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Wrecking   /rˈɛkɪŋ/   Listen
Wrecking

noun
1.
The event of a structure being completely demolished and leveled.  Synonym: razing.
2.
Destruction achieved by causing something to be wrecked or ruined.  Synonyms: laying waste, ruin, ruination, ruining.



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"Wrecking" Quotes from Famous Books



... ago. But ever since your book of reminiscences went into two more editions than his, and the rush for it led to the wrecking of the Times Book Club, you have become to all intents and purposes his senior. He lost ground by saying that the wrecking was got up by the booksellers. It showed jealousy: and ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw

... orders to join me in a few days, in order to reinforce me until my commandos should come back. My intention was not to undertake any great operations, for my force was not strong enough for that. I intended my principal occupation to be to interrupt the communications of the enemy by wrecking the line and telegraph. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... slept. However, Dick Sand, alone, did not seek in sleep the repose which was so necessary to him. Thought absorbed him. He dreamed of his companions, whom he would save at all hazards. The wrecking of the "Pilgrim" had not been the end of their cruel trials, and others, still more terrible, threatened them should they fall into the hands ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... out rattled from its scabbard the old worthy's sword. "Come back, I say, you loafing, miching, wrecking crow-keepers; there are no pickings for you here. Brown, send those fellows back with the bayonet. None but blue-jackets allowed on the beach!" And the labourers ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... her hand, and said, eagerly, "Now, Kate, do not trifle. I must have some certainty that I am not wrecking your happiness. I cannot wait a year in suspense. I am a man. I have not the patience ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... ranging, if it may be, far above personal and partisan politics. This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done by one effort in all past time, as in the providence of God it is now your high privilege to do. May the vast future not have to lament that ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... less turbulent nature of Chekhov has made him reproduce in his creatures of the imagination his own sufferings and fears. I think he was afraid of mental as well as physical decay, for he has studied insanity with the same assiduity as that displayed by Andreev in his nerve-wrecking story ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... the roof. I had scarcely done examining these phenomena when another crash shook the whole building, and we found that an infernal machine had been exploded in the House of Commons, tearing the doors off their hinges, wrecking the galleries, and smashing the Treasury Bench into matchwood. The French Ambassador, M. Waddington, entered the House with me, and for a while stood silent and amazed. At length he said, "There's no other ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... own rates and the hardship of the long and short haul (in other words, against the discrimination of nature and of physical laws) no less than against the peril of bankruptcy and the consequent speculative tendency of their stocks (after which may come the wrecking, the watering, and the vast individual fortunes), the railways of this republic have endeavored, by establishment of pool commissions, to defend both the public and themselves.... The honest administration of railways for all interests, the payment of their fixed ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... stand a big chance of getting to us. Anyway, we must get in touch with them, to find out if they know anything we don't, and this is the only way I know of to do it. Besides, I want to head Dunark off from wrecking this world. They're exactly the same kind of folks he is, you notice, and I don't like civil war. Any suggestions? Keep an eye on that bird, then, Mart, and we'll ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... hoping that it might protect me from at least the smaller outbounding boulders. For a minute or two the shocks became more and more violent—flashing horizontal thrusts mixed with a few twists and battering, explosive, upheaving jolts,—as if Nature were wrecking her Yosemite temple, and getting ready to build ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... Nicolette into another. And there arose a storm at sea which parted them. The ship in which Aucassin was went drifting over the sea till it arrived at the Castle of Beaucaire. And when the people of the country ran to the wrecking of it, they found Aucassin, and recognised him. When the men of Beaucaire saw their young lord, they made great joy of him; for Aucassin had stayed at the Castle of Torelore full three years, and his father and mother were dead. ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous

... deliberately disregarding the strategically-placed hand-grips on the walls, floor, and ceiling. It seemed aeons before he reached the narrow little control compartment, and got the ultra-wave radio into action, nearly wrecking ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara

... written it in many different ways, and told it in many more. There are endless analogies. Thousands before me have written and sung and told the same. It is the great Story. We see it working out even in these wrecking days. The plan is already in the souls of men.... And what has this to do ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... the Navy has instructed the Boston Towboat Company, which corporation had charge of the wrecking operations on the U. S. S. Maine, to suspend work at once. The Secretary of War has authorised an allotment of one million dollars from the emergency fund for the office of the chief of engineers, and this amount will be expended in purchasing material for the torpedo defences connected ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... off successfully, save that a German operator in a Bleriot came to grief, crashing down to the ground, wrecking his machine, and breaking an arm. But he only laughed at that, and coolly demanded another cigarette, as he crawled out of the tangle of wires, ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton

... a thought flashed through my brain. In a few seconds the paso would be moving on; the bearers were bracing themselves for a new effort. That bouquet! if it should hold the threatened bomb? This was the moment for such an attempt at wrecking the royal box, for the King was a member of the next brotherhood that must pass; and soon he would be leaving his sister and friends to walk with it, perhaps not returning to his ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... time, by wrecking All that we seek and find. Its relentless waves of years Break even the impregnable wall of memory That thought builds ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji

... secured by the 'soundsers,' to find, ere long, a ready market in the larger inland towns and cities. But united to this shooting, fishing, and oyster-catching, they have another 'trade' whose scene is on the waters, though it connects itself with the sea, rather than the sounds, and this is 'wrecking.' They are prompt for this service whenever the occasion requires; indeed, I sometimes think they prefer it, dangerous though it be, before all others. Inured as they are to every sort of exposure, they are of course a tough and rugged race; and what with their diversity of occupation, calling, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... was the wrecking of the steamer City of Columbus off Martha's Vineyard, January 19th. There were 129 persons on board of whom ninety-seven ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... another agent, and they whispered together, and finally the first one came to me and asked pa's full name, and then the two of them got out a fountain pen, and they made out a check, and he said: "This is the first case in the history of railroad wrecking that the agent has not had the heart to try to beat the injured party down. This is certainly the most pitiful case that has ever been known, and if your father ever comes to his senses you can tell him he is welcome to ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... and his eyes closed, and he turned his face to the wall. But he did not go to sleep. He was trying to meet life with self-respect gone. The last thing he remembered was that second of utter rebellion against wrecking his strength, his good muscles—he had not thought of his life—to save the child. There had been no time to choose; his past, his character, had chosen for him, and they had branded him as that impossible thing, ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray

... of the most delightful stories Mr. Chambers has ever written. It is the romance of a bewilderingly pretty girl and a young New York society man. Just as they come to know each other, Fate steps in and renders them both penniless by wrecking the great firm in which their fortunes are invested. How the idle young man, without occupation or profession, is moved to swing about and take up the business of life in dead earnest is told with the brilliance and animation which ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... for a career. Rumor got hold of you first on the South Side, and had it that you were experimenting with some small contractor. The explosion which followed reached me even in Vienna. Did you feel that you could go farther, or did you courageously run the risk of wrecking him then instead of wrecking yourself and him later? Oh well, he's comfortably married now, and all the pain you gave him was probably educative. You may look at his flaunting granite house on that broad boulevard, and think ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... only ushered in worse ravings when Pickering lived over once more the horror of the train-wrecking, and then it took many strong arms to hold him in his bed. "Come on, Ben," he would shout, struggling hard; "leave him alone—we shall be caught—the fire! the fire!" until his strength died away, and he ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... do was either to kill the pilot or else to strike some vulnerable part of the engine, thus disabling it and wrecking the plane. Those were chances which had to be taken continually; but as a rule the rapidity of flight ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... it. Bud turned around and hurried to the nearest drayage company, and ordered a domestic wrecking crew to the scene; in other words, a packer and two draymen and a dray. He'd show 'em. Marie and her mother couldn't put anything over on him—he'd stand over that furniture with a ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... stand by her family. There's more loyalty in her than there was in the army of the Potomac. My cousin Lispenard says it's wrecking his nervous system to live up to the ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... on or she'd make some different arrangement. You feel in another element when you get into the hostel. It's 'do as you like and don't bother me so long as you don't go too far and aren't found out.' It might be all very well in the old days last year, but it's wrecking the show now. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... from the combination of demagoguery and plutagoguery that is wrecking it," said I without heat, "and make it again an instrument of at least ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... night watches that Wilson had many long talks with Stubbs—talks that finally became personal and which in the end led him, by one of those quick impulses which make in lives for a great deal of good or wrecking harm, to confide in him the secret of the treasure. This he did at first, however, without locating it nearer than "Within five hundred miles of where we're going," and with nothing in his narrative to associate the idol with the priest. Truth to tell, Wilson was disappointed ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... bitterly disappointed. Both King and ministers knew their business very badly; with limitations of intelligence which would have been disastrous to the conduct of a small shop, they came in this instance, as in other instances, within measurable distance of wrecking a royalty. It is probable that Franklin, shrewd, cool observer though he was, went too far when he wrote in his journal that if George the Third had had a bad private character, and John Wilkes a good one, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... nineteen, whom everybody loved. I was sent for to go down and bring the body up. Well, I went down. The packet lay in a hundred feet of water, and that's a wonder deep dive. I had to go down twice. The first time I couldn't find anything, though I went all through the berth-deck. I came up to the wrecking-float and reported that I had seen nothing. There were a lot of men there belonging to the wrecking gang, and some correspondents of London papers. But they would have it that she was below, and had me go down again. I did, and this time ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... "Parson, actor, young sinner, old saint—I ask you frankly, girls, on your word of honor, was there ever more than one man in ten went through your hands who didn't turn out soft somewhere before you were through with him? Mawking about your 'sweet eyes' while you're wrecking your optic nerves trying to decipher the dose on a poison bottle! Mooning over your wonderful likeness to the lovely young sister they—never had! Trying to kiss your finger tips when you're struggling to brush their teeth! Teasin' you to smoke cigarettes ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... would lightly adventure the pestilential perils of a tropic stream, or fever-haunted water-way or canal, who would yet shrink from being caught—owing to want of care, and cautious calculation as to the exact hours of slack and safety—by the hideous, irresistible, all-engulfing, all-wrecking whirl of the terrifying Stroem! Once drawn within the down-draught of that hideous vortex, a whole army might be destroyed more certainly than even by the manifold death-dealing contrivances of modern science, a whole legislature lost in a single ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various

... Stone with the shining stars controlled Fire. The symbolism inscribed on the soles of her feet gave sway over Land and Water. About the Star Stone I shall tell you later; but whilst we are speaking of the sarcophagus, mark how she guarded her secret in case of grave-wrecking or intrusion. None could open her Magic Coffer without the lamps, for we know now that ordinary light will not be effective. The great lid of the sarcophagus was not sealed down as usual, because she wished ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... the car being suspended by four bands which encircled the balloon envelope. In October of 1907, 'Nulli Secundus II.' made a trial flight from Farnborough to London and was anchored at the Crystal Palace. The wind sprung up and took the vessel away from its mooring ropes, wrecking ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... costumes, language, multiplying himself in many forms, scattering deceptions and lies from one end of France to the other; and finally, after so many efforts, such prodigies of calculation and activity, end by wrecking ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... which is taken directly from railway users, and is a tax which would be saved under national ownership, as United States district attorneys could attend to such legal business as might arise. This expenditure is incurred in endless controversies between the corporations, in wrecking railways, in plundering the shareholders, in contending against State and federal regulation, in manipulating elections and legislation, and in wearing out such citizens as seek legal redress for some of the many outrageous acts of oppression ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... which he had taken as booty from the heathen places of worship during his campaigns used for the sanctuary at Jerusalem, because he feared that the heathen would boast, at the destruction of the Temple, that their gods were courageous, and were taking revenge by wrecking the house of the Israelitish God. Fortunately Solomon was so rich that there was no need to resort to the gold inherited from his father, and so ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... themselves at other people's expenses, the Push found new cares and duties thrust upon them, the chief of which was chastising anyone who interfered with their pleasures. Their feats ranged from kicking an enemy senseless, and leaving him for dead, to wrecking hotel windows with blue metal, if the landlord had contrived to offend them. Another of their duties was to check ungodly pride in the rival Pushes by battering them out of shape with fists and blue ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... help but wonder how he was ever to get on if the laws bound him so tight to the truth, and the truth would prove the undoing, the wrecking of all his ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... straight away to the matron's room, and asked her to sew the two buttons on his waistcoat; he'd pulled them off on purpose. He is a cunning beggar, that Gull. Fancy his staying behind to light the reading-room gas, and telling Lucas he'd only just come! Why, he did more of the wrecking than any two of us ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... wild affair, with unlimited quantities of champagne, loud patriotic speeches, songs and shouts of "Deutschland ueber Alles," and finally a smashing of glass, a breaking of furniture, and the customary wrecking ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... prude. I like to overstep conventions, too. But this wholesale wrecking of the social structure would be ruinous ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... ninety-four pound projectile passed overhead, sweeping half the corrugated-iron roof from the railway-official's late dwelling with a fiendish clatter and din, as it passed harmlessly over the Women's Laager, and, wrecking a sentry's shelter on the western line of defences, burst harmlessly upon the veld beyond, blotting out the low hills behind a curtain of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... other water than such as is preserved in cisterns, and no soil, or so little as to render even a head of lettuce a rarity. Turtle is abundant, and the business of "turtling" forms an occupation additional to that of wrecking. As might be expected in such circumstances, a potato is a far more precious thing than a turtle's egg, and a sack of the tubers would probably be deemed a sufficient remuneration for enough of the materials of callipash and callipee to feed all the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... the Government had no choice in the matter, as the popular pressure upon them was too great to be resisted." This determination is rightly characterised by Mr. Farrelly, the late legal adviser to the Government of the South African Republic, as the "fiendish project of wrecking the mines and plunging into hopeless misery for years tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children." But that is not all. He has put upon record[105] the sinister fact that the man entrusted with the execution ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... sawed-off self," said Poney, as .007 was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and grimy car like a caboose, but full of tools—a flatcar and a derrick behind it. "Some folks are one thing, and some are another; but you're in luck, kid. They push a wrecking-car. Now, don't get rattled. Your wheel-base will keep you on the track, and there ain't any curves worth mentionin'. Oh, say! Comanche told me there's one section o' sawedged track that's liable to jounce ye a little. Fifteen an' a half out, after the grade at Jackson's crossin'. You'll know ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... among the Catholics, Count Jean vigorously supported the duke in the defence of their religion, and converted his chateau of Oron into a refuge for the fugitives from the Lutheran persecution. While the Bernois were breaking the sacred images and wrecking the churches and chapels, Count Jean regularly maintained the celebration of mass at Oron, and threatened to wreak vengeance upon the Lutheran heretics who fell into his hands. Therefore, the Bernois, with evangelical pronunciamentos, commanded ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... more of Quinet. Small, gaunt and strange-looking, I pitied him because he was a victim of our stupid educational wrecking systems. His was too fine an organization to have been exposed to the blunders of the scholastic managers; for his course had exhibited signs of no less than the genius he had claimed. Most of his years of study had been spent as a precocious youth in that great Seminary of the Sulpician Fathers, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... That queen of women pledged to be my wife. To look upon the beauty of her face, The still closed eyes, the lips that knew no breath; To look, to learn,—to realize my place Had been usurped by my one rival—Death. A storm of wrecking sorrow beat and broke About my heart, and life shut out its light Till through my anguish some one gently spoke, And said, "Twice did she call for ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... world. It is the victory of strength over weakness. If it brings glory to some nations, it brings destruction to others, and humiliation to others still. It means the loss of countless lives, and the wrecking of numberless homes. It is followed by unspeakable sufferings and bitter sorrows. It knows nothing of pity or mercy. Its garlands of triumph are stained with blood ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick

... entertained some idea of making a boat trip up the Grand, but he abandoned it, and we prepared for the work ahead. The rations, which were now fallen to poverty bulk, were carefully overhauled and evenly distributed among the boats, so that the wrecking of any one would not deprive us of more than a portion of each article. The amount for daily use was also determined; of the bacon we were to have at a meal only half the usual quantity. We knew Cataract ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... Moravians, and established a new circle of societies, himself ordaining the ministers who served them. These societies flourished for a while, but about 1759 Ingham became imbued with the doctrines of a certain Sandeman, and the result was the almost total wrecking of his societies. This broke Ingham's heart, and affected his mind, so that his last days were very sad. He passed away in 1772, and his societies gradually merged themselves ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... responsibilities. One sits on court-martial, for instance, and decides on the life of a fellow-creature, without being asked any inconvenient questions as to previous knowledge of Blackstone; and after such an experience, shall one shrink from wrecking a steamer or two in the cause of the nation? So I placidly accepted my naval establishment, as if it were a new form of boat-club, and looked over the charts, balancing between one river and another, as if deciding whether to pull up ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... war is beastly, Billy, you can picture something worse— There's the wrecking of an empire, and its broken people's curse; There are nations reft of freedom, and of hope and kindly mirth, And the shadow of an evil black ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... elevating his country and his kind; no, but that most hateful species of it which exists in the contrivance and working out of family arrangements and insane projects for the aggrandizement of our offspring, under circumstances where we must know that they cannot be accomplished without wrecking the happiness of those to whom they are proposed. Such a passion, in its darkest aspect—and in this I have drawn it—has nothing more in view than the cruel, selfish and undignified object of acquiring ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... stoicism and bitterness in this answer, there was not deliberate cruelty. Raoul loved his lugger, next to Ghita, before all things on earth; and, in his eyes, the fault of wrecking her in a calm was to be classed among the unpardonable sins. Still, it was by no means a rare occurrence. Ships, like men, are often cast away by an excess of confidence; and our own coast, one of the safest in the known world for the prudent mariner to approach, on account of the ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... I made the acquaintance of several old salts, both white and black, one or two of whom time and their neighbours had invested with a legendary savour of the old "wrecking days," which, if rumour speaks true, are not entirely vanished from the remoter corners of the islands. But either their romantic haloes were entirely due to imaginative gossip, or they themselves were too shrewd to be drawn, for I got nothing out of them to my purpose. They seemed ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... blowing one way and we wanted to go the other, so after nearly wrecking a couple of tugboats and a brick scow, we fixed the sail so the wind would push the boat right along. Aye, aye, captain, a fish sou'-sou' by east with the wind in his teeth! The sturdy vessel was just tearing along. ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... over the statement from L. W.'s bank and saw the money piling up to their credit; the first thrill of joy gave way to fear—of Stoddard, and what he might do. With interests so vast lying unprotected what could restrain his ruthless hand? And yet there was Rimrock, wrecking his life in New York and letting her watch their mine alone! A wave of resentment rose up at the thought—it was the old hatred that she tried to fight down—and she clasped her hands and gazed straight ahead as she beheld in a vision, the woman! ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... wrecking crew. She's bottom side up, two wheels off and part of her machinery on the other side of the road," was Crazy Jane's calm reply. However, before they had an opportunity to say more, Tommy Thompson came running toward them, ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge

... your conduct are wrecking some other life, in like manner. There is not one of us who does not exert a powerful influence on those about us, one way or the other, to build up and strengthen, or ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... loose logs bobbing in the open water, seized the victim of the accident by the collar, desperately scaled the face of the moving jam, and reached the top just as the two sections ground together with the brutish noise of wrecking timbers. It was a magnificent rescue. Any but these men of iron would have adjourned for thanks ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... repeated, disdainfully. "Excuse me, Rosalind. No woman ever had the power of wrecking my life. Indeed, I have been far more fortunate and prosperous since Lady Alice chose ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... had not had a daughter, this young man had not loved; if he had not loved, he had never been disappointed; if not disappointed, he would never have taken poison." It was the same Cadi possibly, who sentenced the island of Samos to pay for the wrecking of a vessel, on the principle that "if the island had not been in the way, the vessel would never have ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... Such a wrecking of hearts appalled even him. His quality was such that he could have annihilated them both in the heat of action; but to accomplish the deed by oral poison was beyond ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... had watched most carefully over Philip. He was aware of the ill-will felt by the rest of the villagers towards his charges, and made it no secret that he was one of the sternest opponents of the evil practice of wrecking. It was well known that Arthur had set his face against their evil designs, and that it was his determination to have a lighthouse built, no matter at what cost, to warn off ships from this doubly dangerous spot. The worst-disposed among the men ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... like to you, adoring not The God; who therefore to one bane hath brought You and this body, wrecking all our line, And me. Aye, no man-child was ever mine; And now this first-fruit of the flesh of thee, Sad woman, foully here and frightfully Lies murdered! Whom the house looked up unto, [Kneeling by the body.] O Child, my daughter's child! who heldest true My castle walls; ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... realize," he said, sorrowfully, "that you're wrecking a ten-million-dollar corporation. One in which you, yourself, are ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... field of inquiry, but soon threw it aside. Mathematics and I could never agree. Speculative and imaginative in an extraordinary degree, carrying much sail with scarcely any ballast, what but the ever watchful care of Him who sitteth upon the circle of the earth could have preserved from fatal wrecking a vessel so frail, while yet ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... same year (1660) the central spire, which had been injured by lightning in 1593, fell through the roof, wrecking many of the beautiful canopies of the stalls. The damage to the choir and other parts of the church, estimated at L6000, was repaired with money raised under a brief from Charles II., but the spire was never rebuilt, and in 1664, to avoid any further catastrophe, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

... from the precipitous river front of the citadel hill of Quebec, in 1889, dashed across Champlain Street, wrecking a number of houses and causing the death of forty-five persons. The strata here are ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... house, in drink. She had watched him with the never-failing eye of love, and had seen, to her horror, the signs she so dreaded. She could face disaster stoically, she could face danger unflinchingly, but this moral wrecking of the old man, who had been more to her than a father, was more than she could bear. Two great tears welled up into her beautiful, somber eyes and slowly rolled down her cheeks. She bowed like a willow bending to the force ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... steps were being taken to recover the safe; but that the conviction of the plotters was another and a very doubtful proposition. Above all things, he asked to be let alone for a while, at least. The driver, he stated, had no idea that the wrecking of the stage was other than it appeared on the face, an accident pure and simple. The letter was sealed and sent by ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... ago, after the fashion of the Nigritia and the Monrovia, she was carelessly lost. Though anchored in a safe place, when swinging round she hit upon a rock and was incontinently ripped up; the injured compartment filled, and the skipper ran her on the beach, wrecking her according to Act of Parliament. They once managed to get her off, but she had not power to stem the seas, and there she still lies ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... remembered just the same feeling of unpleasant, anxious expectation as he now felt when the Boer War had begun fifteen years ago, before the first news came. The first news of the Boer War had been the wrecking of a British armoured train near Kimberley. What similar story might not the overdue paper tell ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... Cornish wreckers and wrecking, both priest and clerk are said to have taken part in the sharing of the tribute of the sea cast upon their rockbound coast. The historian of Cornwall, Richard Polwhele, tells of a wreck happening one Sunday morning just before service. The clerk, eager to be at the fray, announced ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... topic, but let my courtesy expend itself in good wishes, and came away at last with a bewildering remembrance of her beauty, which I am doing my best to blot out by faithfully recounting to myself the story of those infinite caprices of hers which have come so near wrecking ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... can't work his boat without a crew, but if he is armed he will be able to defend himself even if he is attacked. I don't know how many boats there were at La Dorada, but I would lay my life that Purvis took the precaution of sending them adrift or wrecking them before he ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... of what astronomers call Solomon's Orbit had its beginning about three months ago. Solomon, who couldn't remember his first name, was warming tired bones in the sun, in front of his auto-wrecking yard a mile south of Fullerton. Though sitting, he was propped against the office; a tin shed decorated like a Christmas tree with hundreds of hub caps dangling from sagging wooden rafters. The back door opened on two acres of what Solomon ...
— Solomon's Orbit • William Carroll

... of all known parties who had attempted the passage through the canyons above. Less than half of these parties, excepting Galloway's several successful trips, succeeded in getting through Cataract Canyon without wrecking boats or ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... together and drove us to the arena to witness the punishment of the slaves who killed the guardsman. I wish now that I had not left the arena for by this time my friends and I might have made good our escape, whereas this delay may mean the wrecking of all our plans, which depended for their consummation upon the continued sleep of the three Mahars who lay in the pit beneath the building in ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... came very near wrecking himself on the quicksands of the romantic school. He had begun to quote from a speech delivered by Gouverneur Morris, on the right of deposit at New Orleans, and which he had spoken at college, and was near getting into a part of the subject that might not have been so apposite, but retreated ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... was in trouble. He felt instinctively that the good old soul was wrecking her week's resources in this lavish hospitality, but he also felt that she would be deeply hurt if he did not appear to enjoy everything. The one possibly clean thing was the bread. He devoted himself to that; it was of poorest quality; one or two hairs looping in ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... nature of the excitement, and being unwilling to interfere until I had thoroughly grasped the ethical and other import of the situation, I shinned up a tree, and from this point of vantage took in the spectacle. It appeared from Foxy's violent accusations that Hughie had been guilty of wrecking the store, which, by the way, the latter utterly despises and contemns. The following interesting and striking conversation ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor

... occasionally received visits from bombing airplanes. The night before I left France, the last time, they dropped several bombs on the village of Ecoviers where I was staying. The only result was the killing of two civilians, the wounding of several others and the wrecking of one of the few whole houses in the town which had often been a victim of shells. Not ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... between us two, Celia," he continued, with solemnity in his voice and manner. "He is gone; let him go and take the past with him. But one word: Celia, it was Heyton who wronged Susie, it was Heyton who forged the cheque; it was because Lady Gridborough thought me guilty of wrecking Susie's life, that she cut me that morning when she passed us at the gate by the wood. She knows the truth now; for Reggie has ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... Cabinet meeting held on Feb. 7:th 1905[49:1] the Swedish Minister for Foreign affairs, Count GYLDENSTOLPE, pointed out that the chief cause of the wrecking of the negotiations was, that the Swedish Minister for Foreign affairs was supposed still to be at the head of the Foreign policy of the Union, and he advocated the desirability of resuming negotiations on this phase of the Union problem. The Minister for Foreign affairs only expressed ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund

... will be all right to publish my report in the newspapers. I don't care much for newspaper publicity, and I do not think that my report is written in a style suitable for newspapers. The people want such a thing written with more poetry and color—gruesome, nerve-wrecking suspense, complete revenge, mountainous clouds, blue, breeze-swept sky—that is what they want. But if the publication of the report will bring you any joy, I will not be ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke

... of Tilden exploited his war record, his reputation as a railroad wrecker, and his evasion of the income tax.[1525] The accusation of "railroad wrecking" was scarcely sustained, but his income tax was destined to bring him trouble. Nast kept his pencil busy. One cartoon, displaying Tilden emptying a large barrel of greenbacks into the ballot box, summed ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... old woman into the house, and while she gave us some bread and wine she told us about the wrecking of the village and the factory. It was one of the most damnable stories I've heard yet. Put together the worst of the typical horrors and you'll have a fair idea of it. Murder, outrage, torture: Scharlach's programme seemed to be fairly comprehensive. ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... restrain my comrades, and when they were burning the hayricks, throwing the meal on the dunghill, and wrecking the property of the farmer, I cut the cords with which they had bound the poor fellow to his chair ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne

... ago. It's all over now, but it was bad while it lasted. Perhaps Marian will consider your request more favourably if I put it in the light of a favour to myself. She must feel that she owes me something for wrecking ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... who, viewing the wrecking of a ruined habitation, condemned by the Board of Public Safety, try to stop the process of the workers; they do not know that when the ground shall have been cleared, a finer, more sightly, and above all, more habitable building ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... entrance, accepted with sedate satisfaction the comfortable seats assigned to it. The uninvited but cheerful majority lingered out in the frosty street, forming a crowd that increasingly blocked the avenue and the church entrance, besides wrecking the nervous systems of ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan

... of innate limitations, can ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything save discord. Nor can I see how this matters either, since the discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking disaster. No, Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, depend upon it, to the burden of Fools All. For I am as liberally endowed as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my performances, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... Express" was derailed, here in the flat land at the grade crossing. The thing had been done some time. The fire had been drawn from the engine; there was only a sputtering of steam. The passengers had been removed. A wrecking-car had come up from down the line. A telegrapher was setting up a little instrument on a box by the roadside. A lineman was climbing a pole to connect his wire. A track boss with a torch and a crew of men were coming up from an examination of the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... in the passage up the cleft in the cliff, impregnable though all men had thought them, had yielded to the vehemence of Phorenice's attack. And, indeed, it was scarcely to be marvelled at. With all her genius spurred on to fury by the blow that had been struck at her by wrecking so fair a part of the city, the Empress would be no light adversary even for a strong place to resist, and the Sacred Mountain was no ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... was heralded somewhat inauspiciously by a tremendous gale which swept across the Hampshire Downs, after doing no small mischief in the Channel, and wrecking a good many fine old oaks and beeches in the New Forest. It was only the tail of a storm which had been blowing furiously in Scotland and the north of England, and no one as yet knew the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... principle of self-determination, a transfer of millions of Chinese from one foreign master to another. This is another of those secret arrangements which have riddled the 'Fourteen Points' and are wrecking ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... faction hasn't succeeded in wrecking the Three Bar up to date," Deane said. "It's probable they see you're ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... having secured an abundance of potatoes, they sit down to enjoy themselves for the winter. During the night they play cards for geese, turkeys, and herrings; attend dances, where they are enrolled and sworn into secret societies; and devote some hours to the wrecking of the houses, or the castigation of the persons, of those who are obnoxious to them. In the daytime, you find them at the places of public resort or amusement, or lazily and listlessly strolling about those miserable abodes—in whose floors you frequently find stepping-stones to carry you from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... business in 1861. That the Irish question should defeat an understanding between ourselves and England would be, to quote what a gentleman who is at once a loyal Catholic and a loyal member of the British Government said to me, "wrecking the ship for a ha'pennyworth ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister

... wrecking crew arrived, and just as the first gray streaks of dawn showed the last of the cars was put back ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum

... starry shadows over the quiet sea, which with subdued murmur lulled in their sleep the great summer homes along the shore. The ship departed, carrying toward her sombre destiny Agrippina, absorbed in her smiling dreams. When the moment came and the wrecking machine was set to work, the vessel did not sink as fast as they had hoped: it listed, overturning people and things. Agrippina had time to understand the danger; with admirable presence of mind she jumped overboard and escaped by swimming, while, during the confusion ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... Farnum. "I must rush for the telegraph station and get off a message for a diver—also for a wrecking company to send tugs and floats here for raising the 'Pollard.' Yet it will take a wretchedly ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham

... this about? just when I wanted you most, too, and a rough night. They'll get ahead of us, and all through this confounded wrecking business. Couldn't you keep out of it for once, ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... Devagas dome was solidly invested by now, its transmitters blanked out. It hadn't tried to communicate with its attackers. On their part, the Fed ships weren't pushing the attack. They were holding the point, waiting for the big, slow wrecking boats to arrive, which would very gently and delicately start uncovering and opening the dome, taking it apart, piece by piece. The hierarchy could surrender themselves and whatever they were hiding in there at any point in the process. They didn't have a chance. Nobody and nothing had ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... duties of life. Godless men may be scientists, philosophers, encyclopaedias of knowledge, but for want of religion, they blunder in the direction of their lives, and lack wisdom enough to keep them from wrecking ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... question how he is to learn the truth; and here the authors go very far astray. There are two, and only two, really dramatic ways in which Colonel Ford can be enlightened. Lady Fancourt must realize that Agatha is wrecking her life to keep her mother's secret, and must either herself reveal it to Colonel Ford, or must encourage and enjoin Agatha to do so. Now, the authors choose neither of these ways: the secret slips out, through a chance ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... chronicles, it has provided resistance as well as cruelty. In Scotland nearly everything has always been in revolt—especially loyalty. If these people are capable of making Glasgow, they are also capable of wrecking it; and the thought of my many good friends in that city makes me really doubtful about which would figure in human memories as the more huge calamity of the two. In Scotland there are many rich men so weak as to call themselves strong. But there are not so many poor ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... raced toward Bar Harbor with her shipload of non-combatants. Eighteen hundred and sixty-three men, women, and children went down with the ship. No warning had been given. No chance had been offered for women or children or neutral passengers to escape. The disaster duplicated the wrecking of the Lusitania in 1915, but it exceeded it in loss of human life. The American captain and all his men shared the fate of the passengers intrusted ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... together!" he said, not unkindly. "I'm not hounding you; Lawton never harmed you, and now he is dead. He was my client and I was bound to protect his interests, but as man to man, the fault was yours and you know it. I tried to keep you from making a fool of yourself and wrecking three lives, but I only succeeded in ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... attacks the work of ruin, which otherwise proceeded slowly. A breach in the embankments protecting the town or the temple allowed its waters to rush violently through, and thus to effect large gaps in the decaying walls, completing the overthrow of the columns and wrecking the entrance halls and secret chambers by the fall of the roofs. At the time when Egypt came under the rule of the XIIth dynasty there were but few cities which did not contain some ruined or dilapidated sanctuary. Amenemhait ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Alaskan boundary, the transit of merchandise in bond, the alien labor laws, mining rights, reciprocity in trade, revision of the agreement respecting naval vessels in the Great Lakes, a more complete marking of parts of the boundary, provision for the conveyance of criminals, and for wrecking ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... The wrecking of old Dobbins' house had remained a mystery. Some thought the rope had been cut, while others were of the opinion that it had broken because of the heavy ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... men all depend on this right. And today the right to one's own is doubly under attack from the violence of laboring men, and the guile of those in positions of financial trust. The strikers who offer as an argument the burning of a mine or wrecking of a mill, and the directors who manipulate corporation accounts to pay unearned dividends, are both undermining the right of property. Against such counsels of force and fraud, the representatives of the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... The wrecking of a passenger vessel was a much more serious matter than the destruction of a freighter, where there would only be the crew to bring ashore. The Huronic carried two hundred passengers and as it was impossible for any boat to get alongside of her to take them ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey



Words linked to "Wrecking" :   wipeout, demolition, devastation, destruction, wreck



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