"Terrifically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... already been withdrawn to rearward positions not far from group headquarters and were firing as fast as the guns could be reloaded. The others were still in their old emplacements a mile or so farther forward, being shelled terrifically by the Austrian twelve-inch batteries, but having extraordinary luck. They were using up as much of their ammunition as they could, because it was becoming clearer every moment that the Italian transport service was not going to be able to supply the lorries ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... aware that the hush was too intense, too complete; and a moment later, as though stretched to the cracking-point, it burst terrifically into sound. A huge uproar shook the room, crashing through it like a tangible mass. The sparks whirled in a menacing dance round the little prince's body, and, abruptly blotted, left a deeper darkness, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... with a faintly wry expression. "Not necessarily white on that account, my friend, so don't run away with that idea, I beg! I'm quite capable of giving you a worse drubbing than the good Antonio, for instance, if you qualified for it. I can be a terrifically wild beast upon occasion. Look here, you imp! Are you starved or what? Do you want ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... foremost, of course, will come President John Adams, he who, both before and after his term of high office, toiled terrifically in the public cause, being at the time of his election to Congress a member of ninety committees and a chairman of twenty-five! We see him as the portraits have taught us to see him, with strong, serious face,—austere, but not harsh,—velvet coat, white ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... sustain it! "Well, I mean the establishment of something between us. I mean your arranging somehow that we shall be drawn more together—know together something nobody else knows. I should like so terrifically to have a RELATION that is ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... James said if he ever troubled them that he would immediately put him away; but he was very fond of the younger ones, played with them, and amused them, though when roused and provoked by grown-up people, he raged, stormed, swore terrifically, and struck with anything that was near him, in short, he had an irritable but not a sulky, sour, misanthropic temper. The Messrs. Chambers wrote a book about him and his doings at a very early period of their literary history. Did I tell you of a female relative, Niven ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... strong line of the enemy's troops. The rebels opened fire with shot and shell from their batteries, as our troops advanced, changing it soon to grape and canister, which with the fire from the infantry made it terrifically hot. Dashing through this over the open plain, the soldiers of the Army of the Cumberland swept on, driving the enemy's skirmishers, charging down on the line of works at the foot of the ridge, capturing it at the point of the bayonet, and routing the rebels, sending them at ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... the battle. But he was one of those who, precisely as they are effective when present, are forgotten in absence. And, in the meanwhile, as the Vega was utterly desolated, and all supplies were cut off, famine, daily made more terrifically severe, diverted the attention of each humbler Moor from the fall of the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... girls best, and I thought he looked conceited and proud. My best friend has a big brother, too, but he's not a bit like yours. Rather shaggy, but so clever and kind! He promised to write to me while I was here, just because he knew I should be dull. It's really an honour, you know, for he is terrifically clever. Every one says he will be Prime Minister one day. He's going to Cambridge. Your brother is, too, isn't he? I shouldn't think they would be at all in the ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... was cut short, or rather it ended in a shriek of pain and fright, as the cook, suddenly swinging himself from his shoulders, landed a terrifically propelled right foot in ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... holding tightly to the purlin — for the waves made the masts tremble with their violence — I tried to look around and below me. The sea was literally raging beneath, and great masses of livid-looking foam were dashing be- tween the masts, which were oscillating terrifically. It was still dark, and I could only faintly distinguish two figures in the stern, whom, by the sound of their voices, that I caught occasionally above the tumult, I made out to ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... where it has been most conspicuous, is either absolute—in which case it will be found to justify itself, even at present, to the considerate—or it is but provisional, and waiting for contingencies—in which case it will soon unmask itself more terrifically than either friend ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... suburbs and the concrete citadel were the coal pits, with their fathomless depths of ages and the mysteries of kultural strategy. The struggle became a succession of avalanches of gas, burning oil, rifle and machine-gun fire. Both sides lost terrifically, but the Germans had held the town. Now it was given up without a blow and its great coal fields were once more in possession of the French. Before retreating the Germans showed their usual destructive energy and the mines were found flooded ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... Else Again" we find some sixteen translations of Horace and other "furriners," exotic phrases such as "eheu fugaces" and "ex parte" used without making faces over them, and a popular exposition of highly technical verse forms which James Russell Lowell and Hal Longfellow would have considered terrifically high-brow. And yet thousands of American business men quote F.P.A. to thousands of other American business men ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... at last; but even as they stood panting, the rent in the top of the embankment spread—deepened—yawned terrifically—and the pent-up lake plunged through, and sweeping away at once the center of the embankment, rushed, roaring and hissing, down the valley, an avalanche of water, whirling great trees up by the roots, and sweeping huge rocks away, and driving them, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... the seasoned trans-atlantic tourist who, on the occasion of a certain terrifically stormy passage, was for three days the only person on board excepting the captain who never missed a single meal. You find him everywhere; there must be a million or more of him; and he loves to talk about it, and ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... German diplomat, landing from his steam launch on his return from the palace; from the devil-may-care English youth in white flannel to the graceful Turkish adjutant on his beautiful Arab horse; from the dark-eyed Armenian lady, walking slowly by the water's edge, to the terrifically arrayed little Greek dandy, with a spotted waistcoat and a thunder-and-lightning tie. He sees them all: the Levantine with the weak and cunning face, the swarthy Kurdish porter, the gorgeously arrayed Dalmatian embassy ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Her 'recital' must take place in the coming season, in May or June. She would sketch a programme at once—tomorrow morning—and then work, work, work terrifically! ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... but the path is cut into continual and short windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the mountain. It is a scene terrifically desolate. In a thousand spots the traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived, where trees lie broken and strewed on the ground, some entirely destroyed, others bent, leaning upon the jutting rocks ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... crying, and barking, which, I suspect, as far as the prisoners were concerned, was far from complimentary. Among them were some dreadful old crones, who came stretching out their withered, black, parchment arms, shrieking terrifically, and abusing the white men as the cause of all the misery and hardships it had been their lot to endure. Their accusations were, I believe, in most respects, too just. Certainly white men had torn them or their ancestors from their native land—white ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... he could make gold. He looked at me with his frightful grin, and said, "Yes, and diamonds too, with time and money to help me." He not only believes in The Philosopher's Stone; he says he is on the trace of some explosive compound so terrifically destructive in its effect, that it will make war impossible. He declares that he will annihilate time and space by means of electricity; and that he will develop steam as a motive power, until travelers ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... there was but one bark found bold enough to venture upon her angered bosom, and this, although but an epitome of those that have subdued the world of waters, and chained them in subservience to the will of man, now danced gallantly, almost terrifically, from billow to billow, and, with the feathery lightness of her peculiar class, seemed borne onward, less by the leaping waves themselves than by the white and driving spray that fringed their summits. This bark—a canoe evidently of the smallest description —had been watched in its progress, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... contain a single pound of powder. Its course, as usual, was to be marked by its path along the sea, as it bounded, half a mile at a time, from wave to wave. Spike saw by its undeviating course that this shell was booming terrifically toward his brig, and a cry to "look out for the shell," caused the work to be suspended. That shell struck the water for the last time, within two hundred yards of the brig, rose dark and menacing in its furious leap, but ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... tales already republished in this pleasant edition, Ravenshoe has always seemed to me the best in every respect; and in spite of its feeble plot and its impossible lay-figures—Erne, Sir George Hillyar, and the painfully inane Gerty—I should rank The Hillyars and the Burtons above the more terrifically imagined and more neatly constructed Geoffry Hamlyn. But this is an opinion on which ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Yes! I have seen the phantom ship, or at any rate a phantom ship, once—but only once. It was one night in the fifties, and we were becalmed in the South Pacific about three hundred miles due west of Callao. It had been terrifically hot all day, and, only too thankful that it was now a little cooler, I was lolling over the bulwarks to get a few mouthfuls of fresh air before turning into my berth, when one of the crew touched me on the shoulder, and ejaculating, 'For God's sake——' abruptly left off. Following the ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... grasped her wrists now. His blond head is bowed down over hers, so that his lips hover close to the part of the dusky hair. "My hat, Maidie," he cries, "or I'll—I'll take what I want!" Both hands tugging terrifically at those slender wrists now, and yet not gaining an inch. ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... fragile old man. His trousers were terrifically too big for him. When he walked (in an insecure and frightened way) his trousers did the most preposterous wrinkles. If he leaned against a tree in the cour, with a very old and also fragile pipe in his pocket—the stem (which looked enormous in contrast to the owner) protruding ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... Levake," he said after he had raked him terrifically. "Now, if you are going to shoot, do it. You haven't long to live ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... so pretty,' my friend said, 'and one of the saddest parts of it was that I hear she was terrifically disfigured, and she took this most sadly to heart. The right side of her face was utterly ruined, and the sight of the right eye lost, though, strange to say, the left side entirely escaped, and seeing her in profile one would have had no notion of ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... that strip lowered, I tell you!" "Oh, my Lord! Can't you lower that strip!" Another workman at the rear of the stage began to saw a plank, and somebody else, concealed behind a bit of scenery, hammered terrifically upon metal. Altogether it was ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... some cranky idea he'd got hold of, or some rot he'd been reading. Stanley turned over on his back and kicked with his legs till he was a living waterspout. But even then... "I dreamed I was hanging over a terrifically high cliff, shouting to some one below." You would be! thought Stanley. He could stick no more of it. He stopped splashing. "Look here, Trout," he said, "I'm in rather a hurry ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... mountain wall before and above us there hung in mid-air a vast sheet of water which the howling wind flapped to and fro in the gorge terrifically; while the blinding lightning and crashing thunder seemed to issue together from the mountain itself. The creek, before clear and placid, quickly became turgid and agitated. It began to creep up the banks. ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... it the more if I did," Nan said, lazily. These competitions in unselfishness between Pamela and Frances Carr always bored her. There was no end to them. Women are so terrifically self-abnegatory; they must give, give, give, to someone all the time. Women, that is, of the mothering type, such as these. They must be forever cherishing something, sending someone to bed with bread and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... Gollyer, instantly masked in gravity. "You're quite right. Still, we are looking things in the face—planning for the future. Of course it's a delicate question, terrifically delicate. I'm almost afraid to put it to you. Come, now, how shall I express it—delicately? It's this way. Fifteen thousand a year divided by one is fifteen thousand, isn't it; but fifteen thousand a year divided by two, may mean—" He straightened ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... scarcely uttered the words before the darkness was rent by the most terrifically vivid flash of lightning that he had ever seen, while simultaneously the air was shattered by a clap of thunder of such frightful volume that the cruiser jarred and shivered from stem to stern, as though she had taken the ground at full speed; indeed, for ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... Turks, well aware of the limited possibilities at the disposal of the allied force, had made terrifically strong defensive positions of the few beaches where successful landings were at all possible. Row upon row of barbed wire had been run along the shores and even out into the sea. Mines had been constructed that could be depended upon to blow the intrepid first landing parties to pieces. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... I stopped again at the platform, and was requested to see the GREAT BELL; of which I had heard the deep-mouthed roar half a dozen times a day, since my arrival. It is perhaps the finest toned bell in Europe, and appeared to me terrifically large—being nearer eight than seven feet high.[209] They begin to toll it at four or five o'clock in the summer-mornings, to announce that the gates of the town are opened. In case of fire at night, it is ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... taken completely by surprise; they had not had the least notion of affairs getting to such a length. The smell of the powder, the loud report, and the sensation of positive danger that accompanied these phenomena, alarmed them most terrifically; so that, in point of fact, with the exception of the empty chest that was thrown down in the way of the first soldier, no further idea of defence seemed in any way to find a place in the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... charging him when the warning bellow attracted his surprised eyes loomed terrifically monstrous before him—monstrous and awe-inspiring; but it did not terrify Tarzan, it only angered him, for he saw that it was beyond even his powers to combat and that meant that it might cause him to lose his kill, and Tarzan was hungry. There was but a single alternative to remaining for annihilation ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... but, before he got half-way, his coronation pace degenerated into a strut, and then into a shamble, and with an awkward and confused countenance, half impudent and half flinching, he held forward his left hand to his newly-arrived visitor. Mr. Cleveland looked terrifically courteous and amiably arrogant. He greeted the Marquess with a smile at once gracious and grim, and looked something like Goliath, as you see the Philistine depicted in some old German painting, looking down upon the pigmy fighting ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... when her emancipation seems to be assured. The woman, with her flashy dress in one arm and her equally exaggerated type of picture hat in the other, is nearly prostrated by the tune and the realization of the future as it is terrifically conveyed to her. The negress, in the happiness of serving LAURA in her questionable career, picks up the melody and hums it as she unpacks the finery that has been put away in ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... exhausted, I assure you," cried the youth, fanning himself with his handkerchief. "And though you have quite forgotten it, this is our dance. What can you two have been talking about? But why ask? There is only one theme upon which you could become so terrifically serious." ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... have disintegrated from some slow action of the celestium. It could be destructive: terrifically destructive. You shall judge. There was the schooner, naked as your hand. Possibly I might have thought it a hallucination but for what came after. Darkness fell again. I supposed then that Handy Solomon's crew were managing—or mismanaging—the ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The pressure was still far below that of the fuel. He turned the heating unit on full, and watched the gauge climb higher. They didn't understand the numerals of the domed cities, but knew the pressure was getting terrifically high. ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... her hand and took his. He was terrifically conscious of the warm smoothness of her fingers playing a soft tattoo on the back of his ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... warm human friendliness. It was nothing new to him. He knew they were reaching out their woman's hands to him. But it was different now. Far down there in the orchestra circle was the one woman in all the world, so different, so terrifically different, from these two girls of his class, that he could feel for them only pity and sorrow. He had it in his heart to wish that they could possess, in some small measure, her goodness and glory. And not for the world could he hurt them because of their ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... your orders, Henri," smiled Jules, as full of merriment as ever. Indeed, the fiercer the conflict had grown, the more desperate the efforts of the Germans had become, and the more terrifically the fighting had developed, the higher had this young fellow's spirits risen. Of fear he showed not a trace, though of excitement he showed every evidence. Sparkling with wit, as lively as a cricket, wonderfully cheery, he had stood in the forefront of the ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... intellectual depository. This feat accomplished, a roseate gulf was revealed, which would have made the stout heart of Quintus Curtius quail ere he took the awful plunge. Time or contest had removed the ivory obstructions in the centre, but the shores on each side of the gulf were terrifically iron-bound, and appeared equal to crushing the hardest granite; the shinbone of an ox would have been to her like an oyster to ordinary mortals. She revelled in this luxurious operation so long, that I ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... and beheld with dismay a vast vapor shooting from the summit of Vesuvius in the form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk, blackness—the branches fire!—a fire that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment, now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed terrifically ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the horizon with the sudden sweep and splendor of a meteor. The arch described by her ascent was as vast in compass as it was rapid; and, in all history, no political growth, not that of our own Indian empire, had travelled by accelerations of speed so terrifically marked. Not that even Russia could have really grown in strength according to the apparent scale of her progress. The strength was doubtless there, or much of it, before Peter and Catherine; but it was latent: there had been no such sudden growth as people fancied; but there had been a ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... medicine-man of the pale-faces was received with as grave a courtesy as if he had been an invited guest. Just as the two had entered the dark circle that formed around them, a young chief threw some dry sticks on the fire, which blazing upward, cast a stronger light on a row of as terrifically looking countenances as ever gleamed on human forms. This sudden illumination, with its accompanying accessories, had the effect to startle all the white spectators, though Peter looked on the whole with a calm like that of the leafless tree, when the cold is at its height, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... awful Cyclops, stood upon the floor of the hall some twenty feet below, yet rearing terrifically up through the well of the building till his head and shoulders alone seemed to fill the entire space beneath the skylight. Though his feet rested unquestionably upon the ground, his face, huge as ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood |
