come to grief

1. Meet with disaster or failure. For example, The icy runway caused at least one light plane to come to grief. [Mid-1800s]

Example Sentences

“A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good,” Machiavelli cautioned his readers.“Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to maintain his position to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.”

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Two oilmen would come to grief, more or less, in the 1920s.

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Not intended as a mere star vehicle for its increasingly high-profile male lead, the visually stripped-back production is emotionally revelatory, too: Frecknall’s forensic skills allow us to look afresh at a motley gathering of people, Patsy Ferran’s tremulous Blanche DuBois chief among them, who seek understanding and compassion but just as frequently come to grief.

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In the end, both Musk and Twitter may well come to grief.

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When powerful, professed men and women of God come to grief, they almost always do so over two transgressions older than the Commandments: sex and money.

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