"Shattering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scantling upon the door jamb, shattering it to pieces. The whole guard flung themselves against the door, shoved it shut, and shot ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... an area of not more than 5 feet square; between us was a tiny card-table laid with our supper, and on this the principal quantity of the masonry had fallen—certainly 2 tons of red brick and mortar—shattering it to atoms. If our chairs had been drawn up to the table, we should probably have been buried beneath this mass. But our most sensational discovery was the fact that two enormous pieces of shell, weighing certainly ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... but a shattering stroke thy system has sustain'd; Any other than an alderman had certainly been brained. And, soon as he had breath to swear, the Knight right roundly swore That, straight, he'd put down Smithfield, and set ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... crew, but it was different with the captain. Davy Jones was preparing something worse yet for him, or thought he was. He was tired of seeing him simply wander hopelessly on the ocean; he wanted to plague him more. He could do this, he thought, by giving him now and then a little hope and then shattering it and sinking it to the bottom of the sea, and dragging the man's heart to the bottom of the sea, too, with a ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... fell alike upon all of them. A young squaw was standing in the grass, a short distance from the American line, holding her child, a little girl of four years old, in her arms. In this position, a ball struck the right arm of the child, just above the elbow, and shattering the bone, passed into the breast of its young mother, and instantly killed her. She fell upon the child and confined it to the ground. When the battle was nearly over, and the Indians had been driven from this point, Lieutenant Anderson of the United States army, ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... the true, the only sting which he knew now; it rankled more than her sin, more than her falsehood, more than the shattering of his ideal. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the virtues of Nagaya!" he cried—"This is most excellent fooling! I, Zephoranim, the destroyer of my friend and first favorite in the realm? ... Old man, thy frenzy exceeds belief and exhausts patience,—though of a truth I am sorry for the shattering of thy wits,—'tis sad that reason should be lacking to one so revered and grave of aspect. Dear to me as my royal crown is the life of Sah-luma, through whose inspired writings alone my name shall live in the annals of future history—for the glory of a great poet must ever surpass ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... all the glitter of its showy Empire, and had seen its imperial glories dispersed as mist. Russia she had watched with curiosity and dread. On the day when the ruler, who had bestowed freedom on millions of his people, met his reward in the shattering bomb which tore him to fragments, she had been in St. Petersburg. A king, who had been assassinated, she had known well and had well liked; an empress, whom a frenzied madman had stabbed to the heart, had ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... upon him. He could not blind himself to them. And sometimes when he sat alone by his dying fire, as the dark menaced him, and the girl that was his charge slept within the portals of stone, he had the unescapable feeling that the very structure of his life was falling and shattering down; but even now he could see, an enchanted vista in the distance, a mightier, more glorious tower, builded and shaped by ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... no man doubted: death might sweep, swift and shattering, along these electric-lit enclosed spaces where they stood waiting; the great ship was being driven head-long by unseen forces towards an unseen foe. But of that foe, none of the hundreds of men between decks save the straining gunlayers with their eyes at the sighting-telescopes ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... were all probably being whirled round and round one of the pools they had passed, like scraps of straw, and the shattering of the raft seemed a certainty; but their big companion was a man of resource. Seating himself upon the edge of the raft as it glided evenly along, he waited with legs extended for the coming contact. His ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... breath, with every muscle tense, and his heart sank within him. For out of that inner doorway came a sound—a sound unmistakably human—tragically human, it seemed now, shattering his returning courage ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... on that morning of fog and firelight, in the midst of Adrian's artificial French Lares and Penates, dimly seen, like spindle-shanked ghosts of chairs and tables, just consider the mind-shattering facts. Here was a man whose whole literary output was a few precious essays and a few scraggy poems, who had never schemed out a novel before, not even, as far as I am aware, a short story; who had never, in any way, tested his imaginative ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... tried and the door. There was a discussion as to the possibility of getting through the bulkhead forward, and one or two attempts were made, but each time, at the first crack made by the wood, there was the report of a pistol, and the shattering of the bulkhead above their heads, plain proof that they were strictly watched by one who had had orders to fire at the ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... great many trumpeters; and with the first breath that they drew, they put their brazen trumpets to their lips, and sounded a tremendous and ear-shattering blast; so that the whole space, just now so quiet and solitary, reverberated with the clash and clang of arms, the bray of warlike music, and the shouts of angry men. So enraged did they all look, that Cadmus ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... heat of my cry struck a shock through the hushed room distinct as the shattering of crystal. There was no answer, no movement; no rebuke of my movement. I was alone. With ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... dozen further explosions on the parapet pealed out, the little party of precipitately retreating Englishmen heard heavy thuds all round them as fragments of the burst ordnance came showering to the ground. And in between the shattering reports of bursting cannon which were now almost continuous they faintly caught the sounds of human outcry as the astounded garrison, awakened by the reports, sprang from their beds and rushed hither and thither in blind panic, each man demanding of every other an explanation of the extraordinary ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... one entire neuralgia. The unending use of the same muscles, the repetition of the same rhythmic series, the cranium-shattering clatter of all the riveting-guns, the anxiety to be sure of each successive rivet, quite burned her out. And she learned that the reward for this ordeal was, according to the minimum wage-scale adopted by the Emergency Fleet Corporation, thirty ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... simple proceeding had a most disconcerting effect upon Alvaros, whose return gaze at once became shifty and uncertain; the result being that the Spaniard's bullet flew wide, while Jack's, aimed by a hand as steady as a rock, struck Alvaros' right elbow, completely shattering the bone and inflicting an injury that the surgeon, at a first glance, thought would probably stiffen the arm for the remainder of its owner's life, to the extent of very seriously disabling him. Under these circumstances Alvaros' second expressed ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... is necessary in order to secure a victory. In spite of all my efforts and ruses, it was not possible for me to fight this combat; I did not succeed, in spite of all my challenges, in shattering, as I expected, this virtuous conjugal fortress. Madame de Bergenheim still persisted in her systematic reserve, with incredible prudence and skill. During the remainder of the winter, I did not find more than one opportunity ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... cavern was made evident by the frequent plunging of the shattered bowsprit against the inner end of the cave. This action sent the vessel reeling backwards, as it were, every time she struck, besides shattering the bowsprit. That the cave, also, was open to the full force of the sea was only too severely proved by the rush of the billows into it, and the frequent and severe shocks to which they were in consequence subjected. These shocks had extinguished the lamps, and it ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... chose the more peaceful way? It was a night of perplexed thoughts, confused emotions. One thing only was clear. For the first time in his life certain dreams, which had been as dear to him as life itself, had received a shattering blow. Always he had spoken and acted from conviction. It was that which had given his words their splendid force. It was that which had made the words which he had spoken live as though they had been winged with fire. Perhaps it was his own ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hinted more than ever of the pale straw-gold that was not there. Never had she seen him quite so royally young. As he smiled to greet her, with a slow white flash of teeth from between red lips, she caught again the promise of easement and rest. Fresh from the shattering chaos of her sister-in-law's mind, Billy's tremendous calm was especially satisfying, and Saxon mentally laughed to scorn the terrible temper he had charged ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... note came then from the hills, commencing like the warning siren of a space liner approaching its berth and swelling to a bombilation of ear-shattering sound that set the steel of the Nomad's hull vibrating and their very flesh and bones a-tingle. Then it died away as had the bird note which was the first sound of ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... roar died away to the rhythmic, whistling wail that had preceded it. But another great noise was commencing. It was not the shattering scream of steam, but a mighty rumble that came from an immense distance. Coincidentally, the mountain itself came alive and shook, not violently, but gently, shudderingly, as if Atlas, far beneath, were hunching ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... immediate reality became too overwhelming. Grey multitudes were sweeping khaki multitudes before them. High-explosives, shrapnel, grenades, bombs, bullets were rending, piercing, and shattering the living flesh and muscle and bone. Towns and villages were being turned into heaps of brick and wreckage. Hordes of old men, women, and children were thronging the roads, and fleeing ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... church. Early next morning (on the 9th of July), while the workmen were waiting at the church door for the key, the bell struck four, and the vibration at once brought down the tower, which overwhelmed the nave, demolishing all the pillars along the north side, and shattering the rest. "The very parts I had pointed out," says Telford, "were those which gave way, and down tumbled the tower, forming a very remarkable ruin, which astonished and surprised the vestry, and roused them from their infatuation, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... rock mightily he smites, Shattering it more than I can tell; the sword But grinds. It breaks not—nor receives a notch, And upward springs more dazzling in the air. When sees the Count Rolland his sword can never break, Softly within himself its fate he mourns: ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... by the breakfast-table, waiting, in a chill fever, if such a thing can be, for Philip, when a thing occurred which no one could have thought of, and yet which was the most natural thing in the world—which came upon Elinor like a thunderbolt, shattering all her plans again just at the moment when, after so much shrinking and delay, she had at last made up her mind to the one thing that must be done at once. The sound of the driving up of a cab to the door made her go to the window to ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... robes jingling with golden bells; and Queen Elizabeth, be-ruffled and be-fardingaled, has glanced at those gable-ends east of St. Dunstan's, as she rode in her cumbrous plumed coach to thank God at St. Paul's for the scattering and shattering of the Armada. Here Cromwell, a king in all but name and twice a king by nature, received the keys of the City, as he rode to Guildhall to preside at the banquet of the obsequious Mayor. William of Orange ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and ragged peal of cockcrow rose to their ears from the dark valley below the windows. And this shattering noise in the silence of all around was like a light in a dark place, and shook them both out of ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... live, we see the disintegration of that which Christianity means, the shattering of that brotherly love that makes men nations and nations the children of God. Not without truth did Shylock say of his money that he made it breed. The pieces of silver have bred well; they jingle to-day in the pockets of millions ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... before George had had time to draw breath after it, he and Roger and Maxime were all three in the water. The ball from the little cannon of the prison-boat had done its work better this time, striking the electric launch on her nose and shattering her ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... enormous feet, chewing outlying portions of one another, as ill-brought-up babies chew their blankets; sitting down abruptly and unpremeditatedly, and watching with deep dubiety the departing form of their escort, as though a sudden and shattering doubt of his identity had paralysed them, until some contrary wind of doctrine blew them into action again, and they hurled themselves upon his trail, filled with the single intention to rush between his legs. Nothing but that instinct of self-preservation ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... of heat that penetrated even the airtight superstructure of the Elmoran. An instant later, there was another, and another, similar shock. Two more bombs had gone off behind them, in Keegark; that meant that they had found King Orgzild's remaining nuclear armament. There were shattering sounds of breaking glass, and heavy thumps that told of structural damage to the cutter, and hoarse shouts, and lurid cursing as Morrison and his airmen struggled with the controls. The cutter began ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... for ever with the idea of Knox as a human cannon-ball, endowed simply with force of will, and tearing and shattering as it goes. The views which at a definite period gave this tremendous impulse to a nature previously passive, are not obscure, and are perfectly traceable. They are views upon which Knox continually ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... ranks, that break and rend the battling ship. All the night is mad and murderous: who shall front the night? Not the prow that labours, helpless as a storm-blown leaf, Where the rocks and waters, darkling depth and beetling height, Rage with wave on shattering wave and thundering reef on reef. Death is fallen upon the prisoners there of darkness, bound Like as thralls with links of iron fast in bonds of doom; How shall any way to break the bands of death be found, Any hand avail to pluck them ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... pontifical hierarchs, as regards all those profound mysteries which from the beginning have swayed the human heart, sometimes through the light of angelic smiles lifting it upwards to an altitude just beneath the heavens, and sometimes shattering it, with the shock of quaking anguish, down to earth. As it was the function of the hierophant, in the Grecian mysteries, to show the sacred symbols as concrete incarnations of faith, so was it De Quincey's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... there, helpless and maddened. Then he flung the broken pieces of his gun at the disappearing runners; sank down in the gloom, and broke out into that heart-shattering nightmare sobbing which shows that ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... that seemed very poor on a creek which they named William's after Deitz. The gold did not pan a dollar a wash; but in wild haste came the rush to William's Creek. Crossing a creek one party of prospectors was overtaken by a terrific thunderstorm, with rock-shattering flashes of lightning. Shivering in the canyon, but afraid to stand under trees {45} or near rocks, with the gravel shelving down all round them, one of the men exclaimed sardonically, 'Well, boys, this is lightning.' The stream ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... to remote points; by robbing the arsenals in the Northern States of arms and munitions of war, so as to abundantly supply the Southern States at the critical moment; by bankrupting the Treasury and shattering the public credit of the Nation; and by other means no less nefarious. Thus swindled, betrayed, and ruined, by its degenerate and perfidious sons, the imbecile Administration stood with dejected mien and folded hands helplessly awaiting the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... told that they must cross, which they accordingly attempted to do. A few yards from the bank the cart stuck on a rock, and whilst in this position the Boer escort poured a volley into it. Poor Elliot was instantly killed, one bullet fracturing his skull, another passing through the back, a third shattering the right thigh, and a fourth breaking the left wrist. The cart was also riddled, but, strange to say, Captain Lambert was untouched, and succeeded in swimming to the further bank, the Boers firing at him whenever the flashes of lightning revealed his whereabouts. ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... Other men's freaks and eccentricities lead to the distortion of truth and the confusion of relations, but Mr. Reade has freaks of wisdom and eccentricities of practical sagacity. Occasionally he has a stroke of observation that comes like a flash of lightning, blasting and shattering in an instant a prejudice or hypocrisy which was strong enough to resist all the arguments of reason and all the appeals of humanity. "White Lies" is full of examples of his power, and of the peculiarities of his power. Blunt and bold and arrogant as his earnestness often appears, it is capable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... depths of Asia, seized upon with a robber's hand, and, lawlessly trampling under foot, administered up to this time the affairs of Greece, after his own lust and will. Needs it was that we, sooner or later, shattering this iron and heavy sceptre, should recover, at the price of life itself (if that were found necessary), our patrimonial heritage, that thus our people might again be gathered to the family of free and self-legislating ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... sound was swept away and lost in the turmoil of cheers from the French soldiers who heard him, and in the shattering reports of those French 75's, which, blazing hard in the rear, registered still ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... but where I wish to squander, time and energies no more. Though a most romantic region, its toils and dangers legion, my memory oft besieging, what time cannot restore; again I hear the shocks of the shattering of the rocks, see the wallabies in flocks, all trembling at the roar, of the volcanic reverberations, or seismatic detonations, which peculiar sensations I wish to know no more. The horses were mustered at last, and at length we were ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... such a shattering uproar, all vocal, broken out upon a peaceful afternoon. Gipsy possessed a vocabulary for cat-swearing certainly second to none out of Italy, and probably equal to the best there, while Duke remembered and uttered things he had ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... discoveries which spring into the mind with shattering swiftness. This was one of them. A revelation seemed to come to Colwyn as light from the sky at midnight, which, lays everything bare in one ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... hundreds of thousands of more or less drunken and untrained young men marching into battle—muddle-headed, sentimental, dangerous and futile hobbledehoys—there will be thousands of sober men braced up to their highest possibilities, intensely doing their best; in the place of charging battalions, shattering impacts of squadrons and wide harvest-fields of death, there will be hundreds of little rifle battles fought up to the hilt, gallant dashes here, night surprises there, the sudden sinister faint gleam of nocturnal bayonets, brilliant guesses that will drop catastrophic shell and death ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... quarter-gallery. For the Richard's rigging was much cut away, and she was crank at best. So we backed and filled once more, passing the Englishman close aboard, himself being aback at the time. Several of his shot crushed through the bulwarks in front of me, shattering a nine-pounder and killing half of its crew. And it is only a miracle that I stand alive to be able to tell the tale. Then I caught a glimpse of the quartermaster whirling the spokes of our wheel, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mademoiselle, I ask you, am I to be calm when you speak of shattering the hopes of my life?" cries the vicomte, who is dancing about frantically backwards and forwards, in a clear space of three square yards, between the different pieces of furniture by which he is surrounded, all equally fragile, and equally ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... the world is all before you!" Blithely rang the bells and the steeples rocked and reeled! Then—he saw her eyes grow wide, and, all along by Leaden Hall, Drums rolled, earth shook, and shattering ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... give any idea of the rich grayish brown of this old tower against the pale luminous sky, or the pathetic charm of its wild bell music, shattering down through the silent watches of the night, over the sleeping town, as I have heard it, standing by some silent, dark, palace-bordered canal, watching the tall tower melting into the immensity of the dusk, or by day in varying light and shade, ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... like a distant stream of foamy water, seemed to flow down a winding path. The goats were standing quite still. Suddenly they flung up their heads, as if at an imperious call, and in wild abandon rushed toward the shadowy woods above. The dog, as if roused from a trance, gave chase, shattering the silence with yelping barks. The boy, his heart beating violently, followed. It took all the afternoon to collect and quiet the flock, and when Marcus started home he had himself not lost the awed sense of a Presence ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... Diane honestly. "I wish I did. I've wondered and wondered. No matter how hard I think, it doesn't somehow come right. It's like shattering a cherished crystal into fragments to think that every tie of blood and country I valued is meaningless—that every memory is a mockery—that grandfather and you and Aunt Agatha—" she paused and sighed. "When I try to realize," she finished, "I ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... hideous spectre seen in delirium, intermittent, terrible, with blinding flashes of light breaking between. He felt as if his head were bursting. The agony of suffocation possessed him to the exclusion of all else. There came a sudden glaze in his brain that was like the shattering of every faculty, and then, in a blood-red mist, ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... attack on Greece and falls into three main divisions. In the first three books he tells how Persian power was consolidated: in the next three he shows how it flooded Russia, Thrace and Greece, being stemmed at Marathon in 490; the last three contain the story of its final shattering at Salamis and Plataea in 480 and of the Greek recoil on Asia in 479. It is thus a "triple wave of woes" familiar to Greek thought. His dialect is Ionic, which he adopted because it was the language of ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... thus constructing her defences there was one force with which she omitted to reckon and against which she in consequence made no preparation, a force which, nevertheless, was capable of shattering all her carefully-laid schemes at ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... hiss from between his teeth Jabe shot out his long arm and knocked up the barrel of the rifle. In the same instant the Hunter's finger had closed on the trigger. The report rang out, shattering the night; the bullet whined away high over the treetops, and the great bull, springing at one bound far back into the thickets, vanished ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... within each husk by pressure of the beak. Negroes armed with guns were stationed about the fields with instructions to fire whenever a drove of the birds alighted nearby. This fusillade checked but could not wholly prevent the bobolink ravages. To keep the gunners from shattering the crop itself they were generally given charges of powder only; but sufficient shot was issued to enable the guards to kill enough birds for the daily consumption of the plantation. When dressed and broiled they were such ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... wounded by a just reproach, that, unmindful of his royal birth, he conducted an army of strangers against his king and country. The Assyrians maintained their loyalty by a skilful, as well as vigorous, defence; till the lucky stroke of a battering-ram, having opened a large breach, by shattering one of the angles of the wall, they hastily retired into the fortifications of the interior citadel. The soldiers of Julian rushed impetuously into the town, and after the full gratification of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... to this difficult task, which demanded not alone courage of the highest order, but combined with this courage a master-mind and the strategic skill of a general. But there comes a time for everything. The moment for shattering this mystery had apparently arrived and the mortal who was to achieve this wonderful feat enters upon the scene with the quiet nerve and perfect confidence of a master. He realised the gravity of the proposition and therein rested his ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... majority of the community, these three phases, at whose vagaries many laugh, and over whose consequences millions mourn, comprehend intoxication and its results, from the filling of the cup to its shattering fall from the nerveless hand, and this is the end of the matter. Would to God that it were! for at that it would be bad enough. But it is not, for wife, children and friends must suffer and drink the cup of trouble and sorrow ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... but conceive thoughts and images of what is presented to us in words, and unable to think of or understand anything without such images, it is appropriate and right that we view it literally, just as it is painted, that He descends with the banner, shattering and destroying the gates of hell; and we should put aside thoughts that are too deep and incomprehensible for us." "But we ought ... simply to fix and fasten our hearts and thoughts on the words of the Creed, which says: 'I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, dead, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... northward, preparing to meet their fire. But when they perceived that our dastard captains had no such intent, but were beyond doubt running away, they bore down upon the Breda and ran between us and the disabled ship, firing all their guns, shooting away our main-topsail yard, and shattering our rigging. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... to the Old Testament, as revealed in modern light, he would have enjoyed a very different popular fame. In the divine economy, however, even the sledge-hammer of ridicule may play an important role in shattering false claims and the untenable theories which obscure the real truth. It is wholesome to apply the principle of relative values to the Bible, since one cannot fully appreciate the best without recognizing that which is inferior. These priestly narratives come from a school ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... their dead chieftain; I saw the terrified and fainting wives haled along by thongs of raw oxhide, and the weeping prisoners driven passively like sheep to the slaughter; I saw the fearful orgy of massacre and rapine around the open tumulus, the wild priest shattering with his gleaming tomahawk the skulls of his victims, the fire of gorse and low brushwood prepared to roast them, the heads and feet flung carelessly on top of the yet uncovered stone chamber, the awful dance of blood-stained cannibals around the mangled ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... last time, the coffin. All eyes survey the record of name, of sex, of age, and the day of departure from earth—records how shadowy! and dropped into darkness as if messages addressed to worms. Almost at the very last comes the symbolic ritual, tearing and shattering the heart with volleying discharges, peal after peal, from the final artillery of woe. The coffin is lowered into its home; it has disappeared from all eyes but those that look down into the abyss of the grave. The sacristan stands ready, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Dragon," he said, puffing unsteady but solemn breaths between his words, "wrap up in lightning and thunder that we may be—may be—lieve what you say." Then he shook the iron till it gave forth a frightful shattering sound. The Grand Marshal said not a word. With three long steps he stood towering in front of the man and dealt him a side blow under the ear with his steel fist. He fell instantly, folding together like something boneless, and lay along the floor for a moment quite still, except ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... For always formidable was the league 65 And partnership of free power with free will. The way of ancient ordinance, though it winds, Is yet no devious way. Straight forward goes The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid, 70 Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches. My son! the road the human being travels, That on which blessing comes and goes, doth follow The river's course, the valley's playful windings, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... their wives and their children, for the white man's benefit? Did not our people take care of the white women — all the white women, including Boer fraus — whose husbands, brothers and fathers were away at the front — in many cases actively engaged in shattering our own liberty? But see their appreciation and gratitude! Oh, for something to — Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack Nature's moulds, all germins spill at once! That make ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... save money - and he does not in the least like getting hurt. He has received just sufficient education to make him understand half the purport of the orders he receives, and to speculate on the nature of clean, incised, and shattering wounds. Thus, if he is told to deploy under fire preparatory to an attack, he knows that he runs a very great risk of being killed while he is deploying, and suspects that he is being thrown away to gain ten minutes' time. He may either deploy with desperate swiftness, or he may shuffle, or ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... into the underbrush and thus hidden began to close in upon Belsaye town. And of a sudden they heard a cry, and thereafter the shattering blare of a trumpet upon the walls. And now from within the waking city rose a confused sound, a hum that grew louder and ever more loud, pierced by shout and trumpet-blast while high above this growing ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... instance either before or since have I known her to do that thing. The man she had served so well (guessing, perhaps, at the depths of his affection for her) I have known much longer, and in bare justice to him I must say that this confidence-shattering experience (though so fortunate) only augmented his trust in her. Yes, our ships have no ears, and thus they cannot be deceived. I would illustrate my idea of fidelity as between man and ship, between the master and his art, by a statement which, though it might appear shockingly sophisticated, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... almost positive that Nita was sitting down to her task.... The poor girl saw nothing to alarm her, but the gun kicked when the shot was fired by Lois' innocent stepping upon the dining room bell, and the big lamp was rocked so that it banged against the window frame, shattering the one bulb Miles had left in it. Of course he moved the lamp a foot or so, in the resulting excitement. And if Nita had been wounded only, living to tell how the shot was fired, Miles would have committed suicide ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... captain lay dying the cannonade seemed, if that were possible, to have increased in violence; another shell had landed in the garden, shattering one of the old elms. Terror-stricken men came running in to say that all Sedan was in danger of destruction; a great fire had broken out in the Faubourg de la Cassine. If the bombardment should continue with such fury for any length of time ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at the picture. Upon my word, I can't give you a better idea of the shattering effect of Corky's uncle Alexander when in action than by saying that he had absolutely made me forget for the moment that ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... engaged. This was due partly to improved antiseptic methods of treatment, and partly to the nature of the wound made by the Mauser bullet. In most cases this wound was a small, clean perforation, with very little shattering or mangling, and required only antiseptic bandaging and care. All abdominal operations that were attempted in the field resulted in death, and none were performed after the first day, as the great heat and dampness, together with the difficulty of giving the patients proper ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... will there learn of the spirit that has stood unswervingly behind the commanding officer in every decision that he has been called upon to make, even though that decision involved sore disappointment and shattering of hopes. These men have been started out on correct lines and will have no ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... alarming her, but in the sense of the security being gone. And not only security. I don't know how to explain it clearly. Look! Even a small child lives, plays and suffers in terms of its conception of its own existence. Imagine, if you can, a act coming in suddenly with a force capable of shattering that very conception itself. It was only because of the girl being still so much of a child that she escaped mental destruction; that, in other words she got over it. Could one conceive of her more mature, while still as ignorant as she was, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... bell of the city spire Is a far prouder one than such as I; And its deafening stroke, compared with mine, Is thunder compared with a sigh: But the shattering note Of his brazen throat, As it swells on the Sabbath air, Far oftener rings For other things Than a call to the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... started, that he might put an end to his suspense. He had not yet reached the archway before the shattering news burst upon him. From that moment he remembered nothing. But his mother described his ghastly agitation, as, throwing himself upon her neck, he told her, through dreadful sobs, the calamity which had fallen. She did her best to comfort him; but he grew wilder and wilder, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... was indeed shattering to certain closed minds. For the coyote had not only adapted to the country of the white sands; he had evolved into something which could not be dismissed as an animal, clever and cunning, but limited to beast range. Six cubs had been brought ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... social conditions contributed to the change. France stood on the morrow of a shattering catastrophe. The complacency of mid-Victorian England began to be disturbed by menaces from the workshops of industry. And it was precisely in triumphant Germany herself that revolutionary Socialism found, in Karl Marx, its first organizing mind and authoritative exponent. The millennium ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... conflict. Fully aware of the superiority of the Swedish troops, he awaited the attack of his formidable foe behind his redoubts. In one of the skirmishes, two days before the great battle, a bullet struck Charles XII., shattering the bone of his heel. It was an exceedingly painful wound, which was followed by an equally painful operation. Though the indomitable warrior was suffering severely, he caused himself to be borne in a litter to the head ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... true that you have a hard task before you, but it is not because you are fighting convention and shattering illusion; it is because you are assailing a good. Love has never acquired the prestige of the established, and the run of marriages are prompted by advantage, routine, or passion. So you are no innovator, Herbert. The idolatry of love will not be overthrown by a drawn battle between those of the ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... with all his strength he struck the cup upon the table. Then what seemed to be to me a marvel happened, for instead of shattering as I thought it surely would, it split in two from rim to foot. Whether this was by chance, or whether the artist who fashioned it in some bygone generation had worked the two halves separately and cunningly ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... bow and its failure came a fraction of a second too late for him to dodge far enough. His sideward leap was short, and the horn caught him in midair, ripping across his ribs and breaking them, shattering the bone of his left arm and tearing the flesh. He was hurled fifteen feet and he struck the ground with a stunning impact, pain washing over him in a ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... would pass on his way, shattering the peaceful air at half-minute intervals with his bilingual disharmonies. He was pallid, meagerly built, stoop-shouldered, bristly-haired, pock-marked, and stiff-gaited, with a face which would have been totally insignificant but for an obstinate chin and a pair of velvet-black, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... painfully. A cold, dishonouring suspicion gripped me. The man was here to betray his flag. I glanced aloft: the British ensign flew at the peak. And as I turned my head, I felt rather than saw the flash, heard the shattering din as the puzzled American luffed up and let fly across our bows with a raking broadside. Doubtless she, too, took note of our defiant ensign, and leaped at the nearest guess that we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as a matter of fact they were right. As we discovered afterwards, the whole force of the explosion, instead of shattering the vast bulk of the stone image, had rushed up through the hollow chambers in its interior until it struck against the solid head. Lifting this as though it were a toy, the expanding gas had hurled that mighty mass an unknown distance into ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... Gunner at my side made no comment. He was content to let his Arm speak for itself, but when one big gun in a sticky place fell out of alignment for an instant I saw his eyebrows contract. The artillery passed on with the same inhuman speed and silence as the Line; and the Cavalry's shattering trumpets ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... reunited divinity. Come.... (Moves a step toward the bed) I can look on her now ... and be quiet. Sweet rose, I can watch your petals fall. But they fall early ... they fall early ... blasted in the May. Not by the divine breath drawing you home, but by my mortal, shattering hand! I promised you sun and dew.... I have given you frost and shadows. O God! O God! let me not think! Keep me a little, ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... development of population, together with the necessity for war which is inextricably mixed up with a developing population, cannot be effected without, as one champion of the doctrine is pleased to put it, "shattering both the structure of Euclidean space and the psychological laws upon which the existence of self-consciousness and human society are conditional."[27] In simpler words, populations tend to become too large for their territories, ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... wanted." Passing them without an effort, as it seemed, we threw them into the rear with so lengthening an interval between us as proved in itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption; whilst our guard blew back a shattering blast of triumph that was really ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... and scrambling and thudding behind them, and a moment later a chaise with a little girl in it, drawn by a pair of grey ponies, dashed past at a fearful pace, only just avoiding the caravan, and disappeared in a cloud of dust; and then after a minute or so came a tremendous shattering crash, and ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... his directions, took from his breast a miniature that hung round it; but, on examination, it proved that the bullet had passed directly through it, shattering the ivory, so that the woman's face it represented ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the rending of plates, the shattering of glass, and above all this horrid turmoil the mighty roaring and hissing of steam!... And the wild, gurgling cries of the frantic unfortunates who had ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure. The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, The hard brands shiver on the steel, The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly, The horse and ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... first announced to the world in the actions of the fleet which he had sent with sealed orders to the West Indies under Penn's command. The instructions to Penn and to General Robert Venables, who went with him as commander of the troops, were nothing less, indeed, than that they should strike some shattering blow at that dominion of Spain in the New World which was at once her pride and the source of her wealth. It might be in one of her great West-India Islands, St. Domingo, Cuba, or Porto Rico, or it might be at Cartagena ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... had been too much excitement for him to feel in the least like sleeping. He could not bear to think of it with the Dazzler leaping and surging along and shattering the seas into clouds of spray on her weather bow. His clothes had half dried already, and he preferred to stay ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... results were not that of an explosion. It was more as though some tremendous force had pushed outward from within. It had not been the shattering shock of high explosive, but some great thrust that had unhurriedly, but irresistibly, moved everything out ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... struck up the dust at my feet. Nothing was more probable than a ball through the head by ACCIDENT, which might have had the beneficial effect of ridding the traders from a spy. A boy was sitting upon the gunwale of one of the boats, when a bullet suddenly struck him in the head, shattering the skull to atoms. NO ONE HAD DONE IT. The body fell into the water, and the fragments of the skull were scattered on ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... seemed to be flying as swiftly as the wind. A wild ride—to where? Were they driving out into the lonely heart of the deep, there to perish in a last long dive? Or was it shoreward, with oblivion coming in the dreadful grinding and crashing and shattering of timbers? ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... before any of us could interpose, the resolute and powerful man in whose hold he writhed and struggled vainly, with the gripe of a master, had thrust him through the opening, his heels, in their upward evolutions, shattering a dozen of the panes as he disappeared from sight below. We all concluded that he was killed. We were in an upper chamber, which I estimated to be twenty or thirty feet from the ground. I was too much shocked for speech, and rushed to the window, expecting ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... I reached the front, Brodie was hit, the bullet shattering one arm and whirling him around as he stood. He had kept on the extreme front all through, his presence and example keeping his men entirely steady, and he at first refused to go to the rear; but the wound was very painful, and he became so faint that he had to be sent. Thereupon, Wood directed ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... Royson's clothes told him enough, as he thought, to appraise the value of the assistance given. And he had no idea that his fair companion had really been in such grave danger. He believed that the shattering of the pole against the lamp standard had stopped the bolting horses, and that the tall young man now surveying him with a measuring eye had merely succeeded in ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... moment his finger accidentally pulled the trigger, and instantly there was a tremendous report, the noise being increased by the shattering of the ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... times, while others have explained their occurrence at a height of 1300 feet by assuming that the gravel and sand had been thrust uphill by an advancing ice-sheet. (See H.B. Woodward, "Geology of England and Wales," Edition II., 1887, pages 491, 492.) Darwin attributed the shattering and contorting of the slates below the drift to "icebergs grating over the surface.") and far-distant rounded boulders, which I attributed to the violent impact of icebergs or coast-ice. I can offer no opinion on whether the more recent changes of level in England were or were not accompanied ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of the addition of between three and four million women to the electorate was immediately apparent. A woman suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution had suddenly become a live question. A circumstance greatly in its favor was the shattering of the traditional idea that the Federal Constitution must not be further amended, by the adoption of two new Articles—for an income tax and the election of U. S. Senators by ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... intoxicated, drove more rapidly than was his custom.[38] The engine exploded half a minute after the carriage had passed it—killing twenty persons, wounding fifty-three (among whom was St. Regent, the assassin who fired the train), and shattering the windows of several houses on both sides ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... was astonished to find how little both money anxieties and the shattering of literary hopes distressed him. For the first, it was clear that his mother and sister could live with an adequate degree of comfort and dignity. And as for his literary hopes, he realised that the failure had been a real revelation of his own weakness; but he ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... cleansed the windows of their homely coat of grime; and they look out, literally, upon a new heaven and new earth. The long quiet work of adjustment which others must undertake before any certitude rewards them is for these concentrated into one violent shattering and rearranging of the self, which can now begin its true career of correspondence with the Reality it has perceived. To persons of this type I do not address myself: but rather to the ordinary plodding scholar of life, who must reach the same goal by ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... wave harshly withdrawing upon the reluctant pebbles, there sounded from the crowd an enormous intaking of the breath. An instant's stupendous silence, the wave poised for return. Down! A shattering roar, tremendous, wordless. The figure of Pike appeared upon the balcony, in his shirt sleeves, his long hair wild about his face, in his hands that which caught the roar as it were by the throat, stopped it and broke it out anew on a burst ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... instinct is quite properly that of self-preservation. Of many established dramatists all over the world it may be affirmed that if they were so indiscreet as to publish a novel, the result would be a great shattering and ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... do. Only one presented his piece at the young officer. Mr. Oliphant snapped his pistol at him, forgetting that it was empty. Immediately half a dozen shots were fired at him, but so wildly that none did him any harm beyond shattering his buckle, and he retreated hastily up one of the dark steep lanes ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... arrived three blows from the oaken log sent the door shattering from its hinges. Wilhelm sprang at once over the prostrate portal, but not in time to prevent the flight of the guard down the stairway. Calling the sappers to the first landing, and pointing to the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... was maddening to be picked off, like stuffed crows resting on a tree branch; maddening to listen to the low sounds from beneath which told them that some one of their comrades was facing the end of his fight. Then, just as they reached the summit, one of their five dropped, with a bullet shattering ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Divine solution; the visible is lost in the invisible, and nature retires before her God. Surely they are splendid reveries those of the Platonic school; but it is sad to reflect that they have not cast the slightest gleam of light on the dark, frightful, faith-shattering mysteries which perplex all inquirers. The old shadows of sin, death, damnation, evil, and hell, are found to darken the 'ideas' of Plato's world quite as deeply as they do the actualities of this weary, work-day earth, into which men have, for some inscrutable ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... left the scene behind him, he heard the guns suddenly roar out. He imagined them shaking in black rage. They belched and howled like brass devils guarding a gate. The soft air was filled with the tremendous remonstrance. With it came the shattering peal of opposing infantry. Turning to look behind him, he could see sheets of orange light illumine the shadowy distance. There were subtle and sudden lightnings in the far air. At times he thought he could see ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... way to arrive at a well-considered verdict was to toss a coin. Another type of judge conveyed to the jury that the prosecution had established an unanswerable case, but the defence had shown equal skill in shattering it, and therefore he did not know on which side to make up his mind, and fortunately English legal procedure did not render it necessary for him to do so. The prisoner might be guilty and he might be innocent. Some of the jury might think ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... to muse on vanished youth; it is bitter to lose an election or a suit. Bitter are rage suppressed, vengeance unwreaked, and prize-money kept back. Bitter are a failing crop, a glutted market, and a shattering spec. Bitter are rents in arrear and tithes in kind. Bitter are salaries reduced and perquisites destroyed. Bitter is a tax, particularly if misapplied; a rate, particularly if embezzled. Bitter is a trade too full, and bitterer still a trade that ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... and yet in the din of the shattering glass he was able to escape again. He had lost all sense of direction. Even his touch on the furniture didn't help him, since everything was now displaced. Nevertheless, he continued to duck and dodge, to wriggle and creep and elude. Once Thor's ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... the other three, which were simultaneous absolutely. Howls and cries for help at once came from a tent 15 yards in front of my dugout. A shell had crashed into this tent where five men were lying, exploding at the feet of one, and shattering his leg at the ankle. The other four were untouched. Some of the fuses of yesterday's shells have been dug up to-day, and we find from the brilliant orange colour on these that lydite had been used, in some of the shells ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... silvery olives in a Tuscan dell, her mother within hearing of the waves that broke on the Atlantic shore; and if the wanderer could be purified by penitential tears, what mattered the shattering of the family circle on earth, when in the eternal Beyond, it would be indissolubly reformed? Over the black gulf that yawned in her young, pure life, the wings of her Christian faith bore her steadily, unwaveringly ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... their incessant lashing for century upon century. The waves, like furious blue bulls, charged, frothing with anger, against the rock, wearing deep caverns, which were prolonged upward in the form of vertical cracks. This age-long battle was destroying the coast, shattering its stony armor, scale by scale. Colossal wall-like fragments loosened. They first separated by forming an imperceptible crevice which grew and grew with the passing of centuries. The natural wall leaned for ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... on more or less actively in many minds; in some cases with very decisive results. But after the explosion caused by Mr. Ward's book, a crisis of a much more grave and wide-reaching sort had arrived. To ordinary lookers-on it naturally seemed that a shattering and decisive blow had been struck at the Tractarian party and their cause; struck, indeed, formally and officially, only at its extravagances, but struck, none the less, virtually, at the premisses which led to these extravagances, and at the party, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... finished. A sudden, clattering roar had come from beneath the hood, a clanking jangle which told him that his eyes had sought the oil gauge too late,—the shattering, agonizing cacophony of a broken connecting rod, the inevitable result of a missing oil supply and its consequent burnt bearing. Hopelessly, dejectedly Barry shut off the engine and pulled to one side of the road,—through sheer force of habit. ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... death here and now, following fast upon that of this unhappy Frenchwoman, would avail to wipe out the evidence I have so laboriously collected against this man, I should welcome it with gratitude. I shrink from ending my career with the shattering of so fine an image, in the public eye. What lies back of this crime—what past memories or present miseries have led to an act which would be called dastardly in the most uninstructed and basest of our sex, I lack the imagination to conceive. Would to God I had never tried to find out! ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... the doors below! Loose the dogs! Curses! they don't hear me! I'll ring the alarm-bell." And he raised his arm with the intention of executing his purpose, when a ball from Jack's pistol passed through the back of his hand, shattering the limb. "Aha! my lad!" he cried without appearing to regard the pain of the wound; "now I'll show you no quarter." And, with the uninjured hand he drew a pistol, which he fired, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... countries, and were soon qualified as instruments for communicating the results of intellectual activity. The Middle Ages closed by two events occurring nearly at the same time: the erection of the great monarchies on the ruins of feudalism, and the shattering of the sovereignty of the Romish Church by the Reformation. At the same period, the invention of printing, the most important event in the annals of literature, became available as ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... lose! The shattering of broad sheets of ice around them was a warning of what might happen to the frail support of their chase. One thrust of the boat-hook sometimes cleft a cake that to the eye seemed stout enough to bear a heavier ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... spoke an ear-splitting fusillade of hammering commenced outside. The steel bulkheads reverberated with blows that settled down to a persistent rain of sound, deafening, nerve-shattering. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... well, it is our careless custom to talk about dress, and to write about dress, as if it had no meaning at all; as if the breaking waves of fashion which carry with them the record of pride and gentleness, of distinction and folly, of the rising and shattering of ideals,—"the cut which betokens intellect and talent, the colour which betokens temper and heart,"—were guided by no other law than chance, were a mere purposeless tyranny. Historians dwell upon the mad excesses of ruff and ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... get floored as I do! I'm going to chuck it!" and he threw his Horace across the room, shattering the ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... effort, wrenched away his right hand, which flew to his hip-pocket and came out grasping a small revolver. Instantly I struck up with my left and caught him a smart blow under the chin, which dislodged him; and as he rolled over there was a flash and a report, accompanied by the shattering of glass and followed immediately by the slamming of the street door. I let go his left hand, and, rising to my knees, grabbed the revolver with my own left, while, with my right, I whisked out the concussor and aimed a vigorous ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman |
