"Overwhelming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... themselves in my memory whenever I meet an old woman who puts me in mind of them by some faint resemblance of dress or feature. And whether it is that misfortune has initiated me into the secrets of irremediable and overwhelming disaster; whether that I have come to understand the whole range of human feelings, and, best of all, the thoughts of Old Age and Regret; whatever the reason, nowhere and never again have I seen among the living or in the faces of the dying the wan look of certain gray eyes that I remember, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... Then the consciousness of the serried ranks of faces below there came with almost overwhelming force upon him, and he dared not look at her again. He felt the blood ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... representative fell into a heavy swoon, and was revived with some difficulty. The thought of the permanent withdrawal from public life in his golden prime of the great virtuoso, with his opulent physique, his superbly Mosaic features and his luxuriant chevelure, was altogether too poignantly overwhelming. Let us hasten then to reassure our readers that the blow, though it must inevitably descend one day, is mercifully deferred for a considerable period. To begin with, Mr. Bamborough is under contract to give five farewell tours in the United States ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... pounding the polished wood with their beer glasses. She returned attired in less gown, and sang again. She received another enthusiastic encore. She reappeared in still less gown and danced. The deafening rumble of glasses and clapping of hands that followed her exit indicated an overwhelming desire to have her come on for the fourth time, but the curiosity of ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... with Pan-German and German naval and military literature during the same period, affords overwhelming proof of this powerful current in German nationalism. If Naboth consulted strong neighbours as to necessary precautions against Ahab's plans for obtaining the vineyard, then Naboth acted as a wise man, and the only regret to-day is that the "strong neighbours" ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... sort of stab at my heart. The thought that I might have seen her, and had not seen her, and should never see her—that bitter thought stung me with all the force of overwhelming reproach. 'She is dead!' I repeated, staring stupidly at the hall-porter. I slowly made my way back to the street, and walked on without knowing myself where I was going. All the past swam up and rose at once before me. So this ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... greatness, and none knew better than he that it is the outward and visible sign which counts among the orientals, more perhaps than the inward and spiritual grace: he may also possibly have felt that he did not possess the latter to any overwhelming extent. ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... warrior, now louder and more exultant than before, was suddenly changed to a yell of agony. A jet of warm blood, at the same moment, gushed over Roland's right arm; and the savage, struck by an unknown hand, or by a random ball, fell a dead man at his feet, overwhelming ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... mountains to the vicinity of Sarikamish, where they were rallied by Iskan Pasha. For six days and nights this heroic band made a determined attempt to capture the town held by a comparatively weak Russian garrison. Finally, when, surrounded by overwhelming Russian forces, it became apparent that no Turkish relief could reach him, Iskan Pasha and the remnant of his once ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... great ache lay in his heart. The perfect book of fairy-tales he had been reading was closed and finished. Weeks had passed in the delicious reading, but now the last page was turned; he came back to duty—duty in London—great, noisy, overwhelming London, with its disturbing bustle, its feverish activities, its complex, artificial, unsatisfying amusements, and its hosts of frantic people. He grew older in a moment; he was forty again now; an instant ago, just on the further ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... was rapidly rebuilt, Roman architecture and decoration, of often tawdry and inferior character, replacing the chaste and artistic Greek. Once more the city became a centre of gayety, ostentation, and licentiousness, when, in 79 A.D., the eruption of Vesuvius came, and the overwhelming storm of ashes came down like a thick-descending fall of snow on the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... France at his back Charnisay had been defeated by a woman,—the Huguenot wife of an outlaw! He must reduce La Tour or stand discredited before the world. {68} Furious beyond words, he hastened to France to prepare an overwhelming armament. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... particulars of it are familiar to all. It continued through the twenty-third; and although General Taylor's defeat seemed inevitable, yet he succeeded by skill, and by the courage and devotion of his officers and men, in repulsing the overwhelming forces of the enemy, and throwing them back into the desert. This was the battle of the chiefest interest fought during the Mexican War. At the time it was fought, and for some weeks after, General Taylor's communication with the United States was ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... statue in 1543. The David was the first work by Michael Angelo that displayed the awe-inspiring quality known as his Terribilita; from the fierce frown of the brow to the sharp, strained forms of the feet and toes there is an expression of strenuous force struggling against an almost overwhelming power. The force of the David may succeed against Goliath; but in Michael Angelo's later works the struggle always appears to be a hopeless one, nobly as his Titans fight against fate and omnipotence. The face of the David is a development of the Saint ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... interceded that it be spared. Its wickedness proved, however, too great for pardon. Lot, who, true to his nomad training, hospitably received the divine messengers, was finally persuaded to flee from the city and thus escaped the overwhelming destruction that felt upon it. What was the possible origin of this story? (Hist. Bible I, 87.) What are the important religious teachings of this story? Were great calamities in the past usually ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... the herd at every puff of smoke. It is a curious sight, and one of the grandest in the world, to see a fine rogue elephant knocked over in full charge. His onset appears so irresistible, and the majesty of his form so overwhelming, that I have frequently almost mistrusted the power of man over such a beast; but one shot well placed, with a heavy charge of powder behind the ball, reduces him in an instant to ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... true that no one actually saw the prisoner kill the decedent, and that he has so successfully hidden the body that it has not been found, but the powerful chain of circumstances, clear and close-linked, proving motive, the criminal agency, and the criminal act, is overwhelming. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... as I can find out it is an overwhelming, unquenchable gladness for everything that has happened or is going to happen. At any rate, her quaint speeches are constantly being repeated to me, and, as near as I can make out, 'just being glad' ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... was excited, and the Queen, whose life had been menaced, was more popular than ever. They say that her first visit to the opera after this shocking attempt was a most memorable occasion. Her reception was something almost overwhelming. The audience were all on their feet, cheering and shouting, and waving handkerchiefs and hats, and there was no quieting them till the National Anthem was sung—and even then, they broke in with wild cheers at the close of every verse. Her ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... her mere proximity in the darkness had been sufficient to set him on fire. He knew nothing of enchantments, and for years had been a stranger to anything approaching tender relations with any member of the opposite sex, for he was encased in shyness, and realised his overwhelming defects only too well. Yet this bewitching young creature came to him deliberately. Her manner was unmistakable, and she sought him out on every possible occasion. Chaste and sweet she was undoubtedly, ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... imagined that he saw a wild beast rise up from the floor and fly at his child, a babe of eighteen months. He sprang at the beast and dashed it to the ground, and when awakened, to his horror and overwhelming grief he found that he had killed his beloved baby. A similar record has been reported of a student who attempted during the night to stab his teacher; the man was disarmed and locked up in another portion of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... and I had not the courage to tell you. I had to choose between you, and in my weakness I turned away from my own little girl. For three years I have kept her existence a secret from you, but I heard from the nurse, and I knew that all was well with her. At last, however, there came an overwhelming desire to see the child once more. I struggled against it, but in vain. Though I knew the danger, I determined to have the child over, if it were but for a few weeks. I sent a hundred pounds to the nurse, and I gave her instructions about this cottage, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... be seeking useless vengeance. There came wild yells from the lower end of the valley where the greater fight was on. With a cry Ab gathered his men together and the victorious band ran toward the barrier again, there with overwhelming force to end the struggle. Ever, in later years, did Ab regret that his fight with Boarface had not ended sooner. To save an old hero he had come ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... British woodlands Caesar found; and Bos Taurus had risen in his wrath, and showed that an ancient race was not to be trifled with, with impunity. Even Jones's Bull went down in the end—though, mind you, evidence went to show that he made an hour's stand!—before the overwhelming rush and the terrible horns of the forest monarch. And the victor only gave back before a wall of brandished torch and blazing ferns, that the unsportsmanlike spirit of the keepers did not scruple to resort to. No—she would not admit that Dave's bull had ever met his match. She would say ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... battle was over.[103] On the left wing scarcely a trigger was pulled: the men broke and ran like sheep. The famous Scots Brigade, in fact, set the example of flight. Their officers behaved like brave soldiers. Balfour, abandoned by his men, defended himself for a time against overwhelming odds, till he was cut down by a young clergyman, Robert Stewart, a grandson of Ballechin. Eight officers of Mackay's own regiment were killed, including his brother, the colonel; and many of Ramsay's. In vain was the cavalry ordered to charge. ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... of the Padre's farm had quite recovered from the effects of her disastrous journey. Youth and a sound constitution, and the overwhelming ministrations of Mrs. Ransford had done all that was needed to ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... "The overwhelming probability of a common cause for both was forced upon him, and by calculation he ascertained that this probability was as one million million million ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... my supper. I had found the mundane things of Greece disappointing enough, but my sorrow over Hippopopolis's expert testimony as to the shortcoming of the gods was overwhelming. It was to be expected that the country would fall into a decadent state sooner or later, but that the Olympians themselves were not all that they were cracked up to be by the mythologies had never suggested itself to me. As a result of my courier's words, I lapsed into a moody silence, which ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... This was considered overwhelming proof against him, in spite of his positive denial. Torture was applied, but the most awful sufferings could not wring from him the acknowledgment of having taken part in the conspiracy. Yet Loftus ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... numbering over seven hundred, attacked a village occupied by two hundred and sixteen Pawnees, and succeeded in killing eighty-three. In 1854 a party of one hundred and thirteen were cut off by an overwhelming body of Cheyennes and Kiowas, and killed almost to a man. In 1873 a hunting party of about four hundred, two hundred and thirteen of whom were men, on the Republican, while in the act of killing a herd ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... hearts given back to God their Creator. Many are the Indian homes consecrated to the Wakantanka. Many are the Indian lives devoted to His service. And yet there are facts—there are overwhelming facts, sad enough to break the great, throbbing Christian heart of this country—facts that should make us cover our ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... on, the old humbug!' It is true that I continually repeated, 'but then Varia is mine! mine!' ... Yet that 'but'—alas, that but!—and then, too, the words, 'Varia is mine!' aroused in me not a deep, overwhelming rapture, but a sort of paltry, egoistic triumph.... If Varia had refused me point-blank, I should have been burning with furious passion; but having received her consent, I was like a man who has ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... on Strindberg was overwhelming. He returns to it in one letter after another. Everything that suits his mood of the moment is "Poesque" or "E. P-esque." The story that seems to have made the deepest impression of all was "The Gold Bug," though his thought ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... and go away. Liza rose from her chair but sank back again at once without even paying befitting attention to her mother's squeal—not from "waywardness," but obviously because she was entirely absorbed by some other overwhelming impression. She was looking absent-mindedly into the air, no longer ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... transaction, it would appear that all the marines had discharged their muskets—none having reserved fire. This was a fatal mistake, because, before they had time to reload the natives rushed upon them in overwhelming numbers, and with fearful yells. Then followed a scene of indescribable ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... men moves you to indignation and overwhelming distress, even to a desire for vengeance on the evil-doers, shun above all things that feeling. Go at once and seek suffering for yourself, as though you were yourself guilty of that wrong. Accept that suffering ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hideous crush On Scylla, or Charybdis (dangerous rocks!) She strikes rebounding; whence the shattered oak, So fierce a shock unable to withstand, Admits the sea; in at the gaping side The crowding waves gush with impetuous rage, Resistless, overwhelming; horrors seize The mariners; Death in their eyes appears, They stare, they lave, they pump, they swear, they pray; Vain efforts! still the battering waves rush in, Implacable, till, deluged by the foam, The ship sinks foundering ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of acting on the offensive, but his moderation should detract nothing from his firmness, and it is even of importance that the means of action which he is about to prepare, should manifest so clearly the overwhelming superiority of the North, that the resistance of the ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... of sculptors. But if artists were wanting, there were talkers enough. Have you ever remarked that there are no orators so indefatigable as those who have nothing to say? And the interruptions, the clamour, the apostrophising, more highly coloured than courteous! Such an overwhelming tumult was ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... with anxiety as to Agricola's fate, the girl had been unable to work; the miseries of expectation and hope delayed had prevented her from doing so; now another day would be lost, and yet it was necessary to live. Those overwhelming sorrows, which deprive the poor of the faculty of labor, are doubly dreaded; they paralyze the strength, and, with that forced cessation from toil, want and destitution are often added ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... authority was never contemplated. All that the members of convention desired was the repeal of several grievances, and they meant only to petition the Regent for their removal. The executive influence in the legislature was overwhelming and mischievous. The governor had not only the disposal of every civil office, and of every civil and military commission, but of land to a boundless extent. That influence had been repeatedly misapplied. The lamentable effects of such a misapplication of influence ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... robust, sturdy, hardy, powerful, potent, puissant, valid. resistless, irresistible, invincible, proof against, impregnable, unconquerable, indomitable, dominating, inextinguishable, unquenchable; incontestable; more than a match for; overpowering, overwhelming; all powerful, all sufficient; sovereign. able-bodied; athletic; Herculean, Cyclopean, Atlantean^; muscular, brawny, wiry, well-knit, broad-shouldered, sinewy, strapping, stalwart, gigantic. manly, man-like, manful; masculine, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have none of it. He could not stand it. This sort of thing filled up his throat and put him at an overwhelming disadvantage. He just laid a hand on Jem Temple Barholm's shoulder and gave him ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of Richmond. Then, too, I was in doubt whether the besiegers could hold the entire army at Petersburg; and in case they could not, a number of troops sufficient to crush me might be detached by Lee, moved rapidly by rail, and, after overwhelming me, be quickly returned to confront General Meade. I was satisfied, moreover, that my transportation could not supply me further than Harrisonburg, and if in penetrating the Blue Ridge I met with protracted resistance, a lack of supplies ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... again the curving line of lamps that drew the outline of some village built upon a hill. Dawn showed them Jamaica Pond, smooth and breezeless, and encircled with green skeins of foliage, delicate and new. Here multitudinous birds were chirping their tiny, overwhelming chorus. When at length, across the flat suburban spaces, they again sighted Memorial tower, small in the distance, the ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... because they were made of the material which is not easily beaten, and then they learned as the years went by that the human soul and will may be even stronger than that which may seem at the outset overwhelming fate. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... him has disappeared, and he seems alone with himself and the black shades that surround him, feels his existence a blank and nothingness, except so far as memory recalls to him the glories and splendors of light. Everything is dead to him, and he, as it were, to Nature. How crushing and overwhelming the thought, the fear, the dread, that perhaps that darkness may be eternal, and that day may possibly never return; if it ever occurs to his mind, while the solid gloom closes up against him like a wall! What then can restore him to like, to energy, to activity, to fellowship and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... pamphlet into his pocket, made the most cordial bow to the financier, and even rose to give him his hand. The baron entered the room, overwhelming every one with salutations. "I have the honor to attend the orders of your highness the princess. She knows that she may always ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... recognizing these sister republics, and argued that, both in diplomacy and in commerce they would be guided by an American policy and aid the United States to free itself from dependence on Europe. His motion was lost by an overwhelming majority, but the speech made a deep impression. [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... returned to Downside in the morning. Brave as she was, she did not wish to encounter Sir Ralph. Sir Ralph exhibited no overwhelming grief at the loss of his eldest son; his thoughts seemed immediately ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... still more importance to them. It was out of the question, therefore, that Mr. Wallace should categorically deny that their effects were inheritable. On the other hand, the temptation to adopt Professor Weismann's view must have been overwhelming to one who had been already inclined to minimise the effects of use and disuse. On the whole, one does not see what Mr. Wallace could do, other than what he has done—unless, of course, he changed his title, or had been no ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... continued influx of students brings with it responsibilities and difficulties which have taxed the physical resources, and the ability of the Faculties. Happily the increase in income granted in 1919 is an augury of a better era, if the growth for the next few years is not too overwhelming. ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... PETERSBURG AND RICHMOND (April 2, 3).—The next morning, at four o'clock, the Union army advanced in an overwhelming assault along the whole front. By noon, the Confederate line of intrenchments before which the Army of the Potomac had lain so long, was broken, and ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... love for the first time in her life, and it was a sudden and overwhelming experience. During those anxious days of Quin's illness, when his life had hung in the balance, she had time to realize what he meant to her. Now that he needed skilful nursing and constant care to assure his recovery, she was determined not ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... artillery and rearguard. The confederates had given an evasive answer, for they were pondering whether they ought to jeopardise the whole Italian force in a single combat, and, putting all to the hazard, attempt to annihilate the King of France and his army together, so overwhelming the conqueror in the ruins of his ambition. The messenger found Charles busy superintending the passage of the last of his cannon over the mountain of Pontremoli. This was no easy matter, seeing that there was no sort of track, and the guns had to be ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Cartier's winter-quarters is established by Champlain with the certainty of an historical demonstration, and yet there are to be found those whose judgment is so warped by preconceived opinion that they resist the overwhelming testimony which he brings to bear upon the subject. Charlevoix makes the St. Croix of Cartier the Riviere de Jacques Cartier.—Vide Shea's Charlevoix, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... we know, there never was but one human being to whom they proved overwhelming, and he is a character in a popular work of fiction. "Miracles do not happen" broke the bruised reed of the Rev. Robert Elsmere's faith. That long-legged weakling, with his auburn hair and "boyish innocence ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... know but it is a most unworthy curiosity on my part," continued Mr. Foster, "but I have an overwhelming desire to know why—or, rather, to know in what respect, I am ministerial. Won't you enlighten me, ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... by sticks, and at the proper time tripped by means of a string manipulated by some person to the officer unknown, the light being at the same instant extinguished by some one in the plot, the transaction overwhelming the ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke
... breathing announced that he was fast asleep. Overpowered by fatigue, and stunned by the various unexpected and extraordinary scenes of the day, I, in my turn, was soon overpowered by a slumber deep and overwhelming, from which, notwithstanding every cause for watchfulness, I did not awake until the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... come with sudden overwhelming power, and hurl you to destruction! What a terrible thing for this magnificent frame of yours, this glorious handiwork of the Creator, to be hurled to swift destruction, and for the soul that animates it to be ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... phasis of cerebral defect not very unlike the last, which of late years has been occurring with increasing frequency, embarrassing our courts, confounding the wise and the simple, and overwhelming respectable families with shame and sorrow. With an intellect unwarped by the slightest excitement or delusion, and with many moral traits, it may be, calculated to please and to charm, its subjects are irresistibly impelled to some particular form of crime. With more or less effort they strive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the interest of Trina's five thousand dollars. To McTeague's mind this interest seemed woefully small. He had had uncertain ideas about that five thousand dollars; had imagined that they would spend it in some lavish fashion; would buy a house, perhaps, or would furnish their new rooms with overwhelming luxury—luxury that implied red velvet carpets and continued feasting. The oldtime miner's idea of wealth easily gained and quickly spent persisted in his mind. But when Trina had begun to talk of investments and interests and per cents, he was troubled and not a little disappointed. The lump ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... with the overwhelming expression of physical fatigue, almost exhaustion, that Fraser gives to his Indian in "The End of the Trail." It is embodied in rider and horse. Man and beast seem both to have reached the end of their resources and both ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... writhed nakedly. Spectral islands elbowed each other, to peer at us as we flitted past. Still more wraithlike the mainland, fringed to the sea foam with saturnine pine, faded away into fastnesses of impregnable desolation. There was a sense of deathlike passivity in the land, of overwhelming vastitude, of unconquerable loneliness. It was as if I had felt for the first time the Spirit of the Wild; the Wild where God broods amid His silence; the Wild, His infinite solace and ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... and calamity which seemed to be gradually overwhelming Alfred's kingdom, he was not reduced to absolute despair, but continued for a long time the almost hopeless struggle. There is a certain desperation to which men are often aroused in the last extremity, which surpasses courage, and is ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... impulse was to look away, to look anywhere else, to resort again to the champagne glass the watchful butler had already brimmed; but some fatal attraction, at war in him with an overwhelming physical resistance, held his eyes upon ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... which have been made and forgotten, it would not now deserve more than a momentary attention. But the circumstances were such as to make the issue of the impending battle one of the most important in human history. It was entirely possible that an overwhelming defeat of the republican forces on this foreign expedition would bring with it an absolute destruction of the republic, and place Spain once more in possession of the heretic "islands," from which basis she would menace the very existence of England more seriously than she had ever done ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... opinions spring from the defect of culture; that a narrow and pinching way of life not only exaggerates to a man the importance of material conditions, but indirectly, by denying him the necessary books and leisure, keeps his mind ignorant of larger thoughts; and that hence springs this overwhelming concern about diet, and hence the bald view of existence professed by Mackay. Had this been an English peasant the conclusion would be tenable. But Mackay had most of the elements of a liberal education. He had skirted metaphysical and mathematical studies. He had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inspires the younger generation. To my mind, there is nothing which civilization can supply which can take the place of the healthy exercise, social enjoyment, commercial advantages, and spiritual uplift of these dances. Where missionary sentiment is overwhelming they are gradually being abandoned; where there is a mistaken opinion in regard to their use, they have been given up altogether; but the tenacity with which the Eskimo clings to these ancient observances, even in places where they have been nominal christians for years, ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... wish to see, or are forced to leave unseen, at Amiens, if the overwhelming responsibilities of your existence, and the inevitable necessities of precipitate locomotion in their fulfilment, have left you so much as one quarter of an hour, not out of breath—for the contemplation of the capital of Picardy, give it wholly to the cathedral choir. Aisles ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... words formed just the spur I needed, or because she had a mysterious power over me which made her will mine, I threw off the depression into which I had reacted from my overwhelming excitement and anxiety, and soon had my slowly kindling fire burning furiously, dimly conscious in the meantime that deep in my heart another and subtler ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... superiority, and her divine beauty turn the heads of our poor household officers. It is fine and noble, of course, to be so zealous in the cause of a servant; but it can do no good, for the evidence against her stammering favorite is overwhelming, and when her last plea is demolished the matter is ended. She says that she showed a necklace to the child, and to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you are not a vain man," he said, earnestly. "A personal triumph in this case means even less to you than it does to me. I have built up what I regard as an overwhelming case against Holymead. But it is based on circumstantial evidence, and I would willingly see the whole thing toppled over if by that means we could get the final truth. This man Kemp knows the truth, and you are in a position in which you can get the truth ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... urn, and the tempting pile of eatables by which it was surrounded. In watching the endless streams of passengers steadily ebbing and flowing past him, he almost forgot the emptiness of his stomach. Where could they all be going to, or coming from? Did people always travel in such overwhelming numbers, that it seemed as though the whole world were on the move, or was this some special occasion? He thought the latter must be the case, and wondered what the occasion was. Then there were the babies and children! How they swarmed about him! He soon found that he could keep pretty busy, ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... ennobling visions, to maintain himself when he underwent the ceremony of entering a great house. He was so shy in little things, that to hear his name sounded from servant to servant, echoing from landing-place to landing-place, was almost overwhelming. Nothing but his pride, which was just equal to his reserve, prevented him from often turning back on the stairs and precipitately retreating. And yet he had not been ten minutes in Deloraine House, before he had absolutely requested to be introduced to a lady. It ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... unexpected, brilliant, soldierly, unselfish—all the things, in fact, that no one had the least right to expect it to turn out to be. Two or three thousand men looked to him as their hereditary chieftain who alone could help them hold their chins high amid an overwhelming Hindoo population; his position was delicate, and he might have been excused for much hesitation, and even for a point-blank refusal to do what he might have preferred personally. He and his stood to lose all that they owned—their ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... on every side from this compendious mode of drunkenness are enormous and insupportable, equally to be found among the great and the mean; filling palaces with disquiet and distraction, harder to be borne as it cannot be mentioned, and overwhelming multitudes with incurable diseases and unpitied poverty.' Yet he found an excuse for drunkenness which few men but he could have found. Stockdale (Memoirs, ii. 189) says that he heard Mrs. Williams 'wonder what pleasure men can take in making beasts of themselves. "I wonder, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Rome, the memory of which had been dulled but not wholly obliterated by her life in Ferrara. Twice the murder of her young husband Alfonso must have come back to her in all its horror—once on the death of her father and again on that of her terrible brother. If her grief was not inspired by the overwhelming memories of former times, the sight of Lucretia weeping for Caesar Borgia is a beautiful example of sisterly love—the purest and most noble of ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... a brief order to the warriors, but he scarcely ever spoke to the lad directly. Once in their mountain camp when the night was clear Will saw a vast panorama of ridges and peaks white with snow, and he realized with a sudden and overwhelming sinking of the heart that he was in very truth and fact lost to his world, and as the Sioux chief had threatened, he might never again look upon a white face save his own. It was a terrifying thought. Sometimes when he awoke in the ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... have been matchless in the skilful management of a Presidential campaign for another, but he was dwarfed by the overwhelming responsibilities of conducting a campaign for himself, and yet he assumed the supreme control of the struggle and directed it absolutely from start to finish. He was of the heroic mould, and he wisely planned his campaign tours to accomplish the best result. In point of ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... that a single voter may cast during a parliamentary election as many as fifteen or twenty votes it will be observed that the number quite suffices to turn the scale in many closely contested constituencies. An overwhelming proportion of the plural voters are identified with the Conservative party, whence it arises that the Liberals are, and long have been, hostile to the privilege. Following the Liberal triumph at the elections ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... stranger to a sovereign prince was assuredly not an overwhelming one, but it was nevertheless a surprise; and I found that an excess of simplicity may be as confusing as the other extreme. At first I thought the prince might be making a fool of me; but I quickly put aside the idea, and stepped forward and was about to kneel, but his majesty ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... rendered frantic by his wife's caprice and annoyed at the thought that this man Fauchery brought nothing but a certain doubtful notoriety to his household, had conceived the idea of revenging himself on the journalist by overwhelming him with tokens of friendship. Every evening, therefore, when he met him behind scenes he would shower friendly slaps on his back and shoulders, as though fairly carried away by an outburst of tenderness, and Fauchery, who ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... of startled suspense, and then they flew off, men and women, as with one accord, Frederick Massingbird leading the van. Social obligations were forgotten in the overwhelming excitement, and Mr. and Mrs. Verner were left to keep house for themselves. Tynn, indeed, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Maker upon her poor lacerated soul; and afar in its hidden deeps the process of healing was already begun. Agony would many a time return unbidden, would yet often rise like a crested wave, with menace of overwhelming despair, but the Real, the True, long hidden from her by the lying judgments of men and women, was now at length beginning to reveal itself to her tear-blinded vision; Hope was lifting a feeble head above ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... perfectly simple step—the sale of an estate. She cannot do this, is ruined, and thrown out into the unsympathetic world. Chekhov is the dramatist, not of action, but of inaction. The tragedy of inaction is as overwhelming, when we understand it, as the tragedy of an Othello, or a Lear, crushed by the wickedness of others. The former is being enacted daily, but we do not stage it, we do not know how. But who shall deny that the base of almost all human unhappiness ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... to myself "Is there really any painting on it?" I mechanically put out my hand and touched it. On this I was instantly seized by a frightful sensation, a shock that ran from the tips of my fingers to my brain, and steeped my whole being. Simultaneously I was aware of an overwhelming sense of sucking and dragging, which, from my hand and arm, and, as it were, through them, seemed to possess and envelop my whole person. Face, hair, eyes, bosom, limbs, every portion of my body was locked in an awful embrace ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... tow- heads of the river. At noon the plantation of Mr. Jefferson Davis was passed. It was situated twenty-five miles below Vicksburgh, and prior to February, 1867, was on a long peninsula with the estate of Colonel Joseph E. Davis and one belonging to Messrs. Quitman and Farrar. Then came the overwhelming river, sweeping across a narrow neck of land, and transforming the cotton-plantations into an island territory. In the old days of slavery, Colonel Joseph E. Davis, brother of the ex- president of the late Confederate ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... tree-trunks, branches, and fences had become wet. The first snow which fell, being itself wet, had stuck to them. But when all this froze together, and there was another overwhelming fall, outlines were formed over the frozen surface, such as one rarely sees the like of. The weight of the first soft snow had caused it to slip down, but it had been arrested here and there by each inequality, and there it had ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... had a large proportion of rest and training. The officers knew their men both in and out of the line, and it was confidently expected that in the coming active operations great credit would be earned—but the overwhelming disasters of the next ...
— The Story of the 6th Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry - France, April 1915-November 1918 • Unknown
... they have the overwhelming strength that makes us powerless against them." His voice broke, he turned his face away, that I might not see ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... decorate in the most delightful way imaginable—in being in a word architecturally decorative. The marriage of the two arts is, Gothically, not on equal terms. It never occurred, of course, to the Gothic architect that it should be. His ensemble was always one of which the chief, the overwhelming, one may almost say the sole, interest is structural. He even imposed the condition that the sculpture which decorated his structure should be itself architecturally structural. One figure of the portals of Chartres is almost as like another as one pillar of the interior ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... a controversy respecting facts in the physical world. For a time he may succeed in making a theory which he dislikes unpopular by persuading the public that it contradicts the Scriptures and is inconsistent with the attributes of the Deity. But, if at last an overwhelming force of evidence proves this maligned theory to be true, what is the effect of the arguments by which the objector has attempted to prove that it is irreconcilable with natural and revealed religion? Merely this, to make men infidels. Like the Israelites, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... our party to spend Sunday afternoons in the woods. I kept the first check and showed it as we sat under the trees in a favorite grove we had found near Wood's Run. The effect produced upon my companions was overwhelming. None of them had imagined such an investment possible. We resolved to save and to watch for the next opportunity for investment in which all of us should share, and for years afterward we divided our trifling investments and ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... rancher could not have selected a better place for defence. The bowlders were on all sides, there being a natural amphitheatre several rods in extent. Kneeling behind these the whites had a secure protection against their enemies, unless they should make an overwhelming rush—a course of action which is never popular with the American Indian, inasmuch as it involves much personal ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... philosophy commands him to believe, is identical with that very Power which is conspicuously working in the universe for universal aims which also are good. Outside a handful of men of no consequence amid the thundering assent of the overwhelming masses of mankind, the course of things here is upwards. Instinct suggests it, reason proclaims it, history confirms it. But there are no two supreme powers, and therefore that Power ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... certainly make a success of their new experiment in government. Given time, and they will do it. Perhaps my view of China's future is rose-coloured. But the thing seen and felt is of tremendous force, and the impression of power that the Chinese made upon me was rather overwhelming. And, anyway, a friendly opinion may be pardoned in one who, during months of solitary travel in China, never met anything but courtesy and consideration from all, whether coolie on the road, villager or innkeeper, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... some day, capable of discharging two cartridges in immediate succession? And if two cartridges, why not three? An easy thought, but a very difficult one to realise. Something in the power of the double-barrel—the overwhelming odds it affords the sportsman over bird and animal—pleases. A man feels master of the copse with a double-barrel; and such a sense of power, though only over feeble creatures, is fascinating. Besides, there is the delight of effect; for a clever right ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... natural to those who have specially cultivated Links with the Past; who grew up in the traditions of Luttrell and Mackintosh, and Lord Alvanley and Samuel Rogers; who have felt Sydney Smith's irresistible fun, and known the overwhelming fullness of Lord Macaulay. It is not unreasonable even in that later generation which can still recall the frank but high-bred gaiety of the great Lord Derby, the rollicking good-humour and animal spirits of Bishop Wilberforce, the saturnine epigrams of Lord ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... dirty work single-handed. He's a good deal of a coward, and he likes to have a lot of help when he tries anything, so that there is practically no chance for his opponent. His idea is to fight when he is in overwhelming force, and only then. What do you think of ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... painted in the highest style of barbaric art, so as to render them as hideous as possible. Immediately upon catching sight of the Spaniards they rushed out upon them with ferocious cries. Anasco, who was in command of the Spanish party, seeing such overwhelming numbers coming upon him, retreated to an open field, where he drew up his horses and placed his cross-bow men in front with their bucklers, to protect the precious animals. At the same time he sent hastily back to De Soto ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... that time publishing showed the punishments we were doomed to suffer, persons seen in conversation, every thing in fine, had some connexion with this mysterious league; and the dread of some sudden and overwhelming blow left him no peace, either by day or night. This state of mind continued some months, his sleep and appetite had forsaken him, and he wasted daily; and finding no other means of cure than persuading him to return to England, where he might still render me service, a permission ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... finally, by religion. But none of these influences had any effect on Tchekoff. He was too noble to be completely absorbed by the mean details of life; his organism was too delicate to become the prey of an overwhelming passion; and his character too positive to give itself over to religious dogmas. "I lost my childhood faith a long time ago," he once wrote, "and I regard all intelligent belief with perplexity.... In reality, the 'intellectuals' only play at religion, chiefly because they have nothing else ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... victors, as the Thebans of old learned it from the Spartans. When Lewenhaupt, in the October of 1708, was striving to join Charles in the Ukraine, the Czar suddenly attacked him near the Borysthenes with an overwhelming force of fifty thousand Russians. Lewenhaupt fought bravely for three days, and succeeded in cutting his way through the enemy, with about four thousand of his men, to where Charles awaited him near the river Desna; but upwards of eight thousand Swedes fell in ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... waited to be won? With all his love of her, would Philip be ashamed of her also? Her face grew hot. She knew that she was blushing, and she covered up her head as if her lover were there to see. Such fears did not last long. Her joy was too bold to be afraid of tangible things. So overwhelming was her happiness that her only fear was lest she might awake at some moment and find that she was asleep now, and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... dishonor and baseness. When millions believe such intolerable falsehoods of other millions of their fellow-citizens, they must be taught the truth, no matter what the lesson costs. Even now the Southern press asserts that our victories were merely the results of overwhelming majorities, and that the Yankees are becoming frightened at their own successes. There is not one of these traitorous, dough-face meetings of which the details are not promptly sent—probably by the men who organize them—all over the South to inspire faith in a falling cause. When ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... where the now almost invisible thing sat humped together. He had done his best—they had all done their best. He felt nothing but a vast fatigue, an overwhelming weariness, not so much of body, but ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... to learn the nature of that heavy object lying across my chest, feeling at it cautiously. My fingers touched cold, dead flesh, from contact with which they shrank in horror, only to encounter a strand of coarse hair. The first terror of this discovery was overwhelming, yet I persevered, satisfying myself that it was the half-naked body of an Indian—a very giant of a fellow—which lay stretched across me, an immovable weight. Something else, perhaps another dead man, held my feet as though in a vise, ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... chorus-girl, but it certainly had the air of being a last desperate resort. There sprang from that a vague hope that perhaps she might extort a capitulation from her father by a threat to seek that position, and then with overwhelming clearness it came to her that whatever happened she would never be able to tell her father about her debt. The completest capitulation would not wipe out that trouble. And she felt that if she went home ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... 9th of June, 1814; but the sentence was deferred until the 21st of the same month, in consequence of Lord Cochrane's demand for a new trial. That demand was not complied with, in spite of the production of overwhelming evidence to justify it; and the victim of Lord Ellenborough and the tyrannical Government of the day was at once conveyed to the King's Bench Prison. No time was lost in heaping upon him all the indignities which, in accordance with precedent and ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... experienced on this discovery soon gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so great and overwhelming that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result. What had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... overwhelming numbers of the enemy, the little garrison resolved to maintain their position. Little could be gained by flight, and all their property would inevitably be destroyed should they desert the hut. The risk they ran in either case was very great. They might pick off some of the savages, ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... was an overwhelming sentiment for Mr. Blaine, but his refusal was positive and absolute. I had always been a warm supporter and friend of Mr. Blaine, and his followers were very friendly ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... endowments he fell short of the most illustrious of his predecessors, that he lacked the intuitive grasp which he ascribes to Mrs. Siddons and to Kean, and that he never reached the intensity and complete abandon which gave an overwhelming effect to their highest performances. We may apply to his acting what Carlyle has so justly said of the poetry of Schiller, that it "shows rather like a partial than a universal gift—the labored product of certain faculties rather than the spontaneous product ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... the overwhelming force of Germans, rushed forward to check them—fought off the enemy while other British troops were poured over the Marne. Desperately did the Germans try to drive them back. Time after time they charged, only to be hurled back again by the British horsemen, and the infantry that ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... Then the news comes that the bishop is dead. The parson and clerk determine to set out at once. Their steeds are brought, but will not budge a step. The parson cuts savagely at his horse. The demons roar with unearthly laughter. The ruined house and all the devils vanish. The waves are overwhelming the riders, and in the morning the wretches are found clinging to the rocks with the grasp of death, which ever afterwards record their villainy ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... undergone, but his little brain was equally tired. In all the days he had lived it had not worked so hard as on this one day. Furthermore, he was sleepy. So he started out to look for the cave and his mother, feeling at the same time an overwhelming rush of loneliness ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... rather than he charms or persuades him. Strength carried to such a point as this is a fascination; without seeming to take you captive, it makes you its prisoner; it does not enchant you, but it holds you spellbound. His ideal is the extraordinary, the gigantic, the overwhelming, the incommensurable. His most characteristic words are immense, colossal, enormous, huge, monstrous. He finds a way of making even child-nature extravagant and bizarre. The only thing which seems impossible ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has not felt this to be one of the glories of Mr. Carlyle's work, that it, too, is large and spacious, rich with the fulness of a sense of things unknown and wonderful, and ever in the tiniest part showing us the stupendous and overwhelming whole? The magnitude of the universal forces enlarges the pettiness of man, and the smallness of his achievement and endurance takes a complexion of greatness from the vague immensity that surrounds and impalpably ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... truth of the case was established by Garrick, Dillon was the most amazed of us all. He had trusted Herman, and the revulsion of feeling was overwhelming. ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... moor skirt of Lausitz, say you, then?' 'Unarmed, yes; your muskets can come in wagons after you,' replies the Saxon Commandant of Lausitz. 'Thousand thanks, Herr Commandant; but we will not give you all that trouble,' answer Einsiedel and his Prussians; 'and march on, overwhelming him with politenesses,' says Friedrich;—the approach of Nassau, above all, being a stringent civility. Of course, despatch is very requisite to Einsiedel; the Chevalier, with his force, being still within hail. The Prussians march all night, with pitch-links flaring,—nights ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Confronted with this overwhelming evidence, poor Jasmine remained speechless, and dared not even lift her eyes to glance at Tu. That young man, seeing her distress, and being in no wise possessed by the scorn which he had put into his tone, crossed ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... Paul Powis. On all the previous occasions in which her feelings had been strongly awakened on his account, she had succeeded in deceiving herself as to the motive, but now the truth was felt in that overwhelming form that ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... and my brothers have left me here alone," repeated Jenieve; and she wrung her hands and put them over her face. The trouble was so overwhelming that it broke her down before ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... defense according to their social positions; the women, on the contrary, have but one system, no matter what may be their condition in life. They deny everything, persist in their denials even when the proof against them is overwhelming, and then they cry. When I worry the Chupin with disagreeable questions, at her next examination, you may be sure she will turn her eyes into ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... effect of Einstein's work is to make physics more philosophical (in a good sense), and to restore some of that intellectual unity which belonged to the great scientific systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but which was lost through increasing specialization and the overwhelming mass of detailed knowledge. In some ways our age is not a good one to live in, but for those who are interested in physics there are ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... men were singing at their work. Descending to the cabin, Midwinter discovered his friend busily occupied in attempting to set the place to rights. Habitually the least systematic of mortals, Allan now and then awoke to an overwhelming sense of the advantages of order, and on such occasions a perfect frenzy of tidiness possessed him. He was down on his knees, hotly and wildly at work, when Midwinter looked in on him; and was fast reducing the neat little world of the cabin to its ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Torngarsuck's power, the Spirit of Good,[135:1] 110 Forces to unchain the foodful progeny Of the Ocean stream;—thence thro' the realm of Souls, Where live the Innocent, as far from cares As from the storms and overwhelming waves That tumble on the surface of the Deep, 115 Returns with far-heard pant, hotly pursued By the fierce Warders of the Sea, once more, Ere by the frost foreclosed, to repossess His fleshly mansion, that had staid the while In the dark tent within a cow'ring ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... attempts to bend the German type to the social ideas of the pioneer American stock. In the last presidential election, the German area of the State deserted the Democratic party, and its opposition to free silver was a decisive factor in the overwhelming victory of the Republicans in Wisconsin. With all the evidence of the persistence of the influence of this nationality, it is nevertheless clear that each decade marks an increased assimilation and homogeneity in the State; but ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... recalled to France; and the great bulk of the French army was now concentrated round Salamanca, from which it could either march against the British force at Ciudad; or unite with Soult and, in overwhelming strength, either move against Cadiz or advance into Portugal. Wellington therefore left Spencer to guard the line of the Coa, and make demonstrations against Ciudad; while with the main body of his army ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... statue of Isis, which they had saved from the temple near the Porta Caelimontana, a crowd of people rushed among the priests, attached themselves to the chariot, which they drew to the Appian Gate, and seizing the statue placed it in the temple of Mars, overwhelming the priests of that deity who dared to resist them. In other places people invoked Serapis, Baal, or Jehovah, whose adherents, swarming out of the alleys in the neighborhood of the Subura and the Trans-Tiber, filled ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... to reply: the evidence of guilt had evidently been overwhelming. Then, obeying a sign from Renine, she ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... of to-morrow to profit by the return of your messenger. Many, many thanks for your dear letter of the 6th. What are the Austrians about? They would not wait when they ought to have done so, and now that they should have long ago made a rush and an attack with their overwhelming force, they do nothing! nothing since the 30th! leaving the French to become stronger and more fit for the struggle every day!! It is indeed distracting, and most difficult to understand them or do anything for them. The Emperor ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... prevalence of the thing they knew to be untrue,—any more," she added, dropping her eyes, and speaking in a tone sad and patient, "than we who to-day understand that there is no such thing as death can resist the overwhelming power of the belief of the masses of the race. The might of the will of the majority, directed by an appalling delusion, compels us to submit to that which we yet know to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... lindens which led to the shrine of a plaster Virgin, a first and almost imperceptible rustle, a presentiment of verdure, so to speak, ran through the branches, and the three almond trees in the kitchen-garden put forth their delicate flowers. The young poet was invaded by a sweet and overwhelming languor, and Maria's face, which was commonly before his inner vision upon awakening, became confused and passed from his mind. He seated himself for a moment before a table and reread the last lines of a page that he had begun; ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... must be very different, entirely different; if so, what is this curious bond between them? To me you seem possessed with some strange restlessness and morbid melancholy which utterly spoils your life, and in return you never see me without overwhelming me with reproaches, if not for one thing, for another. I tell you I cannot, will not, bear it longer. If you love me, then in God's name cease tormenting me as well as yourself with these wretched doubts and questionings and complaints. I ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... that we could with confidence put into any person's hands, on whom we wished to impress a favourable idea of his extraordinary powers. Let whatever other objections be made to it, it is unquestionably a work of genius—of wild, irregular, overwhelming imagination, and has that rich, varied movement in the verse, which gives a distant idea of the lofty or changeful tones of Mr. Coleridge's voice. In the Christobel, there is one splendid passage on divided friendship. The Translation of Schiller's Wallenstein is also a masterly production in ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... with friends, there was also the fear that those approaching might be enemies; and the sudden sound of the human voice, which he had not heard for so long, tended to create conflicting and almost overwhelming feelings in his breast. Hiding quickly behind a tree, he awaited the passing of the cavalcade; for the sounds of horses hoofs ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... at the moment he did not know the whereabouts of the prisoners, but he would make inquiries and inform me later. That his sole object in burdening himself with the overwhelming responsibilities of Supreme Governor of Russia in this sad hour of her history was to prevent the extremists on either side continuing the anarchy which made the establishment of a free constitution impossible. That if his action at any future time was ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... death into the crowd. But the crowd vanished as quickly as they had come, leaving the burly Thersites, and two or three irresolute fellows of his tribe, standing within pistol range of my levelled rifle. Such a sudden dispersion of the mob which, but a moment before, was overwhelming in numbers, caused me to lower my rifle, and to indulge in a hearty laugh at the disgraceful flight of the men-destroyers. The Arabs, who were as much alarmed at their boisterous obtrusiveness, now came up to patch a truce, in which they succeeded to everybody's ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... rapidly round. Pressure of bills and confusion of legislation grew greater minute by minute. The floodgates of the deluge are lifted upon Congress in its last hours, and business pours onward in such an overwhelming fashion that small private petitioners can scarcely hope that the doors of the ark of safety will be opened to their petty claims. Morse hung about the chamber until the midnight hour was almost ready to strike. Every moment confusion seemed to grow "worse confounded." The work of a month of easy-going ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a centre of curiosity and gossip, and (of all things) they would be least able to despatch a dead body without remark. John feebly proposed getting an ale-cask and sending it as beer, but the objections to this course were so overwhelming that Morris scorned to answer. The purchase of a packing-case seemed equally hopeless, for why should two gentlemen without baggage of any kind require a packing-case? They would be more likely to require ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... retiring, the crowd in gray made a tremendous rush upon its handful of antagonists, overwhelming them by mere momentum and, unable to use weapons in the crush, trampled them, stamped savagely on their limbs, their bodies, their necks, their faces; then retiring with bloody feet across its own dead it joined the general rout and the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... and their adherents, to talk of "radicalism" and democracy on this occasion. They must know, if they consult the commonest sources of intelligence open to them, that detestation of "THE BILL OF PAINS AND PENALTIES" is rooted beyond all possibility of eradication in the breasts of an overwhelming majority of good ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... seized was taken and swallowed before its owner could raise a protest; but a dozen promises to pay ten times over for every nobbler was made on all sides, and, like a wise man, Cudlip hesitated before he opposed overwhelming odds. ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... and adornment of all that made him great. It is difficult to imagine a grander and more magnificent career; and his name ranks among the few chosen examples of human achievement. And yet it was not only an unhappy life; it was a poor life. We expect that such an overwhelming weight of glory should be borne up by a character corresponding to it in strength and nobleness. But that is not what we find. No one ever had a greater idea of what he was made for, or was fired with a greater desire to devote himself to it. He was all this. And yet being all this, seeing ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... flee from fear but from an overwhelming sense of the whole world gone mad, the shattering of tradition and the overthrow of natural laws. The chaos in his mind sent him flying from this insane place within six seconds after his first attack. A mating she-wolf had been transformed into a she-fiend and in the same second ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... representing the highest attainable degree of honor and virtue, whilst any criticism of or revolt against them is savagely persecuted as the extremity of vice. The revolt, driven under ground and exacerbated, produces debauchery veiled by hypocrisy, an overwhelming demand for licentious theatrical entertainments which no censorship can stem, and, worst of all, a confusion of virtue with the mere morality that steals its name until the real thing is loathed because the imposture is loathsome. Literary traditions spring ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... their engagement to maintain this family on the throne. Sven's son, Canute, had taken his father's place among the Danes; he had been long ago baptised, he was of a character which commanded confidence, and possessed at the time overwhelming power. After Ethelred's death the lay and spiritual chiefs of England decided to abandon the house of Cerdic for ever, and to recognise Canute as their King. How many jarls and thanes of Danish origin do we find around the kings under all the last governments. Edgar was especially ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... of war. I am only treating this question upon principles which are almost universally acknowledged throughout the world, and by an overwhelming majority even of those men who accept the Christian religion; and it is only upon those principles, so almost universally acknowledged, and acknowledged as much in this country as anywhere else—it is only just that we should judge the United States upon ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... so started his country on its wonderful career of ocean dominance. Moreover, his success established from the start that the war should be fought out in France and not in England.[20] Then, in 1346, he won his famous victory of Crecy against overwhelming numbers of his enemies. It has been said that cannon were effectively used for the first time at Crecy, and it was certainly about this time that gunpowder began to assume a definite though as yet subordinate importance in warfare. But we need not go so far afield to explain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... lived there so peacefully, so delightfully, and so completely heart to heart. I have never been so happy before in my life. I seemed to catch a glimpse of that future which I desire and dream of in the midst of my overwhelming ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... stockades, and during the Indian campaigns of 1864-5-6 our lines of communication, stage and telegraph, were all held successfully by small detachments of troops in block-houses and stockades, and were never captured unless overwhelming forces of the Indians attacked them, and only then when the defensive works were inferior or not properly constructed; and, even in cases where detachments left their stations, if they had remained they would have successfully ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... looking from one man to another, keenly, uncompromisingly. This was a man whom any would notice in a crowd. Character, physical perfection, strength of will all combined to make him stand out from other men. And over it all, like a fire from within there played an overwhelming sadness that had a transparent kind of refining effect, as if a spirit dwelt there who by sheer force of will went on in ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... some memorable instances, from the keen pursuit of their foes. Thus, every foot-breadth of their territory was capable of being contested, and was contested against the flower of the French and Sardinian armies, led against them in overwhelming numbers, with a courage which Rome never excelled, and a ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... intending to come out, they had offered to advance into the narrow entrance to the Texel, and in that position stop the way against the whole fleet, or at least fight their ship till she sank. Now they proved that their offer had been no empty boast, for, although fighting against overwhelming odds, they stuck to their ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... on Jerusalem poured like an overwhelming flood into the cavern under the ruin of the Herodian palaces. There was Hesper, with most of his Gibborim gathered, preparing to proceed to the defense of the First Wall in Akra against which the Roman would hurl himself ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... the English reader will find it extraordinary that Santa Anna, once freed from his captivity, should not have re-entered Texas with an overwhelming force. The reason is very simple: Bustamente was a rival of Santa Anna for the presidency; the general's absence allowed him to intrigue, and when the news reached the capital that Santa Anna had fallen a prisoner, it became necessary ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... apart from those which date from "After July, 1914"), the reader may see this habit of mind growing and gathering strength: the declaration of war opens the floodgates, and the torrent rushes forth, grandiose, overwhelming, and, I believe, unique. I know of only one English book in which the German taste and temper is emulated. It is certainly a deplorable production; but it is the work of a wholly unknown man, whereas many of the most incredible utterances in the following pages ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various |
