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Shatter   Listen
verb
Shatter  v. t.  (past & past part. shattered; pres. part. shattering)  
1.
To break at once into many pieces; to dash, burst, or part violently into fragments; to rend into splinters; as, an explosion shatters a rock or a bomb; too much steam shatters a boiler; an oak is shattered by lightning. "A monarchy was shattered to pieces, and divided amongst revolted subjects."
2.
To disorder; to derange; to render unsound; as, to be shattered in intellect; his constitution was shattered; his hopes were shattered. "A man of a loose, volatile, and shattered humor."
3.
To scatter about. (Obs.) "Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shatter" Quotes from Famous Books



... all the path is new and unknown by reason of the sudden surprises that may be sprung upon us, by reason of the sudden temptations that may start up at any moment in our course, by reason of the earthquakes that may shatter the most solid-seeming lives, by reason of the sudden calamities that may fall upon us. The sorrows that we anticipate seldom come, and those that do come are seldom anticipated. The most fatal bolts are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... bidding, fluttering breezes! Arise and storm in boisterous strife! With furious rage and hurricane's hurdle waken the sea from slumbering calm; rouse up the deep to its devilish deeds! Shew it the prey which gladly I proffer! Let it shatter this too daring ship and enshrine in ocean each shred! And woe to the lives! Their wavering death-sighs I leave to ye, winds, ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner

... advances in brilliant array, and soon contrives to shatter Menelaus' sword. Thus deprived of a weapon, Menelaus boldly grasps his adversary by his plumed helmet and drags him away, until, seeing her protege in danger, Venus breaks the fastenings of his helmet, which alone remains in Menelaus' hands. Then she spirits Paris back to the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... shoulders. "It's all a question of motives," he said indifferently. "I don't want to shatter your idol; I only want to save you from ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... Hysiae and Erythrae that lie nursed Amid Kithaeron's bowering rocks, they burst Destroying, as a foeman's army comes. They caught up little children from their homes, High on their shoulders, babes unheld, that swayed And laughed and fell not; all a wreck they made; Yea, bronze and iron did shatter, and in play Struck hither and thither, yet no wound had they; Caught fire from out the hearths, yea, carried hot Flames in their tresses and were scorched not! The village folk in wrath took spear and sword, And turned upon the Bacchae. ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... general passions, and the same general views, in other men and in other communities. It is that spirit which inspires into them a new, a pernicious, a desolating activity. Constituted as France was ten years ago, it was not in that France to shake, to shatter, and to overwhelm Europe in the manner that we behold. A sure destruction impends over those infatuated princes, who, in the conflict with this new and unheard-of power, proceed as if they were engaged in a war that bore a resemblance to their former contests; or that they can ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... three another explosion took place, aggravated this time by the fact that, the window pulleys being worn, the sash flew up with enough force to shatter most ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... is tyrannous, Harsh, fierce, imperious! He who man's heart can thus Shatter, may make to bow Maidens as ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... searching glare of the white anteroom, my eyes fell on Razumov, still there, standing before the empty chair, as if rooted for ever to the spot of his atrocious confession. A wonder came over me that the mysterious force which had torn it out of him had failed to destroy his life, to shatter his body. It was there unscathed. I stared at the broad line of his shoulders, his dark head, the amazing immobility of his limbs. At his feet the veil dropped by Miss Haldin looked intensely black in the white crudity ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... the stars anew, Shatter the heavens with a song; Immortal in my love for you, Because I ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke

... that way. Not this time. The tallest of the three whirled, upsetting his drink in the process. I heard its thin shatter through the squeal of the alabaster-haired girl, as a chair crashed over. They faced me three abreast, and one of them fumbled in the ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... I've got it adjusted right now. Come on, see if you can shatter this steel target," and Tom set up a small one at the end of ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton

... about our friend's conquests after your departure from Limasito. He'd be an expert porch-climber if his practice in gaining access to certain balconies on certain back streets counted for anything. I could have told you before, but I did not want to shatter your illusions concerning ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... the reins, but the animal, held firmly, reared so sharply that a little more and like a sling the fragile vehicle would have sent everybody in it flying far away. At this, furious with one of those plebeian rages which in women of her kind shatter all the veneer of their luxury, she dealt the Nabob two stinging lashes with her whip, which left little trace on his tanned and hardened face, but which brought there a ferocious expression, accentuated by the short nose which ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... his companion, was now examining the infernal machine, which was a metallic canister containing about two pounds of dynamite, enough to shatter the aeronef to atoms. If the explosion did not destroy her at once, it would do so in her fall. Nothing was easier than to place this cartridge in a corner of the cabin, so that it would blow in the deck and tear away the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... trifling occurrence added at this moment to his disorder, and converted it into frenzy. Someone outside fell heavily against the door; this, causing madame to utter a low shriek, seemed to shatter the last remnant of the king's self-control. Stamping his foot on the floor, he cried to me with the utmost wildness to open the door—by which I had hitherto kept ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... its hours, or the like of it?—so impalpable—a mere breath, an evanescent tinge? I am not sure—so let me give myself the benefit of the doubt. Hast Thou, pellucid, in Thy azure depths, medicine for case like mine? (Ah, the physical shatter and troubled spirit of me the last three years.) And dost Thou subtly mystically now drip it through ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... entertainments which had illuminated the last weeks of the New York winter. "I suppose you'll begin to give parties as soon as ever you get into a house of your own. You're not going to have one? Oh, well, then you'll give a lot of big week-ends at your place down in the Shatter-country—that's where the swells all go to in the summer time, ain't it? But I dunno what your ma would say if she knew you were going to live on with HIS folks after you're done honey-mooning. Why, we read in the papers you were going to live in some grand hotel or other—oh, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... a blow was about to come from a quarter whence it was least to be expected, which was destined to shatter all the hopes of this long-suffering man, and dissipate all his bright ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... plenipotentiaries looked at each other in dismay. "Count," whispered the marquis, "listen! he leaves and has threatened to shatter Austria. He is the man to fulfil his threat. My God, must we suffer him to depart in anger? Have you been authorized ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... altars blaze, Invokes the high gods to their feast! On Pallas, mighty or to raise Or shatter cities, call'd the Priest— And Him, who wreathes around the land The girdle of his watery world, And Zeus, from whose almighty hand The terror and the bolt are hurl'd. Success at last awards the crown— The long and weary war is past; Time's destined circle ends at last— And fall'n ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... that I am. I love you. Isn't that enough? I'm not worthy of you, maybe. Yet if trying to earn you by being loyal makes me worthy, then I am. Don't say no to me, Kate. It will shatter me—like an earthquake. And I believe you'll regret it, too. We can make each other happy. I feel it! I'd stake my life on ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... has the advantage that it can be tied so as to form two halves at the bottom of the chaise as one likes. I paid sixteen roubles for it. Next point. To travel to the Amur, changing one's conveyance at every station, is torture. You shatter both yourself and all your luggage. I was advised to buy a trap. I bought one to-day for one hundred and thirty roubles. If I don't succeed in selling it at Sryetensk, where my horse journey ends, I shall be in a fix and shall howl aloud. To-day I dined with the ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... found, consisted of an old shatter'd press, and one small, worn-out font of English which he was then using himself, composing an Elegy on Aquila Rose, before mentioned, an ingenious young man, of excellent character, much respected in the town, clerk of the Assembly, and a pretty poet. Keimer made verses ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... happened that the mine became entangled in the sweeping gear and was unknowingly hauled on board with the sweep. When this occurred the position was fraught with extreme peril. Any roll of the ship might cause an explosion which would shatter to fragments everything and everyone within range. Safety lay in lowering the sweep gently back into the sea—an extremely difficult operation ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... out again,"— These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk, They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,— Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride.... Men who went out to battle, grim and glad; Children, with eyes that ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... sting her heel; then will she die with a smile upon her red mouth, for love will have come to her, maybe for a day, maybe for a second of time, but a love which will mingle her soul with the soul of her desert lover, or shatter her body, even as is broken the alabaster vase of sweet perfume. Yet is it the love of the soul that endureth forever, yea, even if the body of the woman passeth unto ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... the proper time, for the attainment of certain mechanical ends which had puzzled the pundits at Washington. He had ideas as to how should be flown the new form of kite which should carry into the upper depths explosives to shatter and compress the atmosphere and produce the condensation which makes rain, just as concussions from below—as after the cannonading of a great battle—produce the same effect. He had fancies about a lot of things connected with the work of the rain-making expedition, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... I squander, hating the long days That will not bring me either Rest or Thee, This health I hack and ravage as with knives, These nerves I fain would shatter, and this heart I fain would break—this heart that, traitor-like, Beats on with foolish and elastic beat: If, after all, this life I waste and kill Should still be thine, may still be lived for thee! And this the dreadful trial of my love, This silence and this blank ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... laws of the universe will not be balked, they are lying in wait. And presently when he thinks, good easy man, his little bourgeois world is rounding into the perfect sphere, they spring up in his path, shatter his sugar-candy paradise, and ruthlessly vindicate themselves (that is, prove that they cannot be disregarded, that they must be reckoned with) by bringing into his life disorder ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green

... wickedness and crime; Thronged with our dead be dire Pharsalia's fields, Be Punic ghosts avenged by Roman blood; Add to these ills the toils of Mutina; Perusia's dearth; on Munda's final field The shock of battle joined; let Leucas' Cape Shatter the routed navies; servile hands Unsheath the sword on fiery Etna's slopes: Still Rome is gainer by the civil war. Thou, Caesar, art her prize. When thou shalt choose, Thy watch relieved, to seek divine abodes, All heaven rejoicing; and shalt hold a throne, Or else elect to govern Phoebus' ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... new leaders, new principles, new plans of action; it had passed through the ordeal of war, and held its ground amidst flashing swords and the smoke of battle; it had survived the shocks of division, disappointment, and failure; treachery, incapacity and open hostility had failed to shatter it; and it grew apace in strength, influence, and resources. At home Fenianism, while losing little in numerical strength, had declined in effectiveness, in prestige, in discipline, and in organization. Its leaders had been swept into the prisons, and though men perhaps as resolute ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... approved. In response to it, Mr. Edison, by a few simple experiments, showed how he could quickly and certainly shatter into its constituent atoms any object upon which the vibratory force of the disintegrator should be directed. In this manner he caused an inkstand to disappear under the very nose of the Emperor William without a spot ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... and I with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits - and then Remould it nearer to the ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... To shatter at a single blow the most venerable of the routine precedents, the sensational thing chose for its colliding point with orderly system one of the oldest and most conservative of the city's banks: the Bayou State Security. At ten o'clock, following the precise habit of ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... cannot destroy; Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care, And bring back the features that joy used to wear. Long, long be my heart with such memories filled! Like the vase, in which roses have once been distilled— You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will, But the scent of the roses will hang ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... ROWNTREE, looking on with blank amazement, "MAKINS evidently thinks that JONAH swallowed the whale." Bill seemed to shatter friendships and dissever old alliances. SQUIRE of MALWOOD naturally at home in the fray, but rather startling to find HOME SECRETARY running amuck at CHAMBERLAIN. MATTHEWS in his most hoity-toity mood; quivered with indignation; thumped the table; shook a forensic ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various

... shaggy brow o'erhangs the shady deep, And views Gortyna on the western side; On this rough Auster drove the impetuous tide: With broken force the billows roll'd away, And heaved the fleet into the neighb'ring bay. Thus saved from death, the gain'd the Phaestan shores, With shatter'd vessels and disabled oars; But five tall barks the winds and water toss'd, Far from their fellows, on the Aegyptian coast. There wander'd Menelaus through foreign shores Amassing gold, and gathering naval stores; While cursed Aegysthus the detested deed By fraud fulfilled, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... or stagnant slime of inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself as it dries, into layers of its several elements; slowly purifying each by the patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the mass in which it was mingled. Contracted by increasing drought, till it must shatter into fragments, it infuses continually a finer ichor into the opening veins, and finds in its weakness the first rudiments of a perfect strength. Bent at last, rock from rock, nay, atom from atom, and tormented in lambent fire, it knits, through the fusion, the fibres of a perennial ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... men and women have, as a rule, been those who have attained great mental and moral development. They have lived in the upper region of a higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the friction, and the discords which weaken and shatter ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden

... Stood forth defiant; but between his brows The monarch's spear was thrust; nor aught avail'd The brass-bound helm, to stay the weapon's point; Through helm and bone it pass'd, and all the brain Was shatter'd; forward as he rush'd, he fell. Them left he there, their bare breasts gleaming white, Stripp'd of their arms; and hasten'd in pursuit Of Antiphus and Isus, Priam's sons, A bastard one, and one legitimate, Both on one car; the bastard held the reins: Beside him stood ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... a nice letter of thanks. A pious intention, wasn't it? But who could have guessed that I was not only going back to a cooler clime, but into the most ghastly weather, weather that threatened to shatter my health! Winter and summer in senseless alternation; twenty-six avalanches in the thaw; and now we have just had eight days of rain with the sky almost always grey—this is enough to account for my profound nervous exhaustion, together with the return of my old ailments. I don't think I can ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther

... the tide of battle followed. Like two giants the armies faced each other, getting their "second wind," and speculating on how to proceed next. Thomas held the ridge and the Confederates were bound to drive him from it and shatter his forces. It was two o'clock and assault after assault was made, lasting until sundown. At times the Confederates would gain a slope or a minor ridge, but a Union division or a brigade would rush upon them and dislodge them, or a ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic

... sought and found in seasons of comparative peace. Though the agonized soul may finally, through the waves of sorrow, make its way into the ark, its long previous struggles, and its after harrowing doubts and fears, will shatter it nearly to pieces before it finds a final refuge. It may, indeed, by the free grace of God, be saved at the last, but during the remainder of its earthly pilgrimage there is no hope for it of ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... due To other cares than those of feeding you. 80 Where glens and vales are thickest overgrown With tangled boughs, I wander now alone Till night descend, while blust'ring wind and show'r Beat on my temples through the shatter'd bow'r. Go, seek your home, my lambs; my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. Alas, what rampant weeds now shame my fields, And what a mildew'd crop the furrow yields! My rambling ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton

... had been brilliantly fine. The bergs had absolutely duplicated and inverted themselves by reflection, so that the sunlit pinnacles became submarine fires, and refraction stepped in to reverse, and as it were shatter, the floes on the horizon, while three mock suns glowed in the heavens at the same time—thus making the beautiful confusion ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... did no wrong to preside at the sacrifices and take part in the services of the gods. He was worshiping not the animal-headed idols, but the attributes which they personified. He felt pity for the ignorant multitude who laid their offerings upon the shrine; and yet he felt that it would shatter their happiness instead of adding to it were they to know that the deity they worshiped was a myth. He allowed his wife and daughter to join with the priestesses in the service at the temple, and in his heart acknowledged that there was much in ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... stiff formalities of army posts, on the raw conditions of alkali journalism and on the solemn humbugs of frontier politics. James Russell Lowell used dialect for dynamite to blow the front off hypocrisy or to shatter the cotton commercialism in which the New England conscience was encysted. Robert H. Newell, mirth-maker and mystic, satirized military ignorance and pinchbeck bluster to an immortality of contempt. Bret Harte in verse and story touched the parallels ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... below him and then made an involuntary movement to regain the ship's deck. Far below him, or so at least it seemed, were mountains of tumbling green water, huge, relentless, irresistible, rushing on by thousands, to shatter themselves with dreadful force against the ship's side. It seemed simple madness to attempt to launch the boat; even the sinking wreck would be safer than this chance. Vandover was terrified, again deserted by all his ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... the "Valley City." A shell entered the magazine of that ship, and exploded, setting the woodwork on fire. An open barrel of gunpowder stood in the midst of the flames, with sparks dropping about it. At any moment an explosion might occur which would shatter the vessel to fragments. Men shrank back, expecting every moment to be their last. With wonderful presence of mind Davis threw himself across the open end of the barrel, and with his body covered the dangerous explosive until the fire was ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... "how this blade has life. Here is none of your soft bronze or rough iron from the northern hills. Here is a living metal that will sever a hair, yet not shatter on the hardest helm." ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... this highly desirable "epidemic of strikes" is not confined to the Western Front. As Generalissimo of all the Allied Forces the great French Marshal has planned and carried out an ensemble of operations designed to shatter and demoralise the enemy at every point. The long inaction on the Salonika Front has been ended by the rapid and triumphant advance of the British, French, Serbians, and Greeks under General Franchet ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... my sails spread wide, And cleave like an eagle life's glassy tide; Gulls follow my furrow's foaming; Overboard with the ballast of care and cark; And what if I shatter my roaming bark, It is passing ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... active genius comes To scourge a guilty race. The Punic fleet, Half lost, is swallow'd by the roaring sea. The shatter'd refuse seek the Lybian shore, To bear the news of their ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy

... a furlong from the highway, and this had guided them. Of course they found no coffin beside me, and I was prudent enough to hold my tongue when I became convalescent. But the effect of that night was to shatter my health for a year and more, and force me to throw up my post of School Inspector. To this day I have never examined the school at Pitt's Scawens. But somebody else has; and last winter I received a letter, which I will ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... in these few hours were sufficient to shatter the strongest nerves, and Ted himself trembled a little at the possibilities unfolded by this unforeseen and unexpected knowledge, while it entirely unnerved the major, and left him as weak ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... unborn, and which for great reasons can not arise—first, because the poverty of his experience, limited to a small circle, engenders a multitude of erroneous associations, which remain unbroken in the absence of other experiences to contradict and shatter them; secondly, because of the extreme weakness of his logic and especially of his conception of causality, which most often reduces itself to a post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Whence we have the thorough subjectivity of his interpretation of the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... warm spring day, though it was served with a ladle out of a tin bowl to the music of many guns. The officers were a cheery set who had become quite accustomed to the menace of death which at any moment might shatter this place and make a wreckage of its peasant furniture. The colonel sat back in a wooden armchair, asking for news about the outer world as though he were a shipwrecked mariner on a desert isle; but every now and then he would ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... He had no idea of time. He had no care. He lay there watching the dancing firelight, building for the hundredth time those priceless castles of the night which the daylight loves to shatter. Never were they more resplendent. Never was ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... now the mask is down, and forth you stand Known for a King whose word is no great matter, A traitor proved, for every honest hand To strike and shatter. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various

... etc., had made its way in, and lodged between the Timbers, which had stopped the Water from forcing its way in in great Quantities. Part of the Sheathing was gone from under the Larboard bow, part of the False Kiel was gone, and the remainder in such a Shatter'd Condition that we should be much better off if it was gone also; her Forefoot and some part of her Main Kiel was also damaged, but not Materially. What damage she may have received abaft we could not see, but believe not much, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... which most they fear: Some less discreet, strive to bear all away, And only for the foe prepare the prey. So in a storm when no sea-arts avail To guide the ship with any certain sail; Some bind the shatter'd mast, with thoughts secure, Others are swimming t'ward the peaceful shore; While with full sails kind fortune these implore. But why do we of such small fears complain, With both the consuls greater Pompey ran, That Asia aw'd, in dire Hydaspes grown The only rock, its pyrates split ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... swift surge of hope Blake realized the way to conquer the things. If he could only shatter those flaccid masses of jelly, he would destroy the swarming dozens of beasts at ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells

... against that hedge-sparrow, so that—oh, horror!—it fell, or swung over backwards, rather, and hung head downwards, swaying slightly, like a toy acrobat on a wire, before it fell, so rigidly and so stiffly immovable that one expected it to shatter to pieces like glass as it hit the ground. It did not, however. But it did not matter. The hedge-sparrow was quite, quite dead before it fell, frozen stiff and stark in the night. And none of the other birds seemed to care. Why should they? ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... high-built galleons came, Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame; Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame. For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no more— God of battles, was ever a battle like this ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... the tonga was well on its way, speeding at a hand-gallop over the dead level of road, with never an incident of shade, or a spear-point of green, to soften the forbidding face of it; with never a sound to shatter the sunlit stillness, save the three-fold sound of their going—the clatter of hoofs, the clank and rattle of the tonga-bar rising and falling to a tune of its own making, and the brazen-throated twang of the horn, which the tonga-drivers ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... lithe and long-winged hawk, of desert-life for thee; No more across the sultry sands shalt thou go swooping free: Blunt idle talons, idle beak, with spurning of thy chain, Shatter against thy cage the wing thou ne'er may'st ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... bow of our boat to-night with a bull's-eye lantern in his cap. The fan of it over the silent, black water, the eyes of the 'gators blazing in the dark, these cool, bronze, turbaned devils with axes to sever the spinal cord and rifles to shatter the skull—it's ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... island of Delos in compassion offered her a precarious shelter. There she became the mother of two children—the poor creature! Just the seventh part of my mother joy! Who can deny that I am fortunate? Who will doubt that I shall remain happy? Fortune would have a hard time if she undertook to shatter my happiness. Take this or that one from my treasured children; but when would the number of them dwindle to the sickly two of Latona? Away with your sacrifices! Take the laurel out of your hair. Go back to your homes and let me never ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... city—steering in, And gliding up her streets, as in a dream, So smoothly, silently—by many a dome, Mosque-like, and many a stately portico, The statues ranged along an azure sky; By many a pile, in more than Eastern pride, Of old the residence of merchant kings; The fronts of some, tho' time had shatter'd them, Still glowing with the richest hues of art, As tho' the wealth within them had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Elsewhere, it is not the war which is represented, but the human sacrifices which anciently celebrated the close of each campaign. The king is seen in the act of seizing his prostrate prisoners by the hair of their heads, and uplifting his mace as if about to shatter their heads at a single blow. At Karnak, along the whole length of the outer wall, Seti I. pursues the Bedawin of Sinai. At Medinet Habu Rameses III. destroys the fleet of the peoples of the great sea, or ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... spirit in which it is carried out counts for even more than the system itself. Once place a firm, self-confident man with the centralising spirit strong within him at the head of affairs, and he will often, without any apparent change, go far to shatter any system, however carefully it may have been devised, to encourage decentralisation. Such a man was Napoleon. Every conceivable subject bearing on the government of his fellow-men was, as M. Taine says, "classified ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... case that has troubled even my mind for over a year—and if that isn't a good reason for standing a dinner, I don't know what is. Cupples, we will not go to my club. This is to be a festival, and to be seen in a London club in a state of pleasurable emotion is more than enough to shatter any man's career. Besides that, the dinner there is always the same, or, at least, they always make it taste the same, I know not how. The eternal dinner at my club hath bored millions of members like me, and shall bore; but tonight let the feast be spread ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... for some time that they never saw Swann now, would announce with satisfaction, and perhaps with a slight inclination to make my grandparents envious of them, that he had suddenly become as charming as he could possibly be, and was never out of their house. My grandfather would not care to shatter their pleasant illusion, but would look at my grandmother, as ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... hope you will get the honor," said Arthur gravely. He felt sadly about the Senator, and the shining ambition of his mother. How could he shatter their dreams? Yet in very pity the task had to be done, and when next he heard them vaporing on the glory of ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... hand; When patriotism from Sweden's hills sublime With tearful eyes o'erlook'd the subject clime, And saw where Stenon and a matchless few, To her bright race unalterably true, Regardless of the thunders launch'd by Rome, Self-titled arbitress of future doom, O'er a waste realm her shatter'd flag unfurl'd, Conspicuous to the whole applauding world. Ernestus' sire in Sweden's state before High eminence and ample influence bore; And public hope call'd forth the willing youth To join the cause of liberty and truth; Yet here his wary diffidence look'd round For ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... the wasted places of the land, Charr'd skeletons of cities, circling walls Of Roman might, and towers that shatter'd stand Of that lost world survivors, forth she calls Her new creation:—O'er the land is wrought The happy villagedom by English tribes From Elbe and Baltic brought; Red kine light up with life the ravaged plain; The forest glooms are pierced; ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... same tongue that the Amahagger use, "who dare to come face to face with Rezu? Black hound, do you not know that I cannot be slain who have lived a year for every week of your life's days, and set my foot upon the necks of men by thousands. Have you not seen the spear shatter and the iron balls melt upon my breast like rain-drops, and would you try to bring me down with that toy you carry? My army is defeated—I know it. But what matters that when I can get me more? Because the sacrifice ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... Ah, you're afraid of losing it; that's what's the matter with you! And you will, Clara Vavrika, you will! When I used to know you—listen; you've caught a wild bird in your hand, haven't you, and felt its heart beat so hard that you were afraid it would shatter its little body to pieces? Well, you used to be just like that, a slender, eager thing with a wild delight inside you. That is how I remembered you. And I come back and find you—a bitter woman. This is a perfect ferret fight here; you live by biting and ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... sprung up again, fresh and cool and unexplored, nurturing a mighty and fantastic animality. Wherever one gazed, the horned Siegfried, the man born of the earth, seemed near once more, ready to clear and rejuvenate the globe with his healthy instinct, to shatter the old false barriers and pierce upward to fulfilment and power. Mankind, waking from immemorial sleep, thought for the first time to perceive the sun in heaven, to greet the creating light. And where was this music more immanent than in the New World, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... what it had been. Up at the big spring under the beeches sat the disgusted orator of the day and the disgusted Senator, who, seriously, was quite sure that the Guard, being composed of Democrats, had taken this way to shatter his campaign. ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... bought at a "leaving auction" a three-sided mirror—once the property of a great buck in the Sixth. The Duffer had got it cheap, but he never used it. The lower boys remarked to each other that Duff didn't dare to look in it, because what he would see must not only break his heart but shatter the glass. Generally, it hung, folded up, close to the window, and the Duffer said that it would come in handy ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... for the suppression of the order of the Jesuits, and I am so to inform the pope! This is a dangerous thing, marquise, and may possibly burn your tender fingers. The suppression of the Jesuits! Is not that to explode a powder-barrel in the midst of Europe, that may shatter all the states? No, no, it is foolhardiness, and I have not the courage to apply the match to this powder-barrel! I fear it may blow ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... must exert his will power, change completely his mental and physical habits and his surroundings. Occupation, changed habits, taking in of confidence, faith and courage thoughts—these changes are necessary to the victim of melancholia, or he will shatter on the danger rocks and go ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... adopts, and he is no respecter of persons. He does not even respect the person of his wife. The love of Mariamne is the one sure rock upon which he can rest when the earthquake, threatening at every moment, comes to shatter his throne and engulf him. He loves her too with a passion which dreams of union so perfect that death cannot break it, so perfect that one of them would wish to die at the moment when the soul of the other left the body. This is Mariamne's dream also, but Herod cannot ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... rose and walked out of the box feeling as though he'd been through a severe drubbing. He might have been sufficiently disheartened to shatter his castle in the air had he not seen Lavinia's big sorrowful eyes fixed upon him from the kitchen. He dared not disobey her mother's behest not to speak to her so he tried to smile encouragingly, and to intimate by his expression that all was going well. Whether he succeeded in so doing ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... S. Rodgers, was an early friend of mine. The elegant Major Alexander S. Macomb, who was his father's namesake and aide, on entering Mrs. Belmont's drawing-room was unfortunate enough to brush against a handsome vase and completely shatter it. It was generally conceded that his hostess was conscious of the disaster, but "was mistress of herself though China fall" and appeared entirely unconscious of the mishap. Some months later at the house of Lady Cunard (Mary McEvers), a similar accident happened. The unfortunate ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... venturing to stem it; the noises are not so deafening, and the occasional sound of a ballad-singer, or a Highland piper, varies and enriches the discords; but here, a multitudinous assemblage of harsh alarms, of selfish contentions, and of furious carriages, driven by a fierce and insolent race, shatter the very hearing, till you partake of the activity with which all seem as much possessed as if a general apprehension prevailed, that the great clock of Time would strike the doom-hour before their tasks were done. But I must stop, for the postman ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt

... with a gesture of despair. "How can I? I got no time to be sick. Three thousand dollars' worth of new machinery to manage, and the wheat so ripe it will begin to shatter next week. My wheat's short, but it's gotta grand full berries. What's he slowing down for? We haven't got header boxes enough to feed the thresher, ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather

... understand, even though the seeing blind, though the knowledge sadden, though the understanding shatter the dearest hopes, such has ever been the craving of the upward-striving mind of man. Some regard it as a weakness, as a folly, but I am sure that it exists most strongly in some of the noblest of our race; ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... gleaming face. A report rang out. The echoes of the sound of Colonel Witham's shotgun startled the crows in all the nests around. But the pumpkin stayed. The shot had only buried itself within its soft shell. The colonel would not give up so easily, however. Again and again he fired, hoping to shatter the pumpkin, or to sever the ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... theological knowledge in that preacher's head is more than sufficient to shatter the arguments of infidelity; the analytic power acquired during his college course would enable him to tear every sophistry to shreds; but the art of making both of these effective for the pulpit, the mastery of clear and nervous ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... the bow quartz port-hole. Down the long shaft through which they had risen they saw the glaring flame of the Gorm. As they looked, its regular pulsations turned irregular: it leaped and splashed as though it was a stormy, choppy sea. Then it gave one final mighty heave, and the universe seemed to shatter beneath them. The "walls" of the shaft collapsed about them and they were enswathed in a raging ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner

... part of Europe, it does not appear at all probable. Almost the last words of Pitt before he resigned office were full of hope and confidence: "he was convinced," he said, "that the British fleet would, with one blow, shatter the coalition of the north." There is no reason, in truth, for doubting the word of Pitt that the question of Catholic emancipation was the real cause of his resignation. How far he was implicated in the question, and to what extent he stood pledged, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Delgratz. He will pay double, four times, the money if only you will consent to go there. Why? Because he believes that Alec is infatuated about you, and that the mere hint of marriage with one who is not a Slav princess will shatter the throne of Kosnovia about the ears of its present occupant. My anxious visitor is mistaken, of course. He is trying to do good that evil may come of it; but while there is justice in Heaven any such perversion of an eternal principle is ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... it means; make him feel the sense of power over material. Jake's rather boyish, and a boy loves to fire a gun because something startling happens in obedience to his will when he pulls the trigger. Isn't it much the same when one gives the orders that shatter massive rocks and move ponderous stones? However, that's not all. I want you to keep him at the dam and ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... utterance direct, Obscure no more, was brought to Inachus— A peremptory charge to fling me forth Beyond my home and fatherland, a thing Sent loose in banishment o'er all the world; And—should he falter—Zeus should launch on him A fire-eyed bolt, to shatter and consume Himself and all his race to nothingness. Bowing before such utterance from the shrine Of Loxias, he drave me from our halls, Barring the gates against me: loth he was To do, as I to suffer, this despite: But the strong curb of Zeus had overborne His will to me-ward. ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... and he might land and see her. But a word, and the questions of forty years might yet be answered—answered, yes, to shatter, as like as not, with pitiless realities the tender figment of a dream. No, he said, he dared not expose himself to a possible disillusion, to play into the hands of sardonic nature, ever mocking at man. No; but he would carry his ship close inshore ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... a Grecian galley rush'd; Ill the Phoenician bore the rough attack— Its sculptured prow all shatter'd. Each advanced, Daring an opposite. The deep array Of Persia at the first sustain'd the encounter; But their throng'd numbers, in the narrow seas Confined, want room for action; and deprived Of mutual aid, beaks clash with beaks, and each Breaks all the other's oars: with skill disposed, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... amongst the faces turned towards her. The poor dears looked so humble, and so wistful, and so tired. There was one lying quite flat, who had not even raised her head to see who had come in. That slumbering, pale, high cheek-boned face had a frailty as if a touch, a breath, would shatter it; a wisp of the blackest hair, finer than silk, lay across the forehead; the closed eyes were deep sunk; one hand, scarred almost to the bone with work, rested above her breast. She breathed between lips which had no colour. About her, sleeping, was a kind of beauty. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Just as I was stepping on board the packet, I received a letter from my youngest son. Among a number of other kind things, it contained words like the following: "Father, dear, when you get to England, don't dream that by any breath of yours, or by any paper balls that you can fire, you can ever shatter or shake the eternal foundations on which Christianity rests." Words like those from a dear good son could not but have a powerful effect on ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... in the upper part appears to shatter the cadence; the keynote does not appear on the accent, and its announcement at the end of the first triplet is very brief. For all that, it is an unmistakable perfect cadence; the chord thus shattered (or "broken," technically speaking) is the tonic harmony ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius

... observed Lansing, "any ass can shatter them with his hind heels, so why should he? If he must be an ass, let him be an original ass—not ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... convinced herself that she had never respected George, that she had never believed in him, forgetting the pride and adoration of her young motherhood. Whatever George did she could not change his relation to her—she could not shatter the one indissoluble bond ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... parable the young shepherd is obviously the man of to-day; the snake that chokes him represents the stultifying and paralysing social values that threaten to shatter humanity, and the advice "Bite! Bite!" is but Nietzsche's exasperated cry to mankind to alter their values before ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... my friend,—there will be naught now but mounting of guards and dire confusion,—the King is as a lion roused, and will not cease growling till his vengeance be satisfied! A plague on this shatter-pated Prophet!—he hath broken through my music, and jarred poesy into discord!—By the Sacred Veil!—Didst ever hear such a hideous clamor of contradictory tongues! ... all striving to explain what defies explanation, namely, Khosrul's flight, for which, after all, no one is to blame so much ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... perhaps, inevitable. Lord Rotherwood was Mr. Mohun's ward, and having a dull home of his own, found his chief happiness as well as all the best influences of his life, in the merry, highly-principled, though easy-going life at his uncle's, whom he revered like a father, while his eager, somewhat shatter-brained nature often made him a butt to his cousins. All this may account for the tone of camaraderie with which the scattered members of the family meet again, especially around Lilias, who had, with her cleverness and enthusiasm, always been the ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... practised by Napoleon. You would have said, indeed, at the first glance, that it rejected the idea of generalship in toto. Let us give General Grant his just dues, however. He was not a great commander, but he was a man of clear brain. He saw that brute force could alone shatter the army of Northern Virginia; that to wear it away by attrition, exhaust its blood drop by drop, was the only thing left—and he had the courage to ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... thou and I with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits—and then Re-mould it nearer ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam

... a true, genuine feeling of love, was bound in adamantine chains to her sister. Time and fortune, that shatter all human institutions and prove human feelings, consolidated the union of their hearts and their destinies. A stranger on stronger proof of the influence of sisterly affection could not be adduced; it dragged the beautiful, blushing Aloysia from the sphere of girlhood, to follow in ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... them depends entirely the strength and resisting power of the mass in which they are embedded, and of which they form scarcely a third. Destroy the vitality of its cells, and the rock-like bone will waste away before the attack of the body-fluids like soft sandstone under the elements. Shatter it, or twist it out of place, and it will promptly repair itself, and to a remarkable degree resume its original directions ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... has inflamed the whole country. Cities are being destroyed. The war of brother against brother is consuming the strength of our revolutionary democracy. The cannons, secured to guard the conquests of our revolution, shatter monuments, homes, and shrines of art. The cities of Russia fall at the hands of ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... of such a state of affairs as that disclosed by this letter there was, of course, only one thing to be done. The War Department decided to remove the Fifth Army-Corps at once from Cuba, and before the middle of August a large part of General Shatter's command was on its ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... Indeed, he was once so flurried by an operition, that he had like to have sounded. — He made believe as if it had been the ould edmiral; but the old edmiral could not have made his air to stand on end,, and his teeth to shatter; but he said so in prudence, that the ladies mought not be afear'd. Miss Liddy has been puny, and like to go into a decline — I doubt her pore art is too tinder — but the got's-fey has set her on her legs again. — You nows got's-fey is mother's milk to a Velch woman. As for mistress, blessed ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... destroy'd The beautiful world With violent blow; 'Tis shiver'd! 'tis shatter'd! The fragments abroad by a demigod scatter'd! Now we sweep The wrecks into nothingness! Fondly we weep The beauty that's gone! Thou, 'mongst the sons of earth, Lofty and mighty one, Build it once more! In thine own bosom the lost world ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... intended to fall upon the hearts of the young, or of the old, should always be spoken kindly, for we can never know how deeply they may penetrate, what tender schemes for widowed mother, aspiring brother, portionless sister, or starving wife and children they may shatter. The public is a pretty keen judge, and will in most cases drop works devoid of the immortal elements of genius. The critic may point the way, but he need add no unnecessary stab to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to tell you about it briefly, though I warn you in advance that you will find it a great strain upon your confidence in my veracity. It may even shatter that confidence beyond repair; but I cannot help that. I hold that it is a man's duty in this life to give to the world the benefit of his experience. All that he sees he should set down exactly as he sees it, and so simply, withal, that to the dullest comprehension ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... Native Country, Goddess guarding home and harbor, Roll the fog-banks o'er the headlands, Hide the narrows from the foemen; Bring the west-wind from the ocean, Drive their boats to crash and shatter On the rocky surf-bound islands. Bring ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell

... size, warfare raged as frequently as among the Republics of South America. There had always been bad blood between the Table Hill and the Three Points. Little events, trifling in themselves, had always occurred to shatter friendly relations just when there seemed a chance of their being formed. Thus, just as the Table Hillites were beginning to forgive the Three Points for shooting the redoubtable Paul Horgan down at Coney Island, a Three Pointer injudiciously wiped out a Table Hillite near Canal ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... express it in our laws, obey it in our lives and social relations, yet we are armed to the teeth and ever arming, adding strength to the plates of our warships and distance to the range of our guns, constantly riveting and welding and forging monsters which shall shatter ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... impatiently, as though anxious for her to speak that he might shatter any suggestion she made. Before she came he had sharply vizualized his meeting with Marian and the Willings. He was impatient for the encounter, and if Sylvia projected herself in the path of his righteous anger, she must suffer ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... things to think of in the silence of her room. Another woman would have unburdened herself to a confidante; but Polly was too loyal to her father to shatter his beliefs, and too high-spirited to take another and a lesser person into her confidence. She was certain that Aunt Chloe would be full of sympathetic belief and speculations, but she would not trust a nigger with what she couldn't tell her own father. For Polly really and truly believed that she ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... a long slant arm of yellow light touched the black body of the Earthquaker, and a thrill went through him, and shook the world, so that, far away, the bells rang in Pantouflia. A moment more, and he would waken in his strength; and once awake, he would shatter the city walls and ruin Manoa. Even now a great mass of rock fell from the roof deep down in the secret caves, and broke into flying fragments, and all ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... idea of mighty labours in steel and stone, and I believe that I am acquainted with all the fiendish noises which can be made by man or machinery. The whack of heavy falling bodies, the sudden shivering splinter of chopped logs, the crystal shatter of pounded ice, the crash of a tree hurled to the earth by a hurricane, the irrational, persistent chaos of noise made by switching freight-trains, the explosion of gas, the blasting of stone, and the terrific grinding of rock ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... on the other, a moral deadness in the North so profound and determined that it threatened thus brutally any voice that would disturb it. Their duty, then, was evident: to fling all the forces of their lives, and by all social and political means, right against this inertness, and shatter it if they could. To Mr. Chase, the course of things gave the larger political work; to my father, the larger social. His diary records how amazed he was, when he returned to Philadelphia, at his former blindness, and how thankful ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... like. Maybe it wouldn't have been just the square thing to do if you'd been a different sort of man—but you wanted to be taught that you couldn't have all the fun of flirtation on your side, and I wasn't afraid the emotional strain was going to shatter you up to any serious extent. Now it's left off amusing me, and I guess it's time to stop. I'm as perfectly aware as I can be that you've been searching around for some way of getting out of it this long while back—so ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various

... almost fallen, and they were left alone to their happiness. The mother kept her own counsel. Raines had disappeared as though Death had claimed him. And the dream lasted till a summons home broke into it as the sudden flaring up of a candle will shatter a ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.

... built. We have special regard for his benevolent character and kind disposition. We are reluctant to see him intimidated and misled by evil counsels to take a step which will undo all his meritorious services to the country and shatter the unique ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... report seemed to shatter the whole scene. Its echoes were mixed with the scattering of the horrified beavers as they rushed for the water—with the short screech of the lynx, as it bounced into the air and fell back on its side, dead—with an exclamation of astonishment from Jabe—and with a ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... she said indignantly. "Well, they'd better not. Here I've spent years building up my reputation to suit myself, and then they go and shatter me like that. They'd better leave ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... to an end! He even went so far as to describe the scene of destruction, when all the elements would be put in motion to destroy mankind, when volcanoes would deluge the land with liquid fire, and earthquakes shake and shatter the world to ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... for the principle of self-determination, and the very existence of the Czechoslovak Republic imperiled. Indeed, for a brief while it looked as though the Bolshevist forces of the Ukraine and Russia would effect a junction with the troops of Bela Kuhn and shatter eastern Europe to shreds. To such dangerous extent did the Supreme Council indirectly abet the Bolshevist peace-breakers against ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... farm of the good genius on whose kindly offices he had now fixed his languid hopes. I need not say what the landscape was in mid-August, or how, as they drew near the farm, the air was enriched with the breath of vast orchards of early apples,—apples that no forced fingers rude shatter from their stems, but that ripen and mellow untouched, till they drop into the straw with which the orchard aisles are bedded; it is the poetry of horticulture; it is Art practicing the wise and gracious patience ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells

... life, could he forget them. Not only had his investments been all transferred to his speculations, but his home had been mortgaged, and he did not dare tell Edith of the lowering cloud that hung over it; and that his sole dependence was the confidence of the Street, which any rumor might shatter, in that one of Henderson's schemes to which he had committed himself. Edith, the one person who could have comforted him, was the last person to whom he could have told this, for he had the most elementary, and the common conception of what ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... apparently sane on all other matters, yet believed himself to be possessed of glass legs. Had this man in wanton anger struck and killed another, his "glass leg" delusion could not logically have availed him. If, however, he had struck and killed one who he believed was going to shatter his legs it might have been important. The illustration is clear enough, but its application probably involves a mistaken premise. If he thought he had glass legs his mind was undoubtedly deranged—whether ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... the white madness before; had seen men die from the deadly monotony of it all. It was conceivable that a book of bright pictures, anything with warm colors might penetrate the pall of white fog that clouded his brain and shatter the obsession, reinstating reason on its tottering throne. But there was only the howling of white wolves out across the white snow fields. Then a wolf howl sounded from ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... what he pleased in his own house; whereupon Sandro, in disdain, balanced on the top of his own wall, which was higher than his neighbour's and not very strong, an enormous stone, more than enough to fill a wagon, which threatened to fall at the slightest shaking of the wall and to shatter the roof, ceilings, webs, and looms of his neighbour, who, terrified by this danger, ran to Sandro, but was answered in his very own words—namely, that he both could and would do whatever he pleased in his own house. Nor could he get any other answer out of him, so that ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... weight) is to beat with a heavy, and pommel with a blunt, instrument. To batter and to bruise refer to the results of beating; that is battered which is broken or defaced by repeated blows on the surface (compare synonyms for SHATTER); that is bruised which has suffered even one severe contusion. The metaphorical sense of beat, however, so far preponderates that one may be very badly bruised and battered, and yet not be said ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... Ireton, I was something absent; I think my health of late is shatter'd much. Sometimes I talk aloud. Did I not speak But now of Joab in the Bible, And how he did slay Abner?— Thou know'st I read ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... panting happily at his elbow the old young man, to Jimmie's disappointment, did not continue to shatter the speed limit. Instead, he seemed inclined for conversation, and the car, ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... after eve that haggard anchorite Would haunt the desolated fane, and there Gaze at the ruin, often mutter low 'Vicisti Galilaee'; louder again, Spurning a shatter'd fragment of the God, 'Vicisti Galilaee!' but—when now Bathed in that lurid crimson—ask'd 'Is earth On fire to the West? or is the Demon-god Wroth at his fall?' and heard an answer 'Wake Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life Of self-suppression, not of selfless love.' ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... veil would tear it. It was only by a sort of hypnotism, he said, that we regarded Lords as separate from ourselves. It was a dream, and a rough movement would wake one out of it. Snobbishness (he said) did violence to this sacred film of faith and might shatter it, and hence (he pointed out) was especially hated by Lords themselves. It was interesting to hear as a theory and delivered in those surroundings, but it is exploded at once by the first experience of High Life and its ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... the children of Leda, succourers of the ships that, "defying the stars that set and rise in heaven, have encountered the perilous breath of storms. The winds raise huge billows about their stern, yea, or from the prow, or even as each wind wills, and cast them into the hold of the ship, and shatter both bulwarks, while with the sail limits nil the gear confused and broken, and the wide sea rings, being lashed by the gusts and ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... with opposing forces, rash, Shatter each other, thou that wouldst have stood Apart to profit by the monstrous feud, Thou art the surest victim of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... I had the double misfortune of being well-born and poor, two unforgiveable things nowadays. Is it fair that the folly, the sin of one's youth, if men choose to call it a sin, should wreck a life like mine, should place me in the pillory, should shatter all that I have worked for, all that I have built up. Is it ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde

... to his feet, and essayed to shatter his blade upon a great rock. Many blows he smote with it, yet it broke not. Then Roland was sorely grieved. Once more he summoned his failing strength, and showered such mighty strokes upon the stone that the blade, unbroken still, ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... think, could have surpassed in ecstasy that first touch of the water on my limbs. To prolong the joy I let myself slip in slowly, resting my hands on the edge of the tank, and smiling to see my body, as I lowered it, break up the shining black surface and shatter the starbeams into splinters. And the water, my Father, seemed to crave me as I craved it. Its ripples rose about me, first in furtive touches, then in a long embrace that clung and drew me down; till at length they lay like kisses ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... my great horror, my boundless despair, when the good woman slowly and sadly shook her head, saying, in a voice full of sympathy and commiseration, 'How loath I am to shatter your hopes and add more trouble to your already much overheavy sorrows, you cannot know, Monsieur, but I fear I can give you ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... he was—his fearlessness, for that seemed to be his one virtue; his frightfulness, for bullying and terrible deeds seemed to be the characteristic of every subject of the Kaiser—it was likely enough that this fellow would do anything to outwit the Frenchmen, and, if he could, would shatter the fort and bring it down upon his own head rather than ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... gazed upon the girl who was proposing this horror as a bright delight. She was a very engaging girl—that was the mischief of it. She stood smiling there in the bright, Egyptian sunshine, gay confidence in her gray eyes. He hated to shatter that confidence. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... the burden of the song, States-General! Have the royal armories no thunderbolt, that thou couldst, O Lomenie, with red right-hand, launch it among these Demosthenic theatrical thunder-barrels, mere resin and noise for most part;—and shatter, and smite them silent? On the night of the 14th of August, Lomenie launches his thunderbolt, or handful of them. Letters named of the Seal (de Cachet), as many as needful, some sixscore and odd, are delivered overnight. And so, next day betimes, the whole ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... The same injury trees likewise often suffer by rigorous and piercing colds and frosts; such as in the year 1683, rived many stately timber-trees from head to foot; which as the weather grew milder, clos'd again, so as hardly to be discern'd; but were found at the felling miserably shatter'd, and good for little: The best prevention is shelter, choice of place for the plantation, frequent shreading, whilst they are yet in their youth. Wind-shaken is also discover'd by certain ribs, boils and swellings ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... people would laugh at the religion my mother and father lived in, taught me, died in, and now is mine. They believed—and I believe—in what I have heard called the Sunday School God! the God who lives, who listens, and to whom I pray. I have read books attempting to shatter this belief—yes, and I think succeeding because written with a cunning appeal only to the intelligence of man. Can such a Being as God exist? they ask. And since man's intelligence can only grasp proved facts, proofs are heaped upon proof that He cannot. The impossibilities ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson



Words linked to "Shatter" :   damage, break, shattering, burst, bust



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