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More "Overwhelm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gallantry, and the latter perhaps of a kind, which in England would not be deemed very innocent. The champagne then goes round, and the ladies drink as much as the gentlemen, that is to say, enough to exhilarate, not to overwhelm the animal spirits. A French woman with three or four glasses of wine in her head, would certainly make an English one stare; but France is the land of love, and it is an universal maxim that life is insipid ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... fury; the waves grew higher and mightier, and became rushing hills of water, overwhelming, irresistible. To me, quailing in my frail bark, in all the consciousness of helplessness and ruin, it seemed as though the winds and the waves were really sentient beings combining to overwhelm me, and increasing their ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... been many times invaded, the Welsh have never been conquered. Powerful tribes, like the Romans, Saxons and Normans, have tried to overwhelm them. Even when English and German kings attempted to crush their spirit and blot out their language and literature, the Welsh resisted ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... it, as he plumed himself upon his adventure, was a certain pestering consciousness that all was not so well with him as observers might guess. But he resolutely put this away each time it threatened to overwhelm him. He would cross no bridge until he came to it. He even combated this undercurrent of sanity by wording part of an interview with himself some day to ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... "You confound me, you overwhelm me!" said Khlobuev, staring at his companion in open-eyed astonishment. "I can scarcely believe that your words are true, seeing that for such a trust an active, indefatigable man would be necessary. Moreover, how could I leave my wife and children ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... relays through all the subsequent periods affirm their own contemporaries to have attained. Every decennium is regularly worse than that which precedes it, until the mind is perfectly confounded by the Pelion upon Ossa which must overwhelm the last term of the twenty-five. It is the mere necessity of a logical sorites, that such a horrible race of villains as the men of the twenty-fifth decennium ought not to be suffered to breathe. Now, the whole error arises ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... present. Politics, trade, and art were now represented. With these she was abundantly supplied for all her future career. But that was not to be, the gate was still open, and the destructive influence of Greece was soon to send in a host of new deities, who were destined not only to overwhelm the old Roman gods—which in itself we might forgive—but to sap away the old Roman virtues, to the maintenance of which the atmosphere of these old gods was essential. The forerunner of this influence was in himself ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... consequent danger of destruction. On one occasion, says Kane: "We are lifted bodily eighteen inches out of water. The hummocks are reared up around the ship, so as to rise a couple of feet above our bulwarks, five feet above our deck. They are very often ten and twelve feet high, and threaten to overwhelm us. Add to this, darkness, snow, cold, and the absolute destitution of surrounding shores." The temperature fell below zero and the ships seemed destined to winter in Wellington Channel, but fortunately a strong northwest gale, in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... thing at a time, if you please. Positively you overwhelm me with surprise. In one breath you tell me you are 'John Kennedy,' and then, without giving a poor girl a chance, you say you are the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... harsh, hard, and solid, for their purpose, which they relinquish, and go to a fresh spot that works more freely? Or may they not in other places fall in with a soil as much too loose and mouldering, liable to flounder, and threatening to overwhelm them ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... them of the approach of Wieroos. Together they went to the edge of the wood and looked up to see five red-robed creatures dropping slowly in ever-lessening spirals toward their little amphitheater. With no attempt at concealment they came, sure of their ability to overwhelm these two fugitives, and with the fullest measure of self-confidence they landed in the clearing but a few yards from the man and ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... those women who appear to have been born women by mistake—who are always chafing at their unfortunate fate, and endeavouring to emulate—even to overwhelm—men; in which latter effort they are too frequently successful. She was a tall elegant woman of about thirty years of age, with a decidedly handsome face, though somewhat sharp of feature. She possessed ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... shadow of the top of the palm tree resteth (for a short time) at its base. Perform various kinds of sacrifices, and enjoy, and give O Bharata, everything thou likest. On the fourteenth year hence, a great calamity will overwhelm thee.'" ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... you see the Golden River issue, and shall cast into the stream at its source three drops of holy water, for him, and for him only, the river shall turn to gold. But no one failing in his first can succeed in a second attempt; and if any one shall cast unholy water into the river it will overwhelm him, and he will become a black stone." So saying, the King of the Golden River turned away and deliberately walked into the center of the hottest flame of the furnace. His figure became red, white, transparent, dazzling,—a blaze of intense light,—rose, trembled, and disappeared. The King of ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... challenge British maritime supremacy. The great military machine of the French army was then turned eastward against the armies of the coalition which England, under Pitt, was forming; and in a series of astonishing campaigns it was used to beat down the Austrians in 1805 at Austerlitz; to overwhelm the Prussians in 1806 at Jena and Auerstadt; and to force the Russians, after {190} a severe winter campaign in East Prussia, to come to terms in 1807. Napoleon and the Tsar, Alexander, meeting on the bridge ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... Burke from the same cause, added to his overpowering autocracy of temper—were but too much calculated to throw suspicion on the cause in which they were employed, and to produce a reaction in favor of the person whom they were meant to overwhelm. "Rogo vos, Judices,"—Mr. Hastings might well have said,—"si iste disertus est, ideo me damnari oportet?" [Footnote: Seneca, Controvers. lib. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... On the 12th of February a strong gale with a heavy sea got up, and the next day the wind and swell so increased that Columbus was aware that a heavy tempest was approaching. It soon burst upon them with frightful violence, increasing still more on the 14th, the waves threatening every moment to overwhelm their battered barks. After laying to for three hours they were compelled to scud before the wind. During the darkness of the night the Pinta was lost sight of. The Admiral steered as well as he could to the north-east to approach the coast of Spain, showing lights to the Pinta; but no ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... of heredity must be occult and complex. The offspring of a rebellious and disobedient child, is certainly entitled to no filial instincts; and some day the strain will tell, and you will overwhelm your mother with ingratitude, black as that ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... determination. Indeed, when a man is working through a hard state, in gaining his freedom from nervous fears, these imps seem to hold councils of war, and to devise new plans of attack in order to take him by surprise and overwhelm him in an emergency. But every sharp attack, if met with quiet "willingness," brings a defeat for the assailants, until finally the resistant imps are conquered and disappear. Occasionally a stray imp will return, and try to arouse ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... must be done, and both the servants and the assistant must receive absolute commands from you. The stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my mind; but when I am alone the horrors I have suffered from laudanum, the degradation, the blighted utility, almost overwhelm me. If (as I feel for the first time a soothing confidence it will prove) I should leave you restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not myself only that will love and honor you; every friend I have (and, thank God! in spite of this wretched vice ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... does not reason sufficiently declare, that there is no real good which you should desire too ardently, or the possession of which you should allow to transport you: and that there is no evil that should be able to overwhelm you, or the suspicion of which should distract you? and that all these things assume too melancholy or too cheerful an appearance through our own error? But if fools find this error lessened by time, so that, though the cause remains the same, they are not affected in ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... yet even he agreed with Arius in a philosophical doctrine of the unity of God which was inconsistent with a real incarnation. Even the noble work of Origen had helped to strengthen the philosophical influences which were threatening to overwhelm the definite historic revelation. Tertullian had long since warned the churches of the danger; but a greater than Tertullian was needed now to free them from their bondage to philosophy. Are we ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... cries the count, holding up both his hands in remonstrance; "you overwhelm me. I require no such inducements; they horrify me. Enrica Guinigi is sufficient in herself—so bright a jewel ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... nearly met with a most serious accident. We were all sitting or standing about the stern of the vessel, admiring the magnificent dark blue billows following us, with their curling white crests, mountains high. Each wave, as it approached, appeared as if it must overwhelm us, instead of which, it rushed grandly by, rolling and shaking us from stem to stern, and sending ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Bonaparte; he had saved our liberty, but he has since destroyed it by the reestablishment of the nobility and by the Concordat. The society of the 'Philadelphi' has as yet no well-defined plans for preventing the evils with which ambition will continue to overwhelm France; but when peace is restored we shall see if it is impossible to force Bonaparte to restore republican institutions, and meanwhile we are overcome by grief and despair. The brave chief of the 'Philadelphi', the pure ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... overtaken by a sandstorm many miles from the camp, and had struggled on till absolutely exhausted, not daring to lie down to rest lest the fast whirling sand should overwhelm him; and when late at night the wind had fallen he was hopelessly and utterly lost, and had thrown himself down in a sheltered spot deep hollowed out by the wind between two gigantic dunes, and had at once fallen into the deep sleep ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... And Lenore returned the greeting calmly, watching him steadily and waiting for the nameless sensations she had imagined would attend this meeting. But whatever these might be, they did not come to overwhelm her. The gladness of his voice, as he had spoken so eagerly to her father about the debt, had made her feel very kindly toward him. It might have been natural for a young man to resent this dragging debt. But he was ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... vanity overwhelm him to get recognition of some kind from Bellydown, who disdained even ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... again alone, sat down at a turn in the path, just out of sight of the house, and waited. Soon she saw, with a certain grim satisfaction, Zora and Bles emerging from the swamp engaged in earnest conversation. Here was an opportunity to overwhelm both with an unforgettable reprimand. She rose before them like ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... verse—"I have nourished and brougth up children, and they have rebelled against me,"—when the claims of God, and their violation and rejection of them; His forbearance, and their ingratitude, appeared to overwhelm them; they sobbed aloud, ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... be sleepy. The storm which was not yet in the sky had already begun to weigh on her. She felt a most unbearable heaviness which seemed to overwhelm her, and at the same time a nervous uneasiness took possession of her. The electricity in the air was penetrating ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... "Indeed you overwhelm me, sirs," said she, smiling. "Your impatience shall be satisfied, you shall passion and languish no longer!" And now as I bowed above her hand came her whisper, "I go to sing for ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... only excuse for marriage, and the only thing which will carry one safely through the troubles and vexations of married life, so love for an occupation is the only thing which will carry one safely and surely through the troubles which overwhelm ninety-five out of every one hundred who choose the life of a merchant, and very many in ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... they could not have failed to see that tilting against foreigners would ruin us in the whole Northwest. New Hampshire and Ohio should forbear tilting against the fugitive-slave law in such way as to utterly overwhelm us in Illinois with the charge of enmity to the Constitution itself. Kansas, in her confidence that she can be saved to freedom on 'squatter sovereignty,' ought not to forget that to prevent the spread and nationalization of slavery is a national concern, and must be attended ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... added she, "dear Monsieur d'Artagnan, do not overwhelm me to-day, I again implore you! I am like the branch torn from the trunk, I no longer hold to anything in this world—a current drags me on, I know not whither. I love madly, even to the point of coming to tell it, wretch that I am, over the ashes of the dead, and I do not blush for ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her for giving way to grief. "It is like rebellion—like rebellion," he denounced, turning away his head to wipe a tear hastily; and I wondered and thanked God that I should be a comfort to that tender young girl, whose lot on earth had been difficult, whose sorrow was great but could not overwhelm her indomitable spirit, which held a promise of sweetness ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... change the direction of the development of the anomaly during the time of germination. [398] The result of my attempt has shown that the choice of the seeds has a manifest influence upon the ultimate development of the monstrosity, but that this influence is not strong enough to overwhelm all other factors. ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... upon the Church and the world! They appear to us as simply absurd, and the result of precocious knavery; not so to the people of that generation. They were looked upon as fearful demonstrations of diabolical power, and preludes to the coming of Satan, with his infernal confederates, to overwhelm the land. The imaginations of all were excited, and their apprehensions morbidly aroused. The very air was filled with rumors, fancies, and fears. The ministers sounded the alarm from their pulpits. The magistrates sharpened the sword of justice. The deputy-governor of the colony, Danforth, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... is still unmistakably evident to the most casual eye; and, from the anxious care with which Barbara looks away from me, when she addresses me, I can perceive that she has observed it, as, indeed, how could she fail to do? If Tou Tou were here, she would overwhelm me with officious questions—would stare me crazy, but Barbara averts her eyes, and ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... neck, is tied up, and just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve brought to him—I say, I do not wonder that they bring a surgeon with it, to let him blood that very moment they tell him of it, that the surprise may not drive the animal spirits from the heart, and overwhelm him. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... impossible not to laugh, and Maurice swallowed his impatience long enough to say, "Jacobus, you overwhelm me!" Then he took his departure, holding the gift between a reluctant thumb and finger. "Funny little beggar," he said to himself, and pitched the stub into the gutter from which Jacky had salvaged it; he didn't look back to see his son hanging over ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... took up a little frock, half made, with the needle hanging to it. The table-drawer had fallen out, and with it the large account-book, the weekly bills, and a sheet of paper covered with figures, and blotted and blistered with tears. The sight seemed to overwhelm him more than all. 'Crying over these! My Violet crying! Oh! what have I ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... table. Prayer meeting and supper she had forgotten entirely. The minister had not come home for his evening meal, and food was furthest from the housekeeper's thoughts. What should she do? What ought she to do? How could she avert the disaster so certain to overwhelm those two young people the moment their ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... made on purpose to frighten superstitious people into fits of piety and devotion, nor to overwhelm devoted cities with destruction; a volcano should be considered as a spiracle to the subterranean furnace, in order to prevent the unnecessary elevation of land, and fatal effects of earthquakes; and we may rest assured, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... first, that the enemy, reinforced from Caimanera or Guantanamo city, would assemble in force on the slopes of the eastern hills, creep up through the scrub until they were within a short distance of the camp, and then overwhelm the marines in a sudden rush-assault. They were known to have six thousand regulars at Guantanamo city, only about fifteen miles away, and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that they might detach a large ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... enough, the factories had to work on the designs they had, and thus for a long time after the outbreak of hostilities standardisation was an impossibility. The versatility of a Latin race in a measure compensated for this; from the outset, the Germans tried to overwhelm the French Air Force, but failed, since they had not the numerical superiority, nor—this equally a determining factor—the versatility and resource of the French pilots. They calculated on a 50 per cent superiority to ensure success; they needed more nearly 400 per cent, ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... mountains they came pouring into Bohemia. Prague was the King's first mark; but the ulterior object was probably Vienna. At Prague lay Marshal Brown with one great army. Daun, the most cautious and fortunate of the Austrian captains, was advancing with another. Frederic determined to overwhelm Brown before Daun should arrive. On the sixth of May was fought, under those walls which, a hundred and thirty years before, had witnessed the victory of the Catholic league and the flight of the unhappy Palatine, a battle more bloody than any which Europe saw during the long interval between ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... demeanor would have gone for much, and indeed it is not at all impossible that a leader of a different stamp from James might even then have so inspired the Highland clansmen, and so made use of his opportunity, as to overwhelm Argyll and the Hanoverian forces, and turn the whole crisis to his favor. But James was peculiarly unsuited to an enterprise of the kind. He had graceful manners, a mild, serene temper, and great power ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... preceded by an intense artillery fire. It was to be the fiercest rain of shells since the Americans had come to the front lines. Then the infantry, supported by tanks and aeroplanes, would follow, going over in waves which it was hoped would overwhelm the Germans. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... and, on a second attempt to look out, he succeeded, and saw indeed an astonishing sight. The sea or waves appeared to be ten or fifteen feet in height of unbroken water, and every approaching billow seemed as if it would overwhelm our vessel, but she continued to rise upon the waves and to fall between the seas in a very wonderful manner. It seemed to be only those seas which caught her in the act of rising which struck her with so much violence and threw such quantities of water aft. On deck there ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fitness must obtain in the accompaniment. The office of the accompaniment is not merely to keep the singer on the pitch. It must help to tell the story by strengthening the mood of the poem. It must not be trivial or insincere, neither must it overwhelm and thus draw the attention of the listeners to itself ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... war in him—scorn, and pity, and wounded love, and pride too proud to sue for a gratitude denied, or quote a sacrifice that was almost without parallel in generosity, all held him speechless. To overwhelm the sinner before him with reproaches, to count and claim the immeasurable debts due to him, to upbraid and to revile the wretched weakness that had left the soil of a guilt not his own to rest upon him—to do ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... foolish youth! Thou seek'st a greatness that will overwhelm thee. Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity Is held from falling by so weak a wind, That it will quickly drop; my day is dim. Thou hast stolen THAT, which after some few hours Were thine without offence; and at my death Thou hast sealed up my expectation; Thy life ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... the approach to the city. How vast it was, how protected, how high, how eaved, how enduring! I was told later that some part of that great bastion was Roman, and I can believe it. The Germans hate to destroy. It overwhelmed me as visions overwhelm, and I felt in its presence as boys feel when they first see the mountains. Had I not been a Christian, I would have worshipped and propitiated this obsession, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... her brain a whirl, her limbs inert. Rape most foul this crowned satyr committed. "He fell upon me as a pack of hounds overwhelm a hunted, wounded she-stag," ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... Fetters had displayed in sending it. Having got the best of the encounter, Caxton had no objection to letting his defeated antagonist discharge his venom against the absent colonel, who would never know of it, and who was already breasting the waves of a sorrow so deep and so strong as almost to overwhelm him. For he had loved the boy; all his hopes had centred around this beautiful man child, who had promised so much that was good. His own future had been planned with reference to him. Now he was dead, and the bereaved father ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Valentine Visconti, the Duke of Milan's daughter, whose dowry had gone to pay the ransom of King John, was at Chateau-Thierry when she heard of her husband's murder. Hers was one of those natures, full of softness and at the same time of fire, which grief does not overwhelm, and in which a passion for vengeance is excited and fed by their despair. She started for Paris in the early part of December, 1407, during the roughest winter, it was said, ever known for several centuries, taking with her ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... gave you credit for a quicker wit, but it is gratifying to learn that you are beginning at last to see that I am in deadly earnest. When I strike there is nothing half-hearted behind my blow; I swear to you that I shall neither relent nor draw back. If ruin overwhelm me, Cynthia Vanrenen shall be involved in my downfall. Picture to yourself the smiles, the whispers, the half-spoken scandal that will cling to her through life. Who will believe her when she says that she was ignorant ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... host of enemies for every useful esculent, while the weeds are suffered to grow unmolested, and are provided with such tenacity of life, and such methods of propagation, that the gardener must maintain a continual struggle or they will hopelessly overwhelm him? What hidden virtue is there in these things, that it is granted them to sow themselves with the wind, and to grapple the earth with this immitigable stubbornness, and to flourish in spite of obstacles, and never to suffer blight beneath any sun or shade, but always to mock their enemies ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... in the morning and, with some difficulty, made his way on deck he found that, as the captain predicted, the sea was far heavier than the night before. Great ridges of water bore down upon the ship, each seeming as if it would overwhelm her; and for the first few minutes Bob expected to see the brig go, head foremost, and sink under his feet. It was not till he reflected that she had lived through it for hours that he began to view the scene with composure. Although the waves ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... have been in love with that sort of woman came very near mental malady. He said "that sort of woman," because the vagueness of the term gave scope to the bitterness of resentment with which he tried to overwhelm her. It enabled him to create some such paradise of pain as that into which the souls of Othello and Desdemona might have gone together. Had he been a Moor of Venice he would doubtless have smothered her with a pillow; but being a New York banker he could only try to slay the image, whose eyes ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... surrounded by an ocean of trees, so vast, so full of endless billows, that it seemed to be pressing on every side to overwhelm them. Gnarled oaks, with branches twisted and knotted as if in rage, rose in groves like tidal waves. Smooth forests of beech-trees, round and gray, swept over the knolls and slopes of land in a mighty ground-swell. But most ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... influence; for, should you fall in his way and be unprotected, direful, indeed, might be the consequences. Sudden disease, like a pestilence at mid-day, might seize you, and on those lovely shores you might pine away and die. Dreadful accidents might overwhelm you and bury all your happiness forever. Therefore be wise ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... here, The black clouds dragging near, Against this lonely elm Thrust all his strength to maim and overwhelm ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... half were not sufficiently strong to carry the second position; so I sent for the two reserve battalions, and ordered the cavalry to pass the river, and follow on our right flank the march of our columns. During this time the enemy had endeavored to overwhelm us on both sides. Major Becdelievre brought together what remained of his battalion, rushed upon the fusileers and forced them back into the wood whence they had come." These were splendid feats of arms. But the excessive inferiority ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... turbulent agitator, which everyone seemed to hear, and be acquainted with, made the audience hostile to begin with. It was not a demonstrable hostility; but one felt it was there, ready to break out, and overwhelm this stormy petrel of ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... the fearful commotion, may be thrown safely on to the shores of reunion. It was anticipated, especially by the rebels themselves, that these incalculable losses, these tremendous shocks and sudden changes, would utterly overwhelm the North with ruin and tear her to pieces with faction and disorder. But this anticipation of accumulated disasters, in which the wish was father to the thought, has not been realized to any appreciable ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Invisible reigned, and the only law was the caprice of the supernatural. In the temples the sorcerers mix themselves up with the popular idea, and scythes cut the grass without being held, brass serpents move, and one hears bronze statues laugh and wolves sing. Immediately the saints reply and overwhelm them. The Host is changed into living food, sacred Christian images shed drops of blood, sticks set upright in the ground blossom into flower, springs of pure water appear in dry places, warm loaves of bread multiply themselves at the feet of the needy, a tree bows down before some ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... fact, that but for the exasperation caused by so many bitter shafts, Jesus might long have remained unnoticed, and have been lost in the dreadful storm which was soon about to overwhelm the whole Jewish nation. The high priesthood and the Sadducees had rather disdained than hated him. The great sacerdotal families, the Boethusim, the family of Hanan, were only fanatical in their conservatism. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... beautiful, and as the guests left the ship, little did they think of the fearful doom that was so soon to overwhelm many of those whose hands they had clasped for ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... shall not be overcome, but will so strive and warsle aneath the foul grips of that rampant Arminian, the English high-priest Laud, that he shall himself be cast into the mire, or choket wi' the stoure of his own bakiefu's of abominations, wherewith he would overwhelm and bury the Evangil. Yea, even though the shield of his mighty men is made red, and his valiant men are in scarlet, he shall recount his worthies, but they shall ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... nothing visible through mist and fog and space, but tiers of winding-sheets. The ground at my feet where, when last there, I had seen the peasantry of Naples dancing among the vines, reckless of the burning mountain which threatened to overwhelm them, was now in possession of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watchfully lying in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed its forked tongue. A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint corpse candle, haunted the distant upper ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... drew the headland. Then it seemed to stand out in the dark ocean like some monster of the deep about to overwhelm us. It was a remarkable headland—once seen not likely to be forgotten. As we all stood gazing at it with dread and anxiety, I observed a person coming up on the poop deck. He advanced rapidly towards where the mates were standing. ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... it said, "how pitiful are thy vain efforts and strivings to keep back by thine own strength that fiery flood of hell which grows and increases to overwhelm thy soul! If the inflowing of good which Jehovah vouchsafes is infinite, only less infinite is the outflowing of that which thou callest evil and wickedness. How, then, canst thou hope to stand against it and to conquer? How canst thou hope to keep back that raging torrent of fire ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... quick perception of her sex she felt it, and drew back a step, not knowing but the next moment might overwhelm her with an accusation. But Bigot was not sure, and he dared not hint to Angelique more ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... AUSTRIA.—An Austrian attempt to overwhelm Serbia in the first weeks of the war met with disastrous failure. This was due to two causes: (1) the brave resistance of the Serbian troops; (2) the fact that the greater part of the Austrian forces had ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... manifestation of our military ideas. We have been the earth's spoiled children, thanks to the salt seas between us and other powerful military nations. Before any other Power could reach the United States it must overwhelm the British navy, and then it must overwhelm ours and bring its forces in transports. Sea-power, you say. That is the facile word, so ready to the lips that we do not realize the wonder of it any more than of the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... fortifications, but the great mass of the people were safe on their inland farms and in their untrodden forests. The Americans may not have been unconquerable, but English troops were not numerous enough to overwhelm them in their scattered settlements. It would not pay to send army after army to be lost in swamps or drowned in rivers or ambushed and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... to a plank, calling for help,—alas, in vain,—upon his father and his father-in-law. But oftenest on his lips was the name of Halcyone. To her his thoughts cling. He prays that the waves may bear his body to her sight, and that it may receive burial at her hands. At length the waters overwhelm him, and he sinks. The Day-star looked dim that night. Since it could not leave the heavens, it shrouded its face ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... devoted town, and that they must submit to be taxed by a parliament, in which they were not and could not be represented, or support their brethren who were selected to sustain the first shock of a power which, if successful there, would overwhelm them all. The neighbouring towns, disdaining to avail themselves of the calamities inflicted on a sister for her exertions in the common cause, clung to her with increased affection; and that spirit of enthusiastic patriotism, which, for a time, elevates the mind above ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... rough passage, Brown, Jones, and Robinson are here seen landed at Ostend, surrounded, and a little bewildered, by the natives, who overwhelm them with attentions—seize the luggage, thrust cards into their hands, drag them in several directions at once, all talking together (which prevented their directions being so clear as they otherwise would have been)—and, finally, ...
— The Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones and Robinson • Richard Doyle
... powerful empire is forced to rise early and be up late; not to meditate on the present fortunes or future destinies of his country, but by his personal exertions to compensate for the inefficiency and expiate the blunders of his underlings, whom his unfortunate want of blood has forced him to overwhelm with praises which they do not deserve, and duties which they cannot discharge. I do not wish you to infer that the policy of Beckendorff has been actuated by the feelings which influence the Minister whom I have noticed, from whose conduct in this very respect his own materially ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... rule, consisted entirely of cavalry. Such swiftly moving assailants as the Northmen and the Magyars could best be dealt with by mounted men who could bring them to bay, compel them to fight, and overwhelm them by the shock of the charge. In this way the foot soldiers of Charlemagne's time came to be replaced by the mailed horsemen who for four centuries ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... diamond mace of inconstancy can overturn the mountain of the Rishi hermit. How despicable and how weak the world! doomed to destruction, without strength! Impermanence, like the fierce lion, can even spoil the Naga-elephant-great-Rishi. Only the diamond curtain of Tathagata can overwhelm inconstancy! How much more should those not yet delivered from desire, fear and dread its power? From the six seeds there grows one sprout, one kind of water from the rain, the origin of the four points is far removed: five kinds of fruit from the two 'Koo'—the three periods, past, present, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... foot in height." Thoreau felt the eerie strangeness of beach and sand dunes as all explorers have, and he noted, too, the characteristics of the sand and its vegetation and of the inhabitants with a humorous minuteness. Writing of the dunes, which seem always about to overwhelm Provincetown, he says, "Some say that while the Government is planting beach grass behind the town for the protection of the harbor, the inhabitants are rolling the sand into the harbor in wheel-barrows, in order to make houselots," which seems characteristic of the beach grass, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... helmets, and the axles fitted with iron scythes so that they can charge straight into the ranks of the foe? [18] And suppose you heard that they have camels to ride on, each one of which would scare a hundred horses, and that they will bring up towers from which to help their own friends, and overwhelm us with volleys of darts so that we cannot fight them on level ground? [19] If this were what you had heard of the enemy, I as you, once again, you who are now so fearful what would you have done? You who turn ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs. The more incapable of it I feel myself, the more I believe it to be possible. The sad splendour with which certain memories of mine overwhelm me, shows me that it is possible. Sometimes I myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece. Sometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence so strong and so creative that the whole room has quivered with it like a forest, ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... feel as if you'd gone into bankruptcy. Women invest in happiness as men do in property, and to 'go broke' the way you have is disconcerting. It would overwhelm some women; but it won't you—not if you're the same Honora I played with when I was a boy. You had pluck for two of us trousered animals—were the best of the lot. I want you to come here and stake out a new claim. You may get to be a millionaire ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... perfect. The creature of clay who has lost Soul, likewise lacks Heart,—and the starved, hopeless poverty of such an one is disclosed in him, even if he be a world's millionaire. Moreover, 'Soul'—that delicate, divine, eternal essence, is easily lost. Any earthly passion carried to excess, will overwhelm it, and sink it in an unfathomable sea. It can slip away in the pursuit of ambition,—in schemes for self- aggrandisement,—in the building up of huge fortunes,—in the pomp, and show, and vanity of mundane things. It flies from selfishness and sensuality. It can be ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... very ill bestowed, its researches worse than useless, and that its tendency is to strike down one of the pillars on which the fabric of Christianity is supported." "Its tendency is to shock the pious,—confound the unlearned,—overwhelm those who are but moderately versed in the recondite investigations of theology, and above all to open an arsenal whence all the small wits of the infidel army may supply themselves with arms. Its ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Maine to Georgia; but it is almost certain that not one man would ever get back again, as by that time the people would have been roused and excited, armed and sufficiently disciplined; and their numbers, independent of their bravery, would overwhelm three or four times the number I ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... right," exclaimed Duff one day to Rucker, after Gary had brought the schooner unscathed through a mountainous wave that had threatened to overwhelm everything. "I will say this for him, he knows ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... great caution. In those southern latitudes the birch tree, from whose bark the canoes of the northern Indians were made, did not thrive. Their boats were made of large logs, hollowed out and neatly shaped. They were often ornamented with infinite labor. Some of the warriors prepared to overwhelm the strangers with a shower of arrows from the land. Others embarked in their larger boats to ascend the river, and others to descend, so as to cut off all ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... with the din of preparation throughout America for defensive war. It now was found that vigorous measures must be pursued to oppose the torrent which was preparing to overwhelm the colonies, which had now been dissevered from the British empire, by the declaration of independence. The continental army was now raising, and great numbers of American youth volunteered in the service of their country. A large army of reinforcements ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... principles. And so, if a physician were called in to see a sick child, he might see that it was in desperate danger, and that unless something could be done, and that speedily, to arrest the disease, his little patient would be dead in a few hours; and yet to say that to the poor child, and overwhelm it with terror and distress, would not be a very suitable course of procedure for averting ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... people, as in some larger communities, have only a share in the legislature, they cannot overwhelm the collateral powers, who having likewise a share, are in condition to defend themselves: where they act only by their representatives, their force may be uniformly employed. And they may make a part in a constitution ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... was so unhappy before; for that gipsy woman has raised doubts and fears which overwhelm me. Lucy, too, has been told something that affects her deeply. She never spoke during the whole way home, and seemed glad to get rid of me as she ran into her father's house. If this should be true (and why raise such a report without ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... said the king's voice, from the bottom of the alcove; a voice which made a cold shudder pass through the musketeer's veins. He bowed, amazed, confused, and stupefied by the smile with which Aramis seemed to overwhelm him, as soon as these words had ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... boys felt, they could not suppress an exclamation of admiration at the magnificent scene before them. The sea was tossed up in great masses of water, which, as they neared the ship, threatened to overwhelm them, but which, as she rose on their summits, passed harmlessly under her, hurling, however, tons of water upon her deck. The wind was still blowing fiercely, but a rift in the clouds above, through which the sun threw down a bright ray of light upon the tossing water, showed that ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... to 'zackly determin whether they are a thousand years old or was bought recent. I can cry like a child over a jug one thousand years of age, especially if it is a Roman jug; but a jug of a uncertin date doesn't overwhelm me with emotions. Jugs and pots of a uncertin age is doubtles vallyable property, but, like the debentures of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, a man doesn't want too ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... obvious creed, he sets down for "French politics;" for, notwithstanding the peace, he cannot be persuaded that the French are not still laying plots to ruin the nation, and to get hold of the Bank of England. The radical attempted to overwhelm him, one day, by a long passage from a newspaper; but Jack neither reads nor believes in newspapers. In reply, he gave him one of the stanzas which he has by heart from his favourite, and indeed only author, old Tusser, and which he ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... in the world, and the mysteries of creation. Even the princes of the heavens, when they see Metatron, tremble before him, and prostrate themselves; his magnificence and majesty, the splendor and beauty radiating from him overwhelm them, even the wicked Samael, the greatest of them, even Gabriel the angel of the fire, Bardiel the angel of the hail, Ruhiel the angel of the wind, Barkiel the angel of the lightning, Za'miel ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... that as they climbed up the steep narrow rocky slope there was a fierce yell and a rush, and they saw the light slightly obscured as the Apaches dashed by the entrance in a fierce charge, meant to overwhelm them. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... overdoing of a work praiseworthy in itself, the proceedings against the witches had proved far less acceptable to the Beneficent Father than to that very Arch Enemy whom they were intended to distress and utterly overwhelm. It is not the less certain, however, that awe and terror brooded over the memories of those who died for this horrible crime of witchcraft. Their graves, in the crevices of the rocks, were supposed to be incapable of retaining ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The unpleasant impression which these conferences were calculated to leave upon my mind was fast wearing away, when there occurred a circumstance, slight indeed in itself, but calculated irrepressibly to awaken all my worst suspicions, and to overwhelm me ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... loved Carleton because he heard and loved them. To have his great, kindly eyes fixed on some poor soldier, or neighbor in distress, was in itself a lightening of the load of trouble. Unlike those professional or volunteer comforters, who overwhelm by dumping a whole cart-load of condolence upon the sufferer, who is unable to resist or reply, Carleton was often great in his power of encouraging silence, and ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... of flood. It comes out from a great chasm in the rocks in the face of a precipice at a vast height from the ground; and, in times of flood, it brings down such a mass of sand, gravel, stones, rubbish, and black mud as sometimes to threaten to overwhelm the village." ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... against the ground, set fire to the dried thorns and withered grass, and the blaze ran along the earth like wildfire, to the great alarm of poor L**, who saw in every burning bush a stream of lava rushing to overwhelm us. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... phrase with which people console themselves in misfortunes they often bring upon themselves. If you would only think of the absurdity of what you are saying. You have admitted your prosperity; and the other troubles, home troubles, which I know are very trying, need not overwhelm you. You are much less manly, Walter, now you are a man, than I expected you to be. You have quite disappointed ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... everlasting! Not all the learning wits and sages boast Can equal the sweet burden of thy song;— Can yield such rest amid life's noisiest strife;— Such peace to still the spirit's wildest wars;— Such hope to stem the most tumultuous wave May threat to overwhelm. The love of Jesus,— Sweet, having this thou risest far above All this world's clouds, and catchest ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... he was sure to encounter Forrest, who always attacked with a vehemence for which he must be prepared, and that, after he had repelled the first attack, he must in turn assume the most determined offensive, overwhelm him and utterly destroy his whole force. I knew that Forrest could not have more than four thousand cavalry, and my own movement would give employment to every other man of the rebel army not immediately present with him, so ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... clothing and his clumsy shoes, then he sank back into his chair, covered his face with his hands, and gave way to tears. He had lived in this world too long not to know that prosperity breeds forgetfulness, and he felt already in his heart a foretaste of the bitterness that should overwhelm him when this boy, whom he loved as his own child, ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... up, and just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve brought to him,—I say I do not wonder that they bring a surgeon with it, to let him blood that very moment they tell him of it; that the surprise may not drive the animal spirits from the heart and overwhelm him. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... "You overwhelm me with your compliments, Mr. Pedagog," replied the Idiot, cheerfully. "A flatterer like you should live ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... could be kinder than Mr Huntingdon's treatment of his restored child; and when her little ones joined her, it seemed as if the pent back affections of the squire were coming forth in such a rush as would almost overwhelm his grandchildren with a flood of indulgence. Brighter days, then, had come; nevertheless, Amos could not help seeing much in the character and conduct of both his sister and Walter which saddened him. Acting himself on the ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... encouragement the youth of this country receive from those who are above them in social station. In every one of your counties there is a hunt, cricket clubs, golf clubs in such numbers that their statistics absolutely overwhelm me. Everywhere one meets young men of leisure, well off, calmly proposing to settle down and spend the best part of their lives in what they call country life. They will look after their estates; they will hunt a little, shoot a little, go abroad for two months in the winter, play golf a little, ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... come down upon us. At times the thunder was so continued, that it was conceived some ship was firing its guns for assistance. At other times there would fall such incessant and heavy torrents of rain for two or three days together as if an universal deluge were going to overwhelm the world. This almost unceasing war of the elements perplexed the men and reduced them almost to despair, so that they were continually wet and could not get half an hours rest at a time, always ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... firm, and inexhaustible in expedients, set itself manfully to meet these calamities, which all combined to overwhelm Sweden; and his shrewd understanding taught him how to turn even misfortunes to his advantage. The defection of so many German cities of the empire deprived him, it is true, of a great part of his former allies, but at the same time it freed him from the necessity ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the Caucasus to the frontier of China. The wild tenants of this wilderness, the various tribes of Tartars, once the terror of East and West, were like a vast ocean of human beings swayed to and fro by nomadic and predatory instincts, which for centuries threatened to overwhelm and efface every vestige of the ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... inexplicable cares were beyond the rule of the Life that dwelt in him, then was that Life no true God, and the whole thing was false; for he loved Helen with a love that was no invention or creation of his own, and if not his, then whose? Certainly not of one who, when it threatened to overwhelm him, was unable to uphold him under it! This thing also belonged to the God of his being. A poor God must he be for men or women who did not care about the awful things involved in the relation between them! Therefore even in his worst anxieties about Helen,—I do not ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... she had seized the significance of Monjardin's verses, had grown deathly pale; stricken by sudden disillusionment, she felt a glacial chill overwhelm her body to the very marrow; she feared that she would faint straightway and provide a spectacle for the guests, who were all drinking her health, their eyes focussed upon her. A veil of tears spread ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... You know that if he makes war, Russia must mobilize. You know that France is bound to come in with us as you are with France. You know that the moment we mobilize, Germany, the old man's ally, will have only one desperate chance of victory, and that is to overwhelm our ally, France, with one superb rush of her millions, and then sweep back and meet us on the Vistula. You know that nothing can stop this except Germany remonstrating with Austria, and insisting on the Servian case being ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... evils overwhelm you as thousands have suffered, and thousands have surmounted; but turn your thoughts with vigour to some other plan of life, and keep always in your mind, that, with due submission to Providence, a man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself[1124]. Your Patron's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... has been accustomed to take God for granted has used almost the same words at some time in his life. The hour of tempest, when the uncontrollable waves of trouble and winds of adversity seemed ready to overwhelm him, when he had done all that mortal might do, then it seemed as though this God to whom he had prayed so often, of whom he had learned to think as part of his life, ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... seemed as though Providence had taken pity on them; for, notwithstanding the insecurity of the craft and the violence of the breakers, the dreaded passage was made with safety. Once, indeed, when they had just entered the surf, a mighty wave, curling high above them, seemed about to overwhelm the frail structure of skins and wickerwork; but Rufus Dawes, keeping the nose of the boat to the sea, and Frere baling with his hat, they succeeded in reaching deep water. A great misfortune, however, occurred. Two of the bark buckets, left by some unpardonable oversight uncleated, were washed ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... follow. No sooner was the storm over than another danger loomed up. The ship's crew included a number of renegade English sailors who conspired to mutiny, to overwhelm the officers, and to kill the crew and passengers. By including in their confidence an American sailor, whom they mistook for an Irishman, their plot came to naught. Lafayette summoned the whole crew, put thirty-three ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... Temple—who had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats; and to make him glow, tremble, and blush with a passion, that not faintly indicated the day-spring of that absorbing sentiment, which was afterwards destined to overwhelm and subdue his ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Forster spoke, explaining to Jimmie the inner significance of terrific world-events. Russia was in the midst of a gigantic offensive, which was meant to overwhelm Austria; England at the same time was hurling in her new armies on the Somme; for these two giant movements they wanted shells—millions and millions of shells from America, which alone could make enough of them. The railroads were clogged ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... clear view of our present condition, it will be necessary, sir, not to amuse ourselves with general assertions, or overwhelm our reason by terrifying exaggerations: let us consider distinctly the power and the conduct of our enemies, and inquire whether they do not affright us more than they are able to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... guilty and the innocent alike—nay, thousands of those who know not their right hand from their left—to one common destruction? Does not God (if you suppose it his doing) swallow up whole cities by earthquake, or overwhelm them with volcanic fires? I say, is there any difference between the cases, except that the victims are very rarely so wicked as the Canaanites are said to have been, and that God in the one case himself ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... likewise faults, and faults sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall show them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious malignity or superstitious veneration. No question can be more innocently discussed than a dead poet's pretensions to renown; and little regard is due to that bigotry which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... considerable difficulty in verifying the symbol, but I will submit what up to the present has seemed to me as the most satisfactory explanation. It appears from the description that this was about the last great public effort the dragon made to overwhelm the church and that he was exasperated to this supreme effort by the humiliating defeat he had suffered. The means he employed was water, an object of nature; hence we are to look for some great political event by which the dragon made his master-effort ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature, and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions, all I dare aver is, that it has been ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... your eye, so that from the sentiment with which you regard it curiosity and surprise are almost completely, and perhaps deplorably, absent. Admiration remains, however—admiration of a familiar and even slightly patronising kind. The Maison Carree does not overwhelm you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the great sensations of antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spite of having been put to all sorts of incongruous uses, marvellously preserved. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... kindled the torch of revolution. The poetic soul of Burns passes away in poverty and moral eclipse. Madness overtakes the cool satirist Swift, and mental degeneracy is the final condition of the fertile-minded Scott. The high-souled Hamilton perishes in a petty quarrel, and curses overwhelm Webster in the halls of his early triumphs. What a confirmation of the experience of Solomon! "Vanity of vanities" write on all walls, in all the chambers of pleasure, in all ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... excessively long-tailed frock coat, shiny stump-toed boots, and with dainty little slouch hat, tipped over his left eye, the small-fry roughs made room for his majesty; when he entered the restaurant, the waiters deserted bankers and merchants, to overwhelm him with obsequious attention; when he shouldered his way to the bar, the shouldered parties wheeled indignantly, recognized him, and—apologized. They got a look in reply, that made them tremble in their boots, and ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... had no money, and would sit whole evenings through near his mistress, patiently and jealously awaiting her when Sonka through chance was taken by some guest. And when she would return and sit down beside him, he would, without being perceived, overwhelm her with reproaches, trying not to turn the general attention upon himself and without turning his head in her direction. And in her splendid, humid, Hebraic eyes during these conversations there was always a martyr-like but ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... shortened at the briefest notice. He had not been called a moment too soon. A flash lit the black sky; a peal of thunder rattled like artillery far off; and then a squall struck the grab with terrific force, and the sea, suddenly lashed into fury, advanced like a cluster of green liquid mountains to overwhelm the vessel. She heeled bulwarks under, and was instantly wrapped in a dense mist, rain pouring in blinding sheets. The main topsail was blown away with a report like a gun shot; and then, under a reefed foresail, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Liberty. The Eyes of the People of Britain seem to be fast closed; if they should ever be opened they will rejoyce, and thank the Americans for resisting a Tyranny which is manifestly intended to overwhelm them and the whole British Empire. Righteous Heaven will surely smile on a Cause so righteous as ours is, and our Country, if it does its Duty will see an End to its Oppressions. Whether I shall live to rejoyce with the Friends ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... exceeded; his madness had grown to be too enormous, and the existence of people too difficult because of him. Vinicius believed that Nero's hour had struck, that those ruins into which the city was falling should and must overwhelm the monstrous buffoon together with all those crimes of his. Should a man be found of courage sufficient to stand at the head of the despairing people, that might happen in a few hours. Here vengeful and daring thoughts began to fly through ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Bohemia. Prague was the King's first mark; but the ulterior object was probably Vienna. At Prague lay Marshal Brown with one great army. Daun, the most cautious and fortunate of the Austrian captains, was advancing with another. Frederic determined to overwhelm Brown before Daun should arrive. On the sixth of May was fought, under those walls which, a hundred and thirty years before, had witnessed the victory of the Catholic league and the flight of the unhappy ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... holy water, for him, and for him only, the river shall turn to gold. But no one failing in his first, can succeed in a second attempt; and if any one shall cast unholy water into the river, it will overwhelm him, and he will become a black stone." So saying, the King of the Golden River turned away and deliberately walked into the center of the hottest flame of the furnace. His figure became red, white, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... my mind with dire apprehension, the lee bulwarks of the vessel were in five minutes thronged with half-naked passengers, who had been roused unexpectedly from their slumbers, staring in terror at the frigid masses which we momentarily feared would overwhelm the ship. The helm being put up, we were soon out of the threatened danger of a collision, which would have consigned us to a grave in the wide wide waters, without the remotest chance of escape. This consideration was, to all on board, a matter of deep thankfulness to the mighty ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... swell of the prairie, and the stern frozen country received them into its bosom. The homesteads were few and far apart; here and there a windmill gaunt against the sky, a sod house crouching in a hollow. But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... silent. I knew he would speak to me in time; but the gates of his heart were close locked. It seemed as if he dared not open them, lest the flood should burst forth and overwhelm us. ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... O foolish youth! Thou seek'st a greatness that will overwhelm thee. Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity Is held from falling by so weak a wind, That it will quickly drop; my day is dim. Thou hast stolen THAT, which after some few hours Were thine without ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... by an ocean of trees, so vast, so full of endless billows, that it seemed to be pressing on every side to overwhelm them. Gnarled oaks, with branches twisted and knotted as if in rage, rose in groves like tidal waves. Smooth forests of beech-trees, round and gray, swept over the knolls and slopes of land in a mighty ground-swell. ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... the least uneasy on my account. If the present is cold and bare and poverty-stricken, the blue distant future is rich and splendid; most great men have known the vicissitudes which depress but cannot overwhelm me. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... announced. She is the cashier's sister, a poor old maid, humble and modest, who has made it her duty to make this call upon the wife of her brother's employer, and who is amazed at the warm welcome she receives. She is surrounded and made much of. "How kind of you to come! Draw up to the fire." They overwhelm her with attentions and show great interest in her slightest word. Honest Risler's smiles are as warm as his thanks. Sidonie herself displays all her fascinations, overjoyed to exhibit herself in her glory to one who was her equal in the old days, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had more tasks than they could accomplish, and were kept employed by being always in arrears with their lessons. This pressed less heavily upon me than on most; but though I seldom incurred punishment, there was a sort of hard distrust of me, I believe because the master could not easily overwhelm me with work, so as to have me in his power. I know I was often unjustly treated, and I never ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... power of any villain. Again, he was no longer free to search for her in the Province; for he was under the ban of military law there, and, unless supported by a sufficient number of bayonets, could not stem the torrent that should soon overwhelm him if he re-entered the territories of the Queen and was discovered. Yet, even death were preferable to the state of mind in which he now found himself; he therefore at once set to work to prepare ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... in Kent, &c. These trees were (some think) carried away in times past, by some accident of inundation, or by waters undermining the ground, till their own weight, and the winds bow'd them down, and overwhelm'd them in the mud: For 'tis observ'd, that these trees are no where found so frequently, as in boggy places; but that the burning of these trees so very bright, should be an argument they were fir, is not necessary, since the bituminous quality of such earth, may have imparted it to them; ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... him, sometimes in one house, sometimes in another. But he is armed after such fashion that he laughs all of them to scorn; and even if the novelty of his opinions prevents entire persuasion, he at least convicts of emptiness most of the arguments with which his adversaries endeavour to overwhelm him. He was particularly admirable on Monday last in the house of Signor Frederico Ghisilieri; and what especially pleased me was, that before replying to the contrary arguments, he amplified and enforced them with new grounds of great plausibility, so as ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... was my sense of responsibility awful: and from day to day it seemed to intensify. An arguing Voice never ceased to remonstrate within me, nor left me peace, and the curse of unborn hosts appeared to menace me. To strengthen my fixity I would often overwhelm myself, and her, with muttered opprobriums, calling myself 'convict,' her 'lady-bird'; asking what manner of man was I that I should dare so great a thing; and as for her, what was she to be the Mother of a world?—a ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... nothing: and had his Government continued three days he would have experienced a more favourable chance than that which he ought reasonably to have expected than asserted that the Emperor was dead, but an estafette from Russia would reveal the truth, resuscitate Napoleon, and overwhelm with confusion Mallet and his proclamation. His enterprise was that of a madman. The French were too weary of troubles to throw themselves into the arms of, Mallet or his associate Lahorie, who had figured ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... fugitives even, and fear confronted men in everything, large numbers turned to plundering. Now the bandit organizations on the mainland, being rather in sight of towns, which could thus perceive a source of injury close by, proved not so very difficult to overwhelm and were somehow broken up with a fair degree of ease; but those on the sea had grown to the greatest proportions. While the Romans were busy with antagonists they flourished. They sailed about to many quarters, ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... factories had to work on the designs they had, and thus for a long time after the outbreak of hostilities standardisation was an impossibility. The versatility of a Latin race in a measure compensated for this; from the outset, the Germans tried to overwhelm the French Air Force, but failed, since they had not the numerical superiority, nor—this equally a determining factor—the versatility and resource of the French pilots. They calculated on a 50 ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... Shackelford charge of the cavalry operating in the upper valley and putting Sanders in command of those resisting Wheeler, Burnside was sure of vigor and courage in the leadership of both divisions. Longstreet kept Wheeler on the left bank of the Holston, directing him to overwhelm Sanders and move directly opposite Knoxville, taking the city by a surprise if possible. But Sanders opposed a stubborn resistance, falling back deliberately, and held the hills south of Knoxville near the river. Wheeler was thus baffled, and ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... perhaps because of my mental exhaustion, for what I had passed through seemed to overwhelm me so that I could no longer so much as think with clearness, even after all that I have described I slept like a child and awoke refreshed ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... familiar. There is the method of illustration; there is the method of anecdote: both excellent, and almost indispensable. Only, they are methods which have their risks, and must be used with care. Illustrations are apt to overwhelm the thing illustrated, the moment much detail is allowed; and they are apt to go on three feet, or even upon one, instead of upon four; and they may be drawn from quarters too remote to strike the hearers with effect. Anecdotes have the same risks; and, ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... marvel if he lets the rod of pain be laid upon you. If you have hindrances which seem to shut up the way before you, if you have trials that you can not understand, if you have disappointments and perplexities, if you have spiritual conflicts that threaten to overwhelm you, do not think it strange. How can you teach others how to bear such things if you have not borne them? How can you know the way out for others if you have never gone that way? How can you teach others to look for the blessings ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... about all the achievement there is in the world. There are cases where this optimism has been disastrous, as with the people who lived in Pompeii during its last quivering days; or with the aristocrats of the time of Louis XVI, who confidently expected the Deluge to overwhelm their children, or their children's children, but never themselves. But there is small likelihood that the case of perverse optimism here to be considered will end in such disaster, while there is every reason to believe that the great change now manifesting itself in society will ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... thou who disturbest the happy estate of the Egyptians, and gavest us the opportunity of flying away from our under them, and madest the dominion of Pharaoh inferior to my dominion; thou who didst make the sea dry land for us, when we knew not whither to go, and didst overwhelm the Egyptians with those destructive waves which had been divided for us; thou who didst bestow upon us the security of weapons when we were naked; thou who didst make the fountains that were corrupted to flow, so as to be fit for drinking, and didst furnish ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... any of his kind on record, and with effects and ways that broke through all rules and all traditions. He has been well describ'd as an actor "whose instant and tremendous concentration of passion in his delineations overwhelm'd his audience, and wrought into it such enthusiasm that it partook of the fever of inspiration surging through his own veins." He seems to have been of beautiful private character, very honorable, affectionate, good-natured, no arrogance, glad to give ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the growth of English commerce. We can trace the adoption of English along the seaboard, and in the towns, while Gaelic still remained the language of the countryman. There is no evidence of any English immigration of sufficient proportions to overwhelm the Gaelic population. Like the victory of the conquered English over the conquering Normans, which was even then making fast progress in England, it is a triumph of a kind that subsequent events have revealed as characteristically Anglo-Saxon, and it called into force the powers of adaptation ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... broken loose—goaded to frenzy by the howling lashes of Aeolus and the roar of the storm-fiend. Then it is grand and awful in its majesty; and when I see it so it makes me mad with a triumphant sense of power in overriding it—as it boils beneath the vessel's keel, longing to overwhelm it and ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and talks in long paragraphs and stilted language to Pravdin and Sophia, expressing the ideal view of life, conduct, service to the state, and so forth. He, as well as Sophia, Pravdin Milon, are quite colorless. The Simpletons overwhelm Starodum with stupid courtesies, and Mrs. S. gets Pravdin to examine Mitrofan, in order to prove to Starodum that her darling child is fit to be Sophia's husband. The examination is even more brilliant than the lesson. Mitrofan says that door, that is to say, the door to that room, is an adjective, ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... might struggle, and destroy a good deal of apparatus, but he could not hope to overwhelm them. He lay on the couch as directed. Almost instantly the overweight one was behind him, seizing his arm. He felt the sting of a needle. The thin one was at his feet, looking down at him soberly. "He will rest," the thin one said, "and then we shall know what ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... help,—alas, in vain,—upon his father and his father-in-law. But oftenest on his lips was the name of Halcyone. To her his thoughts cling. He prays that the waves may bear his body to her sight, and that it may receive burial at her hands. At length the waters overwhelm him, and he sinks. The Day-star looked dim that night. Since it could not leave the heavens, it shrouded its ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... forborne,—if the source of no peculation or oppressive gain should be cut off,—if, by the omission of the opportunities that were in our hands, our Indian empire should fall into ruin irretrievable, and in its fall crush the credit and overwhelm the revenues of this country,—we stand acquitted to our honor and to our conscience, who have reluctantly seen the weightiest interests of our country, at times the most critical to its dignity and safety, rendered the sport of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... unreasonable profusion, and that have long ago destroyed his faith in literature, his love of reading, his sense of humour, and the colouring matter of his hair. He realises, with a dreadful sense of the infinite, that when he is dead and buried this torrent of books will overwhelm the individualities of his successors, bound like himself to a ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... saddened Mademoiselle was evidence of the bitter struggle, though she did not know this. If he had someone to love, she had said mentally, he would not be so stern. She deceived herself. It was because he wrestled with a passion that threatened to overwhelm his reason that he wore so ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... the old, who disappear among the ranks of the common people. Burke's "Vicissitudes of Families" strikingly exhibits the rise and fall of families, and shows that the misfortunes which overtake the rich and noble are greater in proportion than those which overwhelm the poor. This author points out that of the twenty-five barons selected to enforce the observance of Magna Charta, there is not now in the House of Peers a single male descendant. Civil wars and rebellions ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... this must be done, and both the servants and the assistant must receive absolute commands from you. The stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my mind; but when I am alone, the horrors I have suffered from laudanum, the degradation, the blighted utility, almost overwhelm me. If (as I feel for the 'first time' a soothing confidence it will prove) I should leave you restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not myself only that will love and honour you; every friend I have, (and thank God! in spite of this wretched vice [2] I have many and warm ones, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... of material sense is 396:15 not a difficult task in view of the conceded falsity of this testimony. The refutation becomes arduous, not because the testimony of sin or disease is 396:18 true, but solely on account of the tenacity of belief in its truth, due to the force of education and the overwhelm- ing weight of opinions on the wrong side, - all teaching 396:21 that the body suffers, as ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... deemed honorable for the Dutch to have fought with some advantage the combined fleets of two such powerful nations; but nothing less than a complete victory could serve the purpose of De Wit, or save his country from those calamities which from every quarter threatened to overwhelm her. He had expected, that the French would make their attack on the side of Maestricht, which was well fortified, and provided with a good garrison; but Lewis, taking advantage of his alliance with Cologne, resolved to invade the enemy on that frontier, which he knew to be more feeble and defenceless. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... planks—there were spots on her flag— So the fanatics said, as they seized on her helm; And from soft summer seas, turned her prow where the crag And the wild breakers rose the good ship to overwhelm. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... waves! After a dash, singly, all around, upon the common enemy, as if by some silent agreement underwater, they would all rush on at once, with their loudest roar and shaggiest foam, and overwhelm poor bear so completely that nothing less might be expected than to behold him broken in four quarters, and floating helplessly asunder. Mistaken spectators! Although, by his momentary rolling and plunging, he was evidently aroused, yet neither Bruin nor his burrow ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the Middle Ages, Mosheim says: "Nearly all the theologians were Positivi and Sententiarii [that is, they taught what the Church ordered to be taught], who deemed it a great achievement, both in speculative and practical theology, either to overwhelm the subject with a torrent of quotations from the fathers, or to anatomize it according to the laws of dialectics [that is, the laws of reasoning, logic]. And whenever they had occasion to speak of the meaning of any ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... overlooked an immeasurable expanse of sea, furrowed into numberless deep channels: Now, on a sudden, the wave broke under us, and we plunged into a deep and dreary valley, whilst a fresh mountain rose to windward with a foaming crest, and threatened to overwhelm us. The night coming on was not without new horrors, especially for those who had not been bred up to a seafaring life. In the captain's cabin, the windows were taken out and replaced by the dead-lights, to guard against the intrusion of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... himself. Among the papers taken was an autograph letter of General Robert E. Lee to General Stuart, dated Gordonsville, August fifteenth, which made manifest to me the disposition and force of the enemy and their determination to overwhelm the army under my command before it could be reenforced by any portion of the Army ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... of her sex she felt it, and drew back a step, not knowing but the next moment might overwhelm her with an accusation. But Bigot was not sure, and he dared not hint to Angelique more than he ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Meetings of large bodies of the people were held in all the leading cities and towns throughout the kingdom to petition the Prince Regent and parliament to do something effectual to stay the tide of calamity that seemed to be setting steadily in to overwhelm the nation. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... brandishing his broad-sword, dashes along the French line as though to overwhelm it with his mighty blows, while many a wound sheds blood on his arms and many a cruel dint sinks into ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... system of as relaxed morality as can well be imagined.-. 'tis a large quarto, and in general a very superficial one. His philosophy may be new in France, but is greatly exhausted here. He tries to imitate Montesquieu, and has heaped commonplaces upon commonplaces, which supply or overwhelm his reasoning; yet he has often wit, happy allusion;, and sometimes writes finely: there is merit enough to give an obscure man fame; flimsiness enough to depreciate a great man. After his book was licensed, they forced him to retract it by a most abject recantation. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... be everlasting! Not all the learning wits and sages boast Can equal the sweet burden of thy song;— Can yield such rest amid life's noisiest strife;— Such peace to still the spirit's wildest wars;— Such hope to stem the most tumultuous wave May threat to overwhelm. The love of Jesus,— Sweet, having this thou risest far above All this world's clouds, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... much to superintend, much more than had been anticipated. Mrs. Wiggins was undoubtedly a "peculiar female," as had been expected, but she was so elderly and monstrous that Mrs. Mumpson felt some embarrassment in her purpose to overwhelm Holcroft with a sense of the impropriety ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... the receipt of the grape-roots,—Charles is n't to blame, I told him I would write,—because I waited for the cider to come, that wife and I might overwhelm you with a joint letter of thanks, laudation, and praise. But I can wait no longer. That is, the cider does n't come, and I begin to think it is a myth. Poets, you know, deal in such. They imagine, they idealize, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... conceived some ship was firing its guns for assistance. At other times there would fall such incessant and heavy torrents of rain for two or three days together as if an universal deluge were going to overwhelm the world. This almost unceasing war of the elements perplexed the men and reduced them almost to despair, so that they were continually wet and could not get half an hours rest at a time, always beating up to windward. In such terrible tempests they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... so unhappy before; for that gipsy woman has raised doubts and fears which overwhelm me. Lucy, too, has been told something that affects her deeply. She never spoke during the whole way home, and seemed glad to get rid of me as she ran into her father's house. If this should be true (and why raise such a report ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us, and yet passing harmless...we rode through the storm with ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... not square with Jack's simple and obvious creed, he sets down for "French politics;" for, notwithstanding the peace, he cannot be persuaded that the French are not still laying plots to ruin the nation, and to get hold of the Bank of England. The radical attempted to overwhelm him, one day, by a long passage from a newspaper; but Jack neither reads nor believes in newspapers. In reply, he gave him one of the stanzas which he has by heart from his favourite, and indeed only author, old Tusser, and which he calls ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... their tales of adventure, their remarks upon women who pass by, all reveal that they have been caught in the toils of an instinct so powerful and primal that when left without direction it can easily overwhelm its possessor and swamp his faculties. These young men, who do no regular work, who expect to be supported by their mothers and sisters and to get money for the shows and theatres by any sort of disreputable undertaking, are in excellent training for the life of the procurer, and ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... hulk," stormed the ranchman, "and that weak cow of a wife of yours, you dare to live tranquilly on without giving me a grandson! . . . Ah, Frenchy, that is why the Germans will finally overwhelm you. You see it, right here. That bandit has a son, while you, after four years of marriage . . . nothing. I want ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... separated, and the priest began to overwhelm him with questions. But Hlawa was unable to catch his breath and replied with difficulty. The priest thought that his condition was owing to fatigue. But when the news of the finding of Danusia, her rescue and the presence ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... politicians chooses to say or wants to do. "England" has always been, amongst us, a kind of counter token, or token of things to be resisted and repudiated. The "symbols," or "tokens," always have this utility for suggestion. They carry a coercion with them and overwhelm people who are not trained to verify assertions and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... conducted from corridor to corridor and from hail to hail, the immensity and gorgeousness of the vast audience hall in which she was finally left alone with the Emperor; all these did not so much overwhelm her as exalt her. She felt herself indeed ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... section of the Union is annually drained to sustain the views and course of another section, without any adequate return. 3d. Because, judging from the history of past nations, that Union, if persisted in, in the present course of things, will certainly overwhelm the whole nation in utter destruction. Mr. Adams moved that the petition be referred to a select committee, with instructions to report an answer showing the reasons why the prayer of it ought ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... did; you reason right," Answered his chum with winking sight. "For Athens was the seat of learning. Academicians were discerning. They placed us on Minerva's helm, And strove with rank to overwhelm Our worth, which now is quite neglected,— Ay, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... now! Do you really think they were being run away with?" asked Jerry in a tense tone, as he tried to picture the alarm that must overwhelm ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... kind of person who makes the best of things—in fact I'm not a useful person at all. I suppose being abroad so long with my music spoiled me, but whatever it is I seem unable to wrestle with things. They frighten me, overwhelm me, as I say . . ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... and wither resolution! To your patronage, as a man of some genius, you have allowed me a claim; and your esteem, as an honest man, I know is my due: to these, Sir, permit me to appeal; by these may I adjure you to save me from that misery which threatens to overwhelm me, and which, with my latest breath I will say it, I have ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of patriotism. It is filled with the spirit that when a people is divided against itself, all misfortunes fall on and overwhelm it. Achilles, unjustly offended, deprived his fellow-countrymen of his support; they are all on the point of perishing; he returns to them in order to avenge the death of his dearest friend and ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... gone since I saw my Love! There it is; no doubt whatever is left in my mind about it now! Since I saw her my passion has grown and grown by leaps and bounds, as novelists put it. It has now become so vast as to overwhelm me, to wipe out all thought of doubt or difficulty. I suppose it must be what men suffered—suffering need not mean pain—under enchantments in old times. I am but as a straw whirled in the resistless eddies of a whirlpool. I feel that I must see her again, even ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... on, and they disappeared, but immediately afterwards rose on all sides of me. They were evidently getting more confidence; a fact I ascertained with no slight apprehension, for they began to approach nearer, and their gambols threatened every minute to overwhelm my poor craft, that, light as a cork, bounced up and down the agitated waves, as if quite as much alarmed ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... consequence of an unfortunate overdoing of a work praiseworthy in itself, the proceedings against the witches had proved far less acceptable to the Beneficent Father than to that very Arch Enemy whom they were intended to distress and utterly overwhelm. It is not the less certain, however, that awe and terror brooded over the memories of those who died for this horrible crime of witchcraft. Their graves, in the crevices of the rocks, were supposed to be incapable of retaining the occupants who had been so hastily ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... failed him, oh no! he knew only too well what followed upon that moment, but he was stifled by shame, even now, so many years after; he dreaded that feeling of self-contempt, which he knew for certain would overwhelm him, and like a torrent, flood all other feelings if he did not bid his memory be still. But try as he would to turn away from these memories, he could not stifle them entirely. He remembered the scoundrelly, tearful, ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the Spaniards and the Indians. The colonists behaved so badly toward the red men that the chieftain Caonabo, who had destroyed La Navidad the year before, now formed a scheme[580] for a general alliance among the native tribes, hoping with sufficient numbers to overwhelm and exterminate the strangers, in spite of their solid-hoofed monsters and death-dealing thunderbolts. This scheme was revealed to Columbus, soon after his return from the coast of Cuba, by the chieftain Guacanagari, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... had not yet entirely recovered from the fatigue of his journey when he decided, in spite of the infirmities which were beginning to overwhelm him, and which were to remain the constant companions of his latest years, to visit all the parishes and the religious communities of his immense diocese. He had already traversed them in the winter time in his former ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... said Clemence, startled by her friend's vehemence, "you quite overwhelm me. I wish, though," she added; with a sigh, "that I could doubt ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... of their departure had been a painful disillusion, and she knew well what it would mean to return home in disgrace with the de Vignes. Her cheeks burned and tingled still with the shame of the discovery. She felt that another of the old dreadful chastisements would overwhelm her utterly. And yet that she would most certainly have to endure it if she were unruly now was conviction that pressed like a cold weight upon her heart. Had not the letter she had received from her mother only that morning contained a stern injunction to her to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... impression which these conferences were calculated to leave upon my mind was fast wearing away, when there occurred a circumstance, slight indeed in itself, but calculated irrepressibly to awaken all my worst suspicions, and to overwhelm me ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Miss Willis had not been able to obtain a location near enough to the inauguration proceedings to distinguish more than the portly figure of a man, or to hear anything except the roar of the multitude. But now she was to have the chance to meet Jimmy face to face and overwhelm him with her secret. Little by little the file of visitors advanced on its passage toward the nation's representative, and presently Miss Willis caught her first glimpse of Sir Galahad—her real Sir Galahad. Her heart throbbed tumultuously. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... dish I mentioned to Mrs. Larder, Sir Wycherly's cook, was lobscous; and, would you believe it, gentlemen, the poor woman had never heard of it! I began with a light hand, as it might be, just not to overwhelm her with knowledge, at a blow, as Sir Jarvy captivated the French frigate with the upper tier of guns, that he might ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... learning of the wise. "I might have been abashed by their authority." GLADSTONE Homeric Synchron., p. 72. [H. '76.] To confuse is to bring into a state of mental bewilderment; to confound is to overwhelm the mental faculties; to daunt is to subject to a certain degree of fear. Embarrass is a strong word, signifying primarily hamper, hinder, impede. A solitary thinker may be confused by some difficulty in a subject, or some mental defect; one is embarrassed in ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... beauty; I desire thee for my husband. Refuse me not, O king.' To this Pratipa answered, 'I am, 'O damsel, abstaining from that course to which thou wouldst incite me. If I break my vow, sin will overwhelm and kill me. O thou of the fairest complexion, thou hast embraced me, sitting on my right thigh. But, O timid one, know that this is the seat for daughters and daughters-in-law. The left lap is for the wife, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... revulsions to materialism which is liable to overwhelm any man who delves too long at a time in the brutally unconventional issues of life and death, the Senior Surgeon stepped down into the subtle, hyacinth-scented sunshine with every latent human greed in his body clamoring for expression—before it, too, should be hurtled into oblivion. ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... finest spectacle was to see him in the drawing-room, 'dancing,' as Danjou said, 'before the Ark.' He stretched and bent his unwieldy person in all directions. He would challenge to a philosophic duel the young critic, a confirmed pessimist of three-and-twenty, and overwhelm him with his own imperturbable optimism. Laniboire the philosopher had one particular reason for this good opinion of the world; his wife had died of diphtheria caught from nursing their children; both his children had died with their mother; and each time that he repeated his ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... hands more dangers than have ever yet threatened Egypt. Hence we have brought you here to provide means of rescue. But we must act quickly, for the plans of this man advance like a storm in a desert and may overwhelm every one ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... came, noon, then a fall of snow and a keen wind, and despair in her heart; but she had passed the danger-spots, and now, if the storm did not overwhelm her, she might get to Askatoon in time. In the midst of the storm she came to one of the caves of which she had known. Here was wood for a fire, and here she ate, and in weariness unspeakable fell asleep. When she waked it was near ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Library selected me as home teacher, not only because of my years of experience with the blind, but because, blind from early infancy, I was familiar with the handicaps and discouragements that overwhelm the adult but recently deprived of eyesight. The pupils have confidence in a blind teacher, because they know that every step in their difficult path is familiar to her feet. The qualifications for a home teacher are, briefly, these: personality, adaptability, ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... some danger, at first, that the enemy, reinforced from Caimanera or Guantanamo city, would assemble in force on the slopes of the eastern hills, creep up through the scrub until they were within a short distance of the camp, and then overwhelm the marines in a sudden rush-assault. They were known to have six thousand regulars at Guantanamo city, only about fifteen miles away, and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that they might detach ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... day De Scuderi intended to go and take the jewellery to the goldsmith's. But somehow it seemed as if all the wits and intellects of entire Paris had conspired together to overwhelm Mademoiselle just on this particular morning with their verses and plays and anecdotes. No sooner had La Chapelle[17] finished reading a tragedy, and had slyly remarked with some degree of confident assurance that he should ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... to see this famous sight at its best is the Volga, which, with its two thousand miles of length, brings down ice enough to overwhelm a whole city. At times the force of the current piles it up, sheet over sheet, into huge mounds, the crashing and grinding of which, as they dash against each other, make the very air shake. When the river is "moving," as the Russians call it, he would be a bold man who should attempt to take a ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... die is to be transferred suddenly, and with violence, into strange scenes, which must overwhelm and distract the senses. It seems to them that it must be like being whirled instantly into a distant, unknown city, and waking up amidst the confusion and strangeness of that place. We cannot believe that such is the ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... of Biscay, and blew great guns and small arms, as sailors say, or in other words, very nearly a hurricane. I own that I did not like it. Our stout ship looked like a mere cockle-shell amid the mighty billows, which in huge watery walls rose half-way up the masts, threatening every instant to overwhelm her. Though I tried to conceal my fears Medley detected them, but he did not ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the beginning, that this is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye & the spirit. To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink & purple & golden floods, & overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim & faint & turn the solid city into a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature & make a sympathetic one ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... is an absence of the black pigment, the rays of light traverse the iris, and even the choroid coat, and so overwhelm the eye with light, that their vision is quite imperfect, except in the dimness of evening, or at night. In the manufacture of optical instruments, care is taken to color their interior black, for the same object, namely, the absorption ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... "I am the investigating magistrate. I cause my man to be arrested, and, twenty minutes later, he is standing before me. I do not amuse myself by putting questions to him, more or less subtle. No, I go straight to the mark. I overwhelm him at once by the weight of my certainty, prove to him so clearly that I know everything, that he must surrender, seeing no chance of escape. I should say to him, 'My good man, you bring me an alibi; it is very well; but I am acquainted with ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... matter, in a lesser degree—always find the new nationalism in the form of the "New China" student. Despite the opposition he gets from the old school, and although the old order of things, by being so strong as almost to overwhelm him, allows him to make less progress than he would, this new student, the hope of the Empire, is there. I do not wish to enter into a controversy on this subject, but I should like to quote the following ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Thaisa, he said: 'A terrible childbed hast thou had, my dear; no light, no fire; the unfriendly elements forget thee utterly, nor have I time to bring thee hallowed to thy grave, but must cast thee scarcely coffined into the sea, where for a monument upon thy bones the humming waters must overwhelm thy corpse, lying with simple shells. O Lychorida, bid Nestor bring me spices, ink, and paper, my casket and my jewels, and bid Nicandor bring me the satin coffin. Lay the babe upon the pillow, and go about this suddenly, Lychorida, while I say a ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a great honour for me to act with a gentleman whose ancestors figured honourably in the crusades," said she, "and I only hope that my profound respect for him will not overwhelm me, and spoil my acting; fortunately I have become pretty well accustomed to the society ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... charge of 800 Mamelukes at Chebreiss, the army made its way up the banks of the Nile to Embabeh, opposite Cairo. There the Mamelukes, led by the fighting Bey, Murad, had their fortified camp; and there that superb cavalry prepared to overwhelm the invaders in a whirlwind rush of horse (July 21st, 1798). The occasion and the surroundings were such as to inspire both sides with desperate resolution. It was the first fierce shock on land of eastern chivalry ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... that wrestled with the squared Towers. They rose again in a single monstrous wave that rushed to overwhelm them. Before they could strike the City swept closer; ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... never be returned. Yet this confidence did not prevent her taking every precaution, lest Dorriforth should come to the knowledge of it. She would not have his composed mind disturbed with such a thought—his steadfast principles so much as shaken by the imagination—nor overwhelm him with those self-reproaches which his fatal attraction, unpremeditated as it was, would ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... another officer. "The world will ridicule the suggestion; our people will overwhelm us with their anger. The Grays will take it for ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... excessive chroma and value of red and yellow pigments so overwhelm the lesser degrees of green and blue pigments that no balance is possible, and the colorist of fine perception must reject not alone the theoretical, but also the practical outcome of ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... body, the geographers of the other world would evidently lose the chance of guiding their souls to this unknown abode. They would draw no profits from the hopes with which they feast them, and from the terrors with which they take care to overwhelm them. If the future is of no real utility to the human race, it is at least of the greatest advantage to those who take upon themselves the responsibility of conducting ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... It was the first time she had entered an English Protestant church since she had last sat in it, there, with Mr. Carlyle. Can you wonder that the fact alone, with all the terrible remembrances it brought in its train, was sufficient to overwhelm her with emotion? She sat at the upper end now, with Lucy; Barbara occupied the place that had been hers, by the side of Mr. Carlyle. Barbara there, in her own right his wife; she severed ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... side. Accustomed from infancy to her mode of life, and this unusual domicile, her eye quailed not, nor did her heart beat quicker, as she looked down into the abyss below, or turned her eyes up to the beetling mass of rock which appeared, each moment, ready to fall down and overwhelm her. She passed her hand across her temples to throw back the hair which the wind had blown over her eyes, and again scanned the distance as the sun's light increased, and the fog gradually ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... they cannot long have it. Now is the time to prove that the American people know the difference between liberty and license, by their support of the party of order and constitutional government, and by administering a thorough rebuke to those licentious men who are seeking to overwhelm the country and its Constitution in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... you. I should not be a man if this womanly helplessness did not just give you a double attractiveness in my eyes. You must not think anymore about the hard things I said in my first moment of consternation, when I thought everything was going to overwhelm me. I have forgiven you, Nora; I swear to you ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... heredity must be occult and complex. The offspring of a rebellious and disobedient child, is certainly entitled to no filial instincts; and some day the strain will tell, and you will overwhelm your mother with ingratitude, black as ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the quarters. Until now we have had no doubts as to the outcome of passing events. We knew about the too celebrated victory of Sarrebrueck, we do not expect the reverses which overwhelm us. The major examines every man; not one is cured, all had been too long gorged with licorice water and deprived of care. Nevertheless, he returns to their corps the least sick, he orders others to lie down completely dressed, ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... King, Saturnian Jove, implored. Father of all, by all that I have done Or said that ever pleased thee, grant my suit. 620 Exalt my son, by destiny short-lived Beyond the lot of others. Him with shame The King of men hath overwhelm'd, by force Usurping his just meed; thou, therefore, Jove, Supreme in wisdom, honor him, and give 625 Success to Troy, till all Achaia's sons Shall yield him honor more than he hath lost! She spake, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... observer should have failed to notice that the Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries was no longer the Roman Empire of the great Antonine and Augustan age; that it had lost its hold over its territories and its economic cohesion and was menaced by the barbarians who were in the end to overwhelm it. The territory of the Roman Empire had at its height stretched from the lands bordering the North Sea to the lands on the northern fringes of the Sahara, and from the Atlantic coast of Europe to the central Asiatic ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... the time he was not sufficiently aware of this and, as with all true glamour, was unable to grasp where the true ended and the false began. He was caught momentarily in the same vortex that had sought to lure the cat to destruction through its delight, and threatened utterly to overwhelm the ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... law was the caprice of the supernatural. In the temples the sorcerers mix themselves up with the popular idea, and scythes cut the grass without being held, brass serpents move, and one hears bronze statues laugh and wolves sing. Immediately the saints reply and overwhelm them. The Host is changed into living food, sacred Christian images shed drops of blood, sticks set upright in the ground blossom into flower, springs of pure water appear in dry places, warm loaves of bread multiply ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... of the Gods and men hath given thee might enow, O AEolus, to smooth the sea, and make the storm-wind blow. Hearken! a folk, my very foes, saileth the Tyrrhene main Bearing their Troy to Italy, and Gods that were but vain: Set on thy winds, and overwhelm their sunken ships at sea, Or prithee scattered cast them forth, things drowned diversedly. 70 Twice seven nymphs are in my house of body passing fair: Of whom indeed Deiopea is fairest fashioned ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... hurriedly, or who may be tempted to acquire the habit, should weigh well the words read therein (Friday's Vespers) "Labor labiorum ipsorum operiet eos; cadent super eos carbones" (Ps. 139). "The labour of their lips shall overwhelm them; burning ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... Line is a certain sign that some terrible tragedy in the affections will at some time or other overwhelm ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... a discussion, and he was a foe who wielded a stout blade. He fought, however, with scrupulous fairness, never interrupting an adversary; but listening to him with a deliberate patience that was almost disconcerting. Then when his turn came he would overwhelm his opponent and destroy his most weighty arguments in what a friend once described as “a lava torrent of burning words.” He possessed many of the qualities necessary to debate: concentration, the power of pouncing upon the weak spot in his adversary’s argument, and above all a wonderful memory. ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... said Keats, "the principle of beauty in all things." It is that to which all I have said has been leading, as many roads unite in one. We must try to use discrimination, not to be so optimistic that we see beauty if it is not there, not to overwhelm every fling that every craftsman has at beauty with gush and panegyric; not to praise beauty in all companies, or to go off like a ripe broom-pod, at a touch. When Walter Pater was confronted with something ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that battle. And that mighty car-warrior, O sire, began also to despatch, with his shafts of keen points, the whole army of the Pandavas to the other world. The Pandavas also, O king, after the same manner, supported by their vast host, began to overwhelm Bhishma like the clouds covering the maker of day. O bull of Bharata's race, surrounded on all sides, that Bharata hero consumed many brave warriors in that battle like a raging conflagration in the forest (consuming numberless trees). The prowess that we then beheld there of thy son (Dussasana) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... these people and try to rally them. Our military force could overwhelm most of these poor people, involving men, women, and children in a common fate; but there are among the Mormons many brave men accustomed to arms and horses, men who could fight desperately as guerillas; and, if the settlements ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... men are constantly being surprised with serenades, I concluded I'd be surprised in the same way, so I made arrangements accordin. I asked the Brass Band how much they'd take to take me entirely by surprise with a serenade. They said they'd overwhelm me with a unexpected honor for seven dollars, which ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... "Is he the sort of man that you would expect to find at the head of a mob shouting, 'To Hell with the Pope'?" Witness, with great emphasis: "No. Certainly not. Jamie was never any ways a religious man." These bewildering corruptions of sense and sanity overwhelm you at every turn. Ask your neighbour offhand at a dinner in Dublin: "What is so-and-so, by the way?" He will reply that so-and-so is a doctor, or a government official, or a stockbroker, as it may happen. Ask ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... now, Jack, I have not been so much to blame as thou thinkest: for had it not been for me, who have led her into so much distress, she could neither have received nor given the joy that will now overwhelm them all. So here rises great and durable good out ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... point of similarity which is the practical manifestation of our military ideas. We have been the earth's spoiled children, thanks to the salt seas between us and other powerful military nations. Before any other Power could reach the United States it must overwhelm the British navy, and then it must overwhelm ours and bring its forces in transports. Sea-power, you say. That is the facile word, so ready to the lips that we do not realize the wonder of it any more than of ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... of surpassing courage. They even learned, from Cowan, how Siddons, working with the French, had plotted trapping von Herzmann that day when the squadron was attacked for the first time. The lucky arrival of the French Spads, they now knew, was not a matter of luck at all, but a daring plan to overwhelm the greedy German war eagle and rid the air of him. Yes, Siddons had courage and brains. There was no ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... suggestion—one he himself believed in—for the last. It would help lift the dead weight of bitter anxiety which was sure to overwhelm his visitor in the wakeful hours ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... best of the Jewish kings. He, too, had been schooled by occurrences which one might have thought would have beaten down all pride and self-esteem. The king of Assyria had come against him, and seemed prepared to overwhelm him with his hosts; and he had found his God a mighty Deliverer, cutting off in one night of the enemy an hundred fourscore and five thousand men. And again, he had been miraculously recovered from sickness, when the sun's ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... down in the heavier gusts, would uprise and overwhelm both ends of the Nan-Shan in snowy rushes of foam, expanding wide, beyond both rails, into the night. And on this dazzling sheet, spread under the blackness of the clouds and emitting a bluish glow, Captain MacWhirr could catch a desolate glimpse of a few tiny specks ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... once that he had mistaken his course. "The association, which admires your excellency, especially since the trial, which looks on your excellency as a martyr, asks nothing except one favor, which will overwhelm it ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... and his clumsy shoes, then he sank back into his chair, covered his face with his hands, and gave way to tears. He had lived in this world too long not to know that prosperity breeds forgetfulness, and he felt already in his heart a foretaste of the bitterness that should overwhelm him when this boy, whom he loved as his own child, should ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... they overwhelm you all the time with their superiority? Vanity so dominates their souls that between you and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... propositions is regarded as indispensable to salvation, the pursuit of truth as such is not possible, any more than it is possible for a man who is swimming for his life to make meteorological observations on the storm which threatens to overwhelm him. The sense of alarm and haste, the anxiety for personal safety, which Dr. Cumming insists upon as the proper religious attitude, unmans the nature, and allows no thorough, calm thinking no truly noble, disinterested feeling. Hence, we by no means ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... him short. "And yet if you only knew—if you knew how I have changed—with what a changed spirit I came here.... Ah, I swear that now I hate all my past. I loathe it. I swear that now the mere presence of a thief would overwhelm me ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... Vigee Le Brun painted, in her twenty-fourth year (1779) of Marie Antoinette. Here is no hint of the tragedy that was to overwhelm the handsome young daughter of Austria; all was as yet but gaiety and roses and sunshine and pleasant airs, and the glamour that hovers about a throne. But there are signs of the imperious temper of her house, combined with the levity and frivolity of manners ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... evident, by the 18th, that nearly the whole of Lee's army was assembling in front of General Pope, along the south side of the Rapidan. Among papers captured from the enemy at this time, was an autograph letter from General Robert Lee to General Stuart, stating his determination to overwhelm General Pope's army before it could be reinforced by any portion of the army ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... subjugated by lions which, next to man, seem to be the most dreaded of all mortal tyrants. The country in general—at least, what we have been hitherto able to discover, seems rather inimical to human life; the intolerable dryness of the place, the burning sands that overwhelm whole armies and cities in general ruin, and the hideous life many roving hordes are compelled to lead, incline me to think, that if ever we form any great settlements therein, it will become the grave of our countrymen. Yet it is nearer to us than the East Indies, and I cannot but imagine, that ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... moss ankle-deep, or through long, rank grass, waist-high and water-rotted with sea-fog. Here they launched their boat of sea-lion skin on a bone frame, and pulled across a bay of ten miles to the farthermost hunting-grounds. Again, the natives overwhelm Drusenin with kindness. The Russian keeps his sentinels as {91} vigilant as ever pacing before the doors of the hut; but he goes unguarded and unharmed among the native dwellings. Perhaps, poor Drusenin ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... On the one hand, the most terrible and destructive of natural phenomena was in action around us—the rocks, the mountains, the solid earth were trembling and convulsed, and we were utterly impotent to guard against the danger that might at any moment overwhelm us. On the other hand was the spectacle of a number of men, women, and children running in and out of their houses, on what each time proved a very unnecessary alarm, as each shock ceased just as it became strong enough to frighten us. It seemed really very much like "playing at earthquakes," ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... disappointed, for his plan, undertaken in such confidence, had ended in a crushing defeat. However, gathering his forces together, he set out to march rapidly across country in pursuit of Morgan, hoping to overwhelm him and recapture the six hundred British prisoners before he could ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... directory to the legislative body declaring, that the state is in the most calamitous situation; that the springs of government are almost broken, that the public treasure is exhausted, and that they are threatened with evils, which may overwhelm the republic. Decreed, that a forced loan shall be levied of 600,000,000 in specie upon a million of citizens. It is computed that by means of three hundred millions in specie, thirty milliards of assignats will be taken out of circulation. In this forced loan assignats ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... glow of the setting sun was obscured by rising clouds, which they at once grasped were dust; a semi-darkness came on, and through this they had a glimpse of the mountain-side all in motion and threatening to overwhelm them ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... philosophical doctrine of the unity of God which was inconsistent with a real incarnation. Even the noble work of Origen had helped to strengthen the philosophical influences which were threatening to overwhelm the definite historic revelation. Tertullian had long since warned the churches of the danger; but a greater than Tertullian was needed now to free them from their bondage to philosophy. Are we ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... far the best known of Milton's prose writings, being the only one whose topic is not obsolete. It is also composed with more care and art than the others. Elsewhere he seeks to overwhelm, but here to persuade. He could without insincerity profess veneration for the Lords and Commons to whom his discourse is addressed, and he spares no pains to give them a favourable opinion both of his dutifulness and his reasonableness. More than anywhere else he affects ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... mamma, stopping the accusations she saw were ready to overwhelm the offending little girl; "come here, and let me talk to you about this sad thing you have done to the little birds. Do you see what you have done by your ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... disobey reason? does not reason sufficiently declare, that there is no real good which you should desire too ardently, or the possession of which you should allow to transport you: and that there is no evil that should be able to overwhelm you, or the suspicion of which should distract you? and that all these things assume too melancholy or too cheerful an appearance through our own error? But if fools find this error lessened by time, so that, though the cause remains the same, they are not affected in the same manner, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... completed, most wonderful of all the successes of the great imperial epic. And Wagram, where it was the aim of the Austrians to cut us off from the Danube; they keep strengthening their left in order to overwhelm Massena, who is wounded and issues his orders from an open carriage, and Napoleon, like a malicious Titan, lets them go on unchecked; then all at once a hundred guns vomit their terrible fire upon their weakened center, driving it backward more than a league, and their left, terror-stricken ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... He charged both the cause and the continuance of the war upon the Republican party. "Four years ago," he said, "a convention met in this city when our country was peaceful, prosperous, and united. Its delegates did not mean to destroy our government, to overwhelm us with debt, or to drench our land with blood; but they were animated by intolerance and fanaticism, and blinded by an ignorance of the spirit of our institutions, the character of our people, and the condition of our land. They thought they might ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... was only at the expense of almost their last cartridges and the loss of three more dogs. Joe spoke again of the heroism of Howling Wolf, who sat up in his sledge and shot at the wolves, though they threatened to overwhelm him and Joe on more than one rush that they made. Joe said nothing of himself but one's imagination can easily picture these two hardy hunters, sheltered only by their sledges, making a fight for life against a large ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... them live, but let us defend ourselves against their teeth and fangs. Are the overseers of God's people, in a world of shame, to be mere philosophical Gallios, indifferent to our higher interests? Is it a Christian duty to permit an avalanche of evils to overwhelm the Church on the plea of toleration? Shall we suffer, when we have the power to prevent it, a pandemonium of scoffers and infidels and sentimental casuists to run riot in the city which is intrusted to us to guard? Not thus will we be disloyal to our ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... subject. I will point out to you how little encouragement the youth of this country receive from those who are above them in social station. In every one of your counties there is a hunt, cricket clubs, golf clubs in such numbers that their statistics absolutely overwhelm me. Everywhere one meets young men of leisure, well off, calmly proposing to settle down and spend the best part of their lives in what they call country life. They will look after their estates; they will hunt a little, shoot a little, ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... back. "There is destruction, treachery, and murder outside. Crime may break in here and overwhelm us, but we ought not to go out ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the spectacle before us. So many chimneys now send up their smoke, that it begins to have the aspect of a village street; although everything is so inartificial and inceptive, that it seems as if one returning wave of the wild nature might overwhelm it all. But the one edifice which gives the pledge of permanence to this bold enterprise is seen at the central point of the picture. There stands the meeting-house, a small structure, low-roofed, without a spire, and built of rough timber, newly hewn, with the sap still in the ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are compared to the ocean; as David says, 'All thy waves are gone over me.' But then the Lord answers to that, 'When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the floods, they shall not overwhelm thee;' and David himself in another place declares it to be true—'O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee? or to thy faithfulness round about thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.'—I suppose," he added, thoughtfully, taking ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... her lover, "Sir," said she, "you overwhelm me with amazement and anxiety! you are imposed upon, if you have received any such letter. You are deceived, if you thought Aurelia Darnel could be ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... send you to the Jesuits, who make a specialty of retreats for men: but knowing you as I think I know you, I feel sure you would not stay there two days. You would find yourself among amiable and very clever priests, but they would overwhelm you with sermons, would wish to interfere with your life, mix themselves up with your art, they would examine your thoughts with a magnifying glass, and then you would be under treatment with good young people, whose unintelligent ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... would never be returned. Yet this confidence did not prevent her taking every precaution, lest Dorriforth should come to the knowledge of it. She would not have his composed mind disturbed with such a thought—his steadfast principles so much as shaken by the imagination—nor overwhelm him with those self-reproaches which his fatal attraction, unpremeditated as it was, would still have drawn ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... movement to limit the power of the majority. This attempt, however, to muzzle the press and overthrow the right of free speech instead of silencing the opposition only strengthened and intensified it. It merely augmented the rising tide of popular disapproval which was soon to overwhelm the Federalist party. ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... difficulties in regard to moral justice vanish. If a man be born blind, deaf, a cripple, a slave, an idiot, it is because in a previous life he abused his privileges and heaped on his soul a load of guilt which he is now expiating. If a sudden calamity overwhelm a good man with unmerited ruin and anguish, it is the penalty of some crime committed in a state of responsible being beyond the confines of his present memory. Does a surprising piece of good fortune accrue to any one, splendid riches, a commanding ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... becomes plenty. Contracts are entered into by individuals resting on this unsubstantial state of things, but the delusion speedily passes away and the country is overrun with an indebtedness so weighty as to overwhelm many and to visit every department of industry with great and ruinous embarrassment. The greatest vigilance becomes necessary on the part of Government to guard against this state of things. The depositories must be given distinctly ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... those aboard her perceived that she was showing signs of weakness, and was likely to go down with all on board unless aid could be obtained. Not a sail, however, was in sight; and every wave seemed about to overwhelm or dash to pieces the frail craft. She labored heavily in the furious sea. By and by the strain on her timbers was such that the port hog-brace broke in two places, weakening the vessel so that her fate was apparent to all. Soldiers and sailors worked away with a frantic energy born by the fear of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the same size. When, however, in times of calm an old sea, as it is called, is rolling in, the surges may occasionally undergo very great variations in magnitude. Not infrequently these occasional waves are great enough to overwhelm persons who are upon the rocks next the shore. These greater surges are probably to be accounted for by the fact that in the open sea waves produced by winds blowing in different directions may run on with ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Lord, in might victorious, Rise and give Thy people aid; Come, O come in triumph glorious, Overwhelm Thy foes dismayed. Circled with a thousand wonders, Girt with all Thy power and strength, Mid ten thousand thousand thunders Save, ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... Since the old man died, it had been little tended, and weeds grew rank where flowers had once been planted. Jan threw himself on the neglected grave. "My poor mother!" he cried, almost bitterly. For a moment the full sense of their common wrong seemed to overwhelm him, and he shrank even from Lady Adelaide. But when, kneeling beside him, she bent her face as if the wind that sighed among the grass stalks could carry her words to ears long dulled in death,—"My POOR child! I will be a mother to your son!"—Jan's heart turned back with a gush of gratitude ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... together with furious amiability as they looked at Guercino's "Aurora." Then two of them parted from the rest, and went to a little summer-house in the gardens, while the others followed us to the top of the Casino. There they caught sight of their friends in the arbor, and the spectacle appeared to overwhelm them. They bowed, they took off their hats, they waved their handkerchiefs. It was not enough: one young fellow mounted on the balustrade of the roof at his neck's risk, lifted his hat on his cane and flourished it in greeting to the heart's-friends in the arbor, from ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... would try to concentrate his mind on the study or the writing to which he had been used so eagerly to turn, another thought that he had been keeping at bay by a conscious effort would rush at him again and overwhelm him. ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... thoughts. I would have her think every moment lost that is not passed with me: sing to me, read to me, play to me when I pleased: no joy so great as in obeying me. When I should be inclined to love, overwhelm me with it; when to be serious or solitary, if apprehensive of intrusion, retiring at a nod; approaching me only if I smiled encouragement: steal into my presence with silence; out of it, if not noticed, on tiptoe. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... lavished upon the brave soldiers who, in the struggle with the foe, have covered themselves with glory, and returned victorious from the field of battle; but how much more brilliant is the achievement of those who overwhelm disease, that common enemy of mankind, whose victims are numbered by millions! Is it meritorious in the physician to modestly veil his discoveries, regardless of their importance? If he have light, why hide it from the world? ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... became guilty. The cruel deeds of a man not only prevented Lord Byron from feeling the least sympathy for him, but even made gratitude toward him a burden. However much Ali Pasha, the fierce Viceroy of Janina, may overwhelm him with kindness, wish to treat him as a son, address him in writing as "Excellentissime and Carissime," the cruelties of such a friend are too revolting for Byron to profit by his offer of services. He calls him the man of war and calamity, and in immortal verse ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... answer, before I could think the thing out indeed, for all this breath from savage and mystical Africa blowing on me suddenly here in an Essex drawing-room, seemed to overwhelm me, the ineffable Harut proceeded in ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions all I dare aver is that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... certain you will make all sacrifice that lies in your power. For we are face to face with a peril greater than plagues, greater than influenza, greater than earthquakes and mighty floods, which sometimes overwhelm this land. These physical calamities can rob us of so many Indian bodies. But the calamity that has at the present moment overtaken India touches the religious honour of a fourth of her children and the self-respect of the whole nation. The Khilafat wrong affects the ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... trenches was destined to overwhelm me with astonishment, and this one surpassed all that I could imagine. I should like to be able to impart the extraordinary impression I felt; but one would have to have been there that night to be capable ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... spoken of, I, the writer of this present narrative, belong. It has nothing whatever to do with merely human dogma,—and yet I would have it distinctly understood that I am not opposed to 'forms' of religion save where they overwhelm religion itself and allow the Spirit to be utterly lost in the Letter. For 'the letter killeth,—the spirit giveth life.' So far as a 'form' may make a way for truth to become manifest, I am with it,—but when it is ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... Blake looked ahead to see the upper gates, which were supposed to remain closed until the boat had risen to the upper level, swing open, and an immense quantity of foamy water rush out. It seemed about to overwhelm them. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... throughout all Italy, so many and such shocking examples of violence and avarice as in this city. Has our country fostered us only to be her destroyer? Have we been victorious only to effect her ruin? Has she honored us that we may overwhelm her with disgrace? Now, by that faith which is binding upon all good men, I promise you, that if you still conduct yourselves so as to make me regret my victory, I will adopt such measures as shall cause you bitterly to repent ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Turkey. These fearful heaps of peril lie so heavy at our hearts, since we know not into which we shall fortune to fall and therefore fear all the worst, that (as our Saviour prophesied of the people of Jerusalem) many among us wish already, before the peril come, that the mountains would overwhelm them or the valleys open and swallow them up and ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... would overwhelm the Jews; but, even though the wall of Jerusalem should be broken down, the city laid waste, and the inhabitants led away captive, God's words were sure. He would visit His people at last. He would redeem ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... resisting, that would be a scandal I might have difficulty in suppressing. It would spread surely, go over the country, get to the ears of the Central Government, and return to New Mexico with a weight that might overwhelm me. Besides, amigo mio, it would spoil my plan in several respects—notably, that with the nina and others too numerous to mention. Of course, we'll kill him if we can, with fair pretext for doing so. But unless he show fight, we must take him ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... no time high or enduring spirits, but such as she had were now completely quelled. A dreadful feeling of coming evil—a foreboding of misery, such as will sometimes overwhelm stronger minds than Anty's, seemed to stifle her; and she continued sobbing till she fell into hysterics, when Meg and Jane were summoned to her assistance. They sat with her for above an hour, doing ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... uneasiness and regret rather than of surprise and admiration. The ancient ruins, stupendous in themselves, seemed to her spoilt for effect by their situation in the center of a modern town. "Of the Rome of the past not enough exists to overwhelm me with its majesty; of the Rome of the present not enough to make me forget the first, and much too much to ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... schemes of his political ambition by seemly and specious means. But it was necessary for him in the times in which he lived, to proceed with eclat, and in a way that should confound all opposers. The utmost resolution was required to overwhelm those who might otherwise have been prompted to contend against him. Hence it appears that he took a right measure of the understanding of his contemporaries, when he dragged the young king from the scene of his retirement, and brought him back by force into the assembly of the nobles. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... could be maintained by the holder; and it would be easy to fill the ditch and scale the walls. Besides, the family is so very unpopular among the military classes around, whose lands they have seized upon, that thousands would come to the aid of any government force brought to crush them, and overwhelm the garrison. They keep their position only by the purchase of Court favour, and have the respect and attachment of only the better sort of cultivators, who are not of the military classes, and could be of little use ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... know immediately if this threat were idle or genuine. If Jefferson Davis should dare to execute these thirteen officers and men, the administration could not resist the storm of indignant protest which would overwhelm it from the North. ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... us by its glare, and the next moment leaving us in darkness, relieved only by the red flames of the conflagration from which we were endeavouring to escape. Our first object was to proceed to a distance from the vessel, lest she should explode and overwhelm us; but, to our inexpressible distress, we discovered that the yawl had no rudder, and that for the two boats we had only three oars. All exertions to obtain more from the ship proved unsuccessful. The gig ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... and advise you in the storm that is now brewing, which will soon overwhelm this goodly Nineveh, and in its course shake a throne to its foundation. But this is no place for explanations. Come—and on our way I will tell you who I am, and why I have mingled with this people, that know hardly, as yet, what they are about ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... occurred to me that it was a little Potterish of Arthur to make a conventional tragic situation out of what he couldn't really mind very much, and to make out that Jane was overwhelmed by what, I believed, didn't really overwhelm her. But that didn't do. Arthur was never Potterish. There must, therefore, be more to this than ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... not to laugh, and Maurice swallowed his impatience long enough to say, "Jacobus, you overwhelm me!" Then he took his departure, holding the gift between a reluctant thumb and finger. "Funny little beggar," he said to himself, and pitched the stub into the gutter from which Jacky had salvaged it; he didn't look back to see his son hanging over the palings, watching the fate ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... shameful means, which their policy brings to the aid of persecution. I would have been indifferent to all except that species of opprobrium with which the first magistrates of the Republic endeavour to overwhelm me. After having deserved well of my country by my last act, I am not bound to hear myself accused in a manner as absurd as atrocious. I have not expected that a manifesto, signed by emigrants, paid by England, should obtain ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... They would be up and away the moment they heard of the near approach of the column. Then it would be a stern chase into the heart of the hills, and there, reinforced by renegades from all sides, they might be able to turn upon and overwhelm their pursuers. There was only one likely way of striking them where they were, and that was by making wide circuit to the north, fording the Ska far behind their camp, and then, turning up-stream, attack them from the north or northeast. Chrome saw the point and yielded. ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... faults:—here we are happily agreed. It is the inferences we draw from this fact that are different. The one that I draw is like one which is recorded in a famous case in antiquity. When the Macedonian armies seemed about to overwhelm Greece, Demosthenes encouraged the Athenians by this very sound bit of philosophy: "The worst fact in our past affords the brightest hope for our future. It is the fact that our misfortunes have come because of our own faults. If they had come when we were doing our best, ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... resort that I dropped two of them with my rifle, bringing the others to a temporary halt. Again, I appealed to them to desist. But they only mistook my solicitude for them for fear, and, with shouts of rage and derision, leaped forward once again to overwhelm me. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... This would indeed have been impossible had De Grammont held his position; but when that officer saw the English troops halt he believed he had only the advanced guard in front of him, and resolving to overwhelm these before their main body arrived, he abandoned his strong position, led the troops across the swamp, and ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... appeared to us. Now let us go three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may offer a sacrifice to Jehovah our God.' But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless he is made to do so by a mighty power. Therefore I will use my power and overwhelm Egypt with all the marvellous deeds that I will do there. After that ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... brain a whirl, her limbs inert. Rape most foul this crowned satyr committed. "He fell upon me as a pack of hounds overwhelm a hunted, wounded she-stag," ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... own opinion, it seemed at last to be generally agreed that there might possibly be a storm gathering in the air, of which this was the prognostic; and by its following, and nearly keeping pace with us, we were in great fear lest it should break upon and overwhelm us, if not carefully avoided. Our commander, therefore, as it approached nearer and nearer, ordered one of the ship's guns to be fired, to try if the percussion of the air would disperse it. This was no sooner done ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... where our struggles and protests would be unavailing. It is by thus generalizing the point of view of art so that we adopt it towards our own life that we secure the catharsis of tragedy. Instead of letting sorrow overwhelm us, we may win self-possession through the struggle against it; instead of feeling that there is nothing left when the loved one dies, we may keep in memory a cherished image, more poignant and beautiful because the reality is ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... captivity. Or else, impelling with the force of fifty men their snaky craft, which were swift as race-boats and noiseless as beasts of prey, they would surprise at dead of night some defenceless merchantman, overwhelm their victims with showers of spears, and with morning light a plundered boat, a few dead bodies, were the silent witnesses of their ferocity. On the other hand, the Illanum and Balanini tribes, infesting the islands ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... me to the heart, and is my bitterest condemnation. A true man were courteous to high and low alike. Now, indeed, you overwhelm me with shame, maiden ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... answered, speaking very low, for my voice was choked; "but thy songs are not good for the sons of men to hear—of a truth they overwhelm me!" ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Edinburgh united with, the sacred and exhilarating interests of the Gospel to arouse all that was noble, and divine in every heart. The Moderator reverently led the Assembly in prayer and constituted the court most solemnly in the name of Jesus Christ. Such a prayer should overwhelm the soul with God's presence, burden the conscience with responsibilities, make the spiritual world dreadfully visible, and bring God's servants close to His ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... importuners-how many have here whiled away precious time in a gloomy cell, provided for the punishment of poverty!" The disowned man, for such he is, struggles to retain his resolution; fain would he, knowing the price of that resolution, repress those sensations threatening to overwhelm him. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... among the rarest of fossils, due, no doubt, to their aerial habits removing them from the ordinary dangers of flood, bog, or ice which overwhelm mammals and reptiles, and also to their small specific gravity which keeps them floating on the surface of water till devoured. Their remains were long confined to Tertiary deposits, where many living genera and a few extinct forms ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... were then left to perish in excruciating agony; and some, bound to parts of different trees which had been brought together by machinery, were torn limb from limb by the sudden revulsion of the liberated branches. [306:1] But, even in the East, this attempt to overwhelm Christianity was not prosecuted from its commencement to its close with unabated severity. Sometimes the sufferers obtained a respite; and again, the work of blood was resumed with fresh vigour. Though many were tempted for a season to make a hollow ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... sighing fitfully; the clouds gathered and formed an army which stormed the zenith and threatened to overwhelm the pure light of the planet. The lesser stars vanished, two or three falling in their haste and losing themselves forever in infinity. The night thickened; snow began ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... that the two principal figures in that affair parted each other's company fully realizing that hostilities were at hand. To say that Harrison was bound to sit helplessly in his capital while his enemies gathered a force sufficient to overwhelm him, and all without a move on his part to avert a calamity, but illustrates the foolishness of the whole contention. Immediately on the breaking up of the council, Tecumseh departed with a portion of his braves to organize and cement a federation of the tribes; Harrison, in the meantime, ordering ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... resolution can do much. "If the pot boils," says the proverb, "take it off the fire." A little care, a word swallowed, a rising sentence struck down in us by a simple rule, may save us humiliation. "By reflection, by restraint and control a wise man can make himself an island which no floods can overwhelm. He who is tolerant with the intolerant, mild with the fault-finders, and free from passion with the passionate, him I indeed call a ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... "French politics;" for, notwithstanding the peace, he cannot be persuaded that the French are not still laying plots to ruin the nation, and to get hold of the Bank of England. The radical attempted to overwhelm him one day by a long passage from a newspaper; but Jack neither reads nor believes in newspapers. In reply he gave him one of the stanzas which he has by heart from his favourite, and indeed only author, old Tusser, and which he ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... the summer softness—a contact of something unseen—an amour of the light and air, I am jealous and overwhelm'd with friendliness, And will go gallivant with the ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... necessities nor painful infirmity had disturbed him, his remnant of life might have been as cheaply and cheerily enjoyed as the early playtime of the kitten and the child. Old Dr. Dolliver and his great-granddaughter (a ponderous title, which seemed quite to overwhelm the tiny figure of Pansie) had met one another at the two extremities of the life-circle: her sunrise served him for a sunset, illuminating his locks of silver and hers of golden brown with a homogeneous shimmer ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... their opportunities for hiding were consequently reduced; the chances of their emplacement being immediately spotted from the fortress were correspondingly high, and the big gun in the fortress was pretty certain to overwhelm the majority of them at least. It is evident that the circumference {GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA} offers far more chances of hiding than the circumference ABC, but a still more powerful factor in favour of the ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... than honour or loyalty warranted. Brave amongst the bravest, fair in presence and in favour, skilful to manage the most intricate affairs, to attach to himself those who were doubtful, to stun and overwhelm, by the suddenness and intrepidity of his enterprises, those who were resolute in resistance, he attained, and as to personal merit certainly deserved, the highest place in the kingdom. But he abused, under the influence of strong temptation, the opportunities ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... very long. I frequently find my mind in degree sheathed against the deep sorrows, and am enabled not to look so much at them; but there are also times when secondary things arise, such as parting with servants, schools, the poor around us, and our dear home. These things overwhelm me; indeed, I think naturally I have a very acute sense of the sorrow. Then the bright side of the picture arises. I have found such help and strength in prayer to God, and highly mysterious as this ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... his wound attacking him? Or did the shame of belonging to a race capable of acts so base overwhelm the young heart? Or did the lad cling to his kindred, and was it wrath and resentment at hearing them so bitterly reviled which made his color vary from red to pale and roused such a tumult in his soul that he was scarcely capable of speech? No matter! ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to storm a wall, but the cleverest of all men at plundering. And some of the soldiers who are good fighters will join them in the invasion, so that, if no opposition presents itself to them, they may overwhelm those who fall in their way, and if any hostile force encounters them, they may be saved easily by retiring to us. And after we have captured the fortress, if God wills, then with the whole army let us cross the River Tigris, without having to fear mischief from anyone in our rear, and knowing ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... her planks—there were spots on her flag— So the fanatics said, as they seized on her helm; And from soft summer seas, turned her prow where the crag And the wild breakers rose the good ship to overwhelm. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... all the dream, for it said that if you, the Swallow, should set your face southward with us then the best of luck would turn to the worst, for then utter misfortune should overwhelm me and my regiments. Now, lady, I cannot doubt that as the first part of the prophecy has come true, so the last part would come true also did I tempt the spirits of my ancestors by disregarding it, and, therefore, White Swallow, ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... horrible!" she murmured, striving to keep back her tears. "And why? Why?" she repeated, as infinite grief for love that was lost seemed to overwhelm her. It was revolting to think that Riasantzeff had always lied to her in such a facile, heartless way. "And not only he, but all the others lied, too," she thought. "They all of them professed to be so delighted at ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... generous assistance in war, had evinced the most cordial dispositions for a liberal and mutually beneficial intercourse in peace, and was now set upon by an unholy league of the monarchical powers of Europe, to overwhelm and destroy her, for her desire to establish institutions ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the heavier gusts, would uprise and overwhelm both ends of the Nan-Shan in snowy rushes of foam, expanding wide, beyond both rails, into the night. And on this dazzling sheet, spread under the blackness of the clouds and emitting a bluish glow, Captain MacWhirr could catch a desolate ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... fell, after the field was won, than during all the previous combat. No lances, no long weapons, no missiles were at hand, wherewith to overwhelm the desperadoes; no horse wherewith to tread them under foot; hand to hand, man to man, it was fought out, with those short stabbing blades, against which the stoutest corslet was but as parchment, the hardest shield of brass-bound bull's hide, but ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... attempt to break through in the west on the old plan. The immense collection of guns, ammunition, railway material, and every kind of transport aroused high hopes. It was believed that the bombardment prolonged throughout many days with an intensity far greater than before the Somme would overwhelm the German resistance, and open the way to the Flanders coast and to the submarine bases then at the most successful height of their activity. These expectations were disappointed. The German positions no longer consisted of continuous trench lines, which could be reduced to shapeless masses ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... anxiety rendered them averse to move. Attention appeared to interfere with their walking on the ice; and each held his breath in expectation. They saw that the schooner, then less than a cable's length from them, was close to the rocks; and the next shock, if anything like the last, must overwhelm her. To their astonishment, instead of being nipped, the schooner rose by a stately movement that was not without grandeur, upheld by broken cakes that had got beneath her bottom, and fairly reached the shelf of rocks ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... has been found not only to be advantageous, but to be a prerequisite to progress in research, as the vast multiplicity of facts, still ever accumulating, would otherwise overwhelm the scholar. In philological classification fixity of nomenclature is of corresponding importance; and while the analogies between linguistic and biotic classification are quite limited, many of the principles of nomenclature which biologists have adopted having no application ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... Howe had served in America during the French War and was accounted an excellent officer, a strict disciplinarian, and a gallant gentleman. Nevertheless he loved ease, society, and good living, and his expulsion from Boston, his failure to overwhelm Washington by sallies from his comfortable bases at New York and Philadelphia, destroyed every shred of his military reputation. John Burgoyne, to whom was given the task of penetrating New York from Canada, had likewise seen service in the French ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... his face with his hands, and gave way to tears. He had lived in this world too long not to know that prosperity breeds forgetfulness, and he felt already in his heart a foretaste of the bitterness that should overwhelm him when this boy, whom he loved as his own child, should leave ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... reprieve brought to him; I say, I do not wonder that they bring a surgeon with it, to let him blood that very moment they tell him of it, that the surprise may not drive the animal spirits from the heart, and overwhelm him. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... her heart was awakening, becoming animated and moved, her little woman's heart which as yet knew nothing! There, very near him, without giving a thought to him, she had a revelation of the way in which love may overwhelm a human being; and this revelation, this initiation had come to her from that miserable ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... an overpowering will to see her. He turned, inch by inch, little degree by degree, knowing that if, when he turned, he looked into her eyes, the end would rush upon them, overwhelm them, carry them along like straws on the flooding river. At last his head was ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... my College in order to work in other directions, [5] where I now seem to be most needed, and where none other can do the work. I withdraw from an overwhelm- ing prosperity. My students have never expressed so grateful a sense of my labors with them as now, and never have been so capable of relieving my tasks as ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... to-morrow morning. For the present I will ask you to keep what I have said a secret even from your good mother. It is as well not to disturb Squire Haynes in his fancied security until we are ready to overwhelm ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... suggesting lines of reading; in his excitement he even recommended some slight study of Patristics. There was nothing like getting to the sources—Polycarp and Irenaeus were important; or he could lend her Lightfoot. But he did not want to overwhelm her with dogmas—mere matter for the intellect—he would prefer her to accept some truths provisionally and see how they worked out. After all, the working out was everything. He wanted her to see that it was a question of will. In the crisis ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... TO AUSTRIA.—An Austrian attempt to overwhelm Serbia in the first weeks of the war met with disastrous failure. This was due to two causes: (1) the brave resistance of the Serbian troops; (2) the fact that the greater part of the Austrian forces had to be used for defense against the Russian invaders of Galicia. Serbia ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... making light of the precious blood of the Son of God, and trifling with the gracious invitations of his Redeemer: surely, if he be not lost to sensibility, mixed emotions of guilt, and fear, and shame, and remorse, and sorrow, will nearly overwhelm his soul; he will smite upon his breast, and cry out in the language of the publican, "God be merciful to me a sinner." But, blessed be God, such an one needs not despair—it is to persons in this very situation, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... city-spire; 35 The Channel there, the Islands and white sails, Dim coasts, and cloud-like hills, and shoreless Ocean— It seem'd like Omnipresence! God, methought, Had built him there a Temple: the whole World Seem'd imag'd in its vast circumference: 40 No wish profan'd my overwhelmd heart. Blest hour! It was ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of my mother," she answered, in a grave voice. "You will never know, Jules, what I suffer in remembering my mother's dying farewell, said in a voice sweeter than all music, and in feeling the solemn touch of her icy hand at a moment when you overwhelm me with those ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... moaned. All her eager desire to overwhelm Rose Cameron's rival with the shameful news of her bridegroom's previous marriage and living wife had evaporated, leaving only deep sympathy and compassion for the sweet young girl, who looked so kindly, and spoke so gentle. Yet deeply she felt that, even ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... another more marvellous in its connection with the first. The huge lens was a simple accident of curved rocks and convex water, planed smooth as crystal. In other than a droughty summer it would probably not exist; the spouting torrent would overwhelm it—but I know not. Was not this astonishing enough? Yet Nature had worked a second miracle to mock in anticipation the self-sufficient plagiarism of little man. I noticed that the rays of the sun concentrated in the lens ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... lent an additional weight. Another half hour's exertion might possibly bring him to the shore, but that exertion hardly seemed possible. It was but with difficulty now that he could strike out. Often the rush of the waves from behind would overwhelm him, and it was only by convulsive efforts that he was able to surmount the raging ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... The writer, therefore, made the best of his way aft, and, on a second attempt to look out, he succeeded, and saw indeed an astonishing sight. The sea or waves appeared to be ten or fifteen feet in height of unbroken water, and every approaching billow seemed as if it would overwhelm our vessel, but she continued to rise upon the waves and to fall between the seas in a very wonderful manner. It seemed to be only those seas which caught her in the act of rising which struck her with so much ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shock and shame of being banished from her home overcame her, and she wept. Although of a naturally long-suffering and uncomplaining disposition, the catastrophic wind-up of all her hopes was too much for her. What was this element in life that could seize and overwhelm one as does a great wind? Why this sudden intrusion of death to shatter all that had ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... wall erected against the call of experience which was sure to be death-dealing. The old prohibitions are still active in it in the terror with which life is viewed, in the menace and cruelty of things, the sharpness of edges encountered, the weight of the masses that threaten to fall and overwhelm, the fury and blackness and horror of nature once again regarded. Again and again there passes through it the haggard, shrouded figure of the Russian Jew. The "Poems of 1917" are full of the wailings and rockings of little old Ghetto mothers. Again and again Ornstein speaks in ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Eastern races, had always the pre-eminence intellectually and morally, might, in concert with the West, and making herself, so to speak, the organ of its views in the East, become a powerful barrier against that torrent of Slavism which for some time past has threatened to overwhelm ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... most expensive, of course. I wouldn't care to overwhelm them. I thought of black fox muffs and scarfs for Kathie and Freda, and gray squirrel for Ida and Marie. None of them have furs. I have four or five sets and a fur coat, too. I feel selfish to have so much, when they ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... observes, on closing the history of Napoleon Bonaparte, that the reader may be disposed to pause a moment to reflect on the character of that wonderful person, on whom fortune showered so many favours in the beginning and through the middle of his career, to overwhelm its close with such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... the gyro-knife barrier beneath the surface. At the same time, from scouting parties and deserters at other points we learned that rumors are rife throughout the enemy forces of some scheme now on foot that will overwhelm us within a very short time. No details have been given, but so widespread is the gossip, and so consistent, that we have been forced to the conclusion that it cannot be reasonably dismissed as mere ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... scarcely be conceived; and it is not easy to imagine whether the untaught manners, rude dialect, and uncouth appearance of these poor foresters, would more astonish the king; or his dignity of person and manners, together with the splendid scene with which they were surrounded, would overwhelm them. The end, however, of the business was, that strong presumptions appeared of the boy having been suborned to accuse them falsely, and they were accordingly dismissed. The boy afterwards confessed ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... It is, however, permissible to suggest that the security of his right flank, and the possession of a rallying point, inspired him with the confidence which enabled him to {79} withstand the sustained attacks of Napoleon until the arrival of Bluecher's corps permitted him to overwhelm his adversary. ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... of bronze who could terrify witnesses, torture and overwhelm the opposition, and thunder so successfully from the legal rostrum, sat there abashed by the child's tone and manner, and as he watched her he could not avoid smiling at her imperious mandate. Although silent, it was one o'clock before she fell into a deep, sound ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... excessively long-tailed frock-coat, shiny stump-toed boots, and with dainty little slouch hat tipped over left eye, the small-fry roughs made room for his majesty; when he entered the restaurant, the waiters deserted bankers and merchants to overwhelm him with obsequious service; when he shouldered his way to a bar, the shouldered parties wheeled indignantly, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... An iron suit, Iron jacket and iron boot, 20 Iron breeches, and on the head No hat, but an iron pot instead, And under the chin the bail (I believe they called the thing a helm); And, thus accoutered, they took the field, 25 Sallying forth to overwhelm The dragons and pagans that plagued the realm,— So this modern knight Prepared for flight, Put on his wings and strapped them tight,— Jointed and jaunty, strong and light,— Buckled them fast to ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... had been made the man who really held the fate of the world in his hands took a long envelope out of the breast-pocket of his coat, and proceeded to explain, somewhat as a schoolmaster might explain to his class, the doom which would overwhelm humanity on the 12th ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... rejoice when the day of triumph came; but the name of this woman was found upon no heroic roll, nor is it on the page of any history that men have since written, although she made heroes of cowards, and helped to stay the wave of desolation which, in the dark days of '76, threatened to overwhelm ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... wraps. I packed them all up comfortably in the carriage, and rode on to tell you of their arrival. I don't seem to have done the right thing, as usual; but that is always the way. Here is the carriage lumbering up the drive. Now you had all better go out on the steps and overwhelm them with kisses and caresses. Only may I ask that they should be taken straight up to their nursery, and not ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre
... prayers had not been heard, and in the bitterness of my heart, it seemed that you, who were said to be the friend of the poor on earth, and God the Father, had forgotten us in our misery, in order to overwhelm the rich with greater gifts. In my distress, and that of the child; I had learned to curse the day on which we were born. Oh! how wild were my thoughts during the time that Hannele was trying to sell ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... water, overwhelming, irresistible. To me, quailing in my frail bark, in all the consciousness of helplessness and ruin, it seemed as though the winds and the waves were really sentient beings combining to overwhelm me, and increasing their ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... hour, oppressed me with a feeling unutterably sad. I could not bear it, at last. It seemed as though another deep was rising and breaking in my heart, the flood of proud, half-stifled passion waking in one awful moment to overwhelm me. No light upon that sea—but hope wronged, the mockery of death for yearning love, the unguided clash of drifting ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... paused for a moment. "I am a godless man," he said. "The stars and space and time overwhelm my imagination. I cannot imagine anything above or ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... enormous bulk, it seems not so much the bulk, so lightly is it carried, as the spirit of the tree—the elastic vigor, the patience, the endurance of storm and change, the confident might, and the soaring, almost contemptuous pride, that overwhelm the puny spectator. It is just because man can measure himself, his littleness, his brevity of existence, with this growth out of the earth, that he is more personally impressed by it than he might be by the mere variation in the contour of the globe which is called a mountain. ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... it; and I beg your pardon: but if you knew the cause I have to complain. The slipperiness, sir, of one staggering parson, has set rolling this very avalanche, which gathers size every moment, and threatens to overwhelm me now, unless that idle dog Lancelot will condescend to bestir ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... to come became unspeakable. But through it all one thing, one gleam of hope obtruded itself. It was not a tangible hope. It was not even a hope that could have found expression. It was merely a picture that ever confronted her, even when darkness seemed most nearly to overwhelm her. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... are the Secret Party. We will work in the dark and find out things—and run risks—and collect an army no one will know anything about until it is strong enough to suddenly rise at a secret signal, and overwhelm the Maranovitch and Iarovitch, and seize their forts and citadels. No one even knows we are alive. We are a silent, secret thing that ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the throne, what evil counsellors whispered in his ear? They were concerned with revenues and policies and ephemeral trifles of all sorts, while we were intent on renewing our ancient covenant with God, to the end that His promise to the world should be fulfilled, and His justice overwhelm the nations. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... the fate of the first. Still the Nancy was to come. She was seen labouring on amid the foaming seas. Now she sank into the trough of a huge wave, which rose up astern and robed in with foam-covered crest, curling over as if about to overwhelm her. Another blast filled her sails, and just escaping the huge billow which came roaring astern, the next moment, surrounded by a mass of hissing waters, she was carried high up on the beach. Most of her active crew instantly ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... had been strongly aroused. But when he felt himself to be the protector of innocence, the defender of justice, or the prosecutor of wrong, he frequently disclosed such unexpected resources of reasoning, such depth of feeling, and rose to such fervor of appeal as to astonish and overwhelm his hearers, and make him fairly irresistible. Even an ordinary law argument, coming from him, seldom failed to produce the impression that he was profoundly convinced of the soundness of his position. It is not surprising that the mere appearance of so conscientious an attorney ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... mechanical rigidity of a minute sleepwalker. They went into a jewelry store beyond, with a square low bow window and white trimming, where he purchased a ring with a ruby, and small gold bracelets with locks and chains. His restless desire was to clothe Eunice in money, to overwhelm her with gifts; yet, although an evident delight struggled through her stupefaction, he failed to get from the expenditure the release he sought. A leaden sense of blood guiltiness persisted in him. At Parkinson's, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the Gods. Him Prometheus reviles with opprobrious epithets, calling him a lackey of the Gods, and refuses to disclose anything concerning the matter on which he questions him. The winged God, replying, threatens him with dire calamities. A tempest will come upon him and overwhelm him with thunderbolts, and a bloodthirsting eagle shall feed upon his liver. Thus saying, he departs, and immediately the earth commences to heave, the noise of thunder is heard, vivid streaks of lightning blaze throughout the sky and a hurricane—the onslaught of Jove—sweeps ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... proceed. And do you set bounds to vice? or is it novice to disobey reason? does not reason sufficiently declare, that there is no real good which you should desire too ardently, or the possession of which you should allow to transport you: and that there is no evil that should be able to overwhelm you, or the suspicion of which should distract you? and that all these things assume too melancholy or too cheerful an appearance through our own error? But if fools find this error lessened by time, so that, though the cause remains the same, they are not affected in the same manner, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... crash down a boulder for the ox wagons. As you get higher an anxious and disastrous silence surrounds you, the violated spirit of the mountains that has yielded itself only to the love of Michelangelo seems to be about to overwhelm you in some frightful tragedy. In the shadowless cool light of early morning, these pallid valleys, horrid with noise of struggle and terror, the snorting of a horse, the bellow of a bullock in pain, seem like some fantastic ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... engines, long and round, Thick rammed, at th' other bore with touch of fire {p. 249} Dilated and infuriate, shall send forth From far, with thund'ring noise, among our foes Such implements of mischief, as shall dash To pieces, and overwhelm whatever stands Adverse." ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... to the letter what the supporting army is to the line of attack. It stands just behind the men at the front, ready to strengthen a point here, reinforce the line there, overwhelm opposition ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... "will never overwhelm me with gratitude. You do not know them as I do. A true Thetian would love best the man who led them into the jaws of death to fight for his liberty, even though the fight were in vain, than the man who made all things smooth and happy for ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... you will not stop short, as in your last letter, received the day before yesterday, dearest Harriet, with "but I will not overwhelm you with questions:" it is particularly agreeable to me to have specific questions to answer in the letters I receive from you, and I hope you perceive that I do religiously reply to anything in the shape of a query. It is pleasant to ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... years had been the delight of the Florentines every Carnival. But one year a rival theatre produced a new and rival Stenterello. Of course the old and established Stenterello could not stand this without using the license of the popular stage to overwhelm his rival with ridicule. "This sort of thing," said he, "will never do! How many Stenterelli are we to have? Two is the regular established number in Florence. There are I and my brother over there at the great house on the other side of the Arno: we are the Florentine Stenterelli ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... who, with the brave, repentant Morrice, surprised Pontefract Castle, and made from thence those courageous sallies and predatory incursions which gave employment to the Parliamentary troops in that quarter, and prevented them from uniting to overwhelm the succours which Sir Marmaduke Langdale was conducting to join Duke Hamilton and the Scotch Loyalists. But, however limited its means, a good heart will ever discover some way of shewing its benevolence. Charity was now a scanty rill, not an ample stream; but ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... ground. By the audacity of our stratagem they were completely deceived. So large a skirmish line was an indication of a proportionately strong force to support it. When they found us closing in upon their flanks, they concluded we were far superior in numbers, and certain to overwhelm them. With but slight resistance they fled the field, leaving much of their transportation and equipments to fall into our hands. We called in our skirmishers and pressed them in vigorous pursuit, capturing wagons ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... Mary has no such hope as Martha had expressed. Her more passive, meditative disposition had bowed itself, and let the grief overwhelm her. So in her we see a specimen of the excess of sorrow which indulges in the monotonous repetition of what would have happened if something else that did not happen had happened, and which is too deeply dark to let a gleam of hope shine in. Words will do little to comfort such grief. Silent sharing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... commands," said the Duchess, while the commotion in the pit was calming down. "Moses will overwhelm him, even on his throne, by declaring the death of every first-born son in Egypt, singing that strain of vengeance which augurs thunders from heaven, while above it the Hebrew clarions ring out. But you must clearly understand that this air is by Pacini; ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... (Signiors) And charitable favours overwhelm me. If I were of your blood, you could not be More tender of me: what then can I pay (A poor Boy and a stranger) but a heart Bound to your service? with what willingness I would receive (good Sir) your noble offer, ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... foot, and in his eagerness to arrive at the scene of action would not wait to provide artillery and the various engines required in a siege. "The multitude of my forces," said he, confidently, "will be sufficient to overwhelm ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... marvelous part of the whole thing is that the undistilled well which the Bubble Bug taps would often overwhelm it in an instant, either by the burning acidity of its composition, or the rubber coating of death into which it hardens in the air. Yet with this current of lava or vitriol, our Bug does three wonderful things, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... greater triumph, and now that we had conquered the airships we dropped within a few hundred feet of the surface of the water and then turned our faces westward in order to follow the advance of the deluge and see whether, as we hoped, it would overwhelm our enemies in the very center ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... deferential way in which certain young barristers of promise hang on his lips, copy his gestures and bow to his judgment, one cannot resist a smile. When he tells us that he went on calmly reading and taking notes during the eruption of Vesuvius, though the hot ashes were threatening to overwhelm the villa in which he was staying, or when he quotes the really execrable verses which some scribbler of the day composed in his honour, with the most exquisite self-complacency, one is tempted to show a little impatience at such extravagant self-satisfaction. ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... comes a file of empty carriages;" next, "all the guests in their evening attire, and the ladies in full dress, trembling with fear, with downcast eyes, between two rows of men, women, and children, who stare them in the face, and overwhelm ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... over them the waters of a flood, and overwhelm them all. But I will deliver what is left of the righteous among them; and I will bring them to a distant land, and the land in which you live now shall remain desolate and without one ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt
... Jordan knew and dreaded; the law was on his wife's side, and by applying at a police-court for protection she could overwhelm him with shame and ridicule, which would make life intolerable. Impossible to argue with this woman. Say what he might, the fault always seemed his. His wife was simply doing her duty—in a spirit of admirable thoroughness; ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... writing or the writer?—— Without there!—Call in Robin Hays. Sir Willmott Burrell, Sir Willmott Burrell! the Lord deliver me from such as thou art!" he continued, swelling and chafing himself into anger, 'pricking the sides of his intent,' that so he might overwhelm the dastard knight. "We doubted, sir, at first, but we doubt no longer. Sir, you have robbed that old man of his daughter! You have, by so doing, perjured your own soul, and brought most foul dishonour upon England. I once heard you ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Simoun's face that he was leaving the fated house forever, that the lamp was lighted. Alea jacta est! Seized by the instinct of self-preservation, he thought then of saving himself. It might occur to any of the guests through curiosity to tamper with the wick and then would come the explosion to overwhelm them all. Still he heard Simoun say to the cochero, "The ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... this, which disowned her love and care and defied her authority, the child could not have spoken. She answered him as if he had not been a child; and a truth which no words could have made him comprehend seemed to break upon and overwhelm him, while she spoke. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... to superintend, much more than had been anticipated. Mrs. Wiggins was undoubtedly a "peculiar female," as had been expected, but she was so elderly and monstrous that Mrs. Mumpson felt some embarrassment in her purpose to overwhelm Holcroft with a sense of the ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... on with thunderous unison of tread; and the rattling thunder-shocks, intermittent, though coming steadily nearer, served but to emphasize these foot strokes of the waves. The heavens above and the waters under the earth—these conspired, these marched together, to assail, to overwhelm, to utterly destroy. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Be careful what you say, for you waken in me terrible memories. And your last word shows me that you will not shrink from causing a scandal that will overwhelm all of us with shame. Shall we air in public courts past occurrences which will show that I am not free from reproach, while you are infamous? (He turns to Mademoiselle de Vaudrey) She cannot have told you everything, dear aunt? ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... great mountains of water moving more slowly, and carrying a good wholesome slope on their lee sides, that enabled the ship to ride them easily and comfortably without the provocation of a constantly recurring feeling that each great menacing wall of water was about to overwhelm her. ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... act miraculous. But here, unhappily, the Devil, who never sleeps, had laid a snare for this lamb of God, had belched forth this devouring monster of a she-dragon, this mixture of maniac and demoniac, to swallow him up, to overwhelm him ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... languages; the Finlanders themselves only speak Finnish, the more educated people speak Swedish, and in official circles they must know Russian, a language which has been forced upon them; while the great Russian people are ready to overwhelm and absorb, and march over them to new fields. Still, as a Finlander truly said to the writer, "The destiny of a people is in the hands of the Lord, and Finland has courage in God;" and therefore it is possible a great future may be in store for that beautiful country, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... others, had been kept in ignorance of the message until now, started from his chair with a loud exclamation, then sank back limp. Carmen's face went white. Evil seemed to have chosen that day with canny shrewdness to overwhelm her with its quick sallies from out the darkness ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... what you are going to say: you are going to overwhelm me again with your great principles, and tell me that a man has not sufficient control over his feelings to stop when he would. Pooh! I regard those who talk in that fashion in the same light as the man, who believes he is in honor bound to show great sorrow on the occasion ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... always looks well for a lawyer or an agent confidentiel to keep a client waiting for a moment or two while he attends to the enormous pressure of correspondence which, if allowed to accumulate for five minutes, would immediately overwhelm him. I signed and folded the letter, threw it with a nonchalant air into a basket filled to the brim with others of equal importance, buried my face in my hands for a few seconds as if to collect ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Palais-Egalite, fourteen Breton conspirators, men, women, old men, youths, masters, and servants. The crime was proven, the law explicit. Among the guilty was a girl of twenty, adorable in the heyday of her young beauty under the shadow of the doom so soon to overwhelm her, a fascinating figure. A blue bow bound her golden locks, her lawn kerchief ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
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