"Eyewitness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... questioned, said that he had seen the ruins once or twice, that he had also been up the Urubamba Valley and seen the great ruins at Ollantaytambo, and that those which he had seen at Yurak Rumi were "as good as those at Ollantaytambo." Here was a definite statement made by an eyewitness. Apparently we were about to see that interesting rock where the last Incas worshiped. However, the foreman said that the trail thither was at present impassable, although a small gang of Indians could open it in less than a week. Our hosts, excited ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... where anything is saved, the greatness of the salvation depends upon the value of the thing saved, together with the measure of effort and sacrifice required to effect it. Some years ago a very destructive fire was raging in the city of Pittsburg. A gentleman, who claimed to have been an eyewitness of the fire, related the following incident to me. He said the firemen had just rescued a family from a burning building, and thought they had all out, when one of the rescued ladies looking around screamed out, "O, save my Bessie!" "Where is she?" was ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... and with foaming lips, to drag him down. He clung to his antagonist, roaring like a wild beast; even now Philippus never for an instant lost his presence of mind but desired the nun to fetch two strong slaves. The Sister hurried away, and Paula remained the eyewitness of a fearful struggle. The physician had twisted his ancles round those of the stalwart Persian, and putting forth a degree of strength which could hardly have been looked for in a stooping student, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is by blood and martyrdom. For this too is called baptism, the most honourable, and reverend of all, inasmuch as its waters are not polluted by fresh sin; which also our Lord underwent for our sakes, and rightly called it baptism. So as imitators and followers of him, first his eyewitness, disciples, and Apostles, and then the whole band of holy martyrs yielded themselves, for the name of Christ, to kings and tyrants that worshipped idols, and endured every form of torment, being exposed to wild ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... send out men of clean hearts and lives into your dependencies, Alas! in your great military camps during your Spanish war a moral laxity was allowed, which, had it been attempted in the Egyptian campaign, Lord Kitchener would have stamped out with a divine fury. I had it from an eyewitness, but the details ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... of the Battle of Appomattox has been written from the account of an eyewitness. Dick plays an important part. The volume closes with the blue and the gray ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... key did presently come into my hands, and the way that it happened was this. You have heard all the world talk of this matter which I am about to speak of, but you have not heard an eyewitness talk ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... give them up or not, you are all as good as dead," exclaimed the other in a burst of frankness. "Good Lord, boy, do you dream that they figure on letting any eyewitness escape to a town and set the officers of law on their trail? You can hold them off here until night, but when darkness comes you'll be wiped out like the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... papers are widely read and digested by Germans, while the German papers not only print prominently the French official communiques, the Russian communiques when available, and interesting chunks from the British "eyewitness" official reports, but most of their feature stories—the vivid, detailed war news—come from allied sources via correspondents in neutral countries. The German censor's task is here a relatively simple one, for German war correspondents never allow professional enthusiasm ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... statement of the circumstances attending the lamented fate of Mr. Park, was given to the travellers by an eyewitness, and together with all the information which they could collect, tallies with the story, disbelieved at the time, which Isaaco brought back from Amadi Fatooma. The informant stated "that when the boat came down the river, it happened unfortunately ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the extreme regularity of its developments, the classic style is powerless to fully portray or to record the infinite and varied details of experience. It rejects any description of the outward appearance of reality, the immediate impressions of the eyewitness, the heights and depths of passion, the physiognomy, at once so composite yet absolute personal, of the breathing individual, in short, that unique harmony of countless traits, blended together ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... selects a few picturesque incidents and striking figures, and his vivid pictures of the storming of the Bastille, the rush of the mob to Versailles, the death of Louis XVI, and the Reign of Terror, seem like the work of an eyewitness describing some terrible catastrophe. At times, as it portrays Danton, Robespierre, and the great characters of the tragedy, Carlyle's work is suggestive of an historical play of Shakespeare; and again, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... summons. Again the general marched them ashore after another council of war, and then and there he abandoned his personal conquest of Canada. His army literally melted away, "about four thousand men without order or restraint discharging their muskets in every direction," writes an eyewitness. They riddled the general's tent with bullets by way of expressing their opinion of him, and he left the camp not more than two leaps ahead of his earnest troops. He requested permission to visit his ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... a statement addressed to the public, describing the interview with the Secretary of War, which he calls a "Council of War." I did not then deem it necessary to renew a matter which had been swept into oblivion by the war itself; but, as it is evidence by an eyewitness, it ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... character or repeating what mariners had told or written about wreck and storm at sea in the safe harbor of the old store on the Shell Road was different from being an eyewitness ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... unmoved under this torrent of abuse is, I think, the most dramatic incident of his life. It was a victory of glorious endurance; it was the crown of unmerited infamy which was needed to give depth of interest to his successful career. An eyewitness thus described the scene: "Dr. Franklin's face was directed towards me, and I had a full, uninterrupted view of it, and his person, during the whole time in which Mr. Wedderburn spoke. The Doctor was dressed in a full dress suit of spotted Manchester velvet, and stood ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... within him. After he had watched a scrimmage at football—a dozen of the aboriginal savages fighting together in a heap, a mass of legs, arms, heads—and been hustled across the terrace in a rush of Russians and English, from which he emerged without his hat, umbrella, or book, and after he had been eyewitness of an encounter between Jock Howieson and Bauldie over a misunderstanding in marbles, he offered to teach ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... them had been suffered to perish in filth, famine, or disease; and their mothers, wives, sisters, and young children had been robbed, insulted, and abused, and were found by them in temporary huts more resembling a savage camp than a civilized habitation." Though Captain McCall was an eyewitness of some of the scenes he describes, the picture he draws might seem to be too highly colored were it not supplemented by a great mass of evidence. One more instance out of many may be given. In a skirmish with the ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... snake a serious remonstrance to the Sheriff against such an unwarrantable violation of the freedom of election, and he called upon the Sheriff to have Watson taken into custody, who had actually been assaulting several of his voters in the presence of the Sheriff. Although Mr. Sheriff had been an eyewitness of these proceedings several times before, yet he felt that, now his attention was thus publicly called to the subject, he could not connive at them any longer; and as Watson had been laying about him in the most ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... and commanded bread to be distributed among them. The next day, a solemn mass was performed in the cathedral, and 'Te Deum' sung amidst the discharge of artillery. The imperial general rode through the streets, that he might be able, as an eyewitness, to inform his master that no such conquest had been made since the destruction of Troy and Jerusalem. Nor was this an exaggeration, whether we consider the greatness, importance, and prosperity of the city razed, or ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... imagine that anarchy existed at Alton from the commencement of these disputes. Not at all. "No one of us," says an eyewitness and a comrade of Lovejoy, "has taken up arms during these disturbances but at the command of the Mayor." Anarchy did not settle down on that devoted city till Lovejoy breathed his last. Till then the law, represented in ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... True and Impartial Account of the most material Passages in Ireland since December 1688, by a Gentleman who was an Eyewitness; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... these "impressions" to any non-combatants they may interest. They must not look for the talents of a great story-teller, nor the thrilling interest of a novel. All they will find is the simple tale of an eyewitness, the unschooled effort of a soldier more apt with the sword than ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... the presentation of graphic pictures, Parkman has neither the solemn grandeur of Prescott nor the rapid eloquence of Motley, but Parkman has unique merits of his own,—the freshness of the pine woods, the reality and vividness of an eyewitness, an elemental strength inherent in the primitive nature of his novel subject. He secured his material at first hand in a way that cannot be repeated. Parkman's prose presents in a simple, lucid, but ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... interpreter, I learned that the conditions of the city had been altered since the Boxer Rebellion in 1890. Indeed, that fearful event was the cause of many changes in Peking and of great suffering as well. The story of the conflict as related by an eyewitness was very thrilling. Certain portions of the city at the present time consist of naught but ruins, such as the foreign mission buildings and the eastern and southern cathedrals, one of which was in process of renovation. The Legation quarter has ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... Turks, writes an eyewitness in the Sentry, gave us "our first taste of bombing. They crawled down a small gully and threw eight or nine bombs on to our gun emplacement, hurting no one, but putting the gun out for twenty minutes." Meanwhile they fired the gorse in front ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... and slay her family scatheless; but one thing you must not do: you must not lay a hand upon her sleeping-mat, or your belly will swell, and you can only be cured by the lady or her husband. Here is the report of an eyewitness, Tasmanian born, educated, a man who has made money—certainly no fool. In 1886 he was present in a house on Makatea, where two lads began to skylark on the mats, and were (I think) ejected. Instantly after, their bellies began to swell; pains took hold on them; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mention did occur, but though the unfortunate man who was killed bore Mr. Stephenson's name, he was not related to him. I will tell you something of the events on the 15th, as, though you may be acquainted with the circumstances of poor Mr. Huskisson's death, none but an eyewitness of the whole scene can form a conception of it. I told you that we had had places given to us, and it was the main purpose of our returning from Birmingham to Manchester to be present at what promised to be one of the most striking ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... eyewitness of the whole thing, he thought, as he tried to elbow his way through horrified men and hysterical women. If he could only find him! And then a very stout man in a navvy's garb blocked up ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... beholder, observer, looker-on, onlooker, witness, eyewitness, bystander, passer by; sightseer; rubberneck, rubbernecker [U.S.]. spy; sentinel &c (warning) 668. V. witness, behold &c (see) 441; look on &c (be present) 186; gawk, rubber ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... heroism of Thomas, holding his position on the horse-shoe ridge till night put an end to the fighting, and then retiring in perfect order to the Rossville Gap, to which he was ordered. This part of the story has been made familiar to all. An eyewitness has told how, when Rosecrans reached Chattanooga, he had to be helped from his horse. His nerves were exhausted by the strain he had undergone, and only gradually recovered from the shock. [Footnote: Cist, The Army ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... began the Gettysburg Campaign Mr. Coffin watched every movement. He was with the cavalry during the first day's struggle on that field, but was an eyewitness of the second and third days' engagement. His account was re-published in nearly every one of the large cities, was translated and re-published in France and Germany. While the armies east and west were preparing for the campaign of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... knowledge and authority, and the tale he has to tell is very complete and full of precious detail. He was, himself, an eyewitness of much that happened; he pursued a personal acquaintance with many of those who were connected with Sir Oliver's affairs that he might amplify his chronicles, and he considered no scrap of gossip that was to be ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... made at Greene, probably by Hill's left brigades which were ordered forward to support Hood. Greene's men lay on the ground just under the ridge above the burning house till the enemy were within a few rods of them, then rose and delivered a volley which an eyewitness (Major Crane, Seventh Ohio) says cut them down "like grass before the mower." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 506.] Those who escaped sought refuge in the wood behind the church, where the crowning ridge is some distance back from the road. Greene ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... echo to gloomy reports which one member after another delivered from the shadow of the tribune. Towards nine o'clock the members of the two dread Committees came in panic to seek shelter among their colleagues, 'as dejected in their peril,' says an eyewitness, 'as they had been cruel and insolent in the hour of their supremacy.' When they heard that Hanriot had been released, and that guns were at their door, all gave themselves up for lost and made ready for death. News came that Robespierre ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... evolution and development of law and order were suddenly and insanely interrupted through the inconceivable weakness of a most amiable and useless king, by the 'wild asses' of Mirabeau, acting in 1789 under the pressure of what so friendly an eyewitness of their conduct as Gouverneur Morris calls the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... are in the rear. If McClellan wants to fight in the morning, I will give him battle again. Go!" Without a word of remonstrance the group broke up, leaving their great commander alone with his responsibility, and, says an eyewitness, "if I read their faces aright, there was not one but considered that General Lee was taking a fearful risk."* (* Communicated by General Stephen P. Lee, who was present at the conference.) So the soldiers' sleep was undisturbed. Through the September night they lay beside their arms, and ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... and took fifty hostages, of whom twenty-six perished. And at half-past five, while the fighting was still going on, the punitive burning of the town began, by a cyclist section told off for the work and furnished with every means for doing it effectively. These men, according to an eyewitness, did their work with wild ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... am reminded of a tragedy to which I was an eyewitness. Nearly every night for a week or more two of us dined at the same restaurant on the Rue de Rivoli. On the occasion of our first appearance here we were confronted as we entered by a large table bearing all manner of special delicacies and cold dishes. Right in the middle of the array was one ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... above, will suffice to prove that the assertion made in the preface was not unwarranted. It is far from my intention to enter the lists with a man of the literary merit and reputation of Mr. Irving, but as a narrator of events of which I was an EYEWITNESS, I felt bound to tell the truth, although that truth might impugn the historical accuracy of a work which ranks as a classic in the language. At the same time I entirely exonerate Mr. Irving from any intention of prejudicing the minds of his readers, as he doubtless had only in view ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... power is amply attested in an ancient manuscript of undoubted authenticity, which has just been translated from the Japanese. It is an account of the water-battle of Loo, by an eyewitness whose name, unfortunately, has not reached us. In this battle it is stated that Smith overthrew the great Neapolitan general, whom he captured and conveyed in chains to the island ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... 1775, a year before the surrender of Fort Washington, yet his company may be taken as a fair sample of what the riflemen of the frontiers of our country were, and of what they could do. We will therefore give the words of an eyewitness of their performances. This account is taken from the Pennsylvania Journal ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... lord!" said the Count, "I have it from an eyewitness, an archer of the King of France's Scottish Guard, who was in the hall when the murder was committed by William de la ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... to give a true history of Clark's campaign as seen by an eyewitness, trammelled as little as possible by romance. Elsewhere, as I look back through these pages, I feel as though the soil had only been scraped. What principality in the world has the story to rival that of John Sevier and the State of Franklin? ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... overflowing. Every particle of space in the aisles was occupied and it was estimated that 3,000 people were gathered within its walls. I will give the narrative of a correspondent of the St. Paul "Pioneer Press," who was an eyewitness of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... certain points of ordinary fact, which can be placed beyond the region of dispute, and by which the truth of his narrative may be held to stand or fall. I shall confine myself for this purpose to what he states at first hand in his capacity as an eyewitness, and to two salient cases which may be taken to represent the whole. Among the rest some are in course of investigation, and so far as they have gone are promising similar results; the locality of others has been so chosen as to baffle inquiry; and in one ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... the other kind to balance it? Sparke was a soldier who never found his sea legs. But his diary, besides its other merits, is particularly interesting as being the first account of America ever written by an English eyewitness. ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... monarch! How great! How nobly did he console me for the past! How entirely did his assurance of favour overpower my whole soul! He had read the history of my life. When prince of Prussia, he had been an eyewitness, in Magdeburg, of my martyrdom, and my attempts to escape. His Majesty parted from me with tokens of esteem and condescension.—My eyes bade adieu, but my heart remained in the marble chamber, in company with a prince capable of sensations so dignified; and my wishes for ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... that I am to be sent along the French and English lines. I shall be the first correspondent, I am told, to see the British front, as "Eyewitness," who writes for the English papers, is supposed to ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... gain much enlightenment from the "Eyewitness" with G.H.Q., though his literary skill in elegantly describing the things that do not ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... picnicked on these hills, with their lunches packed in billies; and she had seen the caves and rocky holes where blackfellows were said to have hidden themselves in early times; but neither this particular excursion, nor the exciting incident which she described with all the aplomb of an eyewitness, had ever taken place. That is to say: not a word of her narration was true, but every word of it might have ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... an eyewitness. Sit still, Mr. Ballard, until you hear the whole; then blame me if you can. A few years ago you had a Swede working for you in your garden. You boarded him. He slept in a little room over your summer kitchen; ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the gospel of Matthew, bearing in mind that it does not profess to be the evidence of an eyewitness. It is a chronicle, founded, like other chronicles, on such evidence and records as the chronicler could get hold of. The only one of the evangelists who professes to give first-hand evidence as an eyewitness naturally takes ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Bouc, se consume en feu, & reduit en cendre, laquelle les Sorciers recueillent, & cachent pour s'en seruir a l'execution de leurs desseins pernicieux & abominables'.[633] In 1603, a Belgian witch, Claire Goessen, was present at such a sacrifice, and her account is therefore that of an eyewitness. 'Elle s'est laissee transporter a l'assemblee nocturne de Lembeke, ou, apres la danse, elle a, comme tous les assistans, baise un bouc a l'endroit de sa queue, lequel bouc fut ensuite brule et ses cendres distribuees et emportees par les convives.'[634] Jeanne de Belloc in 1609 'a veu ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... the terrors of the Church were combined with the panoply of war to affright the souls of the turbulent burghers. A brilliant train of "dukes, princes, earls, barons, grand masters, and seignors, together with most of the Knights of the Fleece," were, according to the testimony of the same eyewitness, in attendance upon his Majesty. This unworthy son of Ghent was in ecstasies with the magnificence displayed upon the occasion. There was such a number of "grand lords, members of sovereign houses, bishops, and other ecclesiastical ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bounds upward with a frantic ejaculation. Then comes the fighting at close quarters. Perhaps kind women who are misled by the newspaper-writer's brisk babblement may like to know what that means, so I give the words of the best eyewitness that ever gazed on warfare. He took down his notes by the light of burning wood, and he had no time to think of grammar. All his words were written like mere convulsive cries, but their main effect is too vivid to be altered. Notice that ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... cried, "Captain, here is your lady, sir, come to see you." At which words Booth started up from his chair, and caught Amelia in his arms, embracing her for a considerable time with so much rapture, that the bailiff's wife, who was an eyewitness of this violent fondness, began to suspect whether Amelia had really told her truth. However, she had some little awe of the captain; and for fear of being in the wrong did not interfere, but shut the door ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Young wrote, 'half the County of Norfolk within the memory of man yielded nothing but sheep feed, whereas those very tracts of land are now covered with as fine barley and rye as any in the world and great quantities of wheat besides.'[423] There can be no doubt from this statement, made by an eyewitness of exceptional capacity, that he commenced the work so nobly carried on by Coke. The same authority tells us that when Townshend began his improvements near Norwich much of the land was an extensive heath without ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... cuff. Sandy spoke occasionally, but it was mostly to tell of sledge-hammer feats or to corroborate something the boss said. One after another Yates interviewed the prisoners, and gathered together all the materials for that excellent full-page account "by an eyewitness" that afterward appeared in the columns of the Argus. He had a wonderful memory, and simply jotted down figures with which he did not care to burden his mind. Hawkins laughed derisively now and then at the facts they were giving Yates, but the ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... nothing that is not true, and with having related nothing that he has not seen, he feels no misgivings or regret at leaving much unsaid. Of all the information which can be acquired without leaving one's fireside in London or St. Petersburg he gives not a word, but the valuable testimony of the eyewitness he records in a series of drawings in which Eastern life is 'taken in the fact' with a truth and liveliness of touch rarely found in an amateur pencil. The letter-press is a secondary part of the work,—merely to render ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... striped peppermint candy to have his best friend stabbed in the back before morning; you see giddy poster designs carrying on flirtations with hand-painted valentines; you catch the love-making, overhear the intriguing, and scent the plotting; you are an eyewitness to a slice out of the life of the most sinister, the most artistic, and the most murderous period of ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... mention this because from the first oak I see I mean to rend such another branch, large and stout like that, with which I am determined and resolved to do such deeds that thou mayest deem thyself very fortunate in being found worthy to come and see them, and be an eyewitness of things that will with difficulty ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... his submission upon his knees, promising that henceforth he would "demean himself dutifully, faithfully, and peaceably." Formally forgiven, he was restored to his place in the Virginia Council. An eyewitness reports that presently he saw "Mr. Bacon on his quondam seat with the Governor and Council, which seemed a marvellous indulgence to one whom he had so lately proscribed as a rebel." The Assembly of 1676 was of a different temper and opinion from that of the Long Assembly. ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston |
