1 He was about to throw himself on the ground, and make one struggle for his young life, when he saw that they stood before a solitary house: all ruinous and decayed.
2 It was before this ruinous building that the worthy couple paused, as the first peal of distant thunder reverberated in the air, and the rain commenced pouring violently down.
3 I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I had entered.
4 I went through gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher.
5 In August he was at Smolensk and thought only of how to advance farther, though as we now see that advance was evidently ruinous to him.
6 He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used his power to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses open to him.
7 Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinous encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for three days.
8 It crept onward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river.
9 You remember I told you I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place.
10 They saw a weedgrown, floorless room, unplastered, an ancient fireplace, vacant windows, a ruinous staircase; and here, there, and everywhere hung ragged and abandoned cobwebs.
11 One day, as he went prancing down a quiet street, he saw at the window of a ruinous castle the lovely face.
12 So Scarlett reluctantly stayed away from Johnnie's mill, fearing that if she came too often he might quit and that would be ruinous.
13 From this secret conflict, always muzzled, but always growling, was born armed peace, that ruinous expedient of civilization which in the harness of the European cabinets is suspicious in itself.
Les Misérables 4 By Victor HugoContext Highlight In BOOK 1: CHAPTER IV—CRACKS BENEATH THE FOUNDATION