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More "Astonishing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from view. Now he resolved to see what could be accomplished by will. He undertook to forget the water, and at times he succeeded, but, despite his greatest efforts, the Teotihuacan would come back now and then with the most astonishing vividness. Although he was lying on the serape with bushes and shrubs all around, there was the river visible to the eye of imagination, brighter, fresher and more sparkling than ever. He could not control his fancy, but will ruled the body and he did not stir ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... these astonishing fruits of the tree of knowledge are too often regarded by both friends and enemies as the be-all and end-all of science? What wonder if some eulogise, and others revile, the new philosophy for its utilitarian ends and its ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... relieved of her presence. She was not long absent, but Eileen and Winifred, being avid of gossip and generally eliminated subjects, "got in their work" with quite fevered haste. They liked the idea of astonishing Robin. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Pugatshef, very soon found himself at the head of fourteen thousand fierce warriors, and commenced ravaging oriental Russia. For a season his march was a constant victory. Many thousand Siberian exiles escaped from their gloomy realms and joined his standards. So astonishing was his success, that even Catharine trembled. Pugatshef waged a war of extermination against the nobles who were the supporters of Catharine, in cold blood beheading their wives and children, and conferring ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... astonishing companion were not less full of adventure than his Sundays. Collar-and-elbow wrestling in a tent, under the red light of torches, between him—simple amateur—and Du Bois, the iron man, in person; rat-chases near the mouths of sewers, with dogs as fierce as tigers; sanguinary encounters ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... to the St. Lawrence (it is astonishing how the old water-ways still pull us children of the air), and followed his broad line of black between its drifting ice blocks, all down the Park that the wisdom of our fathers—but every ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... which is so astonishing in the religious life of the ancient Greeks is the irrestrainable stream of GRATITUDE which it pours forth—it is a very superior kind of man who takes SUCH an attitude towards nature and life.—Later on, when the populace got the upper hand in Greece, FEAR became rampant also in religion; ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... It is astonishing how some men, who are kind in their families, useful in the church, charitable to the poor, are utterly transformed of the devil as soon as they enter the Stock Exchange. A respectable member of one of the churches of the city went into a broker's office and said: ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... with the pillars of the central cluster. These porches stood at the distance of seventy feet from the main building, and have the appearance of having been entirely separate from it. They are 143 feet long, by thirty broad, and thus cover each an area of 4260 feet. The most astonishing feature in the whole building is the height of the pillars. These, according to the measurements of M. Flandin, had a uniform altitude throughout the building of sixty-four feet. Even in their ruin, they tower over every other erection ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... as he set down his empty tumbler. "Astonishing how keen I feel about this little adventure. I'm perfectly sick of the humdrum life I have been leading the last week, and you do sort of take one back to the Arabian Nights, you know, Reggie. I am never quite sure whether to take you ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ever lived in it. Beethoven! He was not called. Raphael was not called. He was all an accident. All the inventors, discoverers, poets—God never called one of them; he turned his attention to popes, cardinals, priests, exhorters; and what selections he has made! It's astonishing. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... this revelation of Miss Polly's discernment was astonishing to her; "but if that's the case," she added gravely, "I oughtn't to think of moving ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... you were almost afraid they would find some loose bar and spring out at you. The two lions roared tremendously when disturbed. A great cage full of the funniest chattering monkeys, ready for nuts or cake or bits of apples, and who could swing with their heads downward and turn astonishing somersaults. Many other curious animals that we see nowadays in Central Park; but, alas! there was no Park then, and such indulgences ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... grandfather's wisdom—not making it the reason for doing what he could, but accepting that it not impossibly might apply. He saw one possibility right away. It looked fairly good. After a minute's examination it looked better. It was astonishing ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... Vautrin, and Vautrin appears as the name of the most astonishing and most original character which Balzac has created and introduced in the five or six greatest novels of the Comedy. So transcendent, super-human and satanic is Vautrin, Herrera, or Jacques Collin, as he is indifferently called, that a French ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... panacea were one part of strong iron-water to five parts of old whisky, to which sal-volatile, red lavender, cardamoms, ginger, and other warming drugs were added. "Her Grace's bottle," as it was invariably termed, achieved astonishing popularity, and the most marvellous cures were ascribed to it. I have sometimes wondered whether its vogue would have been as great had the whisky been eliminated from its composition. In her home under the Sussex downs, amidst the broad stretches of heather-clad common, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... to which sound is carried when the temperature is low is an astonishing fact; it is only equalled by the brilliancy of the constellations in the northern skies; the waves of light and sound are transmitted to great distances, especially in the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... The astonishing success of the French was still more imputable to the free use and admirable organization of their infantry, whose strength lay in the Swiss mercenaries. Machiavelli ascribes the misfortunes of his nation chiefly to its exclusive reliance ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... respect to pocket-money young Lynde was a prince. My friend spent the long vacations with me at Newburgh, running down to New York occasionally to pass a day or so with the uncle. In these visits their intimacy ripened. Old Lynde was now become very proud of his bright young charge, giving him astonishing dinners at Delmonico's, taking him to Wallack's, and introducing him to the old fossils at the club ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... no longer your host. We meet here on equal terms. I have an offer to make to you which I think you will find astonishing. The fact is, her Highness is anxious to run no risk of any resurrection of a certain scandal. She has commissioned me to beg your acceptance—you and your friend—of these," he laid down two separate pieces of ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... see them fly away, and the snapdragons that went off like little pistol-shots when you cracked them. Splendid dollies did she make out of scarlet and white poppies, with ruffled robes tied round the waist with grass blade sashes, and astonishing hats of coreopsis on their green heads. Pea-pod boats, with rose-leaf sails, received these flower-people, and floated them about a placid pool in the most charming style; for finding that there were no elves, Daisy made her own, and loved the fanciful ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... drunkenness among women, the conservative journals all over the world swelled the sound and confirmed the charges. Now that that story has run itself to death, a new assault is projected, and a general clamor concerning their illiteracy follows. If the charges are true, there is nothing very astonishing about them. The education of women has been considered a matter of secondary importance until very recently, and with our foreign population the education of girls has been almost wholly neglected. When the customs and usages of the world have made ignorance ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... highly of poor Mrs. Broderick, Stephen, and so do I," she remarked one day. "Very few women would bear things in that quiet, uncomplaining way, and the amount of work she gets through is astonishing; but that perpetual dragging in of her husband's name seems ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... glorying in most of the eccentricities of human nature. It is astonishing, considering the active part he took in society, that he should, towards the close of life, have secluded himself so entirely from the world, and those with whom he must have from circumstances ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... our elections here are still going against Government, and the signs of the times are all for reform and retrenchment, and against slavery. It is astonishing the interest the people generally take in the slavery question, which is the work of the Methodists, and shows the enormous influence they have in the country. The Duke (for I have not seen him) is said to be very easy about the next Parliament, whereas, as far as one can ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... action, in the most conspicuous spheres, unillustrated by a single incident which mankind has, or will have, reason to cite and applaud, were not astonishing evidence of fitness for the chief magistracy; and the event has shown, that Mr. Buchanan was to be regarded as an old politician rather than a practised statesman, that the most serviceable soldier in the ranks may prove to be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... to the astonishing proceeding as if he liked it, while Jasper, delighted with Polly's appreciation, beamed down on them, and struck up friendship with her ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... two tired yet grateful women to the women's Red Cross station and left them in kindly, congenial company. It was here Senator Walsen and his daughters were staying. When they and Miss Aida became acquainted at breakfast next morning it was astonishing how many mutual acquaintances they discovered, yet mostly back in the dear old country ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... Thames Street, were devouring the houses on the southern side of the street with an astonishing rapidity; and the river was crowded with wherries, to which the affrighted people brought such goods as they could hastily lay hands upon in the terror and confusion. St. Magnus was now burning ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... shoot has a tendency to throw all the vigor into the development of the young bunch, and the leaves remaining on the shoot, which now grow with astonishing rapidity. It is a gentle checking, and leading the sap into other channels; not the violent process which is often followed long after the bloom, when the wood has become so hardened that it must be cut with a knife, and by which ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... gentleman in the family, a dogcart is the most convenient vehicle which can be kept; but as that would not be suitable for a lady, we contrived to make the back seat of the carriage do duty for the well of the dog-cart, and it was astonishing how many light packages we managed to "stow away" in it. I will not dilate on the pleasant drives through quiet lanes, of the delight afforded to the children when allowed to have a ride on "Bobby," nor of the great facility it gave ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... sanguine little creature; and being limpid and tender as well, and more loyal than artful, she had failed to conceal her ardent attachment and its anxious expectancy. Had she loosed a wink of challenge from her gray eyes in another direction, the reluctance of Dickie Blue might have been reduced with astonishing rapidity, and she could have punished his stupidity at will, had she been maliciously inclined. Conceiving such practices to be both cheap and artful, however, and being, after all, of a pretty sturdy turn of character, she rejected the advantages ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... just gone over in his mind this roseate programme, when a soft tinkle told him that the Winnebago was within a few steps of the tree; and at the same moment that the youth made this interesting discovery, another still more astonishing one ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... about his grandson. He filled up the future nursery with a hundred little knick-knacks of his own contriving; and with wonderful cheap bargains, which he bought in his walks about Tottenham Court Road. He pasted a most elaborate book of prints and sketches for Boy. It was astonishing what notice Boy already took of pictures. He would have all the genius of his father. Would he had had a better grandfather than the foolish old man who had ruined all belonging ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... women of Johannesburg are doing noble work. Dr. Murray says it is astonishing how intelligently alert and self-sacrificing they are proving themselves to be. A story has been told me of a Boer woman who was fearfully mangled; she bore the necessary surgical operation with fortitude, but wept ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... truth is to begin by tearing down error. I wish to attack, in the first place, a theory much taught and too generally practiced, that one should seek, in matrimony, a companion as near like himself as possible. It is astonishing to see what a hold this theory has upon the public mind, considering the fact that it never has had any good results to support it. A distinguished Physiologist, in a recent work which has been extensively circulated, uses these words ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... such a sudden pull on all his legs that, with a huge thud Rataplan found himself lying on the ground. With one furious cry of rage he did his best to turn, displaying a flexibility of body and limb which was quite astonishing in ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... the attention of my men to it, and they too thought it merely a fire; but a few minutes afterwards, as we got farther off shore, the light rose clear up above the ridge of the hill, and some faint clouds clearing away from it, discovered the magnificent comet which was at the same time, astonishing all Europe. The nucleus presented to the naked eye a distinct disc of brilliant white light, from which the tail rose at an angle of about 30 deg. or 35 deg. with the horizon, curving slightly downwards, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... historical fact, as authentic as any of those which the annals of ancient kingdoms have transmitted to posterity. It was built to defend the Chinese Empire from the incursions of the Tartars, and is calculated to be 1500 miles in length. The rapidity with which this work was completed is as astonishing as the wall itself, for it is said to have been done in five years, by many millions of labourers, the Emperor pressing three men out of every ten, in his dominions, for its execution. For about the distance of 200 leagues, it is generally ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Levantines, who had fled from that underground world where every coin of reputation is falsely minted, refugees from the storm of the world's disapproval. There were Greeks with Austrian names; Armenians, speaking Italian as their native tongue; Italians of astonishing military skill, whose services were no longer required by their offended country; French Pizarros with a romantic outlook, even in misery, intent to find new El Dorados; Englishmen, who had cheated at cards and had left the Horse Guards for ever behind; Egyptian intriguers, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on, and told me the most extraordinary and astonishing story. I'd give anything to pass it on to you; and having got so far, you'll curse me for not going farther! But I had to promise I wouldn't write or breathe the secret to any one except Jack. So, alas, you must wait till ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... Just the reverse is the case of Rowley's pretended poems. They have all the elegance of Waller and Prior, and more than Lord Surrey—but I have no objection to any body believing what he pleases. I think poor Chatterton was an astonishing genius-but I cannot think that Rowley foresaw metres that were invented long after he was dead, or that our language was more refined at Bristol in the reign of Henry V. than it was at court under Henry VIII. One of the chaplains of the Bishop of Exeter has found a line of Rowley in Hudibras-the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... look upon beings of a celestial race": upon which both men and women, children and adults, young men and old, when they got rid of the fear they at first entertained, would come out in throngs, crowding the roads to see us, some bringing food, others drink, with astonishing affection and kindness. ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... and Americans who yearly visit Switzerland and the Riviera, it is astonishing that so few, comparatively, ever think of approaching nearer to the Pyrenees than Pau. And it is more astonishing still, that those who have been enabled to enjoy the beauty of these mountains from the Place Royale at Pau, should ever think of leaving their vicinity without ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... reader break this rule against saying "good-bye," for our same splendid "Automobile Girls" are soon to be met with again, under astonishing and startling circumstances, and on historic ground. The next volume in this series will be published under the title: "THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS ALONG THE HUDSON; Or, Fighting Fire in Sleepy Hollow." In this spirited narrative, the girls will be shown doing ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... a low rent. This system, if extensively adopted, promises to work a wonderful change for the better in the condition of the working classes. Indeed the system where adopted has already been attended with astonishing results. When we come to consider that out of the 77,394,433 acres of land in the British Isles, there are no less than 15,000,000 acres of uncultivated wastes, which might be profitably brought under cultivation; it is surprising to us, that instead of applying ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... mirthless, mocking laugh. It is astonishing, sometimes, how deeply a man may be hurt through his vanity. Rosemary had turned away, and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... McFlimsey, she had 'nothing to wear'. But these were mere trifles, and they assured their mother that the experiment was working finely. She smiled, said nothing, and with Hannah's help did their neglected work, keeping home pleasant and the domestic machinery running smoothly. It was astonishing what a peculiar and uncomfortable state of things was produced by the 'resting and reveling' process. The days kept getting longer and longer, the weather was unusually variable and so were tempers; an unsettled feeling possessed ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Nathaniel Johnson introduced the silk culture into South Carolina, but the astonishing success which rewarded the casual introduction of rice into the plantation about eight years before, precluded a just interest in the undertaking, and as a public and recognized commodity it soon came to naught, though several persons, more for amusement than profit, still ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... McRae Tuesday morning, and left him here Thursday evening, to our infinite delight, for we felt as though we would never again see our dear little Jimmy. He has grown so tall, and stout, that it is really astonishing, considering the short time he has been away.... To our great distress, he jumped up from dinner, and declared he must go to the city on the very next boat. Commodore Hollins would need him, he must be at his post, etc., ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... the excellent arrangements that are made for arresting its progress. The engines, apparatus, and corps de pompiers, are admirably maintained, and the promptitude and regularity with which they arrive at the scene of devastation truly astonishing: indeed, were this not the case, the city must very soon be destroyed; for notwithstanding all their exertions, every conflagration makes it minus several houses, and few nights pass without bringing a ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... than seventy or eighty. He performed every duty with big comrades of the 5th company of Veterans, When King Louis Philippe visited Dreus, Kolombeski was presented to him, who, taking the decoration from his breast, presented it to the veteran soldier. This is the most astonishing instance of longevity that has, perhaps, been ever known in the army. The Marshal Governor of the Invalides ordered that Kolombeski should be brought to him on his arrival; but, as the old soldier was fatigued, he was taken to ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... it would go the whole island of Walcheren, the key to all the Netherlands. In one morning he had heard of the revolt of Enkbuizen and of the whole Waterland; two hours later came the news of the Valenciennes rebellion, and next day the astonishing capture of Mons. One disaster followed hard upon another. He could have sworn that the detested Louis of Nassau, who had dealt this last and most fatal stroke, was at that moment in Paris, safely watched by government emissaries; and now he had, as it were, suddenly started out of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... perspective of six months, but have not abandoned it. I have visions of living for half a year or so, in all sorts of inaccessible places, and opening a new book therein. A floating idea of going up above the snow-line in Switzerland, and living in some astonishing convent, hovers about me. If Household Words could be got into a good train, in short, I don't know in what strange place, or at what remote elevation above the level of the sea, I might fall to work next. Restlessness, you will say. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... parsonage door. He was a big man, riding a handsome gray horse and wearing a look of executive severity. I trembled with apprehension, for we had heard, of course, that Brother Brock had written to him preferring charges against William for horse racing. But now I had an astonishing and unexpected view of William's character. His worldly mood was still upon him, his Antaeus heel still upon the earth. He hurried out to meet Doctor Betterled, the elder, and, having thrown the saddlebags of his guest across his shoulder, stood apparently transfixed with ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... Church; insistence upon virtue as well as knowledge; the wide-spread demand for education, and a view of it as essential to liberty of conscience; a comprehensive working system of elementary, collegiate, and university training for all, poor as well as rich; an astonishing familiarity with Scripture, even among the lowest classes; utilization of representative church organization for founding, supporting, and unifying education; readiness to sacrifice for education, a spirit of carrying a thing through at any cost; ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Grown Up, a product of the astonishing genius of Frederic Thompson, creator of Luna Park, covering nearly twelve acres and packed with Thompson's whimsical conceptions of the figures of the Mother Goose Tales, Kate Greenway's children, and soldiers and giants, and the familiar toys of the Noah's Ark style-all on a gigantic ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... Rabbit gave him the last coat and laid the whitewash on thicker than ever, especially in places, and when Mr. Crow could open his eyes he went in and looked at himself in Mr. Rabbit's long glass, and said he never thought anything so astonishing as that could happen to anybody, and declared he must hurry right off home now, and that he was going to make up a lot of whitewash and keep himself looking like that all the time, and his kitchen, too, and perhaps all the rest of the Hollow Tree, for there was certainly ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... possessed every personal advantage; but then he was greatly deficient in mental accomplishments. He had no sentiments but such as others inspired him with; and those who first insinuated themselves into his friendship, took care to inspire him with none but such as were pernicious. The astonishing beauty of his outward form caused universal admiration: those who before were looked upon as handsome were now entirely forgotten at court: and all the gay and beautiful of the fair sex were at his devotion. He was particularly beloved by ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... the front steps with them Ferry was at the gallery's edge, Miss Harper, Cecile and Harry were on three sides of him, and he was explaining away our astonishing departure. We were going to Hazlehurst, to issue clothing and shoes to those ragged and barefoot fellows we had seen that afternoon, and the light of whose tentless camp was yonder in the sky, now, toward Brookhaven. We were to go that way, confer with their officers, telegraph from ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... I appreciated the excellent character of my tutor, and the respect my lackey showed me no longer seemed objectionable. With the freedom that I enjoyed, and the unlimited money at my command, and the restless energy of youth, it is astonishing that I did not fall into some excess, were it only gambling, which might well have appealed to my combative instincts. It was my own ignorance of everything that prevented this; it made me extremely suspicious, and the abbe, who was very ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... down, and was deaf to all remonstrances until I went after him and laid hold of him. In another minute we were outside the gate, and it was locked, and Estella was gone. When we stood in the daylight alone again, Joe backed up against a wall, and said to me, "Astonishing!" And there he remained so long saying, "Astonishing" at intervals, so often, that I began to think his senses were never coming back. At length he prolonged his remark into "Pip, I do assure you this is as-TON-ishing!" and so, by degrees, became conversational ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... pocket, and thought of you. I have seen the article in the Edinburgh about the Bible—exceedingly brilliant and clever, but rather too epigrammatic, quotations scanty and not correct. Ford is certainly a most astonishing fellow; he quite flabbergasts me—handbooks, review's, and I hear that he has just been writing a 'Life of ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... danger lest the Christianity of its readers should be unduly Judaic in feeling and practice, suits well the experiences of a writer living in Alexandria, where Judaism was immensely strong. Further, he shows an "astonishing familiarity with the Jewish rites," in the opinion of a modern Jew (Kohler in the Jewish Encycl.); so much so, that the latter agrees with another Jewish scholar in saying that "the writer seems to have been a converted Jew, whose fanatic zeal rendered him a bitter opponent of Judaism ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... an astonishing, an absurd, length of time. Woolfolk became infuriated at his inability to bring it to an end, and he expended an even greater effort. Nicholas' arms were about his chest; he was endeavoring by sheer pressure ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Mr. Ballin." His eyes perused the stranger with astonishing speed and deftness, without seeming ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... and nerve ourselves to resist great obstacles and much suffering. Our ingenuity is various and considerable. We can form machines, and erect mighty structures. The invention of man for the ease of human life, and for procuring it a multitude of pleasures and accommodations, is truly astonishing. We can dissect the human frame, and anatomise the mind. We can study the scene of our social existence, and make extraordinary improvements in the administration of justice, and in securing to ourselves that germ of all our noblest virtues, civil and political liberty. ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... How astonishing the accurate knowledge of the accomplished physician! How miracle-like the dainty and beneficent skill of the modern surgeon. The peculiar ability of a great diagnostician amounts to divination. And he, whom Nature has fitted for this noble profession, is endowed with ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... herself to make further objection, and the keys were brought. It was astonishing what a number of keys Mrs. Mumpson possessed, and she was not long in finding those which would open the ordinary locks thought by Holcroft ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... again presently—was not the sort of noise that a man shut in would be likely to make; nor did the little plaintive sound seem like a human cry. But the matter was one to be investigated in a hurry, and with an energy quite astonishing, in comparison with my lassitude of a moment before, I got the hatch open and leaned down it, listening; and then I heard the scratching so plainly that I ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... deep-seated and powerful cause which instinctively produces amongst the Americans this astonishing gravity. Under a despotism communities give way at times to bursts of vehement joy; but they are generally gloomy and moody, because they are afraid. Under absolute monarchies tempered by the customs and manners of the country, their spirits are ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... had collected a sufficient quantity of wrath for the use of Sophia; but she now transferred it all to the squire. "Brother," said she, "it is astonishing that you will interfere in a matter which you had totally left to my negotiation. Regard to my family hath made me take upon myself to be the mediating power, in order to rectify those mistakes ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... They trace their descent from some of them; and a change of form from beast to man, or from man to beast, while still preserving individual identity, would not seem at all incredible, or even odd, to them. By and by, however, the number of creatures having these astonishing powers would decrease, as the circle of experience widened. But there would linger a belief in remarkable instances, as at Shan-si, in China, where it is believed that there is still a bird which can divest itself of its ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... of two days for Mrs. Cliff and Willy to open the seven trunks, and properly display and dispose of the various articles and goods, astonishing in their variety and beauty, and absolutely amazing when the difference between the price paid for them and what they would have cost in New York ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... being thus dropped by her first friend, she was peremptorily claimed and appropriated by the actresses. They had not failed to notice her interest in their enterprise, and some of the cleverest of them had already mastered an astonishing problem. ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... face a breath, which amid the heat of the desert seemed all at once hot to him. That breath, at first very delicate, increased, growing hotter and hotter, and at the same time the dark streak rose in the sky with astonishing swiftness. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... the use of her friends; yet, by a second edition, we must infer that the public at large were so. There is a poem prefixed with the signature W.C. which no one will hesitate to pronounce is by Congreve; he wrote indeed another poem to celebrate this astonishing book, for, considered as the production of a young lady, it is a miraculous, rather than a human, production. The last lines in this poem we might expect from Congreve in his happier vein, who contrives to preserve his panegyric amidst that caustic wit, with ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... too sober to take a really vital interest in the teaching, he was a misanthrope, bitter and brutal, with an astonishing command of the most terrible words. At these times he made the gravest charges against Noyes; charges for which the man should be made accountable, even to such a one as the lodger. One evening Cake sat watching him, waiting for this mood to pass so ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... monotony of the schoolroom inspires a sometimes unbearable longing for something astonishing to happen, and as every boy's fundamental desire is to do something astonishing himself, so as to be the centre of all human interest and awe, it was natural that Penrod should discover in fancy the delightful secret of self-levitation. He found, in this ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the others must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing conjunction of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances that this ram, who instead of getting into the general fold every evening goes into a special enclosure where there are oats—that this very ram, swelling with fat, is killed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... 'Speaking for myself, Amelia, not me. The war has wakened me up to a understanding of my own importance that is really astonishing.' ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... there was not one of the former who for a single moment doubted the sincerity, the patriotism, or the humanitarianism of the Jewish members. Moreover, in the course of our work there was brought to our attention an astonishing amount of information concerning efforts being made by progressive and high-minded employers in all parts of the country to introduce into their industries reforms looking to the betterment of the lot ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... the invitation as cordially as it was given. It is astonishing how genial and friendly these men of the world can be at the slightest imaginable notice. One can fancy the striped tigers of Bengal shaking paws in the jungle, the vultures hob-nobbing in a mountain cleft over the torn carcass of a stag, the kites putting their beaks together ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the Regularity of their Position, the Order and Exactness, and yet inconceivable Velocity of their Motions, the certainty of their Revolutions, and the Variety and Virtue of their Influences; and then, which was even to the Devils themselves most astonishing, That after all the rest of their Observations they should find this whole immense Work was adapted for, and made subservient to the Use, Delight and Blessing only of one poor Species, in itself small, and in Appearance ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Mr. G.M., "what you tell me is rather astonishing. But the explanation is simple as far as poor Barber is concerned. You say he has been often ill lately? Naturally, this has affected his brain and spirits. What is a little more difficult to explain ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in-coming convict passed the purple beauty of this convict Golgotha, his eyes were attracted by a point of grey rock covered with white buildings, and swarming with life. This was Point Puer, the place of confinement for boys from eight to twenty years of age. It was astonishing—many honest folks averred—how ungrateful were these juvenile convicts for the goods the Government had provided for them. From the extremity of Long Bay, as the extension of the sea-arm was named, a convict-made tramroad ran due north, through the nearly ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... advanced sheets of the edition of Dr. Taylor's great work on medical jurisprudence, now passing through the press. Reviewing the trial in London with that freedom from bias which the isolation of distance produces, he says: "The trial lasted fifty-two days, and an astonishing amount of evidence was brought forward by the defence and prosecution, apparently owing to the high social position of the parties, for there is nothing, medically speaking, which might not have been settled in forty-eight hours. The general died after ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... the end, the most extraordinary thing happened. Turning over in bed, she distinctly called out your name, and rallied. And now, thank God, she is completely out of danger. The doctor says it is the most astonishing recovery he ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... a brave child! She grew to be quite devoted to her poor father, though he could do so little to help her. She had a wonderful quantity of shining dark hair, all curling natural about her. It is quite astonishing to me now, that I didn't go tearing mad when I used to see her run from her mother before the cart, and her mother catch her by this hair, and pull her down ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... appeared wearing an eccentric costume which increased the tumult, but her rich voice, that astonishing voice of hers, appealed to the public, and she charmed them ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... side of the hill, again rose, and they all resumed their journey. They soon lost the track of the boreen, but they still continued to ascend, keeping by the sides of the loose built walls with which the land was subdivided. It was astonishing what labour had seemingly been wasted in piling wall after wall in that barren place, and that even in spots where no attempt had been made at tillage, and where the only produce the land afforded was the food of a few miserable sheep and goats, which it might be thought could have grazed ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... observed, that a frequent repetition of the use of this class of medicines so habituates the body to their stimulus, that their dose may gradually be increased to an astonishing quantity, such as otherwise would instantly destroy life; as is frequently seen in those, who accustom themselves to the daily use of alcohol and opium; and it would seem, that these unfortunate people become diseased as soon as they omit their usual potations; and that the consequent ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Salariki, who had continually manifested their belief that Terrans and their ship were an offence to the nostrils of all right living "men," to wish to enter the spacer was an astonishing about-face. But any advantage no matter how small, which might bring about a closer understanding, must ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... laughed at. You are young, I also; if this kind of life should become distasteful to you, are you the woman to tell me of it? In truth, if it were so, I would confess it to you frankly. And why not? Is it a crime to love? If not, it is not a crime to love less or to cease to love at all. Would it be astonishing if, at our age, we should feel ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... occupation, perform much less, perhaps not one hundred and fifty days' work on the average. The following table, published in 1856-1857, by Mr. Guthrie, then Secretary of the Treasury, discloses a condition of things very remarkable; but no wise astonishing to those who have investigated the causes of the disparity. The ratio of annual per capita production to each man, woman, and child, white and black, in the respective States, exclusive of the gains or earnings of commerce, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Majesty's Government to produce, from the records of public offices, documents which do not appear to be required for any public purpose. I am therefore under the necessity of declining to comply with your lordship's request." "Is it not astonishing," said Lord Dundonald, in a letter to the Duke of Hamilton, "that Sir James Graham does not consider justice to an individual to be ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... to-day, that if this Catholic doctrine be firmly believed, and that the prayers of the Church are indeed availing to shorten the sufferings of those who have gone before us; to relieve those whom we love from thousands of years of torture, it is astonishing how the rich do not become poor, and the poor beggars, in furtherance of this object; and that if the idea be purely human, it showed a wonderful knowledge of human nature, on the part of the inventor, as what source of profit could ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... opinion—it is astonishing how many people unwittingly hold it—that a fact becomes annihilated by a man shutting his eyes to it. Ermine regarded her with a look of ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... definite tendency. (5) We must remember that, from the death of Nero till the time of Trajan, very little is known of the history of the Church except the fact that, by the end of this time, Christianity had not only spread to an astonishing extent, but also ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... thus," she continued. "It is, therefore, not astonishing that the physiognomy and the attitude of the man who drew the curtains in Monsieur Caffie's office should not leave my memory. You admit this, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... him at once in the first rank of parliamentary orators. "I was able to execute in some measure what I intended," was Pitt's own modest account of this speech in a letter to his mother. The opinion of the House of Commons and the town was wholly different: his speech was regarded as masterly—astonishing in one so young and new to Parliament. Selwyn had not heard it, but in the following letter he tells Carlisle of the general impression it had made; and on June 13th he gives his own critical opinion of Pitt's third speech. The detailed description by Storer, who ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... watchfulness, it is astonishing what slips are made, even by good writers, in the employment of an inappropriate word. In Gibbon's 'Rise and Fall,' the following instance occurs: 'Of nineteen tyrants who started up after the reign of Gallienus, there was not one who enjoyed a life of ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... wrote you was from the Missouri army. I am so continually flying around that I have won the cognomen of "the kite." It is astonishing what a charm there is in camp life; boys that have been away but a short time feel a craving to once more resume their duties among their comrades. With me 'tis a great pleasure to get back to the familiar faces of ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... She had, during the first year or two of his new career, often expostulated with him on the doubtful character of his business; but he, by always making light of her fears, by telling her some truth and withholding more, and disclosing as great a part of his astonishing gains as he supposed would pass with her for honest acquisitions, generally silenced, if he did not convince, her; and she, finding him always light-hearted and satisfied with himself, when he came home, finally ceased her remonstrances, having concluded she would try to conquer her doubts ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... serious?" he asked, looking up in astonishment from the first astonishing drawing in colour which he held ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... larva works in the midst of a coating of mud, which is the cause of its dirtiness, so astonishing when we see it issue from an excessively dry soil. The perfect insect, although henceforth liberated from the work of a sapper and miner, does not entirely abandon the use of urine as a weapon, employing it as a means of defence. Too closely observed it throws a jet of liquid upon the importunate ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... outstripped the other two. Commercialism means consolidation and concentration and since the Napoleonic wars the Germanic races—at the beginning slowly but within the last twenty-five years rapidly—have drawn together at an astonishing pace. In countries such as Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Switzerland, each possessing their own petty machinery of expensive government; existent only through the mutual jealousies of their bigger neighbors, ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... "By all that's astonishing, it's Tag Mosher!" Prescott gasped. He clutched at the tree trunk again, watching, for Tag had halted and appeared to be peering hard through the foliage at the ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... in 'Valerie' that night," the young man went on. "Did you know that she could sing too? She sang several verses by an astonishing little Jew musician that has come ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... Exposition, I saw a marble bust—life size—which was a portrait of a lady of ancient Rome. There was only the head and neck, the hair was dressed very plainly, and it was astonishing how well that bust would have answered for the portrait of a lady of Thirty-fourth street, New York, or the wife of a gentleman in Springfield, Ohio. The head and face were just such a head and face as I had often seen, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... flowers, beyond which was a very small cottage indeed, through the open door of which there issued a most appetizing odour, accompanied by a whistle, wonderfully clear, and sweet, that was rendering "Tom Bowling" with many shakes, trills, and astonishing runs. ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... sixteenth century the number of students in colleges and at theuniversities increased in an astonishing degree, especially from the middle classes. The sons of simple burghers entered upon the contests of free, intellectual aspirations with a zeal mostly absent in those whose position is already secured by birth. At Court, no doubt, the feudal aristocracy were yet powerful indeed. They could ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Hercules' pillars, they came to a great bay called the Western Horn, in which was an island where they could find or see nothing by day-light but woods, and yet in the night they observed many fires, and heard an incredible and astonishing noise of drums and trumpets; whence they concluded that a number of Satyrs ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... "It's astonishing, Frank, how well you know him, and yet you deny his intimacy with Pembroke. To you he is a living man; you always talk of him as if he had just gone out of the room, and yet you persist ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... separated, Mohegan taking the direct route to the village, while the youth moved toward the lake. The divine stood at the entrance of his dwelling, regarding the figure of the aged chief as it glided, at an astonishing gait for his years, along the deep path; his black, straight hair just visible over the bundle formed by his blanket, which was sometimes blended with the snow, under the silvery light of the moon. From the rear of the house was a window that overlooked the lake; and here Louisa was ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... that met them was so astonishing that for a second the Kansan could not move. He saw Barbara Harding, a revolver in her hand, aiding the outlaw to escape, and in the instant that surprise kept him motionless Eddie saw, too, another picture—the picture of a motherly woman in a little farmhouse ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... by an astonishing reserve of strength. Undoubtedly it was that marvelously merciful power which enables a person, for the love of others, to bear up under a cross, or even to fight death himself. As Young had his bright-eyed Indian boys and girls, who had learned Christianity ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... so that it was supposed they were the father and his son and future successor. After exchanging salutations the Spaniards were conducted to a round house near a large square. Numerous seats of very black wood decorated with astonishing skill were brought, and when the principal Spaniards and natives were seated, some attendants served food and others, drink. These people eat only fruits, of which they have a great variety, and very different ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... all the winter in bad spirits from coughs and colds, and, their having been obliged to retreat from the French, did'nt help much to mend the matter. However, when they heard that an English man-o-war was come, it was astonishing how soon they became stout-hearted; faith, they were like lions, and just as bold! The man-o-war prov'd to be the "Lowestoffe," which had been detached from the main fleet below, with orders to make the best of time through the ice, and take ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... ended ere it began, sweet maid. You are in love; but have not yet waked up to that astonishing fact. Now, why did the good God give me a big heart and a small head and a twisted spine? Why not have made me either ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the American story, the youth who had dined in a cabinet particulier with a lady, in contravention of the rules of the house, had not the sense to hold his tongue until after he had paid his bill. When that document did make its appearance, some of the items were astonishing. "You don't expect me to pay this bill?" said the astonished diner to the proprietor, who had made his appearance. "No, I do not," said Mr. Delmonico, "but until you do you will not ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... "It is not astonishing for you to know it, Monsieur Broussel, who knows everything; but as for me, by holy truth, I did not know it and I thought I would give you good advice; you must not be angry with ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... their eyes and see with clear vision what is going on over their heads, and more than high time that they should refuse to take part in the Quarrels of those who (professionally) live upon their labour. It is indeed astonishing that the awakening has been so long in coming; but surely it cannot be greatly delayed now. Underneath all the ambitions of certain individuals and groups; underneath all the greed and chicanery of others; underneath ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... persuaded that a woman can go anywhere and do anything, provided she conducts herself properly. Of course it would be absurd to deny that it is not infinitely more agreeable to be accompanied by the "tyrant" called "man"; but when there is no tyrant to come to lovely woman's rescue, it is astonishing how well lovely woman can rescue herself, if she exerts the brain and muscle, given her thousands of years ago, and not entirely annihilated by long disuse. I have been nowhere that I have not been treated with greater consideration ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... in it," he said, reflectively, as the horse plodded along on the shady side of the road, "an amount of comfort that's astonishing. I don't know, but I'd like to have her come to a standstill just about now and never grow any older or bigger. But I thought the same thing three years ago, that's a fact. And when she gets to blooming out and enjoying her bits of girl finery there'll be pleasure ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... from his difficulty he sent to the King an astonishing proposal. The King was to renounce the right of investiture and all interference in the elections, in return for which the prelates should give up all imperial lands and rights with which they were endowed, retaining merely ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... commencement of the performance, to study the features of the audience, and watch their earnest gesticulations; for the Spaniards, like the Italians, talk with their whole bodies,—hands, arms, head, trunk, and all. The ladies, as usual, were each supplied with that prime necessity, a fan; and it is astonishing what a weapon of coquetry it becomes in the delicate hands of a Spanish beauty. Its coy archness is beyond comparison, guided by the pliant wrist of the owner, concealing or revealing her eloquent glances and features. With her veil and her fan, a Spanish woman is ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... sis," cried Ned, with a sudden friendliness quite astonishing after the part he had taken, and to be accounted for only by the idea that had struck him, "here's a blessing in disguise! There's a ship sails next Wednesday—so I found out this evening—and damn me if you sha'n't go to London with me! That's ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... lies of the mentally diseased. Here follows his positive contribution to the conception; the pathological lie is active in character, a whole sequence of experiences is fabricated and the products of fancy brought forward with a certainty that is astonishing. The possibility that the untruth may be at any minute demolished does not abash the liar in the least. Remonstrances against the lies make no impression. On closer inspection we find that the liar is no longer free, he has ceased to be master of his own lies, ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... It is really astonishing to find Dean Swift, joining issue with less religious wits, in laughing at Blackmore's works, of which he makes a ludicrous detail, since they were all written in the cause of virtue, which it was the Dean's business more immediately to support, as on this account he enjoy'd his preferment: But ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... posterity will find that England will have paid very dear for a Protestant king; religion is what everyone is willing to admit the propriety and necessity of, until they are taxed to pay for it, and then it is astonishing how very indifferent, if not disgusted, they ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... away with astonishing quickness to hide his acquisition, lest, mayhap, his guests should repent ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... could take sleigh-rides and see in the distance the whales enjoying their diversions. The summer solstice was approaching. Since the fifteenth the occupants of the "Alaska" had beheld a new and astonishing spectacle, even for Norwegians and the natives of southern Sweden; it was the sun at midnight touching the horizon without disappearing and then mounting again in the sky. In these high latitudes and desolate coasts the star of day describes in twenty-four hours a complete ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... a boudoir formed entirely of mirrors, like the one in Castle Rosenburg; but here the glasses magnified to an astonishing degree. On the floor, in the middle of the room, sat, like a Dalai-Lama, the insignificant "Self" of the person, quite confounded at his own greatness. He then imagined he had got into a needle-case full of pointed needles of ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the massacres in the prisons of Paris early in September. Little is known about the publicist, Lebrun, on whom now rested the duty of negotiating with England, Spain, Holland, etc. It is one of the astonishing facts of this time that unknown men leaped to the front at Paris, directed affairs to momentous issues, and then sank into obscurity or perished. The Genevese Claviere started assignats and managed revolutionary ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the square, the pea, and the pyramid, flash into existence. In some branches of traffic the wearer calls loudly for new fashions; but in this, the fashions tread upon each other, and crowd upon the wearer. The consumption of this article is astonishing. There seem to be hidden treasures couched within this magic circle, known only to a few, who extract prodigious fortunes out of this useful toy, whilst a far greater number, submit to ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... it so quickly that Desire gasped. Then she laughed. She had never had anything taken from her by force since her childhood and it was an astonishing experience. Also, she had not dreamed that Benis was so strong. It hadn't been at all difficult. And this in spite of the fact that she had clung to the ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... nobles with the townsfolk, schisms between the wealthier and poorer burghers, jealousies of the artisans and merchants, and factions for one or other eminent family. These different elements of discord succeed each other with astonishing rapidity; and as each gives place to another, it leaves a portion of its mischief rankling in the body politic, until last there remains no possibility of self-government.[1] The history of Florence, or Genoa, or Pistoja would supply us with ample ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... the collar, and with astonishing strength, pulled him off the prostrate lad." (See ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... animals towards the narrow outlet near the enemy's camp. While this was being done, he got the remainder of the troops under arms and led them slowly forward. The cattle, while the flame was moderate, and burned only the wood, walked steadily forward towards the mountain side, astonishing the shepherds on the mountain, who thought that it must be an army, marching in one great column, carrying torches. But when their horns were burned to the quick, causing them considerable pain, the beasts, now scorched by the fire from one another as they shook their heads, set off in wild career ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... person, and often leading her troops valiantly. The Tahitian women were nearly as strong as the men and mentally their full equal. They wound their husbands around their fingers or treated them cruelly in many instances, astonishing the whites by their independence. Only religion, the taboos, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... a talk of a second concert which Chopin is to give on the 10th of March, and already more than 600 names are put down on the new list. In this there is nothing astonishing; Chopin owed us this recompense, and he well deserves ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... upon re-imbursing you for—" began the lawyer stiffly, but Mr. Bingle snapped his fingers disdainfully, much nearer the gentleman's nose than he intended, no doubt, and with a perfectly astonishing result. The legal representative's hat fell off backwards and he actually trod upon it in his haste to give way before the ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... are young, I also; if this kind of life should become distasteful to you, are you the woman to tell me of it? In truth, if it were so, I would confess it to you frankly. And why not? Is it a crime to love? If not, it is not a crime to love less or to cease to love at all. Would it be astonishing if at our age we should feel the need ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of these courts was fast completed under Henry's great justiciar, De Lucy, and the chancellor Thomas. The next few years show an amount of work done in every department of government which is simply astonishing. The clerks of the Exchequer took up the accounts and began once more regular entries in the Pipe Roll; plans of taxation were devised to fill the empty hoard, and to check the misery and tyranny under which the tax payers groaned. The king ordered a new coinage which should establish ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... Lord Earle hoped for great things. He looked to a prosperous career as a statesman; no honors seemed to him too high, no ambition too great. But a hard fate lay before him. He made one brilliant and successful speech in Parliament—a speech never forgotten by those who heard it, for its astonishing eloquence, its keen wit, its bitter satire. Never again did his voice rouse alike friend and foe. He was seized with a sudden and dangerous illness which brought him to the brink of the grave. After a long and ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... this impudence clever, and glanced across the table for applause as he spoke. But although Mamma Watchmaker, if she had heard it, might have thought it a piece of astonishing wit, the strangers at the public table were quite of a different opinion, and there was a general cry of 'Turn ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... keeping, not house-hunting. There are pleasant and habitable houses in Venice—but they are not cheap, as many of the uninhabitable houses also are not. Here, discomfort and ruin have their price, and the tumble-down is patched up and sold at rates astonishing to innocent strangers who come from countries in good repair, where the tumble-down is worth nothing. If I were not ashamed of the idle and foolish old superstitions in which I once believed concerning life in Italy, I would tell how I came gradually to expect very little ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... health for some time," continued Charles. "He died two days ago at Cannes. It is astonishing that I did not hear the news before. I have wired to Hutchins, my election agent, and if I can manage it, I shall run down to Mallow. Of course one is sorry, but since it has been ordered so, after all, one has to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... venison,—but the immigrant, colonizing society. Cockneys are to be found at every turn, flaunting their banners of the awkward squad, proclaiming to the world with protuberant pride that they are the veritable backwoodsmen,—rather doing it, rather astonishing the natives, they think. And so they are. One squad of such neophytes might be entertaining; but when every square mile echoes with their hails, lost, poor babes, within a furlong of their camps, and when the woods ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... his foot with impatience. It was absolutely astonishing, the ignorance in which Maggie lived, and lived efficiently and in content. Edwin filled the house with newspapers, and she never looked at them, never had the idea of looking at them, unless occasionally at the 'Signal' for an account of a wedding ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... her curious friendship with Natalie. Audrey the careless, with her dark lazy charm, her deep and rather husky contralto, her astonishing little French songs, which she sang with nonchalant grace, and her crowds of boyish admirers whom she alternately petted and bullied—surely she and Natalie had little ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... surface. This rounded form appears in the posts used in various kinds of furniture. When rectangles were used they were always broader than high. The garlands of fruit were heavy, the cornucopias were slender, with an astonishing amount of fruit pouring from them, and the work was done in rather low relief. Carved and gilded mirrors were introduced by the Italians as were also sconces and glass chandeliers. It was a time of great magnificence, and shadowed forth the coming glory of Louis ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... the unexpected variety thereof, kept him fully occupied in defending himself. With the exception of the single blow delivered when he had regained his feet, he had been unable even to attempt aggression. It was as though he had touched a button to release an astonishing and bewildering ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... his party in power, as it seemed, firmly and permanently; when the preponderance of that party was immense, and when there seemed little prospect of any change. He may have met with men, who sank under the astonishing popularity of General Jackson, who despaired of the republic, and who therefore shrank from the expression of their opinions. It must be confessed, however, that the author is obnoxious to the charge which has been ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... forts, he carried off his little aide from the McRae Tuesday morning, and left him here Thursday evening, to our infinite delight, for we felt as though we would never again see our dear little Jimmy. He has grown so tall, and stout, that it is really astonishing, considering the short time he has been away.... To our great distress, he jumped up from dinner, and declared he must go to the city on the very next boat. Commodore Hollins would need him, he must be at his post, etc., and in twenty minutes ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... nothing more than simple phenomena of the self-conscious Ego; and that, so far from being the earthly authors of my existence, they are themselves—the creation and offspring of my own thought. And on what ground am I asked to receive this astonishing discovery? Why, simply because I can be sure of nothing but the facts of consciousness. But how are these facts proved? They "need no proof; they are self-evident; they are immediately and irresistibly believed." Be it so. I can just as little doubt of the existence of my ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... with the steady, coldly flaming eyes of Harlan upon him, Harlan's right hand extended slightly, the fingers spread a little as though he was about to offer his hand to the other. Deveny became aware that he was doing an astonishing thing. He was raising his ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... light from the Diskos did seem astonishing great, and this to be because there was so monstrous a darkness all about me there forever. And thereafter would I go onward again, until the pain of my stumblings did bid me surely to have that sweet shining ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... the History of Palestine; Remarkable Character of the Hebrew People; Their small Beginning and astonishing Increases; The Variety of Fortune they underwent; Their constant Attachment to the Promised Land; The Subject presents an interesting Problem to the Historian and Politician; The Connexion with Christianity; Effect of this Religion on the Progress of Society; Importance of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... think very highly of poor Mrs. Broderick, Stephen, and so do I," she remarked one day. "Very few women would bear things in that quiet, uncomplaining way, and the amount of work she gets through is astonishing; but that perpetual dragging in of her husband's name seems ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was not long in perceiving that he must pass Mr. Samuel Weller to get away. He therefore resumed his brisk pace, and advanced, staring straight before him. The most extraordinary thing about the man was, that he was contorting his face into the most fearful and astonishing grimaces that ever were beheld. Nature's handiwork never was disguised with such extraordinary artificial carving, as the man had overlaid his ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the king's chamberlains, the keepers of the door, who sought to lay hand on the king Ahasuerus." But how came this particular circumstance in his personal history, to be selected on this occasion? The Persian records contained events of astonishing magnitude, and romantic interest. They told of mighty exploits, and splendid conquests!—Again we discern that divine superintendence, by which Ahasuerus was led to a circumstance of his own time, in which that very individual was named, whose life was now in imminent ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... confined ourselves to questions of leather and even of liquor- saddlers and breeches-makers and how to get excellent claret cheap- -and matters like "good trains" and the habits of small game. His lore on these last subjects was astonishing—he managed to interweave the station-master with the ornithologist. When he couldn't talk about greater things he could talk cheerfully about smaller, and since I couldn't accompany him into reminiscences of the fashionable ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... evidence of this man's astonishing coolness is the fact that, at the very time when the market was closing on Friday, when it was whispered all over the country that he was arranging terms of peace for the Standard Oil with Mr. Rogers, Mr. Lawson was ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... she appeared looking strangely well, and every day she grew better until she regained her girlish figure and the quick dance of movement which was a grace and a joy in the silent peacefulness of the old house. Her grace and lightness were astonishing, and one day, coming down dressed to go in the carriage, she raced across the library, opened her escritoire, hunting through its innumerable drawers for one of the sums of money which she kept there wrapped up ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... hundred yards off. Keeping the dog behind us, we hurried round by the east shore to avoid climbing the higher ledges, which rose sixty or seventy feet along the middle of the islet. These bare, flinty ledges, when not encumbered by bowlders, are grand things to run on. One can get over them at an astonishing pace. Once, as we ran on, we heard the bellow repeated, and, on coming within twenty or thirty rods of where it had seemed ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... inferred that comets and meteors equally have an origin foreign to the solar system, but are drawn into it temporarily by the sun's attraction, and occasionally fixed in it by the backward pull of some planet. But the crowning fact was reserved for the last. It was the astonishing one that the August meteors move in the same orbit with the bright comet of 1862—that the comet, in fact, is but a larger member of the family named "Perseids" because their radiant point is situated in ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... or schooners aground on the bars, and the boarders and cottagers from the cities had not yet come to East Wellmouth. Also the opening of the High Cliff House was getting to be a worn-out topic. So Emily Howes, her appearance and behavior, and John Kendrick, HIS behavior and his astonishing recklessness in attempting to wrest a portion of the county law practice from Heman Daniels, were welcomed as dispensations and ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a uniform rule among his fellow-workers to do exactly the opposite to his own idea; there was an astonishing unanimity in working by the clock; where the hour of closing was five o'clock the preparations began five minutes before, with the hat and overcoat over the back of the chair ready for the stroke of the hour. This concert of action was curiously universal, no "overtime" ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... who has described an East End parish in which he spent some of his earliest years. Over that parish, he says, might have been written Dante's inscription over the entrance to the Inferno: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." After speaking of its physical misery and its supernatural and perfectly astonishing deadness, he says that he embarked on a voyage round the world, and had the opportunity of seeing savage life in all conceivable conditions of savage degradation; ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... the privileged brawlers, who ought to be punished by penalties more severe than mere private individuals. Religion is an all-powerful weapon. 'The priest,' says Montesquieu, 'takes the man from the cradle, and accompanies him to the tomb;' is it then astonishing that he should have so much control over the mind of the people, and that it is requisite to make laws, in order that under a pretence of religion it should not trouble the public peace? What should be the nature of such a law? I maintain that one only can be efficacious, and that is banishment ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... had he been unprepared, he would have started and looked round at the scream and the crash of the victim falling. But a man absorbed in prayer on, let us say, a tenth floor, is, in point of fact, quite unlikely to hear a crash in the basement, or a scream even nearer to him. But the most astonishing thing about The Eye of Apollo is the staging. In order to provide the essentials, Mr. Chesterton has to place "the heiress of a crest and half a county, as well as great wealth," who is blind, in a typist's ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... were really there and awake, or asleep and dreaming up-stairs in his bed. Elmira came close beside him and clutched his arm—even that did not clear his bewildered perceptions into certainty. It is always easier for the normal mind, when confronted by astonishing spectacles, to doubt its own accuracy rather than believe in them. "Do you see him?" he whispered, sharply, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... most astonishing rumours continue to come in from Giants' Bay. In addition to the disappearance recorded in a recent issue, we have received information that a whole congress of anthropomorphists has been missing for a week. They were quartered at Cormoran's ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... knew that the person running toward her was Captain Cy has not been satisfactorily explained even yet. She cannot explain it and neither can the captain. And equally astonishing was the latter's answer. He certainly had not heard her voice often enough to recognize ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... what did these spectral moths feed? A pallid boy of sixteen who guided me about the town told me that he had been born in a cave; that he slept in one every night, and worked underground all day. His large brown eyes could see objects in the dark where all was of inky blackness to me. It is astonishing with what unconcern mites of children romp and ramble through these corridors, where there is danger not only on account of pitfalls, but also of the roof falling in. Where I went, guided by a child of ten, every now and then I was ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... in the gusty wind, making me think of the revolving lights on a foggy night out on the coast. Now and again an unfastened door swung open and shut again, with a bang like a minute gun. My inward comment on these occasions was that, even in our nervous times, there must still be an astonishing number of people without nerves; for such bangs thunder through the whole house right up to the garret, as a gust fills the passage, and doors fly open and shut, shut and open; everybody feels the discomfort, but ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... understanding was convinced, and his heart was touched; and regardless of every worldly consideration, and devoted to the cause of truth, he openly embraced Christianity; and before kings and people, Jews and Gentiles, he pleaded the religion of the crucified One with unquenchable zeal and astonishing power. The evidence of such a man on any doctrine {101} connected with our Christian faith must be looked to with ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... population. Woman suffrage in the South would so vastly increase the white vote that it would guarantee white supremacy if it otherwise stood in danger of overthrow. If a sly dread of female supremacy is troubling the doubter he may find comfort in the rather astonishing fact that white males over 21 are considerably in excess of white females over 21 in all except Maryland and North Carolina; negro females over 21 exceed negro males in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia, but the restrictions in ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various
... prose writers have drunk inspiration—a book, moreover, to which, from the hardy deeds which it narrates, and the spirit of strange and romantic enterprise which it tends to awaken, England owes many of her astonishing discoveries both by sea and land, and no inconsiderable ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... from some of them; and a change of form from beast to man, or from man to beast, while still preserving individual identity, would not seem at all incredible, or even odd, to them. By and by, however, the number of creatures having these astonishing powers would decrease, as the circle of experience widened. But there would linger a belief in remarkable instances, as at Shan-si, in China, where it is believed that there is still a bird which ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... soul of good-nature—but she was much more than that. She was by far the most sensible, genial, and worldly of the Inside Saints; it was, in fact, astonishing that she should be an Inside Saint ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... himself unexpectedly able to forward Mr. Green's views relative to the cleaning of 'The Burgomaster's Breakfast.' The inclosed compound has just reached him from Amsterdam. It is made from a recipe found among the papers of Rembrandt himself—has been used with the most astonishing results on the Master's pictures in every gallery of Holland, and is now being applied to the surface of the largest Rembrandt in Mr. P.'s own collection. Directions for use: Lay the picture flat, pour the whole contents of the bottle over it gently, ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... from Mr. Baring that the French translation is bad and incomplete, and that the original work, vast as it is, is only a preliminary fragment of a truly enormous novel which death prevented Dostoievsky from finishing. Death, this is yet another proof of your astonishing clumsiness! The scene with the old monk at the beginning of "The Brothers Karamazov" is in the very grandest heroical manner. There is nothing in either English or French prose literature to hold ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... but looked at him with eyes streaming, drawing back from him. Her embrace was astonishing even to herself, for as a child Rhodo had been a figure of awe to her, and the feeling had deepened as the years had gone on, knowing as she did his work throughout the world for the Ry of Rys. In his face was secrecy, knowledge, and some tragic underthing which gave him, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Cambridge man across the table exposes the eccentricity of a friend who wished to know in what canton he was travelling; the squire with the pink and white daughters is amazed at the absence of police. In the very heart of the noblest home of liberty which Europe has seen our astonishing nation lives and moves with as contented and self-satisfied an ignorance of the laws, the history, the character of the country or its people, as if Switzerland were Timbuctoo. Still, even sublime ignorance such as this is ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... matter, and speedily became convinced that we needed to revolutionize our whole training in marksmanship. Sims was given the lead in organizing and introducing the new system; and to him more than to any other one man was due the astonishing progress made by our fleet in this respect, a progress which made the fleet, gun for gun, at least three times as effective, in point of fighting efficiency, in 1908, as it was in 1902. The shots that hit are the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... nothing astonishing in what are called miracles. Only those who are mesmerised by matter can find a difficulty in such events. I am aware that the evidence for miracles is logically and historically untrustworthy; I am not defending recorded miracles. My point ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... She manages, with astonishing skill, to keep the household in comfort. She goes through trials of sickness, death, agonizing suspense, and ever with the same heroic cheerfulness, that her anxious husband may be spared the pangs which ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... gazing with vacant wonder at that and the companion saucer which he holds in his hand, joins in admiration of its astonishing beauties! ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... sixty-six years so little. The fact that the two sixes stood together caused her, according to an old country saying[3] (which, however, was not universally believed in) to be regarded as a witch. It was said that she sometimes milked her black goat for hours at a time, and that this goat gave an astonishing quantity of milk, but that in milking this goat she was in reality drawing the milk out of the udders of the cows belonging to persons she hated, and that she had an especial grudge against Farmer Rodel's cattle. Moreover, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of her was astonishing enough. The Princess, a delicate sickly woman, together with our little Countess, had left Montroud in the night with fifty horses. The Princess rode on a pillion behind M. de Coligny, Cecile in the same way, and the little Duke of Enghien was on ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "What is there astonishing about it?" asked the girl. "I have been out boating with Mr. Locker, and it did not amaze you. You need not be afraid; Mr. Hemphill says he has had a good deal of practise in rowing, and if he does not understand the management of a boat I am sure I do. It is only for an hour, and we shall be ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... them to learn it? The art of conversing with absent persons, and of hearing from them, of communicating to them at a distance, without the aid of another, our feelings, intentions, and wishes, is an art whose value may be explained to children of almost any age whatever. By what astonishing process has this useful and agreeable art become so irksome to them? They have been forced to learn it in spite of themselves, and to use it in ways they cannot understand. A child is not anxious to perfect the instrument used in tormenting him; but make the same thing ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... one hundred and fifty days' work on the average. The following table, published in 1856-1857, by Mr. Guthrie, then Secretary of the Treasury, discloses a condition of things very remarkable; but no wise astonishing to those who have investigated the causes of the disparity. The ratio of annual per capita production to each man, woman, and child, white and black, in the respective States, exclusive of the gains or earnings of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... for me! You've been waiting for me!" as if it were the most astonishing fact in history. "And since when have you been ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... for the first time that Dexie wore a new ring, and the volley of questions she poured forth regarding it was quite astonishing. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... the time she gave the impression of swift, butterfly movement. While talking to Henry she took some red stuff out of her bag and rubbed it on her lips! This frank "making-up" in public was a far more astonishing thing in the 'eighties than it would be now. But I liked Miss Sarah for it, as I liked her ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... fearfulness of the rumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only are whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a thousand shores, you would not come to any chiseled hearth-stone, or aught hospitable ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... occupied by little groups, which usually consisted of a bonne and a baby, or of a chevalier and a hopelessly unclassable dog; for the dogs of Versailles belong to breeds that no man living could classify, the most prevalent type in clumsiness of contour and astonishing shagginess of coat resembling nothing more natural than those human travesties of the canine race familiar to us ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... bird safely housed at the back part of our store, where we kept our horses, and after astonishing Steel Spring by telling him that he was to make his entree into Melbourne on the back of the bird, we again took the road, and were soon gratified by meeting our partner, Smith, with two huge loads of merchandise of all descriptions, and each drawn ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... the examination of the urinary and sexual organs we may consider, at the beginning, a false impression that prevails to an astonishing extent. Many horsemen are in the habit of pressings upon the back of a horse over the loins or of sliding the ends of the fingers along on either side of the median line of this region. If the horse depresses his back it is at once said ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... and Applegarth and I got on so well that he asked me down to his place. Oxford man, clever, a fine musician, and an astronomer; has built himself a little observatory—magnificent telescope. By Jove! you should hear him handle the violin. Astonishing fellow! Not much of a talker; rather dry in his manner; but no end of energy, bubbling over with vital force. He began as a barrister, but couldn't get on, and saw his capital melting. 'Hang it!' said he, 'I must make some use of what money ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... worn with half rations and whole-day marches, there came never one jeer, never one taunting or exultant word, as they tramped into the capital of their enemies. The bearing of the troops was chivalrous in its gentleness, and not the least astonishing sight to the inhabitants was the passing of the Guards, the dandy troops of England, the body-servants of the great Queen. Black with sun and dust, staggering after a march of thirty-eight miles, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with feverish but happy eyes. "You see, Nickols will represent the cosmopolitan in judgment upon the normally developed insular. I remember once that Mr. Justice Harlan said that in an opinion on freight rates I had sent up to him I had represented both the cosmopolitan and the insular interest with astonishing equity, and I told him that I considered that it took at least six generations of insular mind culture to see any kind of national equity. The same thing holds good with a garden. It takes the sixth generation on a piece of land to produce ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... off his coat and barrad, and immediately plunged in and swam with astonishing rapidity towards the spot where Shawn and the dogs—the latter still engaged in their ferocious contest—were in the lake. Shawn now had regained considerable strength, and was about to despatch the enemies of his brave defenders, when, on looking back to ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... on windows (1851) (S595), with the introduction of American petroleum, speedily dispelled the almost subterraneous gloom of the laborer's cottage. Meanwhile photography, which began to be used in 1839, revealed the astonishing fact that the sun is always ready not only to make a picture but to take one, and that nothing is so humble as to ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... up from his seat with an impatient air, and began to pace the room. His daughter had said very little, but that little had been beyond measure irritating to him. It galled him to think that this marriage should seem to her an astonishing—perhaps even a preposterous—thing. True that the woman he was going to marry was younger, by a year or two, than his own daughter. In his own mind there was so little sense of age, that he could scarcely understand why the union should seem discordant. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... character, received, like the hermits of old, the visits of pilgrims, not only from his own nation, but from the farthest boundaries of Europe. Here too is Bonnet's abode, and, a few steps beyond, the house of that astonishing woman Madame de Stael: perhaps the first of her sex, who has really proved its often claimed equality with, the nobler man. We have before had women who have written interesting-novels and poems, in which their tact at observing drawing-room ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... It is quite astonishing that nobody has before been struck by what I have in my eye. People go round all the while writing about Old Greenwich Village, the harbour, the Ghetto, the walk uptown. Coney Island, the Great White Way, the subway ride, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... live a thousand years, we should never forget the impression made upon us by the adventure of the corpse, where the Don falls upon the priests who are escorting the bier by torch light, and by the sequel thereto, his midnight adventures in the Brown Mountain. We can only speak of these scenes as astonishing—they have never been equalled in their line. There is another wonderful book which describes what we may call the city life of Spain, as the other describes the vida del campo—we allude of course to Le Sage's novel, ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... followed in exultant pursuit. Breathed and McGregor opened with redoubled violence. Shells dropped and exploded among the skirmishers, while thicker and faster they fell around the position of the reserves. Pennington replied with astonishing effect, for every shot hit the mark, and the opposing artillerists were unable to silence a single union gun. But still they came, until it seemed that nothing could stop their victorious career. "Men, be ready," ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... of the chapel of Loretto, the wandering Jew, the visions of Stockius and Sims, and St. Anthony's obliging an ass to adore the sacrament as related by Mosheim, are astonishing lying wonders and ridiculous inventions. The Protestant daughters of mystic Babylon are not free from lying wonders to this present day. The book of Mormon contains fabulous stories; the spiritualists' work is freighted with many satanic wonders, and frequently we hear of visions ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... by Kate. The elopement from St. Sebastian's, the doubling of Cape Horn, the shipwreck on the coast of Peru, the rescue of the royal banner from the Indians of Chili, the fatal duel in the dark, the astonishing passage of the Andes, the tragical scenes at Tucuman and Cuzco, the return to Spain in obedience to a royal and a papal summons, the visit to Rome and the interview with the Pope— finally, the return ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... flowers appear in clusters at the hoary stein's summit, in June and July, also bears them. Often this ice formation assumes exquisite feathery, whimsical forms, bursting the bark asunder where an astonishing quantity of sap gushes forth and freezes. Indeed, so much sap sometimes goes to the making of this crystal flower, that it would seem as if an extra reservoir in the soil must pump some up to supply it ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... and ethical, that underlay the Greek view of life, using as its medium of exposition the ancient national myths, so the latter dealt with the particular phases of contemporary life, employing the machinery of a free burlesque. The achievement of Aristophanes, in fact, is more astonishing, in a sense, than that of Aeschylus. Starting with what is always, prima facie, the prose of everyday life, its acrid controversies, its vulgar and tedious types, and even its particular individuals—for Aristophanes does not hesitate to introduce his contemporaries in person on ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... and placed, where it deserves to be, among the masterpieces. And yet in this last piece the colour is not only in a singular degree interpretative of the subject, but at the same time technically astonishing—with certain subtleties of unusual juxtaposition and modulation, delightful to the craftsman, which are hardly seen again until we come to the latter half of the present century. So that here we have the great ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... think the discard of the Rejects two hundred years ago has produced for us an unexpected reward. There are three natives under the canopy before me and their physical perfection and complete adaptation to this hellish gravity is astonishing." ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... some time he retained a marked preference for "Good morning, Saire," and "Thank you very mush," over all other locutions, and fell back upon them on all possible and many impossible occasions. And he could do some sleight-of-hand tricks with remarkable skill and humour, and fold paper with quite astonishing results. Meanwhile Mr. Van der Pant sought temporary employment in England, went for long rides upon his bicycle, exchanged views with Mr. Britling upon a variety of subjects, and became a wonderful ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Grandfather's biggest dinner-tray heaped with fruit, among which I descried African pomegranates and other exotics. Still more was I amazed when other slaves crowded in behind them, carrying baskets of hot-house melons of astonishing size and insistent perfume. Last of the procession was Agathemer, who stood in the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... promised rewards, fought with the greatest fury. In vain the Normans attempted to fly; they were overtaken and overpowered by the multitude of their assailants. The number that perished by the sword and drowning was astonishing; those who attempted to escape were overtaken, and shared the fate of the others; and but few got back to Normandy with the news of their defeat. Never was a sea-fight in which personal courage was more nobly exhibited; ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... a tone!' continued the King. 'Hear, in contrast, the music of this Stanza of Rousseau's [Repeats a stanza]. Who could express that in German with such melody?' And so on; branching through a great many provinces; King's knowledge of all Literature, new and ancient, 'perfectly astonishing to me;' and I myself, the swift-speaking Gottsched, rather copious than otherwise. Catastrophe, and summary of the whole, was: Gottsched undertook to translate the Rousseau Stanza into German of moderate softness; and by the aid of water did so, that very night; [Copied ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... character is a great incentive to act with propriety and spirit. But I should be sorry to contribute in any degree to your acquiring an excess of self-sufficiency ... I own indeed that when ... to display my extensive erudition, I have quoted Greek, Latin and French sentences one after another with astonishing celerity; or have got into my Old-hock humour and fallen a-raving about princes and lords, knights and geniuses, ladies of quality and harpsichords; you, with a peculiar comic smile, have gently reminded me of the importance of a man to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... banished the idea of Valancourt, though they more frequently revived it. These brought to her recollection the prospects among the Pyrenees, which they had admired together, and had believed nothing could excel in grandeur. How often did she wish to express to him the new emotions which this astonishing scenery awakened, and that he could partake of them! Sometimes too she endeavoured to anticipate his remarks, and almost imagined him present. She seemed to have arisen into another world, and to have left every trifling thought, every trifling ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... believed this other island to be uninhabited, as we saw no people on its coast at our arrival; but on walking along the beach, we noticed the prints of human feet of such uncommon magnitude, that if the rest of the body were of similar proportions, the natives must be of astonishing size. We at length noticed a path which led into the country, which nine of us determined to pursue, that we might explore the island, as we imagined it was of small size, and could not consequently have many inhabitants. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... in to read the Bible for the purpose of putting to shame other boys double his age who could not read nearly so well. Uncle James appears to have taken much pains with William's schooling, but his aunt said that "how he picks up everything is astonishing, for he never stops playing and jumping about." When he was four years and three months old, we hear that he went out to dine at the vicar's, and amused the company by reading for them equally well whether the book was turned upside ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... with the Army-men. So with Salway, Ludlow had been nominated on the new body at a venture. Thinking he might be wanted to help the Rump in their struggle with the Army, he had returned from Ireland, leaving Colonel John Jones as his locum tenens there; and he had not heard the astonishing news of Lambert's action till his landing on the Welsh coast. He had then wavered for a while between going back to Ireland and coming on to London, but had decided for the latter. Before his arrival in town he had heard of his nomination to the Committee of Safety and resolved not to accept ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... boys, jump out, and never mind the luggage. George will see to that." With astonishing activity the old man ran up the gangway, followed by the boys, and found May waiting for them. Their greetings were of the simplest, and May calling the chief steward told him to shew the gentlemen their cabins, while Goody handed Hal an envelope as ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... there is a pleasant valley replenished with date trees. On the east side of this vale is a small town called Dibnee, very little inhabited except in the date harvest. In the months of June and July the wind blows in this valley with astonishing violence; yet only a short gun-shot off towards the town of Delisha, over against the road where the ships ride, there is hardly there a breath of wind. About 100 years ago [1500] this island was conquered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... sober, yet a general tone is produced of great strength and astonishing effectiveness. The illumination is that of the open air, tempered and modified by an overhanging canopy of green; the great effect is obtained by the brilliant grayish white of the saint's alb, dominating and keeping in due balance the red of the rochet and the under-robes, the ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... yet misrepresenting and misleading, has unfortunately survived to injure both the man who wrote it and the man about whom it was written. It is quoted in order to show the sort of covert fire in the rear to which Franklin was subjected throughout his term of service. It is astonishing now, when the evidence is all before us and the truth is attainable, to read such a description of such a patriot as Franklin, a man who went through labors and anxieties for the cause probably only surpassed by those of Washington, and whose services did more to promote ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... stories may be explained, Mrs. Marchmont. So would I have said a year ago; but since we last met at your hospitable fireside, my wife and I have gone through a very astonishing experience. We 'can a tale unfold.' No man was better inclined to laugh at ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... never been able to learn anything more satisfactory than that, in the hot and unpeopled gorges west of the Dead Sea, there is a thin and yellow serpent called the Neshabiyeh, which flings itself across from one point to another in the air with astonishing velocity and force. It is therefore named after Neshabeh, a dart or arrow in Arabic. The natives also apply to it the epithet of "flying." The wound which it inflicts is said to be highly inflammatory and deadly, and from this effect it may be called "fiery." It may be also that, ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... much eagerness to be witnesses of the wonderful event, one expecting her to be delivered of a giant, another of some enormous monster, and all were in earnest expectation of something grand and astonishing; when, after waiting with great impatience a considerable time, behold, ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... was nursing a superficial wound in the foot. He cuddled it, baby-wise, but he looked up from it often to curse with an astonishing utter abandon straight at the noses of his captors. He consigned them to red regions; he called upon the pestilential wrath of strange gods. And with it all he was singularly free from recognition of the finer ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... written for nearly two months. At least, no letter from him had reached Janice. The Day family in Polktown had not gone into mourning in the Spring and Aunt 'Mira gloried in a most astonishing plum-colored silk with "r'yal purple" trimmings. Nevertheless, Janice had now all but given up ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... upon the keys only to snatch them away again as if they were white-hot metal, and Serviss fancied her cheek grew pale. The third time she clashed out a few jarring chords intermixed with quite astonishing roulade on the treble—an unaccountable interruption, as if a third hand had been thrust in to confuse her. She stopped, and he ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... a long distance, sometimes, to make the astonishing discovery that pleasure comes with the doing of very simple things. We had come from over the seas to find the act of leaning on a window casement as exciting as it was satisfying. It is true that from our two inn ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... start will carry a man far. Under the conditions of either war or peace, it is astonishing how many times all things come in balance for the man who is less fearful of rebuff than of being counted a cypher. One of Britain's great armored leaders, Lt. Gen. Sir Giffard Martel, digested the lesson of his whole life experience into this sentence: "If you take ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Logic, says the ancient platitude, hangs by the end of a philosopher's beard; and an American woman would as soon grow hair on her face as admit reason to her soul. Therein, doubtless, lies her charm, her artless allurements, her enigmatic manner, her astonishing success. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... dread of losing it again efface from the memory all the obligations in the world. And to prove the truth of what he said, he told us briefly what had happened to a certain Christian gentleman almost at that very time, the strangest case that had ever occurred even there, where astonishing and marvellous things are happening every instant. In short, he ended by saying that what could and ought to be done was to give the money intended for the ransom of one of us Christians to him, so that he might with it buy a vessel there ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... then there is less danger of the beaver sinking before he can be removed from the water. The hunter, while waiting for a shot, makes a noise with the handle of his knife against a stick in imitation of a beaver cutting wood—a sound somewhat similar to that of the boring of a large auger. It is astonishing how far, on a still night, beavers will hear such a sound and come to help their friends at work. When Oo-koo-hoo shot beaver he charged his gun with four slugs and fired for the head, as he explained that ordinary ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... set of fellows, brother, capital fellows, I promise you; they will steal you the very buttons off each other's trousers in perfect security, although in the teeth of a loaded musket,* and they live in clover and enjoy a reputation for forty miles round, which is quite astonishing. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... affair had failed, he should think something of quite another sort might succeed. Enthusiasm, as I say, had not come at first to Isabel, but it came to-day and made her feel almost happy. It was astonishing what happiness she could still find in the idea of procuring a pleasure for her husband. It was a pity, however, that Edward Rosier had ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... interesting to tell you. I left the office an hour ago. I'm at the place where I live when I'm in Salonika. Write down the address. Can you come here? I've found out something astonishing!" ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... found himself at the head of fourteen thousand fierce warriors, and commenced ravaging oriental Russia. For a season his march was a constant victory. Many thousand Siberian exiles escaped from their gloomy realms and joined his standards. So astonishing was his success, that even Catharine trembled. Pugatshef waged a war of extermination against the nobles who were the supporters of Catharine, in cold blood beheading their wives and children, and conferring ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... piece of news was revealed to me. Astonishing at least to me, though Josephine says that I need not have been astonished had I kept my eyes open, inasmuch as the affair was going on under my very nose, and everybody in town except myself knew how it was likely to end. I refer ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
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