Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Ruin   /rˈuən/  /rˈuɪn/   Listen
Ruin

verb
(past & past part. ruined;pres. part. ruining)
1.
Destroy completely; damage irreparably.  Synonym: destroy.  "The tears ruined her make-up"
2.
Destroy or cause to fail.
3.
Reduce to bankruptcy.  Synonyms: bankrupt, break, smash.  "The slump in the financial markets smashed him"
4.
Reduce to ruins.
5.
Deprive of virginity.  Synonym: deflower.
6.
Fall into ruin.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Ruin" Quotes from Famous Books



... "You will not think of doing such a desperate thing, which might ruin your whole life, when I have promised you that there is ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... with his great bull-headed English obstinacy, saw the facheuse position into which he had brought his troops, he was for dying on the spot, and would infallibly have done so—and the loss of his army would have been the ruin of the East India Company—and the ruin of the English East India Company would have established my empire (bah! it was a republic then!) in the East—but that the man before us, Lieutenant Goliah Gahagan, was riding at the side of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... deadly, and killing rule of no rule; the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men. Slop-shirts attainable three-half-pence cheaper by the ruin of ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... Egypt's great host in battle-ray forth brought, The Caliph sends with Godfrey's power to fight; Armida, who Rinaldo's ruin sought, To them adjoins herself and Syria's might. To satisfy her cruel will and thought, She gives herself to him that kills her knight: He takes his fatal arms, and in his shield His ancestors and their ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... signed by names unknown to her. They all related to race-horses, and to cunningly devised bets which were certain to make the fortunes of the clever gamblers on the turf who laid them. Absolute indifference on the part of the winners to the ruin of the losers, who were not in the secret, was the one feeling in common, which her father's correspondents presented. In mercy to his memory she threw the letters into the empty fireplace, and destroyed ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... mysterious and intricate study that even many of its teachers do not seem to understand in every detail. It is a notorious fact that many so-called vocal instructors, including some of the highest-priced members of the profession, frequently ruin magnificent voices by wrong methods of instruction. It is a simple matter to build up a good voice, but it is also a simple matter to ruin one ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... the messenger with interest as he trudged away on some new errand, wishing he had a better day and a thicker pair of boots. He was an unusually large, well-made man, and reminded me of a fine building going to ruin before its time; for the broad shoulders were bent, there was a stiffness about the long legs suggestive of wounds or rheumatism, and the curly hair looked as if snow had fallen on it too soon. Sitting at work in my window, I fell ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... dwellings, with upper stories far overhanging the street, and thus marking their date, say three hundred years ago; the stately city walls, the castellated gates, the ivy-grown, foliage-sheltered, most noble and picturesque ruin of St. Mary's Abbey, suggesting their date, say five hundred years ago, in the heart of Crusading times and the glory of English chivalry and romance; the vast Cathedral of York, with its worn carvings and quaintly pictured windows, preaching of still ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... of unlawful love. In her strange and romantic history we see this passion portrayed with the most complete and graphic fidelity, in all its influences and effects, its uncontrollable impulses, its intoxicating joys, its reckless and mad career, and the dreadful remorse, and ultimate despair and ruin in which it always and inevitably ends." But Mr. Abbott has disposed of the uncongenial theme with his accustomed ingenuity and good sense. Without vailing the character of the voluptuous queen, or concealing the poetical aspects of her romantic history, he delineates the events in her ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... Topsy's friend. Then it was trying when Colonel Newcome said Adsum, and the end of Socrates in the Phaedo moved one more than seemed becoming—these, and a passage in the history of Skalagrim Lamb's Tail, and, as I said, the ruin of the Athenians in the Syracusan Bay. I have read these chapters in an old French version derived through the Italian from a Latin translation of Thucydides. Even in this far-descended form, the tale keeps its pathos; the calm, grave stamp of that tragic telling ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... that she did not mean to spoil the peony; but it was almost as bad to ruin it by being careless. Children ought to understand that not meaning to do wrong is not a good excuse, when the wrong might have been prevented by ...
— Proud and Lazy - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic

... this were practised in any other business, it would be open fraud. If in any way you could palm upon a farmer that which is not only worthless, but mischievous—that which would certainly tend to ruin him and his family, could there be any doubt about the nature of this employment? It makes no difference here, that the man supposes that it is for his good; or that he applies for it. You know that it is not for his benefit, and you know—what is the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... great trust put in him, to call upon him with particular vigor and exertion to prevent all abuses through the settlement, and particularly these abuses of corruption. Much trust is put in his frugality, his order, his management of his private affairs; and from thence they hope that he would not ruin his own fortune, but improve it by honorable means, and teach the Company's servants the same order and management, in order to free them from temptation to rapacity in their own particular situations. There have been known to be men, otherwise ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Bonaparte committed a great fault in neglecting at this juncture to conciliate her mother-in-law, who might have protected her again those who sought her ruin and effected it nine years later; for the divorce in 1809 was brought about by the joint efforts of all the members of the Bonaparte family, aided by some of Napoleon's most confidential servants, whom Josephine, either ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... wares a chest of false Venetian coins. He vainly protested his innocence; it was only too evident that some malicious fiend, perhaps the official in charge himself, had smuggled in the chest in order to ruin your father. The inexorable judges, satisfied that the chest had been found in your father's offices, condemned him to death. He was executed in the quadrangle of the Fontego; nor would you now be living if faithful Margaret had not saved ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... knocked over one of the horses, and sent the rest off capering. After four or five hours he drove in his mules and took out another set. The Indians could only interrupt his pastoral labors by making a general charge; and that would expose them to a fire from the ruin, against which they could not retaliate. They thought it wise to make no trouble, and all day the foraging went on ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... ignorant of Germain's neglect and Howe's futilities, was struggling to his fate at Saratoga, north of Albany. He had been receiving constant aid from Carleton's scanty resources, though Carleton knew full well that the sending of any aid beyond the limits of the province exposed him to personal ruin in case of a reverse in Canada. But it was all in vain; and, on the 17th of October, Burgoyne—much more sinned against than sinning—laid down his arms. The British garrison immediately evacuated Ticonderoga and retired to St Johns, thus making Carleton's position fairly safe ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... into all the mysteries. Verily a ruin. Mounting to an upper floor by the solid stone steps outside, we found ourselves in another chamber, the roof of which was supported by rafters, through the thick walls of which a long dark passage ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... fifteen years of age when he began to reign. One of his first acts was to reward the intriguing Dunstan for his crimes by bestowing upon him the archbishopric of Canterbury. Think of conferring an archbishopric as the price of a brother's ruin and death! Ah, better to be Edwy the Fair in his early grave, with the birds singing and the violets waving above him, than the cruel boy Edgar upon ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... commercial ventures at vast profit, became suddenly idle and non-productive. But it is an ill wind which blows no good. So it was in the case of New England at this period. For the ill wind which carried ruin to her commerce and want to hundreds of thousands of people, carried also the seeds and small beginnings of all her subsequent manufacturing greatness and prosperity. With the development of manufactures, which now followed, and the diversifying of ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke

... make this experience count for us yet. But we mustn't let a mistake ruin us-it should teach us. What right has anyone to keep you in a hole? God don't expect a toad to stay in a stump and starve if it can get out. He don't ask the snakes to suffer as ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... him, Leaving no trace behind of himself and his animate action! As by the house we straightway can tell the mind of the master, So, when we walk through a city, we judge of the persons who rule it. For where the towers and walls are falling to ruin; where offal Lies in heaps in the gutters, and alleys with offal are littered; Where from its place has started the stone, and no one resets it; Where the timbers are rotting away, and the house is awaiting Vainly its new supports,—that place ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... mercenaries in Greece—in particular of those who served in the army of Pyrrhus; or who, acting in the pay of Carthage, contributed so much to the victories of that powerful and wealthy people, and who took that lead in the famous insurrection of the mercenaries, which so nearly brought about their ruin. We must pass over too, unnoticed, the desperate struggle between the Romans and Gauls in Cisalpine Gaul, which ended in the defeat of the Boian confederacy at the battle of the Telama, and their submission, and the subjugation of the Insubrians by Marcellus. The whole ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... not only wasted in the void, like that of gunpowder burned in the open air, and steam unconfined by science; but, striking in the dark, and its blows meeting only the air, they recoil and bruise itself. It is destruction and ruin. It is the volcano, the earthquake, the cyclone;—not growth and progress. It is Polyphemus blinded, striking at random, and falling headlong among the sharp rocks by the impetus ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... line, was obliged to flee from the country and Askia Mohammed usurped the throne. He began as a pious ruler and was, therefore, praised as "a brilliant light shining after great darkness; a savior who drew the servants of God from idolatry and the country from ruin."[201] He made pilgrimages to Mecca, scattered his funds in the holy places, rendered homage to the Khalif Abassid Motewekkel in Egypt, got in touch with the theologians and learned men of Cairo and endeavored to take over the more advanced civilization of Egypt. During these ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... the king's property. Many of the conquered people rebelled against his rule and his strict feudal laws, and some of his provinces had to be conquered twice over. But with every year he came nearer to his goal, and those who opposed him only brought about their own ruin. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... with English cathedrals, or endeavored to trace out the lines along the broken wall of some old abbey. Not that this extant cloister, still perfect and in daily use for its original purposes, is nearly so beautiful as the crumbling ruin which has ceased to be trodden by monkish feet for more than three centuries. The cloister of Santa Maria has not the seclusion that is desirable, being open, by its gateway, to the public square; and several of the neighbors, women as well as men, were loitering within ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... yet know the worst.. Poor Admiral Boscawen(99) has been most unfortunate during his whole expedition; and what increases the horror is, that I have been assured by a very intelligent person, that Lord Anson projected this business on purpose to ruin Boscawen, who, when they came together from the victory off Cape Finisterre, complained loudly of Anson's behaviour. To silence and to hurt him, Anson despatched him to Pondicherry, upon slight intelligence and upon ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... possessed treads the impalpable marches, From the dust of the day's long road he leaps to a laughing star, And the ruin of worlds that fall he views from eternal arches, And rides God's battlefield in a flashing ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... they first act, and when too late, begin to examine. From a knowledge of this disposition, there are several here, who make it their business to frame new reports at every convenient interval, all tending to denounce ruin, both on their contemporaries and their posterity. This denunciation is eagerly caught up by the public: away they fling to propagate the distress; sell out at one place, buy in at another, grumble at their governors, ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... 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 piece of loving ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... still young. The more you trust in your heart, the farther astray you will be led by your pride. To-day you stand before the first ruin you are going to leave on your route. If Brigitte dies to-morrow you will weep on her tomb; where will you go when you leave her? You will go away for three months perhaps, and you will travel in Italy; you will wrap your cloak about you like a splenetic ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... against that house, and could not shake it: because it had been well builded. 49 But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that built a house upon the earth without a foundation; against which the stream brake, and straightway it fell in; and the ruin ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How small a thing is needed to make or ruin us! ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... Then a bloody pirate, I The wide plains of the sea ran over, Argus of its dangerous shallows, Lynx-eyed where the reefs lay covered; In that vessel which the wind Bit by bit so soon demolished, In that vessel which the sea As a dustless ruin swallowed, I to-day these fields of crystal Eagerly ran o'er, my object Being stone by stone to examine, Tree by tree to search this forest:— For a man in it is living, Whom it is of great importance I should see, this day expecting The fulfilment of a promise Which he gave and I accepted. This ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... prone to believe either in more than one Su- 203:18 preme Ruler or in some power less than God. We im- agine that Mind can be imprisoned in a sensuous body. When the material body has gone to ruin, when evil has 203:21 overtaxed the belief of life in matter and destroyed it, then mortals believe that the deathless Principle, or Soul, escapes from matter and lives on; but this is not 203:24 true. Death is not a stepping-stone to life, immortality, and ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... and value. The books have been bought for the Duke of Milan, the marbles and bronzes and the rest are going to France: and both will be protected by the stability of a great Power, instead of remaining in a city which is exposed to ruin." ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... their military power in 1914. The united force of the Allies has grown, through valley-visions of right and justice and human kindness, into an irresistible might before which the German "will to power" has gone down in ruin. ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... if the military party convinced him of ability to crush France and occupy Paris, he would be unalterably opposed to the attack. For, said he, one war with France is only the first of at least six, and were we victorious in all six, it would only mean ruin for Germany, and for her ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron

... the Octorara, Miami, six other steamers, and seventeen of the mortar schooners. The orders of the government were peremptory that the Mississippi should be cleared. The Confederates held the river by a single thread. The fall of Memphis and the ruin of the famous river-defence fleet left between St. Louis and the Gulf but a solitary obstruction. This ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... of the encounter, and their eternal happiness or misery is suspended upon the issue[130]. What must be the emotions of these men, on first opening their eyes in the world of spirits, and being convinced, too late, of the awful reality of their impending ruin? May the mercy and the power of God awaken them from their desperate slumber, while life is yet spared, and there is yet space ...
— 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

... to be plenty further up in the hills; I cannot examine it just now, in consequence of the natives being about. It would not do for me to leave, as the party is so small, nor do I like sending one of them, for he might be taken by surprise and cut off, which would ruin me altogether, being able to do scarcely anything myself. Although I am much better, I am still very weak; the pains in my limbs are not so constant. I attribute the relief to eating a number of native cucumbers which are in quantities on this creek. The horse ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... denoting the existence of some internal complaint beyond that which less equivocal symptoms sufficiently present to the eye and knowledge of the regular practitioner—we can only say that we conceive them to be justly punished in the loss of their money, and the consequent ruin of their health. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... importance of humoring the priestly power, were more vexed and more anxious about the necessity under which they found themselves of continuing to despoil the churches and of persisting in a system which was putting the finishing stroke to the ruin of all ecclesiastical discipline. They were more eager to mitigate the evil and to offer the Church compensation for their share in this evil to which it was not in their power to put a stop. Accordingly at the March parade held at Leptines in 743, it was decided, in reference to ecclesiastical ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... 'Lysistrata'—produced at intervals of years, the sixth, tenth and twenty-first of the Peloponnesian War, and impressing on the Athenian people the miseries and disasters due to it and to the scoundrels who by their selfish and reckless policy had provoked it, the consequent ruin of industry and, above all, agriculture, and the urgency of asking Peace. In date it is the earliest play brought out by the author in his own name and his first work of serious importance. It was acted at the Lenaean Festival, in January, 426 B.C., and gained the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... so great that it can be restricted no longer; and it not only breaks through the dam, but bursts all barriers, floods the country, sweeps away homes, farms, cattle, human beings, towns, cities, leaving ruin in its path. Let rivers flow as God meant them to; and they ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... a servant of the Kingdom the feeling which suggests such a speech is wicked, are the moth holes in the garments of the Church, the teredo in its piles, the dry rot in its floors, the scaling and crumbling of its buttresses. They do more to ruin what such men call the Church, even in outward respects, than any of the rude attacks of those whom they thus despise. He who, in the name of Christ, pushes his neighbor from him, is a schismatic, and that ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... doing what I can to help Jacobus to keep his tongue clean, and I will not have Rem lead him into temptation. As for Rem, he is guilty of a great wrong; and he must now do what his father told him to do—work day and night, as men work, when a bridge is broken down. The ruin must be got out of the way, and the bridge rebuilt, then it will be possible to open some pleasant and profitable traffic with human beings again—not to speak ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... hath been ravaged in Aquitania (Novempopulania), Lyonness, and Narbonensis; the towns, save a few, are dispeopled; the sword pursueth them abroad and famine at home. I cannot speak without tears of Toulouse; if she be not reduced to equal ruin, it is to the merits of her holy bishop Exuperus ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... know," she said in a low voice, "I believe that man's been up to some trick again. You know how he treated us over the Crusade? Now I suppose he's going to ruin us!" The satisfaction of a justified prophet seemed to mingle with the dismay of a wife and the anger of a sufferer; Lady Richard had ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... four minutes; longer boiling ruins the water for coffee or tea making, as most of its natural properties escape by evaporation, leaving a very insipid liquid composed mostly of lime and iron, that would ruin the best coffee, and give the tea a dark, dead look, which ought to be ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... is the ruin of many a worthy subject! And yet accident—chance—fortune—or whatever you may choose to call it, interferes nefariously, at times, with a gentleman's prosperity. I am an adorer of constancy in friendship, Sir, and hold the principle that men should aid each other through this dark vale of life—Mr. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... no!" she protested, "it would utterly ruin you! There was one woman there to-night—very handsome—I knew she was your mother. And I saw the way she looked at me.... It's no use, Clive. Those people are different. They'd never forgive you, and it would ruin you or you'd have to go ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... of the West India Islands, that of St. Vincent, affords an example of these extraordinary connections. This volcano had not emitted flames since 1718, when they burst forth anew in 1812. The total ruin of the city of Caracas preceded this explosion thirty-five days, and violent oscillations of the ground were felt both in the islands and on the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... into the duodenum when the latter calls for its assistance. The next time the cook cleans out a fowl, ask her to show you the little greenish bladder which she calls the gall and which she takes such care not to burst, because it contains a bitter liquid which, if spilt upon it, would quite ruin the flavor of the fowl. Such, precisely, is the bag which holds the bile. Moreover, it is close by the liver of the fowl that you will find it placed: and you can convince yourself in a moment by it, that the little provision I tell you ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... this was done from motives of policy, since Elizabeth was on the throne, and the edicts against Papists, though only rigidly enforced by fits and starts, were always in existence, and had been the ruin of many ancient families. However that may have been, the only son of this union had been trained up a Protestant, and had brought up his own children as members of the Established ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... a man who had sworn your ruin and who was made an instrument by your enemies. We ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... Peradventure, were I to tarry longer in the tents of Kedar, the gracious boon would be revoked, and I also be swallowed up in the deluge of wrath, or consumed in the storm of fire and brimstone, or involved in whatever new kind of ruin is ordained for the horrible perversity ...
— The Man of Adamant - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... stuck a musket in his hand, and placed him on guard." Yet there was some pluck in him. He was just the sort of man who, led by a good officer, would fight like a lion, but whose animal instincts had so befogged his intellect that, if left to his own resources, he would be as likely to ruin ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... Humility and Independence is equally good, and pleasantly demonstrates the proposition, that Humility is the true mother of Independence; and that Pride, which is so often supposed to stand to her in that relation, is in reality the step-mother by whom is wrought the very destruction and ruin of Independence. False humilities are ordered into court, and summarily convicted by this single-eyed judge, whose cross-examination of these 'sham respectabilities' elicits many a suggestive practical truth. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various

... as of gentleness outgrown and timidity overcome, dazzled him for a moment—caused a revulsion in him which he half recognized as the beginning of a dangerous passion. His former love for her suddenly appeared boyish and unreal to him; and this ruin of a once cherished illusion cost him a pang. Meanwhile, there she was, holding out her hand and smiling with a cool confidence in the success of her advance that would have been ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... derived from one man's life, is in the present day scarcely worthy of the name—at least for those who are to act in the higher and wider spheres of duty. An ignorant general, he said, inspired him with terror; for if he were too proud to take advice he would ruin himself by his own blunders, and if he—were not, by adopting the worst that was offered. A great genius may indeed form an exception, but we do not lay down rules in expectation of wonders. A similar remark I remember to have heard from a gallant officer, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... has war worn so terrible a visage or exhibited more grossly the debasing influence of illicit ambitions. I am sure that I shall look upon the ruin wrought by the armies of the Central Empires with the same repulsion and deep indignation that they stir in the hearts of the men of France and Belgium, and I appreciate, as you do, sir, the necessity of such action in the final settlement of the issues of the war as will not only rebuke such acts ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... and as he came to the trunk he paused, looked at it, muttered something about "ruin," and something about "fortune," kicked the lid down and threw ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... fair Italy! Thou art the garden of the world, the home Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree; Even in thy desert, what is like to thee? Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste More rich than other climes' fertility; Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced With an immaculate charm which can not ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... set purpose. Behind the King's most trivial act there was always a set purpose. In a boy's feeble hands, a puppet as he had called him, a king in legal age and yet a child in years and ignorance, this great France he had built up so laboriously would crumble into ruin. Louis was a statesman first and a father afterwards. So Commines must go to Amboise, must sift, search, find—but especially find. Find what? His question had been answered—find and prove the boy's guilty knowledge. But having found, having proved that the ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... In the ruin of the Roman Empire, her laws were lost in the general wreck. During the 200 years, which followed the reign of Constantine the Great, Europe was a scene of every calamity, which the inroads of barbarians could inflict, either on the countries through which ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... lay heavily loaded with irons in Don Pedro's barracoon, awaiting the sentence which the whites in his service already declared should be death. "He struck a white!" they said, and the wound he inflicted was reported to have caused that white man's ruin. But, luckily, before the sentence was executed, I came ashore, and, as the transaction occurred in my presence, I ventured to appeal from the verdict of public opinion to Don Pedro, with the hope that I might exculpate the Krooman. My simple and truthful story was sufficient. An order ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... the cost of a marriage is at least $200, wherefore if a man has several daughters his ruin is almost certain. Female infanticide is often the result, but even if the girls are allowed to grow up there is a way for the father to escape. There is a special high class of Brahmans who make it their business to marry these girls. They go up and down the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... to imagine, and wholly impossible to describe the ruin and wreck to be seen everywhere in the path of the larger gold washing operations. Streams naturally pure as crystal, become changed to a thick, yellow mud, from this cause, early in their passage out from the hills. Many of them are turned ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... almost with a sense of terror. Travellers from "white and shining little mother Moscow" told fearful tales. Thousands killed; the Tverskaya and the Kuznetsky Most in flames; the church of Vasili Blazheiny a smoking ruin; Usspensky Cathedral crumbling down; the Spasskaya Gate of the Kremlin tottering; the Duma burned to the ground. (See App. X, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... alike by Mohammedan and Christian," returned the Jew, with dignity. "You know full well, Sidi Hamet, that the sum you have named would ruin all the Jews in the town. If the security of my people is not to be purchased for a smaller sum, we must perish. My utmost efforts would not avail to raise more than the half thereof within the specified time. You may indeed ruin us, if you will, but it were wise to remember that ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... of our story. At any rate, the field bore splendid 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 the mowers in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... for word, at the head of your paragraphs," he said, "and you'll hear no more of me, unless you give me fresh provocation. And I advise you to think twice before you have me arrested—for I'll defend my own case, and—ruin you! I'm rather a dangerous customer to have much to do with! However, you've got my card—you know where to find me if you want me. Only you'd better send after me to-night if you do—to-morrow I ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... us at the present moment from that pressure of pauperism which sits like an incubus upon the energies of the nation, and which will precipitate us, if not timely avoided, into speedy and irretrievable ruin. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various

... step must damage the Government, although it ought to damage Lord Palmerston still more. Lord John's expression was: "Yes, it would ruin anybody ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... of year thou may'st in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold— Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang, In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after Sunset fadeth in the West, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... people would have been the ruin of the mission, as well as the destruction of the tribe, who were afraid to encounter them, Mr M, the missionary, determined upon sending for the assistance of the Griquas, the people whom I have before ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... within a space of the grey horizon sky. But the chin was firm, the mouth and nose were firm, the forehead sat calmly above these shows of decay. It was a most noble face; a fortress face; strong and massive, and honourable in ruin, though stripped of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... distant music fell, Smiting the mother like a funeral knell. High rode the sun in heaven next day before The stricken mother found along the shore The object of her unremitting quest. The cooling wave whereon she lay at rest Had stilled the tumult of Winona's breast Along that shapely ruin's plastic grace, And in the parting of her braided hair, The hopeless mother's glances searching there The Thunder-Bird's ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... premises in an instant, and in another instant all the women had collected in the yard; even Miss Ingamells had betrayed the sacred charge of the shop. Ten people were in the yard, staring at the window aperture on the first-floor and listening for ruin. Some time had elapsed before Darius would allow anybody even to mount the steps. Then the baker, the tenant of the ground-floor, had had to be fetched. A pleasant, bland man, he had consented in advance to every suggestion; ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... long as they only confuse the brain, without arming the hand. Scepticism and free-thinking, as long as they occupied only the minds of the indolent and philosophical, have caused the ruin of no throne, for which purpose religious and political fanaticism are the strongest levers in the hands of nations. It is nothing to the ambitious man what people believe, but it is everything to know how he may turn them for the execution of ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... perplexed, he retraced his errant pathway through life, back to the source of doubt and pain; and, once arrived there, he remained, gazing with impartial eyes upon the ruin two young souls had wrought of their twin lives; and always, always somehow, confronting him among the debris, rose the spectre of their deathless responsibility to one another; and the inexorable life-sentence sounded ceaselessly in his ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... the English consul?' cried the host, with sudden eagerness. 'Thou wilt refrain from saying any word to Cook or Baedeker to bring ill-fame and ruin on the place? Our Lord augment thy wealth and guard thee always! May thy progeny increase in honour till ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... 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. ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton

... never quitted the silence of their hospitable deserts! How many scenes should I have avoided which fill these aged eyes with tears, and pierce my soul with horror as often as I recollect them! I should not have been witness to such a waste of human blood, nor traced the gradual ruin of my country. I should not have seen our towns involved in flames, nor our helpless children the captives of fell barbarians. But it is in vain for human beings to repine at the just decrees of Providence, which have consigned every people to misery and servitude ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... are selling this precious stone, which we have ignorantly raked out of the Roman ruins, at such a rate as the Switzers did that which they took in the baggage of Charles of Burgundy. For that Camillus had stood more firm against the ruin of Rome than her capitol, was acknowledged; but on the other side, that he stood as firm for the patricians against the liberty of the people, was as plain; wherefore he never wanted those of the people ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... Mrs. Goodriche; "but tell me, have you breakfasted?" And when she heard that he had; "Come with me, kind friend," she said, "we will first look at the ruin, and then I have other things to talk to you, and to consult you about. So, Bessy, do you stay behind; you are not to make one ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... could regret: but indeed I do regret. It is no small addition to my concern, to fear or foresee that Houghton and all the remains of my father's glory will be pulled to pieces! The widow-Countess immediately marries—not Richcourt, but Shirley, and triumphs in advancing her son's ruin by enjoying her own estate, and tearing away great part ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... expectation of coming change stalks abroad; the air is rife with rumours; at last there bursts out an eruption of greater or less violence—the destructive flood overleaps its barriers, and flows forth, carrying devastation and ruin in one direction of another, until its energies are exhausted, or its progress stopped by some obstacle that it cannot overcome, and it subsides reluctantly and perforce. Such a time was that on which Ramesses III. was cast. Wars threatened him on every side. On his north-eastern frontier ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... liar, a thief, and a swindler. There is a swindle in this thing somewhere, and he hopes to pull out a big sum of money from it. He is merely using Christie to pull his own chestnuts out of the fire. She is innocent; we realize that, but this fellow is going to ruin the girl unless we succeed in exposing him. He's not only involving her in his criminal conspiracy, but he's making love to her; he's teaching her to love him. That's part of his scheme, no doubt, for then she will be so much easier handled. I tell you, Fairbain, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... good thing, but the boy looked so happy, and it was Christmas Eve, with the general feeling of joy in the air. He was curiously moved himself. Perhaps happiness wasn't such a weak and sinful thing after all. It did not seem to ruin the Underhill family. ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... me at least tell you what I think of you, you minx. To draw my poor son into a mess like this, to ruin his prospects, to turn him into a hunted felon—he who never so much as hurt a worm, he who is my eldest son, like to make his fortune, come in for his uncle's business and his money. Oh, did I ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall

... would be raised at the expiration of his twelvemonth's tenancy, remarking that a tenant could not reasonably expect to have a pretty, rain-tight dwelling-house for the same money as a hardly habitable ruin. Smilash had immediately promised to dilapidate it to its former state at the end of the year. He had put up a board at the gate with an inscription copied from some printed cards which he presented to persons who happened ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... be easy, Monsieur," she said calmly and coldly. "My husband tried to kill you. You would do—ah, but let me pass!" she said, with a sudden fury. "You—if you were a million times richer, if you could ruin me for ever, do ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... then returned to their lord and master. It required but a slight stretch of the imagination to suppose that these well-meaning servants made a favorable report, and whispered in his ear that "all was right," and thus unwittingly betrayed him to his ruin. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... but escaping into impersonality again from the grasp of retribution, weakens that sense of personal responsibility which is the root of self-respect and the safeguard of character. Dante indeed saw clearly enough that the Divine justice did at length overtake Society in the ruin of states caused by the corruption of private, and thence of civic, morals; but a personality so intense as his could not be satisfied with such a tardy and generalized penalty as this. "It is Thou," he says sternly, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... surely will not allow your good people to kindle a fire here in the yard? I beg that you will forbid it; there is no knowing what mischief might result from it; and besides, it will ruin the yard." ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus

... breach. And no precautions will save us. At the very moment when we feel ourselves secure, he will be ready to strike. What he will attempt, I know not; but his will be a terrible revenge. Remember my words, Blanche, if ruin ever threatens our house, it will ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... day! I will make thee drink the sourest of regrets! By Allah, I will not turn back upon the faith of Mohammed son of Abdullah, who made salvation general; for his is the True Faith; nor will I leave the right road though I drain the cup of ruin!"—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... hardly twenty buildings all told; but it was the first settlement of the Dominion, and sentiment would fain have preserved it. A mossy ruin, draped in vines, is all that remains of it now. The ascertainable causes of its destruction seem inadequate; yet the circumstances show that it could not have been done in mere wantonness. Civilized warfare permits the destruction of the enemy's property; but the enemy had retreated, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... modern habit of chipping monumental stones for relics is inexcusable; for it is not done by ignorant or otherwise lawless persons, but too often by the educated, who carry their mawkish sentiment to such an extreme as to deface and sometimes, as in the present case, entirely to ruin a monument. It is in vain to urge that this was only a stranger's stone, and that there were none to care. It was all the more an outrage, if there were no friends to protect it. We are glad to learn that there were people in the town who did what they ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... trouncing I got at the hands of Mr. William Archer in the columns of the World. My critic complained, tenderly enough, that at one point I took the stage with an obvious effort, as if determined to show that thus and thus should a man behave under sudden news of irreparable ruin. I cannot quite tell, said Mr. Archer in effect, why it was not admirable acting, and yet it was not If he could have told, he went on to say, he might himself have been an excellent actor, and not a critic. But ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... from the ruin'd shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... of a Dutchman's virtues. He is not cold, nor calculating, nor cruel. Generally happy himself, he desires others to be happy also. If he cannot get on with people, he lets them alone. He does not seek to ruin them. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... I'll undertake to ruin the character of the primmest prude in London with half as much. Ha! ha! Did your ladyship never hear how poor Miss Shepherd lost her lover and her character last summer at Scarborough? this was the whole of it. One evening at Lady ——'s, the conversation happened to turn on the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... and it contrasted, in every way, with the ruined church of Lasthope, whose worship seemed also to have gone to ruin with the uncared-for edifice. Its aisles had tumbled down, and their material had been rudely built up within the arches of the nave. The church was thus converted into the non-ecclesiastical form of a parallelogram, and was fitted up with the very rudest and ugliest of deal enclosures, which ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... advocate in the council of Almagro. It stood him now in good stead. Alvarado represented to the marshal, that such a measure as that urged by Orgonez would not only outrage the feelings of his followers, but would ruin his fortunes by the indignation it must excite at court. When Almagro acquiesced in these views, as in truth most grateful to his own nature, Orgonez, chagrined at his determination, declared that the day would come when he would ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... encountered some difficulty, some slumbering coil of sharps and flats, and it raises its bristling front in her way.... She has fled back to the opening again. I begin to wonder what unhappy musician lies hidden in this new ruin, behind the bars of this melancholy confusion. There is something familiar but elusive, like a face that one has known and loved and lost and met again after the cruel changes of intervening years. It conjures up oddly enough a vision of a long room in ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... Roland gazed on his slaughtered men and on the pitiful few who rallied around him in his last stand against the Moslem power, his heart smote him grievously for the ruin he had wrought, and he cried to ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... had they striven against the forces of evil; they had sought by every device to turn back the flood-tide of base passion and avarice, but to no purpose. It seemed as if all men were engulfed in one common ruin. Patient, sphinx-like, sat woman, limited by sin, limited by social custom, limited by false theories, limited by bigotry and by creeds, listening to the tramp of the weary millions as they passed on through the centuries, patiently toiling and waiting, humbly bearing the pain and weariness ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... away his clothes. The great cathedral was crumbling to dust, and saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs were being hurled from their niches of stone, the Virgin alone standing unscathed upon her pedestal contemplating the ruin and tribulation around her. And we knew that while we gazed the roads from the doomed city to Locre and Poperinghe were choked with a terror-stricken stream of fugitives, ancient men hobbling upon sticks, aged women clutching copper ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... received for the church of God, or for themselves? then they may pray together: The proof whereof is plain (Exo 15:20,21). If it be objected the case was extraordinary, and that Miriam was a prophetess; To which I answer, That the danger of ruin and destruction, and our deliverance from it, if the Lord grant it, cannot be looked at but as extraordinary. The designs of ruin to the church, and servants of God, being as great as at that time when God delivered his people from the hand of Pharaoh. [7] And will call for praises, if ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... said she, "luckily you have an excellent subject for Quixotism;-otherwise this delay might prove your ruin; but Lord Orville is almost as romantic as if he had been born ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... garden; even more immature than that of Lucera, but testifying to greater taste. Its situation, covering a forlorn semicircular tract of ground about the old Anjou castle, is a priori a good one. But when the trees are fully grown, it will be impossible to see this fine ruin save at quite close quarters—just ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... very bad thing for the marquis to remain here any longer!' There spoke the owl. And here the lion, when the bad news came: 'I had asked for my recall after Ticonderoga. But since the affairs of Canada are getting worse, it is my duty to help in setting them right again, or at least to stave off ruin ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood

... "there's no great harm in deferring your marriage a few days." "Yes, faith, but there 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 offers don't ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... a poor girl do with this great estate upon her hands? It will go to ruin without a man to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... beam of sun in his eyes. He sat up, staring incredulously around him, and could hardly believe that several hours had passed. The sun was shining into the old ruin through the hanging door. Merry looked over toward the spot where he had last seen his chum, and found that Clancy was also ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish

... ten years of the century, the Hudson's Bay Company had also established rival posts all over the country. The competition at times reached bloodshed, and financial ruin was staring all branches of the fur trade in ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... that Amalfi was once a flourishing city of Oriental trade. One looks in vain for any trace of ruin or shrine that still suggests the ancient splendors of activity. The strata of the past, so visible in other mediaeval cities, are not apparent here. The great cathedral is a most interesting study in the art of architecture,—its exquisite arcades, its delicate, lofty campanile ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... of the event; all have absconded or secreted themselves. To attempt to compound with my creditors would be of little avail; my whole fortune will not pay one fourth of the debts; so that, compound or not, the consequence to me is inevitable ruin. ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... again. Who is now the day-boys' house-master? Jackson once again—as if anything was Jackson's business! I handed the house back last term in a most flourishing condition. It has already gone to rack and ruin for the second time. To return to Varden. I have unearthed a put-up job. Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Orr are friends. Do you ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... never did nothing," cried Mrs. Gerhardt; "it isn't us that's wicked. We never wanted the war; it's nothing but ruin to him. They did ought to let me have my man, or my boy, ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... I would blush to describe. I see now that the feeling which a very young man, hardly out of boyhood, dignified with the name of love, is merely a kind of foundation that, when fallen into picturesque ruin, makes a good firm flooring of experience to build second, or real, love, upon. I don't know whether that's well or badly said, but it ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... his father's condition had in some way suggested the thought, or, perhaps, because he wished to change the subject, John said, "The old house looks pretty bad, doesn't it? It is a shame that we have permitted it to go to ruin that way." ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... it, young man," said Hill, solemnly. "Don't do it. It ain't worth shucks to ruin a man fur personal spite. You'll find that out the minute you've done it. You'll feel small and mean; and if you want to be a great man—and I kin see you're ambitious—that ain't the way to go to work. Padre ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... without imagination, with no little vestige of poetry, no gleam of aspiration,—with wit enough to sneer at him, and no more; by no means with wit enough to allow him to save it from itself and from ruin. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... to offer as many novelties as possible, and that he disregards artistic perspective in the arrangement of his programmes. He has indeed never followed the illiberal principle that it is bad taste to perform the works of living masters—a principle which has done much to bring to the brink of ruin a certain association in Boston—but he has endeavored to do justice to all the composers from Bach to Berlioz and Wagner. If Mr. Thomas makes an effort to introduce to his audience a new symphony by Brahms ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... who look'd from upper air, O'er all th' enchanted regions there, How beauteous must have been the glow, The life, the sparkling from below! Fair gardens, shining streams, with ranks Of golden melons on their banks, More golden where the sun-light falls,— Gay lizards, glittering on the walls Of ruin'd shrines, busy and bright As they were all alive with light;— And yet more splendid, numerous flocks Of pigeons, settling on the rocks, With their rich, restless wings, that gleam Variously in the crimson beam Of the warm west, as if inlaid With brilliants from the mine, or made ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... exhorted me to perseverance in this noble cause. Could I have wished for a more favourable reception?—But mark the issue. He was the nearest relation of a rich person concerned in the traffic; and if he were to come forward with his evidence publicly, he should ruin all his expectations from that quarter. In the same week I have visited another at a still greater distance. I have met with similar applause. I have heard him describe scenes of misery which he had witnessed, and on the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... apace, if a leader is but given; and Maxwell was such a one. His hatred for John Paul knew no bounds, and, having once tasted of his displeasure, he lay awake o' nights scheming to ruin him. And this was the plot: when the Azores should be in the wake, Captain Paul was to be murdered as he paced his quarterdeck in the morning, the two mates clapt into irons, and so brought to submission. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... entered by the British on March 18, 1917, after a brief action with the German rear guard. East of the place the Germans had fired a number of villages as they retreated. Athies, a town of some importance, was reduced to a smoldering ruin and the smoke of its burning buildings could be seen for miles. The Germans displayed their "thoroughness" as they retired by poisoning the wells with arsenic, and setting high-explosive traps into which ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... The Bending Mule they shook their heads over him and spoke of the wild devil that had come upon him because the woman he loved was being tortured to death by her husband only a mile away. He was drinking, they said, and his farm was going to ruin, and he would speak to nobody—and they shook their heads. It was not through cowardice that Peter had avoided him, but since those three years at Dawson's he had been lonely and silent himself, and Stephen had never sent for him as he would have ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... ruin a great resolve came to him. He would give his life to fight the power that was setting its heel upon humanity and putting a price upon its blood. He would devote all his powers to the uplifting of people who had been downtrodden and oppressed in the simple act of earning their ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... lad who had so suddenly recovered his memory. "For a number of years he was my father's confidential secretary. My father, who had large business interests fell ill, and this man took advantage of him to secure important papers. He sought to ruin my ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... is when I happened across this ruin. I was looking down into a deep, shut-in coulee, hunting water, when the sun come out and shone straight on to this place. It was right down under me; a stone ruin, with a tower on one end and kinda tumbled ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... completely successful, disabling some of his antagonists and putting the rest to flight. His loss was, however, very severe. His own galley suffered more damage than any vessel in the fleet which was not rendered absolutely unfit for service. The forecastle was a ruin; the bulwark and defences of all kinds were shattered to pieces; and the masts and spars were stuck full of arrows. Cardona himself, after escaping a ball from an arquebus, which was turned by a cuirass of fine steel given to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... his wily arts, And wins (oh shameful chance!) the Queen of Hearts. At this, the blood the virgin's cheek forsook, A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look; 90 She sees, and trembles at the approaching ill, Just in the jaws of ruin, and Codille. And now, (as oft in some distemper'd state) On one nice trick depends the general fate, An Ace of Hearts steps forth: the King unseen Lurk'd in her hand, and mourn'd his captive Queen: He springs to vengeance with an eager pace, And ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... not a canoe was to be seen. The inhabitants, too, kept out of the way. A boat was therefore sent on shore. On landing, the crew hastened to the fortress. It was a ruin. The palisades were beaten down, and the whole presented the appearance of having been sacked, ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... wear run-down heels, but I can't afford to ruin my feet. I have a pair of fancy blue and gray shoes I got at a second-hand shop and I'll put those on for dress occasions, but I'll have to wear my own decently sensible shoes when I am at work. I am going to be in town for a few days yet, but won't be staying here but at a swell third-class ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson

... earnest, I could be satisfied the world should think me a dissembler, full of avarice or ambition? No, you are mistaken; but I'll tell you what I could suffer, that they should say I married where I had no inclination, because my friends thought it fit, rather than that I had run wilfully to my own ruin in pursuit of a fond passion of my own. To marry for love were no reproachful thing if we did not see that of the thousand couples that do it, hardly one can be brought for an example that it may be done and not repented ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... Loyang, ordered the great palace of Yangti, the most magnificent building in the empire, to be set on fire and destroyed. "So much pomp and pride," he said, "could not be sustained, and ought to lead to the ruin of those who considered their own love of luxury rather than ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... makes them the easy prey and bubbles of the artful and the experienced; they look upon every knave or fool, who tells them that he is their friend, to be really so; and pay that profession of simulated friendship, with an indiscreet and unbounded confidence, always to their loss, often to their ruin. Beware, therefore, now that you are coming into the world, of these preferred friendships. Receive them with great civility, but with great incredulity too; and pay them with compliments, but not with confidence. Do not let your vanity and ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... in the night Stirred as a ruin above the thunder broke, And slept again. And dawn upon a world Of leaves and downs and sheep washed into brightness Came on that Sussex out of a clear sky, And on the sea the little ships went on With sails just filled with a small virgin wind. And slowly ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater

... were characteristic of both peoples. On account of the dryness of the climate, these great monuments have been preserved with a freshness through thousands of years. In the valley of the Euphrates many of the cities that were reduced to ruin were covered with the drifting sands and floods until they ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... of Pickering must have been built at this time. One near the castle gateway has a stone in the gable end bearing the initials E.C.W., and the date 1646, another with a thatched roof on the south side of Eastgate, dated 1677, is now fast going to ruin. The roofs were no doubt at that time chiefly covered with thatch, and the whole town must have been extremely picturesque. The stocks, the shambles, and the market cross stood in the centre of the town, and there were none of the unpleasant features ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... troops that the operations of the latter were chiefly conducted. [2] Elizabeth of England, too, did but exercise a just retaliation and revenge in protecting the rebels against their legitimate sovereign; and although her meagre and sparing aid availed no farther than to ward off utter ruin from the republic, still even this was infinitely valuable at a moment when nothing but hope could have supported their exhausted courage. With both these powers Philip at the time was at peace, but both betrayed him. Between the weak and the strong ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... pecuniary distress. Although prudent and methodical, partly from unavoidable circumstances, and partly from the expense of his enormous establishment, his large estate became involved. The failure of a friend for whom he had indorsed completed his ruin and made it necessary to sell his property. This, however, was not done until after his death, when every debt was paid, even to a subscription for a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... one hundred and fifty rules of Hartwell Horne for misinterpreting the plain portions of the Bible, and his one hundred and forty other rules for darkening his mind, and confounding his soul, the Bible will ruin him still quicker. A better book for trying a man, and for rewarding his honesty, and piety, and charity, if he has those virtues, and for making them ever more; or for punishing a man's vanity, and pride, and selfishness, and perversity, if he be the slave of such passions, God could ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... continue this struggle without the assurance of help from elsewhere. Our country has already been ruined to its foundations, and by our continuance, without any reasonable prospect of success, we shall hopelessly ruin ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell

... marrying me. Now don't pretend you don't know it's true. Marrying me would be just ruin—ruin! Oh, I know! What would your family say, and be right in saying? That you'd been got hold of by a girl nobody knew anything about, without any parents or friends, and who came from ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... known to all the country beside. How it was that nobody spoke of it to Sir Morgan, I cannot say: you will wonder that I did not. The truth is—that, when it came to my knowledge, it was too late (as I saw) to interfere without misery to both parties, and ruin to one. The chief objections to the connexion were of course the want of adequate rank and prospects on the part of Captain Nicholas, and the uncertainty of his birth. These, in any common case, were no doubt sufficient ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... Oh, this would ruin me with Valma! oh, if your lordship hasn't any feeling for me, don't let Valma think that I'm a—that I'm—! [Going down on her knees before him.] Oh, I won't tell on you! I promise I won't, if you'll only let me go! I will hold my tongue about you and the Duchess! I take ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero

... held 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 declared, to a woman ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... was his triumph! When he saw the ruin that his words had made he shrieked aloud in his terror and agony. Help was at hand, and doctors were quickly brought, but she had received a shock from which it seemed impossible to revive her. David was brought home, and knelt in speechless distress by ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... called. The Addresses to the King as yet are feeble and poor, nothing like heart appearing. If the Opposition get in, they will let fly a set of measures calculated to secure popularity at starting, but which in the end will bring ruin, absolute, upon the country. It does not appear possible to me for the Government to get on, when Parliament meets, if the present fever in the public mind does not abate. I will not bore you any more with my lamentations. Pray ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... prelude to her magnificent designs, after a conversation, the subject of which I must keep secret, even from you, she put into my hands a considerable sum, saying, with her usual grace and goodness: 'I have been threatened with ruin, and it might perhaps come. What I now confide to you will at least be safe—safe—for those who suffer. Give much—give freely—make as many happy hearts as you can. My happiness shall have a royal inauguration!!' I do not know whether I ever told you, my ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... was perhaps the oldest of all stories. He had heard it a hundred times before, but never had it left him quite so cold and pulseless as he was now. And yet, even as the palace of the wonderful ideal he had builded crumbled about him in ruin, there rose up out of the dust of it a thing new-born and tangible for him. Slowly his eyes turned to the beautiful head bowed in its attitude of prayer. The blood began to surge back into his heart. His hands unclenched. She had told him that he would hate her, that ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... strives to have control of his property taken away from him, but his friend, Barry Ussher, believing that restraint would make Tyrrell mad indeed, so intimidates a hesitating physician that Mrs. Tyrrell fails in her most natural plan to save herself and her child from ruin by having her husband declared incompetent, and, if necessary, restrained. With his friend's assistance Tyrrell has won his fight against his wife. Obstinacy in the treatment of some tenants that his debts have driven him to evict rouses ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt



Words linked to "Ruin" :   desolation, fire, wipeout, lay waste to, building, destruction, kick in, wreck, thwart, foil, bust up, consume, ruiner, waste, failure, plunder, vandalize, devastate, wash out, bankrupt, queer, scourge, dilapidate, burn down, burn, bilk, finish, dilapidation, bust, rape, scotch, get, ravage, baffle, despoil, couple, kick down, explode, frustrate, devour, ruinous, desolate, copulate, shipwreck, cross, do a job on, devastation, demolition, ruination, impoverish, wrack, harry, decay, violate, mate, undo, crumble, pair, subvert, spoil, ruining, destroy, vandalise, edifice



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com