"Formidable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... talking to the strangers in the shed-room. They seemed tall and formidable, under the low roof, against the flat glare of the sun on the hard-swept ground in front of the shed. She waited inside until her mother reminded her of the dinner half cooked on the stove; then she went out shyly, the light falling on her downcast face and full white eyelids, on her yellow hair, ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... handsbreadth to cover as they rush out from the walls or retire. [48] But now, if we leave a distance between ourselves and them as wide as our line is long, not only with they realise our numbers plainly enough, but our veil of glittering armour will make the whole multitude more formidable in their eyes. [49] And, if they do attack us anywhere, we shall be able to foresee their advance a long way off and be quite prepared to give them welcome. But it is far more likely, gentlemen," he added, "that they will not make the attempt, with all that ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... Counsellor Quin, a man of vulgar manners and mean abilities, but yet one who could drink and cajole electors full as well as Sir Hyacinth, with all his wit and elegance. The other candidate, Mr. Molyneux, was still more formidable; not as an electioneerer, but as a man of talents and unimpeached integrity, which had been successfully exerted in the service of his country. He was no demagogue, but the friend of justice and of the poor, whom he would not suffer to be oppressed ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... before our readers all the opinions which have been held in regard to the solution of this formidable enigma. For ourselves, we hold the belief that the Man in the Iron Mask stood on the steps of the throne. Although the mystery cannot be said to be definitely cleared up, one thing stands out firmly established among the mass ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Belgian side at least, had had no great reason in the past year or so to be especially vigilant. But Paul was horrified by this proof of the determination of the great power to the east and north not to hesitate to invade Belgium, should that course be necessary to enable it to reach its most formidable antagonist, France. ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... have thrown a stone into a congregation of blackbirds, in writing as you have of our family wars and wants. The response comes from all parts of the country, and the task of looking over and answering your letters becomes increasingly formidable. Everybody has something to ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sounded. Most of them were armed with slings, some of the bigger boys with bows and arrows. The bigger girls carried aloe-spikes, strong as steel and sharp as needles, fitted to longish shafts—rather formidable weapons. Their sole duty was the charge of such as ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... knows what it is to take part in a cross-country run of half a dozen miles. The Norwegian test is something more formidable—about fifteen miles of rough, mountainous country, over hill and dale, through forests, and as often as not down rocky precipices, all half buried in snow; in the runner's hand a staff, and on his feet his ski, six or eight feet long. ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... by reference to particular campaigns. In 1792, when the Duke of Brunswick invaded France, she had no armies competent to her defence. Their numbers upon paper were somewhat formidable, it is true, but the license of the Revolution had so loosened the bonds of discipline as to effect an almost complete disorganization. "It seemed, at this period," says the historian, "as if the operations of the French generals were dependent upon the absence of their enemies: the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... its powerful tail. After some trouble, a second lasso was thrown over the tail, which was thus somewhat restrained in its movements; and Sambo, approaching cautiously with an axe, cut a deep gash just at the root of that formidable appendage, which rendered it harmless. "Hi-i," shouted Sambo in triumph, as he sprang towards the animal's head, and inflicted a similar gash in the neck; "dare, you ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... however, exulted in this show of force, and ascribed to it a conservative influence and a benumbing effect. "Our harbor is full of ships, and our town full of troops," Hutchinson said. "The red-coats make a formidable appearance, and there is a profound silence among the Sons of Liberty." The Sons chose to labor and to wait; and the troops could not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... last noteworthy representative of the German metaphysical school. His works are gigantic in size and appear formidable. But if one be not afraid of giants and venture to approach near, one finds nothing but a big Morgante, full of the most commonplace prejudices, quite easily killed with the bite of ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... the belle of a party containing two or three very pretty women, but had also enchanted the men by her fun, vivacity, and singing. Poor Lady Mary! it was hard, in spite of all her efforts to secure a clear field, to find her daughter suddenly confronted by such a formidable rival. ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... chance of a voice being raised in her favour,' I said to myself. But I was wrong; for at that moment a lovely angel-child flew past me on its blue and white wings. Without any sign of fear it flew direct to St. Peter, who looked formidable enough with his long beard and great keys, and, pointing with its little forefinger to the hard-hearted woman, cried: 'She once gave me a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... words, and the wedding was over. Then Mr. and Mrs. George Keane received abundant congratulations, and they adjourned to partake of breakfast. In the hall stood a quantity of baggage labelled "Mrs. Keane," which seemed very formidable, but was not much after all, considering the travellers were going to Europe. Yes; the young pair were to have a six months' tour before settling down at Pendlepoint, and some felt as if Carrie were going away for ever. She looked very grave and sad; and when she ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... natural; yet he handles his humbugs and impostors with as cold a kindness and a magnanimity as equable as he displays in his treatment of their opposites. Indeed his interest in humanity is inexhaustible, and his understanding of it is well nigh formidable in its union of breadth with delicacy. Himself an aristocrat and an official, he is able to sympathise with the Russian peasant as completely and to express his sentiments as perfectly as he is able to ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... connected with others in friendship, in interest, or as the member of a society for particular objects: he may confederate with immense bodies, for the protection of his rights, or become part of an army for the destruction of his neighbours. Thus one philosophical system, in pamphlets or in formidable volumes, endeavours to overturn another: but the words are individual, and have no tendency to associate until they are enlisted and disciplined into the ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... changed, the features slightly losing their accentuation, growing youthful, softer in outline, the long drooping moustache giving place to a close-cut beard. The eyes alone stayed the same, steady, luminous, a living silence in them at once formidable and strangely sad. Finally—and this the poor child found indescribably agitating and even horrible—their silence was broken by a question. For they asked what she, Damaris, meant to say, meant to do, when ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... under our control. We are masters of the passions of the people, and we have employed our dominion with a terrible effect. But, sir, do you, or does any man here, imagine that we could have acquired this formidable ability to sunder the strongest ties by which the different classes of society are fastened, unless we found the materials of excitement in the state of society itself? Do you think that Daniel O'Connell has himself, and by the single powers of his own mind, unaided by any external ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... been anticipated, the issues prove to be at bottom not so much economic as moral and religious, for "Materialism and its formidable sons, Anarchy, Bolshevism, and Unrest, have thrown down the gauge of battle" ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... that were attacking Tucker and Traps, sensing a new and more formidable enemy, turned upon Charley. Swinging his ax he held them at bay, while they crouched, watching for an opening, their lips drawn back from their ugly fangs, while with ferocious snaps and yelps ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... closed the entrance to the Rue Saint-Florentin and the Rue de Rivoli by its skilled construction and great height appeared even more formidable than the other, Jean's instinct told him they would have less difficulty in getting by it. It was completely evacuated, indeed, and the Versailles troops had not yet entered it. The abandoned guns were resting ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... were content to read, copy, translate, and comment on Aristotle. Scarcely a single independent effort at research was made in the whole of the period. During the Middle Ages the spread of strong religious beliefs put formidable obstacles in the way of independent scientific investigation. There was no question of resuming the advance of biology. Even when human anatomy began to stir itself once more in the sixteenth century, and independent research was resumed ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... I have no distinct recollection that it was so, Plowden may have also been smitten by the lady. Now, whether the Irishman imagined that the young banker was his most formidable rival, or whether there may have been some previous cause of ill-will between the two men, I cannot say, but so it was that the chamberlain sent a challenge to the banker. The latter declined to accept it on the ground that he was a banker ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Yueeh-chih tribes (some of which seem to have been of Indo-European language stock) and incorporated their people into their own federation; they had conquered also the less well organized eastern pastoral tribes, the Tung-hu and thus had become a formidable power. Everything goes to show that it had close relations with the territories of northern China. Many Chinese seem to have migrated to the Hsiung-nu empire, where they were welcome as artisans and probably also as farmers; ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... state of Southern affairs, is the most rational that can be adopted, and promises very important advantages. Indeed, I hardly see how a sufficient force can be collected in that quarter without it: and the enemy's operations there are growing infinitely serious and formidable. I have not the least doubt, that the negroes will make very excellent soldiers with proper management: and I will venture to pronounce, that they cannot be put in better hands than those of Mr. Laurens. He has all the zeal, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... north. It was said that Timmendiquas, stung to fiery energy by his defeats, was coming east to form a league with the Iroquois, the famous Six Nations. These warlike tribes were friendly with the Wyandots, and the league would be a formidable danger to the Colonies, the full strength of which was absorbed already in the ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... longer imposed on with fictitious Stories," but both Miss Blandy and Mr. Ford, her counsel, took great exception to this at the trial. Pamphlets, as we shall presently see, poured from the press, and even before she appeared at the bar the first instalments of a formidable library of Blandyana, had come ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... remove all these difficulties. I will point out that absolute necessity, which is called also logical and metaphysical and sometimes geometrical, and which would alone be formidable in this connexion, does not exist in free actions, and that thus freedom is exempt not only from constraint but also from real necessity. I will show that God himself, although he always chooses the best, does not act by an absolute necessity, and that ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... around us was like the seething of a caldron; for the waves boiled up all at once, and ran in all directions. I was distracted by their universal assault, and did not observe the heaviest and most formidable of all, till it was almost down upon our broadside. I put the helm hard down, and shouted with all my might to O'More—"Stand by for a sea, sir—lay hold, lay hold." It was too late. I could just prevent ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... expression, which was admirably adapted to his purpose. In short, he had such a wonderful vein of oratory in commenting, explaining, and discussing, that I never beheld his equal; though in amplifying, embellishing, and refuting, he was rather to be dreaded as a formidable critic, than admired as an eloquent speaker."—"Indeed," said Brutus, "though I always thought I sufficiently understood the character of Scaevola, by the account I had heard of him from C. Rutilius, whose company I frequented for the sake of his ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... at eight o'clock in the morning, Erik from the deck of the "Alaska" pressed the button of the electrical machine, and a formidable explosion took place. The field of ice shook and trembled, and clouds of frightened sea-birds hovered around uttering discordant cries. When silence was restored, a long black train cut into innumerable fissures ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... of slavery, the Christmas holidays brought with them general alarm. To prevent insurrections, the militia was uniformly called out, and an array made of all that was formidable in military enginery. This custom was dispensed with at once, after emancipation. As Christmas came on the Sabbath, it tested the respect for that day. The morning was similar, in all respects, to the morning of the Sabbath ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... those singular accidents which we occasionally meet with in history, Graham, afterwards destined to become his most formidable opponent, saved the life of the Prince of Orange at the battle of St. Neff. The Prince's horse had been killed, and he himself was in the grasp of the enemy, when the young cornet rode to his rescue, freed him from his assailants, and ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... he was anxious to open an account, but that he would probably have gone to the length of selling Eph a barrel of molasses "on tick" rather than run any risk of offending so formidable ...
— The Village Convict - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... upon seeing a native rise to put his spear into the throwing stick. Some of my companions asserted that they had seen them hit their object at the almost incredible distance of 200 yards: but, making all due allowance for the guess, I could not help thinking how formidable they would have been had they been enemies instead of friends. They remained with us the whole afternoon; all the tribe and many visitors, in all about seventy persons, squatting down with crossed legs in the narrow shades of the trunks of trees, and shifting their position as the sun advanced. ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... and ignorant people. In his acute criticism of the genesis or what was regarded as Christianity in his day, he spoke bitter and earnest truths, and therefore acquired the name of the fiercest and most formidable of all the enemies of Christians. His work was destroyed (condemned by an edict of Theodosius II. and Valentinian, of the year 448), and even the writings in reply (by Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris, Philostorgius, etc.,) have not been preserved. Yet we possess fragments in Lactantius, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... but unknown Indian regions beyond its easternmost limits. Besides Macedonia, Greece, and Thrace, he possest all that immense treasure and military force which had once rendered the Great King so formidable. By no contemporary man had any such power ever been known or conceived. With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian spectators had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the innumerable ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... complexion very dark in Raymond, Frank, and the absent Miles. Frank's eyes were soft, brown, rather pensive, and absent in expression; but Raymond's were much deeper and darker, and had a steadfast gravity, that made him be viewed as formidable, especially as he had lost all the youthful glow of colouring that mantled in his brother's olive cheek; and he had a short, thick, curly brown beard, while Frank had only attained to a black moustache, that might almost have been drawn on his lip ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her proceeding with surprise, "so that we need never refer to them again. You are my husband, and must relieve me now of all my business cares. Here—" she opened the pocketbook and spread out some formidable-looking papers, with stamps and seals attached, before him: "This is my check book, here the deposit receipts for my government stock ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... had freshened, and, though there were no great waves at sea, yet breakers, formidable to such a craft as theirs, were seen foaming over long disjointed reefs ahead, that grinned black and dangerous ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Araucanians had besieged Arauco, than he began his march for that place with such forces as he was able to collect at a short notice; though contrary to the advice of his most experienced officers, who urged him to wait till he could collect a more formidable army, and seemed to have a presentiment of the fatal consequences which were to result from the present expedition. The historians of the times differ materially in their accounts of the force under Valdivia on this occasion. According ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... back up so formidable a quintette of stalwarts," assented the tall visitor gaily. "But we won't trouble about that just now. We have a couple of hours before us in which to do all that we want. So au revoir, friend Rondeau...two more louis ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... bank they were on their guard. The expectation of a visit from the Fox brothers caused anxiety and apprehension. The evil reputation of these men, and their desperate character, made them formidable. ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... would, and be surprised to find how soon that end had arrived, and what a pleasant journey you had made. But if you are frightened at Hume, and I own he looks formidable, let me select you something in the library, to commence operations with, which will not be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... fanatics from the Cevennes, who had fled to London after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and whose paroxysms of religious hysteria at length brought them into trouble with the authorities (1707). Paris saw an outbreak of the same kind of ecstasy, though on a much more formidable scale, among the Jansenist fanatics, from 1727 down to 1758, or later. Some of the best attested miracles in the whole history of the supernatural were wrought at the tomb of the Jansenist deacon, Paris.[30] The works of faith exalted multitudes into convulsive transports; men ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of the family of a glistening metallic crimson. It has very long legs, and prefers climbing among the foliage to living on the ground, like most varieties of the tiger-beetle. Its movements are very quick. It will pounce like lightning on a fly, which can rarely escape the grasp of this formidable enemy. ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... stopped there on a pilgrimage to some relatives on the other side of the prairie. The White Hawk was so pleased with their tidy little forms that he thought he, too, would be a mouse, especially as they were by no means formidable to look at, and would not be at ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... him to repel any sudden attack by confusing or stunning his foe, till he can turn on his back, which he is obliged to do ere he can use his mouth. This wily and experienced shark, not daring to turn and expose his more vulnerable parts to the formidable sword of his enemy, lashed at him with his heavy tail, as a man uses a flail, working the water into a syllabub. Meanwhile, in honour, I suppose, or in the love of fair play, his seven compatriot sharks stood aloof, lying to with their fins, in no degree interfering in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... He spread a formidable-looking document wide-open on the table, adjusted his pince-nez and prepared to read. "Dear old Nat!" said Alaric reflectively. "Do you remember, mater, we met him at Victoria Station once when I was little more than a baby? Yet I can see him now as plainly as if it were yesterday. A portly, sandy-haired ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... rowed he was constantly uttering derisive and defiant remarks; but all the same his grubby face was rather ashy, and he too grew tremendously hot as he worked away at his scull for quite an hour, during which time they had not seen anything more formidable than half a dozen red oxen standing knee-deep in the water, and swinging their tails to and fro to drive away ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... and formidable changes of aspect our hero stood watching with a motionless and riveted attention, and as though they were to him matters of the utmost consequence and importance; and only when the last flicker of life had departed from his second victim did he lift his ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... secciones. A las 4 y media (sencilla), exito formidable y extraordinario, El caballo "Fantasma" (estupendas aventuras policiacas) y otras.—A las 6 y cuarto (doble): Noche lugubre, interpretada por la bellisima actriz Henny Porten (exclusiva); El caballo "Fantasma" (proyectada ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... in this wise, Peter Gill made his entrance into the study with the formidable monthly lists and accounts, whose examination constituted a veritable doomsday to the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... though there was one just back, we never saw our buggies again. Once, following a crescent, far below us lay the water battery concealed by the trees that grew by the water's edge, looking, from where we stood, like quite a formidable precipice. Then still beyond, after leaving the river, we passed through a camp where the soldiers divided their attention equally between eating their supper and staring at us in the most profound silence. Then, through an old gate, down a steep hill, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... the ground. Presently a large ground sloth came to the pool to drink, lapping up the water at the sides that had partly cooled. In an instant the black armored monster rushed down the slope with the speed of a nineteenth-century locomotive, and seemed about as formidable. The sloth turned in the direction of the sound, and for a moment seemed paralyzed with fear; it then started to run, but it was too late, for the next second the enormously exaggerated ant—for such it was—overtook it. The ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... a matter of considerable difficulty: but they succeeded at last in discovering a retreat in the rocks, where they were secure from any attack, no matter by how formidable a number made. ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... you to clean up that island," was the royal order. It was a formidable job for a young man of twenty-odd years. By royal proclamation he was made mayor of the island, and within a year, a court of law being established, the young attorney was appointed judge; and in that dual capacity he ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... affairs. The boat had taken about twenty minutes to feel her way in, and during that time I had been assiduously practising gymnastics; I was therefore now not only dry but also in a pleasant glow of warmth, and quite ready to undertake the really formidable part of the task that still lay ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... formidable enemies to sentiment. I was prepared for every struggle, even with my father, in order that I ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... only at once put a stop to the Crusade, but that it might lead to more serious consequences at home. The fiery bravery of the English king, backed as it would be by the whole strength of his subjects, might render him a very formidable opponent; and the king felt that private grievances must be laid aside where the ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... work, too, has entered on a new phase, and that opens up a new future for me. It is a formidable affair. I don't think I'll go to Kalgan or that region. I fear no doctor would stay with me there. I may go away North-east. I can hardly tell yet. Meantime, with God's help, I hope to do another month's work in Peking, and then hand the thing over to Rees once ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... commanders going into battle; and yet the action, fall out how it will, is not one of those the muse delights to celebrate. Indeed, it is difficult to see why the fellow does a thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look at, unless on the theory ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... start, he found himself leaning over the gunwale, and the shark just at his elbow. This had startled him, and caused the sudden exclamation by which I had been aroused. I shuddered at his narrow escape, and I acknowledge that the sight of this hideous and formidable creature, stealing along in our wake, and manifesting an intention to keep us company, caused me some uneasy sensations. He swam with his dorsal fin almost at the surface, and his broad nose scarcely three feet from the rudder. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... intense surprise, he lingered on; he actually grew stronger. Although never seeming to gain an ounce in weight, he could eat a formidable breakfast and used to insist, to my horror and shame, in importing his own wine, which he accused my German maid Bertha of drinking on the sly. Callers cheered him up—Rolfe the Consul, Dr. Dohrn of the Aquarium, and old Marquis Valiante, that perfect botanist—all ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... times past more puissant and formidable, is related by the Prince of authors, the deified Julius [Caesar]; and hence it is probable that they too have passed into Germany. For what a small obstacle must be a river, to restrain any nation, as each grew more potent, from seizing or changing habitations; when as yet ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... a horrible grimace. "I choke you lak w'ite bear, I t'row you ovair my should'r, I mash you lak leetle strawberr', I—" He paused in his task to advance with a formidable gesture. ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... the Conquest, the priests were the only learned men, and they, too, like the Scribes, acted as judges and advisers of litigants. Even as late as the time of Henry VIII, as we know, the Keeper of the King's Conscience and the head of the Court of Equity, was an Ecclesiastic in the formidable person of Cardinal Woolsey. About the reign of King John, laymen became lawyers, and in Henry III's time the Pope forbade priests to fit themselves in civil law or to act as advisers in respect to it. We may properly say that the profession of the Bar, as ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... would make all the ventilators of Strong, Bulbul & Co. quite jealous. And what is it these big people make? Is it iron bridges, or locomotives, or armor plates, or steam boilers, or mining pumps? From what my American told me, I might find a rival to Creusot or Cokerill or Essen in this formidable establishment in the United States of America. At least unless he has been taking a rise out of me, for he does not seem to be "green," as they say in his country, which means to say that he does not look very much like an ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... called eating at first, that I might not mystify you at the beginning with hard words. But now that we are growing learned ourselves, we must accustom ourselves to the terms in use among learned people, especially when they are not more formidable than those ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... death whilst still availing herself of the hospitality of Madame Trouessart: to withdraw the jewellery and plate which she had deposited there on her mother's account. But there she found herself confronted with the red tape of the Latin which is more formidable, even, than that of the land of Dora at the present day. These deposited articles were held on the order of Mrs. Warren; they could not be given up till her will was proved and letters of administration had been granted. So that small resource in funds was withheld, at any rate till some time ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... then stand face to face, and one would bend forward meekly, whilst the other dealt her a truly terrific blow between the shoulders or on the head—not with a cane or a light stick, be it remembered, but a really formidable club. The blow (which would be enough to kill an ordinary white woman) would be borne with wonderful fortitude, and then the aggressor would hand the club to the woman ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... similar stories, which confirmed, without adding to, the facts already known, and night came on without much progress having been made toward the unravelling of this formidable mystery. ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... down in solution and deposit it with evaporation in massive layers, forming a comparatively hard roadway in the midst of the shifting sand-dunes. Over these latter our progress was extremely slow. One stretch of fifteen miles, which it took us six hours to cover, was as formidable as any part of the Turkoman desert along the Transcaspian railway. At an altitude of only six hundred feet above the sea, according to our aneroid barometer, and beneath the rays of a July sun against which even our felt caps were not much protection, we were half-dragging, half-pushing, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... formidable array of testimony it appears that the tendency of urban populations is certainly not toward the pure blond, long-headed, and tall Teutonic type. The phenomenon of urban selection is something more complex than a mere migration ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... rent,—"really a feudal payment from freeholders,"—was thus a material source of income for the crown as well as for the proprietors. Wherever it was laid, however, it proved to be a burden, a source of constant irritation; and it became a formidable item in the long list of grievances which ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... he had no reason to solicit pardon for offences. 14. Thus this defection, which threatened danger to Rome, was repaired by the prudence and moderation of a general, whose ambition it was to be gentle to his friends, and formidable ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... Everett, that this formidable objection, so emphatically announced, is after all a mere man in buckram; and I am almost sorry that in doing this, I shall be obliged to expose one more proof of Mr. Everett's having neglected ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... evolution by natural selection, because it must clearly be a most improbable thing that so complicated a structure as the eye of a fish should happen to be arrived at through each of two totally different lines of descent. And this difficulty would, indeed, be a formidable one to the theory of evolution, if the similarity were not only analogical but homological. Unfortunately for the objection, however, Darwin clearly showed in his reply that in no one anatomical or homologous feature do the two structures ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... contains, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent I, the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyes flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the infinite to cause ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... resuming the subject of Ascot. Lydia listened to him, and looked at her new acquaintance. Now that the constraint of society had banished his former expression of easy good-humor, there was something formidable in him that gave her an unaccountable thrill of pleasure. The same impression of latent danger had occurred, less agreeably, to Lucian, who was affected much as he might have been by the proximity of a large dog of ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... returned to the palace, unperceived by any one, but we heard a confused noise of trumpets, drums, and other instruments of war. We soon understood by the thick cloud of dust, which almost darkened the air, that it was the arrival of a formidable army: and it proved to be the same vizier that had dethroned my father, and usurped his place, who with a vast number of troops was come to possess himself of that also of the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the occurrence to Commodore Riveros, who, after debating for a minute or two as to whether or not he should follow the corvette, finally decided in favour of pursuing the Huascar, as she was the more formidable craft of the two; and the Chilian ironclad accordingly was kept on her previous course. Jim then returned to his post, and kept his glass fixed upon the flying steamers in front of him; and hardly had he taken up his position again when he saw the Huascar ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... cold on Sunday in our way to the D'Antraigues.[227] The horses actually gibbed on this side of Hyde Park Gate: a load of fresh gravel made it a formidable hill to them, and they refused the collar; I believe there was a sore shoulder to irritate. Eliza was frightened and we got out, and were detained in the evening air several minutes. The cold is in her chest, but she takes care of herself, and I hope ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... that St. Patrick and his two sisters were brought captive into Ireland from Armorica, or Brittany, in the kingdom of France. It is evident likewise that when Niall, the King of Ireland, had succeeded with the Britons, he despatched a formidable fleet to plunder the coast of France, and succeeded; and that he carried away numbers of captives with him into captivity, one of which, it is reasonable to suppose, was the young Patrick, who was afterwards distinguished by the name of ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... not naturally a nervous man, he thought, but he had never taught girls before, and he found the calm, cool scrutiny to which he was being subjected by every member of the class something formidable. He would rather teach fifty boys, he said to himself, than these ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... have been established within the last few years, and the site of that once formidable building the Bastile is now occupied by one. None of these modern fountains (although many of them display much taste) are, however, by any means to be compared, in point of elegance, to that which stands in the market of Innocents, ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... Sometimes he rose to admirable passages of virtuous indignation and scathing rebuke, as he warmed with the subject of Southern delusion, actuated by unprincipled leaders, and few of the Senators who sat on the Democratic side escaped from his truly formidable denunciation. Lane, of Oregon, a compound of conceit, ridiculous ignorance, and servility to Southern masters, was totally annihilated by the sturdy Tennesseean, for his imbecile attempts to excuse his pusillanimous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... whenever he was in her presence; to be more witty, more eloquent, more romantic, more full of wonderful tales than he ever yet had been. The cunning Don had found himself foiled in his first tactic; and he was now trying another, and a far more formidable one. In the first place, Rose deserved a very severe punishment, for having dared to refuse the love of a Spanish nobleman; and what greater punishment could he inflict than withdrawing the honor of his attentions, and the sunshine of his ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... that two ships draw so near in a calm as to incur some risk of falling on board one another. I need scarcely mention, that, even in the smoothest water ever found in the open sea, two large ships coming into actual contact must prove a formidable encounter. As long as they are apart their gentle and rather graceful movements are fit subjects of admiration; and I have often seen people gazing, for an hour at a time, at the ships of a becalmed fleet, slowly twisting ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... in my own defence, to follow a proceeding that I have so much condemned in others. But several of my acquaintance among the declining party, are grown so insufferably peevish and splenetic, profess such violent apprehensions for the public, and represent the state of things in such formidable ideas, that I find myself disposed to share in their afflictions, though I know them to be groundless and imaginary, or, which is worse, purely affected. To offer them comfort one by one, would be not only ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... the sluggish, yellow river to discourage the designing crocodiles that swarmed below. In the open, and in a fair fight these repulsive reptiles were easy victims of her power and cunning; but, taken unawares, she would find them formidable adversaries. For this reason she drank only of the shallowest pools, and refrained from swimming, reaching her abiding place over a series of conveniently-placed boulders that ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... presence of a Minister and his spouse. The former has always been pessimistic, and so we had Boxers for soup, Boxers with the entrees, and Boxers to the end. In fact, if the truth be told, the Boxers surrounded us in a constant vapour of words so formidable that one might well have reason to be alarmed. P——, the Minister, was, indeed, very talkative and gesticulative; his wife was sad and sighed constantly—elle poussait des soupirs tristes—at the lurid spectacle her husband's words conjured ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... highest rank, as candidates for the consulship? You see, therefore, that there are men of the noblest families, who from defect of ability are not your equals. But, you will say, Catiline and Antonius are formidable. Rather I should say that a man of energy, industry, unimpeachable character, great eloquence, and high popularity with those who are the ultimate judges, should wish for such rivals—both from their boyhood stained with blood and lust, both ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... resembles certain combinations of wheels, which are tranquil in appearance yet formidable. You pass close to them every day, peaceably and with impunity, and without a suspicion of anything. A moment arrives when you forget that the thing is there. You go and come, dream, speak, laugh. All at once you feel yourself clutched; all is over. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... When the wing and the further wing of the samsaptakas had thus been exterminated by Savyasaci, the son of Drona quickly proceeded against Arjuna, that foremost of victorious warriors. Indeed, Drona's son rushed, shaking his formidable bow, and taking with him many terrible arrows like the Sun himself appearing with his own rays. With mouth wide open from rage and with the desire to retaliate, and with red eyes, the mighty Ashvatthama looked formidable like death himself, armed with his mace and filled with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Lunch threatened to be formidable. To begin with, Laura, whose natural, easy frankness had by this time all but been successfully educated out of her, Laura was never shyer with strangers than at a meal, where every word you said could be listened to by a tableful of people. Then, too, her vis-a-vis was a small ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... the thoughtless lad; "he is a younker, like myself, and would hardly dare run down upon such a formidable force as ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... my fellow-citizens, these considerations, in full confidence that the good sense which has so often marked your decisions will allow them their due weight and effect; and that you will never suffer difficulties, however formidable in appearance, or however fashionable the error on which they may be founded, to drive you into the gloomy and perilous scene into which the advocates for disunion would conduct you. Hearken not to the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... and fear. After a lot of twisting and turning you came to the very top of the house and found it heavily curtained off. You lifted a curtain and found yourself in a small entresol, somewhat artistically painted—the whole and sole work of an artistic member who came one day with a formidable array of lumber and paint-pots and worked his will on the ancient wood. Then you saw the brass plate and its fearful name, and beneath it the formal legal notice that this club was duly registered and so on, and if you were a member you went in, and if you weren't a member ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... my taking of the scriptures from his arguments, I will do it in a way that is most to his advantage, making of each of them as formidable an objection as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... days steaming on the Danube, at Widdin, where the exiled Servian minister, M. Petronovich, was then resident, under the protection of the Pasha, whose name is known to all the world as the destroyer of the Janissaries and the defender of Shumla, the once formidable Hussein. To this redoubted personage, now apparently verging on eighty, Mr Paton was introduced by M. Petronevich at an evening audience, it being contrary to etiquette to receive visits by day during the Ramadan—and found him "sitting in the corner of the divan at his ease, being afflicted with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... has for its highest images an analogon in the spiritual condition of those who profess it. The God of Mohammed . the solitariness of the desert, the distant roar of the lion, the vision of a formidable warrior. The God of the Christians . everything that men and women think of when they hear the word "love". The God of the Greeks: a beautiful apparition ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... speech. Such has been the influence exercised in the United States by the institution of slavery; it has forbidden authors to write, clergymen to preach, and almost individuals to think any thing that displeased it; it has invented the right of secession, in order to have at its disposal a formidable means of intimidation, and to place a threat behind each of its demands. To yield, to descend, to descend still further, to obey a continued impulse of democratic debasement, such is the course to which it has impelled the ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... was circulating in their veins, everything appeared black, everything appeared bitter, everything created doubts of a God, while speaking by the mouth, even, of God. It was customary for the admiral and his suite to embark the last: the cannon waited to announce, with its formidable voice, that the leader had placed his foot on board his vessel. Athos, forgetful of both the admiral and the fleet, and of his own dignity as a strong man, opened his arms to his son, and pressed him, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... monasteries and castles here are fortified. They were the only points capable of holding out when the Golden Tribe rushed upon them with twenty or thirty thousand horses, and devastated all that flat country. Long after their yoke was broken, the Khans of Tartary in the Crimea were formidable enemies. The watchmen from the highest battlements of the Kremlin were continually observing the wide expanse toward the south; and when the dust-clouds rose thence, and the great bell (kolokol) of Ivan Welicki rang the alarm, every one fled behind the walls of the Czar's palace or to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... perhaps to the Roman soldiers and the latter to the temple police—and they carried lanterns and torches, probably because they expected to have to hunt for Jesus and His followers in the recesses of His retreat. Altogether it was a formidable body: they were determined to make ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... behind us. Far away were Brian and Dierdre. And oh, Padre, I can never dislike that girl again! I apologize for everything I ever said against her. She saw that great police dog making for blind Brian. And you know, a police dog can look formidable as a panther. She took no time to think, though the idea might have sprung to her mind that the creature was mad. She simply threw herself in front of Brian. It was an offer ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... these two which we saw, when, at the third turn of the hill, the advance-guard came upon another, which we had not been able to see. They commenced to fight bravely from below it, but because the position of the stockade was very strong, and that of our men very cramped—hemmed in by formidable precipices, and exposed to all the guns and other weapons of the enemy (especially sompites, bacacayes, and stones)—no sooner would some of our men gain the little open place before the stockade than they would fall dead or wounded. For this reason, after having fought a good two hours, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... "But, however formidable at first sight the admissions, which I have no desire to narrow or to qualify, may appear, they in no way shake the foregoing arguments. They do not change the nature of truth and her capability and destiny to benefit mankind. They do not relieve Government ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... daughter's love, especially after the terrible misunderstanding that had divided her from him, Dalton had no thought for those grave dangers which surrounded both her and him. But to Edith these dangers still appeared, and they were most formidable. She could not forget that she was still liable to arrest on the most appalling of accusations, and that her father also was liable to discovery and re-arrest. Reginald had tried to banish her fears and inspire her with hope; but now that he was no longer near, her position ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... release him from his torturing anxieties, and after all, he felt, something must turn up before the reckoning was due. It was not in his nature to face a crisis, and with him a trouble seemed less formidable if it could only be put off a little. Edmonds, who knew with what kind of man he had to deal, said nothing further, and quietly reached out for ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of evening were stealing over the land, the men gathered for their march against the enemy. They were a formidable band, and Davidson was much pleased as he watched them fall into line. The Colonel had charge of the little squad of Loyalists, and his old spirit possessed him as he drilled and instructed them for a few minutes in front of his house. The ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... middle-aged lady with glasses who was the secretary. Honora looked around her. The membership of the Society, judging by those present, was surely of a sufficiently heterogeneous character to satisfy even the catholic tastes of her hostess. There were elderly ladies, some benevolent and some formidable, some bedecked and others unadorned; there were earnest-looking younger women, to whom dress was evidently a secondary consideration; and there was a sprinkling of others, perfectly gowned, several of whom were gathered in an opposite corner. Honora's eyes, as the reading ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... her strength and the morning air gave her confidence. The district, too, was less formidable than the neighborhood of the Karntnerstrasse and the Graben. The shops were smaller. The windows exhibited cheaper goods. There was a sort of family atmosphere about many of them; the head of the establishment in the doorway, the wife at the cashier's desk, daughters, cousins, nieces ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and speedily make breaches in the walls; but the real fighting won't begin till they enter. The barricades were at first little more than breastworks, but they have grown and grown until they have become formidable fortifications, and, if stoutly defended, and with every house occupied by desperate men, it will be terrible work carrying them by assault. However, there are few places where the main defences cannot be turned, for it is impossible to fortify every street. However, ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... uncle Richard.—Here, now, is a maiden sister of his, my great-aunt Deborah, done by Kneller, in his best manner, and esteemed a very formidable likeness. There she is, you see, a shepherdess feeding her flock. You shall have her for five pounds ten—the sheep ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... disobedience which I should have had to confess; and so arose infinite false excuses, and petty prevarications, which embittered and clogged still more my already overtasked spirit. About my own ailments—formidable as I believed they were—I never had a moment's anxiety. The expectation of early death was as unnatural to me as it is, I suspect, to almost all. I die? Had I not hopes, plans, desires, infinite? Could I die while they ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... more fertile in reasonings by which to recommend the expedients. This gift was often dangerous, for he was apt to be carried away by the dexterity of his own dialectic, and to think schemes substantially good in whose support he could muster so formidable an array of arguments. He never seemed to be at a loss, in public or private, for a criticism, or for an answer to the criticisms of others. If his power of adapting his own mind to the minds of those whom he had to convince had been equal to the skill and swiftness with ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... have been forgotten that, with the object of destroying Frankville, Herr Schultze launched a formidable engine, intended to beat down the town and annihilate it at ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... them in America! They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable; and, among others, to the cruelties of a savage foe the most subtle, and I will take upon me to say the most formidable, of any people upon the face of the earth; and yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty our American brethren met all the hardships with pleasure, compared with those they steered in their own country from the hands of those that ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... extraordinary. The fact was, that when in the beginning of the year 1665 the States General saw that the war with England was become inevitable, they took several vigorous measures, and determined to equip a formidable fleet, and with a view to obtain a sufficient number of men to man it, prohibited all navigation, especially in the great and small fisheries as they were then called, and in the whale fishery. This measure appears to have resembled ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... inside the detention room the young man sitting there did not seem very formidable. In height he might have been a little above average, but not enough to make him noticeable. His brown hair was cropped conservatively; his unlined boy's face was not one to be remembered—unless one was ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... for 'beats out his brains'. Of heaviness, Davenant's Gondibert is a formidable ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Highlander's costume. He covered his neck and arms with golden chains. The simple and ferocious German wore no decoration save his iron ring, from which his first homicide relieved him. The Gaul was irascible, furious in his wrath, but less formidable in a sustained conflict with a powerful foe. "All the Gauls are of very high stature," says a soldier who fought under Julian. (Amm. Marcel. xv. 12. 1). "They are white, golden-haired, terrible in the fierceness of their eyes, greedy of quarrels, bragging and insolent. A band of strangers ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ignominious. The mature take good and evil fortune as they come; but to fail at first setting out in life, to be outwitted in the opening venture, to have to acknowledge that experience is, after all, a formidable foe—these are mishaps which sour the ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... the attention of the plotter was attracted by a Standard broadside bearing the words: 'Second Edition: Explosion in Golden Square.' His eye lighted; groping in his pocket for the necessary coin, he sprang forward—his bag knocked sharply on the corner of the stall—and instantly, with a formidable report, the dynamite exploded. When the smoke cleared away the stall was seen much shattered, and the stall keeper running forth in terror from the ruins; but of the Irish patriot or the Gladstone bag no adequate remains were to ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Hills) and the Bonner Alps, and encircling also the volcanic region between Honnef and Dollendorf. These hills with their step-and-terrace formation were once fortified by Valentinian against the formidable Frankish hordes, and German poetry early began to find scenery in them worthy of its national epic, and so laid the scene of the Saga of Wilkina among these mountains and valleys. Here, above the legends of Roland and Siegfried and the Christian captive, who, exposed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... rocks, and finding it no easy task to get over that so-called quarter of a mile, which, like all such spaces on the sea-shore, proved to be about double the length it looked, while the nearer we got the higher and more formidable the ridge seemed to grow, completely shutting out all beyond, where it ran down from the cliff at right angles into ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... But 'Miss Carew'—with a voice—sounds more formidable. It's for Miss Carew I'm going to have afternoon tea. I'll go out now and make my little cakes. And I'll have very, very thin bread and butter. I've just one cherished jar of the choicest Orange Pekoe, ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... to remain grilling there, even though the view of the silent city below, falling in tier after tier to the lake—the glare only broken here and there by patches of green garden—was superb. On either side rose the bare, rocky ridges, fort-crowned and looking formidable even in decay, while in front the dusty road stretched away into the haze of the dusty plains below. Of course, we should have visited the great Jain temples and other things worthy of note; but, alas! a green garden, whose palms overhung the lake, proved ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... course I like to make a little; this Federal Tariff has rose the price of living considerable," she said, softening somewhat as we now sat down on the formidable and well-dusted seats. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... place of sociology among the sciences and its relation to the other social sciences, particularly to history, to state somewhere, clearly and definitely, what, from the point of view of this volume, sociology is. This resulted finally in the imposition of a rather formidable essay upon what is in other respects, we trust, a relatively concrete and intelligible book. Under these circumstances we suggest that, unless the reader is specially interested in the matter, he begin with the chapter on "Human Nature," and read ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... 1858 and 1859. Outwardly it was eminently respectable, and its respectability was its particular method of lapsing into paganism. It was afraid of ideals, and for those who cherish this fear the worship of respectability comes to be a very dangerous kind of worship, and its idol is perhaps the most formidable of ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... news of his conduct had been received by the elder and more influential portions of the school. He had dreaded unspeakably the first occasion when it would be necessary to meet them again, but he felt that Mr Paton's countenance and kindness had paved the way for him, and smoothed his most formidable trial. It had been beyond his warmest hopes that he should be able to face them so. He had never dared to expect this open proof, that the person who had suffered chiefly from this act would also be the first to show that he had not cast him off as helpless or worthless, but was ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... amongst the full and fashionable auditory that attended her first appearance fancied (with a lively recollection of certain scandalous chronicles in the newspapers touching upon her antecedents) that they were about to behold a formidable-looking woman, of Amazonian audacity and palpably strong-wristed as well as strong-minded, their disappointment must have been grievous; greater if they anticipated the legendary bulldog at her side, and the traditionary pistols in her girdle, and the horse-whip ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... him. I had endured "terrapin-buzzards," hurled at the group by my woman child, perceiving need of relief for her pent-up passion. I had, moreover, for the same reason, permitted my namesake to roll under his tongue the formidable and satisfying expletive, "John B. Gough!" But I felt that the line must be drawn at Gamboge. Terrapin-buzzards was bad enough, though it was true that this might be used innocently, as in a moment of mild dismay, or as an exclamation of mere astonishment ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... into the kitchen on this occasion, and began to bustle about in search for her apron, Belinda, who was on her knees polishing the grate, amidst a formidable display of rags and brushes, paused to take breath and look at ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ready for the fray. Old General Blucher was not a lucky general. He was beaten almost every time he ventured to battle; but in an incredible space of time he had gathered together his routed army, and was as formidable as before. The Germans liked the bold old fellow, and called, and still call him, Marshal Forwards. He had his disappointments, no doubt, but turned them, like the oyster does the speck of sand which annoys it, to a pearl. To our minds, the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... she had need to go, with a great stick for privateersmen, the vagabond, drunken Hessians, and other street pirates. I can see her now, shod with goloe-shoes against mud or snow, with her manlike walk and independent air, quite too formidable to suggest attack. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... said, to nip in and out much more easily than in and out of a trap. In his business you did almost nothing but nip in and out. On the front seat he caused to be fitted a narrow box of japanned tin, with a formidable lock and slits on the top. This box was understood to receive the rents, as he collected them. It was always guarded on journeys by a cross between a mastiff and something unknown, whose growl would have terrorised a lion-tamer. Denry himself ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... of such name and birth and connection as would in themselves be a guarantee (and how in poverty is this likely?) I should go back to Vienna with a light heart, if I could say, 'My kinswoman is an Englishman's wife; shall her children be the heirs to a house so renowned for its lineage, and so formidable for its wealth?' Parbleu! if my cousin were but an adventurer, or merely a professor, he had been pardoned long ago. The great enjoy the honour not ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bear is the only really formidable quadruped of our continent. He is the favorite theme of the hunters of the far West, who describe him as equal in size to a common cow and of prodigious strength. He makes battle if assailed, and often, if pressed by hunger, is the assailant. If wounded, he becomes furious and will pursue ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... of mettle full, Nurs'd in some giant's skull— Because Goliath scratch'd him as he fed, Employs with vehemence his angry claws, And gaping, grinning, formidable jaws, To ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... who recall with pleasure the satisfaction of the British chess circle at the zeal and prowess of Alexander McDonnell, of Belfast, on his appearance in London in 1828, and his continued pluck, perseverance and improvement, and gallant stand against the most formidable of French or living chess players, and which first began to establish English chess claims to equality with France and the very learned German school which had sprung up of which Dr. Bledow, Heydebrand Der Lasa, Hanstein and ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... combat; to make him quick and proficient in handling his rifle; to give him an accurate eye and a steady hand; and to give him confidence in the bayonet in offense and defense. When skill in these exercises has been acquired, the rifle will still remain a most formidable weapon at close quarters should the bayonet ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... from one of the batteries on shore. But though the janissaries were thus reduced to order and obedience, the flame of disaffection was still smouldering among the spahis of Asia Minor, and broke out, in the course of the ensuing year, into a formidable and widely-organized rebellion. Not fewer than forty pashas and sandjaks followed the banner of the insurgent leader Abaza-Hassan, pasha of Aleppo, who advanced towards the Bosphorus at the head of 70,000 men, assuming the state of a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Chester each took the proffered weapons. They were ungainly and heavy, but the lads realized that they were indeed formidable weapons. Alexis stood looking at them with the big leg resting lightly on his right shoulder. It was a massive piece of wood, this third leg, a terrible weapon in the hands of a giant ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... armee, dont tu avais vu les restes de la terrasse de St. Florent, etait redevenue formidable par son recrutement dans les departements envahis. Je les ai bien vus, bien examines, j'ai reconnu meme de mes figures de Chollet et de Laval, et a leur contenance et a leur mine, je l'assure qu'il ne leur manquait du soldat que l'habit. Des troupes qui ont battu de tels ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Champa by no means enjoyed stability and peace, the history of Camboja, if not altogether tranquil, at least records several long reigns of powerful kings who were able to embellish their capital and assure its security. The Chams were exposed to attacks not only from Annam but also from the more formidable if distant Chinese and their capital, instead of remaining stationary through several centuries like Angkor Thom, was frequently moved as one or other of the three provinces became ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... the treasurer. Perhaps they are reciprocally cause and consequence. Not only has the treasurer discharged the usual duties of that office but he has also attended to most of the correspondence and clerical work. He has conducted the nut contests which, under his management, have developed to formidable proportions requiring immense expenditure ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... buildings of Port Royal were distinguished at the end of a narrow sandy spit overgrown with mangroves, well known as the Palisades. At the farther end of the spit was seen the white walls of Fort Morant, with a steep hill rising above it. Passing between the formidable ramparts of Fort Charles on one side, thickly studded with heavy ordnance, and of Fort Augusta, with Rock Fort above it, capable of sinking any fleet which might have ventured to enter, the corvette ran on towards Kingston, where she brought ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston |
