"Shock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... package of papers there was a letter written in a woman's hand. Hasty and professional as was his glance, and much disturbed as he was by the discovery which accompanied his finding of the letter, the words which met his eyes carried a shock such as he had not known in all the years of service ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... and we are equal. But if you think of making me fight, I tell you I won't. If there was a furnace behind me, I should fall into it rather than run against a bayonet. I 've heard say that the nerves are in the front part of us, and that's where I feel the shock. Now we're on a plain footing. Say that I'm not to fight. I'll be your servant till you release me, but say I 'm not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... circumstances the clergy did not receive more than two-thirds of the value of the tithe in kind. The delays were a frequent source of loss. In rainy weather, when the farmer desired to get his crops in quickly, he was obliged to shock his crops, give the tithe-owners notice to set out their tithes, and wait for their arrival; in the meantime the crop, perhaps, being ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... natives fell aside from the shock, and in a few seconds the boys stood by their countrymen. There were six in all— sailors, as the boys had expected. The fight had evidently been a sharp one. Four or five natives lay upon the ground, and two of the sailors were bleeding from sword-cuts. The tars gave a cheer at the sight of ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... to show you what sort of person it is who is at present entrusted with the care of your own son, and allowed to associate on a footing of equality with your niece, Miss Atherton. I can assure you it is very painful to me to write this, for I know how it will shock you. But I feel my conscience would not give me peace till I told you all. May I now ask one special favour from you? It is well known, and you probably have noticed it yourself, that Jeffreys and I naturally dislike one another. But I want you to believe ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... had the smartest shock of an earthquake which I remember, (and I have felt thirty, slight or smart, at different periods; they are common in the Mediterranean,) and the whole army discharged their arms, upon the same principle that savages beat drums, or howl, during an eclipse of the moon:—it was a rare scene altogether—if ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... appreciate what genius they often brought to the solution of great problems. We have had much negative pseudo-information brought together with the definite purpose of discrediting monasticism, and now that positive information is gradually being accumulated, it is almost a shock to find how different are the realities of the story of the intellectual life during the Middle Ages from what many ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... for you, Mrs. Lyndsay, if you will only give him the treat—and then, he will not shock the sensitive nerves of the sailors, by hanging them near the sea," sneered the handsome ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... nearer they rushed to the shore. Now they were almost upon it. Harry steadied himself, and cast one quick glance at the captain. Now the bow cut the thick foliage like a knife, but there was no shock, and the Mariella, with trees and vines scraping her sides and rising almost to her funnel-top, shot into a broad lagoon that lay completely hidden by the dense ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... heard this, they felt a shock, though rather at the horror of such an event, than from belief in him who asserted it; the barbarians, on the other hand, assumed fresh courage, and advanced with greater fury on the disheartened Romans, who were just ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... against the Allies. If on the other hand it should appear that the advantage has been with the Allies, there is every reason to hope that Prussia will come forward with vigour to decide the contest." Records: Prussia, vol. 196. It was the surrender of Ulm which really gave Pitt the shock attributed to Austerlitz. The despatch then written—evidently from Pitt's dictation—exhorting the Emperor to do his duty, is the most impassioned and soul-stirring thing in the whole ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... wondered if the Almia of the story had cut off her beautiful hair. He was sure she had had an abundance of light silvery-golden hair which fluffed itself all about her head under her wide hat, and it would be a sort of shock to think of its being cut off. But he asked no questions; he did not want to interrupt ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... engineer of the pursuing locomotive was evidently ready for such an emergency. He reversed his engine, and was soon running backwards. When the baggage car struck the tender no harm was done; the shock must have been very slight. In another minute the enemy's engine was puffing onward again in the wake of the fugitives, while the car was being pushed along in ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... necessary, but not a subject for glory; because it for a long time blasted the generous feelings of Loyalty. And now, when by the benignant effect of time the present Royal Family are established in our affections, how unwise it is to revive by celebrations the memory of a shock, which it would surely have been better that our constitution had not required. BOSWELL. See ante, iii. 3, and iv. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... and progressive. Labor turmoil in 1980 led to the formation of the independent trade union "Solidarity" that over time became a political force and by 1990 had swept parliamentary elections and the presidency. A "shock therapy" program during the early 1990s enabled the country to transform its economy into one of the most robust in Central Europe, but Poland currently suffers low GDP growth and high unemployment. Solidarity suffered a major defeat in the 2001 parliamentary elections when it failed ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... that might have been sixty, he was most comical to look upon—in stature short and round, suggesting kinship with a gnome. His head seemed too large for the body, yet this might have been because it carried a plenteous shock of straw-colored hair, with mustache and beard to match. He was attired in "knickers" and pleated jacket, that looked as if he'd slept in them, and his fat legs were knock-kneed. On the floor about his feet lay almost every conceivable type and age ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the spell not yet shaken off him, wanting his supper. A smaller image of his father he was, lean and shock-headed, with gray steady eyes changing from the stillness of childhood's innocence to the depth ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... letters, to whom Louis XIV. committed the governorship of his sons; died of a broken heart due to the shock the death of the dauphin gave ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... woman's world, full of odd surprises. Everything she did seemed quite sweet and reasonable and at the same time daring and bizarre. She looked at things differently, with a sort of worldly-wise tolerance and an ever-changing, provocative smile. Nothing seemed to shock her even when, to try her, he moved closer; ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... the effects due to swift communication by steam, but especially to the electric telegraph, modern credit is a very different thing from what it was fifty years ago. Now, a shock on the Bourse at Vienna is felt the same day at Paris, London, and New York. A commercial crisis in one great money-center is felt at every other point in the world which has business connections with it. Moreover, as Cherbuliez(245) says: "A country is more subject to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... crash. Sudden I heard the roar of one of Penfeather's ever-ready pistols followed by his voice up raised in vicious sea-curses, and glancing up saw the black ship right aboard of us and braced myself for the impact; came a shock, a quiver of creaking timbers and the groan of our straining hawsers as the black ship, falling off, drifted by in a roaring storm of oaths and blasphemy. Now when her battered stern-gallery was nigh lost in the mist, bethinking me of the boat I had seen, I glanced about and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... himself a great draught of water, and, restored by that and by the rush of rage that swelled all his veins, he flew downstairs, past Joseph in the hall, who gave an outcry of astonishment, to where the gardener's boy was still holding his pony outside. Geoff, scarcely able to stand, what with the shock and what with the emotion, clambered up upon the pony, and turned its head homewards. The pony was well pleased to find himself in that way, and obeyed with enthusiasm his little master's impulse. The small steed and ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the shock (cried puss) "Was ever cat attended thus! The open drawer was left, I see, Merely to prove a nest for me, For soon as I was well composed, Then came the maid, and it was closed. How smooth those 'kerchiefs, and how sweet Oh what a delicate retreat! I will resign myself to rest Till ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... turned out better than I had anticipated. My father seemed to recover rapidly from the shock he had received. Our tribe, in a fierce inroad upon the southern country of the Crows, had inflicted upon them a severe punishment. Our men returned with a hundred and fifty scalps, four hundred horses, and all the stock of blankets and tobacco which the ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... deemed Utopian, was opposed by many well meaning men who feared that its effect would be to give a shock to the trade and domestic industry of the province; and who thought that, as the depreciation had been gradual, justice required that the appreciation should ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... already published of the elevation of the land at Valparaiso, which accompanied the earthquake of 1822 (Dr. Meyen "Reise um Erde" Th. 1 s. 221, found in 1831 seaweed and other bodies still adhering to some rocks which during the shock of 1822 were lifted above the sea.): but I heard it confidently asserted, that a sentinel on duty, immediately after the shock, saw a part of a fort, which previously was not within the line of his vision, and this would indicate that the uplifting ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... forget—no, though I double my present years—the shock, the wildness of despair with which she first detected the selfishness of my homage; with which she saw that I had only mocked her trusting simplicity; and that while she had been lavishing the richest ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mastery of self, the steady, firm control of natural, intuitive impulses, selfish because natural, was a progression. Each victory not only gained the immediate end in view, but braced the mind and increased the force of will for the next shock, the next struggle. She had imagined and had told herself that Bennett had broken her strength for good. But was it really so? Had not defeat in that case been only temporary? Was she not slowly getting back her strength ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... up, and he struck the pavement with a concussion that sprung his hat from his head, and sent it some feet in the air. In his efforts to recover himself, his legs became entangled in those of the other, and over he went, backwards, his head striking the ground with a terrible shock. ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... other Colonels. This was at Cromwell's request, who had reason to know Ireton, and had special confidence in him. Nor did the result belie Cromwell's judgment. Ireton's wing, indeed, had given way and fled under the shock of Rupert's charges, but not till Ireton himself had had his horse shot under him, received two wounds, and been taken prisoner in a counter-attack. Rescued by the turn of the battle, he came in for a share of the praise. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 42, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... faces, and all so strange! Life in front of me—home behind, I felt like a waif before the wind Tossed on an ocean of shock and change. ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... to question the crew, Dick received a terrible shock. They knew less about the ship's operation than his own men! They didn't understand their ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... in one hand and the pitcher in the other, so Julie caught the jug from her, and dashed the water in the woman's face. The sudden choking and shock broke the spell. Then the towel was hastily pinned over the lower part of her face and she was hurried to the door. But the smoke and heat caused the girls to slam the door to again ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the wheel, and the warm shaft of light which streamed from somewhere in the ship's body and isolated the foremast as a column of gold. There was the monody, confident but subdued, the most ancient song in the world, of invisible waters. Sometimes there was a shock when she dropped into a hollow, and a vicious shower whipped across the glass of the wheel-house. I then got the sad feeling, much too soon, that the inhospitable North was greeting us. It is after sundown at sea, when looking through ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... guest, as it were by a simultaneous paralysis. The latter involuntarily arose; while the former planted his solid person still more firmly in its seat, like one who was preparing to meet some severe and expected shock, with all the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... quiet. The people returned on shore, and some were seen hurrying back to buildings which had been the most shaken, either to rescue friends who had been left behind, or to carry off their household furniture, in case another shock should occur, and bring their ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... morning," said the clerk thoughtfully. "But I'm sure that none of them answers to the description we have had of madame's husband. Let me see—Monsieur Dampier is aged thirty-four—he is tall, dressed in a grey suit, or possibly a brown suit of clothes, with a shock of ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... dining-room of the Hotel of the Four Nations at Barcelona was opened softly, almost nervously, by a shock-headed little man, who peered into ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... Madeleine de Traisnel, where she was educated after the superficial fashion which she so much regrets in later years. She speaks of herself as a romantic, imaginative child, but she began very early to shock the pious sisters by her dawning skepticism. One of the nuns had a wax figure of the infant Jesus, which she discovered to have been a doll formerly dressed to represent the Spanish fashions to Anne of Austria. This ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... recent writers, that the brain is a voltaic pile, and that each of its pulsations is a discharge of electricity through the system. It has been remarked that the sensation felt by the hand from the beating of a brain, bears a strong resemblance to a voltaic shock. And the hypothesis, if followed to its consequences, might afford a plausible explanation of many physiological facts, while there is nothing to discourage the hope that we may in time sufficiently understand the conditions of voltaic phenomena to render the truth of the hypothesis amenable to ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... traverses and repudiates Romance. The duke and the lady are simpler and slighter Hamlets—Hamlets who have no agonies of self-questioning and self-reproach; intervening in the long pageant of the famous lovers of romantic tradition with the same disturbing shock as he in the bead-roll of heroic avengers. The poet's indignant denunciation of his lovers at the close, apparently for not violating the vows of marriage, is puzzling to readers who do not appreciate the extreme subtlety of Browning's use of figure. He was at once too much and too little ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... residence as ambassador at the Papal Court at Rome from 1816 to 1823; the revolution of the three days of July 1830 in Paris threatening, as he thought, a recurrence of the horrors of the first, gave him such a shock that he sickened of it and died; by his treatment of the history of Rome he introduced a new era in the treatment of history generally, which consisted in expiscating all the fabulous from the story and working on the residuum of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... living, and the bills that could not be deferred, were eating deep into Laura's subsidy. Ralph's anxieties returned, and his plight was brought home to him with a shock when, on going one day to engage passages, he learned that the prices were that of the "rush season," and one of the conditions immediate payment. At other times, he was told the rules were easier; but in September and October ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... light of determination in her grandmother's eyes, and realized with a shock of surprise that to protest would ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... womb of that deep night Burst livid flashes of electric flame: Whirling and circling with terrific might, In wild confusion on the tempest came. Nature, awakening from her still repose, Shudders responsive to the whirlwind's shock Feels at her mighty heart convulsive throes; Her groaning forests ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... passed through the heart of Austin, he could not have received a more sudden shock, and the start which he made from his saddle attracted the notice of ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... years ago and had immense piles of sawdust. We mulched with about four inches and some animal got every chestnut out. We never knew what animal it was. There wasn't any evidence on the top. They got every chestnut which was quite a shock to him. I brought this point out that there was danger and he was going to build the bed up high and cover with wire or he was going to get some of this old camouflage netting type and cover that bed for protection both against rodents and early spring frost. He didn't ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... They are resisted by the inertia of the crust, and are taken up by its elasticity. The nature of this succession of alternate compressions and rarefactions in the crust possess some resemblance to those arising in an earthquake shock. ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... gymnastics—occupying the space of a few seconds—it came to him with a shock that here was a new specimen of the species. At the same time he comprehended that she was as pure and lovely as the white orchid of Borneo and that she did not carry that ridiculous shield called false modesty. He could talk ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... friends in Southampton, and whilst taking a bath in a movable bathing-house on the beach, probably was seized with cramp and suffocated by water getting into his lungs. The news of his death caused a painful shock in business, social, and religious circles, where he had been so well known ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the Colwan wood, I perceived a figure approaching me with slow and dignified motion. The moment that I beheld it, my whole frame received a shock as if the ground on which I walked had sunk suddenly below me. Yet, at that moment, I knew not who it was; it was the air and motion of someone that I dreaded, and from whom I would gladly have escaped; but this I even had not power to attempt. It came slowly onward, and I advanced ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... system, the system which is all one gangrene; the most corrupt system in Europe, is it not? Here is my comfort. Apart from the dreadful amount of individual suffering which cries out against us to heaven and earth, this adversity may teach us much, this shock which has struck to the heart of England may awaken us much, and this humiliation will altogether be good for us. We have stood too long on a pedestal talking of our moral superiority, our political superiority, and all our other superiorities, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... equal to the occasion. Summoning all his powers to manfully bear this additional shock of fate, he ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... The shock of this blow was so violent and sudden, that Mrs Gamp sat staring at nothing with uplifted eyes, and her mouth open as if she were gasping for breath, until Betsey Prig had put on her bonnet and her shawl, and was ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... freshened, the boat rose and fell with easy motion over the whitening waves. The sun all at once was obscured. They looked behind them; a heavy black cloud was rising rapidly in the west. Greenleaf put the boat about, and, as it met the shock of the sea, they were covered with spray. To go back in the wind's eye was clearly impossible; they must beat up, and, hauling as close to the wind as possible, they stood towards Swampscot. For a mile or two they held this course, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... right point so favoured us that we made sure of finding ourselves off the coast of Spain on the morrow by daybreak. But, as good seldom or never comes pure and unmixed, without being attended or followed by some disturbing evil that gives a shock to it, our fortune, or perhaps the curses which the Moor had hurled at his daughter (for whatever kind of father they may come from these are always to be dreaded), brought it about that when we were now in mid-sea, and the night ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a generation ago, in those days when Shanghai was not as respectable as it is now—whatever that says to you. It was, of course, a great change from Home, and its crude pleasures and crude companions gave him somewhat of a shock. For he was of decent stock, with a certain sense of the fitness of things, and the beach-combers, adventurers, rough traders and general riff-raff of the China Coast, gathered in Shanghai, did not offer him the society he desired. He was often obliged to associate ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... from the last. Though Robin's Constitution hath received a Shock it may never recover, his comparative Amendment fills us with Thankfulnesse; and our chastened Suspense hath a sweet Solemnitie and Trustfullenesse in it, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Meg Gordon were trying to comfort Gipsy, and make her take heart of grace again, but she had suffered a severe shock, and controlled herself with difficulty. She sat up, however, as Miss ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... mind is due to the fact that you have not recovered from the shock of your fall. You won't feel like that always, sure not to, a girl with the courage and good sense you have always revealed. Still, what I am going to tell you is obliged to stir you up. I don't believe you will object to the other Girl Scouts hearing what ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... these cliffs is so wild and horrid, that it is impossible to behold them without terror. The spectator is apt to imagine that nature has formerly suffered some violent convulsion, and that these are the dismembered remains of the dreadful shock; the ruins, not of Persepolis or Palmyra, but ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... the stupendous opposing forces met with a shock that, to the man's overstrung senses, seemed to make the very daylight reel. There was no space for evasion or manoeuver. The two ponderous bulks went straight through the ranks of the black bulls, ripping them with beak and horn from shoulder to rump, treading them down like corn, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... have gone to her and said things which he had found it impossible to say when the opportunity had come to him. He rose again from his seat as the powerful snow-engine and its consort coupled on to the train. The shock almost flung him off his feet. Even then she ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... subtle intrigue. For he well knew that opposite parties or factions in a commonwealth, like passengers in a boat, serve to trim and balance the unready motions of power there; whereas if they combine and come all over to one side, they cause a shock which will be sure to overset the vessel and carry down everything. And therefore Cato wisely told those who charged all the calamities of Rome upon the disagreement betwixt Pompey and Caesar, that ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... occasioned his going downstairs, and without well knowing what he did, he knocked at the parlour door, which when opened, the first thing which struck his eyes was the gentleman whom he had robbed, drinking a glass of water. This gave him such a shock that he had much ado to collect spirits enough to tell the gentlewoman of the house that he perceived she had company, and therefore would not intrude. But she, laying her hand upon his arm, said, Pray, Mr. Benson, walk in; here's nobody but a gentleman ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... my sincere thanks for your kind letter. The event to which you allude came upon us with startling suddenness, and was a severe shock to us all. My poor brother has long had a shaken constitution, and during the summer his appetite had been diminished, and he had seemed weaker, but neither we, nor himself, nor any medical man who was consulted on the case, thought ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... smile on the aged mother, who was kneeling by her side. His eyes moistened for a moment, as he said she had always been a faithful servant, and they should never be able to supply her place. Mrs. Flint took to her bed, quite overcome by the shock. While my grandmother sat alone with the dead, the doctor came in, leading his youngest son, who had always been a great pet with aunt Nancy, and was much attached to her. "Martha," said he, "aunt Nancy loved this child, and when he comes where you are, I hope you will be kind to him, for ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... secret" letter to that effect reaching him at that port on the 29th of September,—his birthday. The purpose of the ministry filled him with shame and indignation. Confronted abruptly with the course which four months before had seemed to him natural and proper, the shock brought out the fulness of the change through which he had passed meantime. He has no illusions about Corsica. The inhabitants had disappointed all the expectations of the British,—"At a peace I should rejoice at having given up the island." But the days passing over his head had brought wider ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... so strongly against Bonaparte as it did at that period. The French have more need than any other people of a certain degree of liberty of the press; they require to think and to feel in common; the electricity of the emotions of their neighbours is necessary to make them experience the shock in their turn, and their enthusiasm never displays itself in an isolated manner. Whoever wishes to become their tyrant therefore does well to allow no kind of manifestation to public opinion; Bonaparte ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... of ardour and delight, and even longed for its approach. Not so Rosalie! She looked on war and bloodshed with the natural apprehensions of her sex; and saw in the projected expedition, and its prospects of glory, only danger and death to her lover! Her spirits received a severe shock when the intelligence was first communicated—she gradually lost her cheerfulness and spirits; the song, the dance, had no longer charm or interest for her, and she could only contemplate the approaching separation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... off at the neck, and was carried into camp, by that splendid shock of luxuriant black hair, which had been his pride when he was alive. It was clotted with blood now, and matted with the dirt from the lairs where he had slept in the jungle, but it served well enough as a handle by which to hold his dissevered head, and there was no need, therefore, to make ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... family, and, although there were some faint efforts made to smooth the matter over, no good resulted. The difficulties of the past two years had so inured his parents to expect the untoward and exceptional that, astonishing as this was, it did not shock them so much as it would have years before. They were too much frightened by life to quarrel with its weird developments. They could only hope ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... quiet," he said. "She must not be troubled in any way. Worry or mental distress is what I fear most. Any sudden bad news or shock might—well, goodness knows what effect it might have. She must not be worried. Ros—" after one has visited Denboro five times in succession he is generally called by his Christian name—"Ros, if you've got any worries ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... perfect swarm of white-headed little ones. The father, and his two stalwort sons, are busy in the forest close at hand. How merrily the echoes ring out at each blow of their axes, and how the earth groans with the shock of the falling trees. The two largest of the woodland giants are cut into logs—the others are also divided into the proper lengths. The logs are placed athwart the stream several feet distant from each other—the rest are laid in close rows athwart, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... move the Kaname rock Though he tug at it never so hard, For over it stands, resisting the shock, The ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... had been done by that unfinished coffee, or by that bread whose crumbs lay here and there, or by those cutlets, a bone of which remained? Then as for the third time he passed by, again glancing, his eyes fell upon the basket of figs, and at once he stopped, as if beneath the shock of a revelation. An idea seized upon him and mastered him, without any plan, however, occurring to him by which he might change his sudden suspicion into certainty. For a moment he remained puzzled with his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... be verified, and which, nevertheless, is the glory of its originator. But when, to explain the course of human events, I suppose, with all imaginable caution, the intervention of a God, I am sure to shock scientific gravity and offend critical ears: to so wonderful an extent has our piety discredited Providence, so many tricks have been played by means of this dogma or fiction by charlatans of every stamp! I have ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... speaking earnestly across the table, her profile turned to me. I had noticed casually her earnest manner, her somber clothes, and the great mass of odd, bronze-colored hair on her neck. But suddenly she glanced toward me and the utter hopelessness—almost tragedy—of her expression struck me with a shock. She half closed her eyes and drew a long breath, then she turned again to the man across ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... marvellous, but the uncanny words and the girl's apparent seriousness gave a touch of unreality to the scene. Presently, from sheer inability to further control himself, the looker-on gave a laugh that rent the stillness of the afternoon like a cruel shock. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... of Mrs. Grancy's death came to me with the shock of an immense blunder—one of fate's most irretrievable acts of vandalism. It was as though all sorts of renovating forces had been checked by the clogging of that one wheel. Not that Mrs. Grancy contributed any perceptible ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... chance-sown by the fountain, Blooming at Beltane, in winter to fade; When the whirlwind has stripp'd every leaf on the mountain, The more shall Clan-Alpine exult in her shade; Moor'd in the rifted rock Proof to the tempest shock, Firmer he roots him the ruder it blow; Menteith and Breadalbane, then, Echo his praise agen, Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the world, events move slowly and men's minds assimilate change without shock. Old people look for death long before it arrives, so that when at last the great change comes it is effected quite calmly. There is no indecent haste, no scrambling to put a semblance of finish to the incomplete, as there is in the hurried ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... terribly hot day; we had to lie in the trenches, as all day long the enemy fired at us from the smaller positions facing us, at a distance of 15,000 paces; and constantly the bombs burst over our heads. At regular intervals a lyddite bomb—that gave us a shock through our whole body—came from the wood towards the cannon on our left. Once only part of our entrenchment, where, fortunately, no one happened to be, was blown ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... a European empire was no small undertaking. It needed strong hands and a capable head. Peter possessed both. In the year 1698, the great operation of grafting Modern Europe upon Ancient Russia was performed. The patient did not die. But he never got over the shock, as the events of the last five ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... on inland streams in the following ways: (1) By dynamiting. If a charge of dynamite be exploded on the bed of the river, great numbers of fish, killed by the shock, rise to the top of the water and can be taken. This practice was quite common at one time, but is now prohibited by law ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... no satisfactory conclusion, my cogitations had one useful effect; they occupied my mind to the exclusion of that unfortunate draught of tea. Not that I had been seriously uneasy after the first shock. The quantity that I had swallowed was not large—the tea being hotter than I cared for—and I remembered that, when I had thrown out the lump of sugar, I had turned the cup upside down on the table; so there could have ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... Then we heard rhythmic beating on the top of the stand behind the medium. Startling as it was at the beginning, increasing as it did from a slow beat to an incredibly rapid drumming, when the initial shock was over Herbert ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... deliberate and spaced with not infrequent slight delays. Exactly at the end of the hour the lecture stopped. Suddenly, abruptly, but quietly, without peroration of any sort, always with "a gentle shock of mild surprise" to the unprepared listener. He had weighed out the full measure to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... two pinches of the apple and swallowed them. After that and a little shudder she rose again, and turned about to go to bed, backwards, slowly, tremblingly, with measured steps, feeling her way past the furniture, having a shock when she touched anything, and laughing to herself, nervously, when she remembered ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... I spun round for a minute or two with such velocity that I almost lost my senses, and then fell suddenly, left wing foremost, down the vacuum funnel in the centre. I dropped like a stone, and lost nearly a thousand feet. It was only my belt that kept me in my seat, and the shock and breathlessness left me hanging half-insensible over the side of the fuselage. But I am always capable of a supreme effort—it is my one great merit as an aviator. I was conscious that the descent was slower. The ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he said, "when the dreadful flash came which shattered that tree. We were all knocked down by the shock, and narrowly escaped being killed, not only by the lightning, but by the pieces of timber which were, as you may observe, scattered ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... glad that things are different now— 'T would give me quite a shock To see our dinner-table look As bare ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... until its diameter equals that of the bore of the gun. The forward end of the tube is pointed with some soft material, in which is embedded the firing pin, a conical cap closing the end. A cushion of air is interposed at the rear end of the dynamite charge, to lessen the shock of the discharge and prevent explosion, until the impact of the projectile forces the firing pin in upon the dynamite and explodes it. Many charges have been successfully fired at Fort Hamilton, N.Y. As the center of gravity is forward of the center of figure in the projectile, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... who pass through life by other ways? "Those lucky merchants!" cries the soldier stout, When years of toil have well-nigh worn him out: What says the merchant, tossing o'er the brine? "Yon soldier's lot is happier, sure, than mine: One short, sharp shock, and presto! all is done: Death in an instant comes, or victory's won." The lawyer lauds the farmer, when a knock Disturbs his sleep at crowing of the cock: The farmer, dragged to town on business, swears That only citizens are free from cares. I need not ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... this," he said, drawing forth a two-dollar bill. "Why didn't I see him do that in time? At least, I am grateful that he did n't attempt to pay me at parting, while in the act of shaking hands." His eyes twinkled deeply. "You have no idea what a shock it is to feel a crisp bill crinkling in your palm at such a moment. But come, gentlemen. Our post-prandial smoke has ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... face of Joel Creech. "Brack! ... What's this? Is he dead?" Bostil sustained a strange, incomprehensible shock. Sight of a dead man had never before ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... pigmy or a fairy mite. This third tumbler was a little fellow of about eight, very slender and childish in form, but lithe and well-knit. Instead of being dark and gypsy-like, as were the other three of the wandering band, this boy was fair, with a shock of golden hair falling about his shoulders, and with a skin of unusual whiteness, despite his life of exposure to sun and hard weather. And the eyes that looked wistfully at the children in front of him were blue as the ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... whose keen vision had so often served him in good stead. Then, turning on his heel and scanning the grey horizon seaward, he added: "They're going to fire out on to the Gaa between those two lighthouses on Buddon Ness. By Jove!" he laughed, "the men in them will get a bit of a shock." ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... murderers; one of whom, in a tone of exultation, cried, 'Here is a glorious day for France!' I endeavoured to assent, though with a faultering voice, and, as soon as they were passed escaped to my room. You may imagine I shall not easily recover the shock I received.—At this moment they say, the enemy are retreating from Verdun. At any other time this would have been desirable, but at present one knows not what to wish for. Most probably, the report is only spread with the humane hope ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... having a great esteem and affection for you, and the grateful memory of him that is departed being still green and fresh upon my spirit, I cannot forbear to inquire, how you have stood the second shock at your sad meeting of friends in the country. I know that the very sight of those who have been witnesses of our better fortune, doth but serve to reinforce a calamity. I know the contagion of grief and infection of tears, and especially when it runs in ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... make a final and desperate rush past him; and he had his plan of action all outlined. What worried him was the possibility of Wildfire doing some unforeseen feat at the very last. Slone was prepared for hours of strained watching, and then a desperate effort, and then a shock that might kill Wildfire and cripple Nagger, or a ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... blow dealt Belllounds would not have caused such a shock of amaze, of torture. The secret of the punishment meted out to him by his father! The hideous thing which, instead of reforming, had ruined him! All of hell was expressed in ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... from those about her, and made her necessarily solitary. As for marriage, the possibility of such a thing never crossed her mind; there was not a man in the parish who did not offend her sense of propriety and shock her taste, whenever she met one; and though her warm, kind heart made her a blessing to the poor and sick, her mother was yet bitterly regretted at quiltings and tea-drinkings, where she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... the shock had been so sudden and overpowering that he showed none of the lesser symptoms of agitation or embarrassment. In this revelation of a secret, that he now instinctively felt was bound up with his ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... a shock within a month, when a cowboy from a neighboring ranch, and without provocation, was shot down by Indian police in a trader's store at the agency. The young fellow was a popular Texan, and as nearly ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... again, o'er snowy main, The winged steeds return: On roughening rock, with shriek and shock, ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... train, glided like a ghost over the water; the smoke poured from her stack and the cleft wave foamed at her prow, but there was little else to remind her inventor that 2,300 horse-power was being expended to drive her. There was no jar, no shock, no thumping of cylinders and pounding of rapidly revolving cranks; the motion of the engine was rotary, and the propeller shafts, spinning at 2,000 revolutions per minute, made no more vibration than a ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... some time vigorously on both sides, till at last the Mazices, though a hardy and warlike race, being unable to withstand the fury of our men and the shock of their arms, after sustaining heavy loss, fled in every direction in disgraceful panic; and as they fled they were put to the sword in great numbers, with the exception only of those who, contriving to make their ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... chosen to look I could have read every word she was writing. But naturally I was not choosing to, for one thing, and for another my eyes were glued to her face. Something in the look of her gave me a sick shock. She was deadly pale, and under the light of Charliet's half-trimmed lamp I saw the blue marks under her eyes, and the tight look round the nostrils that only come to a woman's face when she is fighting something that is pretty nearly past her, and is next door to despair. She looked ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... Roland had got so into the habit of taking it for granted that every Paranoyan he met must of necessity be a devotee of the beloved Alejandro that it came as a shock to him to realize that there were those who objected to his restoration to the throne. Till now he had looked on the enemy as something in the abstract. It had not struck him that the people for whose correction he was buying all these rifles and machine-guns were ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... bonnie bairn," said Janet. There was a sob in her voice, and she crooned kind words to the dying girl, who fell asleep at last in her arms. Then Janet went to the door, and stood almost gasping in the strong salt breeze; for the shock of Sophy's pitiful return had hurt her sorely. There was a full moon in the sky, and the cold, gray waters tossed restlessly under it. "Lord help us, we must bear what's sent!" she whispered; then she noticed a steamboat with closely reefed sails ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... "A shock of remembrance shot across me. The chase, her pale face, the words, the temple—all my dream ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... breath away. For the first few seconds he was only aware that a heavy sea had been shipped, and had wet him through and through with its unexpected deluge. A moment later, he was dimly conscious that his companion had slipped from his grasp, and was nowhere visible. The violence of the shock, and the slimy nature of the sea water, had made him relax his hold without knowing it, in the tumult of the moment, and had at the same time caused Muriel to glide imperceptibly through his fingers, as he had often known an ill-caught cricket-ball ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... was full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick: I heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was not like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to wake. They rose expectant: eye and ear waited ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... undulated round me; its lightning wings grew dim; nearer, nearer; till I felt a shock electric,—and ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... publicly that it will continue its economic reform agenda in close coordination with its Mercosur (Southern Cone Common Market) partners. In 1995, the government also promised to undertake efforts to formalize the financial sector, after a financial shock forced the bail-out of the second and third largest banks. Paraguay's continued integration into Mercosur also offers potential for growth; it is closely linked with the success of foreign investment promotion. Non-traditional exports, such as finished agricultural ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... general gasp. Roxanne regained her balance, gave a little cry, and rose quickly to her feet. It had been the greatest shock of her life. This, from Jeffrey, the heart of kindness, of consideration—this ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... after it. It is because men in general are shocked at the idea of matter without beginning and without end, that they so readily embrace the idea of a God, forgetting that if the idea of eternal matter shock our sense of the probable, the idea of an eternal Being who existed before matter, if well considered, is sufficient to shock ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... came. I went to Roscoe and told him that she wished to see him. He smiled sorrowfully and said: "To what end, Marmion? I am a drifting wreck. It will only shock her." I think he thought she would not love him now if ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... be honestly said that Cornelia was profoundly revolted by the facts so lightly, almost gaily, presented. Her innocence of so much that they implied, and her familiarity with divorce as a common incident of life, alike protected her from the shock. But what really struck terror to her heart was something that she realized with the look that the hideous little man now bent upon her: the mutual understanding; the rights once relinquished which might now be urged again; the memory of things past, were all suggested ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... was past the first moment of shock and would be able to handle herself. After all, they had made very precise preparations against the day when they might discover that the Federation's suspicions had turned, ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... Avenge them! avenge our flag! Forward!' These few words roused my men. We advanced as swiftly as our horses could carry us upon the artillery, which was taken. The enemy's cavalry, which awaited us firmly, was repulsed by the same shock, and fled in disorder, galloping as we did over the wrecks of our squares. The Russians rallied but a squadron of horse grenadiers came up to reinforce me, and thus enabled me to hold ground against the reserves of the Russian Guard. We charged again, and this charge was terrible. The brave Morland ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton |
