"Awe-inspiring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... angry buzz. One dwelt habitually in the wood-pile, and sometimes, when we came for firewood, thrust up his small head between two logs, and hissed at the intrusion. The rattle has a legendary credit; it is said to be awe-inspiring, and, once heard, to stamp itself for ever in the memory. But the sound is not at all alarming; the hum of many insects, and the buzz of the wasp convince the ear of danger quite as readily. As a matter of fact, we lived for weeks in Silverado, coming and going, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of this heavenly awe-inspiring object sailing through the skies, you will have trials of an unexpected nature to beset you, but by bravely combating these foes you will rise above the mediocre in life to heights ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... Wilfrid," said the old man, looking at his guest, "I often tremble in every limb as I read, during the long winter evenings the awe-inspiring works in which this man declares with perfect artlessness the wonders that are revealed to him. 'I have seen,' he says, 'Heaven and the Angels. The spiritual man sees his spiritual fellows far better than the terrestrial man sees the men of ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... moment before, it had been belching skyward an enormous stream of gaseous vapor, all but invisible except at the casing head, now it was a monstrous blow torch, the flaming crest of which was tossed a hundred feet high. Nothing in the nature of a conflagration could have been more awe-inspiring, more confounding to the faculties than that roaring column of consuming fire. It was a thing incredibly huge, incredibly furious, incredibly wild. Human figures, black against its glare, were ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... holding open the door. A sense of gloom and chill at once overwhelmed me. From the interior, which I faintly saw stretching before me, there breathed even in that first moment of hurried entrance a cold and haughty grandeur that, however rich and awe-inspiring, was any thing but attractive to a ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... why he repelled as well as attracted me; what it was behind the almost awe-inspiring purity and earnestness I felt in him that left me with a chill sense of disappointment? The question was so perplexing and so interesting that I determined to follow it up next day, and ordered my servant to call me as early as Mr. Austyn ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... shrieking, blood-thirsty band was greeted with thunderous whoops and in the end nearly one hundred and fifty braves were going through all the barbarous awe-inspiring ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... degree of apparent faith, was a hard and difficult task. He would have tried to divert her mind by taking her on a long drive; but she was fearful that Carry might come during her absence; and her strength, he was obliged to admit, had failed greatly. As he looked into her large and awe-inspiring clear eyes, a something he tried to keep from his mind—to put off day by day from contemplation—kept asserting itself directly to his inner consciousness. He began to doubt the expediency and wisdom of his management. He recalled every incident ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... It had been a very dry season, the rough shingles were like tinder, and the inflammable material burst quickly into great flames, lighting up the valley as far as the edge of the forest. It was an awe-inspiring and a horrible spectacle. Columns of yellow and black smoke rolled heavenward; every object seemed dyed a deep crimson; the trees assumed fantastic shapes; the river veiled itself under a red glow. Above the roaring and crackling of the flames rose the inhuman yelling ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... did not finish, for at that moment something awe-inspiring occurred. Amid the stillness of the night, in the depths of the ravine, from the direction in which the corpses lay suddenly resounded a kind of inhuman, frightful laughter in which quivered despair, and joy, and cruelty, and suffering, and pain, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... themselves up fantastically and floated off also, leaving the deep blue vault to mirror itself in the answering azure of the sea; the eternal calm above, awful in its intensity of stillness; the ceaseless movement below, a type of life, throbbing, murmurous, changeful, more interesting than awe-inspiring, more to be wondered at ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... his renderings of Hamlet, King John, Wolsey, the Duke in 'Measure for Measure,' Leontes, and Brutus satisfied the most exacting canons of contemporary theatrical criticism. Kemble's sister, Mrs. Siddons, was the greatest actress that Shakespeare's countrymen have known. Her noble and awe-inspiring presentation of Lady Macbeth, her Constance, her Queen Katherine, have, according to the best testimony, not been equalled even by the achievements of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... form, drooping hand, anxious eye, and gushing tear, the terrified and afflicted populace, and the unperturbed devotional gaze of a few by-standers are too among the masterly beauties of this composition. The lights are well kept, and the entire effect of the Window is that of awe-inspiring grandeur. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... in air. Mystic, lovely, they seemed to float above the earth, as unsubstantial as the clouds from which they rose. They belonged to another world, a fairy world altogether apart from the rugged, tumbled masses, the awe-inspiring precipices and tremendous cliffs, of the nearer mountains. These were majestic, overpowering, but plainly of this earth, unlike the pure, white summits that seemed ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... region is one of extraordinary richness for the lover of history. The splendor of the cities of Transalpine Gaul in this vicinity is attested by remains more numerous and in better preservation than Italy affords save in a very few places. And awe-inspiring evidences of medievalism's power flank one at every step and turn. Without doubt, Foch made the ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... she plays no further part. The Nibelungenlied found its final form on Upper German, doubtless Austrian, territory. Here alone was it possible that that greatest of all transformations could take place, namely, in the character of Attila. The Franks of the Rhine knew him only as the awe-inspiring conqueror who had annihilated their neighbors the Burgundians. In Austrian lands it was quite otherwise. Many Germanic tribes, particularly the East Goths, had fought under the banner of Attila, and ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... attention was concentrated on a single figure and face—the form and countenance of the Prince, who rose from his throne as I approached. Those who remember that Louis XIV., a prince reputed to have possessed the most majestic and awe-inspiring presence of his age, was actually beneath the ordinary height of Frenchmen, may be able to believe me when I say that the Autocrat of Mars, though scarcely five feet tall, was in outward appearance and bearing the most truly royal and imposing prince I have ever seen. His stature, rising nearly ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... had spent in a similar jungle with her forest god—with the fearless and unconquerable Tarzan of the Apes. Then there had been no thoughts of terror, though the jungle noises were new to her, and the roar of a lion had seemed the most awe-inspiring sound upon ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... stood at the extreme end of the street,— dark, dismal, quite awe-inspiring on a night like this. A narrow lane stretched from the hotel to the sanctuary and beyond. There is nothing at hand to show whether it is a Methodist, a Presbyterian, or a Baptist church. As the two young women most vitally concerned in this tale were professedly high church, it ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... as a spiritual heritage, is waiting for us. We begin slowly to understand ourselves as the repositories of infinite possibilities!—as cosmic units of the larger Cosmos—as a perfect microcosm of the macrocosm! With feelings of awe-inspiring adoration, we reflect that we may know ourselves as individuals, only as the extent of our knowledge of the universe around us is increased. Responding to the law of action and reaction, the more we reflect, the greater ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Byrnes's men" was a much more awe-inspiring individual to Gallegher than a member of the Cabinet. He accordingly seized his hat and overcoat, and leaving his duties to be looked after by others, hastened out after the object of his admiration, ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... not have explained the cause of her impression, there was something awe-inspiring to the young lady in this large, cold, naked, curtainless room; and as, by degrees, she noticed certain peculiarities in the furniture, which she had not at first perceived, she was seized with an indefinable feeling ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... was a grand and indescribable gloom on all around, an awe-inspiring sublimity on all ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... sanctuary where all the clerks perform their devotions. In the silence of the sleeping factory, the heavy pages of the great books rustle as they are turned, and names called aloud cause search to be made in other books. Pens scratch. The old cashier, surrounded by his lieutenants, has a businesslike, awe-inspiring air. From time to time Fromont Jeune, on the point of going out in his carriage, looks in for a moment, with a cigar in his mouth, neatly gloved and ready for the street. He walks slowly, on tiptoe, puts his face ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the way. At an invisible signal, the massed machines—thousands on thousands of them—started into action. Like shock troops in a last desperate assault they ground forward, a serried line that exactly paralleled the threatened break, and hundreds deep. This old earth of ours had never witnessed so awe-inspiring a sight. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... ecclesiastical rank to do with the drudgery and danger of sick calls, except that Christian faith and charity constrained him? Priests volunteered for the dangerous service. It was the same on the first coming of the cholera, that mysterious awe-inspiring infliction. If priests did not heartily believe in the Creed of the Church, then I will say that the remark of the apostle had its fullest illustration:—"If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... to Hot Springs, and the first glimpse of the stream, smoking as if its bed rested upon some subterranean fire, are in themselves awe-inspiring. The valley is narrowed to the limits of three hundred feet, and the road winds gracefully around the base of the mountain, upon whose top the cold spring furnishes a better beverage than iced champagne; while close by its side bubbles the boiling spring, in which ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... being "overtaken" has been the prototype of father to son in every effort to do so from that day to the present. There is a serious view, however. Here the sea, sky and neighborhood of Jerusalem, pyramids, monuments and sacred traditions all conspire to have a solemn and awe-inspiring effect. Thousands of generations of men have lived and moved in the activities that engage modern humanity, but have passed like fleeting shadows, leaving only these sentinels as perpetual reminders. While the "Red Sea" sings in murmuring ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... heavy of heart and, in a vague way, so fearful of impending misfortune, that she was in no mood to enjoy the splendours around her. She crossed her hands on her bosom and, in the half-light of this mysterious subterranean cathedral, yielded to the awe-inspiring influence of the place and gave utterance, in a subdued chant, to these ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... a basin scooped out on its face, a hollow not more than five hundred yards square we could see, night and day, an eternal artillery conflict in progress, in the daylight by the smoke and in the dark by the flashes of bursting shells. It was an awe-inspiring and wonderful picture this titanic struggle; when I looked on it, I felt that it was not good to see—it was the face of a god. The mortal who gazed on it must die. But by night and day I spent most of my spare ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... lit only by a nightlight, a sick man lies in bed. Death draws near him in the midst of awe-inspiring silence. The unhappy man seems to wander in his mind at times, and to find comfort in past memories. His life passes before his eyes: his innocent childhood, his happy youth, the struggles of middle age, and his efforts to attain the splendid goal of his desires, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... elderly and impressively haughty person in a black robe showed us through the Crypt and delivered learned lectures before the tombs of Nelson and Wellington. His appearance and manner were somewhat awe-inspiring, especially to Hephzy, who asked me, in a whisper, if I thought likely he was a bishop or a canon or something. When the round was ended and we were leaving the Crypt she saw me put a ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was uttered conversationally, and the man against the tree cried out in fear. Lal Chunder flung at him a flood of rapid Hindustani, and he collapsed into shivering silence. Probably it was rather awe-inspiring—the great black-bearded Indian, with his keen, enraged face and the voice that seemed to cut. But to Norah he was ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Greece possessed; and that very fact illustrates what is meant when we say that the Hellenic spirit had no capacity for, the Hellenic view of life no impulse to, that intensity of feeling which could produce imagery so stupendous in such awe-inspiring phrase. ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... with my wife, and babies, and lodgers, and the various cubby-holes into which I had fitted them, my mind's eye had become narrow- angled, and I could not quite take in all of my own room at once. The immensity of it was awe-inspiring. Could this be the room I had rented for six shillings a week? Impossible! But my landlady, knocking at the door to learn if I were comfortable, dispelled ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... was at hand, paralysed all political and social life. Churches were too small to contain the immense throngs of fearful penitents: legacies and donations from conscience-stricken worshippers poured wealth into their treasuries. But once the awe-inspiring night of the vernal equinox that began the year 1000 had passed, and the bright March sun rose again on the fair earth, unconsumed by the wrath of God, the old world "seemed to thrill with new life; the earth cast off her outworn garments and clothed herself ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... exclaimed Robin, whose faithful spirit beat so warmly in his bosom that he forgot for an instant in whose presence he stood, and gave full vent to his feelings, which doubtless he would not have done had he seen the expression of Cromwell's countenance—that awe-inspiring countenance which had full often sent back the unspoken words from the open lips of bolder men who looked ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... "It isn't very awe-inspiring now, is it? But you should see it in the spring after the rains. It certainly can play havoc then. Changes its channel every two or three years, and causes all sorts of damage. What is the matter ahead there?" Their auto had slowed ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Chancellor, and the Dean of the Chapel Royal. Francesca, it is true, makes her annual bow to the Lord High Commissioner at Holyrood Palace and dines there frequently during Assembly Week; and as Ronald numbers one Duke, two Earls, and several Countesses and Dowager Countesses in his parish, there are awe-inspiring visiting cards to be found in the silver salver on her hall table,—but Salemina in Ireland literally lives with the great, of all classes and conditions! She is in the heart of the Irish Theatre and ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... see another man like that seal-cutter. He was stripped to the waist, with a wreath of white jasmine as thick as my wrist round his forehead, a salmon colored loin-cloth round his middle, and a steel bangle on each ankle. This was not awe-inspiring. It was the face of the man that turned me cold. It was blue-grey in the first place. In the second, the eyes were rolled back till you could only see the whites of them; and, in the third, the face was the face of a demon—a ghoul—anything ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... belief that he would espouse only the right. And when the great panic came; when trembling consulars and pallid magistrates rushed to the Temple of Vesta to proffer their last hurried vows, before speeding away to Capua, their refuge; Fabia stood all day beside the altar, stately, gracious, yet awe-inspiring, the fitting personification of the benignant Hearth Goddess, who was above the petty passions of mortals and granted to each ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... other, in awe-inspiring tones; "'the Battersea Bruiser.' Consequently when he clapped me on the back, and asked me when the banns was to be, ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... tall, fair, handsome man of awe-inspiring aspect. Omar used to look at him and say, "This is the Caesar of the Arabs," while his wife called him a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... progress was now slower and more difficult, because in places we could scarcely get through the forest. Fallen trees were everywhere and we had to avoid the branches, which was powerful hard to do. Besides, it was quite dusky among the trees long before night, but it was all so grand and awe-inspiring. Occasionally there was an opening through which we could see the snowy peaks, seemingly just beyond us, toward which we were headed. But when you get among such grandeur you get to feel how little you are and ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... in the distant past the inhabitants of the deserts from whence came the forefathers of the Hebrews make their journeys under the clear, cool light of the moon, avoiding the hot, piercing rays of the mid-day sun. The moon with its marvelous transformations is unquestionably the most striking and awe-inspiring object in the heavens. It is not strange, therefore, that many primitive peoples and especially the nomadic desert dwellers worshipped it as the supreme ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... of "The Presentation of the Virgin," which fills all one wall of it. I give a reproduction opposite page 36. The radiant figure of the thick-set little brave girl in blue, marching so steadily away from her parents to the awe-inspiring but kindly priests at the head of the steps, is unforgettable. Notice the baby in the arms of a woman among the crowd. The picture as a whole is disappointing in colour, and I cherish the belief that if Tintoretto's beautiful ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the first faint streak of the dawn of June 7 the mines at Hill 60 and St. Yves were exploded. The sight was awe-inspiring, and the ground trembled as if in the throes of an agonizing palsy. On the tick of the appointed time our 'boys' went 'over the top.' It was for this experience that they had worked and waited. They advanced immediately behind the barrage so consistently ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... different disposition, the Divisional Commander contented himself, during his first visit, with merely observing and asking a question here and there. His subsequent visits were frequent and seldom welcomed by the rank and file, who found him awe-inspiring and hypercritical. He was, however, known to unbend and show generous appreciation of honest effort and good work. On rare occasions he unexpectedly revealed the possession of ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... before now been in tropical forests and jungles, and they always produce the same awe-inspiring, and indeed depressing effect. The almost solid green walls on either side of the narrow track; the awful stillness which prevails, only occasionally broken, or rendered more intense, by the shrill note of a bird, the cry, or rather pitiful wail, of a monkey, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... burial at sea to be a very solemn and awe-inspiring event, but I was quickly disillusioned, by this burial at any rate. One of the hunters, a little dark-eyed man whom his mates called "Smoke," was telling stories, liberally intersprinkled with oaths ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... other world, and from that proximity he relates his experience. These works receive the reverence of all musicians for their spirituality, their mysticism, their psychological qualities. They are the revelations of the seer, awe-inspiring mementos of states and conditions of mind which transcend the experiences of ordinary life. In these last impassioned utterances of the master, we find a strain holier, more profound, different from anything which the art of music ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... stood still, just inside the door. Apart from anything else, the room itself had a certain awe-inspiring quality for her. She had never before been in a lawyer's office. She was fully possessed with the rural and feminine ignorance and holy fear of all legal appurtenances. From all her traditions, this office door should have displayed ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ceased, and a shrill whistle ushered in the half-hour's respite. The effect of that raucous shriek was as solemn, as awe-inspiring, for the first moment, as the ringing of the Angelus bell in a Catholic country-side. For one moment everybody stood motionless and mute, the women with arms akimbo on aching hips, the black washers with ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... in getting firearms. A war-party of the Ngapuhi, only one hundred and forty strong, is said to have gone through the length and breadth of the North Island putting all they met to flight with the discharge of two old flint-lock guns. The cunning warriors always followed up the awe-inspiring fire with a prompt charge in which spear and tomahawk did the work for which panic had prepared the way. Another Ngapuhi chief, the leader of an attack on the men of Tauranga, managed to arm his men with thirty-five muskets, which they used with ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... sombre aspect and awe-inspiring delivery of the messenger, or the sight of the handwriting on the address of the missive, Mr. Compton's countenance suddenly fell, and his hand rested irresolute, as if not daring to ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with human blood, and containing receipts for medicines which enabled him, as he professed, to cure various diseases. Presently he became a Methodist, and thereupon burned this book with certain awe-inspiring formalities. He seems to have been a fanatic in religious matters, for he soon left the Methodists to form a sect of his own; and it is related that he gathered a number of Germans about him, to whom he gave himself out as a being to be worshiped, and later as one ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... far more grim and awe-inspiring than the scene of the inquest which had taken place so long ago, on that bright April day, in the village inn. There the coroner had sat on the same level as the jury, and the witnesses had simply stepped forward one by one, and taken ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Michelangelo first displayed that quality of terribilita, of spirit-quailing, awe-inspiring force, for which he afterwards became so famous. The statue imposes, not merely by its size and majesty and might, but by something vehement in the conception. He was, however, far from having yet ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... never interposed the slightest objection. As a matter of fact, they were very good to me, nor did I see aught while I was among them to indicate that they are ever else than a simple, kindly folk when left to themselves. Their awe-inspiring size, terrific strength, mighty fighting-fangs, and hideous appearance are but the attributes necessary to the successful waging of their constant battle for survival, and well do they employ them when the need arises. The only flesh they eat is that ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... intensely awe-inspiring—so awe-inspiring, indeed, as to be disturbing in a high degree. Though it did not in the least terrify me or torture me, or make me have anything approaching a dread of its repetition, I experienced a kind of rawness and sensitiveness of soul ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... was on his way back from Singapore. He would never forget that night, he said, the stars were so wonderful, so big, so close, so soft and luminous. But the northern stars were different. They were without the orange tone that belongs to the South. They seemed remoter and more awe-inspiring, and there was always a green tone to ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature of this kind—for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... a rose-shaded lamp from the stand, and placed it behind her, so that the light should not shine directly into her eyes. They were all watching her intently in the full expectation of something to be done or said that was mysterious and awe-inspiring. Colonel Estcourt then seated himself on a chair opposite the couch. For a moment their eyes met and lingered in the gaze, then hers closed softly, and she seemed to sleep as peacefully and gently as a ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... the singers. Seen thus from an open boat under the lowering wings of night, there was something awe-inspiring—even to these who lived onboard them—in the stupendous fighting outlines limned against the last of the light. Complete darkness reigned on board, but once a dog barked, and the strains of an accordion drifted ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... can rightly tell? Of all hieroglyphic images it remains the one least understood. The unfathomable thinkers of Egypt symbolised everything for the benefit of the uninitiated under the form of awe-inspiring figures of the gods; and it may be, perhaps, that, after having meditated so deeply in the shadow of their temples, and sought so long the everlasting wherefore of life and death, they wished simply to sum up in the smile of these ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... in passing Philip's school I peeped in at the flap of the tent. He had already acquired the awe-inspiring look of the schoolmaster. He was teaching a class of little boys, whose wandering eyes were soon fixed on my face, and then Philip saw me. He smiled and blushed, and came outside. He said he was getting along capitally, and did not want to try ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... water! They stood out friendly and simple, the rest was such curious and involved Hebrew that sometimes, in an audacious moment, the child wondered whether even his father understood it all, despite that he wept freely and bitterly over certain acrostics, especially on the Judgment Days. It was awe-inspiring to think that the angels, who were listening up in heaven, understood every word of it. And he inclined to think that the Cantor, or minister who led the praying, also understood; he sang with such feeling and such fervid roulades. Many solos did the Cantor ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Shrinking from his awe-inspiring wrath, they retreated from him, watching him fearfully as they backed toward their horses. They had almost reached them when Calumet's voice brought them to ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... more smiling, and who, further, had been made suddenly aware that in this somber setting of bleak and elemental nature the great figure of his future employer assumed a certain air of grandeur that was a little too awe-inspiring ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... the fires from thousands of furnaces lit up the whole country round. Below them was the very heart of shell-production and gun-making. The sight was an awe-inspiring and magnificent one. The lights were so bright that the pilots and observers could hardly distinguish the flashes of the guns which were firing hundreds of shells at ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... buff silken glory. Matrons stared at it; maidens gazed with fascinated and jealous vision; men young and old let their eyes take full liberty. It was as if a queen, arrayed in a robe of state, had entered that dingy log edifice, an apparition of dazzling and awe-inspiring beauty. Oncle Jazon caught sight of her, and snapped his tune short off. The dancers swung together and stopped in confusion. But she, fortified by a woman's strongest bulwark, the sense of resplendency, appeared ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... before. It was thought to be a most difficult country to reach—a terra incognita—rude and dangerous, having no allurements for the average Canadian, whose notions about it, if he had any, were limited, as usual, to the awe-inspiring legend of ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... and at last found his heart fluttering unpleasantly in the higher altitude. Yet he held grimly to his task, and, when broad daylight was streaming full upon him, he found himself on a wide shelf of rock, a ledge falling sheer on one side to unseen depths, towering on the other to awe-inspiring heights. Here he came to a halt. And then, so tired was he, so faint with exhaustion, so racked of body and spirit, that he sank upon the cool rock even before the men could clear themselves from him, and lay ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... end of it, just as they had done thirty years ago. One little urchin was making a squeaking noise with a wet finger on the window-pane, inside which were displayed a few crossed pipes and fly-blown sweatmeats. As the city minister stood looking about him, a bent yet awe-inspiring form came hirpling to the door, leaning heavily on a staff. Making out by the noise the whereabouts of the small boy, the old man turned suddenly to him with a great roar like a bull, before the blast of which the boy disappeared, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... sigh, but only to find that the place really did grow more beautiful as they climbed on, while the deep, humming roar grew louder and more awe-inspiring as they penetrated farther and farther into the recesses of the mountain. For the long and heavy rain had charged the fountains of the hills to bursting. Every lakelet was brimming, every patch of moss saturated, ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... or the Lake District. The Constantines and the Maxses were very fine indeed because they went both to Cannes in the winter and Scotland in the summer. It was wonderful, considering how often Mrs. Constantine was away from Skeaton, how solemn and awe-inspiring an impression she made and retained in the Skeaton world. Maggie discovered that unless you had a large house with independent grounds outside the town it was impossible to remain in Skeaton during the summer months. Oh! the trippers! ...Oh! the trippers! Yes, they ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... figure he presented as he stood there in his savage war-gear! Accustomed as I have been to savages all my life, I do not think that I have ever before seen anything quite so ferocious or awe-inspiring. To begin with, the man was enormously tall, quite as tall as Umslopogaas, I should say, and beautifully, though somewhat slightly, shaped; but with the face of a devil. In his right hand he held a spear about five and a half feet long, the blade being two and a half feet in length, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... upon the induna was tremendous; he stood for several seconds gazing open-mouthed upon the awe-inspiring apparition of his king in the new and strange attire, and then, flinging himself prone upon the ground with his hands over his ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... dogmatism is shaken by vibrations from the new Dominant. His difficulty, which he acknowledges, but which he would have disregarded had he written a decade or so earlier, is the profundity of some of these obscurations. He says that mere smokiness cannot account for such "awe-inspiring dark days." So he conceives of eddies in the air, concentrating the smoke from forest fires. Then, in the inconsistency or discord of all quasi-intellection that is striving for consistency or harmony, he tells of ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... concerning the lives, habits and likes of half a dozen of as fine companions as it has ever been my luck to meet or, so far as I can now imagine, ever will be. In prison one learns several million things—if one is l'americain from Mass-a-chu-setts. When the ominous and awe-inspiring rattle on the further side of the locked door announced that the captors were come to bid the captives good night, I was still in the midst of conversation and had been around the world a number of times. At the clanking sound our little circle centripetally ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... of the sixty thousand sons of Sagara to be overflowed with the sacred waters of Ganga and thereby rescued them from their sin. Indeed, one should take the names of all these that were endued with the blazing effulgence of fire, great beauty of person, and high energy. Some of them were of awe-inspiring forms and great might. Verily, one should take the names of these deities and Rishis and kings, those lords of the universe,—who are enhancers of fame. Sankhya, and Yoga which is highest of the high, and Havya and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... not watched this work long when a distant muffled sound, something like that of a blast, and yet plainly not produced by an explosion, reached their ears. Although not loud, it was an ominous, awe-inspiring sound; and Derrick would have taken to his heels and made for the bottom of the slope had not his pride kept him where ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... reply proceeded from the lips of the beauteous lady. At length the hollow tone of the awe-inspiring guide broke upon the death-like stillness, revealing that the lady should not be freed from the spell that bound her till some daring hand should unsheathe the magic sword, or blow the mystic horn worn by a giant warrior, who kept guard by ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... an awe-inspiring effect upon the barbarians. When they thought they had a God to deal with, they gave up the struggle; which made their conquest a ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... of dormancy, though unaccompanied by the rigors of a northern winter, called for prudence in husbanding, and forethought and skill in endeavoring to increase their natural resources. The aspects of nature were less massive and awe-inspiring, her features more subdued, and her areas more circumscribed and broken, inviting and emboldening man to attempt her conquest. The whole tendency of natural phenomena in Greece was to restrain the imagination, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... too—and we were all as mute as mice; and even now, when time has whitened my locks, and I am the grandparent of a second generation, I could not behold that remarkable woman without feelings it is impossible to describe. Whoever has seen that awe-inspiring air and manner, so characteristic in the father of his country, will remember the matron as she appeared, when the presiding genius of her well-ordered household, commanding ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... "Scene I, Act I," in what was meant to be a most solemn, awe-inspiring government function, turned out an unmistakable farce, if not a disastrous break down. Even the government journals themselves, without waiting for "Scene II.," (though coming off immediately) raised a shout of condemnation of the discreditable bungle, and demanded that it ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... revolutionary cast. 'I am a Mosaic Radical,' he exclaimed; and, indeed, in the exaltation of his energies, the incoherence of his conceptions, the democratic urgency of his desires, combined with his awe-inspiring aspect and his venerable age, it was easy enough to trace the mingled qualities of the patriarch, the prophet, and the demagogue. As, in his soiled and shabby garments, the old man harangued the crowds of Bermondsey or Peckham upon the virtues of Temperance, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... the other hand, here was Margaret, her adorable Margaret, forbidding her to work, and, moreover, Margaret in such an irritable mood, with that smooth brow of hers frowning, and that sweet voice, which usually had a lazy trickle like honey, fairly rasping, was as awe-inspiring as her grandmother. Annie Eustace hesitated for a second. Her grandmother had commanded. Margaret Edes had commanded. The strongest impulse of her whole being was obedience, but she loved Margaret, and she did not love her grandmother. She had never confessed such a horror to ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hysterics. inspiring fear &c v.; alarming; formidable, redoubtable; perilous &c (danger) 665; portentous; fearful; dread, dreadful; fell; dire, direful; shocking; terrible, terrific; tremendous; horrid, horrible, horrific; ghastly; awful, awe-inspiring; revolting &c (painful) 830; Gorgonian. Adv. in terrorem [Lat.]. Int. angels and ministers of grace defend us! [Hamlet]. Phr. ante tubam trepidat [Lat.]; horresco referens [Lat.], one's heart failing one, obstupui steteruntque comae et vox faucibus ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was moral conduct, and their own spotless lives entitled them to be severe in this respect, while their sermons made such an impression upon me that during the whole of my youth I never once forgot their injunctions. These sermons were so awe-inspiring, and many of the remarks which they contained are so engraved upon my memory, that I cannot even now recall them without a sort of tremor. For instance, the preacher once referred to the case of Jonathan, who died for having eaten a little honey. "Gustans gustavi paululum ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... to suit his case. He is a psychologist of the intuitive type. He may thunder and scold if he finds in his audience, whether numbering one or a million, a tendency to yield to authority, and he then poses as that authority, handing out his dicta in an awe-inspiring fashion. He will awaken the latent trend to ridicule and scoffing by pointing out inconsistency in others, or he may awaken admiration for his fairness and justice by lauding his opponent, taking care not ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... lasting friendship with the Delloggs, and remembering they had them on they decided that perhaps it wasn't only sun and oranges making the taxi-driver so attentive, but also the effect on him of their grown-up and awe-inspiring hats. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... spellbound as Garrick unfolded the dreadful, awe-inspiring possibilities of the machine behind the screen. He walked slowly to the back ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... hour were all big fellows. I am a Tokyo kid, delicately built and small, and did not appear very impressive even in my elevated position. If it comes to a scraping, I can hold my own even with wrestlers, but I had no means of appearing awe-inspiring[E], merely by the aid of my tongue, to so many as forty such big chaps before me. Believing, however, that it would set a bad precedent to show these country fellows any weakness, I lectured rather loudly and in brusque tone. During the first part ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... my first near view of the Kenai Mountains, and, as I learned to know them better, they seemed to grow more awe-inspiring ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... phenomenon which is an accompaniment of the blowing of a converter: the prolonged and violent emission of sparks and flames which startled Bessemer in his first use of the process[99] and which still provides an exciting, if not awe-inspiring, interlude in a visit to a steel mill. Soden refers, without much excitement, to a boiling commotion, but the results of Kelly's "air-boiling" were, evidently, not such as to impress the rest of those who claimed to have seen his furnace in operation. ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop
... and the old gentleman stopped groaning and stared at him with eyes of crab-like protuberance. The crimson flush deepened on his cheeks, and his white whiskers appeared to bristle with wrath. He was truly an awe-inspiring object. ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... during his boyhood, and it is a healthy ambition of which we need not be ashamed. Yes, I was going to be an acrobat and wear pretty red tights with glittering spangles! It would be nice, too, I thought incidentally, to be near the little lady who wore the pink tights and did such awe-inspiring stunts on the flying-trapeze. The circus sawdust ring and the flapping folds of canvas may lure boys from books and study, but they give us our first ambition to be and to do something. Mine was of short duration, however. It came and ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... too, as every one must know who has ever been inside the place, the amazing, awe-inspiring picture of Kharvani painted on the inner wall; of Kharvani as she was idealized in the days when priests believed in her and artists thought the labor of a lifetime well employed in painting but one picture of her—Kharvani the sorrowful, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... and your friends," replied the elder traveller, in his mild, deep voice, that had something at once sweet and awe-inspiring in it. "Give me likewise a cup of the milk; and may your pitcher never be empty for kind Baucis and yourself, any more than for the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... speak a few precious words, the effect was visible a good many yards from where he stood. At the close of the service he went in great state down the center aisle, preceded by the gorgeous beadle—a character that is always awe-inspiring to me in these churches, being a cross between a magnificent drum-major and a verger and two persons in livery, and followed by a train of splendidly attired priests, six of whom bore up his long train of purple silk. The whole cortege was resplendent in embroidery and ermine; and as the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... produced the plateaus of Arizona and Utah. The gorges that have been rapidly cut into such great upheaved blocks form part of the world's most striking scenery. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado with its tremendous platforms, mesas, and awe-inspiring cliffs could have been formed in no other way. Equally wonderful are some of the narrow canyons in the broadly upheaved plateaus of southern Utah where the tributaries of the Virgin and other rivers have cut red or white chasms thousands ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... stupidity, half glorious, half pathetic, with which he moved among his fellows was a physical expression of this psychic fact that his spirit had never learned the skilful tricks taught by civilization to lesser men. It was, in a way, awe-inspiring, for he was now at last driving back full speed for ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... Aunt Jane makes disagreeable remarks. Be happy, and never mind them," cried Rose, so much excited by all this that she felt the spirit of revolt rise up within her and was ready to defy even that awe-inspiring institution "the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... from your gold frame, Between that starched old Bishop and the dame In awe-inspiring ruff. We'll brave their ire And trip a minuet. You will not?—Fie! Those mocking lips half make me wish that I, Her grandson, might have been my ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... switches off from the artillery, and tells a blood-curdling tale of Boer treachery and cowardice. He tells how the enemy held out the white flag to coax our men to stop firing. Then, in awe-inspiring tones, he sobs forth a tale of dark and dismal war, how our soldiers respected the white flag and rested on their arms, only to be mowed down by a withering rifle fire from the canaille who represent the enemy in the field. Having got so ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... In point of versatility we shall perhaps hardly find his equal at a later day—unless, indeed, an exception be made of Eratosthenes. The myths that have grown about the name of Empedocles show that he was a remarkable personality. He is said to have been an awe-inspiring figure, clothing himself in Oriental splendor and moving among mankind as a superior being. Tradition has it that he threw himself into the crater of a volcano that his otherwise unexplained disappearance might lead his disciples to believe ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... while pointing out that "a high degree of intelligence, amounting even to genius, has in some cases been associated with epilepsy," observes that "the epileptic is apt to be influenced greatly by the mystical and awe-inspiring, and he is disposed to ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... frescoes. There is a great difference between the two works. The figures on the ceiling are strong and powerful, their attitudes spirited and graceful. Those in the Last Judgment are huge and cumbersome, their attitudes strained and violent. The entire effect of the vast company of colossal figures is awe-inspiring, but not pleasing. ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Now the matter is taken out of our hands and we have only to resume our work here. God grant that this baptism of fire may purge and purify us and prepare us to be a great blessing to the church. It is a most awe-inspiring providence, God's burning us out of Chicago, and we feel like putting our shoes from off our feet and adoring Him in silence.... Pray that the lessons we have been learning through so many trying months may help us to be helping hands to those who may pass through similar straits. One ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... The house caved in before us, forming only an enormous, bright, blinding brazier, an awe-inspiring funeral-pile, where the poor woman could no longer be anything but a glowing ember, a glowing ember ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... descended. Ten minutes' walk brings one to the edge of a precipice 2,400 feet deep, so appalling and so sudden that one's breath is momentarily taken away. It is a spot to sit and meditate on the grandeur of the work of the Master of all architects. The majesty of that mighty ravine is, indeed, awe-inspiring. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Ariadne, who unlike Cassie Weldon, rather enjoyed the publicity of the occasion. "I chanced to be about the first girl he was introduced to, when he came into the house. And we had a chat, and when I chaffed him a bit on his dignity and awe-inspiring presence, he refuted it by showing me the picture in his watch. He said it was a little chorus girl he had taken out to supper the night before. I could see the picture had been merely tucked in temporarily, it wasn't neatly pasted in, as a watch-case picture usually is, and then ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... courage (to us schoolgirls it seemed extraordinary courage) to confront the three Directors of the school, and ask if we might be allowed to play in the gardens of the Square. The three Directors together were to us the most formidable and awe-inspiring body, though separately they ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... peculiar power of moving men's minds, must have existed in the tones of his voice; to this must be added the awe-inspiring effect of his whole appearance, the way in which his whole being and the motions of his bodily frame joined in testifying of that which seized and inspired him. Thus it admits of being explained how, in Germany, even those who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various |
