"Startle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... If he expected to startle the young man he was in error. Roseleaf merely nodded and said he would take one of the weapons owned by ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... the more irresistible. The eyes of the man were soon riveted upon the gorgeous vision of loveliness before him, and the contagion of the girl's animation showed itself even in him, for he brightened a little, and was clever enough to startle himself. It was a new delight and stimulus to Helen to perceive it, and she was soon swept away in much the same kind of nervous delight as her phantasy with the thunderstorm. The sofa upon which the two were seated had been somewhat apart from the rest, and so they had nothing to disturb ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... trees, apparently unconscious of the presence of a few dogs, and not caring for the numerous turkeys, geese, and other domestic animals that gabbled and screamed around them. Nor did my own approach startle the wild, beautiful creatures, that seemed as docile as ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... whether a month hence he will be rich or poor, whether in a year's time he may not be rowing an Algerian galley under the lash of the slave-driver. Above all do not teach him this, like his catechism, in cold blood; let him see and feel the calamities which overtake men; surprise and startle his imagination with the perils which lurk continually about a man's path; let him see the pitfalls all about him, and when he hears you speak of them, let him cling more closely to you for fear lest he should fall. "You ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... thee The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; To hear the lark begin his flight And singing startle the dull night From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise: Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweetbriar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine: While the cock with lively din, Scatters ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... my micracoustic ear trumpet extend the sense of the unbearable beyond all possible bounds. Thus, sir, the circulation of the blood and the fluids of the body will not give me pause; you shall hear them flow with the impetuosity of cataracts; you shall perceive them so distinctly as to startle you; the slightest irregularity of the pulse, the least obstacle, is striking, and produces the same effect as a rock against which the waves of ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... said L'Isle. "Our host has flocks so numerous, that it would startle you to hear their numbers told. The whole country for miles around is pastured by them. He is a farmer, or rather grazier, on a grand scale. Not to puzzle you longer, he is a bee-farmer, having many hundred hives. ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... explosion, differing much in sound from those which continued to startle the night, rang suddenly out of the distance. It arose from a spot on the confines of the orchard, and was sharp in tone—sharp almost as the human cries which followed it. Then the distant lights hastened ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... resulted in the foundation of the so-called Catholic Apostolic Church was of somewhat earlier date, and its author had already been disavowed as a minister by the presbyterian Church before the Tracts for the Times began to startle the religious world. The most brilliant part of Edward Irving's career falls within the reign of George IV., when his chapel in London was crowded by the fashionable world, and even attended occasionally by statesmen like Canning. According to all contemporary testimony ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... it; but he seemed to think that he was not responsible for the cow's voice. I then told him to take her away; and he did, at intervals, shifting her to different parts of the grounds in my absence, so that the desolate voice would startle us from unexpected quarters. If I were to unhitch the cow, and turn her loose, I knew where she would go. If I were to lead her away, the question was, Where? for I did not fancy leading a cow about till I could find somebody ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's working—to startle its lethargy with a deep and pure agitation of astonishment—are their higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture, first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with mighty sculpture ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... To startle him back into hiding would have only deferred my getting truly rid of him, so I was most tiptoe and diplomatic in my doings. Finally, a paper bag, put into a likely nook with some sentimentally preserved wedding-cake crumbled into it, crackled to me of his arrival. In a brave moment I noosed ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... to-night except this—I find that you are influencing all my thoughts and all my days in what is to me a very new and a very happy way. You hear as much as that often, and from many people, don't you? So there is nothing in it that need startle you or make you uncomfortable." He paused, and she nodded in a visible effort to ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... acts Ursus exhibited his power as an engastrimist, and executed marvels of ventriloquism. He imitated every cry which occurred in the audience—a song, a cry, enough to startle, so exact the imitation, the singer or the crier himself; and now and then he copied the hubbub of the public, and whistled as if there were a crowd of people within him. These were remarkable talents. Besides this he harangued like Cicero, as ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... saw an apple fall, he found In that slight startle from his contemplation— 'T is said (for I 'll not answer above ground For any sage's creed or calculation)— A mode of proving that the earth turn'd round In a most natural whirl, called 'gravitation;' And this is the sole mortal who ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Ben; "and as I have already said, may be developed slowly, through the exercise of the will, or suddenly, as in some great physical shock, and of a necessity comes to all in the event called death. Were I to tell you how I acquired this knowledge, Mr. Henley, it would startle you, far more than any exhibition of the power itself. No, I can not tell you; at least, not at present; perhaps some day you may be better prepared ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... collecting the pennies for the Holiday Fund Savings Bank from the children who came weekly to her house. She noticed on three consecutive Mondays that one little lad deliberately helped himself to a new envelope from her table. Not wishing to frighten or startle him, she allowed this to continue for some weeks, and then one day, having dismissed the other children, she asked him quite quietly why he was taking the envelopes. At first he was very sulky, and said: "I need them more than you do." She quite agreed this might be, but reminded ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... victory o'er the routed foe— Will startle from their rest no more The fallen brave of Mexico. To God alone such spirits yield! He took them in their strength and bloom, When gathering, on the tented field, The garlands woven ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... in the face of my little dinner to go startle me with a thing of the sort! I'm not worth the ground I stand on! For the Champion of next Thursday! I to be dead ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... Letter written in the blood of your poor friend would indeed be of a nature to startle you; but this is nought but harmless red ink, or, as the witty mercantile phrase hath it, Clerk's Blood. Damn 'em! my brain, guts, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, TIME, is all theirs. The Royal Exchange, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... a century and a half adventures in themselves unimportant enough. In spite of disappointments and dark hours of desertion, Charles, who was much of a boy, probably enjoyed the mystery which he now successfully created. If he could not startle Europe by a brilliant appearance on any stage, he could keep it talking and guessing by a disappearance. He obviously relished secrecy, pass-words, disguises, the 'properties' of the conspirator, in the spirit ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... examined some forty years after his interment, and the skull was found to be without sutures. (Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 218.) Richelieu's was found to be perforated with little holes. The abbe Richard deduces a theory from this, which may startle the physiologist even more than the facts. "On ouvrit son Test, on y trouva 12 petits trous par ou s'exhaloient les vapeurs de son cerveau, ce qui fit qu' il n'eut jamais aucun mal de tete; au lieu que le Test de Ximenes etoit sans suture, a quoi l'on attribua les effroyables douleurs ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... try if I can remember anything to startle you, if you're out for sensations. It's a kind of literary society, isn't it? Can you lend me a pencil, please, and some waste paper? I don't know what I've done with my blotter. Thanks! Now I'm going right up to my bedroom ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... or they know how, in the mood for free and friendly talk. People often wonder, 'How do you catch So-and-so? He is so shy! I have invited and invited, and he never comes.' We never invite, and he comes. We take no note of his coming or his going; we do not startle his entrance with acclamation, nor clog his departure with expostulation; it is fully understood that with us he shall do just as he chooses; and so he chooses to do much that ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the people with that of his own country. The existence, almost under the shadow of the flag of the freest institutions the earth ever knew, of a government as purely despotic as that of the autocrat of Russia is a monstrous fact that must startle the ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... well, doctor. At any rate, you are a brick, I will say that. But I'll think of all this, I'll think of it; but it does startle me to find that poor Mary has a child living ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... conclusion that this is the business I ought to do. I have only one parishioner on my hands to-day," he went on with a slight smile, "and I may as well attend to her. I am going to tell you my plan. I shall not startle you? Just now you allowed that you had confidence ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... fly or butterfly perched on the back of it. The combination of a familiar sight and a threatening sound would very plausibly result in cautious immobility. As for its instantaneous assumption of the pose, to move instantaneously is the next best thing to not moving at all. It is less likely to startle than a slow movement. Twigs which have been bent get suddenly released in the natural course of events; they do not move slowly. The instantaneous appearance of a twig where no twig was before may possibly ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... noted, he was turned away in disgrace. Again he presented himself before the rector of St. Michael's, knowing as little of popish plots as he did on his previous return. But Tonge, though disappointed, was not disheartened; if no scheme existed, he would invent one which should startle the public, and save the nation. Such proposals as he made towards the accomplishment of this end were readily assented to by Oates, in whose breast wounded pride and bitter hate rankled deep. Therefore, after many ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... hiding the details in the thickets, and all the hot day, he had been thrusting his way through thicket after thicket, in obedience to the instructions of the foresters. He had struck trees with his short club and had grunted and squealed, to startle the khada into flight. A few of the ugly beasts had come out, charging into the open, to be run down ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... things round about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins. Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played "I lay ten dollars down." There were three couples on the floor, and I saw—for the excited dogs had pushed the door ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... Leslie? I thought I heard a sound, and then it was so quiet that I came out to see what it meant. Every little noise seems to startle me this afternoon." ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... with as much ease and willingness as another man could put off his clothes. He even wished, every step of his journey, to meet with the wild beasts; and though that death was most shocking and barbarous, and presented the most frightful ideas, sufficient to startle the firmest resolution; yet it was incapable of making the least impression upon his courageous soul. The perfect mortification of his affections appears from his heavenly meekness; and he expressed how perfectly he ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... give her assistance, but Marian shook her head at her, with a kindly look, that seemed to say, "Do not startle her—she is used only to me lately," and bore her out of sight into ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... take wings at some other's word—a mind skilled at scheming"—he stopped and laughed—"Why, Esther, before the new moon which in the courts of the Temple on the Holy Hill they are this moment celebrating passes into its next quartering I could ring the world so as to startle even Caesar; for know you, child, I have that faculty which is better than any one sense, better than a perfect body, better than courage and will, better than experience, ordinarily the best product of the longest lives—the faculty divinest of men, but which"—he stopped, and laughed ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... her with torture until she confess where be her Robber of a son-in-law." But Hasan the fourth officer dissuaded them saying, "O good folk, do ye fear Almighty Allah and be not over hasty, saving that hurry is of old Harry. These be all women without a man in the house; so startle them not; and peradventure the son-in-law ye seek may be no thief and so we fall into an affair wherefrom we may not escape without trouble the most troublous." Thereupon Shamamah came up and cried out, "O Hasan, it ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... naught between me and high heaven but that white face. Ah, how I loved her! I knew it—I never doubted it. Could years of passionate adoration touch her heart—her little heart, now beating so calmly with no thought of love to startle it from its quiet and send it fluttering against the gentle breast? In her lap her clasped hands tightened—her eyelids drooped as though some pleasant thought was passing. I saw the color dye her temples, I saw the blue eyes turn, half frightened, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... too bad of me to startle you like that," he acknowledged. "Please forgive me. I caught sight of you both through the trees and declared myself rather ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... my experience of 'ladies' of one kind and another, I never saw a woman—not a basket woman or a gipsy—smoke before!" This last remark is highly significant. Forster says that Dickens "lived to have larger and wider experience, but there was enough to startle as well as amuse him in the scene described." The words "cigar" and "cigarette" are used indifferently by the novelist, but it seems clear from the description and from the number smoked by the lady in an hour or two, that it ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... impression that one sometimes gets by a glance at these public-inflicted trade-marks, and without having heard or seen any of their music, is that the one great underlying desire of these appearing-artists, is to impress, perhaps startle and shock their audiences and at any cost. This may have some such effect upon some of the lady-part (male or female) of their listeners but possibly the members of the men-part, who as boys liked hockey better than ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... this was a case in which his Walworth sentiments only could be taken. It was a relief to get out of the room where the night had been so miserable, and I needed no second knocking at the door to startle ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... of the heat of the weather, the performances of Dick and Jack upon strong venison essence and roast gazelle were enough to startle any housekeeper of small income and an anxiety about the state of the butcher's bill. But of course the outdoor life and constant exertion produced a tremendous appetite; and as Mr Rogers noted the change in Dick, whose palate had to be tempted only a short ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... man in all Europe than the kaiser. It is related of him at the Court of Berlin that when on one occasion he inquired of his brother, Prince Henry, if he could suggest to him anything new wherewith to startle both his own subjects and the world in general, the sailor prince, with a merry laugh, proposed that his majesty should remain perfectly quiet, without saying or doing anything, for an entire week! That, he assured his imperial ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... he continued; "Heaven knows I had no will to startle you; and, indeed, there should be nothing startling in the presence of one who wishes you so well as I do. And, believe me, I am acting rather from necessity than choice. We have many things in common, and I am sadly in the dark. There is much that I should be doing, and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... high station on the poop of his ship, and sees the first uncertain glimmer of the light, 'rising and falling with the waves, like a torch in the bark of some fisherman,' which is the shining star of a new world. Bruce is caged in Abyssinia, surrounded by the gory horrors which shall often startle him out of his sleep at home when years have passed away. Franklin, come to the end of his unhappy overland journey - would that it had been his last! - lies perishing of hunger with his brave companions: each emaciated figure stretched upon its miserable bed without ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... to startle Jolly Robin. But the moon-faced man paid not the slightest attention to the accident. There was something ghostly in the way he stood there, all in white, never moving, never ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... sometimes wonder what opportunity might have done for Osceola. As great as Napoleon, some one said. What might opportunity do for this strange, exotic flower of Osceola's people? She has brains and beauty and instinctive grace enough to startle a continent. I am greatly tempted. Ann, I beg of you, don't breathe any of this to Aunt Agatha. Some day I may carry Keela away to the cities of the North for an experiment quite my own. Her delicate beauty—her gravity—her shy, sweet dignity, hold me powerfully. It ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... oars it was for a good reason. I wanted to slip past a cove where some native craft were moored. That was common prudence in such a small boat, and not armed—as I am. I saw you right enough, but I had no intention to startle anybody. Take my word ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... to herself, "now I will wait and startle these girls from Tabeaue as they come along." And so she sank low down in the water, so that only her dark ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... Liberator left the city. That night the bleaching skeleton of the venerable patriot Hermano was taken down from the gibbet where it had hung so long, by hands that left the revolutionary banner waving proudly in its place. This was an event to startle the viceroy. It was followed by other events. In a few days more and the sounds of insurrection were heard throughout the province—the city still moving secretly—sending forth supplies and intelligence by stealth, but unable to raise ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... boarding-houses near at hand. The owners of the mills are particularly careful to allow no persons to enter upon the possession of these houses, whose characters have not undergone the most searching and thorough enquiry." Finally, the author announces that he will state three facts which he thinks will startle his English readers: "Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical called 'The Lowell ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... evading the law even when he contrives to kill two at one time. He does not like to do it, but there is money in it, you know; and he pockets his unholy blood money without a squirm. Don't prosecute him; if you do, he will make revelations that will startle the town. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... care-worn faces in the city are to be seen on this street. Women clad in the richest attire pass you with unquiet face and wistful eyes, and men who are envied by their fellows for their "good luck," startle you by the stern, hard set look their features wear. The first find little real happiness in the riches they have sold themselves for, and the latter find that the costly pleasures they courted have been gained at too ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... and death, but that one's experience is a much larger and older thing than the experience which mere memory records. It is that which one has lost; and one of the greatest mysteries of art lies in the fact that a picture, or a sudden music, or a page in a book, will sometimes startle one into the consciousness of having heard, seen, known, felt the emotion before, elsewhere, beyond ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and over again! What a pity that she is at her old Marshal's now! We would have had a good laugh! So that old woman wants to take the bread out of my mouth. I will startle ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... polished. Some of them were mere clerks and chroniclers, and their writings are dry and common-place; others were fervid, powerful geniuses, and their works are full of fire and originality. Their thoughts startle you. Their words warm you. They are spirit and life. All the writers show their natural qualities and tempers. All exhibit the defects of their learning and philosophy. All write like men,—like men of the age, and of the rank, and of the profession, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... to die Were all, it were most sweet to rest my head On the cold clod, and sleep the sleep of Death. But if the Archangel's trump at the last hour Startle the ear of Death and wake the soul To frenzy!—dreams of infancy! fit tales For garrulous beldames to affrighten babes! I have been guilty, yet my mind can bear The retrospect of guilt, yet in the hour Of deep contrition to ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... it, as if they had never seen it before, and then one of them turned on me quickly, as if to startle me. "Vous etes ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... "it is because I have been ill that things perplex me, and sometimes startle me by an effect of strangeness. There are moments when even the stars look odd to me, and when the countryside, viewed from the tower above us, is bewildering. In one direction I see woods where I should have expected meadows; in another direction, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... at the door, as to quite startle his wife and the charity-girl, both of whom had fallen into a sound sleep, as they sat together awaiting his return. Mr. Morton, who, as we have said before, was not entirely sober, was singing a popular melody, and keeping time upon the door with the head of his cane. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... we started out to gain; the way we content ourselves with the environments of evil and forego forever the voice that calls us away to partake of things which shall be as wine and honey to the soul, frightens me; startles me as the sudden thunder of the surf might startle one who sojourned by ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... the Ghetto, heralded by a month of special matins and the long-sustained note of the ram's horn. It was in the midst of the Ten Days of Repentance which find their awful climax in the Day of Atonement that a strange letter for Hannah came to startle the breakfast-table at Reb Shemuel's. Hannah read it with growing ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... physics, ought to produce a more tolerant spirit amongst the scientific for speculations even which may afford the slightest promise of a solution, although emanating from the humblest inquirer after truth. The hypothesis of an undiscovered planet, exterior to Neptune, is of a nature to startle the cautions timidity of many; but, if the general theory be true, this hypothesis becomes extremely probable. We may not have located it exactly. There may be even two such planets, whose joint effect shall be equivalent to one in the position ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... Chastisements for due offences Do not fright me, do not startle, For if they through arrogance And ambition sought this garden, Me the worship of the gods Here has led, and so I 'm guarded 'Gainst all sorceries whatsoever, 'Gainst all forms of Christian magic:— Art thou ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... those days it was the fashion for young ladies to be frail and delicate and the least noise was apt to startle ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... sublimity, his fitful transitions from mood to mood, his wild bursts of laughter, his passion of tears, Hamlet or Hamlet's gravedigger, Lear or Lear's fool, would have startled the readers of the "Spectator" as they would startle the group ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... meal was announced Angel, as usual, was the first to appear, and when he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror he thought one of his friends had come to visit him. It did not seem to startle him in the least, but like all children ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... improbable that the desire to surpass Suevius influenced Virgil in attempting the same task again." [19] Trifling as this circumstance is, nothing that throws any light on the growth of Virgil's muse can be wanting in interest. Virgil was not one of those who startle the world by their youthful genius. His soul was indeed a poet's from the first, but the rich perfection of his verse was not developed until after years of severe labour, self-correction, and even failure. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... either from idleness or curiosity, while they strive to find evil in everything, they do not comprehend that others still believe in the good. Therefore they have to be so nonchalant as to stop their ears, lest the hum of the busy world should suddenly startle them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but fleeting. But when he returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and see what has taken place in him ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... chamber of the Sangraal, Rowena IV was arranging the red samite cover around the Grail. She jumped when she saw him. "Marry! fair sir, ye did startle me. Methinketh ye be ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... secure because there is hope, Thou shalt look around and take thy rest in safety; Thou shalt lie down and none shall startle thee, Yea, many ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... lack-lustre gaze of town-bred folk, in the sight of an eye as keen and wild as a hawk's from sheer solitude and lonely travelling. He was so bent and scarred with weather that he seemed as much a part of that woodland place as the birks themselves, and the noise of his labours did not startle the birds that hopped on ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... the repugnance she felt toward the miserable, misshapen creature, now sleeping on the floor, and after one glance in his direction looked swiftly away. But that glance had been sufficient to startle her by its resemblance to another face she ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... due time, a worthy consort, and a certain Crown Prince would, in further due time, startle the world with his left-handed pitching. It was a prospect all golden to dream upon. His spirit grew tall and ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... this. Her silence encouraged Mr Welles to proceed. He thought his tactics had succeeded, and the creature was coming round by degrees. The only point now requiring care was not to startle ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... standpoint of the Greek was the exact opposite. He did not seek advertisement and notoriety. He was happy with his inner vision of beauty, and intent only on its realization. He had not the smallest desire to shock or startle any one. There are occasions when shock tactics are necessary, but they are not necessary every day in the week, nor is it necessary to make a clean sweep of the past before one sets to work in one's own ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... nor more than that. It is never frank, uncompromising nature. The fact is, that Beddoes wrote from the head, collectively, and without emotion, or without inspiration, save in literature. All Beddoes' characters speak precisely the same language, express the same desires; all in the same way startle us by their ghostly remoteness from flesh and blood. 'Man is tired of being merely human,' Siegfried says, in Death's Jest-Book, and Beddoes may be said to have grown tired of humanity before he ever ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... little daughter of a gamekeeper to nobility was preparing to emigrate with her father to a new home in the Western world, where she would learn to perform miracles with rifle and revolver, and where the beauty of the hermit thrush's song would startle her into comparing it to the beauty of her own untried voice. But to her father, and to her, the most beautiful thing in all the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... until the hubbub rivaled that of a Woman's Suffrage Convention. Thomas Haviland Hicks, Jr., was actually returning to old Bannister; and he was bringing "The Prodigious Prodigy," whatever that was, with him. Knowing the cheery Senior's intense love of doing the dramatic and his great ambition to startle his Alma Mater with some sensational stunt, they could hardly wait for old Dan Flannagan's jitney-bus to roll up ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... son, was a strange child. He had a Norseman's taste for the fabulous and fantastic, and although he never heard a tale of Necken or the Hulder, he would often startle his mother by the most fanciful combinations of imagined events, and by bolder personifications than ever sprung from the legendary soil of the Norseland. She always took care to check him whenever he indulged in these imaginary flights, and he ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... determine whether they were friends or foes, they were so far before him. He hesitated after he had raised his gun to his shoulder to proclaim his presence by a shot, and then lowered his rifle. A shot might startle the unsuspecting men who were struggling to gain the rim and the report of his rifle might increase their danger. At the same time, however, he began to advance more rapidly and in a brief time was able to recognize the men whose actions he had ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... has then most effect on an audience when it appears to flow naturally from the occasion, not to have been laboured by the art of the speaker; and this device of questioning and replying to himself reproduces the moment of passion. For as a sudden question addressed to an individual will sometimes startle him into a reply which is an unguarded expression of his genuine sentiments, so the figure of question and interrogation blinds the judgment of an audience, and deceives them into a belief that what is really the result of labour in every detail has ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... attention—this gaunt, restless preacher. With his long hair, his flowing beard, his harsh voice, and his wild gesticulation, he was so rude and unkempt as to startle all conservative hearers. Said one of his opponents: "His manners (are) clownish in the extreme; his habit and appearance more filthy than a savage Indian, his public discourses a mere rhapsody, the substance often an insult upon the gospel." ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... long, the organs of the human body; that a light has been found which can penetrate, so as to make a photographic record, through everything from a purse or a pocket to the walls of a room or a house, is news which cannot fail to startle everybody. That the eye of the physician or surgeon, long baffled by the skin, and vainly seeking to penetrate the unfortunate darkness of the human body, is now to be supplemented by a camera, making ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... did startle me!" he exclaimed. "No, there's no one in there—I came up to look for a book. But as I told them to delay dinner yet a little longer, would you mind if we went in and saw Bubbles together on our way downstairs? I feel I should rather like to get my first interview with ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... about you that is comforting," I sniffed. "You said precisely the same thing to me at three o'clock this morning. You never startle me by ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "He'll startle you mair afore you're done wi' him," the atheist said maliciously. "I ken the ways o' thae ministers preaching for kirks. Oh, they're cunning. You was a' pleased that Mr. Dishart spoke about looms and webs, but, lathies, it was a trick. Ilka ane o' thae ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... suspecting that his talents were inconsiderable, even among those who had their reasons not to like him. The degradation which his literary character has suffered has been inflicted by more recent hands; and it may startle the last echoer of Pope's "Pedant-reign" to hear that more wit and wisdom have been recorded of James the First than of any one of our sovereigns. An "Author-Sovereign," as Lord Shaftesbury, in his anomalous but emphatic style, terms this class of writers, is placed between a double eminence ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... a great deal to startle your commercial New Yorker. The small tailor, standing in his doorway, seemed in no way surprised at the spectacle of Archie, whom he had seen pass at a conventional walk some five minutes before, returning like this at top speed. He assumed ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... Reader, since the sermon is over, and we are still sitting here in this Miserere, let us read aloud a page from the old parchment manuscript on the lettern before us; let us sing it through these dusky aisles, like a Gregorian Chant, and startle ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... any case, music. I am in a mood for music. I am in a mood where if something be not done To startle me, I ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... afternoon. Didn't you notice the lurid mixture of colors I was daubing on my block? And all because I knew you were having psychic thoughts and I was so afraid you would say what I thought you were thinking and startle Estelle. I wanted so much to know myself just what you were driving at with your watch-chains that I almost chewed my tongue ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... very nature of his being, could not spend an evening except at cards. Nikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov had been intending for three days past to drop in that evening at Mihail Makarovitch's, so to speak casually, so as slyly to startle the eldest granddaughter, Olga Mihailovna, by showing that he knew her secret, that he knew it was her birthday, and that she was trying to conceal it on purpose, so as not to be obliged to give a dance. He anticipated a great deal of merriment, many playful jests about ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... got into his system, and crept where it yet lay lurking in hidden corners and crannies, a noise at night would on shore startle him awake, and set his heart beating hard; but no loudest sea noise ever woke him; the stronger the wind flapped its wings around him, the deeper he slept. When a comrade called him by name, he was up ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... her, in his absent-minded, startled way. He had never understood her since she was first put into his hands, aged six months, a fluffy bundle of motherless babyhood. She never ceased to startle him. She was an enigma beyond any puzzle in mathematics he had ever brought his ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... relieved Mrs. Upton of her usual task of taking a collection and among her witty remarks was one on Bartholdi's statue of Liberty. "The real goddesses of Liberty in this country do not spend a large amount of time standing on pedestals in public places; they use their torches to startle the bats in political cellars." Referring to the ignoring of women's work in the histories she said: "When I was a child and studied about the Pilgrim Fathers I supposed they were all bachelors, as I never found a word about their wives." Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's topic was Masculine, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Blew them together; and round its lords that met Paused all the reeling battle; two main waves Meeting, one hurled sheer from the sea-wall back That shocks it sideways, one right in from sea Charging, that full in face takes at one blow That whole recoil and ruin, with less fear Startle men's eyes late shipwrecked; for a breath Crest fronting crest hung, wave to wave rose poised, Then clashed, breaker to breaker; cloud with cloud 1550 In heaven, chariot with chariot closed on earth, One fourfold flash and thunder; yet a breath, And with the king's spear through ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... stand the moral test. We screw everything up to that. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of an evening, startles us in the same way as the alarming indications of profligacy in a son or ward in real life should startle a parent or guardian. We have no such middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours' duration, and of no after consequence, with the severe eyes which ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... themselves from the church, is at best but ephemeral in its existence, contracted in spirit, moving and operating by mere impulse and irregular starts, and withal destitute of vitality and saving influence. A death-bed scene may awaken a transient and visionary sense of duty; adversity may startle the drowsy ear, and cause the parents to turn for the time to the souls of their children; but these continue only while the tear and the wound are fresh, and the apprehensions of the eternal world are moving in their terrible visions ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... habitants, who had been all expatriated and banished from their native waves. Large poles twisted with fir branches, stuck thickly around the lake, gave to the waters the becoming Helvetian gloom. And here, beside three cows all bedecked with ribbons, stood the Swiss maidens destined to startle the shades with the Ranz des Vaches. To the left, full upon the sward, which it almost entirely covered, stretched the great Gothic marquee, divided into two grand sections—one for the dancing, one for ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... a thousand other things. Their days are haunted by fear of this thing or that. Their peace is marred and their hearts are troubled. For all this, trust is the cure. I do not mean to say that if you trust, nothing will ever startle you or frighten you, or that you will never feel physical fear in time of danger; but in such times trust will bring to us a consciousness that the Lord knows and cares, and that his helping presence is ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... not startle Addison, or cause him any misgiving; on the contrary he boldly asserts (Spectator, No. 135), "The same single letter 's' on many occasions does the office of a whole word, and represents the 'his' or 'her' of ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... with more freedom than in this State, nor with more firmness of mind. They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face. The preacher might be excluded by our hierophants from their churches and meeting-houses, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... you startle the audience with such a speech as that, what will Mr. Hartman think? You must put on your prettiest behavior, Bob. Make a desperate effort, and try to keep it ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... lessons taught in his journal may well startle the incredulous and unbelieving spirit of our skeptical day. Those who doubt the power of prayer to bring down actual blessing, or who confound faith in God with credulity and superstition, may well wonder and perhaps ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... human hopes and the folly of friendship?" inquired Adrien, so coldly as to startle both the company and Lord Standon himself, who not being in Lady Constance's confidence, was naturally at a loss for the reason of this sudden anger on the part of Leroy. He drew back in surprise, but any further reference ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... to move, having occasion to ask the mate (he stood by my side) to take a compass bearing of the Pagoda, I caught myself reaching up to his ear in whispers. I say I caught myself, but enough had escaped to startle the man. I can't describe it otherwise than by saying that he shied. A grave, preoccupied manner, as though he were in possession of some perplexing intelligence, did not leave him henceforth. A little later ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... as well as his audience, is to be his judge. Lord Vargrave's utter incapacity to comprehend political morality, his contempt for all the objects of social benevolence, frequently led him into the avowal of doctrines, which, if they did not startle the men of the world whom he addressed (smoothed away, as such doctrines were, by speciousness of manner and delivery), created deep disgust in those even of his own politics who read their naked exposition in the daily papers. Never did ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a great comfort to have aunt Madge so near. If it had been Susy instead, Prudy would have had no company but the sound of her breathing. It was of no use to try to wake Susy in the dead of night. Pricking her with pins would startle her, but she never knew anything even after she was startled. All she could do was to stare about her, cry, and act very cross, and then—go to ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... husband a young lady would then add the not less important business of making herself a rational person, instead of a more or less tastefully decorated doll with a passion for a great deal of money. She might awaken to the fact, which would at first startle her very much no doubt, that there is a great portion of a universe outside her own circle and her own mind. This simple discovery would of itself effect a revolution that might transform her from being an insipid idiot into a tolerably ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... threads of light under the window; and at the little flowers just peeping above the ground; and at the foliage, with its many-shaded green; and occasionally I looked at the body stretched upon the bed. And each time that I looked it seemed to me that it gently stirred. This did not startle me at all, for I was accustomed to the appearance of death. Who that has lost a friend does not find it impossible to realize that the form is utterly without life? And who has ever gazed long at a corpse without fancying that it moved? So again and again ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the likeness flashed upon Lynde suddenly, as it had done in the grove the previous day, that it now had the power to startle him. At the present moment it did not even seriously annoy him. In an idle, pensive way he noted the coincidence of the man leading the mule. The man was Morton and the mule was Mary! Lynde smiled to himself at the reflection that Mary would probably not accept ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the proceedings may not be interrupted," said Mr Morgan; and then everybody looked towards the open door: the sight they saw there was enough to startle the calmest spectator. Elsworthy, who was seated close by, sprang from his stool with a low resounding howl of amazement, upsetting his lowly seat, and staggering back against the wall, in the excess of his wonder and consternation. The judges themselves ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... busy at her wheel, with two children playing on the ground before her, were the objects that now presented themselves. The uncouthness of my garb, my wild and weatherworn appearance, my fusil and tomahawk, could not but startle them. The woman stopped her wheel, and gazed as if a ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... them. These doubts enter into the mind at first almost imperceptibly: they exist only as vague indistinct surmises, and by no means take the precise shape or the substance of a formed opinion. At first, probably, they even offend and startle by their intrusion: but by degrees the unpleasant sensations which they once excited wear off: the mind grows more familiar with them. A confused sense (for such it is, rather than a formed idea) of its being desirable that their doubts should prove well founded, and of the comfort and enlargement ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... stick it in an envelope. Then I "dash off the address." Obviously I am not at all original at home. I replied to a letter from the president of a theological seminary, asking me to speak to his young men. I like young men so I agree to do so if I can. I "startle" the reporter finally, by a sudden burst of unexpected hilarity over a letter from a man in Pennsylvania who wants me to send him a cheque by return mail for one hundred thousand dollars, on a sure thing investment. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... fashion will scarcely have the breath of life in it. If, on the other hand, in the course of his legendary, romantic, or historical reading, some character should take hold upon his imagination and demand to be interpreted, or some episode should, as it were, startle him by putting on vivid dramatic form before his mind's eye, then let him by all means yield to the inspiration, and try to mould the theme into a drama. The real labour of creation will still lie before him; but he may face it with the hope ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... speak of the humbugs who deliberately exploit the credulity of fools. I speak of the sincere believers—people like my dear old friend W.T. Stead, who was the most extraordinary combination of wisdom and moonshine I have ever known. He would startle you at one moment by his penetrating handling of the facts of a great situation, and the next moment would make you speechless with some staggering story of spirit visitors or starry conspiracies that seemed to him just as actual as the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... grieved at the shock, that Minnie had received, "did thee startle her by so suddenly claiming her in the street? Would it not have been better for thee to have waited and found out where she lived, and then discovered ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... in the ear, ring in the ear, thunder in the ear; pierce the ears, split the ears, rend the ears, split the head; deafen, stun; faire le diable a quatre[Fr]; make one's windows shake, rattle the windows; awaken the echoes, startle the echoes; wake the dead. Adj. loud, sonorous; high-sounding, big-sounding; deep, full, powerful, noisy, blatant, clangorous, multisonous[obs3]; thundering, deafening &c. v; trumpet-tongued; ear-splitting, ear-rending, ear- deafening; piercing; obstreperous, rackety, uproarious; enough ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... keys and, going to the desk, unlocked the centre compartment with a jerk. Afterward he gave a sharp exclamation. He had found a paper in the secret drawer at the back which appeared to startle him. ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... strength; he then gathered himself for another effort while the split end of the tiller floated on the water; then came another strong muscular effort, and then another resounding splash. If the boat drew near the brown rocks the blows of the tiller would startle a piper or a curlew; a long note of warning would pierce the stillness, and a wailing answer came from the next point; then a shrill clamour passed all round the bay, and the birds skimmed towards the island ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... formerly,* that all dealers, though but for pins, may be taken in by customers for pins, sooner than by a direct bribe of ten times the value; especially if pretenders to conscience: for the offer of a bribe would not only give room for suspicion, but would startle and alarm their scrupulousness; while a high price paid for what you buy, is but submitting to be cheated in the method of the person makes a profession to get by. Have I not said that human nature is a rogue?**—And do not I know that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... quite forget myself, and sit staring into vacancy, till Mr. Davies, lifting his nose from his volume, would note my absence and call on me by name, and thump his desk, and startle me with some question on the matter we were supposed to have in hand. A mighty matter, truly, the name of some emperor or the date of some campaign—matter infinitely less real than the name of the ship that ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the rivers sustained, and the earth must have become for the most part desert plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and the purifying of the winds are the least of the services appointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's working,—to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment,—are their higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture; first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with mighty sculpture and painted ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... another wins her from me," interrupted Mr. Hastings, somewhat bitterly; and his sister answered, "I am sure that will never be, though were you now to startle her with your love she probably would ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... Channa thrice, swept by the stand, The prince saw that another round would test, Not overtax, their powers, and gave the sign, When three loud trumpet-blasts to all proclaimed That running one more round would end the race. These ringing trumpet-calls that brought defeat Or victory so near, startle and rouse. The charioteers more ardent urge their steeds; The steeds are with hot emulation fired; The social multitude now cease to talk— Even age stops short in stories often told; Boys, downy-chinned, in rough-and-tumble sports Like half-grown ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... was quite enough to startle and alarm them, for Nanahboozhoo was also much feared, as ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... in that which need startle or surprise any man who believes in a living God at all, and in the possibility, therefore, of a connection between the Great Spirit and all the human spirits which are His children. I would maintain, in opposition to many modern conceptions, the actual ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... remains soft during babyhood. He could have broken connection with Barter for these two by jerking the controls free. And then what? He would never get through to Barter and would release in Bronx Park two men whose strange type of madness, when they were discovered, would startle the countryside. Two men with the savagery of anthropoid apes! He shuddered as he carefully ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... awhile he knelt upon his side, and she remained on hers, both trembling; but at last the King, dreading to startle her away, rose softly and went round the Pond to where he ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... gun-bearers were staggering under the weight of the deer, and the spare guns were carried by my tracker. We were proceeding slowly along, when the tracker, who was in advance, suddenly sprang back and pointed to some object in the path. It was certainly enough to startle any man. An enormous serpent lay coiled in the path. His head was about the size of a very small cocoa-nut, divided lengthways, and this was raised about eighteen inches above the coil. His eyes were fixed upon us, and his forked tongue played ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... winter—giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the valley of the Saco) They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one; for a mountain towered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would often rumble down its sides and startle them at midnight. ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... over the "land of Mizraim." Where nature is most tame and commonplace, man is tempted to his highest flights of audacity. As in the level Babylonia he aspired to build a tower that should "reach to heaven" (Gen. xi. 4), so in Egypt he strove to startle and surprise by gigantic works, enormous undertakings, enterprises that might have seemed wholly beyond his powers. And these have constituted in all ages, except the very earliest, the great attractiveness of Egypt. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... pray, And suck the ripe world to its rotten core? Yet do you reek if my reign be done? E're I pass ye crown the newer one! At ball and rout ye dance and shout, Shutting men's cries of suffering out, That startle the white-tressed silences Musing beside the fount of light, In the eternal space, to press Their roses, each a nebula bright, More close to their lips serene, While ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... reaction which served as a superstructure for it." The objection, raised even by Caspari, that a prophecy of the victorious struggles in the time of the Maccabees must be strange and surprising in a prophet of the Assyrian period, will not startle those who look at the analogies—such as the prophecy in Is. vi. In the latter prophecy, first the Chaldean, and then the Roman catastrophes, are described in sharp outlines, but without any mention of the names of the instruments of punishment. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... startle him, she certainly succeeded; but only in turn to be startled herself. With a tiger spring he turned on her, and his right hand was feeling for her throat. At the same instant with the other hand he crumpled up the paper that lay before him. For ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... difficulty. Philosophy itself, mental and moral, has its preparation, its forethoughts, in the poetry that preceded it. A powerful generalisation thrown into some salient phrase, such as [6] that of Heraclitus—"Panta rhei," all things fleet away—may startle a particular age by its novelty, but takes possession only because all along its root was somewhere among the natural though but half- developed instincts of the human ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... rickety bridge by which we have crossed the Jordan soon disappears behind us, as we trot along the winding bridle-path through the river-jungle, in the stifling heat. Coming out on the open plain, which rises gently toward the east, we startle great flocks of storks into the air, and they swing away in languid circles, dappling the blaze of morning with their black-tipped wings. Grotesque, ungainly, gothic birds, they do not seem to belong to the Orient, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke |
