Citations:conflagration

English citations of conflagration

				1787	1847 1876 1898	1922	2018
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1787 — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist № 16

  And as to those mortal feuds which, in certain conjunctures, spread a conflagration through a whole nation, or through a very large proportion of it, proceeding either from weighty causes of discontent given by the government or from the contagion of some violent popular paroxysm, they do not fall within any ordinary rules of calculation.

• 1847 — Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights ch. XXXI

  “Yes that’s all the good that such a brute as you can get from them!” cried Catherine, sucking her damaged lip, and watching the conflagration with indignant eyes.

• 1876 — Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ch. XIV

  A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said, “Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children alone”, and she took wing and went off to see about it — which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once.

• 1898 — H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds ch.11

  Every now and then a haze of smoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the window and hid the Martian shapes.

• 1922 — James Frazer, The Golden Bough

  Again the ancient Italian opinion that mistletoe extinguishes fire appears to be shared by Swedish peasants, who hang up bunches of oak-mistletoe on the ceilings of their rooms as a protection against harm in general and conflagration in particular.

• 2018, Ian Kerner / Suzannah Weiss, The Establishment, What A Fake ‘Female Orgasm’ Statistic Says About Gender Bias

  Irony, bigger and cruel, seems to be embedded into our respective processes of arousal: that a woman, so unique in her sexuality…should so often find this vast potential for blazing ecstasy smoldered — a magnificent conflagration left unlit — all for lack of a match that can hold its flame.