye saw nothing but ruin, and desolation, and death. New Castle, yesterday a flourishing town, full of trade and spirit, and containing nearly one thousand inhabitants, was now a heap of smoking ruins; and Douglasstown, nearly one-third of its size, was reduced to the same miserable condition. Of the two hundred ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... finish this journey with my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner," I counseled myself, "upon which it is of a certainty that this plot for his ruin in the world of his politics will be averted, and I will return to the home of my Uncle, the General Robert. If I be not discovered in my woman's estate in a few days' space of time I will endeavor to do some ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... of the cemetery is the grave of M. De Rance. His monument, with his figure carved at full length in a recumbent posture, was removed when the destruction of the old church took place; it is now a complete ruin, and a few stones alone mark the spot of its ancient founder's grave, which is kept free from weeds with pious reverence and care. The revolution, which like a torrent swept all before it, did not even ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes

... heard all that had passed at Charlottesville and at Wendover, and her vain and jealous spirit was filled with such mortification and rage that she was now hiding herself and deeply plotting the ruin of those who had been her best ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... false and corrupt motive, to vitiate the purity of our good actions, depriving them of all which rendered them truly and essentially valuable. That, not to be too hastily approved, because it takes the side of virtue, it often works her ruin while it asserts her cause, and like some vile seducer, pretends affection only ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... "Ah!" she said, "now I can talk freely—in Fritz's interest, mind. You are a young man like himself, he will be disposed to listen to you. Do all you can to back his father's influence, and cure him of his infatuation. I tell you plainly, his marriage would be his ruin!" ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... forgot, and the ring pricked him so sharply that his finger had a drop of blood on it. This happened again and again, for the prince grew more self-willed and headstrong every day; he had some bad friends, too, who urged him on, in the hope that he would ruin himself and give them a chance to seize the throne. He treated his people carelessly and his servants cruelly, and everything he wanted he ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... were verra wasteful o' their shells that day, considering how much siller they cost! They were pounding away, and more shells, by a good many, were falling in Arras than had been the case when we arrived at noon. So I got a chance to see how the ruin that had been wrought ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... explanation now. The waves had swallowed all necessities like this. But, had he known me the inmate of a mad-house, no bolts or bars would have withheld him from my presence. His own eyes could alone have convinced him of such ruin as was alleged against ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... demon of the lash and whip, What time you let your dogs of ruin slip At his unguarded throat with raurd'rous cry, And passion-howl of rage and agony?— Nay:—in that deathful hour, from shore to shore, Men heard his voice who never heard before; And, pale with ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... held to be subjects of taxation in the State Governments about to be re-organized. In Georgia, for example, a State tax of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars was levied in the first year of peace. The property of the State, even after all the ruin of the war, exceeded two hundred and fifty million dollars. This tax, therefore, amounted to less than one-seventh of one per cent upon the aggregate valuation of the State,—equal to the imposition ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... among the rocks—huge clusters of them, bloomy and luscious as the grapes of Eshcol. The blueberry is nature's compensation for the ruin of forest fires. It grows best where the woods have been burned away and the soil is too poor to raise another crop of trees. Surely it is an innocent and harmless pleasure to wander along the hillsides gathering these wild fruits, as the Master and His disciples once walked through the fields ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... in the opposite line all went gunning for this daring rider. Ordinarily it was death to expose oneself on No Man's Land, but fate made another exception in his case and they "never touched him," though they did ruin his fine bicycle by shooting out the spokes of its wheels. However, a mustard gas shell "got him" one day. He was temporarily blinded in addition to suffering excruciating pains. Did he temporarily retire? No, on the contrary, he borrowed his orderly's eyes, in ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... twelve square miles of ground, or a little more. Nor had the walls, so far as we could judge when we reached them, been very high, probably not more than forty feet, which was about their present height where they had not through the sinking of the ground, or some such cause, fallen into ruin. The reason of this, no doubt, was that the people of Kor, being protected from any outside attack by far more tremendous ramparts than any that the hand of man could rear, only required them for show and to guard against civil discord. But on the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... behaved as though I might be that. She never paused to consider the ruin she had wrought, but darted off ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... in my life determined to have my own way), "hold your foolish tongue. Your absurd pride has been the ruin of us hitherto; and, from this day, I'll have no more of it. Hark ye, Orlando, if you will take Jemimarann, you may have her; and if you'll take five hundred pounds for a half-share of the shop, they're yours; and THAT'S for ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Tarquinius, shows great wisdom; for it is very true, that "idleness is the root of all evil." In states it foments discord, and in private life occasions misery and ruin. Well, Ferdinand, what have you ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux

... revenge for his public and his private wrongs, in a passage in which high idealism is joined with personal spite, in which he has revealed himself in all his strength and weakness, and involved his enemies in a common ruin with himself. It concludes the essay ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... More regiments are ordered thither, and to-morrow a plan, I fear equivalent to a declaration of war, is to be laid before both Houses. They are bold ministers methinks who do not hesitate on civil war, in which victory may bring ruin, and disappointment endanger their heads.... Acquisition alone can make burdens palatable, and in a war with our own colonies we must inflict instead of acquiring them, and we cannot recover them ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... all—wherever you find great affairs—matters of state, diplomacy, politics—you find the influence of women in them; women of the great world, sometimes, sometimes of the half-world; great women, at all events, with the power to make or ruin great careers; women at whose feet men of the first class lay all they have; women the tact of whose hands is trusted to determine great matters. They may not be beautiful (I have seen a faded little woman ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... fear she might never attain to that; that perhaps his sudden marriage was a mistake that would ruin the happiness of ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley

... attach, with sympathy to harmonize, with courage to attempt, with patience to endure, and with the power of conscience, that faithful monitor within the breast, to enforce the conclusions of reason, and direct and regulate the passions of the soul. Truly we must pronounce him "majestic though in ruin." "Happy, happy world," would be the exclamation of the inhabitant of some other planet, on being told of a globe like ours, peopled with such creatures as these, and abounding with situations and occasions to call forth the multiplied excellencies of their nature. ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... lauded to the skies, because their riches are great and notorious; when this is the case, we are not to be surprised that men are ashamed to be thought to be poor. This is one of the greatest of all the dangers at the outset of life: it has brought thousands and hundreds of thousands to ruin, even to pecuniary ruin. One of the most amiable features in the character of American society is this; that men never boast of their riches, and never disguise their poverty; but they talk of both as of any other matter fit for ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... people would persuade her to keep her spirits up, and gave her something to drink, and by degrees she became fond of it. Her husband was killed by a fall from the mast-head; and she loved him still and took more to liquor, and that was her ruin. She don't drink now, because she don't feel as she used to do; she cares about nothing; she is much to be pitied, poor thing, for she is still young, and very pretty. It's only four years ago when ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... villainous career with too fatal success. Unsatisfied with satiating their avarice and walking the common path of wickedness, those inhuman wretches, like to Satan himself, made mischief their sport, cruelty their delight, and the ruin and murder of their fellow men their constant employment. Of all the piratical crews belonging to the English nation, none ever equalled Low in barbarity. Their mirth and their anger had the same effect. They murdered a man from good humor, as well as ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... hesitated, then bent over the bowed figure, and as he did so Janoah, casting one last look of gloating delight at the ruin he had wrought, slipped softly from ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... life the ruin'd cities smile, Again from mother-Rome their sacred fire Knowledge and Faith rekindle through the isle, Nigh quench'd by barbarous war and heathen ire:— —No more on Balder's grave let Anglia weep When winter storms entomb the golden ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... that which taught me its power. Your rejection was the making of me; thanks to Violet, who would not let me harden myself, and ruin all.' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... crops, and the mowers always got an extra shilling an acre for cutting it, by Miss Winter's special order, which was paid by Simon in the most ungracious manner, and with many grumblings that it was enough to ruin all ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... irritable, Ned," I then told the harpooner, "and don't ruin things for us with pointless violence. Who knows whether they might be listening to us? Instead, let's try to ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... fell Palmyra. Centuries of ruin and neglect have passed over the once fairy-like city of the Syrian oasis. Her temples and colonnades, her monuments and archways and wonderful buildings are prostrate and decayed, and the site even of the glorious city has been known to the modern world only within ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... noble husband in a "handsome Oriental palace," had been invited to dine with them and had afterward seized the occasion while "walking in the garden" with the lady to disclose the fact that he knew all, and had it in his power to ruin them as impostors. Marie Louise had been frightfully angry, but afterward her better nature had suggested the return of the inheritance, or at least a hundred millions or so, to the rightful heirs. The General had left the palace believing ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... must still bear towards your own mother, listen to the stories of other mothers torn by anxiety for their sons and daughters, and if there is any justice or righteousness in this great city close up those gambling hells that are sending to ruin scores of our finest young men—and women. You have taken up other fights against gambling and vice. Take up this one that appeals to women of wealth and social position. I know them and they are as human as mothers in any other station in life. Oh, if there ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... maintained his independent attitude against all the world, refusing to go to Rome at the summons of the pope. Lanfranc crowned William II., and as long as he lived did much to moderate that monarch's rapacious attacks on the wealth of the Church. He rebuilt the cathedral which had fallen into ruin, and founded the great monastery of Christ Church. He was the author of a celebrated treatise in refutation of the doctrine of Berengarius of Tours, on the subject of the Real Presence, and was present at the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... blackbirds, which were an awful pest. There were millions of these birds and there was not a time of day when they were not hovering over the fields. These birds would alight in the corn fields, tear the husks from the corn and absolutely ruin the ears of corn; also feed on the oats and wheat when it was not quite ripe ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... ruin, when his talents, and great and uncommon genius, attracted the king's patronage. He has now not only his pension, which gives him the felicity of devoting all his time to his darling study, but he is indulged in licence from the king to make a telescope according to his new ideas ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... the lease of half a farm, which was going to ruin in his hands for want of a helpmate. A widower, and inconsolable for the loss of his wife, he tried to drown his troubles, like the English, in wine, and then, when he had put the poor deceased out of his mind, he found himself married, so the village maliciously ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... another people reared their legislative halls out of their mouldering sepulchres and crumbling bones. O, American Nation, with your wonderful civilization of today, it is well to pause here amid the "steam shriek" career of your harried life with all its getting and spending, to contemplate the ruin of even this once consecrated piece ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... corruptly, and that clear honour Were purchas'd by the merit of the wearer! How many then should cover that stand bare; How many be commanded that command; How much low peasantry would then be glean'd From the true seed of honour; and how much honour Pick'd from the chaff and ruin of the times To be new varnish'd! Well, but to my choice: 'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.' I will assume desert. Give me a key for this, And instantly unlock ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... us to take action, but he absolutely refused to go into the witness-box to give evidence. I pressed him, pointing out that that was the only way in which we could bring home anything against them. 'It will ruin me,' he declared. 'Is there no other way it can be put a stop to?' I replied that we were helpless. 'What can I do?' he cried. 'Is the thing they accuse you of true?' I asked. He flushed and admitted that it was. 'Well,' I said, 'if you ask my advice as a man and not as ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... purchaser, and the devil too, for aught I care,) and I, and my legal advisers, are to meet to-morrow, the said purchaser having first taken special care to enquire 'whether I would meet him with temper?'—Certainly. The question is this—I shall either have the estate back, which is as good as ruin, or I shall go on with him dawdling, which is rather worse. I have brought my pigs to a Mussulman market. If I had but a wife now, and children, of whose paternity I entertained doubts, I should be happy, or rather fortunate, as Candide or Scarmentado. In the mean time, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... a king in feeble health was all that stood between the Cardinal and ruin, and several times it seemed impossible that he should outwit his enemies. Louis XIII fell ill in 1630. At the end of September he was not expected to survive, and the physicians bade him attend ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... importers of lace, and was thunderstruck at the enormous quantity of highly-respectable importers, certainly far exceeding New York and Philadelphia. They are first-rate business men: no auctions, which I detest: no overstocks, which will be the ruin of New York; well assorted, and in good condition. In fact, I felt as if I had been in an English town, for the men of business are more like English than Americans. They nearly all import—at least thirty first-rate men import—our goods. I experienced a great deal of civility from Mr. W. ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore

... the strange incidents which had so terribly varied the monotony of her existence. She thought, too, of the scene which she had beholden on the banks of the Arno—her worst fears were confirmed; Flora had escaped from the ruin of the Carmelite convent—was alive, was at liberty—and was with Francisco! Oh! how she now longed for the return of Fernand Wagner; but many hours must elapse—a night must pass—and the orb of day which had by this time gone down, must gain the meridian once more ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... did not—why I left my story but half told. I sometimes wish that I had declared myself fully, and that we were now pledged to each other. But the very next morning I sustained heavy losses in my business, and others soon followed, and to-day I am threatened with utter ruin. If I cannot raise a hundred thousand dollars this week, and as much in another week, I am a bankrupt. And now you will understand why in two days I am to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... the year 1608, was situated at the corner of the rue Thouret and the rue de la Grosse-Horloge, and near the tower of the belfry; the only portion of this building which remains, is that which faces the rue Thouret. This edifice having fallen into ruin, it was decided that a new town-hall should be erected. In 1757, a plan was adopted, and the monument was to be raised at the western extremity of the old market place; but after having laid out one ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet

... thence through Berlin, Dresden, and the like, Until he reached the castellated Rhine:— Ye glorious Gothic scenes! how much ye strike All phantasies, not even excepting mine! A grey wall, a green ruin, rusty pike, Make my soul pass the equinoctial line Between the present and past worlds, and hover Upon their airy ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... strength which must arise in the conflicts of races. Republics have fallen through their standing armies. The proprietary class at the South was the most dangerous of standing armies, for it was disciplined to the use of power night and day. The overthrow of the Rebellion will to a great degree ruin this class. But since it is one not founded on birth or culture, but simply on white blood and circumstance, (for no Secessionist is so fierce as your converted Northerner,) it cannot fall like the Norman nobility ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... looked graceful and vigorous, but yet in his walk there was something just perceptible which betrayed in him a being already touched by decay, weak, and on the road to ruin. And all at once there was a whiff of spirits in the wood. Marya Vassilyevna was filled with dread and pity for this man going to his ruin for no visible cause or reason, and it came into her mind that if she had been his wife or sister she would have devoted her whole life to saving him from ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... strikes one as curious that people should be ready to sympathize with the slouch who lets his place go to ruin out of laziness, and never think of the storekeepers' just claim on the money he's wasted. Anyway, there's nothing to stop people from bidding; but, in case they hold off, we have fixed up how ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... the reply. "Money matters, I think, and the gent is sick, too. He wanted it kept very quiet—said it might ruin his reputation if it ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer

... division. Three central schools at Paris, one called the Quatre-Nations. "This school must be visited in order to form any idea of the state of destruction and dilapidation which all the national buildings are in. No repairs have been made since the reopening of the schools; everything is going to ruin.... Walls are down and the floors fallen in. To preserve the pupils from the risks which the occupation of these buildings hourly presents, it is necessary to give lessons in rooms which are very unhealthy ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... who profited by their exportation. The South itself feels the strength of its position so well that its ambition is to separate the valley of the Mississippi from the Eastern States, and to unite itself to the West, consigning the Yankees of New England to a solitude which would ruin them. With the Mississippi for a bait, the Confederates hope to reestablish to their profit, that is, to the profit of slavery, the Union which they have broken for fear of liberty[6]. We now see what ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... accommodate their barns, and all their live stock. Likewise, when floods are coming, they construct false floors in their houses, elevating their furniture above high-water mark, so that, if the whole house is not carried away, they may return to something less than utter ruin. It is the custom, also, to place ladders against trees, in the branches of which provisions are kept in time of danger, and to have skiffs, containing food and water, ready on the galleries of ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... other partisans lives at stake if the States' right party did not fall—had been able to bear down all thoughts of mercy. He was successful, was called to the house of nobles, and regained the embassy of Paris, while the house of Barneveld was trodden into the dust of dishonour and ruin. Rarely has an offended politician's revenge been more thorough than his. Never did the mocking fiend betray his victims into the hands of the avenger more sardonically than was done in this ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... days.) The Duke sent back the letter without comment to Hunter, who one day handed it to an officer who was dining with him. "You will surely notice this?" said the officer. "No," replied Hunter. "The man has a family, and I don't want to ruin them." ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... Sun-God's element. I held it policy to put the men-children Of that climate to the sword, That the mother's tears might relieve the parched earth: The men died, the women wept, and the grass grew; Else had my Friesland horse perished, Whose loss would have more grieved me Than the ruin of that ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... perhaps better, but their first thoughts will be how the war will affect themselves and, unless there is some chance of the enemy approaching their homes, driving off their cattle, and plundering their cottages, they will look on with a very calm eye at the general ruin. ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty

... travesty on the name—was ended; the castle which his dreams had built on this remote mountain was a shattered ruin. Yet, through the dark series of crowding events, ran a fine thread of gleaming gold, and Donald felt that it had not been broken by his departure. No, it was spun by Destiny to stretch on and on into the unseen future, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... family clothing. She made her own soap and wouldn't have a stove in the house. She had eight children, too, and they all of them turned out badly. I used to go there off and on; I think she looked on me as a kind of sinful amusement. Anyhow, she told me the world was going to ruin, and the women were poor 'doless' creatures, who couldn't spin a hank of yarn, or gin a pound of cotton, or heel a sock. She shook her head over me when she found I couldn't knit, but she set a garter ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith

... falcon eye, and courage bright, Our king saw glory in the fight; To fly, he saw, would ruin bring On them and him—the folk and king. 'Hands up the arms to one and all!' Cries out the king; 'we'll win or fall! Sooner than fly, heaped on each other Each man shall fall ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... to Rosamund for a proof of her darling's lunacy. She in conversation with Stukely Culbrett unhesitatingly accused Cecil of plotting his cousin's ruin. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... at the end of ten minutes the sweeps of the prahus were in full work, and the whole party rapidly making their way up the river once more to some fresh hiding-place, from which they could issue to deal ruin and ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... married, and liv'd above twenty Miles from her Uncle's, in the Road to London, and that the Cause of her quitting the Country, was to avoid the hated Importunities of a Gentleman, whose pretended Love to her she fear'd had been her eternal Ruin. At which she wept and sigh'd most extravagantly. The discreet Gentlewoman endeavour'd to comfort her by all the softest and most powerful Arguments in her Capacity; promising her all the friendly Assistance that she could expect from her, during Bellamora's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... its southern end is Birs Nimrud and some adjacent mounds, anciently Borsippa; here stood a huge temple of the god Nebo. Near its north end, ten or eleven miles north of Borsippa, round Babil and Kasr, is a larger wilderness of ruin, three miles long and nearly as broad in extreme dimensions; here town-walls and palaces of Babylonian kings and temples of Babylonian gods and streets and dwelling-houses of ordinary men have been detected and in part uncovered. Other signs ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield

... of relief. If he had weakened in his story that he was alone and had told the truth, he would have brought ruin upon both himself and ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine

... a glance the effects of the three most fascinating and seductive Drugs in the world—Tobacco, Opium, and Alcohol, and which physically, mentally, and morally injure or ruin the ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... teacher from Iowa, had grown very pale. He buttoned his coat and kept one hand in the region of his belt. One second he peered wildly out of the windows on his side, the next he strained to see if devastation and ruin were approaching ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... longer to-day than he did in 1800, and longer yet than in 1700. Here is a curious proof. Annuities calculated on a certain rate of life in 1694 would yield a fortune to those who issued them. Calculated at the same rate in 1794, they would ruin them; for the more general diffusion of knowledge and refinement had added, I am not able to say how many years to the average British life. Observe how this statement is confirmed by some wonderful statistics preserved at Geneva. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... quick as the blinding levee she plunged the dagger into his vitals, and forthwith the miscreant fell back stone dead. Ali Baba was dismayed and cried in his wrath, "O unhappy, what is this deed thou hast done to bring about my ruin!" But she replied, "Nay, O my lord, rather to save thee and not to cause thee harm have I slain this man: loosen his garments and see what thou wilt discover thereunder." So Ali Baba searched the dead man's dress and found concealed therein a dagger. Then said Morgiana, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... who has assisted, like myself, in the descent of a vessel charged with gas and floating in the air, can appreciate the difficulties experienced in landing. An uncontrolled Zeppelin, for instance, would inevitably pile up in a tangled twisted ruin if forced to descend in the manner of an ordinary balloon. Consequently the pilot of a dirigible realises to the full the imperative urgency of keeping beyond the point-blank fire of aerial ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... is spoilt enough as it is, Heaven knows. And if things came to the pass that I had to stand up whenever Sancha came into the room, and to sit on a footstool while she lolled back in a chair the way Meregrett does, it would be the child's ruin." ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... should enter upon any new matrimonial alliance was very distasteful to him, as it would tend to complicate matters; and his especial fear was that these good people—he knew the family well—would be the ruin of his excellent captain. ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... Ibsen took the momentous step of quitting his native country. He entered Copenhagen at the dark hour when Schleswig as well as Holstein had been abandoned, and when the citadel of Duepper alone stood between Denmark and ruin. His agonized sympathy may be read in the indignant lyrics of that spring. A fortnight later he set out, by Luebeck and Trieste, for Rome, where he had now determined to reside. He reached that city in due time, and sank with ineffable satisfaction ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... "And Brownie will wash up after them, and say, 'Bless their hearts, why would they stay in a hot kitchen!' And so poor old Bob will go down the road to ruin!" ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... But this ruin once granted, and the idle disappointment at its greatness overcome, there is endless material for study, instruction, and delight. It is the revelation of another life, and the utterance of the past is here more perfect than anywhere else in the world. Indeed, I think that the true ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... romantic, nor entertaining, nor abusive, but on the General and Mr. and Mrs. Bowen, and the General's groom. On the Bowens it is so immeasurably scurrilous, that I think they must prosecute her. She accuses them and her husband of a conspiracy to betray and ruin his own daughter, without, even attempting to assign a motive to them. Of the House of Argyll she says not a word. In short, it is a most dull incoherent rhapsody, that gives no account at all of the story that gave origin to her ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole



Words linked to "Ruin" :   ruination, copulate, thwart, consume, ruinous, finish, destroy, demolition, spoil, crumble, baffle, break, desolation, impoverish, laying waste, violate, pair, plunder, despoil, kick down, dilapidation, failure, frustrate, deflower, kick in, couple, queer, foil, bankrupt, wrack, ruiner, bust, explode, building, smash, scotch, get



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