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All of a sudden   /ɔl əv ə sˈədən/   Listen
All of a sudden

adverb
1.
Without warning.  Synonym: all at once.
2.
Happening unexpectedly.  Synonyms: of a sudden, suddenly.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"All of a sudden" Quotes from Famous Books



... our minds to go long enough. We had been in among all shapes, and want of shapes, of dreariness, through and in and out of every thrup and thrum of weariness, scarcely hoping ever more to find our way out and discover memory of men for us, when all of a sudden we saw a grand sight. The day had been dreadfully hot and baffling, with sudden swirls of red dust arising, and driving the great drought into us. To walk had been worse than to drag one's way through a stubbly bed of sting-nettles. But now the quick ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... come to get him out. He allows he'll keep quiet in there and make believe he is drowned and give her a good scare and make her sorry fur him. But when the cistern door is opened, he hears a lot of clacking tongues all of a sudden like they was a hen convention on. He allows she has told some of the neighbours, and he'll scare them too. So Hank, he laid low. And the woman as looks in sees nothing, for it's as dark down there as the insides of the whale what swallered Noah. But she leaves the door open and goes on ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... from morning till past sunset, the cannon never ceased to roar. It was dark when the cannonading stopped all of a sudden. ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... victuals is no object. And then he has travelled the roads long enough to be sure that he can get a meal for nothing at any house he stops at, as all the tinmen do. He must have seen us looking at his eating so much, and may be his pride is hurt, and so he's made up his mind, all of a sudden, to take his meals no more at ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... to the spot sailed the galleon; Where, for a twelvemonth, off and on The hundred and eightieth degree She rose and fell on a tropic sea. But lo! when it came to the ninth of May, All of a sudden becalmed she lay One degree from that fatal spot, Without the power to move a knot; And of course the moment she lost her way, Gone was her chance to save ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... shuts up with them inside of it," she said mournfully to herself, "I'm sure I don't know what they'll do. It's such a stiff thing to open that it must be perfectly awful when it shuts up all of a sudden," and she was just giving a little shudder at the mere thought of such a thing, when the sideboard bumped up against something and she found that it had run into a tree. In fact, she found that she had drifted into a forest of enormous trees, growing in a most remarkable manner straight up out of ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl

... saying you'd come, I lay awake nights projecting how I'd put you in training for a spell, and then help you into the saddle and make you the boss of the round-up, the same as I'd been. Then it came over me, all of a sudden, that I'd been as crooked as a dog's hind leg—that we'd all been crooked. Not that I've ever taken a dollar for my personal pocket, for I haven't; but I've bought and sold and dickered and schemed with the best of 'em, and the worst of 'em. On top of that, I began to ask myself how I'd like ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... "You're getting damned virtuous all of a sudden," growled Malbihn. "Perhaps you think I have forgotten about the inn keeper's daughter, and little Celella, and that ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... here when I did. I was interested in the war; but there was no real question of my coming, until the month I sailed. Then, all of a sudden, I seemed to know why it was that I had spent my life on horseback. They told me in England that the real war was over. When I landed at Cape Town, I found out that the one thing needed was a man who could ride, and shoot straight. From ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... time ago, when Charles the First was in prison, Lord Bassett was a true friend to him," began Eph, plunging into his story without delay. "The lord had some papers that would have hung a lot of people if the king's enemies got hold of 'em, so when he heard one day, all of a sudden, that soldiers were at the castle-gate to carry him off, he had just time to call his girl to him, and say: 'I may be going to my death, but I won't betray my master. There is no time to burn the papers, and I can not take them with me; they are hidden in the old leathern chair where I sit. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... a feast, at which he got drunk; and that all proud with that happy success, he nevertheless did a great many things entirely ridiculous; but being informed that the ambassadors that the Athenians sent to him to desire peace, wished to see him, he changed his countenance all of a sudden, and having heard their proposals with all possible attention, answered them with a great deal ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus

... dress my voice in the tones of factitious tragedy—no need to lengthen my face artificially. It feels all of a sudden quite a yard and a half long. Polly has stopped barking: he is now calling, "Barb'ra! Barb'ra!" in father's voice, and he hits off the pompous severity of his tone with such awful accuracy, that did not my eyes assure me to the contrary, I could swear ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... will never have an end; as soon as they have hopes of getting out of it, which never fails when the evil has arrived at a certain pitch, they are so surprised, so glad, and so transported, that they run all of a sudden into the other extreme, and are so far from thinking revolutions impossible that they suppose them easy, and such a disposition alone is sometimes able to bring them about; witness the late revolution in France. Who could have imagined, three months before the critical period of our disorders, that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... is said that on Christmas eve, twelve o'clock, the animals talk. I thought so much about it, and I made up my mind to go and hear what they had to say. I was in the middle stable that's empty, and I waited, and all of a sudden—" She stopped, trembling. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... the grey summer dawn, Louie had just wakened, and was staring sleepily at the door, when, all of a sudden, it opened—very quietly, as though pushed by some one anxious not to make a noise—and Reuben's head looked round it. Louie, amazed, woke up in earnest, and Reuben came stealthily in. He had his hat and stick under his arm, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... again, and the sun shines brighter, and the flowers bloom prettier, and there's a kind of a pleasantness about the place. I can't set it down to anything, any more than I know why the sky's blue, but it's there all the same. So I thought over it a deal, and one day I was up in the High field, and all of a sudden it rapped into my head what Grannie Dunch says about the brownie as used to work at the farm. 'Maybe,' I says to myself, 'he's come back.' So I didn't say nothing, but I took notice, and things went on getting better, ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... Dodd melted at once— before so great a thing: she longed to make friends with him; but for once felt timid. It struck her now all of a sudden that she had been misbehaving. However, she caught Dodd alone on the deck, and said to him softly, "I want so to ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... She sounded relieved. "But if you saw one, too.... All of a sudden, it was standing there on deck beside me, right out of nowhere. I lost my head and grounded the Queen, and it vanished. ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee

... letter was disguised, yet not so much but that I was able to discover whose it was. I found; however, in the manner in which the secret was expressed a warmth of zeal and a picturesque style that did not belong to the author of the letter. While reading it, I all of a sudden suspected it was a counterfeit, and intended to mislead the Emperor. I communicated ms idea to him, and the danger I perceived in this fraud. As I grew more and more animated I found plausible reasons enough to throw the Emperor himself into some uncertainty. 'How ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... "How mighty we young gents are all of a sudden. Unless you buy of me sometimes, you shall hear of me again; never fear, young gen'leman." He shouted out the latter words, for Eric had turned scornfully on his heel, and ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... as if he were upon the most friendly footing. I was at first so much ashamed of ever having known such a fellow that I stifled my resentment and drew him into a conversation on such topics as I knew he could talk upon; in which, to do him justice, he acquitted himself very reputably; when all of a sudden, as if recollecting something, he pulled two papers out of his pocket, which he presented to me with great ceremony, saying, 'Here, my dear friend, is a quarter of a pound of tea, and a half pound of sugar, I have brought you; for though it ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... of learning; and he made small proficiency in his studies. He even threw himself into a dissolute and disorderly course of life; and he consumed, in gaming, drinking, debauchery, and country riots, the more early years of his youth, and dissipated part of his patrimony. All of a sudden, the spirit of reformation seized him; he married, affected a grave and composed behavior entered into all the zeal and rigor of the Puritanical party, and offered to restore to every one whatever ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... work was completed; but I thought they had better stay a few days, until after the dance, at any rate, in case anything should go wrong with the electric light. It is such a nuisance if they happen to pop out all of a sudden; and they generally do when there is something on. You don't mind ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... have thought you'd be such a coward? It's all over now, and we can't go away all of a sudden like this, even if we wanted to, and I don't. I want to stop and see what will happen next, and help if ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... we ran up and down till I had a deep-worn trail alongside the log, an' he had a deep-worn trail inside the log, an' I was figgerin' to have him wear it right through at the bottom so the log'd open, but all of a sudden I says, 'I know what to do for you.' I took off my boot and stuffs the leg into one end of the log. Then I rattles a stick at the other end and I heard him run into the boot. Then I squeezes in the leg and ties a string around it an' brings him home, me ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... considerable emotion the first evening. The Marquis of Lorne, son-in-law of Queen Victoria, Governor of Canada, was of royal punctuality. The students knew it. The house was noisy and quivering. Through an opening in the curtain I gazed on the composition of this assembly. All of a sudden a silence came over it without any outward reason for it, and the "Marseillaise" was sung by three hundred warm young male voices. With a courtesy full of grandeur the Governor stood up at the first notes of our national hymn. The whole house was on its feet in a second, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... same purport. But how strange that he should have brooded for eight moons over his passion without ever having considered how it might appear to the object of it! His talk here suggests a mental inadequacy which one is hardly prepared to see change all of a sudden into heroic resolution. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... hardly believe their eyes and their ears. Where did he come from? What did he mean? But when they realized how kind his voice was, and that he was not accusing them nor threatening to have them punished, they were very much ashamed. They hung their heads guiltily; and then all of a sudden they fell at his feet, the five of them, confessing how it had all come about ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown

... Jacob and Laban deal you spoke about the other day," said he. "Curious how things come around that way, ain't it? There I went ridin' off, rakin' up my brains to remember that story, and laughed when it come to me all of a sudden. Jacob skinned them willow sticks, and skinned the old man, too. But I don't guess Earl would turn a trick like that on me, ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... Then all of a sudden the world seemed to turn upside down. The heavens shone below her, in endless depths. At first she was dreadfully frightened; she thought she had flown too far up and lost her way in the sky. But presently she noticed that the trees were mirrored ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels

... him, and he sucked at it from time to time as he staggered on, until all of a sudden he ran on to the alarmed masker, who was growing impatient ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... a girl's life, Jimmie, when she's been starved like I have for something of her own all her days; there's times, no matter how she's held in, that all of a sudden comes a minute ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... attempted to drive away these thoughts, by taking up the book which he had been reading. And now, all of a sudden, his attention became fixed. The book contained a printed letter that an Italian physician had written upon the very subject, about which Cotton Mather was so anxiously meditating. He ran his eye eagerly over the pages; and, behold! a method was disclosed ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... from the others, who will make all haste to take the prisoners and the stolon stock to a place of safety. If we bite at that bait, we shall lose everything, for as soon as the decoys have led us as far out of our way as they care to have us go, they will disappear all of a sudden, and we shall never see them again. If we keep on after the main body, and travel fast enough to gain on them, they will drop the stock in the desert, break up into squads of twos and threes, and we shall have nothing to do but to turn about ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon

... me to make a personal remark. We were far away from public life, confined in prison, and only very little news reached us. Various events filled us with anxiety and despondency. Bohemia seemed to be like a large, silent and dead churchyard. And all of a sudden we heard that underneath the shroud with which they tried to cover our nation there still was some life. Czech books were read more than ever, and the life of the national soul expressed itself in the performances ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... taking a little walk when all of a sudden I happened to think of the bayonet drill Sergeant Mullins ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope

... the North," he added, "but not in the South." The south "learned over the years that mixing the races was a vast problem." Bradley continued, "so any change in the Army would be a big step in the South." General Haislip reasoned, you "just can't do it all of a sudden." As for the influence of those opposed to maintaining the Army's social status quo, Haislip, who was the Vice Chief of Staff during part of the Gillem Board period, recalled that "everybody was floundering around, trying to find the right thing to do. I didn't lose ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... pier tremble. Compartment after compartment of first-class carriages flit by, each lit up so refulgently as to show the crowded passengers, with their rugs and bundles dispersed about them. It is a curious change to see the solitary pier, jutting out into the waves, all of a sudden thus populated with grand company, flashing lights, and saloon-like splendour—ambassadors, it may be, generals for the seat of war, great merchants like the Rothschilds, great singers or actors, princes, dukes, millionnaires, orators, writers, 'beauties,' brides and ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... All of a sudden Phebe's head went down upon her arms folded on the rail of the bridge and, secure in her solitude, she gave herself up ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... still leaves as he goes under them. Striking sparks with his iron shoes; silencing the katydids. Dr. Morgan riding to a child-birth over Tilbury way; riding to deliver a woman of her first-born son. One o'clock from Wayfleet bell tower, what a shower of shooting stars! And a breeze all of a sudden, jarring the big leaves and making them jerk up and down. Dr. Morgan's hat is blown from his head, the horse swerves, and curves away from the sign-post. An oath—spurs—a blurring of grey mist. A quick left twist, and the gelding is snorting and racing down the Tilbury road with the ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... go to bed—now," she confided amiably. "'Cause every night I put Peach to bed at eight o'clock and she's so naughty always I have to stay with her! And then all of a sudden it's morning—like going through a ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... "Then, all of a sudden, she took a new turn and begun to study and to try to learn things—everything: how to talk and dress and act, besides stuff that was just book-learnin'. She's been doin' that for quite a spell and Mary says she thinks she'd do pretty well now, in lots of ways, if only she had half ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... Mr. Van Brunt afterwards described it, "looking as if she could have bitten off a ten-penny nail," and, indeed, as if the operation would have been rather gratifying than otherwise. She gave them no notice at first, bustling to and fro with great energy, but all of a sudden she brought up directly in front of Ellen, and ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... daylight—the she-fiend stole our car—and then I went to bed to get a little sleep. About three o'clock this afternoon Pinkie Bonn woke me up. He was half batty with excitement. He said he was over in the tenement in the Pug's room. The Pug wasn't in, and Pinkie was waiting for him, and then all of a sudden he heard a woman screaming like mad from somewhere. He went to the door and looked out, and saw a man dash out of a room across the hall, and burst in the door of the next room. There was a woman in there ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... my fellow traveller and protectress, Esther Davis, who had used me with the utmost tenderness during the journey, and prepared me by no preceedings signs for the stunning blow I was to receive, when I say, my only dependence and friend, in this strange place, all of a sudden assumed a strange and cool air towards me, as if she dreaded my becoming ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... said the Captain, "you ris up like a ghost all of a sudden. I thought you's out to play. I come down a-purpose arter you. Mis' Kittridge has gone shoppin' up to Brunswick, and left Sally a 'stent' to do; and I promised her if she'd clap to and do it quick, I'd go up and fetch you down, and we'd have ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... a common, on which in every direction large masses of rocks were scattered about. The children's attention was soon attracted to a big bird that hovered in the air. They remarked that, after circling slowly for a time, and gradually getting nearer to the ground, it all of a sudden pounced down amongst a mass of rock. Instantly a heartrending cry reached their ears, and, running quickly to the place, they saw, with horror, that the eagle had seized their former acquaintance, the dwarf, and was just about to carry him off. The kind children did ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... was it!" said Mrs. Chirk. "He was lookin' out of the window and pumpin' at the same time, an' spoutin' them verses too. And all of a sudden he cries out, 'Ther's the brood of dark My Hen, scratchin' up the sweet peas. Upon them with the lance!' And he lets go the pump-handle, and it flies up and hits the shelf and knocks off two plates and a cup, and Bubble, he's off with the ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... enough evidence that he was almost ready to start to England, his man got a cable from an old friend of his father's, who always had believed in him, and it said that the bad man was dying—to come quick. So Robert went all of a sudden, like the Dead Letters told about. Now, he described how he reached there, took the old friend of the father of his friend with him, and other witnesses, and all the evidence he had, and went to see the sick man. When Robert showed him what he could prove, the bad man said it was no use, ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... hundred miles off. And certainly if ever a pet of such a size was allowable, it must have been the gentle creature before us. But all things are deceitful—gentle-looking rams among the number,—for on the discontinuance of our gifts, he waxed all of a sudden very wroth, and favoured the youngest of the party with a butt, that made her not know whether she was on her head or her heels—which is an extraordinary specimen of ignorance, for she was exactly half-way between both. So, converting our admiration of the golden fleece ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... All of a sudden the carriage drew up at a recently built stone house, ornamented with the trophies of war. Piles of cannon-balls, old cannon, splinters of shells are tastefully arranged on the walls. Immediately in front of us stood the once famous fortress of Bar, now a shot-riddled and ruined ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... being friends from that time forth—and about all that sort of thing. And when Joe said, not friends he hoped, Dolly was quite surprised, and said not enemies she hoped; and when Joe said, couldn't they be something much better than either, Dolly all of a sudden found out a star which was brighter than all the other stars, and begged to call his attention to the same, and was ten thousand times more innocent ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... however, far away; then it died, and then it came again upon my ear, as I slept, and now it appeared almost as if I heard crackle, crackle; then it died again, or I became yet more dead asleep than before, I know not which, but I certainly lay some time without hearing it. All of a sudden I became awake, and there was I, on the ridge of the hill, with my cheek on the ground towards the stubble, with a noise in my ear like that of something moving towards me, among the stubble of the field; well, I lay a moment or two listening ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... For a few days or weeks, perhaps even longer, he glories in his new self-respect. It is a strange and enticing sensation. Then one day something goes wrong. He loses some money, or he is awfully tired, or the wife and children bore him, and all of a sudden the one greatest interest in the world is a drink. And because his thinking can always be led by his feeling; because he has never learned to force it to go elsewhere, he has his drink. Appealing to his emotions did not and cannot save him unless that appeal is followed ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... Hannah Winter was sixty all of a sudden, as women of sixty are. Just yesterday—or the day before, at most—she had been a bride of twenty in a wine-coloured silk wedding gown, very stiff and rich. And now here she was, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... eating meat. To that the world must come, I am sure. Only it makes one grasshopper foolish. I also receive letters from Morton and F. Tennyson full of fine accounts of Italy, finer than any I ever read. They came all of a sudden on Cicero's villa—one of them at least, the Formian—with a mosaic pavement leading thro' lemon gardens down to the sea, and a little fountain as old as the Augustan age bubbling up as fresh, Tennyson says, 'as when its silver sounds mixed ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... no longer abandon the desire of taking this step. He wished to make a trial of his own strength, so that one day, all of a sudden, he polished his boots himself, bought white gloves, and set forth on his way, substituting himself for Frederick, and almost imagining that he was the other by a singular intellectual evolution, in which there was, at the same time, vengeance and sympathy, imitation ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... mind seemed to absorb his thoughts with the readiness of blotting paper; and he did not pause to observe whether the impression had come out backwards or forwards. He who had been so mute among Lady Everington's geniuses fell all of a sudden into a loquaciousness which was merely the reaction of his love for his wife, the instinct which makes the male bird sing. He just went on talking; and every day he became in his own estimation and in that of Asako, a more intelligent, a more ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... character of the school and left this man to pocket its profits—sent a thrill of the old Wentworth fire through him, so that his muscles hardened, his hands closed, and he took the measure of Mr. Silas Peckham, to see if his head would strike the wall in case he went over backwards all of a sudden. This would not do, of course, and so the thrill passed off and the muscles softened again. Then came that state of tenderness in the heart, overlying wrath in the stomach, in which the eyes grow moist ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... that the very thought of liquor put warmth into my cold bones. It is certain that all of a sudden I straightened my back, took the remaining stairs at two strides, and walked down the passage as bold as brass, without caring a jot ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... though we watched him closely, we couldn't make out what it was. At last, he told the pony that he had been very good, and had done his lessons well; if it would rest him, he might be naughty a little while. All of a sudden a wicked look came into the creature's eyes. He turned around, and kicked up his heels at his master, he pushed over the table and chairs, and knocked down a blackboard where he had been rubbing out figures with a sponge held in his mouth. The Italian pretended to be cross, and ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... than anything," he pronounced, as he stood looking over the desolate expanse of country, "is that when one comes face to face with the fellow he presents all the appearance of a nerveless and broken-down coward. Then all of a sudden there spring up these evidences of the most amazing, the most diabolical resource.... Who's this, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... boys had been in the cave a short time, there came a sudden rustling on a part of the ledge Billy had aimed his camera at, and all of a sudden a great boulder ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh

... of my acquaintance, complaining of her daughter's vanity, was observing that she had all of a sudden held up her head higher than ordinary, and taken an air that showed a secret satisfaction in herself, mixed with a scorn of others. 'I did not know,' says my friend, 'what to make of the carriage of this fantastical girl, until I was informed ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... island!' My mamma was excited, Signora. She held on to my arm, and she said: 'Ruffino,' she said, 'show her to me. Where is she?' my mamma said, Signora. 'And is the Signora Madre with her?' Just then, Signora, the people moved, and all of a sudden there we were, my mamma and I, right in front of ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... "All of a sudden he had an inspiration. He tells the story himself, sir, and I assure you he'd make you laugh—Morgan is a wonderful mimic. Well, he remembered suddenly, as I said, that he was a mighty good ventriloquist, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... "You ought always to wear your hair down," he said. "On my word, it made you look quite a girl!" "Oh yes, I dare say I need it now," answered Fruen. But seeing Elisabet turn away laughing, she flared up all of a sudden and told her to take herself off. And Elisabet put her hands on her hips, and asked the Captain to order her carriage. "Right!" says the Captain at that; "and I'll drive ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... wasn't. Anyway they never found the growing stuff. They never got a clue to its whereabouts. Maybe it was all buried up in snow. We always reckoned on that. The winter passed, and with each year that slipped away the chances seemed to recede farther and farther. Then all of a sudden the Indians got suspicious again. That was three years ago. I just don't know how it happened. Maybe one of our boys gave it away. Anyhow they turned sulky. That was the first sign. Then they refused to trade their ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... looking uneasily at each other, and the plaint of the one-eyed man went on in that tearful voice, and all of a sudden they all looked at me. I do not know who the two old men were or what any of them were doing, but there are moments when it is clearly time to go, and I left them there and then. And just as I got up on to my bicycle I heard the plaintive voice of ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... Calig'ula supposing him actually dead, caused himself to be acknowledged by the Praetorian soldiers,[15] and went forth from the emperor's apartment amidst the applauses of the multitude; when, all of a sudden, he was informed that the emperor was likely to recover. 15. This unexpected account filled the whole court with terror and alarm; every one who had before been earnestly testifying his joy, now reassumed his ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... boat and entering the river we found the country on its banks well peopled. All of a sudden a violent contrary wind blew in from the sea, and forced us to return to our ship. Weighing anchor, we sailed EIGHTY LEAGUES TOWARDS THE EAST, as the coast stretched in that direction, and always in sight of it. At length we discovered an island, triangular in form, about ten leagues from ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy

... see if the skin itself was affected, I scraped away the parts on it with my finger-nail. Finding nothing but the punctures, I threw the rat away and put the knife and skin in my pocket, and started to go away. I had not walked a hundred yards before all of a sudden I felt just as if somebody had come behind me and struck me a severe blow on the head and neck, and at the same time I experienced a most acute pain and sense of oppression at the chest, as though a hot iron had been run in and a hundred-weight put on the top of it. I knew instantly, from what I ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... goes?" he asked. "We spend our lives shielding our young and then, all of a sudden, we find they're shielding us." His pipe had gone out again and he relit it. "Too bad you didn't get an audiovisual of Belsher ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... I told you, young Arthur comes to Doncaster, having decided all of a sudden, in his harebrained way, that he would go to the races. He did not reach the town till towards the close of the evening, and he went at once to see about his dinner and bed at the principal hotel. Dinner they were ready enough to give him; but as for a bed, ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... was prodigious. In its way it was grotesque. It was like something grown by magic. But a few weeks previous there had been nothing here but the smooth green pavement of cheerful little plants that at a distance looked like jade or malachite. Now, all of a sudden, as it were, there was this forest of rank verdure, sprung with a kind of hideous rapidity, stifling, overpowering, productive with a teeming, incredible fecundity. Low down near the earth the full-grown fruit, green with the faintest tip of ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... another and another. Everywhere, above and in front of us, the flashes of the rifles leapt forth into the darkness, and the sharp reports followed in such quick succession as to give the impression of Maxims firing. All of a sudden I saw a great jet of flame, and instantly the thunder of a cannon broke upon the startled air, and presently behind us I could hear the shrapnel ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... kept quiet, and the noise came nearer and nearer and nearer, and then, all of a sudden, there rolled along the floor a ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope

... and that country and this were laboring jointly to stop the course of hostilities in Holland, to endeavor to effect an accommodation, and were scarcely executing at all, the armaments ordered in their ports; when all of a sudden, an inflammatory letter written by the Princess of Orange to the King of Prussia, induces him, without consulting England, without consulting even his own Council, to issue orders by himself to his Generals, to march twenty thousand men, to revenge the ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... to be turning all of a sudden into a regular chatterbox, was interrupted by more huggings and squeezings, as Rough rather objected to much of this sort of thing, and Biddy had still a great deal to spare even after she had bestowed a full ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth

... opportunity to think it out and arrange its details. Mairi was coming to London, and she had carefully concealed the fact from her husband. A little surprise of a dramatic sort was to be prepared for him—with what result, who could tell? All of a sudden Lavender was to be precipitated into the island of Lewis as nearly as that could be imitated in a house at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... that back parlour," said Mrs. Harrop, "I thought he wasn't there to pay the usual call. Somehow it didn't seem as if he was like a clergyman. I felt quite queer: it came over me all of a sudden. And then we know he's been there once or ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... she declared; "seems's if then I'd feel better. To look up, expecting to see the cars coming along real lively and pleasant, just as they always do so sociable-like when I'm sewing, and then—oh, dear me!" she wrung her fat hands together, "there, all of a sudden, were two of 'em bumping together, one end smashed into kindling wood, and t'other end sticking up straight in the air. Oh! my senses, I don't wonder I thought I was going crazy, and that I let the rug fly and jumped into the middle of the ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... pace would begin to rock us to sleep, feeling rather bored at nothing getting up; when all of a sudden, just at the moment we least expected it, right in front of us, twenty paces away, would jump up a gray hare as if from the bowels ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy

... clothing being found to obtain in the case of two young women who were unknown to each other. If the finding of a single reference to Cleopatra had been a thing of so infrequent occurrence as to at once challenge Maitland's attention, what was to be said when, all of a sudden, her name, or some reference to her, seemed to stare at him from every ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... when his mother and father were about to start for the Crystal Palace, Frank, who had been sitting on his thumbs and thinking very deeply, jumped up all of a sudden and said, (he tried to speak in an off-hand manner); "I suppose you couldn't say to a minute, could you, when ...
— Sugar and Spice • James Johnson

... you," answered Philippa. "But I hardly know——" for all of a sudden the perplexities which had for a while been forgotten crowded into her ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... consummation of Cornelia's passionate hopes and torturing fears, of her dishonorable intriguing and reckless self-desecration. She became very calm all of a sudden, and, without making any rejoinder, she "came along" as he bade her, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... development of her character. There were three classes of pupils, the diables, betes, and devotes (the devils, blockheads, and devout). Aurora soon joined the first, and became one of their ringleaders. But all of a sudden a change came over her. From one extreme she fell into the other. From being the wildest of the wild she became the most devout of the devout: "There was nothing strong in me but passion, and when that of religion began to break out, it devoured everything in my heart; and nothing in my brain opposed ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... young ladies from the Rectory and others. She preferred being alone, she told me, and I was glad that she should get the air and the change anyhow. She brightened a little after this, but very little. It was all of a sudden one day that she told me she was going away. I wanted to go with her, but she said that couldn't be. I asked her where she was going, and she told me, after hesitating a little, that she was going to friends in London. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... line we couldn't get rid of so easy, understand me, and that Betzimmer buyer of Kammerman's wouldn't got no confidence in us at all. The way he figures it we could just so much turn out a highgrade line of goods here as you could expect a feller which is acting in a moving pictures to all of a sudden ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... I heard, somethin' I felt. It mout hev been that that set me off the track. It kem to me all of a sudden that he might be sittin' thar calm and peaceful like ez I might be here, hevin' forgot all about her and his trouble, and here was me goin' to drop down upon him and start it all fresh agin. It looked a little like persecution—yes, like persecution. I got rid of it, sayin' to myself it was business. ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... filled with the roseate colours of morning. He heard the soft voice of the Genius, and was about to enter; but the gate of brass closed before him with a harsh sound, and he recoiled in terror. His desire to penetrate into the secrets of the temple was increased by the impossibility. All of a sudden he felt wings, and rising high into the air, he precipitated himself furiously against the brazen gate, was hurled back, and started out of his sleep just as he was on the point of touching the ground. He opened his eyes in dismay. A ghastly figure, wrapped in a winding-sheet, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... only and abhorring the vain pomps of the establishment. Had he felt the need of an implicit faith amid the welter of sectarianism and the jargon of its turbulent schisms, six principle men, peculiar people, seed and snake baptists, supralapsarian dogmatists? Had he found the true church all of a sudden in winding up to the end like a reel of cotton some fine-spun line of reasoning upon insufflation on the imposition of hands or the procession of the Holy Ghost? Or had Lord Christ touched him and bidden him follow, like that disciple who had sat at the receipt of custom, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... not for the sake of some one else that you all of a sudden disappeared from me in ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen

... was nothing else to do, Raggedy Ann waited for Marcella to return. And as she watched the little ants eating cookie crumbs Marcella had thrown to them, she heard all of a sudden the patter of puppy feet behind her. It ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle

... vaccinated a while ago this summer; everybody was down here; and I had a pretty sick time. It took—ferocious! Well, I got over it, and then I thought about it. I'd got something out of my system forever, that might have come upon me, to destruction, all of a sudden; but now never will! It appears to me almost as if we were sent into this world, like a kind of hospital, to be vaccinated against the awful evil—in our souls; to suffer a little for it; to take it the easiest way we can take it, and so be safe. I don't know—and ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... to silence. "All of a sudden she seemed to realize that she was giving them a drubbing instead of a gentle rebuke. She hauled in her sails and stood winking at them behind her huge spectacles, while they all sat staring at her. It was a picture, I can tell you. Then dear old Farrer cleared his throat in that nervous ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... was a singularly clear and cloudless sky. "I'm afraid it will rain," he explained, boldly. "It wouldn't do to take Bobberts out and let him get rained on. It looks just like one of those evenings when a rain comes up all of a sudden. I ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler

... successful if, all of a sudden, one of the rowers had not "caught a crab" with disastrous consequences. The oars were not moving, but a veteran, who looked very much like Joe, dropped the one he held, and in trying to turn and pummel ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... me, and went on to the ridge. I watched him balancing along it like a man on a tight rope, mounting higher and higher, for the ridge went up steep on the far side. Thinks I to myself, 'You're a plucky one,' then all of a sudden I heard a shout from below, and looked down. There stood Turold, waving me out of the way. He'd been to the boat for a gun we'd brought with us, and was taking aim at Remington. The next thing I saw was ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... audacity. She had won her place in the world as an acknowledged beauty, and one of the leaders of fashion. Two years ago she had been the glory and delight of Anglo-Indian society in the city of Madras, ruling that remote and limited kingdom with a despotic power. Then all of a sudden she was ordered, or she ordered her physician to order her, an immediate departure from that perilous climate, and she came back to England with her three-year-old son, two Ayahs, and four European servants, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... All of a sudden the lines slackened, and all hands frantically hauled in slack, as the devil-fish turned and dashed toward the boat. He came up almost under the craft, one great wing actually lifting one side of the heavy launch well out of the water and giving ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... which sprung up, about 1373, in Flanders, and places about. It was their custom all of a sudden to fall a-dancing, and, holding each other's hands, to continue thereat, till, being suffocated with the extraordinary violence, they fell down breathless together. During these intervals of vehement agitation, they pretended to ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... billets in the world, full of the grief and sorrow she was in, by being obliged to disappoint me; on account of a most terrible headache, that obliged her to keep her bed, and deprived her of the pleasure of seeing me till the next day. This headache coming all of a sudden, appeared to me very suspicious; and, never doubting but it was her intention to jilt me: 'Very well, mistress coquette,' said I to myself, 'if you do not enjoy the pleasure of seeing me this day, you shall not enjoy the satisfaction ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... could not understand—the relation between the spark of eternity in your soul and the Power above, and the whole of endless space—has all of a sudden become so clear that you lie here trembling with joy at seeing to the very bottom ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer

... would have seen that this paper was a practical joke." Then it burst all of a sudden on Stephen. And all this about "Mr Finis", "Oh, ah," and the rest of it had been a ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... for I can't recollect it all myself, only the stupid and muddled part of it. But I have been trying to puzzle it out this morning, and that set me thinking about other things as well, till at last, all of a sudden, I got ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... wives leave the children too much alone—had hidden his mother's shoes, and I was laughing heartily, because my Baner won't let any of the little ones live with me, she always says I spoil them, and so I was glad she should have the trick played her—when all of a sudden there was such a loud knocking at the house-door, that I thought there must be a fire and let the child drop off my lap. Down the stairs I ran, three steps at a time, as fast as my long legs would carry me, and unbarred the door. Before I had time to ask them what they wanted, a whole ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... myself comfortable on a sofa after pulling off my boots. "I suppose any one is liable to commit murder all of a sudden. Well, have you got many ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... He was watching the valley, "If it's a girl I'll shoot the beggar twice over, an' second time for bein' a fool. You're blasted sentimental all of a sudden, Thinkin' o' your ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... And all of a sudden the mystery of the syllables was revealed to him, and he began to read. This was a great joy. From that moment he could read, and the meaning of the words, spelt out with such great ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... all of a sudden, a vibrant, ringing note, audible to all, the scream of the eagle, came floating downward, clear and bell-like, from out ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... to ride on with us, to within half a mile of where our boat was waiting to take us on board. I must explain our relative positions as we rode along. The captain was on my left, I next to him, and the man was on my right, riding very near to me. All of a sudden he exclaimed in Spanish, 'Now is the time or never,' threw his right leg over the pommel of his saddle, slipped on to the ground, drew his knife, dashed at me, and after snatching my gun from my hand, stuck ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... you have become, all of a sudden! But I suppose I must go; I shall find her somewhere, crying, in the road. Hide yourself away; pray do not let any one ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... changed since," he said. "I stood just here, leaning on this railing, and I was so wretched!" he laughed under his breath; "I didn't know what was the matter with me! I was only a cub, you know. But"—he spoke very softly—"all of a sudden I knew. Elizabeth, a woman on the raft looked up at me. There was a little baby. . . . Dear, it was then that ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... confess, that, at first, my dignity was a little hurt at the idea of an exhibition of Americans; but a moment's reflection convinced me that I had no grounds for offence, and all of a sudden it occurred to me that the "Americans" might be my friends of the Rue d'Anjou, whose "guide and interpreter," though hardly their "friend," had got them down as far as Siena on the general embassy. I was resolved to see, and accordingly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... All of a sudden, she jumped up. "You stay just where you are a few minutes, Hannah," said she. "I'm going somewhere. I'll be back ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... very cold, and she knew not whither young Dickory was taking her. She did not believe that in all that darkness he could possibly know where he was going; at any moment that dreadful ship might loom up before them, and lights might be flashed down upon them. But all of a sudden the ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... out to learn the reason why, and she chose none other to haunt than the owner of the Harrowby himself. She found him in his own cosey room drinking whiskey—whiskey undiluted—and felicitating himself upon having foiled her ghostship, when all of a sudden the curl went out of his hair, his whiskey bottle filled and overflowed, and he was himself in a condition similar to that of a man who has fallen into a water-butt. When he recovered from the shock, which was a painful one, he saw before him the ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... has come to me here in the dreary streets of the city, Comfort—how do you think?—with a barrel-organ to bring it. Moping along the streets, and cursing my day as I wandered, All of a sudden my ear met the sound of an English psalm-tune, Comfort me it did, till indeed I was very near crying. Ah, there is some great truth, partial, very likely, but needful, Lodged, I am strangely sure, in the tones of the English psalm-tune. Comfort it was at least; and I must ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough

... his friend. "But the sun dazzles my eyes strangely. How dim and faded His Lordship looks all of a sudden! Bless my wits, what is the matter ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man of. Remember what I say; be kicked by him; account his kicks honors; and on no account kick back; for you can't help yourself, wise Stubb. Don't you see that pyramid?" With that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer fashion, to swim off into the air. I snored; rolled over; and there I was in my hammock! Now, what do you think of that dream, Flask? I don't know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho'. May be, may be. But it's made a wise man of ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... thing," said Vera. "It makes a person think she can have a good time being its slave until all of a sudden the person finds out that she has chains on that cannot be broken. You think you can't break that old law of selfishness that makes it misery to you to see another child have something that you ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... up when it comes their time. Sometimes there's girls and they look pretty sad. And sometimes something really interestin' comes off. Once there was a lady who was cryin' and holdin' a baby. On the third run it was. I could see she'd up and left her house all of a sudden on account of a quarrel with her husband, because she was only half ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... masters, resolved to do everything they bid them, and to believe all they say, there being no other way to arrive at perfection in those arts; and that they who hope one day to govern the Republic, and to declaim before the people, imagine they can become fit to do so of themselves all of a sudden. Nevertheless, it must be owned that these employments are more difficult than the others, since among the great number of persons who push themselves into office so few discharge their duty as they ought. This shows us that more labour and diligence is required in such as would capacitate ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon

... other, and she was surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr. Hyde, who had once visited her master and for whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

... clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls. No, Sir, I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life[893], nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.' Here taking himself up all of a sudden, he exclaimed, 'O! Mr. Edwards! I'll convince you that I recollect you. Do you remember our drinking together at an alehouse near Pembroke gate[894]. At that time, you told me of the Eton boy, who, when verses on our Saviour's turning water ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... well, and a while they go thus together; but all of a sudden Skeggi bounded off up along the moors and caught up a meal-sack. Grettir saw him stoop, and asked what he took ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... When the old grandmother got up close, it thought it would do something extra to please her; or else the heat of the candle had dried it up so that it cracked without intending to. Anyway, it tried to give a very broad grin, and all of a sudden it split its ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells

... a result of sleeplessness and the storm. He himself rested with the troops not in action. When day was about to break, he recalled the army, as was expected, and the Romans put away their weapons and retired to rest; then all of a sudden he attacked them, with the result that he killed a number and captured the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... I was lying in bed just as I was, when all of a sudden I knew that Something had come in, and was going up and down, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... door so hard behind her that the building fairly shook. A moment later Alice followed, and in a short time was bounding down the stairway as fast as her little legs would carry her toward freedom, when all of a sudden she tripped and began to fall—down, down, down—O, would she never stop! And then, bump! Her fall was over, and strange to relate the little maid found herself sitting on the floor back in her own nursery in her own real home, with ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs

... holding the same attitude toward him that his twin did! Tom did not like it a bit. He was a manly fellow and had always observed a protective air with Ruth and his sister. And, all of a sudden, they had become young ladies while he was ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson



Words linked to "All of a sudden" :   suddenly, all at once



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