"Piercing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... extreme sensibility, or rather of tender melancholy. Already the figure of Paul displayed the graces of manly beauty. He was taller than Virginia; his skin was of a darker tint; his nose more aquiline; and his black eyes would have been too piercing, if the long eyelashes, by which were shaded, had not given them a look of softness. He was constantly in motion, except when his sister appeared; and then, placed at her side, he became quiet. Their meals often passed in silence, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... life and rob the gloating Pierre of the happiness of seeing two men perish without danger to himself. Something of uncertain shape, but of a blue color, loomed vaguely behind Pierre's head; loomed and suddenly descended to the accompaniment of a piercing shriek. Pierre's pistol went off, but he had evidently been stricken between the shoulders; the ball went wild, and the pistol itself dropped from his hand, another cartridge exploding as it hit the floor. The next instant Pierre tumbled headlong through the hole, landing upon ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... would trickle down his cheeks; a shaking of the hand grew upon him to such an extent that in time he had to use artificial assistance to steady it for writing; his voice was high, shrill, liable to break, piercing enough to make itself heard, but not agreeable. This hardly seems the picture of an orator; nor was it to any charm of elocution that he owed his influence, but rather to the fact that men soon learned that what he said was always well worth hearing. When he entered Congress he had been for much ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... surface of the canal. The ice-hills will be black with forms flitting swiftly down the shining roads on sledges or skates, illuminated by the electric light; a band will be braying blithely, regardless of the piercing cold, and the skaters will dance on, in their fancy-dress ball or prize races, or otherwise, clad so thinly as to amaze the shivering foreigner as ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Fairfax Cary, riding for the third time since the New Year from Malplaquet toward Greenwood, marked the blue March sky, the pale brown catkins by the brooks, and the white flowers of the bloodroot piercing the far-spread carpet of dead leaves. He rode rapidly, but he paused at Forrest's forge and at the mill below the ford. This also he had done before. Neither the smith nor the men at the mill knew the idea that ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the Germans succeeded in piercing a salient in the French lines, but were driven out by a spirited counterattack. Three German planes were brought down during the night, Lieutenant Huerteaux scoring ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... as always she drew the truth from him. "I could not venture to oppose in anything the barons who supported my cause: for if I did, I would not endure a fortnight. Heaven help us, nor you nor I nor any one may transform through any personal force this bitter world, this piercing, cruel place of frost and sun. Charity and Truth are excommunicate, and a king is only an adorned and fearful person who leads wolves toward their quarry, lest, lacking it, they turn and devour him. Everywhere the powerful labor to put one another out of ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... by all their common and familiar performances—throwing large objects into the air which never come down; causing plants to sprout, grow visibly and blossom, in bare ground chosen by spectators; putting a man into a wicker basket, piercing him through and through with a sword while he shrieks and bleeds, and then—the basket being opened nothing is there; tossing the free end of a silken ladder into the air, mounting ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... awards Showered upon her kith and kin! For throughout the land there runs Thought of peril, thought of fire; Men rejoice not in their sons — Daughters are their sole desire. In the gorgeous palaces, Piercing the grey skies above, Music on the languid breeze Draws the dreaming world to love. Song and dance and hands that sway The passion of a thousand lyres Ever through the live-long day, And the monarch never tires. Sudden comes the answer curt, Loud the fish-skin ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... Jacobus, yet she sang on. The deep, majestic basses throbbed out the foundation of the great fuguelike chorus, and the sopranos soared and soared until they were singing falsetto, according to gorgio standards, only it sounded like the sweetly piercing high notes of violins, and the tenors and contraltos wove a garland of glancing melody between the two. They were all singing now. Rocking back and forth a little, swaying gently from side to side, lovers clasped together, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... is in this manner that this name made its first appearance in the gloomy days of our History. I can still see that pale young man, that eye at the same time piercing and half closed, that gentle and forbidding profile. Assassination and the Pantheon awaited him. He was too obscure to enter into the Temple, he was sufficiently deserving to die on its threshold. Baudin showed him the copy ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... taken out, with which they lacerated their thighs, backs, and breasts, in a most frightful manner, whilst the blood kept pouring out of the wounds in streams; and in this plight, continuing their wild and piercing lamentations, they moved up towards the Moorunde tribe, who sat silently and immoveably in the place at first occupied. One of the women then went up to a strange native, who was on a visit to the Moorunde tribe and who stood neutral in the affair of the meeting, and by violent language ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." {34a} The same distinction is marked in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "The word of GOD is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." {34b} It is thus that we understand the contrast which S. Paul enforces between things of the spirit and things of the soul. "The natural man,"—i.e., the psychical man, ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... at the dog, the torn sides, streaming red wounds, and bloody muzzle. Woodsman that he was, he understood. "Sonny!" he cried in a piercing voice. The dog raised his head, wagged his stump of a tail feebly, and made a futile ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... strongest-minded women in the town. In her presence the strength of Mrs Bingley's mind dwindled down to comparative weakness. In form she was swan-like, undulatory, so to speak. Her features were prononce; nose, aquiline; eyes, piercing; hair, black as night, and in ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... extraordinary agitation would come over him, and almost always on such occasions he would get up and go away. Sometimes he would fix a long piercing look upon me, and I thought, "He will say something directly now." But he would suddenly begin talking of something ordinary and familiar. He often complained ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hills with pain, A nearer view of heaven to gain? In lowliest depths of bosky dells The hermit Contemplation dwells. A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat, And lotus-twined his silent feet, Whence, piercing heaven, with screened sight, He sees at noon the stars, whose light ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... until the signal was given and the choristers burst into song, when she came in for even more than her own share of admiration, for the treble solos were without exception given to her to sing, and the piercing sweetness of the young voice moved some of the more emotional of the audience ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... how I, who could never conceal my Love for him, at his own Request, can part with him for ever? Oh, Mr. SPECTATOR, sensible Spirits know no Indifference in Marriage; what then do you think is my piercing Affliction?—-I leave you to represent my Distress your own way, in which I desire you to be speedy, if you have Compassion for Innocence exposed to ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the background of each picture a very small illustration of the manner of his death; for instance, St. Peter on a cross, upside down; St. Thomas being killed by the spears of savages; St. Simon being sawn asunder. Near the beginning of the volume is a print of the Blessed Virgin with a sword piercing her body, and surrounded by seven medallions, showing "the seven griefs." The parable of "The mote and the beam" is quaintly depicted by two men standing near together, one with an enormous log of wood, equal in length to a third of his height, ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland
... overtook a fugitive negro, and as we came upon him unexpectedly, when turning the edge of a hammock, he had not time to retreat, being within rifle-range, or he would doubtless have done so. He threw up his arms, and gave a piercing shriek (an unvariable custom of Indians when in danger), expecting to be instantly shot. He had, however, nothing to fear, having fallen in with friends and not foes. As I saw he was without a rifle, I dashed forward and accosted him ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... after that that a piercing shriek rang through the place. The girl had sprung up like a deer shot through the heart; her eyes dilated, her face wild and pale. Mrs. Warrener came running in; but paused, and almost retreated in fear from the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... shepherds herding their flocks thereabout, but a number of the legionaries also gathered round to hear this fellow play, and there happened to be among them some trumpeters, the piper suddenly snatched a trumpet from one of these, ran to the river, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other side. Upon which Caesar on a sudden impulse exclaimed: "Let us go whither the omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. The die is cast." And immediately at the head of his troops he crossed the river and found awaiting him the tribunes of the people ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... as they were driving underneath Charing Cross Railway Bridge, when he started perceptibly at the thunder of the trains overhead and the piercing whistles of the engines. "Tell me," he said, clutching Horace by the arm, ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... (still in the same letter, October 25): "It was a satisfaction at least to get out of the trenches, to meet the enemy face to face and to see German arrogance turned into suppliance. We knew many splendid moments, worth having endured many trials for. But in our larger aim, of piercing their line, of breaking the long deadlock, of entering Vouziers in triumph, of course ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... disturbed for three successive nights by the ghost, and on learning the tradition of the place he investigated the palace and brought to light the torture chamber with its rows of hooks and rings and chains about the walls. The piercing of its roof, so that the sun came in and the ghosts and malaria went out, the removal of the grim relics of mediaevalism, the cleaning and whitewashing of the apartments, have probably induced the spectre to take up his quarters elsewhere, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... come, and turned the keys in the doors. In one single dwelling sixteen of the enemy were burnt alive. Those who were in the fight described it as a terrible initiation for recruits. Half the town was blazing; and with the incessant roar of the guns were mingled the piercing shrieks of wretches perishing in the flames. The struggle lasted four hours. By that time the Cameronians were reduced nearly to their last flask of powder; but their spirit never flagged. "The enemy will soon carry the wall. Be it so. We will retreat into the house: we will defend it to the last; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... saw this company Of Cossacques and their prey, turned round and cast Upon them his slow brow and piercing eye:— "Whence come ye?"—"From Constantinople last, Captives just now escaped," was the reply. "What are ye?"—"What you see us." Briefly passed This dialogue; for he who answered knew To whom he spoke, and made his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... lost in painful thought. Then he went slowly into the house, and sitting down before the fire, let his head sink upon his breast, and there mused on the trouble that was closing around him. But there came no ray of light, piercing the thick darkness that had fallen ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... Parnassian forest leads, Lurked undiscovered by him; not a rill There issues from the fount of Hippocrene, But he had traced it upward to its source, Through open glade, dark glen, and secret dell, Knew the gay wild flowers on its banks, and culled Its med'cinable herbs. Yea, oft alone, Piercing the long-neglected holy cave, The haunt obscure of old Philosophy, He bade with lifted torch its starry walls Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage. O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts! O studious Poet, eloquent for truth! ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... far as possible from the wild, waving arms, the frenzied eyes, the gaunt and wolfish aspect, the piercing, agonized voice of the fanatic, who had assumed to himself the solemn office of soul-comforter in a time of extremity. I saw from a distance his long, lank figure writhing like a sapling in a storm, as it overtopped the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... he—fixed upon Cuchillo a piercing glance, that appeared to penetrate to the bottom of his soul, at the same time the look denoted a slight ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... as they were melodious; here a rippling torrent of ra, ra, ra-ra-ra, and la, la, la-la-la breaking in on the sustained verses of the leaders; falsetto notes, high and strident, savage and shrilling, piercing the thrumming diapason of the men; long, droning tones like bagpipes, bubbling sounds like water flowing; and all in perfect time. The clear, fascinating false soprano of the woman leader had a cadence of ecstasy, and I marked her under a lamp. Her head was ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... here the shoulder of a hill invited us to race up to the ridge: some way on we came to crossroads, careless of our luck in hitting the right one: yonder hung a village church in the air, and church-steeple piercing ever so high; and out of the heart of the mist leaped a brook, and to hear it at one moment, and then to have the sharp freezing silence in one's ear, was piercingly weird. It all tossed the mind in my head ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a benefit to-night for the leading tenor, and he had chosen "Roland a Ronceveaux," a favourite this season, for his farewell. And, mon Dieu, mused the little M'sieu, but how his voice had rung out bell-like, piercing above the chorus of the first act! Encore after encore was given, and the bravos of the troisiemes were enough to stir the ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... read of the way in which they live in communities, and play games of strength and skill among themselves, the young girl grew enthusiastic and sought to kiss the insect which escaped her and began to crawl over her face. Then she uttered a piercing cry, as if she had been threatened by a terrible danger, and with frantic gestures tried to brush it off her face. With a loud laugh Servigny caught it near her tresses and imprinted on the spot where he had seized it a long kiss without Yvette withdrawing ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... in a moody state of mind all winter, and grown as dull as is consistent with the essential sharpness of his nature. I ought to except our last interview, though, for his entreaties to Mamma that she would bring you home with her were piercing." ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the vanished dead, all clothed in life, and girded round with a panoply of power, and light, and strength; with vivid memory of the secret wrongs deemed buried in their graves. Our cities are thronged with an unseen people who flit about us, their piercing eyes invisible to us, are scanning all our ways. The universe is teeming with them,—"THERE ARE NO DEAD,"—the air, the earth, and the sky above, are filled with a viewless host of spirit—witnesses whose messages ever declare ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... whose aim in life might have been to disguise their own feelings and hide the hearts that God had given them; the next the artificial smiles were wiped away, and they were clinging together, two terrified, cowering women, with a mother's soul in their faces—a mother's love and fear and dread! A piercing cry had sounded through the stillness, and another, and another, and, while they sat paralysed with fear, footsteps came tearing along the passage, the door was burst open, and a wild, dishevelled-looking figure rushed into the room. A curtain was wound round face and figure, but ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... unpractised eyes did not detect them, immersed, as they were, in the current; nor had she recognised the sleigh that whirled past us, as her father's. A little later, a fearful shriek came from one of the fettered beasts; such a heart-piercing cry as it is known the horse often gives. I said nothing on the subject, knowing that love for her father was one of the great incentives which had aroused my companion to exertion; and being unwilling to excite fears that ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... tokens that birth and breeding, and habits of thought and native character can show, you are my countrywoman. That wild, free spirit was never born in the breast of an Englishwoman; that slight frame, that slender beauty, that frail envelopment of a quick, piercing, yet stubborn and patient spirit,—are those the properties of ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... English, and in a voice of thrilling, almost piercing sweetness, which seemed somehow to go straight to my heart, and affected me ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... terror. There were the rushing of footsteps hither and thither, voices calling, bells loudly ringing, and, above all, the voice of a mother's anguish, piercing to the soul! Jones and Wildrake hurried off to the stables, saddled their horses themselves, and dashed off at full speed to summon a surgeon, glad of any excuse to make ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown
... it the best built sermon is but a painted corpse; but when the soul gleams forth in the flashing eye and quivering lip, waves of unseen fire are issuing with every sentence, and arrows of light silently piercing every heart. The most stubborn prejudices are forced to melt and the most depraved wills are swept on the crest of the grand tidal wave, slowly gathering from the start; but when the preacher forgets himself and his surroundings, flings self-consciousness ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... came to the gathering, for she was the head of the advice and counsel of the Cinel-Conail, and, though she was slow and deliberate and much praised for her womanly qualities, she had the heart of a hero and the soul of a soldier." Her daughter, Nuala, is the "woman of the piercing wail" in Mangan's translation of the bard's lament for the death of the Ulster ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... yonder. They wandered on and on, over the dry, rustling, last year's leaves, and over fallen branches that crackled beneath their feet. Soon they heard a loud piercing scream. They stood still and listened, and presently the scream of an eagle sounded through the wood. It was an ugly scream, and they were frightened at it; but before them, in the thick wood, the most beautiful blueberries grew in wonderful profusion. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... guests, were laid out, surrounded with benches, and covered with white cloths. Above them were suspended at least some twenty cages, containing as many canaries, according to a fancy of the district, specially cherished by Mr. Helstone's clerk, who delighted in the piercing song of these birds, and knew that amidst confusion of tongues they always carolled loudest. These tables, be it understood, were not spread for the twelve hundred scholars to be assembled from the three parishes, but ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... nobler and more soul-satisfying is the ideal of the Christian saint with wasted limbs, and clothed in the garb of poverty—his upturned eyes piercing the very heavens in the ecstasy of a divine despair—than any of the fleshly ideals of gross human conception such as have already been alluded to. If a man does not feel this instinctively for himself, let him test it thus—whom does his heart of hearts ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... hat full of crowns. He also says the widow of General Hamilton told him she had often seen 'Captain Molly,' as she was called, and described her as a red-haired, freckle-faced young Irish woman, with a handsome piercing eye." ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... hidden up in the level grayness of the clouds: twi, twi, trrrr-weet!—droom, droom, phloee!—tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, feer!—that was the silvery chorus from thousands of throats. It seemed to us that all the fields and hedges had but one voice, and that it was clear and sweet and piercing.—WILLIAM BLACK, Ibid. ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... shouts of his father, come home nearly drunk, then the sharp replies of his mother, then the bang, bang of his father's fist on the table, and the nasty snarling shout as the man's voice got higher. And then the whole was drowned in a piercing medley of shrieks and cries from the great, wind-swept ash-tree. The children lay silent in suspense, waiting for a lull in the wind to hear what their father was doing. He might hit their mother again. There was a feeling of horror, a kind of bristling in the darkness, and a sense of blood. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... fingers with all the strength of his jaws, and holding him in a tight embrace, rolled with him about the bed, so that Scoronconcolo was unable to strike the one without striking the other. He endeavoured to get at the Duke from between Lorenzino's legs, but only succeeded in piercing the mattress, till at last he remembered that he had a knife about him, and drove it into the Duke's throat, turning it round and round until he eventually ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... he must think quickly, and decide on some plan of action to cover up, if he could, any bad results from his blunder. He was once more cool, and he returned the piercing look of the officer with steadfast eyes. His mind was clear as to one thing. There was no need of his trying to invent a story, on the spur of the moment, with a man like the Captain quite ready to pick it to pieces. For it was plain that this Confederate ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... a cigar which he forgot to light, he evaded the tentative chatter of old Wrinkle and sought a rustic seat under a tree in the yard. Over the meadow, and piercing the shadows which enveloped him, shone a light from Dixie Hart's kitchen. He fancied that he saw her at work, her strong, lithe form and glorious face emitting cheer, courage, and hope to her helpless charges. He wondered if she was recalling, as he would ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... his gun to take aim when a piercing yell seemed to come from the sky. He lowered it hastily, and it was fortunate the shock did ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... of his contention he imputes faulty navigation as the cause of taking them out of their course, and finding themselves united to the Rochefort squadron off Cape Finisterre. The bad-reckoning idea cannot be sustained. The French were no match for the British under Nelson's piercing genius as a naval strategist, or in the flashes of dazzling enthusiasm with which he led those under his command to fight, but it must also be admitted, and has been over and over again, that Villeneuve was a skilled ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... heard that piercing cry. Rayel still lay motionless upon the floor. Was he asleep? Why did he not rise? I began to feel numb. I seemed to have lost the power of motion. I could hear some one rapping at our door, but I could ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... temples; the crash of falling houses will be heard; and one confused noise formed out of all together. Some will be seen striving to escape the danger, but know not where to direct their flight; others embracing for the last time their parents and relations; here the dismal shrieks of women and piercing cries of children fill one with pity; there the sighs and groans of old men, lamenting their unhappy fate for having lived so long as to be witnesses of their country's desolation. A further addition to these scenes of woe is the plunder of all things, ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... the program, so Mittens announced, would be a duet between himself and Miss Tabitha Tortoise, entitled Moonbeams on the Back Fence. This selection proved so very noisy, so full of quavers, trills, and loud and piercing yowls, that the children decided it would be safe to attempt ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... hands. My blood ran cold, my very hair stood up on end, as I saw the wild glitter in her dark, lustrous eyes, and the hopeless frenzy in her harsh and hollow laugh. I wrestled once, with all the strength I could command, and with a piercing scream I awoke! Cold clammy drops lay on my face and hands. My heart was throbbing wildly against my breast. I lay prostrate, paralyzed with fear, staring into the outer gloom. It was just at the turn of the darkness when things are outlined though still colorless ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... could have wished for; and I accept her. Now when you go back to your palace, you will find on the seventh pedestal the statue of the diamond which your father desired you to obtain." And, with these words, the Spirit-king vanished, taking with him the girl, who uttered a great and piercing cry to heaven at having been thus deceived. Very sorrowfully the young king then began his journey home. All along the way he kept regretting that girl, and regretting the cruelty which he had practised in deceiving her and her parents. And he began to say to himself, "Accursed be ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... While trudging along they saw a big bird hovering in the air, circling slowly above them, but always descending lower, till at last it settled on a rock not far from them. Immediately afterward they heard a sharp, piercing cry. They ran forward, and saw with horror that the eagle had pounced on their old friend the dwarf, and was about to carry him off. The tender-hearted children seized hold of the little man, and struggled so long with the bird that at last he let go his prey. When the dwarf had recovered ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... unsurpassed. I occasionally met or passed other pedestrians, but noticed that it required a brisk pace to lessen the distance between myself and an attractive girlish figure a few hundred feet in advance of me. The railroad cuts across one corner of the town, piercing the walls with two very carefully constructed archways. Indeed, the people are very choice of the wall, and one sees posted notices of the city authorities offering a reward for any one detected in injuring it. It has stood now some seven or eight centuries, and from appearances ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... anger in his voice, but there was also no kindness. She knew that he was watching her with a piercing scrutiny, and she dared not raise her eyes. She shook her head at last, as he waited ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... plains of Northern Europe stretched before the gaze of a regiment of British infantry—great undulations of sodden earth left by the winter rains and thaws. There, in the piercing cold that froze the feet, they waited the signal to advance. Stray bullets whined and pinged as they struck the wire and sand bags on the top of the trenches; occasionally a man fell on his face; and the ghastly change in the faces of the troops bore ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... calm and rigid as a statue; but as he commenced the service, his utterance had a terrible meaning and earnestness that were felt even by the most drowsy and leaden of his flock. It is singular how the dumb, imprisoned soul, locked within the walls of the body, sometimes gives such a piercing power to the tones of the voice during the access of a great agony. The effect is entirely involuntary, and often against the most strenuous opposition of the will; but one sometimes hears another reading or repeating words with an intense vitality, a living force, which tells of some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... have been made to ascertain the relative efficiency of different constructions, a torpedo has been adopted, and the work of construction is now being carried on successfully. We were without armor-piercing shells and without a shop instructed and equipped for the construction of them. We are now making what is believed to be a projectile superior to any before in use. A smokeless powder has been developed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... who had experience of London garrets this was a rather favourable specimen of its kind. The door closed more satisfactorily than poor Biffen's, for instance, and there were not many of those knot-holes in the floor which gave admission to piercing little draughts; not a pane of the window was cracked, not one. A man might live ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... find friends or helpers in these States. He had heard enough of the cruelties of Slavery in these regions to convince him, that if he should be caught, there would be no sympathy or mercy shown. Nevertheless the irons were piercing him so severely, that he felt constrained to try his luck, let the consequences be what they might, and so he set out for freedom or death. Mountains of difficulties, and months of suffering and privations by land and water, in ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... appeared suddenly in the great arched doorway. His turban came down almost to his eyes and a neckcloth covered his mouth. All that could be seen of him in the matter of countenance was a pair of brilliant eyes and a predatory nose. He threw a quick piercing glance about, assured himself that such devotees as he saw were harmless, then strode boldly, if hurriedly, toward the rear chamber, which he entered without ado. Instantly the indignant priests rushed toward him to expel him and give him a tongue-lashing for his impudence, ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... passed through the flame and the torment of the three ruined lives and returned again with gathering power as the force which swept him and Sally Fortune out into that river and toward that far-off sea. The last mist was brushed from his eyes. He saw with a piercing vision the world, himself, life. He looked to William Drew and saw that he was gazing on ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... represented by Figs. 4 and 5, is the piercing of the center of the links, which can later be furnished with a stay for such chains as require special strength. The point now is to detach the links, which is accomplished by oblique piercings, as shown in Fig. 6. In the operation represented by Fig. 7, the oval shape is imparted to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... for he was not a place-loving courtier, "clothed in soft raiment or found in kings' courts." Not that he was a master of a superb eloquence like that of Isaiah or Ezekiel; for he was content to be only "a cry"—short, thrilling, piercing through the darkness, ringing over the desert plains. Yet, his Master said of him that "among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist"; and in six brief months, as one has noticed, the young ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... with the tears gushing down his furrowed cheeks, "this is truly the daughter of our Gustavus! Here is her father's brow!—here is his piercing eye! She is his very picture. This ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... things," said I, "my good Socrates; and no less terrible than marvelous. In fact, you have excited no small anxiety (indeed I may say fear) in me too; not a mere grain of apprehension, but a piercing dread for fear this old hag should come to know our conversation in the same way, by the help of some demon. Let us get to bed without delay; and when we have rested ourselves by a little sleep, let us fly as far as we possibly can ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the three days before they quitted Quebec, so rapid was the vegetation, that it appeared as if summer had come upon them all at once. The heat was also very great, although, when they had landed, the weather was piercing cold; but in Canada, as well as in all Northern America, the transitions from heat to cold, and from cold to heat, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... more bracing, my dear, on the higher ground, and on fine days one can walk about the roof and peep through the boiling-oil holes, while as for the Mutts they are protected, at any rate, from those bitterly piercing east winds and have an excellent view ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... hundred years since the body of Origen [95] had been eaten by the worms: his soul, of which he held the preexistence, was in the hands of its Creator; but his writings were eagerly perused by the monks of Palestine. In these writings, the piercing eye of Justinian descried more than ten metaphysical errors; and the primitive doctor, in the company of Pythagoras and Plato, was devoted by the clergy to the eternity of hell-fire, which he had presumed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... in this particular, but, I am free to say, that, up to that hour, my ears had never been so thrilled by Christian melody. The tones were not as mellow as those of the African, but they were more deep and thrilling. Inclined rather to a high key, and disposed to be sharp and piercing, yet the voices of the vast congregation swept through every note of the gamut with equal freedom. I was thoroughly entranced. And, on coming to myself, I found my perturbation had left me and my soul was on a plane with the ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... glance, betrayed a close relation to the woman lying on the bed. They were of the same size, color and brilliance; but the tense, powerful expression that was seen in those of the aged woman, here was softened to a mild, yet piercing glance, which had, at the same time, a touch of sadness. She appeared to be not more than twenty-five years old, although her face, in spite of its gentle, youthful expression, showed the traces ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... never dreamed of. He was some way from the herd now, but at that moment he heard the well-known whistle of the sentinel chamois.[Footnote: Each herd has a chamois who acts as a sentinel. At the slightest sign of danger this sentinel gives a peculiar whistle, not particularly shrill or piercing, but which has a curious, penetrating power and carries a great distance. Not only does this sentinel give warning of danger, but he indicates from which direction it is coming.—Author.] In an instant Chaffer was off, leaping over wide chasms, ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... eternal makes, And from the starry spheres above All cause of war and dangerous discord takes. This sweet consent In equal bands doth tie The nature of each element, So that the moist things yield unto the dry, The piercing cold With flames doth friendship keep, The trembling fire the highest place doth hold, And the gross earth sinks down into the deep. The flowery year Breathes odours in the spring The scorching summer corn doth bear, The autumn fruit from laden trees doth bring. The falling rain Doth winter's ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... the narrow forest-paths, and overwhelming the roads along the sea-coast with mountain snow drifts; so that weeks elapsed before the newspaper could announce how many travellers had perished, or what wrecks had strewn the shore. The cold was more piercing then, and lingered further into the spring, making the chimney- corner a comfortable seat till long past May-day. By the number of such accidents on record, we might suppose that the thunder-stone, as they termed it, fell ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an immense joy when he closed his carrel-door, after his hour's siesta in the dormitory, and sat down to his work. He was still warm with sleep, and the piercing cold of the unwarmed cloister did not affect him, but he set his feet on the sloping wooden footstool that rested on the straw for fear they should get cold, and turned smiling to ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... to lose it. Even as he was speaking a thrill of admiration ran through Cynthia, piercing her sorrow. The superb strength of the man was there in that simple confession, and it is in the nature of woman to admire strength. He had fought his fight, and gained, and paid the price without ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... followed the servant upstairs with a sinking heart. I was left for a moment alone in the library, and then the Dean came in. I don't think I ever in my life felt more intensely uncomfortable than I did in that minute's interval as he stood waiting for me to speak, his clear, grave, piercing eyes gazing questioningly into mine. Very falteringly—it must have been very clumsily—I preferred my request, stating boldly, with abrupt honesty, that I was not a Christian, that my mother was dying, that she was fretting to take the Sacrament, that she would ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... the painful recital of all that I was doomed to endure. The women often expressed the deepest sympathy for me—a sympathy not less piercing to my soul than the scoffs of the young people, and the proud contempt of the men, particularly of the more corpulent, who threw an ample shadow before them. A fair and beauteous maiden, apparently accompanied by her parents, who gravely kept looking straight before ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... a word, but with a more severe compunction of conscience than she had ever felt before in her life. Her father's face and words smote her with a keen reproach, piercing the thick armor of her vanity and selfishness. She saw, for a moment, how unnatural and unlovely she must appear to him, in spite of her beauty, and the thought crossed ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... reproach, thou injured majesty, Nor wound with piercing looks, a heart already With anguish torn, and bleeding with remorse. Your awful looks, alone, are arm'd with death, ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... a young German with a round, ruddy face, which was so innocent of guile as to be out of harmony with the shrewd, piercing black eyes looking out of it. The Englishman ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... those great, sad eyes were turned toward me, and I felt that she had recognized me, and her eyes bored into my breast, and followed me even after the axe had taken off her head. The eyes did not fall into the basket, they were not buried, bat they remain in my breast; they have been piercing me ever since, and burning me like glowing coals. But that night I saw them again, as in life—those dreadful eyes; and as the figure advanced toward me, it raised its hand and threatened me, and its eyes spoke to me, and it seemed ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... night came a heavy blow and by morning the seas were running high. The air was piercing cold, and everybody was glad enough to remain in the cabins. Dave, returning from the ship's library with a volume on travels in England, found Roger had gone ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... become interested in the prayer book; and, with the Pom shooing him out by sharp, ear-piercing barks, Steve left ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... was doing this, there was a piercing cry. I could not see the person making it, but I knew it was the Italian's voice. He was screaming, in broken English that the fire was spreading to the stables, and his animals would be burned. Would no one help him to get his animals out? There was a great ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... punished us both; the nun for telling the lie, and me for getting the brandy. For two hours they made me stand with a crown of thorns on my head, while they alternately employed themselves in burning me with hot irons, pinching, and piercing me with needles, pulling my hair, and striking me with sticks. All this I bore very well, for I was hurt just enough to ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... could not be called venerable, but picturesque. His hair hung in long silvery locks, tied in a queue in the fashions of the past centuries. His height was very near six feet, slender and straight as an Indian brave, and his piercing black eyes seemed to flash fire and impressed one as being able to look into your very soul. He joined the "Palmetto Guards," donned the uniform of that company, and his pictures were sold all over the entire South, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... down to enjoy his well-earned peace. His death-stroke was a flashing lunge, from a grip of a foreleg to a sharp, grinding grip of the enemy's tongue. How he managed it was a puzzle, but sooner or later he got his grip in, to let go at the piercing yell of defeat that invariably followed. But Brown was a gentleman, not a bully, and after each fight buried the hatchet, appearing to shake hands with his late adversary. No doubt if he had had a tail he would have wagged it, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... a mile distant. The meeting was held in a little chapel built out like an architectural excrescence at the side of the great, oblong, wooden structure, with its piercing steeple. The chapel windows blazed with light. People were flocking in. As they entered, a young lady began to play on an out-of-tune piano, which Judge Josiah Saunders had presented to the church. She played a Moody-and-Sankey hymn as a sort of prologue, although nobody ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ingredient in curries, pillaus, &c. The seed capsules are gathered as they ripen, and when dried in the sun are fit for sale. They should be chosen full, plump, and difficult to be broken; of a bright yellow color, and piercing smell; with an acrid bitterish, though not very unpleasant taste, and particular care should be taken that ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... to afford other temptations to an artist of eminence, though many of the colonial gentry on the painter's arrival had expressed a wish to transmit their lineaments to posterity by moans of his skill. Whenever such proposals were made, he fixed his piercing eyes on the applicant and seemed to look him through and through. If he beheld only a sleek and comfortable visage, though there were a gold-laced coat to adorn the picture and golden guineas to pay for it, he civilly rejected the task and the reward; but if the face were the index ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... out. He fired the first shot without even realizing fully that he'd done so, and he heard a piercing scream from Barbara in the back seat. He had no ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in the control cabin with Banner, Harcraft was about to congratulate himself on inventing the apprentice system, when a piercing scream brought both men to their feet. "It's Arnold," Banner said. "Arnold, you ...
— Unspecialist • Murray F. Yaco
... angle. A mile beyond, I reached the edge of the mountain region, and again looked down upon the prosperous valley of St. Gall. Below me was the railway, and as I sped towards Zurich that afternoon, the top of the Sentis, piercing through a mass of dark rain-clouds, was my last glimpse of the Little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... their liquid home. People talk of the lack-lustre of a fish's eye. They are acquainted only with a dead fish. Did they ever remark the keen, bright, diabolical eye of a shark watching for his expected victim? I know nothing in nature more piercing, more dread-inspiring. Here were collected sharks, and pilot-fish, and albicores, bonettas, dolphins, flying-fish, and numberless others, for which old Mr Stunt, to whom I applied, could give me no name. ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... as I say, this was all very well. The hero was a young lordling, sprung from a line of ancestors who had never done anything with their eyes except wear a piercing glance before which lesser men quailed. But now novelists go into every class of society for their heroes, and surely, at least an occasional one of them must have been astigmatic. Kipps undoubtedly wore glasses; so did Bunker Bean; ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... imports for all the small adjacent places, inhabited by 'shaggy capotes.' And she will have a fine time when that talented and energetic soldier, General Tuerr, whom we last met at Venice, begins the 'piercing of the Isthmus.' A propos of which, one might suggest to Patras, with due respect, that (politically speaking) ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... cannot hear them at all; and it becomes proved that certain men, with perfectly sound organs, never heard the cricket in the chimney-corner, yet did not doubt but that bats occasionally utter a piercing cry; and attention being once awakened to these singular results, observers have found the most extraordinary differences of sensibility between their right ear ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... religious conduct are a kind of hypocrisy, so, on the other hand, right conduct, when unattended with deep feelings, is at best a very imperfect sort of religion. And at this time of year[2] especially are we called upon to raise our hearts to Christ, and to have keen feelings and piercing thoughts of sorrow and shame, of compunction and of gratitude, of love and tender affection and horror and anguish, at the review of those awful sufferings whereby our ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... home, before he had forgotten the ghost stories of childhood. While the simple heart still loved to dwell upon the marvellous, he was placed amid all the marvels of the sea. In the dark, out of the howl of wind and din of waves, he would hear strange shrieks piercing the air. By him would float huge forms, dim and mysterious, from which fancy was prone to build strange phantoms. Ships might come and ships might go; the sea must ever hold sway over the sailor man, a mistress to be loved ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... thousand bitter, indescribable feelings. At another sign from the captain, the master-at-arms, stepping up, removed the shirt from the prisoner. At this juncture, a wave broke against the ship's side and dashed the spray over the man's exposed back; but, though the air was piercing cold, and the water drenched him, John ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... resolved that no wild dream of Ind, And what we there might win; or of the West, And bold re-conquest there of Surinam And other Dutch retreats along those coasts, Or British islands nigh, shall draw me now From piercing into England through Boulogne As lined in my first plan. If I do strike, I strike effectively; to forge which feat There's but one way—planting a mortal wound In England's heart—the very English land— Whose insolent and cynical reply To my well-based complaint on breach of faith Concerning Malta, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Christianity; Staffa with grass growing above the unspeakable grandeur which lurks in the cathedral-cave below, and cows peacefully feeding over the tumultuous surge which forms the organ of the eternal service; and Skye, with its Loch Coriskin, piercing like a bright arrow the black breast of the shaggy hills of Cuchullin. Burns had around him only the features of ordinary Scottish scenery, but from these he drank in no common draught of inspiration; and how admirably has he reproduced such simple objects as the "burn stealing under the lang ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... my researches I have heard delicate raps, which sounded as if produced by a pin's point; a cascade of piercing sounds, like those of a machine in full motion; detonations in the air; light and acute metallic taps; cracking noises, like those produced by a floor-polishing machine; sounds which resembled scratching; warbling, like ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... some way humanized the scene. The ward tenders and the interne stared at her blankly; the nurses looked down in unconscious comment on the twisted figure by their side. The surgeon drew his hands from his pockets and stepped toward the woman, questioning her meanwhile with his nervous, piercing glance. For a moment neither spoke, but some kind of mute explanation seemed to be ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... painted glorious visions of the victories of the Lamb of God, and dazzling views of the landscapes of paradise restored, in Patmos; employed the gigantic intellect of Newton, the elegant pen of Paley, the eloquence of Chalmers, Herschel's heaven-piercing eye, and Miller's muscular arm, to guard the outer courts of the sanctuary, while they sung sublime anthems to the music of David's harp within. Have they now, after such a life of devotion, relinquished all these sublimities and beatitudes, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... every opportunity to repent, and he had called her to her account. He charged them to make their preparation now closing, by bringing before their minds that great day when the Judge of the earth would summon before him every soul he had made. None could escape his all-piercing eye; the king and his subject, the rich and the poor the strong and the weak, the learned and the ignorant the white and the colored, the master and his slave! each to render his or her account for the deeds ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... break straight, but in curves, round the body of the aiguilles, somewhat in the manner of the coats of an onion; so that, even after fissure has taken place, the detached film or flake clings to and leans upon the central mass, and will not fall from it till centuries of piercing frost have wedged it utterly from its hold; and, even then, will not fall all at once, but drop to pieces slowly, and flake by flake. Consider a little the beneficence of this ordinance;[62] supposing the cliffs had been built like the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... is close to the curb-stone, with the door swinging open as if to urge the owners to hurry and take possession. The high-stepping trotters are covered with blankets to protect them from the piercing cold, and, with their heads drooping, are either asleep or wondering why they are not put into the stable to take their night's rest; and the coachman is dancing about on the pavement to keep his feet warm—not by any means a merry kind of dance, although he moves about pretty ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... lightly, though she had long been a childless widow and had silvery hair. Tall and finely made, with prominent nose and piercing eyes, she was marked by a certain stateliness and a decided manner. She was blunt without rudeness, and though often forceful was seldom arrogant. Careless of her dress, as she generally was, Margaret Keith bore the stamp of ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... able to say, 'I have found him,' or, 'I think she lies there.' Perhaps, the mourner, unable to bear the sight of all that lay in the church, would be led in blindfold. Conducted to the spot with many compassionate words, and encouraged to look, she would say, with a piercing cry, 'This is my boy!' and drop insensible on ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... moisture for the firmer union of parts; although it be hardly drawn into fusion, yet that metal soon submitteth unto rust and dissolu- tion. In the brazen pieces we admired not the duration, but the freedom from rust, and ill savour, upon the hardest attrition; but now exposed unto the piercing atoms of air, in the space of a few months, they begin to spot and betray their green entrails. We conceive not these urns to have descended thus naked as they appear, or to have entered their graves without the old habit of flowers. ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... Ato. The months had changed him too. He stood tall and lean, and there was a deep line running from each cheekbone down his face. He looked older, but his eyes were piercing now, while his father's were somber. Strife and hard work had sweated all the fat from his bones. He seemed much stronger than when Odin had first met him. But here was something more than strength. Ato had developed into a first-class fighting man. Wolden could ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... expert performer, a piano should be chosen for softness and richness of tone, instead of brilliancy. For most households the old cottage organ is a more practicable instrument than the "concert grand" often found in a small parlor, where its piercing notes, especially in combination with operatic singing, are so confined that tones and overtones, which should assist each other, mingle in jarring confusion. Indeed, when the parlor is large and high, a genuine pipe-organ built in a recess and harmonizing in finish with the woodwork ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... die For some vile, petty theft, some paltry scudi: And, whilst the fiery war-horse chaf'd and sear'd, Shaking his crest, and plunging to get free, There, midst the dangerous coil, unmov'd, she stood, Pleading in piercing words, the very cry Of nature! And, when I at last said no— For I said no to her—she flung herself And those poor innocent babes between the stones And my hot Arab's hoofs. We sav'd them all— Thank heaven, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... candid method of inquiry is to recur back to the state of affairs, as it then appeared, to consider what was openly declared, and what was kept impenetrably secret, what was discoverable by human sagacity, and what was beyond the reach of the most piercing politician. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... too honest a soul not to hesitate when he heard that story, which was possible at least, if not very probable. He fixed a piercing gaze on the farmer, who bore his scrutiny with much impudence or else ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... in Alberti's church of S. Andrea at Mantua, in a chapel decorated at his own expense. Over the grave was placed a bronze bust, most noble in modelling and perfect in execution. The broad forehead with its deeply cloven furrows, the stern and piercing eyes, the large lips compressed with nervous energy, the massive nose, the strength of jaw and chin, and the superb clusters of the hair escaping from a laurel-wreath upon the royal head, are such as realise ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... impressed Shefford. He had a noble head, in poise like that of an eagle, a bold, clean-cut profile, and stern, close-shut lips. His eyes were the most striking and attractive feature about him; they were coal-black and piercing; the intent look out of them seemed to come from ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... hands towards him as she spoke. Then, with a piercing shriek, she staggered backward, and would have fallen had not the captain caught her ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of key after the "Honeymoon Motive" from sweetest major to a piercing minor. This is exquisitely sincere and symbolic, though it is a point too delicate to be perceived save by musicians who have married but have not been able to hang up their wives. The libretto ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the Lynx of North America, of which the Beavers had already told him. Her powerful feet were furnished with large white claws, almost hidden in her thick fur; her face was round, and her eyes as sharp and piercing as those of all her kind. She reached Phil's side as silently as if she were shod with velvet, and greeted him as if she had ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... replied cheerfully. It certainly was much pleasanter in that warm room, with its clear blazing fire, soft carpet, leather-covered chairs, and draughtless windows, than in the large, and often chilly, outer office, but when Mr. Gregory entered with his compressed lips and keen piercing glance all round, Bertie began to think it would not be pleasant to have to sit always within the reach of his ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... to deliver a message from Cuichelme, drew his dagger and rushed upon the king. Lilla, an officer of his army, seeing his master's danger, and having no other means of defence, interposed with his own body between the king and Eumer's dagger, which was pushed with such violence, that after piercing Lilla, it even wounded Edwin; but before the assassin could renew his blow, he was despatched by the king's attendants. [FN ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... In his spare but strong-knit figure, his firm but supple hands, his manner of carrying himself, his every gesture, one felt the abounding vitality, the almost furious energy of the man. That extraordinary head, with its heavy brow beetling above the small but piercing eyes, its red beard and crisp, wiry hair, its projecting jaw and great, strongly modelled nose, was alive with power—with power of intellect no less than of will. His lack of early education gave him a certain diffidence and a distrust of his own gifts of expression. ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... also, together with this, some notable place or other of the Word presented before me, which word hath contained in it some sharp and piercing sentence concerning the perishing of the soul, notwithstanding gifts and parts; as, for instance, that hath been of great use unto me, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, and a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... strangest tide Flow in my veins like lightning, as if, there, by my side, Was the very spirit of Valor. But 'twas dark—you couldn't see— And the one who was firing the duck-gun fell against me And slid down to the clover, and lay there still; Something went through me—piercing—with a strange, swift thrill; The noise fell away into silence, and I heard as clear as thunder The long, slow roar of Niagara: O the wonder Of that deep sound. But again the battle broke And the foe, driven before ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... her weakness. The man was of no account to her; upon the woman only her eyes were fixed, for there was the piercing scrutiny, the quick divination, the merciless censure—there, if anywhere, in one of her own sex. From men she might expect tolerance, justice; from women only a swift choice between the bowl and the dagger. Pride prompted her to hardihood, and when she had well ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... said Mrs. Rusper suddenly from the doorstep, piercing the little group of men and boys with the sharp horror of an unexpected woman's voice. "If a witness is wanted I suppose I've got a tongue. I suppose I got a voice in seeing my own 'usband injured. My husband went out and spoke to Mr. Polly, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... with his rage and might have slain his uncle, but the Lady Isoult, beholding the fury in his face, shrieked in a very piercing voice, "Forbear! Forbear!" And therewith he remembered him how that King Mark was his mother's brother and that it was his hand that had made ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... must have been wearied with the perversity of the "dead foul winds" (as he described his bitter fate to Ball) that prevented him from piercing the Straits of Gibraltar against the continuous easterly current that runs from the Atlantic and spreads far into the Mediterranean with malicious fluctuations of velocity. Many a gallant sailing-ship ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... of the sky showed the moon had risen. This, however, was of little or no help, since the abundance of leaves prevented its rays piercing between and lighting up the ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... friend left behind him? Complexion, clear and sanguine; strongly marked features. His eye, sir, was like Mars, to threaten and command; but I forget the precise colour at this moment. We might, perhaps, content ourselves with 'piercing.' If I allow myself to be betrayed into a description ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... but two or three of which were able to cruise overseas. The British admiral's account of the inferiority of the British navy in submarines, aircraft, mines, destroyers, director firing (installed in only 8 ships in 1914), armor-piercing shells, and protection of bases, seems to justify the caution of British operations, but is a severe indictment of the manner in which money appropriated ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... standing with his head bowed gloomily over the furrow! And thus he is always found, his face clouded, his heart oppressed, as if he were expecting some evil news. Is he meditating some wrongful deed? No; but there are two ideas haunting him, two daggers piercing him in turn. The one is, "In what state shall I find my house this evening?" The other, "Would that the turning up of this sod might bring some treasure to light! O that the good spirit would ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... far-away bagpipes. A creature with bat-like wings flapped with a monstrous ungainliness between the outer posts of the verandah. From across the compound an owl called on a weird note of defiance. And in the dim waste of distance beyond she heard the piercing cry of a jackal. But close at hand, so far as the rays of the lamp penetrated, she could ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... whisper to be something akin to silence; he intended to exercise the utmost consideration for those around him; but his long remark was of the piercing quality that often appertains to whispers, and, as he turned his back, two of the children woke, and a young girl in the seat in front of Sophia sat up, her grey eyes ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... more carefully to take the measure of one who had shown himself so frankly an admirer. Waiting, therefore, a few moments until he felt sure that Truslow's gaze had ceased to rest upon himself, he turned to bend a surreptitious but piercing scrutiny upon his neighbour. His glance, however, sweeping across Truslow's shoulder toward the face, suddenly encountered another pair of eyes beyond, so intently fixed upon himself that he started. The clash was like ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... sword piercing the heart to receive this truth, but it is a truth and must be believed. There are hundreds of thousands in the past who were born and lived and died and were damned for the glory of God. There are hundreds of thousands in this day who have been born and are living and shall die and be damned ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... form. They loved strife, both bodily and mental, and they thus early displayed that taste which, in more polished ages, and in the hands of cultivated poets, was developed in the sharp, cutting wit, and the lively but piercing points of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... (though the tunnel is really 17 m. to the west), the Simplon and the St Gotthard, not to speak of the side passes of the Arlberg, Albula and Pyhrn of the latter. There are also schemes (more or less advanced) for piercing the Splugen and the Hohe Tauern, both on the main ridge, and the Lotschen Pass, on one of the external ranges. The numerous mountain railways, chiefly in Switzerland, up various peaks (e.g. the Rigi and Pilatus) and over various side passes (e.g. the Brunig and the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... expanded. She was no longer so buoyantly superficial in her envisagement of life, and the big things reacted on her in a way which would previously have been impossible. Formerly, their significance would have passed her by, and she would have floated airily along, unconscious of their piercing reality. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... tears from her eyes, to see more clearly as that sorrow pointed out a path which all her firmness would be taxed in treading,—a path which she had never dreamed existed for her, until it had been opened, hewn through the rocks of circumstance by that day's heavy blows, that hour's piercing anguish. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... mountain; the same effect should be produced on the ocean by an absence of all irregularity and all change! A simple, level horizon, perfectly unbroken, a line of almost complete uniformity, compose a grandeur that impresses and fills the soul as powerfully as the most cloud-piercing Alp, or the Andes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... by the soldiers tramping, the horses hitched to the artillery wagons were continually slipping and sliding and falling and wounding themselves and sometimes killing their riders. The wind whistling with a keen and piercing shriek, seemed as if they would freeze the marrow in our bones. The soldiers in the whole army got rebellious—almost mutinous—and would curse and abuse Stonewall Jackson; in fact, they called him "Fool Tom Jackson." ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... wind is uncommonly dry, and brings with it fresh animation and vigor to every living thing. Although this wind is so very piercing in winter, yet the people never complain so much of cold as when the northeast wind blows. The northeast wind is also cold, but it renders the air raw and damp. That from the southeast is damp, but warm. Rain or snow usually falls when the wind comes from any point toward the east. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton |
