"Realise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was almost the first to notice this, and he became very anxious as he remembered the number of men on the rock, and that they had only two boats, which were capable of carrying but eight men each. The men were at first so busy, that they did not realise the danger of their position, but presently it was found that, in consequence of the gale, the tide was coming in more rapidly than usual, and the men, after having worked three hours, left off and went to look for the boats. It ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... inspired, I had engaged her sympathies, I had found words that she must remember, that would ring in her ears at night upon her bed. What mattered if I were half shaved and my clothes a caricature? I was still a man, and I had drawn my image on her memory. I was still a man, and, as I trembled to realise, she was still a woman. Many waters cannot quench love; and love, which is the law of the world, was on my side. I closed my eyes, and she sprang up on the background of the darkness, more beautiful than in life. 'Ah!' thought ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other animals,' or even, as it is often expressed, 'Men and animals,' based as it is on the superiority which civilised man feels over other animals, expresses a dichotomy which is in no way recognised by the Indian.... It is therefore most important to realise how comparatively small really is the difference between men in a state of savagery and other animals, and how completely even such difference as exists escapes the notice of savage men... It is not, therefore, too much ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... took my breath away. They were too horrible to realise. I positively couldn't speak. I went up to the bookstall, laid down my penny without moving my lips, and took the paper in ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... so sometimes.... We women, who are born capable of motherhood, seem to be fashioned also to realise Christ more clearly—and the holy mother who bore him.... I don't know if that's the reason—or if, truly, in us a little flame burns more constantly—the passion which instinctively flames more brightly toward things of the spirit than of ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... came to know how great an influence this hour had on him in moulding his character. But he did not realise how long he had dreamed until he heard Cousin Jane's brisk voice,—it was not a ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... is always ruled by a dandy, and the more absolutely ruled the greater that dandy be. For dandyism, the perfect flower of outward elegance, is the ideal it is always striving to realise in its own rather incoherent way. But there is no reason why dandyism should be confused, as it has been by nearly all writers, with mere social life. Its contact with social life is, indeed, but one of the accidents of an art. Its ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... by the venerable and historic city of Ypres, after fifteen months of personal contact with the apostles of the new civilisation. Only the methodical and painstaking Boche could have reduced a town of such a size to such a state. Imagine Chester in a similar condition, and you may realise the number of shells which have fallen, and are still ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... occupiers, and now let their rooms at from L1 to L1 10s. per week, from June till the middle of September. The results are good in every way. Visitors are pleased at what seems a cheap holiday, and the letters of the rooms save money for the winter, and realise in a pleasant way that their later years have fallen on good times. It is also an encouragement to landowners to build good and picturesque cottages. For the first time they see their way to charging a fair rent on their outlay. The town comes ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... walked homeward, through deserted streets, Victor de Mauleon thought to himself, "Poor girl, how I pity her! married to a Gustave Rameau—married to any man—nothing in the nature of man, be he the best and the cleverest, can ever realise the dream of a girl who is pure and has genius. Ah, is not the converse true? What girl, the best and the cleverest, comes up to the ideal of even a commonplace man—if he ever dreamed of ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rapid; we often see only one or two labourers, whether men or women, on a single patch. But there is no waiting, as a rule, for fine weather to cart away the corn, and masters and men work with a will. We must, indeed, watch a harvest from beginning to end to realise the laboriousness of a farmer's life here. Upon one occasion, when visiting a farm of a hundred and thirty acres, we found the farmer and his mother, rich people, both hard at work in the field, the former casting away straw—the corn being threshed by machinery ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... re-used in a very clever way. The square flanking towers, with their later spires, the arcading over the head of the window, and the graceful curve in the battlement are all worthy of attention, and will serve to confuse visitors before they realise that the Norman architecture is concealed under a later casing, and that there is a great deal of old work ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... witnessed all the changes which have taken place in the western country since its first settlement, its former appearance is like a dream or romance. He will find it difficult to realise the features of that wilderness which was the abode of his infant days. The little cabin of his father no longer exists. The little field and truck patch which gave him a scanty supply of coarse bread and vegetables have been swallowed up in the extended ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... realise in what direction the pre-occupation tended. He determined to make a fight for it, and started by trying to read novels. But he could not get his mind off Pawkins, white in the face and making his last speech—every sentence a beautiful opening for Hapley. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... this the merchants came in a body to see me, and said their worst beads would stand me 80 dollars per frasala, as they would realise that value in ivory on arrival at the coast. Of course no business was done, for the thing was preposterous by all calculation, being close on 2500 per cent. above Zanzibar valuation. I was "game" to give 50 dollars, but ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... minute, as that which gives origin to a musical sound. Such a particle we name an atom or a molecule. I think the intellect, when focussed so as to give definition without penumbral haze, is sure to realise ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... except astronomers fully realise that of all the planets of the Solar system the only one whose solid surface has been seen with certainty is Mars; and, very fortunately, that is also the only one which is sufficiently near to us for the ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... down an inclined plane at the bottom of which lay one thing, and one thing only—the Roman Catholic Church. What was surprising was the length of time which he was taking to reach the inevitable destination. Years passed before he came to realise that his grandiose edifice of a Church Universal would crumble to pieces if one of its foundation stones was to be an amatory intrigue of Henry VIII. But, at last he began to see that terrible monarch glowering at him wherever he turned his ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... rural setting. Yet in this aspect now I could detect no indication whatsoever that he was about to round into mid-season form. He still looked like a cat in an adage, and it did not take me long to realise that my very first act on escaping from this morgue must be to draw him aside and give him a ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... person who has not passed from the plains of India to the Himalayas to realise fully the vast difference between the two countries and the dramatic suddenness with which the change ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... from other side-lights Carlotta has thrown on her upbringing, I can realise the poor, pretty weak-willed baby of a thing that was her mother, taking the line of least resistance, the husband dead and the babe in her womb, and entering the shelter offered by the amorous Turk. And I can picture her during the fourteen ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the thing done, and so effectually, that Disco was far from the camp before he could realise that what had occurred was a fact, and not one of the wild feverish dreams that had beset him during ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... however, did not understand. They sat up and gazed about them with wild, frightened eyes. The executioner and his assistants fell upon them and bound them. No one spoke a word. The condemned men began to realise what it all meant and uttered terrible cries. "If we had not bound them," said the executioner, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... father placed it; and Gary brought her cup of tea, and Dr. Sandford spread her slice of toast. Daisy felt as if she loved everybody, and was very happy. The summer air floated in at the long windows, just as it used to do. It was home. Daisy began to realise ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... whether you realise it or not, you give two strokes for yourself to one for your work. It isn't your fault, darling. I do exactly the same thing, and know that I'm doing it. Most of the French schools, and all the schools here, ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... of new and forthcoming publications, Mr. Alston Rivers cannot but express his gratification at the spirit of fair play which has enabled him to realise such a striking series of successes. The primary business of a publisher is to discriminate, both as to intrinsic literary merit, and with regard to what will hit the public taste, a classical illustration of the difficulty in gauging the latter being the rejection of ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... portentous thing to realise that a newborn human creature can only know what it is taught. To Robin the Lady Downstairs was merely a radiant and beautiful being of whom one might catch a glimpse through a door, or if one pressed one's face against the window pane at the right moment. On the very rare ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wonderful thing is the earnestness with which a boy sets about the task of cleansing his life when once he has been made to realise the real character of the thoughts and acts with which he has been playing. Boys, as I find them, rarely err in this matter, or in any other, from moral perversity, but merely from ignorance and thoughtlessness. Severe rebukes and punishments are rarely either just or useful. ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... in all parts of the kingdom is so great, that I found it perfectly practicable to travel upon wheels by a map; I will go here; I will go there; I could trace a route upon paper as wild as fancy could dictate, and everywhere I found beautiful roads without break or hindrance, to enable me to realise my design. What a figure would a person make in England, who should attempt to move in that manner, where the roads, as Dr. Burn has well observed, are almost in as bad a state as in the time of Philip and Mary. In a few years there will not be a piece of bad road except turnpikes in all Ireland. ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... morning, I made out I would drop into London about noon; and the idea tickled me immensely. "There's only one bother," I said, "I haven't a copper cent. It would be a pity to go to London and not buy the morning Standard." "O!" said he, "you don't realise the conveniences of this carpet. You see this pocket? you've only got to stick your hand in, and you pull it out filled ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Perhaps you think I am inviting you to a tete-a-tete. I shall have some company, though the drove have gone to the Stewarts' in a hope of getting asked to supper—which but a few of them can realise in her mean lodgings. You had better stay. I may have Buckhurst, Sedley, De Malfort, and a few more of the pretty fellows—enough to empty your pockets ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... That dims for ever thine oppressor's name; On all thy faults, nor few nor far between, But then thou wert—a woman and a queen. Proud titles, even in a barb'rous age, To stem th' impetuous tide of party rage; While as I gaze each well-known feature seems To stir with life, and realise my dreams That paint thee seated on the Scottish throne, With all the blaze of beauty round thee thrown; Then see thee passing from thy dungeon cell, And hear thy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... almost too startled to realise her sorrow, she unfastened the caravan door, and crept out into the darkness to tell her father. But he and the men were sleeping soundly on the floor of the little theatre, and, though Rosalie hammered against the gilded boards in ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... cordiality and grace, to her successful commander-in-chief in India, Sir Colin Campbell, with plans for the conspicuous rewarding of the Indian heroes at large, with public visits to various great English towns, and with preparations for the impending marriage of the Princess Royal; and we realise forcibly that even in those sunny days, when the Queen was surrounded with her unbroken family of nine blooming and promising children, and still had at her right hand the invaluable counsellor by whose aid England was governed with a wisdom and energy all but unprecedented, her position ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... as he was when he began to write. His mellow, witty, and gentlemanly style is saturated with the sounds, scents and colours of literature. The exercise of his cultivated judgment is not a trade, but a sacred trust. To look at him and to think of his admirable career is to realise the dignity of his calling—discussing with authority the books of the world as they come ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... away without bestowing a look at Mary and me, as we stood holding each other's hands, unable as yet to realise the fact that we were orphans. He had so many poor patients that he could not afford, I suppose, to exercise his compassionate feelings. Even when Nancy afterwards took us in to see mother's body, I would scarcely believe ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... to think of it, few bicycles do realise the poster. On only one poster that I can recollect have I seen the rider represented as doing any work. But then this man was being pursued by a bull. In ordinary cases the object of the artist is to convince the hesitating neophyte that the sport of bicycling consists in sitting on a ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... anchor and steam slowly down the green inlet, departing and leaving one behind it, as one watched it growing smaller, dwindling ever, till it was a mere speck, and then saw it vanish, leaving the green riband of water unbroken save for the passing bergs? How one would realise solitude when the boat had absolutely disappeared, and how that solitude would thrill through and through one's blood as the long light night rolled by and dawn and day succeeded with their unvarying march of ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... me something of the kind," I said; "but the idea of a life so utterly swallowed up in self that no one even thinks it necessary to affect regard for and interest in others, was to me so unintelligible and inconceivable that I did not realise the full meaning of your account. Nor even now do I understand how a society formed of such members can be held together. On Earth we should expect them either to tear one another to pieces, or to relapse into isolation ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... I wish to make some comments. It is proven, Most Illustrious Prince, that the polar star, which our sailors call Tramontane, is not the point of the arctic pole upon which the axis of the heavens turns. To realise this easily, it is only necessary to look through a small hole at the pole star itself, when the stars are rising. If one then looks through the same aperture at the same star when dawn is paling the stars, it will be seen that it has changed its place; but how can it be in this newly ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of respect to the memory of a revered friend, and to solace the hearts of the disconsolate survivors. They needed all the sympathy they received. It was now the dull dead calm after the torture of the storm, the leaden sea strewn with wrecks, enabling them to realise more fully the extent of their loss. Amid the lulls of the tempest, while Lazarus yet lived, hope shrunk from entertaining gloomy apprehensions. But now that the storm has spent its fury, now that the worst has come, ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... the Samurai proved attractive to a much more various group of readers than the New Republican suggestion, and there have been actual attempts to realise the way of life proposed. In most of these cases there was manifest a disposition greatly to over-accentuate organization, to make too much of the disciplinary side of the Rule and to forget the entire subordination of such ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... him, without thinking of Quen-lung. The fort had brought all its guns to bear on the Su-chen directly the gunboat became practically stationary, and it, as well as the junks, was making such excellent practice that Frobisher at length began to realise that he was in a very warm corner indeed, out of which it would tax his skill to the utmost to extricate himself, to say nothing of carrying out his expressed intention of destroying the pirate stronghold. There was, of course, still time to retire, to return to Tien-tsin and ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... the best kind of love. I have sense enough left to realise that if I give in to you on a clear question of right it would ruin us both. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... Calderon, Marquis de Siete Iglesias, who will suspect the Roderigo Nunez—the murderous student of Salamanca? Our device of the false father stifled even curiosity. Thou mayest wake to the future, nor tremble at one shadow in the past. The brightest hopes are before us both; but to realise them, we must continue the same path. We must never halt at an obstacle in our way. We must hold that to be no crime which advances our common objects. Mesh upon mesh we must entangle the future monarch in our web: thou, by the nets of pleasure; I, by those of superstition. The day that sees ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... nearly half-an-hour the poor man sat down on a piece of fallen rock, over which he had stumbled several times in his search, and a deep groan burst from him as he began to realise the fact that escape from the place was impossible, and that a lingering death awaited him—for he could scarcely hope that his companions would find him in such a place. Hope, however, is hard to kill in the human ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... to be that the distinction, of secular and spiritual powers, except in the sense already indicated, is essentially irrational, and that the attempt to realise it in practice must involve, as it did involve in the Middle Ages, a continual internecine struggle. To set up two regularly constituted powers face to face with each other, one claiming man's allegiance in the name of his spiritual, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... people realise what an immense addition has been made to the literary patrimony of the English reader by the Revised Version of the Bible, and such other presentations of the sacred Scriptures as this Revised Version has made possible. The language of Biblical writers, and the sentences ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... she said, as the space widened between us and the docks. "So we are all going to Europe together this morning! I can hardly realise it. Farewell America! How interesting ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... eluded him, threw the bridle after them, and, sad to say, the bit struck the wife, and as this was of iron they both knew that their marriage contract was broken. Hardly had they had time to realise the dire accident, ere the aged father of the bride appeared, accompanied by a host of Fairies, and there and then departed with his daughter to the land whence she came, and that, too, without even allowing her ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... he meant. Having lived so long in a fool's paradise, she could not realise that her world was coming down ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... giddily downward; and so sick and hurt was I in body, and my mind so much confounded, that it took me a long while, chasing my thoughts up and down, and ever stunned again by a fresh stab of pain, to realise that I must be lying somewhere bound in the belly of that unlucky ship, and that the wind must have strengthened to a gale. With the clear perception of my plight, there fell upon me a blackness of despair, a horror of remorse at my own folly, ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her, it imports us first to realise that while the male voter has—except where important constitutional issues were in question—been accustomed to leave actual legislation to the expert, the female reformer gives notice beforehand that she will, as soon as ever she gets the suffrage, insist on ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier. As the thunder broke overhead, I was grasped as by the hand of a giant and hurled out into the storm. The whole thing was so sudden that, before I could realise the shock, moral as well as physical, I found the hailstones beating me down. At the same time I had a strange, dominating feeling that I was not alone. I looked towards the tomb. Just then there came another ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling breezes, and we get sore-throats and agues with attempting to realise these visions. Master Damon writes a song, and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and the deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening. Zephyr is a north-east wind, that makes Damon button up to the chin, and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... transparently simple and straightforward. Since God had honoured him with this infinite trust of preaching the Gospel, he sought to so preach it that he should please God regardless of men. And yet that is the surest way to please men. People who listen to such a man feel his honesty, and realise that he is seeking to do them good, to save them rather than to tickle their ears and win their applause, and in ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... listen to him, and ran off the terrace. Nikolai Petrovitch looked after him, and sank into his chair overcome by confusion. His heart began to throb. Did he at that moment realise the inevitable strangeness of the future relations between him and his son? Was he conscious that Arkady would perhaps have shown him more respect if he had never touched on this subject at all? Did he reproach himself for weakness?—it is hard to say; all ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... pots on the stage. Jimmy says bloodhounds don't stand any nonsense of that sort, and the sparrow ought to have known it. But it kept looking round flower-pots at Faithful and chirruping at him sideways, and didn't realise that its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... in the north which, though in a sense comparatively slight, has, in consequence of the circumstances connected with it, done more to inflame the men of Ulster than persons not living in Ireland can realise. In June of last year a party of Sunday School children from a suburb of Belfast went for a picnic to Castledawson (co. Derry) under the charge of a Presbyterian minister and a few teachers and ladies. On their way back to the railway station, they were met and assailed by a procession ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... in with them?" Beale roared again; it was as if his spirits rose and rose. "Do you realise, pray, that in ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... itself, the hope that lay deepest at her heart. And her children!—ah! for them she pined, but for them she also hoped. Before them was a long future, and she had all confidence in Philip. Of late, there had been considerable doubts how far the elder Beaufort would realise the expectations in which his nephew had been reared. Philip's younger brother had been much with the old gentleman, and appeared to be in high favour: this brother was a man in every respect the opposite to Philip—sober, supple, decorous, ambitious, with a face ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... full and complete relief from an impost equally oppressive and degrading. That, in carrying out these resolutions, the representatives of the Irish people should always keep in mind the adopting such a prudent and wise course as shall enable them to realise for the Irish nation the greatest possible quantity of good, and as shall also enable them to support and sustain in office, without any violation of principle, the first and only true and honest government ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... him that his ideas must at that time have been deplorably confused and lamentably unsettled. He sometimes took out the old sketch of Madame Mayer's portrait, and setting it upon his easel, tried to realise and bring back those times when she had sat for him. He could recall Del Ferice's mock heroics, Donna Tullia's ill-expressed invectives, and his own half-sarcastic sympathy in the liberal movement; but the young fellow in an old velveteen jacket who used ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... "Their aspirations," he said, "may be high enough to do credit to the noblest male spirit; indeed, our gracious lady's aspirations were nobility itself. But the flesh of females is very weak. It cannot stand alone. It cannot realise the aspirations formed by its own spirit. It requires constant guidance. It is an excellent material, but it is ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... age of fifteen Frithiof was confirmed, received a present of a gold watch and was allowed to go out on horseback; he was not permitted, however, to realise his greatest ambition, namely to go shooting. True, there was no longer any fear of a whipping from his arch-enemy, but he dreaded his mother's tears. He always remained a child, and never managed to throw off ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... thirty years old, and was so torn, stained and greasy as to be all but undecipherable. As the weary weeks went by and they went from island to island, only to be turned away by the inhabitants, they at last began to realise the folly of the venture, and most of them wanted to return to San Francisco. But Richards clung to the belief that they only wanted patience to find a suitable island where the natives would be glad to receive them, and where they could settle down in peace. Failing ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... far into the snowy haze before he began to realise that his playful warning had not ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... commanded by French officers, and the annexation of these States to Egypt would be their practical annexation to France. When his army is disseminated along the coast of Africa, I might realise my dream of ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... Sierra Leone turns out to be when you get to close quarters with it. It causes one some mental effort to grasp the fact that Cape Coast has been in European hands for centuries, but it requires a most unmodern power of credence to realise this of any other settlement on the whole western seaboard until you have the pleasure of seeing the beautiful city of San Paul de Loanda, far away down south, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... her mother at the end of the year, "dost realise that in less than a twelve-month thou 'lt be a girl of eighteen and without a lover, much less a husband? I was wed before I was seventeen, and so are all respectably behaved females. See what elopements come to. 'T is evident thou 'rt to die ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... itself is beauty, but for us Who gaze upon it with all reverent eyes; And youth which sheds its glory luminous, Gives ever in this wise:— Itself the joy it may not realise. Only we know, who linger overlong Youth that is made ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... for all of us. It is that which lies upon the border-land between the past and present; which has gathered some romance from the lapse of time, and yet is not so far off but that we have seen some of the actors, and can distinctly realise the scenes in which they took part. Such to the present generation is the era of the Revolutionary wars. 'Old men still creep among us' who lived through that period of peril and excitement, and yet we are far enough removed from them to fancy that there were giants in those ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... she were in a dream. What did it mean? and was it real? The locked door was a hard fact, that constantly asserted itself; perhaps so did Matilda's want of dinner; the linen patches on the floor were another tangible fact. And as Matilda came to realise that she was alone and could indulge herself, at last a flood of bitter tears came to wash, they could not wash away, her hurt feeling and her despair. Every bond was broken, to Matilda's thinking, between ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... the interpretation which he put upon the Pope's command, namely, that he was not to begin the trial. The English, he said, "would think that I had come to hoodwink them, and might resent it. You know how much that would involve."[611] He did not seem to realise that the refusal to pass sentence was equally hoodwinking the English, and that the trial would only defer the moment of their penetrating the deception; a trial was of no use ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... classical music, and he had answered, 'There is no music except classical music.' And it was this chance phrase that made the day memorable; its very sententiousness had pleased her; in that calm bright evening she had realised and it had helped her to realise that there existed a higher plane of appreciation and feeling than that on ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... walked out into the woods, and only as she turned at the edge of the clearing and looked back to find Iley furtively peering after her from the corner of the house did she realise that the woman's words had been dictated because she had been taken into the confidence of the men and set to keep an ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... you what he'll say beforehand," said Dr. O'Grady. "He'll realise the importance of the illuminated address. He'll understand that it's the thing and that ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... minds never realise their ideals in any matter; and Harris and I sighed over the hollowness of all ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... flames blazing brightly from the dark soot—the forge fire of life, to which the dead woman's last words had referred. She knew what her mother had wished to say, but at the present time she lacked both the desire and the strength to realise it. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ask you not long ago to pay her a visit at her villa on the Adriatic. Start to-morrow, and I promise that you will come back a sane woman. You will be able to laugh at Saton, to see through the fellow, and to realise what a tissue of shams he's built of. You will be able to feel a reasonable interest in anything Naudheim has to say. Just now you are unnerved, these men have frightened you. Believe me that your greatest and most effectual safety lies ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that same evening he presented me with my commission signed, and here I am, a lieutenant commander in the Dutch Colonial Navy! It is, in truth, a hop, step, and a jump into a post of honour I little expected, nor can I yet realise the greatness of ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... something about playing at the party, Dorothea," continued Daniel. "Do you realise that I never heard you play? I will frankly confess to you that heretofore I have been afraid to hear you. I could tolerate only the excellent; or the promise of excellence. You may show both; and yet, what is the cause of my fear? You have not practised in a long while; not once since we ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the sights and sounds of the East End of London still are, none who now visit the vast region lying eastward of St. Paul's can realise the sense of desolation that overpowered one's spirit when beholding it at the time Mr. Radcliffe began his services in 1860-1861. At that time the condition of the millions who existed there was ignored by those dwelling in ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... scarcely possible to realise what a million means. The best illustration which I have met with is that given by Mr. Croll, who says, "Take a narrow strip of paper 83 ft. 4 in. in length, and stretch it along the wall of a large hall; then mark off at one end the tenth of an inch. This ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... without any attempt to break through the enemy's lines, or in fact any resistance of any kind. The court was held at the Grand Trianon, Versailles, a place so associated with a pleasure-loving court, and the fanciful devices of a gay young queen, that it was difficult to realise the drama that was being enacted, when the honour of a Marshal of France—almost an army of France, was to be judged. It was an impressive scene, the hall packed, and people at all the doors and entrances clamouring ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... tracing descent through the female side conferred any special claim for consideration upon women. I shall try to avoid mistakes. I put forward my own opinions with great diffidence. It is so easy, as I realise full well, to interpret facts by the bias of one's own wishes. I know that the habits and customs of primitive peoples that I have studied closely are probably few in comparison with those I have missed; yet ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... about me?" said John. "Haven't I been deceived? Didn't you all conspire to make me think she was sweet and good? I remember somebody telling me I was a lucky man. I realise now you were all only too glad to get ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... reinforcement by the facts of spirit communion and the clear knowledge of what lies beyond the exit-door of death. The shock of the war was meant to rouse us to mental and moral earnestness, to give us the courage to tear away venerable shams, and to force the human race to realise and use the vast new revelation which has been so clearly stated and so abundantly proved, for all who will examine the statements and proofs with an ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shells. But I was then utterly astonished at Sedgwick not being delighted at so wonderful a fact as a tropical shell being found near the surface in the middle of England. Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... engaged at the same time on the works which were to bring them lasting fame. The life and work of Robert Stephenson seem so remote, so much a part of bygone history, that it strikes the mind with an unexpected shock to realise that here is a life which began about the same time, yet has lasted until quite recent years; for Lord Armstrong's long and successful career only closed with the closing ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... you to invite her-that would have been treacherous. No, but when I began to realise what it would be to send her back to her treadmill; though the beauty of it is that she never seems to realise that it is ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Prince Otto brokenly, for it was he, "at last I begin to realise the horrors ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... that darkened his memory. Yet were not these woes and disasters the beginning of a new life for her! In prosperity, what would she ever have become? Nothing less than being thrown out into the world could have given her the impulse needed to realise a high ambition. 'Tant mieux, another great violinist!' How sincerely, how inspiringly, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... remind her that it had once been actual and living. There still existed a Paris far away beyond the hills, brilliant, vivid, exquisite, inspiring, and at this very moment the people were coming and going, the river was flowing, the little steamers plying,—but how hard it was to realise! ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... situated on a sandy plain, within half a mile of the sea, and dotted with scattered fig-trees just beginning to show a few leaves. The climate was perfect, but the water arrangements were most difficult. We began to realise that it does not pay to be the last comer when there is a shortage of anything. We were paid off with the minimum number of fanatis (copper vessels for carrying water on camel pack), and, instead of getting ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... was the intonation to which he listened rather than the words. His very attitude of concentration showed her that. She began to wonder whether it would be so easy after all to quiet his suspicions now that he was blind; she began to realise that it might possibly on that very account be all ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... contrast between the warmth and affection that had distinguished his departure, and the cold vacuum that greeted his arrival, chilled him. He said a few words to the grumpy old porter who was the sole occupant of the platform, but that worthy, although he knew him well enough, did not seem to realise that he had ever been away. During the year in which so many things had happened to Godfrey nothing at all had happened to the porter, and therefore he did not appreciate the ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... at this point as to the general relation of religion and philosophy. We realise the evil which Kant first in clearness pointed out. It was the evil of an apprehension which made the study of religion a department of metaphysics. The tendency of that apprehension was to do but scant justice ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... for a people is in consequence to preserve the institutions of the past, merely changing them insensibly and little by little. This ideal is difficult to realise. The Romans in ancient and the English in modern times are almost ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... at the present day has the penny post become to all classes of the people, that we can scarcely realise how our forefathers managed to live without it. Yet even so recently as the accession of Victoria, the nation was not in the enjoyment of this great blessing. So seldom in those days did a letter reach the abode of a ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... whom he had occasionally written as a matter of kindness (Farmiloe could do such things)—had left him by will the sum of L600. It was strictly a shock; it upset his health for several days, and not for a week or two could he realise the legacy as a fact. Just when he was beginning to look about him with a new air of confidence, the solicitors who were managing the little affair for him drily acquainted him with the fact that his relative's will was contested by other kinsfolk whom the old woman had passed over, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... war and alarms. Would you hesitate to obey?" Torps refrained from the obvious answer and plucked a grass-stem to put between his teeth. "You would obey, wouldn't you, because it is your duty—however much you'd like to sit here with me? Will you try to realise that I shall be only answering the drum, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... and preferred the gold of his watch-chain to all things in nature or art. Then when Wilmet, Angela, and Lance came home, and family chatter began, the weary anxious brain rested; and even in that room, so sad to most eyes, Fernando began to realise what Christian ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lesson. With the Senora herself it is neither disappointment nor chagrin, but a positive and keen apprehension. A daughter of Paraguay, brought up to believe its ruler all powerful over the earth, she can hardly realise the idea of there being a spot where the hand of "El Supremo" cannot reach and punish those who have thwarted his wishes or caprices. Many the tale has she heard whispered in her ear, from the cradle upwards, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... associations like these that I passed my childhood, and it gave a bent to my character which has never been removed. The cathedral, a masterpiece of airy lightness, a hopeless effort to realise in granite an impossible ideal, first of all warped my judgment. The long hours which I spent there are responsible for my utter lack of practical knowledge. That architectural paradox made me a man of chimeras, a disciple of St. Tudwal, St. Iltud, and St. Cadoc, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king. Men of science offer us health, an obvious benefit; it is only afterwards that we discover that by health, they mean bodily slavery and spiritual tedium. Orthodoxy makes us jump by the sudden brink of hell; it is only afterwards that we realise that jumping was an athletic exercise highly beneficial to our health. It is only afterwards that we realise that this danger is the root of all drama and romance. The strongest argument for the divine grace is simply its ungraciousness. ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... would forfeit his own life. It was Orsini, his former comrade in the Carbonari, who reminded Napoleon of his oath, after he had become Emperor of the French. And Orsini did it in the manner best calculated to make the Emperor realise the fate which awaited him if he failed ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... accentuate a trait or two of these photographs, so to speak, and then realise the whole portrait by adding an account given to me by Oscar himself. The joy in humorous romancing and the sweetness of temper recorded by Sir Edward Sullivan were marked traits in Oscar's character all through ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... declaration of love from any man. She was altogether proper; well-bred; admirable; perhaps somewhat of the type so opposite to Barlow's impressionable nature that ultimately, all in good time, they would realise that the scheme of creation had marked them for each other. And Colonel Hodson almost prayed for this. It was desirable in every way. Barlow was of a splendid family; some day he ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... responded to this with a loud, fierce hurrah, and turned to their guns again as cheerfully as though they were still certain of victory, although there was probably not a man there who did not by that time realise that the chances were all against the gallant little ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... hard to realise that the author of 'AElla' and all the other fictions was scarcely more than a child; that the boy of one of our public schools, in the sixth form, is the age of this poor lawyer's apprentice, whose short life was filled with the dreams and aspirations of a man while as yet he had scarcely ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... How Eugene Aram, though a thief, a liar, and a murderer, Yet, being intellectual, was amongst the noblest of mankind. So shalt thou live in a world peopled with heroes and master-spirits; And if thou canst not realise the Ideal, thou shalt at least ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... bed, waiting every moment with thin, outstretched hands to snatch him away. On his bed he lay, his face waxen in colour and emaciated, while the white hands clasped the crucifix. Yet even then one might realise that the dying man had at one time been called "handsome Mike O'Connor." In the prime of his manhood—tall, broad-shouldered, and always cheerful—no other man in the district could look anything but insignificant beside him. But many a one from among ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... quantum only of health, spirits, and intellectual exertion are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three hours of leisure, unalloyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a change and recreation, will suffice to realise in literature a larger product of what is truly genial, than weeks of compulsion.... If facts are required to prove the possibility of combining weighty performances in literature with full and independent employment, the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... do make! Does not it quite realise your conception, Captain Lake, of young Lochinvar, you know, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... unreal to the girl that she did not realise what it portended, not even when a ring (a loosely-fitting ring, for Jack Glover had made the wildest guess at the size) was slipped over her finger. She knelt to receive the solemn benediction and then got slowly to her feet and looked ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... must wish it; he himself must love—love with all the lavish indulgence, all the knightly tenderness, all the grateful sympathising joy in the youth of the beloved, when youth for the lover is no more, which alone can realise what we sometimes see, though loth to own it—congenial unions with unequal years. If Darrell feel not that love, woe to him, woe and thrice shame if he allure to his hearth one who might indeed be a Hebe to the spouse who gave up to her his whole heart in return for hers; ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... inclination for idleness, and to live liberally, doing nothing, on the revenue Madame Raquin had placed in the name of his wife. Very likely he would have fled with the 40,000 francs, had he been able to realise them; but the old mercer, on the advice of Michaud, had shown the prudence to protect the interests of her niece ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... this dipped into blue and there lost itself. It was very quiet—a windless fall of the light. To-day I should find it most beautiful; and even then, I suspect, I felt its beauty without knowing it to be so. Looking into it all without realising it, I presently and gradually did realise something else: a shape, a creature, a thing of form and pressure—not a wraith, not, I am quite certain, a ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett |
