|
|
|
More "Prodigious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do—work that people could not understand. The people invariably thought there must be a trick about the giving—that the eager one wanted hidden results for self.... Invariably, they were prodigious workers, men of incredible energy. Thus they ground themselves fine; and invariably, too, they were men of exalted personal conduct, though often they had passed before the ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... sense of its importance, is for the most part a bit of the most useful information driven out of our heads and choked off from our minds. It is so certain that information, i.e., the knowledge, the stored thoughts and observations of mankind, is now grown to proportions so utterly incalculable and prodigious, that even the learned whose lives are given to study can but pick up some crumbs that fall from the table of truth. They delve and tend but a plot in that vast and teeming kingdom, whilst those whom ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the maids' beds, pull stools from under folks, and lay a coal upon their shoes when they were asleep. He was at last turned off for some notable piece of roguery, and when I came away, was loitering among the ale-houses. Bless me, thought I, what a prodigious wit would this have been with us! I could have matched all the sharpers between St. James's and Covent Garden, with a notable fellow in the same neighbourhood, (since hanged for picking pockets at fairs) could he have had the advantages ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... in Baltimore was, at first, prodigious. What the mishap would have cost the Buttons and their kinsfolk socially cannot be determined, for the outbreak of the Civil War drew the city's attention to other things. A few people who were unfailingly polite racked ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality. The world, it has been often remarked, appears as if it had long been preparing for the advent of man; and this, in one sense, is strictly true, for he owes his birth to a long line of progenitors. If any single link ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... a book- store, she stood next to a gentleman leaning over the same counter, whom a salesman addressed by the name of a popular author, and she remained staring at him breathless till he left the place. When she bragged of the prodigious experience at home, her husband defied her to say how it differed from meeting the lecturers who had been their guests in Tuskingum, and she answered that none of them compared with this author; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mission to receive me. His is a pretty mission, built in the Chinese style, with a modest little church and a nice garden and summer-house. The father has been four years in Tongchuan and ten in China. Like most of the French priests in China he has succeeded in growing a prodigious beard whose imposing length adds to his influence among the Chinese, who are apt to estimate age by the length of the beard. Only three weeks ago he returned from the capital. Signs of famine were everywhere apparent. The ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... able to hide, hitherto, such an encircling and all-mastering Spirit? He possesses every Quality that ART could have charm'd by: yet, has lent it to, and conceal'd it in, NATURE.——The Comprehensiveness of his Imagination must be truly prodigious!——It has stretch'd out this diminutive mere Grain of Mustard-seed, (a poor Girl's little, innocent, Story) into a Resemblance of That Heaven, which the Best of Good Books has compar'd it to.——All the Passions are His, in their most close and abstracted Recesses: and by selecting the ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... fights of his time.... Socially, he has always lived in a somewhat humble position, and it is to the credit of his nature as a man that he bears not the slightest trace of the parvenu. Plain and undistinguished in appearance, he combines the advantages of a prodigious memory with a remarkable aptitude for reading his fellow-man, and this last quality would be more valuable were it not leavened by a weakness in resisting flattery and adulation. He is very pious and self-reliant, which is provocative of bigotry and hot temper; and surrounded and approached ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... most of the complaining are not deliberately striving to sabotage the national war effort. They are laboring under the delusion that the time is past when we must make prodigious sacrifices—that the war is already won and we can begin to slacken off. But the dangerous folly of that point of view can be measured by the distance that separates our troops from their ultimate objectives ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... his hand with a deprecatory gesture—that hand, by the by, was remarkably small and delicately formed—it looked almost fragile. Yet the strength and suppleness of D'Avencourt's wrist was reputed to be prodigious by those who had seen him handle the sword, whether in play or ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the apostle Jude, verse 9, and why not quarrel with, and accuse the justice of God as unrighteous, for consenting to the salvation of sinners, since his best qualifications are most profound and prodigious attempts to dethrone the Lord God of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the black gave a prodigious leap, which Tartlet could not but admire from a choregraphic point of view. Then repressing his fear, and seeing the bird with broken wing running through the grass, he started off and swift as a greyhound ran towards it, and with many a caper, half of joy, half of stupefaction, brought ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... before the sensational rencontre in Emma's den, the chance of finding a rude pilgrim woodcut on the Quai Voltaire revealed the saint's identity. This ugly print informed the faithful that the "prodigious image" of Our Lady existed in the Church of the Carmelites at Borgo San Liberale. One might distinguish at the extreme right of the five compartments a willowy St. Michael in armour, like Chaucer's Squire in a black-letter folio, or if the identification ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... have told you the whole story, Major Pierson," said Lieutenant Dallberg with another prodigious yawn. ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... in the "Tribune" was prodigious. It was widely circulated through all the journals of the North. The Anti-Slavery Society preserved it in a pamphlet. The ire of a good portion of the Southern journals was ludicrous to witness, and proved how keenly the blow was felt. The report was republished in Great Britain,—first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... him," said Mr. Thomson. "I daresay old Peter knew as little about this as I do. You see, I succeeded to a prodigious accumulation of old law-papers and old tin boxes, some of them of Peter's hoarding, some of his father's, John, first of the dynasty, a great man in his day. Among other collections, were all the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exposed to our attacks. Very large bodies of men must otherwise be employed in escorting them. They may form depots at the foot of the hills as they advance, but even then their difficulties will be prodigious. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... the house on Herbert Street, and his daughter Elizabeth (who afterward became a woman of prodigious learning) soon made acquaintance with the Hathorne children. She remembers the boy Nathaniel jumping about his uncle's yard, and this is the first picture that we have of him. When we consider what a beautiful ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... largely advanced each of these branches of science, and having spent many years in gathering and sifting materials for his present work, the store of accurately registered facts upon which the author of the 'Origin of Species' is able to draw at will is prodigious. ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... the offal was by the obscene birds that flew down from the hills; Messieurs the landcrabs, who were assuredly the best scavengers of all, not stirring beyond the Palisadoes. Some things were very cheap, but others inordinately dear. Veal was at a prodigious price; and 'twas a common saying, that you could buy Four children in England cheaper than you could one calf in Jamaica. But for the products and dishes of the colony, which I have elsewhere hinted at, all was as low-priced as it was abundant. What ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... being held there by two pieces of whalebone, that closed the pocket. The searchers, among whom were Dick and Boldero, did not have it all their own way; four or five men rushed upon them, and endeavored to pull them off Emerson. The din of voices was prodigious, but Mark, still standing on the table, stilled it for a ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... who has ever believed for one moment that Colonel Joyce wrote the poem in question—the poem entitled "Love and Laughter." Colonel Joyce is an incorrigible practical joker, and his humor has been marvellously tickled by the prodigious worry his jest has cost the Wisconsin bard. The public understands the situation; there is no good reason why Mrs. Wilcox should fume and fret and scurry around, all on account of that poem, like a fidgety hen ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... drug store. He had once heard Dr. Lamerton, the apothecary at home, described as a "well-to-do" man. The phrase stuck in his small brain, and he connected the sale of drugs with wealth. (How, he reasoned, could any one be tempted to sell wares so nasty unless by prodigious profit?) He felt sure the drug-seller would be able to change the guinea for him, and walked in boldly. His ears were tingling, and he felt a call to ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 'Well-to-Dwell' there lived a mighty hunter, whose name was 'Grim-face,' Feeling a desire one day for a little venison, he took his bow, and went into the woods; where he soon killed a deer. As he was carrying the deer home, he came upon a wild boar of prodigious proportions. Laying the deer upon the earth, he fixed and discharged an arrow and struck the boar, which instantly rushed upon him with a roar louder than the last thunder, and ripped the hunter up. He fell like a tree cut by the axe, and lay dead along with the boar, and a snake ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... to the views of Savary, the Due de Rovigo, who avowedly remained on good terms with Bourrienne after his disgrace, though the friendship of Savary was not exactly a thing that most men would have much prided themselves on. "Bourrienne had a prodigious memory; he spoke and wrote in several languages, and his pen ran as quickly as one could speak. Nor were these the only advantages he possessed. He knew the routine of public business and public law. His activity and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... He swung the bow in. He pointed it shoreward. Straight for the opening of the sluice! His last strokes were prodigious. The boat swung the right way and shot into the channel. Lane dropped his oars. He saw men below wading knee-deep in the water. The boat rode the incline, down to the long swell and curled yellow billows below, where it was checked with violent shock. Lane felt himself ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... George could not get back to his capital till next day at noon. Then, as the road from his closet at St. James's to the King of Denmark's apartment on t'other side of the palace is about thirty miles, which posterity, having no conception of the prodigious extent and magnificence of St. James's, will never believe, it was half an hour after three before his Danish Majesty's courier could go, and return to let him know that his good brother and ally was leaving the palace in which they both were, in order to receive ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... sighs, Sweet Melancholy, from my breast; "'Tis here that eastern greatness lies, "That Might, Renown, and Wisdom rest! "Here funeral rites the priesthood gave "To chiefs who sway'd prodigious powers, "The Bigods and the Mowbrays brave, "From Framlingham's ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... events; and that was a prodigious comfort to a man like myself, who has a sort of religious scruples about making a will. I have heard it whispered that you were actually married to Martha; in which case, Tom might drop into our shoes, so readily, without any more ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... they were interrupted by the approach of Miss Larolles, who, tripping towards Cecilia, exclaimed, "Lord, how glad I am to see you! So you would not go to the auction! Well, you had a prodigious loss, I assure you. All the wardrobe was sold, and all Lady Belgrade's trinkets. I never saw such a collection of sweet things in my life. I was ready to cry that I could not bid for half a hundred ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... attention to. They are more occupied with humanity in general than with individuals in particular. However, Barbicane professed the contrary principles, and applied them upon every occasion. Thanks to his care, to his intelligence and respectful intervention in difficult cases, to his prodigious and humane wisdom, the average of catastrophes did not exceed that of cities on the other side of the Atlantic, amongst others those of France, where they count about one accident upon every 200,000 francs ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... is so prodigious that instead of embracing the message of grace with its guarantee of the forgiveness of sin for Christ's sake, man finds himself more laws to satisfy his conscience. "If I live," says he, "I will mend my life. I will do ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... psychologically preconformed to opium. The prodigious mental activity so early awakened in him counteracted the narcotic despotism of the drug, and made it a sort of ally. The reader sees from this how much depends upon predispositions as to the effect of opium. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a prodigious noise in its day, and was much heralded in France. The French declared that Jumonville, the leader, who fell at the first fire, was foully assassinated, and that he and his party were ambassadors and sacred characters. Paris rang with this fresh instance of British perfidy, and a M. Thomas ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... sat at the centre table, Myra in Miss Murgatroyd's place, and Jim in Susie's, and consumed their bread-and-cheese, and drank their beer, with huge appetites and prodigious enjoyment. And Jim used Miss Susannah's napkin, and pretended to be sentimental over it. And Myra reproved him, after the manner of Miss Murgatroyd reproving Susie. After which they simultaneously exclaimed: "Oh, my dear love!" in Miss Eliza's most affecting manner; then linked fingers for a wish, ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... humanity may be moulded. If he saw them at all, it was through the softening and illusive medium of generalised phrases. Nor was he ever shocked and driven into himself by 'the immoral thoughtlessness' of men. The courses of nature, and the prodigious injustices of man in society, affect him with neither horror nor awe. He will see no monster if he can help it. For the fatal Nemesis or terrible Erinnyes, daughters of Erebus and Night, Emerson substitutes a fair-weather abstraction named Compensation. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... Emperor was seated the King of Saxony, in a white uniform with red facings, and collar richly embroidered in silver, wearing a false cue of prodigious length. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... while he rubbed his hands and laughed—"prodigious, and a man might say impossible. A young lass like Mary, such a coaxing little poppet, as tender as a lambkin, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... cracking of whips, mingled with the braying of mules, the neighing of the horses, the commands of the officers engaged in drilling the men, the incessant hum and buzz of the camps, the blare of bugles, and the roll of drums,—all these made up a prodigious volume of sound that lasted from the coming-up to the going-down of the sun. But this morning was strangely still. The wagons were silent, the mules were peacefully munching their hay, and the army teamsters were giving us a rest. I listened with ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... the year 1537, was reigning Duke of Bracciano. Among Italian princes he ranked at least upon a par with the Dukes of Urbino, and his family, by its alliances, was more illustrious than any of that time in Italy. He was a man of gigantic stature, prodigious corpulence, and marked personal daring; agreeable in manners, but subject to uncontrollable fits of passion, and incapable of self-restraint when crossed in any whim or fancy. Upon the habit of his body it is ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... during which they had listlessly acquiesced in her aggressive absorption of the carriage of the seas. America could count upon their sympathies, and possible co-operation, in her rivalry with the British carrier. "It is manifest," wrote Coxe in 1794, "that a prodigious and almost universal revolution in the views of nations has taken place with regard to the carrying trade." When John Adams spoke of the United States retaliating upon Great Britain, by enacting a similar measure ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Mahomet Bassa were also slain. The whole loss of the Turks in this action amounted to about 22,000; and of the Imperialists, 3,695 common soldiers, and 469 officers. There was found in the camp 164 pieces of cannon, and a prodigious quantity of powder, bullets, bombs, grenades, and various military equipments and stores; and the booty in other articles was great and ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... disjointed scraps of Celtic verse, that in the times of old, when Fionn Mac Cumhaill, popularly styled Finn Mac Cool, wielded the sceptre of power and justice, we possessed a prodigious and courageous dog, used for hunting the deer and wild boar, and also the wolf, which ravaged the folds and slaughtered the herds of our ancestors. We learn from the same source that these dogs were also frequently employed as auxiliaries in war, and that ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... avowed herself the mother of the children, and said that she had killed one and would like to kill the three others, rather than see them again reduced to slavery! By this time the crowd about the premises had become prodigious, and it was with no inconsiderable difficulty that the negroes were secured in carriages, and brought to the United States District Court-rooms, on Fourth Street. The populace followed the vehicle closely, but evinced no active desire to effect a rescue. Rumors of ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... his powers. He then gave himself to his work with all ardor, and without sparing brain or muscle, risking limb and life at Bull Run, on the Mississippi, at Fort Donelson, at Antietam and Gettysburg, in the Wilderness, at Savannah, and in Richmond. His powers in toil were prodigious. He could turn off an immense amount of work, and keep it up. When the lull followed the agony, he went home to rest and recruit, spending the time with his wife and friends, everywhere diffusing the sunshine of hope and faith. When rested and refreshed, he hied again to the front ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... his return home, dropped a hint to the girl Libby—short for Liberia—his wife's orphan and penniless niece, who dwelt with them as a servant, and whose support they were anxious to get off their hands; and so, to her own prodigious astonishment, the recalcitrant Biddy found herself superseded, and the American help hired a day or ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... feed them in high Indra's heaven. Yet they, when that prodigious joy is o'er, Paradise spent, and wage for merits given, Come to the world of ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... and because she had an episcopal decentralised system of Church administration, which has been capable of adapting itself to all political and social situations. She reserved perfection only for herself, and was prodigious in criticising other Christian communities. She became ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... time you would not find anywhere else an ensemble of ideas, works, acts and instruction so suited to your artist-nature, and, consequently, so favorable to the full development of your fine powers. Thanks to M. de Bulow and his prodigious activity, on a par with his intelligence, Munich is becoming the new musical capital of Germany. You will therefore do well to stay some time there, in order vigorously to prepare yourself for the task which has devolved ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... where they embarked on the steamers Algoma and Chigora; and proceeded 300 miles to Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior; thence by land and water through a dense wilderness, several hundred miles, to Fort Garry, at Red River. A prodigious undertaking, indeed, involving a vast amount of labor and privation; nevertheless the majority of the troops endured it tolerably well. During the first two or three weeks Fred Charlston stood the hardships and inconveniences with a brave spirit, and enjoyed with good relish ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in, so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into a prodigious ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... high; nowhere else is there a corps of journeyman novelists comparable to Wells, Bennett, Benson, Walpole, Beresford, George, Galsworthy, Hichens, De Morgan, Miss Sinclair, Hewlett and company. They have a prodigious facility; they know how to write; even the least of them is, at all events, a more competent artisan than, say, Dickens, or Bulwer-Lytton, or Sienkiewicz, or Zola. But the literary grande passion is simply not in them. They get nowhere with their suave and interminable volumes. Their view ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... indeed, he had scarcely frequented the house long enough. M. de Bargeton, spread at full length in his great chair, appeared to see and understand all that was going on; his silence added to his dignity, and his figure inspired Lucien with a prodigious awe. It is the wont of imaginative natures to magnify everything, or to find a soul to inhabit every shape; and Lucien took this gentleman, not for a granite guard-post, but for a formidable sphinx, and thought it necessary ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the plants he cultivates, find that salt gives them an appetite. And it would almost seem as if nature had purposely dealt with us in this matter on a magnificent scale. She has made salt-magazines of the sea and the bosom of the earth, where it exists in prodigious masses which cost nothing but the labor of stooping to pick up, except in countries where a gentleman called a tax-gatherer, stands by to count the lumps and allow them to pass on by paying a duty. For my part, if I were the government—this is a secret between you and me, mind—I would look ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... the defense of the chief. He snatched up a great spear, a weapon full ten feet long and with a point and blade as keen as a razor. He thrust it past Xingudan and, with all his might, full into the chest of the upreared bear. Strength and a prodigious effort driven on by nervous force sped the blow, and the bear, huge as he was, was fairly impaled. But Will still hung to the lance and ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... possessed, and voices sounding from their stomachs and entrails. Such reports, bruited through the world by the foreign ambassadors at Smyrna, the clerks of the English and Dutch houses, the resident foreigners, and the Christian ministers, excited a prodigious sensation, thrilling civilized mankind. On the Exchanges of Europe men took the odds for ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... consigned. But it was as an organizer of research that Mr. Brewer earned his greatest fame and achieved his greatest success, and it was to him more than to any one man, to his immense persistence in urging upon the powers that be a more generous freedom of access to our Records, and to his prodigious powers of work in arranging and tabulating the enormous masses of documents of all kinds which constitute the Apparatus of English History, that this country stands indebted, and will remain indebted as long as ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... old magnificent courage and ability will never altogether leave him until the beatings of his heart shall have quite ceased: touch him with foolishness or disrespect, and his rage will be terrible." Standing here we can see his prodigious bushy eyebrows, that are as white as driven snow, and under them we can see the large black eyes, beneath the angry fierceness of which hundreds of proud British peers, assembled in their council-chamber, have trembled ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... he discovered the spot in the river at which the treasures were sunk, and he was permitted to take possession of them. These were the treasures of which Ahasuerus availed himself to glorify his feast. So prodigious were they that during the six months of the feast he unlocked six treasure-chambers daily to display their contents to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... artificial necessaries, which became, under the iron rule of the aforesaid World- Market, of equal importance to them with the real necessaries which supported life. By all this they burdened themselves with a prodigious mass of work merely for the sake of keeping their wretched ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... incompatibility of temperament; and from 1858 they found it desirable to live apart. This no doubt added to his restlessness and the craving for excitement, which showed itself in the ardour with which he took up the idea of public readings. These readings are only less famous than his writings, so prodigious was their success. His great dramatic gifts, enlisted in the service of his own creations, made an irresistible appeal to the public, and till the day of his collapse, ten years later, their popularity showed no sign of waning. The amount of money which he earned thereby ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... and a half dozen pictures of the fine old English stage-coach days. Over the fireplace were suspended several pairs of boxing gloves, garnishing the picture of a tall fellow in fighting attitude, whose prodigious muscles were only a little smaller than those of all the saints and angels of all the accredited masterpieces of ancient art. A pair of foils and masks, neatly arranged over each corner of the mantelpiece, completed the decorations ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... in nature is simpler or more orderly. The sovereign states of Germany or Italy, which one can traverse in a half hour, compared to the empires of Turkey, Moscow, or China, are only feeble reflections of the prodigious differences that nature has placed in ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... face and manner which disarmed suspicion, which inspired confidence, which confirmed good will. He was a man without vices. He had a strong sense of duty.... He had what the farmers call a long head.... He was a great worker; he had a prodigious faculty of performance; worked easily.... He had a vast good nature which made him accessible to all.... Fair-minded ... affable ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... may regard our race as composed of all the nations that have been and will be—and assign to it different ages. For instance, when the race is ten thousand years old a century will be what a single year is in the life of a centenarian. But there is this prodigious difference. The mortal man grows old and loses his reason and happiness through the enfeeblement of his bodily machine; whereas the human race, by the perpetual and infinite succession of generations, will find itself at the end of ten ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... man, and burnt until the calmness of the evening closed the dreadful scene. Three hundred of the best and most convenient buildings in the town were consumed, which, together with lots of goods, and provincial commodities, amounted to a prodigious sum. Happily few lives were lost, but the lamentations of ruined families were heard in every quarter. In short, from a flourishing condition the town was reduced in the space of six hours to the lowest and most deplorable state. ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... boundless Of groundless joys, and griefs as groundless; Assuring beauties that the border Of their new dress is out of order; And schoolboys that their shoes want tying; And babies that their dolls are dying. Lend me, lend me, some disguise; I will tell prodigious lies: All who care for what I say Shall be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... of these works—the Dante, La Fontaine, or "Don Quixote"—and glance at the pictures. The mere hand labor involved in their production is surprising; but when the quality of the work is properly estimated, what he accomplished seems prodigious. No particular mention need be made of him as painter or sculptor, for his reputation rests solely upon his work ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... previously the family had descended on Tadpool as from the skies—or as a heavy stone cast into some quiet mill pond. No one in the neighbourhood could discover anything about them—although Jane Tebbs's exertions in the matter were admittedly prodigious and unwearied. The house agent proved disappointingly vague, and could only inform her that a gentleman who happened to hear of the place had come down from London, inspected the house, liked its lofty, spacious ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... body thrived at a prodigious rate. One could almost see him grow. There was not a warrior in the village who was as strong as he, and already he surpassed them all in endurance; none was so fleet of foot nor so tireless. His face and hair darkened in the wind ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... when she declared that it was quite enough for her that I had with that fine precipitation invited her, I quite took this as she meant it; before we had gone very far our understanding, hers and mine, was complete. Her attitude was as happy as her success was prodigious. The sacrifice of the portrait was a sacrifice to the true inwardness of Lady Beldonald, and did much, for the time, I divined, toward muffling their domestic tension. All it was thus in her power to say—and I heard of ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... sepulchred emblems Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin! 295 The wrecks beside of many a city vast, Whose population which the earth grew over Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie, Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons, Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes 300 Huddled in gray annihilation, split, Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these, The anatomies of unknown winged things, And fishes which were isles of living scale, And serpents, bony chains, twisted around 305 The iron crags, or within heaps of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Louis XIV. Raoul did not know of her letter to Charles II., although D'Artagnan had guessed its contents. Who will undertake to account for that seemingly inexplicable mixture of love and vanity, that passionate tenderness of feeling, that prodigious duplicity of conduct? No one can, indeed; not even the bad angel who kindles the love of coquetry in the heart of woman. "Monsieur de Bragelonne," said the princess, after a moment's pause, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... had been partially driven away from the spot where we landed and had been working, but we found them in prodigious numbers a little way on. Cousin Silas insisted on our tying up old Surley, to prevent the unnecessary destruction which he dealt among them. Before committing any great slaughter among them, Cousin Silas advised us to kill only a few of each description, to ascertain which ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the empire, amounted to five hundred and eighty-three; and that, under the successors of Constantine, the complete force of the military establishment was computed at six hundred and forty-five thousand soldiers. [134] An effort so prodigious surpassed the wants of a more ancient, and the faculties ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... continual swing, swing, on and on, without a moment's pause, with the quick, bustling, breathless sort of tramp of the engine—all these things, and forty others, put me in such a state of intense activity that I felt as if I kept a shop—or was a prodigious man upon 'Change—or was flying up to make a fortune—or had suddenly been called to form an administration—or had become a member of the prize ring, and was going up to fight white-headed Bob. However, on this occasion I was not called upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... like a well-fattened rat, that I mentally wonder how I could ever have had the courage to eat one, and a flight of rainbow-hued Blue Mountain parrots, who have held their ground to the last, whirr up with a prodigious flapping of wings, and, alighting on a gum-tree, can be seen hanging about the blossoms, head downwards, sucking out the honey with their uncouth beaks and awkward little tongues, which seem but badly adapted to such a delicate task. ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... was seen save the boundless green plain, extending in all directions; and then, upon ascending a slight rise, they saw in the dip before them two ostriches. Almost simultaneously the creatures caught sight of their enemies, and went off at a prodigious rate, followed by the dogs and horsemen. For a time their pace was so fast that their pursuers gained but little upon them. Presently, however, the dogs gained upon one of them, and, by their barking and snapping at it, impeded its movements. The horsemen were close together, and the boys had drawn ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... half an hour earlier than usual the next morning. But no one noted it because his habit had always been to arrive among the first—not to set an example but to give his prodigious industry the fullest swing. There was in Turkey a great poet of whom it is said that he must have written twenty-five hours a day. Norman's accomplishment bulked in that same way before his associates. He had not slept the whole night. But, thanks to ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... ultimately compelled, at their excessive inconvenience, to take another road when they changed guard. It cost them three miles of march, whereas before they had but half a mile. Having achieved this feat, I was entreated with prodigious favours by all the men of quality who were invested in the castle. This incident was so important that I thought it well to relate it, before finishing the history of things outside my art, the which is the real object of my writing: forsooth, if I wanted ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... shore of the Ocean with Ananta and addressed the Ocean, saying, 'O Ocean; we have come to churn thy waters for obtaining nectar.' And the Ocean replied, 'Be it so, as I shall not go without a share of it. I am able to bear the prodigious agitation of my waters set up by the mountain.' The gods then went to the king of tortoises and said to him, 'O Tortoise-king, thou wilt have to hold the mountain on thy back!' The Tortoise-king agreed, and Indra contrived to place the mountain ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... What a prodigious bore this race was going to be! The wind was blowing up his legs, and his light spring overcoat was far from ample. The seats were too close together and were of a granite hardness; but he and Lily were wedged into the back and could not escape without treading upon the ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... though how he contrived to cross the seas the story does not say. The eagle welcomed them, and when the last humming-bird had settled down he addressed the meeting, saying that there was no doubt that he had a right to demand to be proclaimed their king. The spread of his wings was prodigious, he could fearlessly look at the sun, and to whatever height he soared he could detect the slightest movement of a fly ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... never perceive the prodigious improbability of the arrival of that boat. She did not seem to be thinking of it. Perhaps she had already forgotten the fact herself. And Heyst resolved suddenly to say nothing more of it. It was not that he shrank from alarming her. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Rivers was on his way out to the store, he fell to studying the sky and air. On the prairie, as on the sea, one studies little else. There was something formidable in every sign. In the west a prodigious dome of blue-black cloud was rising, ragged at the edge, but dense and compact at ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... Bell Rock, and rose gradually to be captain of the Regent. He was active, admirably skilled in his trade, and a man incapable of fear. Once, in London, he fell among a gang of confidence-men, naturally deceived by his rusticity and his prodigious accent. They plied him with drink—a hopeless enterprise, for Soutar could not be made drunk; they proposed cards, and Soutar would not play. At last, one of them, regarding him with a formidable countenance, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Codlingsby, as he debouched from Wych Street into the Strand. He had been to take a box for Armida at Madame Vestris's theatre. That little Armida was folle of Madame Vestris's theatre; and her little brougham, and her little self, and her enormous eyes, and her prodigious opera-glass, and her miraculous bouquet, which cost Lord Codlingsby twenty guineas every evening at Nathan's in Covent Garden (the children of the gardeners of Sharon have still no rival for flowers), might be seen, three nights in the week at least, in the narrow, charming, comfortable little theatre. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the Boer war, an ex-priest, a clerk, a banker and a cowboy, all very pleasant people as long as they were sober; but the arrival of each was celebrated with several bottles, which the director handed out without any demur, although the amount was prodigious. Quarrels ensued; but by New Year's Eve peace was restored, and we all decorated the director's house with wreaths for the banquet of the evening. The feast began well, but towards midnight a general fight was going on, which came to an end by the combatants falling asleep one ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... the Italian world, were natives of Bearn: one of these, Garat, surnamed "the musical Proteus," was born at Ustaritz. Nothing appeared impossible to this prodigious singer: his voice was splendid and his taste exquisite: his only defect was an inordinate vanity—by no means an uncommon fault in artists of this description. A person on one occasion, thinking to embarrass him, inquired how high in the scale he could go; "I can mount as high as it pleases ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... still linger traces of faded red and blue, which gives access to a great hall with rows of mighty columns, those on the left hand round, those on the right square, and almost terribly massive. There is in these no grace, as in the giant lotus columns of Karnak. Prodigious, heavy, barbaric, they are like a hymn in stone to Strength. There is something brutal in their aspect, which again makes one think of war, of assaults repelled, hordes beaten back like waves by a sea-wall. And still another great hall, with more ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... me, that Martin never looks at nature except through bits of stained glass. He is never satisfied with any appearance that is not prodigious. He should endeavour to school his imagination into the apprehension of the true idea ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... trip to Crocky's Island, situated on the opposite side of the Strait. On landing at Hellgate, within Fools' Inlet my surprise was much excited by the prodigious flocks of gulls, pigeons, and geese, which were directing their flight towards the Great Fish Lake, whither I, too, was making my way. I concluded their object was to procure food, of which a profusion was here spread before them, consisting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... required to testify their loyalty to the emperor by heading the attack on his foes. Desperately the little British force had to fight to maintain their position, and their losses were so serious, the number of their enemies so large, so rapidly increasing, that it was clear to all that the most prodigious efforts would be necessary to enable them to hold on until reinforcements arrived, and that all idea of an early capture of ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... Fields and the City Abulphed. Golius 's Notes upon Alferganus. Thus much concerning the Place of his Nativity; he was born in the Year of the Hegira 370, which is about the 980 Year of Christ. He was indeed a prodigious Scholar; he had learn'd the Alcoran, and was well initiated into Human Learning before he was Ten years old; then he studied Logick and Arithmetick, and read over Euclid without any help, only his Master show'd him how to demonstrate the first five or six Propositions; Then he read Ptolemy's ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... lines at once, and his mind would grasp the meaning with a velocity equal to that of his glance; sometimes even a single word in a phrase was enough to give him the essence of it. His memory was prodigious. He retained thoughts acquired through reading with the same fidelity as those suggested to him in the course of reflection or conversation. In short, he possessed every kind of memory: that of places, of names, of things, and of faces. ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... the period known as the Carboniferous Age, or age of plant life, they did not attain their greatest development until Jurassic and Cretaceous times, when many were of prodigious size and ruled the world. The gigantic ichthyosaurs, mesosaurs, and dinosaurs held dominion over the sea and land, and the monster flying reptile, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... among the prodigious mountains, of which Nepal in its extended sense consists, are inhabited by various tribes, that differ very much in language, and somewhat in customs. All that have any sort of pretensions to be considered as aboriginal, like ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... not current, however, until he took the Sea Witch and showed the world the fastest ship under canvas. Low in the water, with black hull and gilded figurehead, she seemed too small to support her prodigious cloud of sail. For her there were to be no leisurely voyages with Captain Bob Waterman on the quarter-deck. Home from Canton she sped in seventy-seven days and then in seventy-nine—records which were ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... conceived and carved this prodigious statue," says Professor Maspero [Footnote: Manual of Egyptian Archaeology second edition 1895 page 208] "was a finished art, an art which had attained self mastery, and was sure of its effects. How many centuries had it taken to arrive at this degree of maturity and perfection?" It is impossible ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... flowed here now, except in time of freshets, or during the spring and fall rains; and there was such a prodigious tangle of alder, willow, clematis and other vines that for years no one had penetrated it. From a fisherman's point of view there seemed no inducement to do so, since this secondary channel appeared to be dry for most ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... king, however, determined on fighting, if there was any possibility of gaining the victory; but the most dissuaded him from venturing on an engagement, and all, as one man, said that the Vindland people had undoubtedly a prodigious force. Duke Otto, however, pressed much to go to battle. Then the king ordered the whole army to be gathered by the war trumpets into battle array, and ordered all the men to arm, and to lie down for the night under their shields; for he was told the enemy's army ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... hundred and twenty thousand a year. There are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten horses, all of whom (except the horses) walk about the house like the masters of it. Tita, the Venetian, is here, and operates as my valet—a fine fellow, with a prodigious black beard, who has stabbed two or three people, and is the most ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... village crank came to hear me, honoring the occasion by wearing a new stove-pipe hat of prodigious proportions, which he deposited on the seat as he arose during prayer. When the amen was pronounced, perhaps paralyzed by the fervor, he sat down upon said stove-pipe, crushing it to a pie, then leaped from the wreck uttering a blasphemous yell which convulsed the crowd ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... October, 1727, after having been solemnly rehearsed in the cathedral on the 6th, in the presence of a numerous assemblage. This work forms one of the most solid foundations of its author's glory. "Zadok the Priest" especially is an inspiration of prodigious grandeur—the chorus, "God Save the King" (not the National Anthem), is comparable in beauty to the "Hallelujah" chorus, in ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... France make more careful dispositions for a battle—albeit once in it he bore himself like any captain of horse—nor ever did Du Mornay himself sit down to a conference with a more accurate knowledge of affairs. His prodigious wit and the affability of his manners, while they endeared him to his servants, again and again blinded his adversaries; who, thinking that so much brilliance could arise only from a shallow nature, found when it was too late that they had been outwitted by ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... instant, retraced his steps across the flat, gained the foot of the steep hill and climbed step by step with prodigious effort in the deep snow ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... account you may be more struck with their resemblance to the "shears" seen in shipyards, by which the masts are "stepped" into their places. These masts, as we may call them, are not all of one stick of wood, but of several pieces spliced together; and notwithstanding their prodigious length—fifty yards, you will remember—they are of no great thickness. In fact, although the two are joined together at the top—as we shall presently have occasion to show—when a strong wind blows, both bend, and vibrate back and forward like an elastic trout rod. At their bases they are ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... if occasion served, but otherwise to be cast aside as child's play. Nobody could suspect such an inflammable nature with that baby face; but it seems she was ready to eat her fingers with dulness in the school-room, and had prodigious notions of the rights of woman; so she took all he said most seriously, and met him more than half-way. Then he goes to London, gets better information, looks at the will in Doctors' Commons, maybe, finds it a slowish speculation, and wants to let her down easy; whereof she ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... huge hydrocephalic head, the magnitude of which implies disease, ultimate weakness, and early death. Others maintain that, apart from the extraordinary elements that undoubtedly characterised Chatterton, and constituted him a premature and prodigious birth intellectually, there was also in parts of his poems evidence of a healthy vigour which only needed favourable circumstances to develop into transcendent excellence. Hazlitt, holding with the one of these opinions, cries, 'If Chatterton had had a great work to do by living, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, to which we were afterwards conducted, whose exterior front is covered with alternate slabs of black and white marble, which were brought, either in whole or in part, from Jerusalem. Within, there was a prodigious richness of precious marbles, and a pillar, if I mistake not, from Solomon's Temple; and a picture of the Virgin by St. Luke; and others (rather more intrinsically valuable, I imagine), by old masters, set in superb ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... looked at her across the colorful mound, and smiled, half as with embarrassment. A lie, he thought, might ameliorate the situation, and he bravely hazarded a prodigious one. "Is it necessary to tell you that Jack loved you? And that the others ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Roosevelt tells, in his Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, of the most notable of these, a former scout and Indian fighter named "Vic" Smith, whose exploits were prodigious.] ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... was educated entirely by his father at home. He was exceedingly precocious, indeed excessively precocious, for his application to studies in childhood and adolescence impaired his health, and is held responsible for his death at thirty-nine. Prodigious, though not incredible stories are preserved, especially of his precocity in mathematics. His mind was active rather than accumulative; he showed from his earliest years that disposition to find things out for himself, which has characterised ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... the old law of the land and subsequent legislation, should by rights have brought him far in his profession; but he had this much in common with some few great spirits: he entertained a prodigious contempt for his own special knowledge, and reserved all his pretentions, leisure, and capacity for a second pursuit unconnected with the law. To this pursuit he gave his almost exclusive attention. The good man was passionately fond of gardening. ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... prodigious slaughter, a mad scene of butchery, in which the Indians exulted like fiends. Late in the afternoon they returned to camp, stained with blood and loaded with the spoils of the chase. Snoqualmie distinguished himself by killing a large bear, and its claws, newly severed and bleeding, were ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... Grant's campaign through the Wilderness had been tremendous, and now he seemed to be held indefinitely by Lee in the trenches before Petersburg. The Confederacy, after so many great battles, and such a prodigious roll of killed and wounded, was still a nut uncracked, and Sheridan, who was expected to go up the valley and turn the Southern flank, was resting quietly ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Epicurus never disturbed Greece; his philosophy was publicly taught in Athens during many centuries; he was in incredible favour with his countrymen, who caused statues to be erected to him; he had a prodigious number of friends, and his school subsisted for a very long period. Cicero, although a decided enemy to the Epicureans, gives a brilliant testimony to the probity both of Epicurus and his disciples, who were remarkable for the inviolable friendship they bore each other. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... volume, often alluded to, the birth of the monster seems prodigious and mysterious; it combines two opposite qualities; it is so elaborate in its researches among the thousand authors quoted, that these required years to accumulate, and yet the matter is often temporary, and levelled at fugitive events and particular ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Other people might talk learnedly about various schools and tone poems; he took all he could get silently and with a thankful heart; and because in far-away Peking he could not count upon others playing for him, he performed the prodigious feat of learning to play both violin and 'cello himself without a teacher, and long after he was a ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... pounds was drawn up for Bertie's signature and Nevill's indorsement. The lad hesitated briefly, then wrote his name in a bold hand. He resisted the allurements of some jewelry, offered him in part payment, and received the amount of the bill, less a prodigious discount for interest. The Jew servilely bowed ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... with her usual dignity related this prodigious battle, a battle we apprehend never equalled by any poet, romance or life writer whatever, and, having brought it to a conclusion, she ceased; we shall therefore proceed in our ordinary style with the continuation ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... preparation, stretching over weeks and months, unemotional and methodical, infinite in detail, prodigious in effort, suggested the work of engineers and contractors and subcontractors in the building of some great bridge or canal, with the workmen all in the same kind of uniform and with managers, superintendents and foremen each having some insignia of rank and ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... natural sciences, and to English literature. Prince Chow Faa, who has, since April 1851, succeeded his sensual and ignorant brother, under the new appellation of King Somdet Phra Chom Klow, found his knowledge of science thus acquired a prodigious power in the improvement of his future terrestrial kingdom, although his celestial possessions vanished at the same time. Like Prince Henry of Portugal, the Siamese prince believed that the only princely talent worth cultivating, was 'the talent to do good;' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... difficult to say exactly why the sight should have stirred in me so prodigious an emotion of wonder and veneration, for I have had not a little to do with mummies, have unwound scores of them, and even experimented magically with not a few. But there was something in the sight of that grey and silent figure, lying in its modern box of lead ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... were made by the Spanish people to re-establish sovereignty in the island. More than 300,000 troops were sent thither to be cruelly cut down by plague and pestilence. A nation, long on the verge of bankruptcy, incurred uncomplainingly prodigious additional indebtedness to save for its boy king—Alphonso XIII. was at this time but twelve years old—its most precious possession in the west, the Pearl of the Antilles. Queen Isabella of Spain pawned her jewels that Columbus might have the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... she, "I am sure you know what I mean; but you must know I have a prodigious monstrous great favour to beg of you: now pray don't refuse me; I assure you if you do, I shall be so mortified ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... up there on the mole, came Governor Steed, a short, stout, red-faced gentleman, in blue taffetas burdened by a prodigious amount of gold lace, who limped a little and leaned heavily upon a stout ebony cane. After him, in the uniform of a colonel of the Barbados Militia, rolled a tall, corpulent man who towered head and shoulders above the Governor, with malevolence plainly written on his ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... evil! I feel as if I were lost in the desert, and I assure you, dear master, that I am brave, however, and that I am making prodigious efforts to be stoical. But my poor brain is enfeebled at moments. I need only one thing (and that is not given me), it is to have some kind ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... other attempt. "Thus ended," continues the historian, "the third campaign in America (1757), where, with an evident superiority over the enemy, an army of 20,000 regular troops, a great number of provincial forces, and a prodigious naval power—not less than twenty ships of the line—we abandoned our allies, exposed our people, suffered them to be cruelly massacred in sight of our troops, and relinquished a large and valuable tract of country, to the eternal reproach and disgrace ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... about and beneath the cedar-tree proved to have been excavated, in a most surprising way, by a prodigious colony of ants. The ants had furthermore built inside their excavations; and their tiny constructions of straw, clay, and stems bore an odd resemblance to miniature towns. In the middle of a structure considerably larger than the rest there was a marvelous ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... It is actually Balzac himself. And as all the beings of the outer world presented themselves to his mind's eye in strong relief and with a telling expression, he has given a convulsive action to his figures; he has blackened their shadows and intensified their lights. Besides, his prodigious love of detail, the outcome of an immoderate ambition to see everything, to bring everything to sight, to guess everything, to make others guess everything, obliged him to set down more forcibly the principal lines, so as to preserve ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... upon them. A fierce wind from the south-east, accompanied by blinding clouds of snow, which not only raised the waves to a prodigious height, but dashed against the two vessels immense masses of floating ice. It seemed as if they were attacked at all points at once. Erik realized his situation, and saw that he had not a minute to lose in escaping, unless he wished to be hemmed in perhaps ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... said Mr. George. "The beginning of this valley," continued Mr. George "is in the very heart of the most mountainous part of Switzerland, and the River Aar commences there in prodigious cascades and waterfalls, which come down over the cliffs and precipices or gush out from enormous crevices and chasms, and make quite a river at the ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... was one called Meikle Robin, or Robin Meikle. He was strength personified. His stature exceeded six feet; his shoulders were broad, his chest round, his limbs well and strongly put together. He was a man of prodigious bone and sinews. At throwing the hammer, at putting the stone, no man could stand before him. He distanced all who came against him, and, while he did so, he seemed to put forth not half his strength, while his skill appeared equal to the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... on all sides, tempered the character, and developed men. And now note well, Durocher! If France had been centralized formerly as to-day, your dear Revolution never would have occurred—do you understand? Never! because there would have been no men to make it. For may I not ask, whence came that prodigious concourse of intelligences all fully armed, and with heroic hearts, which the great social movement of '78 suddenly brought upon the scene? Please recall to mind the most illustrious men of that era—lawyers, orators, soldiers. How many were from Paris? All came from the provinces, the fruitful womb ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as he had until then believed, a series of fortuitous and independent circumstances. No, it was manifestly the effect of an adverse will pursuing a definite object with prodigious ability and incredible boldness, attacking him, Lupin, in the recesses of his safest retreats and baffling him with blows so severe and so unexpected that he did not even know against whom he had to defend himself. Never, in the course ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... never any mistake about the Oise, as a matter of fact. In these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings of its channel, that I strained my thumb, fighting with the rapids, and had to paddle all the rest of the way with one hand turned up. Sometimes it had to serve ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the princess, "what is a roc, and where may one get an egg?" "Princess," replied the pretended Fatima, "it is a bird of prodigious size, which inhabits the summit of Mount Caucasus; the architect who built your palace can get ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... quite aware, in general, of missing everywhere no more of the human scene than possible, and of having of late been particularly awake to the large extensions of it spread before him (since so he could but fondly read his fate) under the omen of his prodigious "hit." It was because of his hit that he was having rare opportunities—of which he was so honestly and humbly proposing, as he would have said, to make the most: it was because every one in the world (so far had the thing gone) was ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... last half-century, when the British, having subjugated the whole of Hindustan, caused it to be openly taught in the colleges which they established for the instruction of their youth in the languages of the country. Though sufficiently difficult to acquire, principally on account of its prodigious richness in synonyms, it is no longer a sealed language, - its laws, structure, and vocabulary being sufficiently well known by means of numerous elementary works, adapted to facilitate its study. It ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... secure to them and their descendants an asylum from the effects and violence of despotic power, daily gaining ground in every part of Europe. From those and other considerations, on which I need not be minute, emigrations from Europe will be prodigious, immediately on the establishment of American Independency. The consequence of this must be the rise of the lands already settled, and a demand for new or uncultivated land; on this demand I conceive a certain fund may now be fixed. You may smile, and recollect the sale of the bearskin ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... recognised. I think the very cowboy in the farmyard—a broad-shouldered lad, with a good-natured mindless face, and prodigious wooden shoes like clumsy canoes—even the cowboy knows that I am to be Madame Lenoble of Cotenoir. Cotenoir is the Windsor Castle of this district; Beaubocage is only Frogmore. Yes, dear, the bond is signed and sealed. Even ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... that I could agree; but I see her in the cities and everywhere, set down to menial taskwork. She were better in exile, on Ibsen's sand dunes or Maeterlinck's bee farm. But in America the times are very evil. Prodigious convulsion of production, the grinding of mighty forces, the noise and rushings of winds—and what avails? Parturiunt montes ...you know the rest. The ridiculous mice squeak and scamper on the granary ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... and sea fennel. Conseil picked a couple bunches. As for the local fauna, it included thousands of crustaceans of every type: lobsters, hermit crabs, prawns, mysid shrimps, daddy longlegs, rock crabs, and a prodigious number of seashells, such as cowries, murex ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Friesland, a Dutch-American liner, which asserts that at nine next morning, Start Point being at the time ten miles upon their starboard quarter, they were passed by something between a flying goat and a monstrous bat, which was heading at a prodigious pace south and west. If its homing instinct led it upon the right line, there can be no doubt that somewhere out in the wastes of the Atlantic the last European pterodactyl found ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that the best security is to be found for social happiness and advancement, and the most effectual antidote provided to the evils with which either, when existing alone, is so prone. Mr McCulloch has told us, that the commerce and manufactures of Great Britain have now risen to such a prodigious height, that any further extension of them is undesirable, and that no real patriot would have desired them to have become so extensive as they already are. Is it desirable, in such a state of matters, to go on increasing the same splendid but perilous system, and to do so at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... XIV. had received James upon his flight with high honour, and his return to the throne was believed by his own adherents to be imminent. In England, especially in London, the excitement against the Irish Catholics was prodigious, and had been increased by the crowd of Protestant refugees who had recently poured in. The Irish regiments brought to England by James had been insultingly disbanded, and their officers put under arrest. "Lilibullero," the anti-Catholic street song, was sung ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... rehabilitation or reconstruction of the Rebel States; of a thousand and one other matters, of greater or lesser perplexity, growing out of these and other questions; besides the ever pressing and gigantic problems involved in the raising of enormous levies of troops, and prodigious sums of money, needed in securing, moving, and supplying them, and defraying the extraordinary expenses growing out of the necessary blockade of thousands of miles of Southern Coast, and other Naval movements; not to speak of those expenditures belonging to the more ordinary business transactions ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... garments of price in which he had suffered so much torture, and, being clad, boldly presented himself to Madame Carthame with a formal demand for her daughter's hand. And in view of the sudden and prodigious change that had come over M. d'Antimoine's fortunes, almost was Madame Carthame persuaded that the matrimonial plans which she had laid out for her daughter might be changed. Yet did she hesitate before announcing ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... the reverberations of a prodigious blow upon the door outside echoed through the room, "bang, bang—bang, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... got "at it," Barret and Milly continued at it for several hours, during which period they either forgot, or did not care to remember, the flight of time. They also contrived, during that time, to examine, discuss, and comment upon, a prodigious number of plants, all of which, being in pots or boxes, were conveyed by the youth to the empty stand at the side of the fair invalid. The minute examination with a magnifying glass of corolla, and stamen, and calyx, etcetera, rendered it necessary, ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... was he who outbid me everywhere when I was about to make a desirable purchase; and, besides, he has bills on Mr. Thomas John's house to the amount of three millions and a half." "He must have been a prodigious thief!" "How foolishly you talk! he wisely saved where others squandered their property." "A mere livery-servant!" "Nonsense! he has at all events an unexceptionable shadow." "True, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... blew keen and cold from the east. There could be no advantage in waiting here, and soon all arrangements were made for a general shift to Hut Point. Packing took a long time. The snowfall had been prodigious, and parts of the sledges were 3 or 4 feet under drift. About 4 o'clock the two dog-teams got safely away. Then the pony party prepared to go. As the cloths were stript from the ponies the ravages of the blizzard became evident. The animals, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... slunk away, and Mr. Rocksworth faced me alone. Rudolph and Max, thoroughly fed and most prodigious, were bearing down upon us, accounting for the flight of ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... ordinarily intelligent person who has ever believed for one moment that Colonel Joyce wrote the poem in question—the poem entitled "Love and Laughter." Colonel Joyce is an incorrigible practical joker, and his humor has been marvellously tickled by the prodigious worry his jest has cost the Wisconsin bard. The public understands the situation; there is no good reason why Mrs. Wilcox should fume and fret and scurry around, all on account of that poem, like a fidgety hen with one chicken. Her claim is universally conceded; there is no shadow ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... with balsams like the famous one of Fierabras, good Castilians and bad strangers. All the characters are antipodal to Philippine realities and with the semblance of the real and true being from unknown lands and prodigious races. The same is true with the scene of activities; wonderful lands, Palestine, the kingdom of Navarra, the Empire of Great Kahn, the Palace of Macedonia, and not only are they ignorant of, and do they falsify, the face of the earth, but the planetary system itself ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... the full force of the elements. Right bravely did the duke and his lordship venture forth into the spattering rain. They had gone no more than three rods up the path when they were brought to a halt by the sounds of a prodigious struggle behind them. There was a great trampling of horses' hoofs, accompanied by the frantic ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... round, with a scream; her muslin dress, which she was holding up in front, dropped from her hand, and a prodigious lapful of flowers rolled ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... of ingenuity and sustained reflection. It was Miss Hall's belief that nature had not endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs. This theory was impossible of acceptance by the male understanding, but the conception of a faulty female leg was of so prodigious originality as to rank among the most brilliant feats of philosophical speculation! It is strange that in all the controversy regarding Miss Russell's aversion to tights no one seems to have thought ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... happiness. The vulgar mistake even what they have the means of knowing, or, which is the same thing, what they are least practised in they are dazzled with; they proclaim it, accordingly, marvellous, prodigious, extraordinary; it is a phenomenon. They neither admire nor respect much what is always visible to their eyes; but whatever strikes their imagination, whatever gives scope to the mind, becomes itself the fruitful source of other ideas ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... contemporaries looked to him as a kind of guardian spirit, to protect them from (p. 010) harm, and lead them onward to good success. No despondency, nor even misgivings, show themselves in the agents of any enterprise in which he was personally engaged. The prodigious effects of these feelings in the English towards their prince were displayed in their full strength, perhaps, at the battle of Agincourt; but similar results are equally, though not so strikingly, visible in many other passages ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... supplying London with turkeys.[396] Three hundred droves of turkeys, each numbering from 300 to 1000, had in one season passed over Stratford Bridge on the road from Ipswich to London. Geese also travelled on foot to London in prodigious numbers from Norfolk, Suffolk, and the Fen country, often 1,000 to 3,000 in a drove, starting in August when harvest was nearly over, so that the geese might feed on the stubble by the way; 'and thus ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... came face to face with her but, in spite of all prepossessions, she was forced to recognise it, to draw nigh to it, with trust. High imperial heart; with the instinctive attraction towards all that had any height! "You know not the Queen," said Mirabeau once in confidence; "her force of mind is prodigious; she is a man for courage." (Dumont, p. 211.)—And so, under the void Night, on the crown of that knoll, she has spoken with a Mirabeau: he has kissed loyally the queenly hand, and said with enthusiasm: "Madame, the Monarchy is saved!"—Possible? The Foreign ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... grave impressiveness, "your late and lamented uncle, Joseph Hooper, in his will, devises that you are his principal—I might almost say, his sole heir. He has left practically everything to you, sir. I—I pray you, be calm. Do not allow this astonishing, this prodigious—" ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... abandoned themselves to an attitude of permanent delighted astonishment. They lived in a world of magic. And their entire existence was based on the tacit assumption—tacit because the truth of it was so manifest—that their boy was the most prodigious boy that ever was. He went into knickerbockers. He learnt hymns. He went to school—and came back alive at the end of the first day and said he had enjoyed it! Certainly, other boys went to school. Yes, but there was something special, something ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... regard our race as composed of all the nations that have been and will be—and assign to it different ages. For instance, when the race is ten thousand years old a century will be what a single year is in the life of a centenarian. But there is this prodigious difference. The mortal man grows old and loses his reason and happiness through the enfeeblement of his bodily machine; whereas the human race, by the perpetual and infinite succession of generations, will find itself at the end of ten thousand ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... which evolved 1600 Kansas votes from an old Cincinnati directory and 1200 more from an uninhabited county, was not exhausted by that prodigious labor. The same influences, and perhaps the same manipulators, produced a companion piece known by the name of the "candle-box fraud." At the election of January 4, 1858, for officers under the Lecompton Constitution, the returns from ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... fair curls and the radiant outlook for the future? The serious questions decided, they can open the door and recall the banished children. In order not to fill those little heads with thoughts beyond their years, they have agreed to say nothing of the prodigious event, to tell them nothing except that they must dress in haste and eat their breakfast even more hurriedly, so that they can pass the afternoon at the Bois, where Maranne will read his play to them, awaiting the hour to go to Suresnes for a fish-dinner at Kontzen's; a long programme of delights ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... and whom we delight to see beautify her beauty with rich robes and set it off with jewels, though now fantastically masquerading in a garb of tatters, wholly unfit for her to handle. I recognized her, over and over again, in the groups round a door-step or in the descent of a cellar, chatting with prodigious earnestness about intangible trifles, laughing for a little jest, sympathizing at almost the same instant with one neighbor's sunshine and another's shadow, wise, simple, sly, and patient, yet easily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... grottoes of Kentucky or the Balearics. I need hardly say that nowhere is the labor of man apparent. All this is the handiwork of nature, and it is not without wonder, mingled with awe, that I reflect upon the telluric forces capable of engendering such prodigious substructions. The daylight from the crater in the centre only strikes this part of the cavern obliquely, so that it is very imperfectly lighted, but at night, when illuminated by the electric lamps, its ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... he was a powerful young man, and an expert swimmer; he seized on one of the projecting ribs of the nearest hulk, and clinging to it with the grasp of despair, uttered yell after yell, sustaining himself against the prodigious rush ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... the floor of the House of Commons during his speech of 28th December. The dimensions exactly tally with those named by the biographer of Lord Eldon, who retained that dagger, though Bland Burges also put in a claim to have possessed it. The scepticism which one feels about this prodigious order of daggers, which others give as 3,000, is somewhat lessened by finding another letter, of 2nd October 1792, addressed to Dundas by James Maxwell of York, who stated that he highly disapproved of the "French" opinions of his younger brother (specimens of whose letters he ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the college school of Vendome. "His eye would take in seven or eight lines at once, and his mind would grasp the meaning with a velocity equal to that of his glance; sometimes even a single word in a phrase was enough to give him the essence of it. His memory was prodigious. He retained thoughts acquired through reading with the same fidelity as those suggested to him in the course of reflection or conversation. In short, he possessed every kind of memory: that of places, of names, of things, and of faces. Not only could he recall ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... his father at home. He was exceedingly precocious, indeed excessively precocious, for his application to studies in childhood and adolescence impaired his health, and is held responsible for his death at thirty-nine. Prodigious, though not incredible stories are preserved, especially of his precocity in mathematics. His mind was active rather than accumulative; he showed from his earliest years that disposition to find things out for himself, which has characterised ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... and manured, leaving the roads to dimensions without measure sufficient, are the fund upon which I build the prodigious stock of money that must do this work. These lands (which I shall afterwards make an essay to value), being enclosed, will be either saleable to raise money, or fit to exchange with those gentlemen who must part with some land where the ways ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... Clover and Trefoil per acre; the land was previously cleaned as far as possible with the plough and harrows, and the seeds sown and covered in the usual way. In the month of October following, a most prodigious crop of annual weeds of many kinds having grown up, were in bloom, and covered the ground and the sown grasses; the whole was then mowed and carried off the land, and by this management all the annual weeds were at once destroyed, as they do not spring again if cut ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... did," eloquently replied Slim, who was surprised and delighted with the great impression he was making with his experience at church. "Oh, he was a game old buck, he was. Why, the minute he sighted that there prodigious son a-limpin' across the mesa, he ran right out an' ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... gazed upon their work. Fishing and the cleaning and cooking of their catch filled the morning; and if, indeed, the cleaning is something the mind would mercifully pass over, those chiefly concerned were satisfied and ate with prodigious appetite. ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... days, and then parted; Admiral Cornish, in the Lenox, having first saluted our admiral in the Namur, which he returned. We then steered for America; but, by contrary winds, we were driven to Teneriffe, where I was struck with its noted peak. Its prodigious height, and its form, resembling a sugar-loaf, filled me with wonder. We remained in sight of this island some days, and then proceeded for America, which we soon made, and got into a very commodious harbour called ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... enjoyment of observing, during a transient interval of spring, the gradual development of the beauty of the earth. Thus the flowers of Polish literature burst out from their buds with a rapidity unequalled in literary history, and were ripened into fruit with the same prodigious celerity. ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... madness there was always remarkable method. When the nation was apathetic, dead on the subject of slavery, he used every power which he possessed or could invent to galvanize it into life. But with the prodigious excitement which swept over the free States at the outbreak of the war, Garrison saw that the crisis demanded different treatment. Abolitionists and their moral machinery he felt should be withdrawn, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the probabilities. It is popular and acceptable all the same. But there is one test which incontestably proves its merit, and supplies its title, to be considered all but "monumental." This is its prodigious ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... OR CARRICK. A large ship of burden, the same with those called galleons. Hippus, the Tyrian, is said to have first devised caracks, and onerary vessels of prodigious ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... year he actually addressed himself to the task. But his inspiration flagged, and it was not till the beginning of 1774 that a new experience supplied a fresh impulse constraining him to complete the "prodigious little work" which was to take ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... from under his tousled head, and so belaboured him in schoolboy fashion that he had no choice but to leap towards his garments. In five minutes he roared down the kitchen-stairs for shaving-water, and in five minutes more was seated in his shirt-sleeves, consuming fried bacon with prodigious appetite. Bessie had the twofold occupation of waiting upon him and finishing the toilet of the baby; she talked incessantly and laughed with an echoing shrillness which would have given a headache for the rest of the day to any one ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... appeared to result from a continued waste of nervous energy. She looked older than Juliet, though she was in fact much younger, and her face was drawn and heavily lined as if by years of ill-health. Her physical strength was prodigious; one perceived it with the suddenness of surprise. Much the same impression was produced by her youthful manner in connection with her worn features; yet, in spite of her faded prettiness, there was a singular charm in ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... a cause de la quantite prodigeuse de cedres qui entraient dans la structure de cet edifice.' [Translation: 'Another thing he did was build the palace which was called the house of Lebanon because of the prodigious quantity of cedars used in its construction.'] Bishop Patrick places this house in or near to Jerusalem, 'In a cool, shady mountain, which made it resemble Mount Lebanon.' Dr. Gill was of opinion that this house was near Jerusalem; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... day after day, this thing that was against her own little will and instincts—was enormous as the sea. It was no mere prettiness of single Trees, but something massed and mountainous. About her rose the wall of its huge opposition to the sky, its scale gigantic, its power utterly prodigious. What she knew of it hitherto as green and delicate forms waving and rustling in the winds was but, as it were the spray of foam that broke into sight upon the nearer edge of viewless depths far, far away. The trees, indeed, were sentinels set visibly about the limits of a camp ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... Herbert Spencer believes in no such God and Father, and his religion, which he vaunts so much, is but a hard and cold abstraction. On other subjects he is a great writer; and in his volume of essays there is not one which is not marked with strong and original thought. It is a prodigious intellect, certainly, and struggling hard with the greatest questions. [287] May it find its way out to light! Thus far its light is, to my thinking, the profoundest darkness. With our house's love to ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... are too heavy, and, besides, I want to kiss Mabel," says Tommy's aunt with prodigious ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... consider the situation of the Thames, and the immense population along its banks for so many miles, must at once perceive the prodigious accumulation of animal matters of all kinds, which by means of the common sewers constantly make their way into it. These matters are, no doubt, in part the cause of the putrefaction which it is well known to undergo at sea, and of the carburetted and sulphuretted ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... the evidence is not sufficient to convince you that Owen did sell the book? The foreman stuck to his general verdict, "Not guilty," "Not guilty;" and several of the jurymen said, "that is our verdict, my lord, and we abide by it." "Upon which the court broke up, and there was a prodigious shout in the hall." Then "the Jury judged as to facts, law, and justice of the whole, and therefore did not answer the leading question which was so artfully put to them."[127] Of course the insolent Attorney-General was soon made "Lord Chief Justice," and rode the bench ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... enormous, prodigious, gigantic; numerous, countless; superior, excellent, admirable; eminent, famous, illustrious, distinguished, renowned, famed, noted; egregious, flagrant, serious, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... and Carthaginian power depended on it wholly. But such a power could not co-exist with the growing strength of martial Italy. Rome challenged Carthage; and after a prodigious struggle, which lasted to within two hundred years of the birth of Our Lord, ruined the Carthaginian power. Fifty years later the town itself was destroyed by the Romans, and its territory turned into a Roman province. ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... anywhere else. One of the greatest dangers, he told me, in passing this mount in winter, arises from a ball of snow, which is blown down from the top by the wind, or falls down by some other accident; which, gathering all the way in its descent, becomes instantly of such a prodigious bigness, that there is hardly any avoiding being carried away with it, man and beast, and smothered in it. One of these balls we saw rolling down; but as it took another course than ours, we had no ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... were a mystery to everyone." The French police vainly sought to detect the origin of Saint-Germain's supplies, opening his letters at the post-office. Major Fraser's knowledge of every civilized country at every period was marvelous, though he had very few books. "His memory was something prodigious. . . . Strange to say, he used often to hint that his was no mere book knowledge. "'Of course, it is perfectly ridiculous,'" he remarked, with a strange smile, "'but every now and then I feel as if this did not come to ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... while the man-animals went back hastily several steps. The she-wolf stood over against her cub, facing the men, with bristling hair, a snarl rumbling deep in her throat. Her face was distorted and malignant with menace, even the bridge of the nose wrinkling from tip to eyes so prodigious was ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... juncture Cuba, whose nose had doubtless been tickled by Australia's apron-string, gave a prodigious sneeze. Europena, feeling that retribution was upon them, fled in terror. The ballast being removed from the chair, the result was inevitable. A crash, a heterogeneous combination of small girl, green paint, and shattered ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... still persisted in sharing his danger, by such reasons as he could on the instant command, the credulous Dudley placed the thin piece of silver between his teeth, and, with a pressure that denoted the prodigious force of his jaws, caused it to assume a beaten and rounded shape. He then slily dropped the battered coin into the muzzle of his gun, taking care to secure its presence, until he himself should send it on its disenchanting ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... old the prodigious disaster of Agincourt fell upon France; and although the English King went home to enjoy his glory, he left the country prostrate and a prey to roving bands of Free Companions in the service of the Burgundian party, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... selling shellfish, crouched bawling beside their wares, sailors passing, some with pots of tar, some with steaming pots of stew, others with baskets full of squid which they were taking to wash in the fresh water of the fountains. Everywhere prodigious heaps of merchandise of every kind. Silks, minerals, baulks of timber, ingots of lead, carobs, rape-seed, liquorice, sugar cane, great piles of dutch cheeses. East ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... 'Old-Man-of-the-Mountain.' And besides that, after this visit, poor Countess Satan appeared to me quite silly. Her famous Satanism was nothing but the flicker of a spirit-lamp, after the general conflagration of which the other had dreamed. She had certainly shown herself very silly, when she could not understand that prodigious monster. And as she had seduced me only by her intellect and her perversity, I was disgusted as soon as she laid aside that mask. I left her without telling her of my intention, and ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... nature which we see performed, more or less, every day, which some natural philosophers have such difficulty in admitting at all, and which others overlook in seeking for some wonderful operation to produce the effect in a shorter time. The prodigious waste that evidently appears, in many places, to have been made of the solid land, and the almost imperceptible effects of the present agents which appear, have given, occasion to those different opinions concerning ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... to recover his powers, but when they did revive they came with a prodigious rush. He plunged upward out of his chair with a cry like a wounded animal, and the others rose with him. The table rocked, something smashed, a chair was hurled backward. The room broke into instant turmoil. Kirk felt hands upon ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... both the Fields and the City Abulphed. Golius 's Notes upon Alferganus. Thus much concerning the Place of his Nativity; he was born in the Year of the Hegira 370, which is about the 980 Year of Christ. He was indeed a prodigious Scholar; he had learn'd the Alcoran, and was well initiated into Human Learning before he was Ten years old; then he studied Logick and Arithmetick, and read over Euclid without any help, only his Master show'd him how to demonstrate the first five or six Propositions; Then he read Ptolemy's ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... were already making wonderful plans. Those of d'A., who had just finished his course of instruction as lieutenant at Saumur with honours, comprised vast movements of complicated strategy. They culminated in a prodigious but inevitable envelopment of the German armies, De F., more prosaic than the other, dreamt of Pantagruelian repasts liberally furnished with Rhine wines. O., a sub-lieutenant, just fresh from the Military College—which he had left with a No. ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... in a gay and glorious garden. In the centre of it grew a pomegranate tree of prodigious size; its top was lost in the sky, and its innumerable branches sprang out in all directions, covered with large fruit of a rich golden hue. Beautiful birds were perched upon all parts of the tree, and chanted with perpetual melody ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... the flying wave of daisy-tones rose out of this deeper sound beneath. Both humans became aware that it was but a surface-voice they imitated. They heard this other foundation-sound that bore it—deep, booming, thunderous, half lost and very far away. It was prodigious; yet there was safety and delight in it that brought no hint of fear. They swam upon the pulse of some enormous, gentle life that rose about and through them in a swelling tide. They felt the heave of something that was strong ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... frontiers of the empire, amounted to five hundred and eighty-three; and that, under the successors of Constantine, the complete force of the military establishment was computed at six hundred and forty-five thousand soldiers. An effort so prodigious surpassed the wants of a more ancient, and the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... vegetation, which seemed like a furious throng, disputing the ground span by span; others collected in great groups, vertical and serrated, like trophies of titanic lances, whose tips touched the clouds; a superb grandeur, a prodigious disorder of colossal forms, the most majestically terrible spectacle which vegetable ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... fellows, so small that Charley himself stood higher than they. On the other hand, the saddles were prodigious; they covered the little animals completely, and the large wooden stirrups nearly grazed the ground. It seemed to Charley that the saddle alone was weight enough for such horses; but when at word from his father he ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... was clear, bright, and exhilarating; the long days spent in the saddle, and the excitement of the chase, seemed to quicken his pulse and to fill him with a new feeling of strength and life. His appetite was prodigious, and he enjoyed the roughly cooked meals round the blazing fire of an evening, as he had never enjoyed food before. The country was, it is true, for the most part monotonous, with its long low undulations, and the bare sweeps, unbroken by tree or bush; but there was always something new and ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... welcomed them, and when the last hummingbird had settled down he addressed the meeting, saying that there was no doubt that he had a right to demand to be proclaimed their king. The spread of his wings was prodigious, he could fearlessly look at the sun, and to whatever height he soared he could detect the slightest movement of a fly on the earth. But the birds objected to him on account of his predatory habits, and then each in turn stated his own case as a claimant for the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... exploits of Mrs. Puss, and being informed she would soon have young ones, which might in time destroy all the rats and mice in the country, bargained with the captain for his whole ship's cargo, and afterwards agreed to give a prodigious quantity of wedges of gold, of still greater value, for the cat, with which, after taking leave of their Majesties, and other great personages belonging to the court, he, with all his ship's company, set sail, with a fair wind, and, after a happy voyage, arrived ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... lady's private sitting-room, her eyes were mere swollen slits in her face. Instead, however, of sponging them in cold water and bravely joining her friends, Laura was still foolish enough to hide and have her cry out. So that when the bell rang, she was obliged to go in to public prayers looking a prodigious fright, and thereby advertising to the curious what ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... fierce love. There are some women upon whom convulsive sighs drawn from the depths of the stomach, eyebrows frowning in a fantastic manner, and eyes in which only the whites are to be seen and which seem to say: 'Love me, or I will kill you!' produce a prodigious effect. I had myself felt the power of this fascination while using it one day upon a softhearted blond creature who thought it delightful to have a Blue-Beard for a lover. But the drooping corners of Clemence's mouth showed at times an ironical ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... west side of which their territory extended from the Rhine to the Rhone and the Saone. (Florus iii. 3) mentions Teutobocus as the name of a king who was taken by the Romans and appeared in the triumph of Marius; he was a man of such prodigious stature that he towered above his own trophies which were carried ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... now putting on the steam at a prodigious rate, anxious, perhaps, to get rid of the unpleasant reminiscences connected with the spot where he had so disastrously encountered Christian. Consulting Mr. Bunyan's road-book, I perceived that we must now be within a few ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... travelling along the coast of Africa is Rondelo, situate over against Toro, and celebrated for the same miraculous passage. Forty-five leagues from thence is Cocir. Here ends that long chain of mountains that reaches from this place even to the entrance of the Red Sea. In this prodigious ridge, which extends three hundred leagues, sometimes approaching near the sea, and sometimes running far up into the land, there is only one opening, through which all that merchandise is conveyed, which is embarked at Rifa, and from thence distributed through ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... the four comrades entered the gate of the stockade, but early as it was the censitaires and their families were all afoot staring at the prodigious fire which raged to the south of them. De Catinat burst through the throng and rushed upstairs to Adele, who had herself flown down to meet him, so that they met in each other's arms half-way up the great stone staircase with a burst of those little ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... whole-souled expression in his open, almost rosy face. His large brown eyes, curly brown hair, silken young mustache, and firmly set mouth and chin well matched his stalwart, symmetrical form. He was not only handsome, he was brilliant in a way, and his memory was something prodigious. Unquestionably he would ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... the name of Sabbatai, the Messiah; being possessed, and voices sounding from their stomachs and entrails. Such reports, bruited through the world by the foreign ambassadors at Smyrna, the clerks of the English and Dutch houses, the resident foreigners, and the Christian ministers, excited a prodigious sensation, thrilling civilized mankind. On the Exchanges of Europe men took the odds for and against ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... wonder with which his genius was spoken of through all Greece, induced a general opinion that he was specially favoured by heaven, and that he held an intimate communication with the gods. Cicero himself has gone so far as to assert that Hercules had a prodigious esteem for him; and Apollonius[1] of Thyana, a Pythagorean philosopher, said in an oration he delivered before the tyrant Domitian, that "Sophocles, the Athenian, could tie up the winds, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... find they have the greatest inclination to serve us, and at the same time themselves, for no people see their interests clearer, but their fears that we shall be subdued, the confident assertions of the friends of England confirming these apprehensions, the prodigious sums they have in the English funds, with this unlucky business at New York, all ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... the Constitution, nevertheless possesses a weapon, an instrument, a tool, a utensil—call it what you will—with which it can harass, vex, impede, affront, humiliate, and finally destroy the most serious labours of the other. When it is realised that the Party which possesses this prodigious and unfair advantage is in the main the Party of the rich against the poor, of the classes and their dependants against the masses, of the lucky, the wealthy, the happy, and the strong against the left-out and the shut-out millions of the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... this publication in the "Tribune" was prodigious. It was widely circulated through all the journals of the North. The Anti-Slavery Society preserved it in a pamphlet. The ire of a good portion of the Southern journals was ludicrous to witness, and proved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... the result of a correct policy; considering less its own loss, and that of the army, than the effect of the former upon the rustic population. Certainly, the capture of the army was a vital misfortune to the southern States; yet the loss of the city itself was of prodigious effect upon the scattered settlements of the country. The character and resolve of the capital cities, in those days, were very much the sources of the moral strength of the interior. Sparsely settled, with unfrequent opportunities of communion with one another, the minds of the forest population ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... right of the Emperor was seated the King of Saxony, in a white uniform with red facings, and collar richly embroidered in silver, wearing a false cue of prodigious length. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... and, as they closed with it, the chasing canoe was compelled to take a side opposite to that on which the pursued passed. The scout and his companions did not neglect this advantage, but the instant they were hid from observation by the bushes, they redoubled efforts that before had seemed prodigious. The two canoes came round the last low point, like two coursers at the top of their speed, the fugitives taking the lead. This change had brought them nigher to each other, however, while it altered ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... by Borelli, an eminent Italian mathematician and philosopher, who lived in a fertile age of discovery, and was thoroughly acquainted with the true principles of mechanics and pneumatics. He showed, by accurate calculation, the prodigious force, which in birds must be exerted and maintained by the pectoral muscles, with which the all-wise Creator has supplied them, and, by applying the same principles to the structure of the human frame, he proved how extremely ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... knows," Berenice said, quietly. "There must be something great about a man capable of such prodigious self-sacrifice. For at heart Lawrence Mannering ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... any weare a Crosse, Feather or Glove Or such prodigious signes of a knit Faction, Table their names up; at our Court-gate plant Good strength to barre them out if once they swarme: Doe this upon ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... was a prodigious heap of bags of money, which were piled upon one another so high that they touched the ceiling. The floor on her right hand and on her left was covered with vast sums of gold that rose up in pyramids on either side of her. But this I did not so much wonder at, ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... infinite labor too. It lay about one hundred yards from the water, and not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was uphill towards the creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig into the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity. This I began, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains; but who grudges pains that have their deliverance in view? But when this was worked through, and this difficulty managed, it was still much at one, for I could no more stir the canoe than I could ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... days of discipline, and receiving instruction from a goddess, who taught him to walk about among the stars, he proceeded to fight with the king of the demons, to divide mountains and seas, and to command the wind and thunder. All the demons fled before him. On account of the prodigious slaughter of demons by this hero the wind and thunder were reduced to subjection, and various divinities came with eager haste to acknowledge their faults. In nine years he gained the power to ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... out of sight, he sank back upon his rustic bench, like a man exhausted, and breathed a prodigious sigh. He was absurdly pale. All the same, clenching his fists, and softly pounding the table with them, he muttered exultantly, between his teeth, "What luck! What incredible luck! It's she—it's she, as I 'm a heathen. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Shem were in Babel with rebellious Nimrod. That instead of learning humility of their father, through the pride and rebellion of their own vain-glorious fancies, they learned wickedness and rebellion of cursed and prodigious Nimrod. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and skalds (a Scandinavian term for poets) took up these rich themes and elaborated them. Thus, if a hero had killed a serpent, in time it became a fiery dragon, and if he won a great battle, the enthusiastic reciters of it had him do prodigious feats—feats beyond belief. But do not fancy from this that the heroes were every-day persons. Indeed, they were quite extraordinary and deserved ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... mothers-in-law, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, and cousins, of every possible degree, down to the fourth generation. And they were all one family; one sole little nation, assembling in joy and pride to celebrate that diamond wedding, the rare prodigious nuptials of two heroic creatures whom life had glorified and from whom all had sprung! And what an epic, what a Biblical numbering of that people suggested itself! How even name all those who entered the farm, how simply set forth ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... more I think of her," he cried, "the more I think her prodigious, unique, the more I am convinced that she alone holds the truth, that outside her are only weaknesses of mind, impostures, scandals. The Church is the divine breeding ground, the heavenly dispensary of souls; she gives them suck, nourishes them, and heals them; she bids them ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... millions of laborers, artisans, shopkeepers, merchants, bankers, and manufacturers hold so firmly from day to day the countless engagements into which they enter, and that each recurring year the result of the prodigious effort which is now put forth in the civilized world in the work of production should be distributed with so much accuracy and honesty, and, on the whole, with so much wise adjustment to the value of each man's ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... pace or two, keeping his eyes fastened on the other intently, for he actually expected to see some prodigious and sudden change in his appearance. When he thought he had got a good position for manly defence or rapid retreat, as either might become necessary the county Leitrim-man put on a bolder front and resumed ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... us, in general, with feeling of hostility and contempt; and who, by example or precept, rendered no earthly equivalent for the enormous sums that were drawn from a poor and struggling people. It is idle to say that these prodigious ecclesiastical revenues were not paid by the people, but by the landlord, who, if the people had not paid them, would have added them to the rent. But even so—the straggling peasant reasoned naturally, for he felt it to be one thing to pay even a high rent to the landlord, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Bishop's ape appeared to him in a dream, not a mere mannikin as he was in reality, but as tall as Monte San Gemignano, cocking up a prodigious tail and tickling the moon. He was squatted in an olive wood among the farms and oil-presses, while betwixt his legs a narrow road ran alongside a row of flourishing vineyards. Now the said road was thronged with a multitude of pilgrims, who defiled one by one before the painter's eyes. ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... Squire, who had been making a prodigious fuss with his hat and stick, which he managed to send clattering down the flight of stone steps, departed to get ready, saying in a kind of roar as he went that Ida was to order in the dinner, as he would be down ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... it; and now, desirous of putting a finishing touch to this rare and well-contrived adventure, they applied a light to Clavileno's tail with some tow, and the horse, being full of squibs and crackers, immediately blew up with a prodigious noise, and brought Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to the ground half singed. By this time the bearded band of duennas, the Trifaldi and all, had vanished from the garden, and those that remained lay stretched on the ground ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
