CREDITOR, n. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions. - Ambrose Bierce
GARTHER, n. An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country. - Ambrose Bierce
Once again I had the desolating sense of having all along ignored what was finest in him. Perhaps it was just the incongruity of seeing him aloft and stricken, since he was by nature someone who carried others. I didn't think he knew how to act or even how to feel as the object of help. - John Knowles
The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys:Power, like a desolating pestilence,Pollutes whate'er it touches, and obedience,Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,A mechanised automaton. - Percy Bysshe Shelley