"Frightful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I'm getting broken in, or perhaps it's because you're so jolly friendly. You're the only person I know in the whole world who has got the mind and imagination to see what a frightful jar it was for an open-air man like me to be dropped into this. People think it is the most unnatural thing on earth that I should suddenly begin to work. But it's just as unnatural really as if my brother suddenly began to play. Even my great friend, Arthur Waldron, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... imagine how, in so small a community as Cacouna, the news of a frightful crime committed in their very midst, would spread from mouth to mouth. How groups of listeners would gather in the streets, round every man who had anything of the story to tell. How the country people who had been in town ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... princes, with their mother, disguised as Brahmans, spent several years wandering through the forests, having many strange adventures and slaying many demons. While visiting Ekachakra, which city they freed from a frightful rakshasa, they were informed by the sage Vyasa that Draupadi, the lovely daughter of the Raja Draupada of Panchala, was going to hold a Svayamvara in order to select a husband. The suitors of a princess ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... sway that, into the bosom of the earth, down and down, and still down. Nor did the vision leave her as she came more to herself. Even when her mental eyes were at length quite open to the far more frightful verities of her condition, half of her consciousness was still watching the ever sinking stone; until at last she seemed to understand that it was showing her a door out of her misery, one ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the world on the pipes. Moira lay beside him, her strange, wide eyes fixed intently on the road and the shadows until she peopled them almost visibly to the musician with the folk of his melodies—with Angus, the beautiful and strong, with Maive, the sad, the happy, with Congal of the frightful Vision of War, and Mananan, strange ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... After that frightful noise, when her house suddenly grew light, and her husband ran away, Mrs. Woodchuck saw with dismay that there was a big hole in the ceiling. The earth had split open and the daylight ...
— The Tale of Billy Woodchuck • Arthur Scott Bailey
... cook entered with the dessert. The host made the most frightful grimaces, and shook his head; for he was leading the singing, and had to mind his trebles ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... as it was said that she was out of danger and would probably suffer no serious consequences Ruth recalled the doctor's frightful words: "You did it: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Cordillera of South America, in both of which regions the feldspar is of the albitic variety. Owing to the absence of ashes, and the general indecomposable character of the lava in this Archipelago, the islands are slowly clothed with a poor vegetation, and the scenery has a desolate and frightful aspect. ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... "I am making frightful hash of it, I know," Stella confessed, unabashed, as her fingers stumbled. "I think Miss Allison had better play it." Mark glanced quickly at the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... they are afraid to work in the daytime. The beaver will cheerfully work in daytime if there is no prospect of observation or interference by man. The eagle builds in the top of the tallest tree, and the California condor high up on the precipitous side of a frightful canyon wall, because they are afraid of the things on the ground below. In the great and beautiful Animallai Forest (of Southern India), in 1877 the tiger walked abroad in the daytime, because men were few and weak, but in the populous and dangerous ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... to the real causes and objects of the conflict. A survey of newspapers from Mexico to Cape Horn during August, 1914, to the end of that year shows plainly that for several months public opinion had not cleared up, that the conflict seemed to be a frightful blunder, a terrific misunderstanding, that might have been avoided, and for which no one nation in particular was ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... person's own soul would make his face look if he was running away from the things he ought to do, and going to play with monkeys and see the wonders of the world? The boy wondered what he was looking like at the present moment, and summoned up the image of a frightful picture of a devil in another of those old books into which he was forever peeping at odd times. Did they miss him now, the old books in the garret, because he had not come up to wish them good-night and take a look at some ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, were more frightful: but in our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... the French nation wanted character. They had both been at Moscow, and acknowledged that the Emperor had committed a capital error in not retreating in time from what he himself acknowledged to be such a frightful climate. ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... quarrels among boys in England, and a very good way it is. One gets a black eye or something of that sort, and there is an end of it. As for fighting with swords or pistols, I do not know what would happen if two midshipmen were to fight a duel. In the first place they would get into a frightful row, and in the second place they would be the laughing-stock of the whole fleet. Of course, in a country like this, where a blow is considered as the deadliest of insults, things are different; but in England it is not viewed in the same light. Everyone knows something of boxing, that ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... words he gave a frightful yell. The merchant, quite as much terrified at the hideous face of the monster as at his words, answered him tremblingly, "Alas, good sir, what can I have done to you ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... doing the same thing," said Mr. Copley. "That is, I hoped to finish off my previous sketches, which are in a frightful state of incompletion, and spend a good deal of time on the interior of this cathedral, which is unusually beautiful." (At this juncture aunt Celia disappeared for a moment to ask the barmaid if, in her opinion, the constant consumption ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... assassinated,—it is a horrible crime; but they were enraptured at the jugglery blended with the parricide. One of the leaders said, with a sigh of envy and regret, "We do not possess a man of such talent." Another muttered, "It is Order." And he added, "Alas!" Another exclaimed, "It is a frightful crime, but well carried out." Some wavered, attracted on one side by the lawful power which rested in the Assembly, and on the other by the abomination which was in Bonaparte; honest souls poised ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... all right," Will said, "except that I have got some frightful blisters on my feet. I was not going to say anything about it, because I should have been kept in hospital, and left behind at Khuram; but I have hardly known how to march, the last few days. I don't think I could possibly have managed it, if ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... "What a frightful row the natives are making in the city," was the fractious comment of one heat-distracted tourist to another through the mosquito netting which ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... were sound asleep on the floor of Tom's back room, when by a single impulse we both sprang out of bed with an irrepressible cry of alarm, and stood for a moment trembling and clinging to each other in the darkness. The sound of a frightful explosion was ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... off writing to you, for he never could get an answer." I said, you had never received 'but one from him in all the time I was with you, and that I was witness to your having Answered it. He was with his mother, Lady Abercorn,(634) a most frightful gentlewoman: Mr. Winnington says, he one day overheard her and the Duchess of Devonshire (635) talking of "hideous ugly women!" By the way, I find I have never told you that it was Lord Paisley;(636) but that you ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... arrows. When we reached the wood I could see that he was ill at ease: nothing would persuade him to go into the deeper parts; and even where it was very open and light he was constantly gazing into bushes and shadowy places, as if expecting to see some frightful creature lying in wait for him. This behaviour might have had a disquieting effect on me had I not been thoroughly convinced that his fears were purely superstitious and that there could be no dangerous animal in a spot I was accustomed ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... very happy, no little children in the world will be more happy, or have prettier smiling faces than you will have; for when we look kind and pleasant we always look pretty, but when we look cross and angry, then we look ugly and frightful. Remember then, never be cruel to a dog, or any thing else, but think of this lesson, and the pretty song we sung. Now, little children, shall I tell you a story, a real true story about a very cruel boy? If the children say, Yes, the following ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... other feelings I shall speak elsewhere: our business at present is to drive away grief if we can, for that shall be the object of our present discussion, since you have said that it was your opinion that a wise man might be subject to grief, which I can by no means allow of; for it is a frightful, miserable, and detestable thing, which we should fly from with our utmost efforts—with all our sails and oars, as ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to hunt in company with the Ass; and, to make him the more useful, gave him instructions to hide himself in a thicket, and then to bray in the most frightful manner that he could possibly contrive. "By this means," says he, "you will rouse all the beasts within hearing of you, while I stand at the outlets and take them as they are making off." This was done; ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... common faith, and, we sincerely believe, a common cause, urge us, at the present moment, to address you on the subject of that system of negro slavery which still prevails so extensively, and, even under kindly disposed masters, with such frightful results, in many of the vast regions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... side, and, roaring frightfully, carried confusion among the ranks of the horse, which broke up and fled. Many of the frantic animals were killed by their own riders or by the Persians on whom they were trampling, while others succumbed to the blows dealt them by the enemy. There was a frightful carnage, ending in the repulse of the Persians and the resumption of the Roman march. Shortly before night fell, Jovian and his army reached Samarah, then a fort of no great size upon the Tigris, and, encamping in its vicinity, passed the hours of rest ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... put my watch back in my belt, the means of extricating myself from the frightful position I was placed in showed themselves to me as plainly as I ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... paved street below; but the thought of forcing upon her parents the ghastly spectacle of a self-inflicted death-agony, the thought that what would remain of her, picked up amid a crowd of people, would be so frightful to look upon, made her reject ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... first collision, the sky was filled with whistling arrows, while the air resounded with the neighing of horses and the roaring of elephants; the plain shook, and clouds of dust, dimming the light of the sun, formed a heavy pall, beneath which Pandavs and Kurus struggled in deadly fight. This frightful conflict lasted eighteen days, the battle always stopping at sunset, to enable the combatants to recover ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... voice brought the tears suddenly to her eyes, and she remembered a man whom she had once seen in a hospital, smiling after a frightful accident ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... 1810-1811 awakened England to the importance of the labor question, and Owen, who since 1805 had been devoting much time to its study, secured a wider audience and a much more serious hearing than ever before. Then came the frightful misery of 1815, due to the crisis which the end of the great war produced. Every one seemed to think that when the war was over and peace restored, there would be a tremendous increase in prosperity. What happened was precisely the ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... shrilled in his plight. He had flung away revolvers, cartridges, even his coat, reducing his weight when the stuff only gripped him by the ankles. He was half to his thighs. He was sinking to his waist, and with all of his furious efforts, the frightful sand was shuddering, as if in animal ecstacy—some abominable ecstacy of hunger, voracious from long denial, as ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Frightful scenes occurred at the Chateau de —— in the neighborhood of La Ferte-Gaucher. There lived there an old gentleman, M. X., with his servant, Mlle. Y., 54 years old. On Sept. 5 several Germans, among ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... western pallisades, where our gallant little band stood drawn up ready to receive them. They had advanced in a tremendous body, to within a few feet of the fort, when the word "Fire," uttered in a clear, manly voice, resounded above their own frightful yells, and was followed the next moment by a terrible volley of leaden balls, that carried death and terror into their serried ranks. With one simultaneous yell of rage, consternation, and disappointment, ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... the Chinese Empire, during the seventh moon of every year, prayers are offered up accompanied by illuminations and other rites for the release of souls in purgatory. At these times the Buddhist priests hang up large pictures, showing forth the frightful scenes in the other world, to induce the people to pay them money for prayers in behalf of their suffering relatives ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... he got a false impression of father because of that damage suit," said Miss Hastings mildly. "That was a frightful thing. I can't be so unjust as ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... promised the poor seduced girl the support of all charitable ladies and that of the members of the Maternity Society in particular; she foresaw a dozen visits which would occupy her whole day, and brew up a frightful storm on the head of the guilty du Bousquier. The Chevalier de Valois, while foreseeing the turn the affair would take, had really no idea of the scandal which would result from ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... and indeed good for a nation, to inspire and to preserve its manly qualities, its virility, and therefore its power. Were this the only way that this could be brought about, it might be well and good; but the price to be paid is a price that is too enormous and too frightful, and the results are too uncertain. We believe that these same ideals can be inculcated, that these same energies can be used along useful, conserving, constructive lines, rather ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Enoch or Elijah did, by a sudden transportation beyond the regions of mortality to those of undecaying existence, without undergoing "the pains, the groans, the dying strife," or without experiencing the frightful alteration that occurs in other human beings, there would no longer exist the same opportunity as at present for the display of one of the noblest principles of a renewed mind. Who can contemplate the debased condition of the body, who can ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... should have fallen down in another minute. I looked round once, and saw such a horrible face, red and swollen and frightful, with the hair all hanging about it. I shall ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... "With such a frightful catastrophe, gentlemen, the remembrance of which actually makes me nervous, my last speculation in Texas ended. Going over the whole matter with the captain that evening,—a process which took us well into the night,—it was our united opinion that the speculation ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... had known? Was it possible? It dawned upon him that in these last years he had really seen very little—nothing—of her. Nothing. She had come into the world like a thing unknown. She had come upon him unawares. She was a danger. A frightful danger. The instinctive mood of fierce determination that had never failed him before the perils of this life added its steady force to the violence of his passion. She, in a voice that recalled to him the song of running water, the tinkling ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... but all hung back in awe of the dismal horrors of the place, and the danger of attacking such desperadoes in their savage den. The very Indian allies, though accustomed to bush-fighting, regarded it as almost impenetrable, and full of frightful danger. Sublette was not to be turned from his purpose, but offered to lead the way into the swamp. Campbell stepped forward to accompany him. Before entering the perilous wood, Sublette took his brothers aside, and told them that in case he fell, Campbell, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... endeavours to save them. One young lady, who had resolutely refused to quit her father, whose sense of duty kept him at his post, was near falling a sacrifice to her filial devotion, not having been picked up by those in the boats until she had sunk five or six times. A man, who was reduced to the frightful alternative of losing his wife or his children, hastily decided in favour of his duty to the former. His wife was accordingly saved, but his four children, alas! were left to perish. A fine fellow, a soldier, who had neither wife nor child ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... encouraged for so many years bitten their acids through and through the lofty ideals which once had been the larger part of himself? Had the angel in him fallen to the bottom of the pit in that frightful nethermost region of his, for his cynical brain to mock, until that, too, was in its grave? He thought of the high degree of self-government, almost the perfection, that Washington had attained,—one of the most passionate men that had ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... strikes horror into arithmetic. The singularity of the case is, that the very solemnity of the legend and the wealth of the human race in time, depend upon the cubical contents of the monument, so that a loss of one granite chip is a loss of a frightful infinity; yet, again, for that very reason, the loss of all but a chip, leaves behind riches so appallingly too rich, that everybody is careless about the four cubits. Enough is as good as a feast. Two bottomless abysses take as much ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... its appearance. It seems to be composed entirely of rocks, terminating in a vast number of rugged points, which tower up to a prodigious height, all covered with everlasting snow, while the points themselves are surrounded with frightful precipices. The hills appear as if rent by earthquakes, with nearly perpendicular chasms dividing them, reaching almost to their very bottoms, so that nothing can be imagined more savage and gloomy than the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... into her heart the blessed words of peace and comfort, till that poor breaking heart gushed forth in a wild tide of feeling too strong for the feeble frame; and we now saw her slowly recovering from a frightful fever, the result of past sufferings, and of that agitation which even a reaction ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... was frightful stuff—not tea at all, but cheap adulterants colored poisonously. Everything they got was of the same quality; yet the prices they paid for the tiny quantities they were able to buy at any one time were at a rate that would have ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... asleep. Fast asleep were the remaining dozen or so of the Spaniards who were living in houses or huts in the neighbourhood; fast asleep also the gentle natives, not dreaming of troubles from any quarter but that close at hand. The sweet silence of the tropical night was suddenly broken by frightful yells as Caonabo and his warriors rushed the fortress and butchered the inhabitants, setting fire to it and to the houses round about. As their flimsy huts burst into flames the surprised Spaniards rushed out, only to be fallen upon by the infuriated blacks. Eight ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... with frightful headaches this past week," he continued, "so severe that I could scarcely see ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... principle of registration is that which makes Nature debtor to Frederick the Second for the seizure of Silesia, and Bonaparte debtor to Nature for 'trampling on the world, holding it tyrannously down?' It is very well to tell us that 'Injustice pays itself with frightful compound interest,' but there are reasons for suspecting that Mr. Carlyle's definition of the just and the unjust are such as to reduce this and all his other sentences of like purport to the level of mere truism and repetition. If you secretly or openly hold that to ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... bare. In the middle of the bedtop was a huge wooden screw that had evidently worked it down through a hole in the ceiling, just as ordinary presses are worked down on the substance selected for compression. The frightful apparatus moved without making the faintest noise. There had been no creaking as it came down; there was now not the faintest sound from the room above. Amid a dead and awful silence I beheld before me—in the nineteenth century, and in the civilized capital of ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... the spine, he jerked it out of the kist and dropped it on one side in a bristling bony heap. Just as he did so there came so furious a gust of wind that, buried as they were in the earth, they literally felt the mound rock beneath it. Instantly it was followed by a frightful ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... little is known. Mr Ross Cox, in the relation of his travels across the Rocky Mountains, says, "that the Upper Crees, a tribe who inhabit the country in the vicinity of the Athabasca river, have a curious tradition with respect to these animals. They allege, 'that these animals were of frightful magnitude, that they formerly lived in the plains, a great distance in the south, where they had destroyed all the game, after which they retired to the mountains. They killed every thing, and if their agility had been equal to size and ferocity, they would have destroyed all ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Proprietor. The d-danger lies in not going far enough. The frightful p-peril of being ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Elm Bluff after I passed her on the road, and effected an entrance through the window on the front piazza, as it was found open; and the awful work of robbery and murder was accomplished during the storm, which you know was so frightful that it drowned all minor sounds. This morning when the General did not ring for his hot water at the usual time, it was supposed that he was sleeping late, but finally old Bedney knocked. Unable to arouse his master, he opened the door, and found ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... long and wildly. And as she did so, the indifference with which she had regarded him grew into hatred. She shuddered as her imagination made that frightful contrast between the picture which her eyes would have so loved to look on if it were only lawful, and that other picture to look on which was her legal doom. Her brow grew wildly black as she thought of his caresses, his love, which were more hateful to her even than ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... be, he had a frightful qualm, that after all—he wasn't the man? How little he knew of ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Sweden and Norway have been so extensive and frightful of late years, that the natives of those two countries regard them as the most dreadful scourges of Odin, Thor, or Frey; and adopt every precaution they possibly can, in their primitive way, to prevent a ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... March 25, 1889, states that "he had read in L'Abeille du Cher of Friday, November 18, 1836, that a poor old man of seventy-seven, named George Shakspeare, was found dying with cold and hunger in the middle of the frightful night of Wednesday preceding, in Clarence Street, London, and was taken to the Hospital, and died there. He was one of ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... puff of smoke leaps out. At the highest point upon the roof stands a dark figure in a desperate strait, the hands making frantic gestures, the arms swinging wildly—and then the body shoots off into frightful space, plunging upon the pavement with a revolting thud. The man's arm strikes a bystander as he darts down. The crowd shudders, sways, and utters a low murmur of pity and horror. The faint-hearted lookers-on hide their faces. One woman ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... you? He costs such a frightful lot that I can't afford to send him off," Mrs. Birch explained, extending a thickly-ringed hand to Anna, and leaving her in doubt as to whether the person alluded to were her masseur or her husband. Before a reply was possible there was ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... old Madman hasn't, and gets called up, and makes some frightful shots, losing about ten places, and all but getting floored. This somewhat appeases Tom's wrath, and by the end of the lesson he has regained his temper. And afterwards in their study he begins to get right again, as he watches Arthur's intense joy at seeing Martin blowing ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... in difficulties, and it is I who dragged him there, for he has accepted bills for me to the amount of twenty-five thousand francs! And all for a woman who deceives me, who laughs at me behind my back, and calls me an old dyed Tom. It is frightful! A vice which costs me more than it would to maintain a family!—And I cannot resist!—I would promise you here and now never to see that abominable Jewess again; but if she wrote me two lines, I should go to her, as we marched into fire ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... only the calm that precedes the storm. On every hand men were busily engaged in making preparation to break that Sabbath day in the most frightful manner, or were calmly, but resolutely, awaiting attack. On board the ship-of-war, indeed, there was little doing, for, her business being to fight, she was always in a state of readiness for action. Her signal guns, fired the previous night, ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... instance will show you the frightful destructiveness of the French shells. A dug-out five metres deep, surmounted by 2 metres 50 centimetres of earth and two thicknesses of heavy timber, was broken ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... Hume's originality and greatness in this field consist in his genetic view of the historical religions. They are for him errors, but natural ones, grounded in the nature of man, "sick men's dreams," whose origin and course he searches out with frightful cold-bloodedness, with the dispassionate interest of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... blow on the head, and, it need not be added, disappeared. Next morning, a friend of the persecuted woman, who was in the secret of the whole case, on some pretext paid the old woman, the supposed witch, a visit, and she was greatly astonished to find her laid up, suffering from a frightful black eye, which her visitor believed to be the result of the blow dealt her with the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... 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, and sobbing, and derision; the heart-rending and spasmodic laughter of the insane ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in ghosts and visions. In his Life of Dion[28] he notes the singular fact that both Dion and Brutus were warned of their approaching deaths by a frightful spectre. "It has been maintained," he adds, "that no man in his senses ever saw a ghost: that these are the delusive visions of women and children, or of men whose intellects are impaired by some physical infirmity, ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... will climb peaks, and drive over nerve-shaking roads, a steep wall on one side and a frightful precipice on the other; he will toil up hundreds of steps, and go quaking down into mines; he will look, and admire, and tremble, till sentiment is worn to threads, purse depleted, and body and mind alike a wreck. For this sort of a traveler there is no rest in Colorado; there always ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... subtle and as frightful as he is, has acted the ridiculous and foolish Part, as much as most of God's Creatures, and daily does so. And he cannot believe 'tis any Sin to expose him for a foolish Devil, as he is, or shew the World that he may ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... seemed to be shutting him alone with the dead. Save for his trembling self and his wife's painted eyes, the big room was lifeless. It was beyond the closed door that his imagination, now running beyond control, pictured the presence of his frightful guest—his own solitude, coming in ironical answer ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... you stand staring out of window when there is so much to do? Here are all these trunks to pack, Maria in her bed with every tooth in a frightful state of inflammation, and that capable Jane What's-her-name gone off while I was putting a chamomile poultice on her face. If you are tired sit down and try on all your shoes, for though Mr. Peggit has your measure, those absurd clerks seem to think it ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... It is almost frightful to remember how few moments it takes to bind immortal souls together in a union which may be for happiness, and, alas, may be for such misery as eternal bondage alone ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... quaint old legends!" said Mavis. "I shall always think of your mermaid now, when I hear the bell. This is our way down to the cove. It's a most frightful ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... visage, only a vague impression. The sharp frontal bones had shorn clean through the rotted fabrics and I could see the snarling teeth. The small head seemed thrown back, the eyes closed, in enjoyment of some frightful joke. I looked back again and saw him writing, his head in his left hand, writing, no doubt, something in the ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of feet running swiftly up the stair; the door of the adjoining room opened and shut, and a man's voice was heard singing. These sounds conveyed to Edith a frightful sense of the nearness and intimacy of the young man, and of the horror of Lucia's position. As she listened she held her cousin by her two hands in ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... intelligible explanation is that this sorrow arises from the contemplation of the same facts concerning self as lead to poverty of spirit, and is, in fact, the emotional side of the same disposition. He who takes the true measure of himself cannot but sorrow over the frightful gulf between what he should and might be and what he is, for he knows that there is more than misfortune or unavoidable creatural weakness at work. The grim reality of sin has to be reckoned in. Personal responsibility and guilt are facts. The soul ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... dying in a way to break everybody's heart, had soberly set herself to consider that there were as fine fish yet in the sea as ever were caught, and that it was best, therefore, to cheer up and wait for better times! Frightful!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... up town on a street-car. Helena had never been in one before, and the experience interested her; but Magdalena sat dumb and wretched. She had been a docile child, and her father's anger had never been visited upon her; but she had seen his frightful outbursts at the servants, and once he had horsewhipped a Mexican in his employ until the lad's shrieks had made Magdalena put her fingers in her ears. He would not whip her, of course; but what would he do? And this ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... present—"This To[u]kichi would not be the honoured Sakuji Sama; nay, not for the full seven existences in human form." The others felt as he did. Even the kenshi drew up his shoulders a little at the frightful mask of the dead woman's face. He could learn but little. Kyu[u]bei, soon at hand, petitioned for the dead body of O'Mino and the custody of the infant. The neighbours corroborated the story of O'Mino; but Densuke had disappeared. Daihachiro[u] never had confidence ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... mind in which we trust to find so many resources will be far too weak in the struggle to persuade us in the way we wish. For it is this which betrays us so frequently, and which, instead of filling us with contempt of death, serves but to show us all that is frightful and fearful. The most it can do for us is to persuade us to avert our gaze and fix it on other objects. Cato and Brutus each selected noble ones. A lackey sometime ago contented himself by dancing on the scaffold when he was about to be broken on the wheel. So however diverse ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... out, heading for Point Prime Light, although my mind misgave me a little as I got clear of the lee of the land; for the sea rose rapidly, and a tremendous breeze, each moment growing stronger, carried us on with frightful rapidity. When we were about half way across, the wind was blowing a gale, and it was only for a moment, while on the crest of the waves, that I could see the light ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... hand upon Percy's life belt, and struck out for shore; but he felt that it was hopeless. Frightful pains were shooting through his limbs, and he breathed what he believed to be a last prayer; when a boom like thunder, a few yards off, galvanized him into life again—for he saw the gunboat, which they had seen in the morning, only a few yards ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... or a rough-rider, not down like a jockey; and so completely between the hand and the thumb as to leave the fingers free for the reins. To carry that club called the handle of a hunting whip is a frightful enormity. The excuse is, to open gates; but if you put your horse's side against a gate, it is better opened by the hand, but keep your leg from your horse's side. The fingering of the reins should not be impeded even by thick gloves; ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... a stage in the administration of the law, and in the original organisation of the capital in the fourth century before Christ, a place for its infliction was established adjoining the place of execution and the cemetery.[3] It was abolished in the third century by King Wairatissa; but the frightful punishments of impaling and crushing by elephants continued to the latest period of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... just as Billy finished eating, there was a frightful roar, and a mighty great bull, greater than the first, rushed out of the forest. And the two bulls at it and fought. It was a terrible fight! They knocked the hard ground into soft, the soft into hard, the rocks into spring wells, and ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... labelled "American Liberty and Independence;" and the other, which greatly preponderated, "British Gold." From the mouth of the figure proceeded the words, "Come up to my price, and I will sell you my country." The effigies were committed to the flames amid the most frightful yells and groans. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... wailing were in his ears. His way ran through stench and fire, close to the mouth of the bottomless pit. He began to be haunted by a strange curiosity about the unpardonable sin, and by a morbid longing to commit it. But the most frightful of all the forms which his disease took was a propensity to utter blasphemy, and especially to renounce his share in the benefits of the redemption. Night and day, in bed, at table, at work, evil spirits, as he imagined, were repeating close to his ear the words, "Sell him! ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the door, and his wife, who opened it, seeing me in such a frightful condition, flew from me like lightning, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... retorted his sister. "I wish I could see a boar—a big one with a particularly frightful temper and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... wrote in her Journal. "He looked very pale, and said he had been much alarmed lest I should have been frightened by his accident.... He told me he had scraped the skin off his poor arm, had bruised his hip and knee, and his coat was torn and dirty. It was a frightful fall." ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the defeat of the American army. Subsequently, he could have read a newspaper at his residence in Georgetown by the light of the burning public buildings at Washington, and he passed with indignant heart the ruins left by the retreating army when, after a night of frightful storm, they silently departed in a disorderly forced march of thirty-five miles, to Upper Marlborough. He then knew what any other city might expect upon which the "foul footsteps' pollution" of the British ...
— The Star-Spangled Banner • John A. Carpenter
... dishonest agent who seized her estate did. I repeat, it was a hard case—a frightful injustice. But it ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... fit for death. As before, Mrs. Squallop made her appearance with his kettle for breakfast. He was sitting at the table dressed, and with his arms folded, with a reckless air, not at all caring to conceal the new and still more frightful change which he had undergone since she saw him last. Mrs. Squallop stared at him for a second or two in silence; then, stepping back out of the room, suddenly drew to the door, and stood ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... came well provided with cords, as prisoners had a great market value. Nevertheless, in the first fury of their attack, they dragged to the door and murdered two of the children. They kept Williams shivering in his shirt for an hour, while a frightful uproar of yells, shrieks, and gunshots sounded from within. At length they permitted him, his wife, and five remaining children to dress themselves. After the entire village had been destroyed and the inhabitants either murdered or made captive, Williams and ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... that he is so good, and it is this which distinguishes himself from all his fellows but the very greatest. D'Artagnan and Chicot are again the best; but how good, at least in the better books, are almost all the others! D'Artagnan would be a frightful loss, but suppose he were not there and you knew nothing about him, would you not think Planchet something of a prize? Without Chicot there would be a blank horrible to think of. But do we not still "share"? Have we ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... never-to-be-forgotten letter came, and I saw a great gulf open at my feet. An invisible hand placed Dudley Stewart on one brink, and I was left upon the other; and an unknown messenger thundered the decree of separation—'Forget the past and live again in the future!' I started as from a frightful dream. The cold reality forced itself upon me. Mary, a suspicion stole into my heart, and stung me. I thought for a brief time that Mr. Stewart loved you, and whose hand may register the darkened thoughts that crowded bitterly up? The morning we left New Orleans, I went into the schoolroom ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... 'is not so frightful a solitude as you, being a stranger to the manners of this country, have perhaps painted to yourself:—I have companions in whom I believe you will find some agreements.'—She then rung a bell, and ordered an attending nun, or what they call a lay-sister, ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... tell him. His letter had dealt her a heavy blow. His silence about the details of his sudden action had made her the prey of her imagination, which had created frightful possibilities. Her favourite theory had been—an indiscretion committed by him in some moment of depression and a remorse that had resulted in a marriage with some vile person. But she had been somewhat reassured ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... give credit; the pawnbrokers were so overburdened with household goods that they were obliged absolutely to decline to receive more; the doctors were worn out with work; the guardians of the poor were nearly beside themselves in their efforts to face the frightful distress prevailing; and the charitable committee, aided as they were by subscriptions from without, could still do but little in comparison to the great need. Jane Haden and the other women without families, did their best to help nurse in the houses where ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... of his heroic attempts at cheering up the sick man, Con was undergoing a frightful experience. In the first place, there were practically no medicines and no disinfectants in the shack. The boy found a cake of tar soap, a bottle of salts, and a package of sulphur. The latter he burnt daily, sprinkling it on a shovel of coals. The tar soap was a ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... Miss Dalton," said Mowbray, after another pause, in which Edith suffered frightful suspense—"really, your request is a singular one. I would do any thing for you—but this is different. You see, you are a sort of ward, and to carry you away from the control of your guardian might ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... mounted me upon your steeds, in how many days will they bring us to Baghdad?"; and they answered, "They will carry you thither under the year, but not till after ye have endured terrible perils and hardships and horrors and ye have traversed thirsty Wadys and frightful wastes and horrible steads without number; and we cannot promise thee safety, O our lord, from the people of these islands,"—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... crackling of flames hidden somewhere in the overthrown and abandoned. There is no movement but where faint smoke is wreathing slowly across the deserted streets. The unexpected collapse of a wall or cornice is frightful. So is the silence which follows. A starved kitten, which shapes out of nothing and is there complete and instantaneous at your feet—ginger stripes, and a mew which is weak, but a veritable voice of the living—is first a great surprise, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... him gayly, she trips away over the grass, leaving him to the tender mercies of the children. They, with all the frightful energy of youth, devote themselves to his service, and, seizing on him, carry him off to their especial sanctum, where they detain him in durance vile until the welcome though stentorian lungs of the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... that something should be done for Mende. No town ever suffered more from wolves and wolf-like enemies in human shape. Down almost to our own day the depredations of wolves were frightful. The old French traveller before cited, writing in 1816, speaks of the large number of children annually devoured by these animals in the Lozere. The notorious 'Bete du Gevaudan,' at an earlier period, was ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... back, he could come down the Swan. I will be coming up, and we ought to pinch Imbrie between the two of us. The situation is a serious one, as Imbrie has the whole tribe of Kakisas under his thumb. He will stop at nothing now; may be insane. The position of the women is a frightful one. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... far I went. Every yard I covered, my feet dragged more. I was dead beat, inside and out. I had neither strength nor courage left. And within there was that frightful craving, which was as though it shrieked aloud. I leant against some palings, dazed and giddy. If only death had come upon me quickly, painlessly, how true a friend I should have thought it! It was the agony of dying inch by inch which was ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... attention to the deceased, he instantly saw, would be thrown away; and understanding, partly from Winter, partly from the tenor of the General's frantic discourse, the nature of the disclosure which had occurred, he hastened to put an end, if possible, to the frightful and scandalous scene which had taken place. Aware how delicately the General felt on the subject of reputation, he assailed him with remonstrances on such conduct, in presence of so many witnesses. But the mind had ceased to answer ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... be? A monster of frightful mien? the ghost of some murdered man or woman? I could have believed in either just then. ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... All the hideous things are praktisch—oil-cloth, black wall-papers, handkerchiefs a yard square, thick boots, ugly women—if ever you hear a woman praised as a praktische Frau, be sure she's frightful in every way—ugly and dull. The uglier she is the praktischer she is. Oh," said Trudi, casting up her eyes, "how terrible, how tragic, to be an ugly woman!" Then, bringing her gaze down again to Anna's face, she added, "My flat in Hanover is all pinks and blues—the ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... free of my grasp as the besiegers again launched their battering-ram against the door with a frightful crash, and his revolver cracked smartly thrice, as he bent far out with one hand clinging to ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... a real nice fashionable mare," remarked Johnny, opening the gate of a field and leading the filly in, "and she's a sweet galloper, but she's very frightful in herself. Faith, I thought she'd run up the wall from me the first time I went to feed her! Ah ha! none o' yer thricks!" as the filly, becoming enjoyably aware of the large space of grass round her, let fling a kick of malevolent exuberance ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Hoffman's rare and fantastic genius to describe worthily that countenance, at once grotesque and frightful, as it stood out from the dark background of the box. This Englishman was about fifty years old; his forehead was quite bald, and of a conical shape; beneath this forehead, surmounted by eyebrows like parenthesis marks, glittered large, green eyes, remarkably round and staring, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... explosion of a comparatively large shell, and again, hurled aloft in a shower of stones and dirt, went the bodies of a half score of Americans. The Germans were taking frightful toll. ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... Let us take first the emotion of fear. Suppose a person is walking alone on a dark night along a deserted street. His nervous currents are discharging themselves uninterruptedly over their wonted channels, his current of thought is unimpeded. Suddenly there appears a strange and frightful object in his pathway. His train of thought is violently checked. His nervous currents, which a moment ago were passing out smoothly and without undue resistance into muscles of legs, arms, body, and face, are now suddenly obstructed, or in other words encounter ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... said he, "I hadn't advised you to take that treasurership. If we could only be quite sure there wasn't some mistake in the accounts, it would be different. It would be a frightful thing to suspect Rollitt unless ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... she read the clippings, "it takes the editors to have 'em, if they are opposed to woman suffrage and can get hold of something to help them out." Any one who could have the patience to read the fearful morals which were deduced, the frightful sermons which were preached, from what was intended as a joking resolution, would quite agree with her. Even had it been meant seriously, it would have been only such retaliation as men would have visited upon women had the latter been possessed of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Jefferson, p. 311. "Generally speaking, one may say of the German soldier that he is normally good-natured and is not disposed to do injury to harmless people, so long as he finds no obstacles put in his prescribed way. But once disturbed, he becomes frightful, because he lacks any higher capacity of discrimination; because he merely does his duty and recognizes no such thing as individual conscience and, besides, when he is excited becomes at once blind and super-nervous." "The Germans are, indeed, a good-natured people, born to blind obedience and humble ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... fanned. Until we know the source of this riotous tendency in a portion of our population, the deeper cause of this recent outbreak, as of all our outbreaks, we are yet ignorant of the true sources of the frightful disturbance which our social order has sustained, in any such sense as makes a knowledge of causes practically available ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the girl, whose passion was frightful to see. 'Civil words, you villain! Yes, you deserve 'em from me. I thieved for you when I was a child not half as old as this!' pointing to Oliver. 'I have been in the same trade, and in the same service, for twelve years since. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... remember the sad experience of generous and delightful Gilead P. Beck, in "The Golden Butterfly": how, after "Fifine at the Fair," frightful symptoms set in, till in despair he took up "Red Cotton Nightcap Country," and fell for hours into a dull comatose misery. "His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was pushed in disorder about his head, his cheeks were flushed, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... looming near at hand, and they could see it shift and sway, grow thin, and roll up in a dense, black mass. It cast a gloom over their spirits, and made them all feel as if some frightful disaster was impending. ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish |
