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More "Astonishing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or, rather, we must make her prove it. I quite feel with you about it. If I were to act upon my own impulse, my own convictions, I should send her the rest of the story and take the chances. But she may be an enterprising journalist in disguise it's astonishing what women will do when they take to newspaper work—and we have no right to risk anything, for the magazine's sake, if not yours and mine. Will you leave this ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the vials of his wrath upon the beast, that false religion has received a sore and bleeding wound, and where the people, long crushed under the tyranny of a despotic throne, and usurpation of an imposing priesthood, have risen to extricate themselves from the accumulated oppression, and by their astonishing efforts have shaken off the Papal yoke, by renouncing their accustomed allegiance to the head of the Antichristian states at Rome, have withdrawn their wonted supplies from his treasures, and completely overthrown the temporal power of his religion in their own country, which had ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... Baillot used to hide his face when Paganini played a pizzicato with the left hand, harmonics, or a passage in staccato. Dancla, in his recollections, says: "I had noticed in Paganini his large, dry hand, of an astonishing elasticity; his fingers long and pointed, which enabled him to make enormous stretches, and double and triple extensions, with the utmost facility. The double and triple harmonics, the successions of harmonics in thirds and sixths, so difficult for small hands, ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... interest of the Colombian Government. Not a life was lost in the accomplishment of the revolution. The Colombian troops stationed on the Isthmus, who had long been unpaid, made common cause with the people of Panama, and with astonishing unanimity the new Republic was started. The duty of the United States in the premises was clear. In strict accordance with the principles laid down by Secretaries Cass and Seward in the official documents above quoted, the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... anything about you in the papers?" Six-foot-two asked. "No. Ah," he went on triumphantly, "they have about me. There's a medical paper with a piece in it all about my patella. I sent it home and they've framed it. It's the most astonishing thing in surgery that I should be able to ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... Lady Cecilia said, "Really, Elizabeth!" and Sir Dennis got purple in the face, and Jane Roose whispered, "How could you dare with his wife listening!" and every one talked and chaffed. It was too stupid about nothing; but the astonishing part is, that funny old thing I thought was the mother turns out to be ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... this graceful poem, and each one was hailed with enthusiastic applause. The "Humming-Bird" was triumphant, and when her song was concluded she executed a startling pas-seul full of quaint and astonishing surprises, reaching her superbest climax, when she backed off the stage on one portly leg,—kicking the other in regular time to the orchestra. Lady Winsleigh laughed, and leaning towards Thelma, who still sat in her retired corner, said ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... amazement. It had not occurred to her that this girl was married—there seemed nothing of the wife about her. And that she should be the neighbor whom Anne had pictured as a commonplace Four Winds housewife! Anne could not quickly adjust her mental focus to this astonishing change. ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... trigger, prompted by his example, and another man from the cliff above lifted his arms and fell with a loud cry. And this was the astonishing thing, that though we two were caged in a ravine like rats in a trap, and had shot two of the devils stone-dead, no answering shot was fired from above, no ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... Mr. Sherwin, suddenly sitting back bolt upright in his chair, and staring at me in such surprise, that his restless features were actually struck with immobility for the moment—"God bless me, this is quite another story. Most gratifying, most astonishing—highly flattered I am sure; highly indeed, my dear Sir! Don't suppose, for one moment, I ever doubted your honourable feeling. Young gentlemen in your station of life do sometimes fail in respect towards the wives and daughters of their—in short, of those who ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... been recently brought to an astonishing degree of perfection in Paris, is that of dyeing, cleaning, scouring, and restoring almost all descriptions of habiliments; this has been effected by M. Bonneau, but not until he had visited the principal manufacturing towns, and had ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... the woods in vast migratory flocks. It is almost incredible to describe the prodigious flights of these birds in the western wildernesses. They appear absolutely in clouds, and move with astonishing velocity, their wings making a whistling sound as they fly. The rapid evolutions of these flocks wheeling and shifting suddenly as if with one mind and one impulse; the flashing changes of color they present, as their backs their breasts, or the under ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... in all the tranquil habits of this modest life was made by Samuel's astonishing errand. The story is told with wonderful picturesqueness and dramatic force. The minute account of the successive rejections of his brothers, Samuel's question and Jesse's answer, and then the pause of idle waiting till the messenger goes and returns, heighten ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... consolation, in watching the horse's shadow. That an astonishing sight. The beast ran along with them lying on its side. In the evening, when they returned, it covered a part of the field. They came upon a rick, and the shadow's head would rise up and then return to its place when they had passed. Its snout was flattened out like a burst balloon; its ears were ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... one day and nearing Grosvenor Place I saw, if my memory is not at fault, some workmen with their coats off—or so they seemed. They had pickaxes in their hands and wore corduroy trousers and that little leather band below the knee that goes by the astonishing name of "York-to-London." ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... commenced, had received the finishing touch. At sixteen she was thoroughly familiar with the repertoire of the genre theatres, imitated Schneider far better than ever did Silly, and sang with surprising intonations and astonishing gestures Blanche d'Autigny's successful moods, and ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... of a machine is equal to the amount of energy put in, divided by the amount of useful work performed, it naturally follows that in all human activities, unnecessary friction, since it lowers the amount of nervous energy, is going to lower the per cent of efficiency. While we may never reach an astonishing degree of efficiency by economizing nervous energy, nevertheless, if we consistently and perseveringly try to spare ourselves all unnecessary labor and exertion, we shall have an abundant supply of energy to direct into channels ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... natives of Cape York, says that a "communication between the islanders and the natives of the mainland is frequent; and the rapid manner in which news is carried from tribe to tribe, to great distances, is astonishing. I was informed of the approach of Her Majesty's Steamer Salamander, on her last visit, two days before her arrival here. Intelligence is conveyed by means of fires made to throw up smoke in different forms, and by messengers who perform long and rapid ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... enclosed a package of "rough-on-rats," telling him what to do with it. I was worn down to skin and bone by that Spot, and I was that nervous that I'd jump and look around when there wasn't anybody within hailing distance. But it was astonishing the way I recuperated when I got quit of him. I got back twenty pounds before I arrived in San Francisco, and by the time I'd crossed the ferry to Oakland I was my old self again, so that even my wife looked in vain for any ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... surprised to hear that it is a flourishing sect still, and that it still has its assemblies, its votaries, its literature, and its propaganda. It is true that the name Muggletonians does not appear in that astonishing list of religious denominations which the Registrar-General was enabled to compile for the year 1883; but that proves little, inasmuch as the closer a religious corporation is, the more exclusive, the less does it care ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... author of an interesting article on the skoptzi of Olekminsk, which appeared in 1895 in the organ of the then-existing Russian Ethnographical Society, these women were sometimes of an astonishing beauty, and when opportunity offered, as it sometimes did (their initiation not always being quite complete), they would marry orthodox settlers, and leave their so-called "brothers." Cases are on record of women acting in this way, and subsequently becoming mothers, ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... strewed about, exclaimed, "This is the Sibyl's cave; these are Sibylline leaves." On examination, we found that all the leaves, bark, and other substances, were traced with written characters. What appeared to us more astonishing, was that these writings were expressed in various languages: some unknown to my companion, ancient Chaldee, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, old as the Pyramids. Stranger still, some were in modern dialects, English and Italian. We could make out little by ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Forms, the Regularity of their Position, the Order and Exactness, and yet inconceivable Velocity of their Motions, the certainty of their Revolutions, and the Variety and Virtue of their Influences; and then, which was even to the Devils themselves most astonishing, That after all the rest of their Observations they should find this whole immense Work was adapted for, and made subservient to the Use, Delight and Blessing only of one poor Species, in itself small, and in Appearance contemptible; the meanest ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... his personal presence (as it may be called) can forthwith be transferred to every other language under the sun? Then may we reasonably maintain that Beethoven's piano music is not really beautiful, because it cannot be played on the hurdy-gurdy. Were not this astonishing doctrine maintained by persons far superior to the writer whom I have selected for animadversion, I should find it difficult to be patient under a gratuitous extravagance. It seems that a really great author must admit of translation, and that we have a test of his ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... felt on his face a breath, which amid the heat of the desert seemed all at once hot to him. That breath, at first very delicate, increased, growing hotter and hotter, and at the same time the dark streak rose in the sky with astonishing swiftness. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... journals of the Union would be certain to notice the fact. It would be the explanation of the astonishing phenomenon which the whole world had been wondering over ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... is facilitated, and we are enabled to communicate with distant lands in a much shorter space of time than was formerly consumed. On land, railroads are constructed, on which steam carriages run with astonishing rapidity, so that a journey which by coach and horses formerly required two or more days, may now be performed in four or ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... by the early prophets with an astonishing fidelity. Rarely does a race early in its history have a portrait of its weaknesses as well as its strength held up thus prominently before its eyes. Jacob is the antithesis of Esau. While his brother was hunting ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... shout—I'll gag you," came the astonishing declaration, while the bandit struggled with the bracelet, and almost cut Dorothy's wrist on the knife with which he was trying to ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... its steam and boiled, boiled over; tea, bread and cheese, bright yellow plums from a tree hard by, and then away once more we sped on our journey, not walking, but running, scarcely running but flying, leaping, clambering ... and my companion performed the most astonishing feats, for he was ever more ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... found to be of great use in effecting a junction of the locks and hasps of over-filled book-boxes. It was astonishing to see all the amount of literature that Mr. Verdant Green was about to convey to the seat of learning: there was enough to stock a small Bodleian. As the owner stood, with his hands behind him, placidly surveying the scene of preparation, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... tore myself away and returned to the hangar, where the Pioneer now reposed in a scaffolded cradle. The sight which met my eyes was astonishing in the extreme, for the hangar had been transformed into a huge workshop with seemingly hundreds of men already at work. It was a scene of furious activity, and, to my utter amazement, I observed that the Pioneer was already in an advanced stage ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... sneezing, but they triumphantly brought forth an armful of defunct trousers and carried them up to their room. For the next fifteen minutes such giggles and exclamations and shrieks of laughter escaped from their room that Annie left her ironing to see what was up. An astonishing sight met her gaze. Once started upon the dressing-up craze, the girls had not been content with one garment. Chicken Little had daringly ransacked not only Ernest's bureau, but Sherm's possessions, in quest of ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... and chops lying neatly on the counter, crying, 'Come, eat me!' Nevertheless, one's first glance would be arrested neither by Mrs Bruce's black-and-gold sign, nor by the enticements of her stock-in-trade, because one's attention is rapped squarely between the eyes by an astonishing shape that arises from the patch of lawn in front of the cottage, and completely dominates the scene. Imagine yourself face to face with the last thing you would expect to see in a modest front dooryard,—the figurehead of a ship, heroic in size, gorgeous in colour, ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... impressive and solemn formula, when He was about to speak words beyond the reach of human wisdom to discover, or of prime importance for men to accept and believe. He tells these men, who had nothing but His bare word to rely upon, that the astonishing thing which He is going to promise them will certainly come to pass. He would encourage them to rest an unfaltering confidence, for the brief parenthesis of sorrow, upon His faithful promise of joy. He puts His own character, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... alone in the stone-flagged kitchen, it was astonishing how rapidly that sprained ankle recovered. It was nearly nightfall, and we had eaten nothing since early morning, so that we spent some time over our meal. Holmes was lost in thought, and once or twice he walked over to the window and stared earnestly out. It opened on to a squalid courtyard. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the English taken refuge in the kraal than the women fled with the waggons; and it is astonishing to relate that only one little boy of thirteen years was killed, and a woman and a girl slightly wounded. One of the burghers whom the English had ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... rapidly. No doubt for those who have been a long time in the struggle, like your honored president, it seems a long and arduous path that has been trodden, but when you think of the cumulating force of the movement in recent decades you must agree with me that it is one of the most astonishing tides in modern history. Two generations ago—no doubt Madam President will agree with me in saying this—it was a handful of women who were fighting for this cause; now it is a great multitude of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... she had dressed, and it was astonishing to see with what simple means she achieved an appearance of tasteful distinction. A round straw hat, a white standing collar, a well-tailored light gray suit, a lavender silk tie - and she was a lady among the boorish and bourgeois women of her town. For on the point ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... biography. When he was questioned on the subject, he laid his finger on his lip; and if pressed more urgently, his brow writhed, and his dark eye seemed to shoot sparks of livid fire! He could write with astonishing correctness and facility, considering his situation; and, although denied the exquisite pleasure and priceless advantages of the sense of hearing, nature had given him ample compensation, by an eye, quick and far-seeing as an eagle's; and a smell, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... 1824 was unsatisfactory to the woolen interests. In the course of the decade there had been an astonishing increase of woolen factories in New England, [Footnote: See chap. ii., above.] and the strength of the protective movement grew correspondingly in that section. By a law which took effect at the ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... LAY EGGS before they have some place to put them; accordingly, they construct nests for themselves with astonishing art. As builders, they exhibit a degree of architectural skill, niceness, and propriety, that would seem even to mock the imitative talents of man, however greatly these are marked by his own ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... row of squaws against the wall, with and without babies strapped at their backs. Occasionally a young girl would push aside those in front of her, craning and staring to take in the astonishing spectacle of the two white men who had come so far without dogs—pulling a hand-sled a greater distance than any Indian had ever done—if ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... in the purlieus of Canton, it is astonishing how much Dr. Williams was able to effect in the way of making China known to the Western world. His book on "The Middle Kingdom," first published in 1848, continues to be, after the lapse of half a century, the highest ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... there was no prospect of Aladdin being heard of any more. But the magician, when he had contrived his death, forgot the ring he had put upon his finger, which preserved him, though he knew not its virtue. It may seem astonishing that the loss of that, together with the lamp, did not drive the magician to despair; but magicians are so much used to misfortunes that they do not lay them to heart, but still feed themselves, to the end of life, ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... one great consolation in Charley's rapid progress towards health. He was gaining with astonishing rapidity and bid fair to be completely ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... berths of the crew were all aft, on a lower deck. Close by these was the most astonishing part of the vessel, the colossal rudder, not hung with pintles and gudgeons, the vessel having no stern-post, but suspended to two windlasses by three large ropes made of cane and hemp; one round a windlass on the next deck, and two round a windlass ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... his feet, his tremendous bulk pushed Apollo back, at the first onset; but they noticed a peculiar tactic on the part of Apollo. The latter at each forward plunge twisted his head, first to the right, and then to the left, as though he was boring his way in. This was an astonishing thing to the stranger. This was done by Apollo over and over again, and now, every time they met, and the twisting motion was repeated, his enemy would be thrown ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... leagues. One of the arreoros, or muleteers, with me, a native of Madrid, remarked on the solitude of the spot, adding, with a sigh, "This was a different place when first I visited it." Within about half a mile from where we were then conversing was an astonishing freak of Nature. In the midst of the plain were about one hundred naked rocks rising abruptly from the surface, in detached groups, some of which were as high as St. Paul's, and many appeared like the spires of a cathedral. Pointing to these ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... half of the island, I with some difficulty obtained a boat and men to take me across the water—for the Amboynese are dreadfully lazy. Passing up the harbour, in appearance like a fine river, the clearness of the water afforded me one of the most astonishing and beautiful sights I have ever beheld. The bottom was absolutely hidden by a continuous series of corals, sponges, actinic, and other marine productions of magnificent dimensions, varied forms, and brilliant colours. The depth varied from about twenty to fifty feet, and the bottom was very uneven, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... have more ribbons, jewels, and lovers than any other young ladies of the same age. They prattle insipidly from morning to night. The first time I visited a theatre I sat next one of them who had at least half a dozen rings worn over her gloves.... The affectation of ton among them is astonishing. They are special patrons of the drama, and, on the appearance of a star, they flock to the dress circle in hundreds. The pit is generally well filled with a display of shirt-sleeves, pewter pots, and babies. The upper boxes are ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the wire door, you would have seen two children of four or five years disporting themselves in a sand-heap. One was a boy and one a girl; and though they were not at all alike in feature or complexion, there was an astonishing resemblance between them in size, in figure, in voice, in expression, and, ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... accompanies the cycler on a sunny day, and which is the bane of a sensitive wheelman's life. The only representative of animated nature hereabouts is a species of small gray lizard that scuttles over the bare ground with astonishing rapidity. Not even a bird is seen in the air. All living things seem instinctively to avoid this dread spot save the lizard. A desert forty miles wide is not a particularly large one; but when one is in the middle of it, it might as well be as extensive as Sahara itself, for anything ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... outline the typical structure of the vertebrate, take place with astonishing rapidity in the embryo of the Amphioxus; in the afternoon of the first day, or twenty-four hours after fertilisation, the young vertebrate, the typical embryo, is formed; it then has, as a ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... instance of this comes to our mind. A soldier who worked at the forge was soundly converted to God, and as usual had to go through the ordinary course of persecution. It was astonishing how many pieces of iron fell upon his feet, and how often a rod was thrust into his back! At such occurrences prior to his conversion he would have sworn dreadfully, and he had to guard himself with the greatest care lest some ungodly word should escape his lips. And so when any extra cruelty ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... had lain so deep in his heart flew to his lips, and he wooed her with a fervour and nobility as astonishing to himself as to Katherine. He reminded her of all the sweet intercourse of their happy lives, and of the fidelity with which he had loved her. "When I was a lad ten years old, and saw you first in your mother's arms, I called you then 'my little ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... bubbling announcements with stiff indifference, Flossy, in her perplexity, began to bend her acute mental faculties more searchingly on her idol. A fixed point of view will keep a shrine sacred forever, but let a worshipper's perspective be altered, and it is astonishing how different the features of divinity will appear. Flossy had worshipped with the eyes of faith. Now that her adoration was rejected without apparent cause, her curiosity was piqued, and she sought an interpretation of the mystery from her clever wits. As she ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... wherewith Napoleon fed and flattered the French nation for fifteen years, and the astonishing intellectual and animal vigor of the conqueror's mind, dazzle even M. Sainte-Beuve, so that he does not perceive the gaping chasms in Napoleon's moral nature, and the consequent one-sidedness of his intellectual action, nor the unmanning effects of his ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... November, 1820.) 'Among the modern things which have reached me is a volume of poems by Keats; in other respects insignificant enough, but containing the fragment of a poem called Hyperion, I dare say you have not time to read it; but it is certainly an astonishing piece of writing, and gives me a conception of Keats which I confess I had not before.' (To Mrs. Leigh Hunt, 11 November, 1820.) 'Keats's new volume has arrived to us, and the fragment called Hyperion ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... of New York City, half a century ago, no name was more prominent than that of A. T. Stewart, whose success as a merchant was one of the most astonishing features of the time. Born near Belfast, Ireland, in 1803, Stewart was a descendant from one of those hardy and thrifty Scotch-Irish, whom we have had occasion to mention before. His father was a farmer, but died while the son was ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... a New Reformation, and a practical outlet for its enthusiasm of humanity—were the chief aims in the minds of those of us who in 1890 founded the University Hall Settlement in London. I look back now with emotion on that astonishing experiment. The scheme had taken shape in my mind during the summer of 1889, and in the following year I was able to persuade Doctor Martineau, Mr. Stopford Brooke, my old friend Lord Carlisle, and a group of other religious Liberals, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... comical survey of my fashionable toggery,—my swallow-tail coat, white neck-cloth, and ruffled shirt (an astonishing outfit for a young limb of the law in ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... been a little less in accordance with his own inclinations, perhaps Mr Featherstone would not have found it so incumbent on him to obey it. It is astonishing how easy a virtue becomes when it runs alongside a man's interest and choice. Featherstone had never learned self-denial; and that is a virtue nearly as hard to exercise without practice as it would be to play a tune on a musical instrument which the player had never handled ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... slightest personal interest in any human being except yourself; all are emphatic in stating that he has certainly never manifested any affection for anyone else. This is unprecedented. I never heard of such another case. There is nothing astonishing about a young Roman declaring that he would remain unmarried for thirty years in order to mate, ultimately, with the girl of his choice. There is nothing wonderful about his keeping his word. But any other youth I ever heard ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... How astonishing it now seemed to her that she could have accepted such shallow explanations of Redgrave's partnership with Hugh Carnaby! Why, Harvey himself, least suspicious of men, was perplexed, and avowed his inability to understand it. As for Mrs. Strangeways—a woman of the world, if there was one—the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... intelligible;—the integrity of the first design; how later additions affixed themselves thereto; how the rich ornament gathered upon it; the increasing richness of the choir; its glazed triforium; the realms of light which expand in the chapels beyond; the astonishing boldness of the vault, the astonishing lightness of what keeps it above one; the unity, yet the variety of perspective. There is no mystery here, and indeed no repose. Like the age which projected it, like the impulsive communal movement which was here its motive, the Pointed style at Amiens ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... with these bright and beautiful creatures, which appear to have but a half-life. They occupied a large space on the water, and their astonishing radiance, in the midst of the darkness of the atmosphere, had such a striking and magnificent effect, that for a few moments we were diverted from our own sad thoughts; but an observation from Jack ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... recommended had been adopted, will not admit a doubt. That the adoption of the resolution granting half-pay for life has been attended with all the happy consequences I had foretold, so far as respected the good of the service, let the astonishing contrast between the state of the army at this instant and at the former period determine. And that the establishment of funds and security of the payment of all the just demands of the army will be the most certain ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... locomotion; so, it came to depend upon the wart, and use finally developed it into a leg. And then another wart, and another leg, at the proper time—by accident—and accidentally in the proper place. Is it not astonishing that any person, intelligent enough to teach school, would talk such tommyrot to students, and look serious while ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... been nominated on the new body at a venture. Thinking he might be wanted to help the Rump in their struggle with the Army, he had returned from Ireland, leaving Colonel John Jones as his locum tenens there; and he had not heard the astonishing news of Lambert's action till his landing on the Welsh coast. He had then wavered for a while between going back to Ireland and coming on to London, but had decided for the latter. Before his arrival in town he had heard of his nomination to the Committee of Safety and ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... in every other, we are "going ahead" with accelerated velocity, and promising to outstrip the superannuated countries of Europe. It is really astonishing to see the number of tribunals incessantly springing up for the trial of literary offences. Independent of the high courts of Oyer and Terminer, the great quarterly reviews, we have innumerable minor tribunals, monthly and weekly, down to the Pie-poudre courts in the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... begun to draw any of your artificial distinctions. I hope she never will. Her barber friend is on the same level with the clerks and grocery-men of the town. They're all human, you know. She's the true democrat. I confess I like the girl. Her ability is astonishing. Williams and Haney both take her opinion quite as weightily as ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... meanwhile getting ready for her walk. Her agitation was so great that she took rather long in getting ready. Her toilet finally completed, she hurried up the incline with astonishing ease, for the hope of being admitted to the castle made her feel at least ten years younger, though she still had some doubts whether the door would be opened for her; On her arrival she pulled the bell-rope. Mr. Trius appeared, quietly opened and silently walked away ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... than the youngest of the Miss Fairlands, there was a dignified self-possession about Agnes, which was quite astonishing to them. Though rather of the hoyden-ish class themselves, they could not fail at once to recognize the air of refinement which marks the true lady, and while intending by their own appearance to over-awe the new governess, they were so completely taken by surprise by her perfect ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... courtesy. Held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which, is nevertheless subject to change, and which, every secret enemy is endeavouring to dissolve. Our present condition, is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect Independance contending for dependance. The instance is without a precedent; the case never existed before; and who can tell what may be the event? The property of no man is secure in the present unbraced system of things. The mind of ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... twentieth century, science has gained notably in expertness, and lost notably in authority. We are bombarded with inventions; but if we ask the inventors what they have learned of the depths of nature, which somehow they have probed with such astonishing success, their faces remain blank. They may be chewing gum; or they may tell us that if an aeroplane could only fly fast enough, it would get home before it starts; or they may urge us to come with them into a dark room, ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... them desist, by snapping his fingers, the spell was broken. It was most astonishing to see that as each one awoke, he seemed to be fully cognizant of the ridiculous position in which his comrades were placed, and to enjoy their confusion and ludicrous attitudes. The moment, however, he was commanded to do things equally absurd, he obeyed. While, therefore, the class appeared ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... Daylight's hand ecstatically, and Daylight shook his with equal fervor, and, bending, kissed Dede on the lips. They were as exultant over the success of their simple handiwork as any great captain at astonishing victory. In Ferguson's eyes was actually a suspicious moisture while the woman pressed even more closely against the man whose achievement it was. He caught her up suddenly in his arms and whirled her away to the piano, crying out: "Come on, Dede! ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... extraordinary labors? I know of no man of our age who has had more to hear, to answer, to write, nor things of greater importance. The number and quality of his writings alone is enough to astonish any man who sees them, and still more those who read them. And what renders his labors still more astonishing is, that he had a body so feeble by nature, so debilitated by night labors and too great abstemiousness, and, what is more, subject to so many maladies, that no man who saw him could understand how he had lived so long. And yet, for all that, he never ceased to labor night and ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... or even the middle life of the poet. That William and Dorothy, in their poverty, should have rented so noble a country property seems at first sight inexplicable, and the contrast between Alfoxden and Coleridge's squalid pot-house in Nether Stowey can never cease to be astonishing. But the sole object of the trustees in admitting Wordsworth to Alfoxden was, as Mrs. Sandford has discovered, "to keep the house inhabited during the minority of the owner;" it was let to the poet on the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... money-getting, and not destitute of national spirit; but never another, who, in the midst of his schemes of lucre, was at all times willing to enter into a conversation on the structure of the Haik language, or who ever offered me money to render into English the fables of Z—- in the hope of astonishing the stock-jobbers of the Exchange with the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... The astonishing increase of the great metropolis in every direction—the growing up of Brixton and Clapham—the discovery of inhabited streets and houses in the terra incognita to the northward of Pentonville—and the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... it was enthusiastically styled to the inventor, by the lovely Duchess of Dunderwhistle) possesses the inestimable and astonishing quality of changing hair, of whatever color, to a dazzling jet-black; at the same time imparting to it a rich glossy appearance, which wonderfully contributes to the imposing tout-ensemble presented by those who use it. That well-known ornament of the circle of fashion, the young ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... ranked herself against him, which was a bitter pill to swallow, and, so far from showing an inclination to repent as the prescribed time drew to a close, the conspirators appeared only to be the more determined. Long envelopes were continually being dispatched to the post, to appear with astonishing dispatch on the family breakfast-table. The pale, wrought look on Ronald's face as he caught sight of them against the white cloth! No parent's heart could fail to be wrung for the lad's misery; but the futility of it added to the inward exasperation. Thousands of men walking the streets ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... an astonishing scene. Just at the corner of the Ekaterina Canal, under an arc-light, a cordon of armed sailors was drawn across the Nevsky, blocking the way to a crowd of people in column of fours. There were about three or four hundred of them, men in frock coats, well-dressed women, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... Absolute Always Adjudicated with Astonishing Ability After he had read some books from ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... their sails. And husbandmen call thunder-showers nourishing, and think them to be so. Indeed, it is absurd to wonder at these things, when we see the most incredible things imaginable in thunder, as flame rising out of moist vapors, and from soft clouds such astonishing noises. Thus, he continued, I prattle, exhorting you to inquire after the cause; and I shall accept this as your club ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... not look at things from an objective point of view. But that is not astonishing. A man like you, with whom everything is prospering, cannot enter into the psychology of a bankrupt unless he be a philosopher; and philosophy has nothing to do with ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... extracted the particularly difficult and subtle points, and these served as material for the afternoon interrogatories, which lasted two or three hours. Moment by moment they skipped from one subject to another; yet in spite of this she always responded with an astonishing wisdom and memory. She often corrected the judges, saying, "But I have already answered that once before—ask the recorder," ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... kind in his pages will be disappointed. His daring is of a different kind; it is not the daring of adventure but of intensity; his fine surprises are seized out of the very heart of his subject, and seized in a single stroke. Thus many of his most astonishing phrases burn with an inward concentration of energy, which, difficult at first to realise to the full, comes in the end to impress itself ineffaceably upon ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... religion, which pretends, by the maceration of the body, to expiate the crimes of the soul. In the packet of papers which the express had brought to Sir George Staunton from Edinburgh, and which Butler, authorised by his connection with the deceased, did not scruple to examine, he found new and astonishing intelligence, which gave him reason to thank God ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for myself, Amelia, not me. The war has wakened me up to a understanding of my own importance that is really astonishing.' ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... advanced. He diffused himself over England and Wales and Scotland. In every considerable centre, men had the opportunity of seeing and hearing this supreme actor of the political stage; but Midlothian was the scene of his most astonishing efforts. When, on the 2nd of September, 1884, he spoke on the Franchise Bill in the Waverley Market at Edinburgh, it was estimated that he ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... child.—She indeed rewards me, for she is a sweet little creature; for, setting aside a mother's fondness (which, by the bye, is growing on me, her little intelligent smiles sinking into my heart), she has an astonishing degree of sensibility and observation. The other day by B——'s child, a fine one, she looked like a little sprite.—She is all life and motion, and her eyes are not the eyes of a fool—I ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the Supreme Court bench as a stopping place, to save him from ruin.—Look at the bankrupt returns of this district alone—one hundred and twenty millions of dollars in debt, very little paid or to be paid, many of the creditors beggared, many of the debtors astonishing the fashionable with their magnificent carriages and costly horses. No felony in you and your friends, who brought about the times of 1837-8. Oh, no! All the felony consists in exposing you. Two hundred years ago it was a felony to read the Bible ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... young man, but a true christian, being delivered to the wild beasts on account of his faith, behaved with such astonishing courage, that several pagans became converts to a faith which inspired ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... hearty laugh. I remember once, at my wit's end for talk, telling her the old story of Theodore Hook accosting a pompous stranger on the street with the polite request that he might know whether he was anybody in particular. She said, without a smile, "Yes, it was astonishing how rude some people ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... orchard. Our baby quail got tangled in the long grass as he tried to scurry away and I picked him up. He was a jolly soft little brown ball with the brightest eyes. I would have liked to bring him home to the child but I was afraid I couldn't care for him. Tell her though I have a most astonishing present for her and she can never guess what it is, if she lies awake every night till I come. But to return to the ranch—it has two hundred acres of fine farming land, unlimited pasture, and a heavily timbered creek crossing it diagonally. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... Commodore ordered the Colne to lie further out. At this distance from the beach, withdrawn a little from the combat, (there was a hottish scrimmage going on), and yet so close that friends could be recognised, the picture we saw was astonishing. No one has ever seen so strange a spectacle and I very much doubt if any one will ever see it again. The Australians and New Zealanders had fixed themselves into the crests of a series of high sandy cliffs, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... oppose to colonisation, need excite alarm. It is probable, that his instructions would but briefly touch on questions relating to these children of the soil; but considering that the notices and orders of government must have apprised him of their sufferings, he dismisses their case with astonishing indifference.[6] ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... her box in the first tier. My look did not waver; my eyes saw her at once with incredible clearness; my soul hovered about her life like an insect above its flower. How had my senses received this warning? There is something in these inward tremors that shallow people find astonishing, but the phenomena of our inner consciousness are produced as simple as those of external vision; so I was not surprised, but much vexed. My studies of our mental faculties, so little understood, helped me at any rate to find in my own ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... vol. xxx. p. 113). To him is the credit due of first drawing attention to "these signs" in England. It is noteworthy how little such marks are noticed, even in buildings which are visited by archaeologists quite frequently, until a few are pointed out, and then they meet the eye to an astonishing number. In the Sessional Papers, 1868-1869, of the Royal Institute of British Architects, No. 9, may be found numerous samples of the marks from various parts of Europe in illustration of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... medical science.[17] Since 1865 the average duration of life in England and Wales has been raised by a little more than one-third. Other European countries show the same ratio of improvement. This astonishing result, so little known and so seldom referred to, was bound to have a great effect on the birth-rate. So long as the swarming period continued at its height, a net annual increase of 15 or even 20 per thousand could be sustained; but the expansion of the European ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... arrived with astonishing suddenness. About the second or third of August I went down to stay with some friends at the little fishing village ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... memorabile is of a more delicate nature, respecting the conduct of a certain fair lady, who seemed determined to fling herself at my head. There is a wonderful degree of freemasonry among us folk of spirit; and it is astonishing how soon we can place ourselves on a footing with neglected wives and discontented daughters. If you come not soon, one of the rewards held out to you in my former letter, will certainly not be forthcoming. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... suggestive of repose. So far from being indolent, or even deliberate in her movements, she was the most active and energetic woman in the town. She went through the physical exercises of a prayer-meeting with astonishing vigor. It was exhilarating to see her wash a shirt, and a study to watch her do it up. A quick jerk shook out the dampened garment; one pass of her ample palm spread it over the ironing-board, and a few well-directed strokes with the iron accomplished ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... fleshly, carnal peevishness and ill-temper, at not having just the pleasant thing one happens to like. That is a state of mind which is a bird-call for all the devils; and when they see a man in that temper, they flock to him, I believe, as crows do to carrion. It is astonishing, humbling, awful, my friends, what horrible thoughts will cross one's mind if once one gives way to that selfish, proud, angry, longing temper; thoughts of which we are ashamed the next moment; temptations to sin at which we shudder, they seem ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... consumed in its construction; how many tons of Portland stone in the abutments, parapets, and supporting walls; how much timber would be buried twenty fathoms deep in the mud of the river; how many miles of paving-stone would be laid down. Mr. Blocks went on with his astonishing figures till the committee were bewildered, and even Mr. Vigil, though well used to calculations, could hardly raise his mind to the dimensions of the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... sixteenth century the number of students in colleges and at theuniversities increased in an astonishing degree, especially from the middle classes. The sons of simple burghers entered upon the contests of free, intellectual aspirations with a zeal mostly absent in those whose position is already secured by birth. At Court, no doubt, the feudal aristocracy ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... have written his instructions and put them in that ridiculous hiding place, or, more wisely still, would have instructed his solicitor fully on the subject. The amount of trouble given by men, otherwise perfectly sane, by cranks and fancies is astonishing. Here is something like 100,000 pounds lost owing to a superstitious whim. As to your chance of finding the treasure, I regard it as small indeed. The things are hidden in India, in some old tomb, or other rubbishing place. ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... curious to know how you like your brother officers, and how you dispose of your time. The drills and riding-school will, of course, occupy much of your mornings for some time. I trust, however, you will keep in view drawing, languages, etc. It is astonishing how far even half an hour a day, regularly bestowed on one object, will carry a man in making himself master of it. The habit of dawdling away time is easily acquired, and so is that of putting every moment either to use or ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... duty Friedrich Wilhelm would not do; but continued insisting. [Pauli, v. 321.] "Jagerndorf at least, O Kaiser of the world," said he; "Jagerndorf, there is no color for your keeping that!" To which the Kaiser again answers, "Nonsense!"—and even falls upon astonishing schemes about it, as we shall see;—but gives nothing. Ducal Preussen is sovereign, Cleve is at Peace, Hinter-Pommern ours;—this Elector has conquered much: but the Silesian Heritages and Vor-Pommern, and some other things, he will have to do without. Louis XIV., it is thought, once ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... justice and goodness, nor subdued it by our magnanimity. Most of their answers, and the negotiations we have had with them, witness that they were nothing behind us in pertinency and clearness of natural understanding. The astonishing magnificence of the cities of Cusco and Mexico, and, amongst many other things, the garden of the king, where all the trees, fruits, and plants, according to the order and stature they have in a garden, were excellently formed in gold; as, in his cabinet, were ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... return again when he entered upon his office. So he set out on his journey; but some delay occurring in his passage, new intelligence, as often happens, came suddenly from Rome, that Antony had made an astonishing change, and was managing the public affairs in harmony with the will of the senate, and that there wanted nothing but his presence to bring things to a happy settlement. Therefore, blaming himself for his cowardice, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... caused in Prussia and in England, by this astonishing victory, was shared largely by the inhabitants of the country through which the French army had marched. Everywhere they had plundered and pillaged, as if they had been moving through an enemy's country instead of one they had professed ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... and among them the so-called criminal lawyers. Any legislation likely to interfere seriously with the occupation of the criminal class or with its increase is certain to meet with the opposition of a large body of voters. With this active opposition of those interested, and the astonishing indifference of the general public, it is easy to see why so little is done to relieve us of this intolerable burden. The fact is, we go on increasing our expenses for police, for criminal procedure, for jails and prisons, and ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... passion, quite as far removed from the every-day experience of normal human nature. It was this kind of literature, with the French La Calprenede as its high priest, which my Lord Chesterfield had in mind when he wrote to his son under date of 1752, Old Style: "It is most astonishing that there ever could have been a people idle enough to write such endless heaps of the same stuff. It was, however, the occupation of thousands in the last century; and is still the private though disavowed ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... as we came out of the Library, he made an astonishing rejoinder, and one which I cannot in the least account for: "South Carolina ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... drive the healthy reaction of art into its own extravagances of protest. And we shall see how even a genius like Holbein's was unable to entirely free itself from this reactionary defect. For with all his astonishing powers, imaginative and technical, he never wholly overcame that defect of making his figures too short and too thick-set for grace, which amounted to a deformity in the full-length figures of his early work, and was ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... scholarship, it is true, but I can say honestly that it is used to read the Greek Testament with greater accuracy: so of the Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic. I feel, I confess, sometimes that it is nice, &c., to know several languages, but I try to drive away any such thoughts, and it is quite astonishing how, after a few weeks, a study which would suggest ideas of an unusual course of reading becomes so familiar that I never think of myself when pursuing it, e.g., I don't think that after two hours' grind at Arabic the stupid wrong feeling of its being an out-of-the-way study comes upon me now, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to pursue decent terms with Great Britain) to prevent a close alliance between England and Russia, we apprehend, will prevent it. In short, we see no probability of England's forming any alliance against America in all Europe; or indeed against France; whereas, on the other side, from the astonishing preparations of Spain, the family compact, and other circumstances, and from the insolent tyranny of the English over the Dutch, and their consequent resentment, which has shown itself in formidable remonstrances as well as advances towards a treaty with us, there ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... labour, I cut my leather portmanteau into thongs, sewed them end to end, added the sheets of my bed, and descended safely from this astonishing height. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... decaying features of the latest decorated style that impress the vulgar by their apparent age. The extreme care in the masonry has imparted a machine-like finish. As Professor Willis wrote: "The regularity of the size of the stones is astonishing. As soon as they had finished one part, they copied it exactly in the next, even though the additional expense was considerable. The masonry runs in even bands, and you may follow it from the south transept, eastward, round to the north transept, after which they have ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... and other Arabists) considered an impossibility in the elucidation and general re-creation from chaos of the incredibly corrupt and garbled Breslau Text. I confess that I could not have made it out without your previous version. It is astonishing how you men of books get to the bottom of things which are sealed to men of practical experience like me." And he expressed himself similarly at other times. Of course, the secret was the literary faculty and intuition ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... History of Palestine; Remarkable Character of the Hebrew People; Their small Beginning and astonishing Increases; The Variety of Fortune they underwent; Their constant Attachment to the Promised Land; The Subject presents an interesting Problem to the Historian and Politician; The Connexion with Christianity; ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Barbadian home; while shading it and the courtyard was a fine specimen of that superb thing of beauty—a flamboyant tree—glorious with its delicate-green acacia-like leaves and vermilion and yellow flowers, and astonishing with its vast beans. A flight of stone stairs leads from the courtyard to the upper part of the castle where the living rooms are, over the extensive series of cool tunnel-like slave barracoons, now used as store chambers. The upper rooms are high and large, and full of a soft pleasant ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... committed as great an iniquity in the eyes of her people by marrying as by intriguing; nor could she expect pardon for either one or the other, except by some wonderful and powerful interposition, such as Burrell held out. It was astonishing to witness the fortitude with which the fragile and delicate Jewess, who had been clothed in purple and fine linen, fed on the most costly viands, and slept on the most downy couch, encountered the illness, terrors, and miseries attendant on a ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... aversion to monks, those drones in the political hive, whose whole study seems to be to make themselves as useless to the world as possible. Think too of the shocking indelicacy of many of them, who make it a point of religion to abjure linen, and wear their habits till they drop off. How astonishing that any mind should suppose the Deity an enemy to cleanliness! the Jewish religion ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... presented it to Joanna on her wedding day. Columbus took it to America, but fortunately brought it back again; Peter The Great threw it at an indifferent musician; on one of its later visits to England Pope wrote a couplet to it. And the most astonishing thing in its whole history was that now for more than a hundred years it had vanished completely. To turn up again in a little Devonshire cottage! Verily truth is stranger ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... left in her care the few seals and rings he possessed. Then the photograph of her husband as a young man, so much younger than when she had known him. Why send it to her now? What had she to do with this remote past? But the paper was the most astonishing of all. She had been standing when she undid the things; she left the ring and the photograph on the table, and she sank into a chair near the fire holding the bit of paper. The tone of it astonished and confused her. It was more the stern moralist ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... undergoing extensive alterations and decorations, had still a sufficient number of apartments in thorough repair and handsomely enough furnished, to satisfy the taste of a more fastidious person than our ex-Light Dragoon. It was really astonishing the number of visitors he had to receive, and cards and notes of invitation were showered upon him from people whose very existence he had previously never heard of, connections by marriage of the past generation ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... Astonishing scenes of wickedness will then, no doubt, be disclosed. Probably each one will discover things in himself which he had not suspected—depravity, unfairness, disingenuity, the bare suspicion of which by others, would ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... than that of any other animal, and it glistens with the chili water, which has been poured over it, in order to increase his excitement. His resolute shoulders, his straining quarters,—each vying with the other for the prize for strength,—and his great girth, give a look of astonishing vigour and vitality to the animal. It is the head of the buffalo, however, which it is best to look at on these occasions. Its great spread of horns is very imposing, and the eyes which are usually sleepy, cynically contemptuous ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... on the border of a little stream falling into the Mercy, and of the existence of which they had till then been ignorant; it evidently, however, belonged to the hydrographical system to which the soil owed its astonishing fertility. The settlers made a hearty meal, for their appetites were sharpened, and measures were then taken that the night might be passed in safety. If the engineer had had only to deal with wild beasts, jaguars, or others, he would have simply lighted fires all round ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... life," went on Razumov, after glancing at the other uneasily. "Just consider their astonishing nature. A mysterious impulse induces you to come here. I don't say you have done wrong. Indeed, from a certain point of view you could not have done better. You might have gone to a man with affections and family ties. You have such ties yourself. As to me, you know I have been brought up in an ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... adventures we're having! We've explored the country for miles, and I've learned to fish with funny little flies made of feathers. Also to shoot with a rifle and a revolver. Also to ride horseback—there's an astonishing amount of life in old Grove. We fed him on oats for three days, and he shied at a calf and almost ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... are always horizontal and joints properly bound. The freestone blocks at the foot of the wall are very large. The stretchers are six feet eight inches thick, the same wide, and nine feet long. They weigh about twenty-three tons. It is astonishing to find the Assyrians, who were very rapid builders, choosing such heavy and ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... most popular of the cultivated varieties, the far famed MUSA CAVENDISHII, there is little of graceful form, save the broad leaves mottled with brown. All the vitality of the plant is expended in astonishing results. A comparatively lowly plant, its productions in suitable soil are prodigious. In nine or ten months after the planting of the rhizome, it bears under favourable conditions a bunch weighing as much as 120 lb. to 160 lb. and comprising ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... stubbornly resisted the desire to repeat the trip down-town. In the meantime, Simmy had developed into a most unsatisfactory informant. He suddenly revealed an astonishing streak of uncommunicativeness, totally unnatural in him and tantalising in the extreme. He rarely mentioned Anne's name and never discussed her movements. Thorpe was obliged to content himself with an occasional ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... parts of a logical process, the first the choosing of an assumption, and the second the arguing upon it, and humanity, if it devotes itself too persistently to the study of sound reasoning, has a certain tendency to lose the faculty of sound assumption. It is astonishing how constantly one may hear from rational and even rationalistic persons such a phrase as "He did not prove the very thing with which he started," or, "The whole of his case rested upon a pure assumption," two peculiarities which may be found by the curious in ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... more, going up and down the Ohio and many miles to the westward. Some of the Indians used their guns as skillfully as the white men, but when powder and ball were scarce they fell back upon their bows and arrows, and it was astonishing what large game ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... was Vautrin, and Vautrin appears as the name of the most astonishing and most original character which Balzac has created and introduced in the five or six greatest novels of the Comedy. So transcendent, super-human and satanic is Vautrin, Herrera, or Jacques Collin, as he ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... pin, and she liked me to look so too; so I'd better put my best foot foremost when she hasn't laid eyes on me for such an age. I'm fright enough, anyway, goodness knows, with my thinness, and my old lame leg; so—" sticking his head out of the window, and using his lungs with astonishing vigor—"Driver! streak like lightning, will you, to the 'Merchants'? and you shall ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... decoyed into a visit. Instead of taking warning by numerous tokens of the real character of that woman, in her behaviour and in that of her visitants, she consented to remain there one night. The next morning took place that astonishing interview with you which she has since described to me. She is now warned against the like indiscretion. And, pray, what benevolent scheme would you propose ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Rio Noonez. The paths for trade and communication with the interior, from this position, are at the king's pleasure, and he opens and shuts them by his mandate. The Foolahs are tall, well-limbed, robust and courageous, grave in their deportment, are well acquainted with commerce, and travel over an astonishing space of the country. Their religion is a mixture of Mahomedanism, idolatry, and fetishism. One of their tenets, which inculcates the destruction of those they term infidels, is peculiarly friendly to slavery, and as the greater part ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... astonishing, Miss Beth," he replied. "The puzzling fact is that you are here—and under such auspices," he added, in ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... come, and his kingdom be as Solomon's; say also I am ready to give myself and all I have to him and his cause; yet more, say that I should do as was God's purpose in the ordering of my life and in your quick amassment of astonishing fortune; then what? Shall we proceed like blind men building? Shall we wait till the King comes? Or until he sends for me? You have age and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... a burn, there are none equal to a simple covering of common wheat flour. This is always at hand; and while it requires no skill in using, it produces most astonishing effects. The moisture produced upon the surface of a slight or deep burn is at once absorbed by the flour, and forms a paste which shuts out the air. As long as the fluid matters continue flowing, they are absorbed, and prevented from producing irritation, as they would do if ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... carried off his little aide from the McRae Tuesday morning, and left him here Thursday evening, to our infinite delight, for we felt as though we would never again see our dear little Jimmy. He has grown so tall, and stout, that it is really astonishing, considering the short time he has been away.... To our great distress, he jumped up from dinner, and declared he must go to the city on the very next boat. Commodore Hollins would need him, he must be at his post, etc., and in twenty minutes he was off, the rascal, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... I wanted," said the general with satisfaction—"a curiosity. However, the most astonishing and, if I may so express myself, the most painful, thing in this matter, is that you cannot even understand, young man, that Lizabetha Prokofievna, only stayed with you because you are ill,—if you really are dying—moved ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that lay in your way. Brooklyn herself has awakened from her sleep of almost ten years, and the sound of the hammer and the saw and the ring of the trowel are heard on every hand. Owing to the enterprise, energy and self-sacrificing efforts of many of the men who are with us to-day, she is astonishing the country by the wonderful increase in population. Brooklyn can no longer be regarded as the bedroom of Manhattan, for Manhattan is rapidly becoming only the workshop of Brooklyn; we can no longer be regarded as the little brother of Manhattan, for we are rapidly becoming a very ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... which is most certain, does not hold the foremost place in action, but rather particular knowledge, since actions are about singulars: wherefore it is not astonishing that, in matters of action, passion acts counter to universal knowledge, if the consideration of particular knowledge ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Tanks, and had the war continued, the complete destruction of the German Armies would have been brought about in 1919 by "a Tank programme of some six thousand machines." When one considers that for the whole of the three last victorious months in which Tanks played such an astonishing part, the British Armies never possessed more than four hundred of them, who travelled like a circus from army to army, the significance of this figure will be understood. Nor could Germany, by any possibility, ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... long, and can only be properly wielded by an experienced Esquimaux; the other dogs follow like a flock of sheep, and if one receives a lash, he bites his neighbour, and the bite goes round. Their strength, and speed, even with an hungry stomach, is astonishing; and to this they are often subjected, especially by the heathen, who treat them with little mercy, and force them to perform hard duty for the small quantity of food they allow them. Their portion upon a journey consists chiefly in offals, old skins, entrails, rotten ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... at Podsnap's place of business. Finds Podsnap reading the paper, standing, and inclined to be oratorical over the astonishing discovery he has made, that Italy is not England. Respectfully entreats Podsnap's pardon for stopping the flow of his words of wisdom, and informs him what is in the wind. Tells Podsnap that their political opinions are identical. Gives Podsnap to understand that ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... we made a few days ago holds good. Her highness will be proud to receive you when you are ready to come to the throne-room. I am Grenfall Lorry. Come, sir; rest and refresh yourself in our gladdened home. An hour ago we were making ready to rush into battle; but your astonishing but welcome news is calculated to change every ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... been inspired to write a study of womankind without trying to interpose between her thought and the paper the mind and vision of a man. The outcome is astonishing. I have said that the construction of the novel is solid; but no man could have built it up in that way. It moves to a definite goal by a sure path; yet its style is variable like the ways of every woman, even if she be completely mistress of herself.... Thus her ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... States-General, who had now begun to claim it as a right. The Republic was neither venerable by age nor impregnable in law. It was an improvised aristocracy of lawyers, manufacturers, bankers, and corporations which had done immense work and exhibited astonishing sagacity and courage, but which might never have achieved the independence of the Provinces unaided by the sword of Orange-Nassau and the magic spell which belonged to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... unflinching to an astonishing degree, and their fidelity to their Tsar is quite admirable. See how the Russians behaved at Plescova, in Livonia, in the old time, against our great Batory Stephen; they defended the place till it was a heap of rubbish; and mark how they behaved after they ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... "there is in the speech of James, Arts xv. a quotation from Amos in which, to make it fit the subject, (which after all it does not fit) is the substitution of the words "the remnant of men," for "the remnant of Edom," as it is in the original." On this Mr. Everett remarks with astonishing' composure, "There are few of my readers to whom I need say, that the same Hebrew word means 'men,' and 'Edom,' according' as it is pronounced, and St. James has as fair a right to pronounce it men,' as Mr. English has to pronounce it 'Edom.'" ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... It is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence. There can BE no difference any- where that doesn't MAKE a difference elsewhere—no difference ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... desert from being composed of soft sand and being destitute of water, supports prodigious herds of antelopes, while numbers of elephants, rhinoceros, lions, hyenas, and other animals roam over it. They find support from the astonishing quantity of grass which grows in the region, as also from a species of water-melon, and from several tuberous roots, the most curious of which is the leroshua, as large as the head of a young child, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... bay was so near that I could hear the dashing of the waves. It was near midnight, and occasionally a star was to be seen through the flying clouds. The hours passed heavily and cheerlessly away. The wind at times roared through the adjoining woods with astonishing violence. In a pause of the storm, as the wind died suddenly away, and was heard only moaning at a distance, I was startled by an unusual noise in the woods before me. Again I listened attentively, and imagined that I heard the heavy ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... Captain Lloyd, his officers, and crew, the ship was entirely consumed. No sooner, however, did the humane and generous commander of the Badger perceive the nature of the disaster, than he hastened to the dreadful scene; and, by his unceasing exertions, and astonishing presence of mind, the crew were saved from the flames. At his suggestion, the powder was instantly ordered to be thrown overboard; a measure to which all the other ships in the harbour, and even the town itself, probably owed their preservation. The inhabitants, indeed, were thrown into great ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... they responded to the call was only astonishing to those who were unacquainted with the true feelings of the unhappy race whose highest hope of freedom was beyond the pearly gates of the celestial domain. One thing that impressed the blacks ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... proves the quickest and most effectual way. Where before were only resistance and indifference, there come, in answer to prayer, strange telentings, mysterious longings, receptivity, and sometimes, in a way that is astonishing, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... persons with thy goad. Verily, with my spouse, I am in good health. I see my goddess become as beautiful in body as an Apsara. Verily, she is endued with as much comeliness and splendour as she had ever been before. All this, O great ascetic, is due to thy grace. Verily, there is nothing astonishing in all this, O holy Rishi of puissance ever unbaffled.' Thus addressed by the king, Chyavana said unto him, 'Thou shalt, with thy spouse, return hither tomorrow, O monarch!' With these words, the royal sage Kusika was dismissed. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the others must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing conjunction of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances that this ram, who instead of getting into the general fold every evening goes into a special enclosure where there are oats—that this very ram, swelling with fat, is ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... their scientific equipment, their astonishing technique, and their intellectualism, mark the end of one era, do they not rumour the coming of another? Certainly to-day there is stress in the cryptic laboratory of Time. A great thing is dead; but, as ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... But while I was pursuing my investigations the clock struck twelve, the company unmasked, and gaily flocked toward the Supper rooms. I felt particularly entitled to refreshments, and in the course of my indulgence in the good things of my selection, my faintness—which was more astonishing to my robust, muscular young self than any carnival joke in the world could have been—passed off completely. I was as happy and lively as before, and enjoyed the remainder of the ball as much as I had the beginning. I tried to dismiss the episode ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... can neglect it. The next time you are in a car, look at those who sit opposite you and see what you can discover of their habits, occupations, ideals, nationalities, environments, education, and so on. You may not see a great deal the first time, but practise will reveal astonishing results. Transmute every incident of your day into a subject for a speech or an illustration. Translate all that you see into terms of speech. When you can describe all that you have seen in definite words, you are seeing clearly. You are becoming ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... denationalizing themselves Apocryphal New Testament Astonishing talent for seeing things that had already passed Bade our party a kind good-bye, and proceeded to count spoons Base flattery to call them immoral Bones of St Denis But it is an ill-wind that blows nobody good Buy the man out, goodwill and all By dividing ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... confidently related by men high in station, tended to keep up the infatuation of the alchymists in every country of Europe. It is astonishing to see the number of works which were written upon the subject during the seventeenth century alone, and the number of clever men who sacrificed themselves to the delusion. Gabriel de Castaigne, a monk ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the Book of Esdras in the Apocrypha. It is astonishing that such a beautiful and forcible exemplification of the governing principle of life should have been cast aside as doubtful by those who presumed to sit in judgment upon the revealed will of the Almighty. That they did fail to perceive in this the divine stamp, proves all ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... eucharis lilies mostly in tubs, and rare and beautiful flowers brought by him from his Barbadian home; while shading it and the courtyard was a fine specimen of that superb thing of beauty—a flamboyant tree—glorious with its delicate-green acacia-like leaves and vermilion and yellow flowers, and astonishing with its vast beans. A flight of stone stairs leads from the courtyard to the upper part of the castle where the living rooms are, over the extensive series of cool tunnel-like slave barracoons, now used as store chambers. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... manage for yourself. You will miss your dinner sadly if you are not accustomed to fast for twenty-four hours. You will also miss your bed decidedly, and your toothbrush in the morning; but if, on the other hand, you are of the right stamp, it is astonishing how lightly these little troubles will sit on you, and how comfortable you will make ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... outdistanced rivals, SAM MAYO ("The Immobile Comedian," as he is called), remains standing. He has few gestures; he rarely, if ever, sings, and I have never seen him dance; and yet the way in which he "gets over" is astonishing. "Laughter holding both his sides" is the most constant attendant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... for himself, is hard to tell. And it would please him to leave that purposely obscure. What is alive and intense in the poem is, first, the realisation of Athenian life in several scenes, pictured with all Browning's astonishing force of presentation, as, for instance, the feast after the play, and the grim entrance of Sophocles, black from head to foot, among the glittering and drunken revellers, to ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... have you devoted to him, and he longs to have you more devoted. It is astonishing, nevertheless God has intense desire to be prayed to and great love for communion with our hearts. He says, "My son, give me thine heart." What does he want with man's heart? He wants to put his love in it, so he can be loved by it and hold communion with it. "The prayer of the upright is ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... far greater force than is actually the case, while the main body is under the cover offered by a friendly wood and is safe from detection. The rapidity with which thousands of men are able to disappear when the word "Airman" is passed round is astonishing. They vanish as completely and suddenly as if swallowed by the earth or dissolved into thin air. They conceal themselves under bushes, in ditches, lie prone under hedgerows, dart into houses and outbuildings—in short, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... consolation in Charley's rapid progress towards health. He was gaining with astonishing rapidity and bid fair to be completely recovered ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... told they were good beings?" "I believe they might be good beings: but they were not fit to be in the University of Oxford. A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden." Note that, as usual with Johnson,—and that is the astonishing thing—the illustration, however far-fetched, is not merely humorous but exactly to the point. Plenty of men can compose such retorts at leisure: the unique Johnsonian gift was that he had them at his instant command. Or take one other illustration; a compliment this time, and ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... Old University of Cairo, is said to number at times as many as ten thousand students of the Koran, a number which may well challenge a comparison with the Protestant Theological Seminaries of Europe and America, not only by their numbers, but by the astonishing success of their pupils as missionaries. They run where we halt, they win ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... similar feeling. With the negroes the canteen question is of comparatively slight importance, not only because the men can be more easily amused within their barracks, but because their appetite for drink is by no means as strong as that of the white men. Their sociability is astonishing. They would rather sit up and tell stories and crack jokes than go to bed, no matter how hard the day ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... weeks in which he learned, past the waver of a doubt, that his friend was knit with a glistening and imperishable fabric of courage, brought David Cairns to that high astonishing point, where he could say impatiently, "Rot!"—as his former ideals of manhood rose to mind. It was good for him to get this so young.... One morning something went wrong with Benton, the farrier. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... well; we admire the discovery, and, in spite of us, a little surprise mingles with our admiration. But is it not a truly curious thing that several individuals should have had at nearly the same time that idea that was so astonishing in one? This, however, is a fact that the history of electrical inventions offers more than one example of. No one ignores the fact that the invention of the telephone gave rise to a notorious lawsuit, two inventors having had this ingenious ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... unconsciously grown well. He had been strangely, unbelievably happy. Why? Mel Iden had nursed him, loved him, inspired him back to health. Her very presence near him, even unseen, had been a profound happiness. He made the astonishing discovery that for months he had thought of little else besides his wife. He had lived a lonely life, in his room, and in the open, but all of it had been dominated by his dreams and fancies and emotions about ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... happier when they are dirty," said Letty, graciously, pleased to feel herself on these easy terms with her two companions. "What beautiful flowers he has! and what an astonishing little botanist he seems ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enough understand. There is in the simple fact of an aerial ascent something so bold and so astonishing, that the human spirit cannot fail to be profoundly stirred by it. And if this is the feeling of men at the present day, when, after having been witnesses of ascents for the last eighty years, they see ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... I'm very glad you showed me these papers, very glad! I say that it's a most astonishing thing if the ore suddenly stops there. [A gleam of humour visits LEVER'S face.] I'm not an expert, but you ought to prove that ground to the East ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... its final form represents a considerable evolution. The comparison of successive editions reveals an astonishing amount of matter which has been discarded, although there has been no real modification of its fundamental principles. References to malicious animal magnetism which fill a large place in the earlier editions, are almost wholly wanting in the last, and there has been a decided progress ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... skeptic, has been called barren and gloomy; but setting aside all the legends of the Jews, and confining ourselves entirely to the generally received Scriptures, there will be found sufficient food for an imagination warm as that of Homer, Apelles, Phidias, or Praxiteles. It is astonishing that such rich materials for poetry should for so many centuries have been so little regarded, appropriated, or ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... on the ground that there are many Germans in sundry other of the Wisconsin regiments. It may be well to mention here that the number of Germans through all these Western States is very great. Their number and well-being were to me astonishing. That they form a great portion of the population of New York, making the German quarter of that city the third largest German town in the world, I have long known; but I had no previous idea of their expansion westward. In Detroit nearly every third shop bore a German name, and the same ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... a nation even as the United States, the "age of consent" laws evidence the tenacity of barbarism. The black list of states, compiled by Mr. Powell (180. 201), in a recent article in the Arena, reveals the astonishing fact that in three states—Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina-the "age of consent" is ten years; in four states, twelve years; in three states, thirteen years; in no fewer than twenty states, fourteen ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... might have been anticipated. Many of the guests had never seen this celebrated product of human skill, and to all the two-story population of Rockland it was the last expression of the art of pleasing and astonishing the human palate. Its appearance had been deferred for several reasons: first, because everybody would have attacked it, if it had come in with the other luxuries; secondly, because undue apprehensions were entertained (owing to want of experience) of its tendency to deliquesce and resolve ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... saw here once, who looks so like the Bellini portrait of Mahomet II. It's an astonishing likeness; he has the same arched eyebrows and hooked nose and prominent cheekbones. When his beard comes he'll be Mahomet himself. Anyhow he has good taste, for Bergotte is a charming creature." And seeing how much I seemed to admire ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... against Caesar's power were formed in Spain, in Africa, and in Italy. His military skill and energy, however, were so great, and the ascendency which he exercised over the minds of men by his personal presence was so unbounded, and so astonishing, moreover, was the celerity with which he moved from continent to continent, and from kingdom to kingdom, that in a very short period from the time of his leaving Egypt, he had conducted most brilliant and successful campaigns in all the three quarters of the world then known, ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... to doubt the unknown's assertions, and, as that coast was that of lower Bolivia there was nothing astonishing ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... inspired his monks to their task. He even provided lamps of ingenious construction, that seem to have been self-trimming, to aid them in their work. He himself set an example of literary diligence, astonishing in one of ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... those crabs with fine shells known as porcelain crabs, and the curious death's head crab, which seems to build a kind of nest of sponge or shells. But upon the next table (20) the visitor will find the most remarkable of the crabs, together with an astonishing lobster. This crab is known as the hermit crab. The visitor will perceive, that it has a long naked tail; and he should know that the one all-absorbing care of its life seems to be to find a place of safety in which this unprotected part may be screened from ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... flushed. He was now full of anticipation for the new life before him. And it was to be a new life indeed—a life full of astonishing experiences and adventures. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... of my uncles' patent steel, and as I stood at the door and watched him I counted the blows he gave, and it was astonishing how regular he was, every implement taking nearly the same number of blows before he threw ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... first, on the tops of omnibuses and in Chelsea drawing-rooms, at the music-hall, at the opera, at classical concerts, and in Bond Street galleries. We take them for granted and are perfectly civil to them. So why, because he happened to have an astonishing gift of statement and rapid generalization, should Zola be treated as though he were a monster? Though Diggle, the billiards champion, care little or nothing for poetry, he may have an excellent heart, as well as a hand far surpassing in dexterity that of our most accomplished ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... increasing the quantity of money in a state—could that, in fine, which is the faithful handmaid of labor and industry, in every shape, fail to augment that article, which is the prolific parent of far the greatest part of the objects upon which they are exerted? It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary; and it is one, among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement, is to lead men astray ...
— The Federalist Papers
... nocentes," repeated Henri. "What the devil could my brother mean by 'ambo!' Ventre St. Gris, ma mie, it is astonishing that you who know Latin so well have not yet explained it to me. Ah! pardieu! there is 'Turennius' walking under your windows, and looking up as if he expected you. I will call to him to come up; he is very learned, and he will ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... materialisation of spirits, writing on slates, &c. Having subsequently obtained from these distinguished observers written reports admitting that the phenomena observed could only have been obtained by supernatural means, he revealed to them that they were the result of very simple tricks. "The most astonishing feature of Monsieur Davey's investigation," writes the author of this account, "is not the marvellousness of the tricks themselves, but the extreme weakness of the reports made with respect to them by the noninitiated witnesses. ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... purpose apart from the ordinary religious exercises, could not be persuaded but that his mother was now to be decently interred, and lost to him for ever. In the anguish of this conviction, he screamed with astonishing force, and turned black in the face. However touching these marks of a tender disposition were to his mother, it was not in the character of that remarkable woman to permit her recognition of them to degenerate into weakness. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... power in dreams seems to have a range and an intensity which does not exist when one is awake. I have not the slightest power, in waking life, of conceiving and visualising the astonishing landscapes which I see in dreams. I can recall actual scenes with great distinctness, but the glowing colour and the prodigious forms of my landscape visions are wholly beyond my ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... completed in two years. Never before had such a sum been invested in internal improvement in the United States. The rapidity with which the undertaking was carried through and the profits which accrued from the investment were alike astonishing. The subscription books were opened at eleven o'clock one morning and by midnight 2226 shares had been subscribed, each purchaser paying down thirty dollars. At the same time Elkanah Watson was despondently ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... Postillions drove away. At first I was delighted with the rapidity of our progress; But as soon as we were in no danger of pursuit, I called to the Drivers, and bad them moderate their pace. They strove in vain to obey me. The Horses refused to answer the rein, and continued to rush on with astonishing swiftness. The Postillions redoubled their efforts to stop them, but by kicking and plunging the Beasts soon released themselves from this restraint. Uttering a loud shriek, the Drivers were hurled upon the ground. Immediately thick clouds obscured the sky: The winds howled around us, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... the twentieth century, science has gained notably in expertness, and lost notably in authority. We are bombarded with inventions; but if we ask the inventors what they have learned of the depths of nature, which somehow they have probed with such astonishing success, their faces remain blank. They may be chewing gum; or they may tell us that if an aeroplane could only fly fast enough, it would get home before it starts; or they may urge us to come with them into a dark room, to hold hands, and to ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... dells of wood, and lofty rocks and terrific chasms. When I tell you that these ruins cover several acres and that the paths alone penetrate at least half their extent, your imagination will fill up all that I am unable to express of the astonishing scene. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... may be explained, Mrs. Marchmont. So would I have said a year ago; but since we last met at your hospitable fireside, my wife and I have gone through a very astonishing experience. We 'can a tale unfold.' No man was better inclined to laugh at ghost ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... and they would have said with pride afterwards: "That chap Machin o'Bursley was standing behind me at the Empire to-night!" And though Machin is amongst the commonest names in the Five Towns, all would have known that the great and admired Denry was meant ... It was astonishing that a personage so notorious should not have been instantly "spotted" in such a resort as the Empire. More proof that the Five Towns was a vast and seething concentration of cities, and no longer a mere ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... aristocracy, "the Franks of France," in the eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth centuries of our era. The closeness of the whole parallel, allowing for the admitted absence in France of a very great and truly artistic poet, is astonishing. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... requested one of their new acquaintances to go in search of the main body of their party, and to inform the Sachem that she and Henrich had preceded them to the wigwams; and then—with a dignity and composure that were astonishing in one so young and accustomed to so wild a life—she guided her palfrey into the narrow path that wound through the undergrowth of evergreens, while Henrich walked by her side, and ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... ministers against every imputation of the calamities and disasters of the war being the result of their ignorance and mismanagement, and ridiculed the warnings and predictions of opposition. He observed,—"It is true they have often foretold the desertion of our allies, as well as the astonishing exertions of the enemy; and I cannot but confess that such is unfortunately the result. It is not, however, any difficult matter to prophesy disappointment and ill-success: if the prediction proved false, gentlemen would ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of Vorsteher, except incidentally in Section 7, which is the more astonishing, as the annual settlement of accounts, in the same book, in the handwriting of Muehlenberg, both before and after the adoption of this constitution, mention the settlement as made by the pastor, elders and ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker
... lies toward the edge of the claret country; but it grows astonishing claret. When I was about your age it grew a wine yet ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... they are contemplated. There is something grand in the spread of new ideas which are unpalatable to the mighty and the wise. Considering the humble characters of the early Apostles and their disciples, their triumphs were really magnificent. It is astonishing that the teachings of fishermen should have supplanted the teachings of Jewish rabbis and Grecian philosophers, amid so great and general opposition. It is remarkable that their doctrines should have so completely changed the lives of those who ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... calculation, that the sailors often declared they believed he could work out any calculation backwards without the use of logarithms! He was constantly instituting comparisons that were by no means what the proverb terms "odious," but which were often very astonishing, and in all his stories so many curious and peculiar facts were introduced, that, as we have already said, they were very much ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... and stern in the penalties it inflicts. The legs and hands are cut off pilferers, heads are cut off sometimes and preserved in salt and camphor, and the bastinado is an ordinary punishment for lesser crimes. But the Moors must be thick in the soles, nor is it astonishing, as the practice is to chastise children by beating them on the feet. Mahomet Lamarty volunteered to procure a criminal who would submit to the bastinado for a peseta. In the market-place I compassionated an unfortunate thief minus his right hand and left leg. We took a walk to ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Amelia, not me. The war has wakened me up to a understanding of my own importance that is really astonishing.' ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... many generations; sometimes it was almost realised by this or that investigator, then it escaped for long periods. Lavoisier seems to have realised, by what we call intuition, that however great and astonishing may be the changes in the properties of the substances which mutually react, there is no change in the total quantity ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... furnished with books, pictures, and rare things. Here he could, Maecenas-like, entertain his literary friends of all degrees, with a vast number of other friends and acquaintances, notable in their walks of life. It is astonishing what a circle he had gathered round him, and how intimate he was with all: political men such as Brougham, Guizot, Gladstone, Forster, Cornwall Lewis (Disraeli he abhorred as much as his friend of Chelsea did, ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... "Truly an astonishing fellow!" reflected Chichikov with a glance at his companion. "It is sad indeed to see a man so superficial as to be unable to explain matters of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... which might contribute to the entertainment and instruction of my pretty fellow travellers. "I am, said he, as you may perceive by my habit, a Bramin, and my name is Wiseman. All the time I can spare from the worship of my Maker, and the contemplation of that astonishing wisdom and beneficence which he has displayed in his works of creation and providence, I cheerfully devote to the service of my fellow mortals, and particularly of the younger and unexperienced part of them. The most valuable service I can render them is to conduct them into the ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... the Alcmaeonidae and consequently with Pericles. On the death of his father Clinias Pericles had become his guardian. From early youth the conduct of Alcibiades was marked by violence, recklessness, and vanity. He delighted in astonishing the more sober portion of the citizens by his capricious and extravagant feats. He was utterly destitute of morality, whether public or private. But his vices were partly redeemed by some brilliant qualities. He possessed both boldness ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... black-and-white piglets, and at any hour of the day one might see numbers of natives looking over my wall at the graceful little creatures as they chased one another over the grass, charged at nothing, and came to a dead stop with astonishing rapidity and a look of intense amazement. One fatal day I let them out, thinking they would come to no harm, as their parents were with them. As they did not return at dusk I sent E'eu, the under-nurse, to search for them. She came back and told me in a whisper that the father ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... talk. My own impression is, that the Prussians were firing at the ramparts, and that, as often occurs, their projectiles overshot the mark. I did not see anyone either killed or wounded, and it seems to me that the most astonishing thing in a bombardment is the little damage it does to life and limb. I saw a bit of iron cut away a branch from one of the trees, and one shell I saw burst on the road by the river. In 15 minutes we counted 11 shells whizzing through the air, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... "Would'st asperse my daughter's name? Darest thou—By heaven, you hold a weapon in your hand. I am old but—Guard thyself!" he called, whipping out his sword with astonishing agility. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... repair'd by the late King) now rent in pieces, flakes of vast stone split asunder, and nothing now remaining intire but the inscription in the architrave, shewing by whom it was built, which had not one letter of it defac'd. It was astonishing to see what immense stones the heate had in a manner calcin'd, so that all the ornaments, columns, freezes, capitals, and projectures of massie Portland-stone flew off, even to the very roofe, where a sheet of lead covering a great space (no less than six akers ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... St. Lawrence (it is astonishing how the old water-ways still pull us children of the air), and followed his broad line of black between its drifting iceblocks, all down the Park that the wisdom of our fathers—but every one knows the ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... greatly increased, first, by selecting men physically fit for work, and, second, by keeping them in that condition. There is a tremendous waste from inefficiency constantly going on, due to impaired health. Wall Street has an astonishing corps ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... Sweetest days, when (astonishing to say) mortals have actually met together in communion and fellowship; and man, were it only once through long despicable centuries, is for moments verily the brother of man!—And then the Deputations to the National Assembly, with ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Mr. Newman, some time since, in one of the Tracts for the Times; and it was conducted, as may be supposed, with great ingenuity, but with a recklessness of consequences, or an ignorance of mankind, truly astonishing; for he brought forward all the difficulties and differences which can be found in the Scripture narratives, displayed them in their most glaring form, and merely observed, that as those with whom he was arguing could not solve these difficulties, but yet believed the Scriptures no ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... Sergeant, and ordered him to go back down the hill to where the road turned behind it, and tell General ——— to send them a support instantly, as the batteries were knocked to pieces, and they could not hold the hill much longer. The announcement was astonishing to the old soldier; it had never occurred to him that as long as a man remained they could not hold the hill, and he was half-way down the slope before he took it in. He had brought his gun with him, and he clutched it convulsively as if he could withstand alone the whole Prussian ...
— "A Soldier Of The Empire" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... To see a green tree, clear and distinct in form and bright with the beams of the sun which just at that instant caught upon it, breaking out to view suddenly high up among the clouds of the sky, seemed truly an astonishing spectacle. Rollo had scarcely recovered from the first emotion of his surprise before the clouds parted again, wider than before, and brought into view, first a large mass of foliage, which formed the termination of a grove of trees; then a portion of a smooth, green field, ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy of Mr. Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and ideals were rapidly passing; a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a sense of doubt and hesitation overtook the freedmen's sons,—then it was that his leading began. Mr. Washington came, with a simple definite programme, at the psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Nature. But Nature herself cannot create a human being possessed of a complete knowledge of our world almost the moment he is born into it. Is the knowledge of the world which his Miscellanies contain, no proof of his astonishing quickness in seizing every thing he chose? Is it remembered when, and at what age, Chatterton for the first time quitted Bristol, and how few weeks he lived afterwards? Chatterton's Letters and Miscellanies, and every thing which the warmest advocate for Rowley ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... anecdote fitting into this time which has still more of the good-fairy ring in it, while it sounds like a general endorsement of youthful wisdom. Yet it may have had its origin in some eager, youthful fancy of astonishing another girl, and giving her "the very thing she wanted" as a reward for her exemplary behaviour. The Princess was visiting a jeweller's shop incognito (a little in the fashion of Haroun-al-Raschid) when she saw another young lady hang long over some gold chains, lay down reluctantly ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... done my best to keep the astonishing richness of the tomb from the ears of the natives. No one has been inside it but the Chief Inspector and the photographer and you two. No words have ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... of the Australian aboriginal is acute, and his talent for mimicry astonishing; he can imitate the notes of every bird and the call of ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... left alone in the stone-flagged kitchen, it was astonishing how rapidly that sprained ankle recovered. It was nearly nightfall, and we had eaten nothing since early morning, so that we spent some time over our meal. Holmes was lost in thought, and once or twice he walked over to the window and stared earnestly out. It opened on ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "yes" but she placed her disengaged hand, warm and soft, upon his, and Yates was not the man to have any hesitation about what to do next. To practical people it may seem an astonishing thing that, the object of the interview being happily accomplished, there should be any need of prolonging it; yet the two lingered there, and he told her much of his past life, and of how lonely and sordid it had been ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... excellent equal Free School privileges of Boston. The girl, in the Grammar School (chiefly composed of whites), has already distinguished herself, having received a diploma, with an excellent certificate of character; and the boy, naturally very apt, has made astonishing progress." ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the prisoners was nursing a superficial wound in the foot. He cuddled it, baby-wise, but he looked up from it often to curse with an astonishing utter abandon straight at the noses of his captors. He consigned them to red regions; he called upon the pestilential wrath of strange gods. And with it all he was singularly free from recognition of the finer points of the conduct of prisoners of war. It ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... great authority was summoned and installed himself in the castle, and visited the sick man six times during the day, and feasted royally in the meanwhile, after the manner of great authorities, who have an amazing discernment in regard to the good things of this life, as well as an astonishing capacity ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... by begging, stealing, street-sweeping, collecting manure, pushing handcarts, driving donkeys, peddling, or performing occasional small jobs. In every great town a multitude of such people may be found. It is astonishing in what devices this "surplus population" takes refuge. The London crossing-sweepers are known all over the world; but hitherto the principal streets in all the great cities, as well as the crossings, have been swept ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... said the Mayor, after complimenting Arthur on his astonishing success, "would be to hale Claire before the courts for fraud, and subpoena all our distinguished enemies. That course has some ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... on their way, past the old smithy, where a pleasant breath of warmth and a splendid ringing of hammers came from the forge, and past the new garage of raw wood with the still-astonishing miracle of a "horseless carriage" in its big window, pots of paint and oil standing inside its door, and workmen, behind a barrier of barrels and planks, laying a cement sidewalk in front. They passed the Five-and-Ten-Cent ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
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