"Aghast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unconsciousness. I did not like the taste, so I drank for the sole purpose of getting drunk, of getting hopelessly, helplessly drunk. And I, who had saved and scraped, traded like a Shylock and made junkmen weep; I, who had stood aghast when French Frank, at a single stroke, spent eighty cents for whisky for eight men, I turned myself loose with a more lavish disregard for ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... is not a clockwork machine which once wound up will run of itself. Its processes in all their complexity are supervised by mind. It is not the intellect, however, which does this work, but the Unconscious. The intellect still stands aghast before the problem of the human body, lost like Pascal in the profundities of analysis, each discovery only revealing new depths of mystery. But the Unconscious seems to be familiar with it in ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... said, rather aghast at my daring, for we had only just made each other's acquaintance, and I believe he thought that this was my first visit to Germany and that I had been there a week. "It is a wide field," he went on. "However ... if you want ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... aghast, quite in the rear of them all; but that look was not lost upon her; she shuddered, and a cold perspiration stood upon her brow. Had she lived to see such a sight-lived to see another preferred to herself? Alas, what knew she of the scene before her? was it not a shameless one? Had ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... The yellow glare of many fires burned brightly in contrast with the cold blue of the snow. He scanned narrowly the place where his own lodge had been and saw it fall before many hands to be taken to their fires. With raised shoulders and staring eyes he stood aghast. He drunk in the desecration in all its awful significance. The bat's skin—the hand of the Good Gods—was removed from him; his shadow was as naked ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... my dream and I Turn back the hands of memory's books: We sup on pleasures long gone by— We drink of unforgotten brooks; We ransack garrets of the Past, We sing old songs, we play old plays; While hurrying Time looks on aghast, ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... back from the shore through the whole town, and, tho it was undoubtedly fancy, Sam thought he heard it spreading, like the rings from a stone thrown into the water, over the entire land. The foreigners stood aghast. The Porsslanese are not a laughing people. They had never been known to laugh before except in the most feeble manner. The events of the past year had not been especially humorous, and the coming of the great war-lord ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... it is not until now that I have had a passport from my own country? I have never needed one. No one here has ever asked me for one, and it was only when I was in Paris a week ago that an American friend was so aghast at the idea that I had, in case of accident, no real American protection, that I went to the Embassy, for the first time in my life, and asked for one, and seriously took the oath of allegiance. I took it so very seriously that it was ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... together for about a hundred yards over the smooth snow, following their own steps clearly marked in the white surface; and then stopped short aghast, for the deeply indented place in the snow where they had landed in their jump was gone, and in its stead they saw a great triangular-shaped opening widening the crevasse to more than double its original dimensions, while just at its edge ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... beyond conception, poured, as she turned from her brother to me, and from me to her brother, a flood of nonsense, which, when it had once broken bounds, there was no restraining in its course. Amazed at the torrent, my mother stood aghast; Mowbray burst into unextinguishable laughter: I preserved my gravity as long as I possibly could; I felt the risible infection seizing me, and that malicious Mowbray, just when he saw me in the struggle—the agony—sent me back such an image of my own length of face, that ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... saw me she modestly seized a dish-towel and shouted at the top of her voice. The kitchen was filled with the steam from the hot water. 'Venus arising' looked nebulous, and mystic. I beat a hasty retreat, aghast at the revelation, and almost fell against Letitia, who, dropping her conversation book, came to see what ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... of the war the Germans occupied Rheims, but were driven out after von Kluck's retreat. On September 20, 1914, they were reported as first shelling the Cathedral of Rheims and the civilized world stood aghast, for the edifice, begun in 1212, is one of the chief glories of Gothic ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... roared. The German stood aghast. "I ain't got nothing to write with!" thundered Mr. Smith, looking him in the eye. And then the man of his ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... each lightning flash, her voice drowned in the thunder that followed it close. Then, as she neared the sombre group of buildings, the clouds above them split with a terrific, rending crash, and the whole place stood pitilessly revealed to her, as if a spotlight had been turned on. Lorraine stood aghast. The buildings were not buildings at all. They were rocks, great, black, forbidding boulders standing there on a narrow ridge, having ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Ivanovna felt that behind her first sensation of horror, there was another sensation; a feeling of joy at her deliverance from the tyrant, who through all the nineteen years of their married life had made her work without a moment's rest. Her joy made her aghast; she did not confess it to herself, but hid it the more from those around. When his mutilated, yellow and hairy body was being washed and put into the coffin, she cried with horror, and wept and sobbed. When ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... saw the wide staircase leading to the dormitories she was aghast. It was very, very wide, and the steps were low and easy to mount, but there were so many of them before one reached the first floor. For a few seconds mamma hesitated and stood there gazing at them, her arms ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Nibs exclaimed, aghast at such insubordination, whereupon Peter went sternly toward the ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... was aghast. With a gulping cry of alarm and pity, he stooped to lift his unconscious daughter. He had not intended to do ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... aghast for a moment, recalling a hundred similar conversations with similar results, then he shook his head, turned his ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... offering of the waters opens: "The will of the Lord is the rule of good!" and proceeded to pour libations in honour of the river Dareja, on the banks of which he had been born a moment before, reciting at the same time the "profession of faith which puts evil spirits to flight." Bouiti fled aghast, but his master set to work upon some fresh device. Zoroaster allowed him, however, no time to complete his plans: he rose up, and undismayed by the malicious riddles propounded to him by his adversary, advanced against him with his hands full of stones—stones as large as a house—with ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... broke in upon Stephen's vigil. The first came "to borrow" some tea, and helped himself coolly to two teaspoonfuls out of Oliver's canister. Stephen stood by aghast ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... the door behind her and walked back to his inner office, opened the door and stood aghast, for sitting in the chair which he had so recently ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... and autumn of this year were indeed the most memorable in the annals of New Brunswick's history. Many there are still living who distinctly remember that awful visitation. The season of drought was unparalleled. Farmers looked aghast and trembled as they viewed the scanty, withered products of the land. All joined in the common uneasiness, daily awaiting relief. None felt more anxiety than Sir Howard Douglas, whose sole interests were ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... head first with a heavy splash into the sea, showing his legs for a brief space, and then, in a shadowy way that emulated the fishes' glide, he went downward into the sunlit depths, leaving his two companions staring aghast at ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... and Ammianus Marcellinus. After reading a treatise of Augustin's, one is astounded by the intellectual meagreness of these last pagans. The narrowness of their mind and platitude of thought is a thing that leaves one aghast. Even the illustrious Apuleius, who belonged to the golden age of African literature, the author of The Doctrine of Plato, praises philosophy and the Supreme Being in terms which recall the professions of faith of the chemist ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... was the only evidence of life, save the labored, irregular breathing. Then the hand moved, clutchingly. Slowly, tremblingly, Houston turned back an edge of the blankets,—and stood aghast. ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the other, aghast, as he halted his horse. He gazed down and evidently was quick ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... thy wife, that is so free. To comfort her look that thou be fain, For, Joseph, a clean maiden is she: She hath conceived without any train The Second Person in Trinity; Jesu shall be his name, certain, And all this world save shall He; Be not aghast. JOSEPH. Now, Lord, I thank thee with heart full sad, For of these tidings I am so glad That all my care away is cast; Wherefore to Mary I will in haste. ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... her, aghast. "Tell him!" I repeated. "Tell him who I am? Tell him our story, the story that—Mother, ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... gazed at him aghast. It was an enormous name to claim. Even the two female creatures knew what it stood for. It was the name which represented the greatest wealth and power in the world of finance and schemes of business. It stood for financial ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was my first night in the tomb, Where soft sleep was to hold me fast; I little knew my weary doom! It even makes a ghost aghast To think of all the years in store— The slave, as long as death shall last, ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... sat aghast. At length, rallying his tongue and his faculties, he replied that, though he had spoken with a lack of ceremony, he had used the term "thou" merely as an elderly man naturally employs it towards a junior (he made no reference to difference ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... again, rather aghast at the idea of asking any one else to do a service for her, who all her life had been at the beck and call of other people. One of the old ladies came and was asked to bring Mrs. Smith. The Director came quickly, showing that she had ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... legislative power of Utah territory is Mormon and polygamous. If female suffrage is to be incorporated into the laws of our country with a view to the amelioration of our morals or our political sentiments, we stand aghast at the spectacle of what has been wrought by its exercise in the territory of Utah. There stands a power supporting the crime of polygamy through what they call a divine inspiration, or teaching from God, and all the power of the judges of the United States and of the Congress of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... easy to see why thought such as this should have given the stimulus it did. Montesquieu came to praise the British constitution at a time when good men were aghast at its perversion. There was no room in many years for revolution, but at least there was place for hearty discontent and a seeking after new methods. Of that temper two men so different as the elder Pitt and Wilkes are the political symbols. The former's rise to power upon the floodtide ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... chapel and small villa as abandoned as the rest. After toiling up a steep and narrow lane between two walls, our carriage stopped at a solid wooden gateway, and the coachman told us to get out and look through the keyhole. We were aghast, but he insisted, laughing and nodding; so we pocketed our pride and peeped. Through an overarching vista of dark foliage was seen, white and golden in a blaze of sunshine, the cupola of St. Peter's, which is at the farthest end of the city, two miles at the least as the crow flies. When the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... aghast. "Mistress Rose! what is it? you look wildly, I declare, and your hood is all I don't know how. Shall I ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the lower end of the drain heard the turmoil and stood motionless with surprise, but were unable to see what caused it, owing to a thick bush which intervened. Another moment and they stood aghast, for, round the corner of the only bend in the drain, there appeared a raging head of foam, with mud, grass, sticks, stones, and rubbish on its crest, bearing down on them ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... Alfred looked aghast. This was an Ester that he had never seen before, and he didn't know what to say. He wriggled the toes of his boots together, and looked down at them in puzzled wonder. ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... that lead to such steps are, of course, much debated. We remember seeing, not long ago, in the newspapers, a brief table of such causes, purporting to come from an army surgeon who examined each recruit on the subject. It was funny, and so startling withal, that while some laughed or stood aghast, others hardly knew which to admire most, the doctor's eccentricity, or his fertile fancy. We know not if in the world's vast library there is any reliable exhibition of such causes. Sir Walter Scott's imaginary Clutterbuck, after some prefatory doubts, leaves the following as ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... liberty of speech, and whose province was to amuse the courtiers. He was called the king's jester, or, more commonly, the fool. The name of King Charles's fool was Archy. After this rebellion broke out, and all England was aghast at the extent of the mischief which Laud's Liturgy had done, the fool, seeing the archbishop go by one day, called out to him, "My lord! who is the fool now!" The archbishop, as if to leave no possible doubt in respect to the proper answer to the question, ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... laboriously reached the end of the veranda when he noticed the open window of Louise's room, and stopped as a perfunctory duty to look in. And then Richelieu Sharpe stood for an instant utterly confounded and aghast at this crowning proof of the absolute infamy ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... thing be?" communed goody Liu in her heart, "What can be its use?" While she was aghast, she unexpectedly heard a sound of "tang" like the sound of a golden bell or copper cymbal, which gave her quite a start. In a twinkle of the eyes followed eight or nine consecutive strokes; and she was bent upon inquiring what it ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the outraged gowned, the avoidance aghast by terrified playmates—the council with closed doors, his disappearance into the mysterious Office to confront the Directeur alone, and the interview with him at white-heat strain beginning mildly: "My son" and ending with icy ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... King. And as they searched his chambers they found in a chest two shirts of hair made full of great knots, and then they said: Certainly he was a good man; and coming down into the churchyard they began to dread and fear that the ground would not have borne them, and were marvellously aghast, but they supposed that the earth would have swallowed them all quick. And then they knew that they had done amiss. And soon it was known all about, how that he was martyred, and anon after they took his holy body and unclothed him and found bishop's clothing ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... Billings was astonished at the garb of his brother-officers at breakfast, he was simply aghast when he glanced along the line of Company "A" (as his command was at that time officially designated) and the first sergeant rode out to report his men present or accounted for. The first sergeant himself was got up in an old gray-flannel shirt, open at ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... blindly with no probability of effecting a junction with the Twenty-third Corps. Even as it was, the terror in East Tennessee, when it became known that they were likely to be abandoned, was something fearful. Public and private men united in passionate protests, and the common people stood aghast. Two of the most prominent citizens only expressed the universal feeling when, in a dispatch to Mr. Lincoln, they used such language ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... rather old and incompetent trustee, got all the signatures necessary out of Nelly, and carried the thing through. Again, on another and smaller occasion, Miss Martin had seen the two sisters confronted with a scandalous overcharge for the carriage of some heavy luggage from Manchester. Nelly was aghast; but she would have paid the sum demanded like a lamb, if Bridget had not stepped in—grappled with carter and railway company, while Nelly looked on, ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... middle-aged woman rose as I came in, and I stood aghast. It was not my sister. It was soon explained. She was a little pettish about it, poor woman! It seemed my sister had quite recently changed her house, and the present occupant had been put to some slight inconvenience before ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... sight of their aunt they stopped short, looking aghast, and certainly those who beheld them partook of their consternation. Reginald was hot and gloveless; his shoes far from clean; his brown curls hanging in great disorder from his Scotch cap; his handkerchief loose; his jacket dusty—but this was no great matter, since, as Emily said, ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as we approached Kew, came a number of people running, and the upperworks of a Martian fighting-machine loomed in sight over the housetops, not a hundred yards away from us. We stood aghast at our danger, and had the Martian looked down we must immediately have perished. We were so terrified that we dared not go on, but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden. There the curate crouched, weeping silently, ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... Kew stood aghast, as she meant him to. No disaster is ever so great as it is before you know what it is. But Kew ought to have ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... surprise aloud, and Mr Harrel looked aghast: while his new young friend cast upon him a glance of reproach and resentment, which fully convinced Cecilia he imagined he had procured himself a title to an easiness of intercourse and frequency of meeting which this intelligence destroyed. Cecilia, thinking after all ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... sent to University College, Oxford, he broke all bounds. At a time when Tory England was aghast over the French Revolution and its results, Shelley talked of liberty and equality on all occasions. He made friends with an uncouth but able fellow student, who bore the remarkable name of Thomas Jefferson Hogg—a name that ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... battle of Verdun surpassed all other individual events of the war. For six months and more the defenders of the gateway to France withstood a storm at the fury of which the world stood aghast. ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... scholarliness and courtliness which marked De Quincey's colloquial style and expression. Wilson's daughter, Mrs. Gordon, says that he used to address her father's cook "as if she had been a duchess"; and that the cook, though much flattered, was somewhat aghast at his punctilio. That a man of this kind should think it both allowable and funny to talk of Josephus as "Joe," and of Magliabecchi as "Mag," may be only a new example of that odd law of human nature which constantly prompts people in various relations of life, and not least ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... a high hill, where stands the Valkyries' rock, and amidst thunder, lightning, and rain we get the Ride. Brunnhilda rushes in to her sisters with Sieglinda, tells what she has done, and begs for help. All are aghast and refuse. Sieglinda herself asks no aid; Siegmund is dead, and she has nothing to live for. Brunnhilda tells her she carries within her the seed of the world's mightiest hero, and in a moment her mood changes, and she begs to be sheltered. Her ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... of the wheeling twenty-four. It is the pavement on which the legend of London's disgrace is written in bold characters of defiance. Men from distant lands, having made the pilgrimage to our Mecca, the queen, by right of magnitude at least, of the world's cities, stare aghast upon the legend, almost as Belshazzar stared upon the writing on the wall. Colonists seeking for the first time the comfortable embrace of that mother country which has been the fable of their childhood and the dream of their laborious years of maturity, gaze with withering hearts at this cancer ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... her head over her plate, her Spanish dignity aghast at the threatening tears. Her hand hung clinched at her side. Diego took it in spite of resistance, and, opening the rigid fingers, bent his head beneath the ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... mean, Joan." Nancy was aghast. The fear within her was taking shape; it was like a shrouded figure looming up ready to cast off ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... had been principal actor came and went, as in a dream when the will slumbers: now with devilish ingenuity and persistence I was working on Managa's mind; now standing motionless in the forest listening for that sweet, mysterious melody; now staring aghast at old Cla-cla's wide-open glassy eyes and white hair dabbled in blood; then suddenly, in the cave at Riolama, I was fondly watching the slow return of life and ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... the sunburnt man exploded into language so extraordinarily horrible that I stopped aghast. He came down to more ordinary swearing, and pulled himself up abruptly. "Excuse me," he ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... seclusion. When Charles VI. hunted in the time of his wild boyhood near Senlis, there was captured an old stag, having a collar of bronze about his neck, and these words engraved on the collar: "Caesar mini hoc donavit." It is no wonder if the minds of men were moved at this occurrence and they stood aghast to find themselves thus touching hands with forgotten ages, and following an antiquity with hound and horn. And even for you, it is scarcely in an idle curiosity that you ponder how many centuries this stag had carried its free antlers through the wood, and how many summers and winters ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arms and turned her until the light struck into her eyes. Ruth Tolliver, aghast at this sudden strength in one who had always been a meek ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... names, and trembling at the sight of a human being; free men are kidnapped in our streets, to be plunged into that hell of slavery; and now and then one, as if by miracle, after long years returns to make men aghast with his tale. The press says, "It is all right"; and the pulpit cries, "Amen." They print the Bible in every tongue in which man utters his prayers; and they get the money to do so by agreeing never to give the book, in the language ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... sudden beam that shoots along? Why shrink aghast the hostile throng? Lo! from amidst affliction's night Hope bursts all radiant on the sight: Her words the troubled bosom soothe. "Why thus dismay'd? Though foes invade, Hope ne'er is wanting to their aid Who tread the path of truth. 'Tis I, who smoothe the rugged way, I, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... her before to doubt her friend's patriotism. Nearly distracted with the dreadful discovery, she hurried away to find Winifrede, and, showing her the paper, poured out her story. Winifrede listened aghast. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... mother stood aghast at this unexpected declaration; and the result of a long conference, held by the two, was that Charlie should be taken home, Mrs. Ellis being unable to withstand his tears ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... devil-may-care penury of lighthearted artists. Trilby began the movement, Louise ended it, and Mr. TITTERTON is behind his day. I am glad, however, to learn that he was so splendid a model. The students at JULIEN'S fall back aghast before his magnificent figure, and now, in every gallery in Europe, sculptures and paintings of Mr. TITTERTON are to be seen by the vulgar crowd, very often for no charge at all; and that, of course, is delightful for Europe. And, according to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... poor fellow, it would puzzle him to say who was his great-grandfather. E——, you are aware, has long since joined the Church of Rome, and has disclosed such a bottomless abyss of "faith," that whole cart-loads of mediaeval fables, abandoned even by Romanists (who, by the way, stand fairly aghast at his insatiable appetite), have not been able to fill it. All the saints in the Roman Hagiography cannot work miracles as fast as he can credit them. On the other hand, his brother has signalized himself by an ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... laughing at me? Shan't I be ashamed to remember this?" But these doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at the serious faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He was aghast at his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling, prostrated himself before the Gates of the Temple. And really, the feeling of devotion returned to him even more strongly than before. When he had lain there ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... hand to the front of his body. There in the light of the candles, from the great chandelier above, the officers and soldiers saw the thing which they venerated next to God. For a moment they stared, almost aghast at the gilded emblem in Marteau's hand. Eyes sparkled in some faces, brimmed with tears in others, cheeks paled on one hand and flushed upon the other; breaths came quicker, a low murmur ran through the room—almost ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... his horse behind him. It was evident that his plans had miscarried, but his energetic and hardy temperament would not permit him to turn back without a blow being struck. However one may commend his energy, one cannot but stand aghast at his dispositions. The country was wild and rocky, the very places for those tactics of the surprise and the ambuscade in which the Boers excelled. And yet the column still plodded aimlessly on in its dense formation, and if there were any attempt at scouting ahead and on the flanks ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and more highly developed man would have foreseen all this suffering from the first; he would have sown the wind with some knowledge of the whirlwind to come. But Emmet was a child in matters feminine, and he stood aghast at the thought of the probable effect upon Lena of the inevitable discovery of the truth. If the very fancy caused her such grief, what would she do when she found out that her imagination had been prophetic? A frantic desire to postpone the blow that must ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... had Audrey Ross solved the Gordian knot of family difficulty, leaving her mother and sister eyeing each other with the aghast looks of defeated conspirators; and it must be owned that many a tangled skein, that would have been patiently and laboriously unravelled by the skilled fingers of Geraldine, was spoilt in this manner by the quick ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of dawn stole across the green. The red eye of the morning peered aghast over the shoulder of the Pike. And from the sleeping dale there arose the yodling of a man driving ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... the door near the head of the bed, the door that was slightly ajar. She looked aghast, as one does at the apprehension of a great and imminent danger. "Go while there is time! Do you not hear? It is the voice of La Chatre! I recognize it! And the other,—his secretary, Montignac! Go, go, I pray you on my knees, flee while ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... is quite lost when the Branghtons and Madame Duval are mentioned;—she hears their speeches very composedly, and as words of course; but when she hears them followed by loud bursts of laughter from Hetty, Mr. Crisp, Mrs. Gast, and Mr. Burney, she stares with the gravest amazement, and looks so aghast, and so distressed to know where the joke can be, that I never dare trust myself to look at her for more than an instant. Were she to speak her thoughts, I am sure she would ask why such common things, that pass every day, should be printed? ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... shirked his foe. Whether it was Verres or Catiline, or Clodius or Antony, he was always there, ready to take that foe by the throat, and ready to offer his own in return. At moments such as that there was none of the fear which stands aghast at the wrath of the injured one, and makes the man who is a coward quail before the eyes of him ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... He was aghast at her calmness. The irregular lines in his face showed the disordered state of his soul, but she walked by his side without the quiver of an eyelid, or a tinge of colour more than usual. Had ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... strove against an agency invisible to Rita, and which he was totally unable to resist. His body speedily vanished from her sight, then his head, and finally his outstretched arms; the rustling noise, occasioned by his passage through the herbage, ceased; and Rita, aghast at this extraordinary and mysterious occurrence, again found herself alone. We will leave her to her astonishment and conjecture, whilst we follow the gipsy to the place whither he had been so involuntarily and unceremoniously conveyed, a description of which will ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... I stood aghast at this scurrilous address, the like of which I had never yet heard. The others followed it up with shouts of applause, and one of those at my end of the table rose and came towards me, making as if he would catch me by the shoulder ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... the pathless field, Gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield Thy flaccid vest, that, as the gale blows high, Flaps, and alternate folds around thy head.— So stands in the long grass a love-craz'd Maid, Smiling aghast; while stream to every wind Her gairish ribbons, smear'd with dust and rain; But brain-sick visions cheat her tortur'd mind, And bring false peace. Thus, lulling grief and pain, Kind dreams oblivious from thy juice proceed, THOU FLIMSY, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Grant cross'd the Rapidan, till he settled down in the trenches before Petersburg. More than four times as many Union dead lie under the solemn soughing pines about that forlorn little village in southern Georgia, than mark the course of Sherman from Chattanooga to Atlanta. The nation stands aghast at the expenditure of life which attended the two bloody campaigns of 1864, which virtually crush'd the confederacy, but no one remembers that more Union soldiers died in the rear of the rebel lines than were kill'd in the front of them. The great military events which stamp'd out the rebellion drew ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the latest and the most terrible form of idolatry. She has given to the Slave Power a carte blanche, to be filled as it may dictate—and if, at any time, she grows restive under the yoke, and shrinks back aghast at the new atrocity contemplated, it is only necessary for that Power to crack the whip of Disunion over her head, as it has done again and again, and she will cower and obey like a plantation slave—for has she not sworn that she will sacrifice everything in ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... cup and lip; nonfulfillment of one's hopes; sad disappointment, bitter disappointment; trick of fortune; afterclap; false expectation, vain expectation; miscalculation &c 481; fool's paradise; much cry and little wool. V. be disappointed; look blank, look blue; look aghast, stand aghast &c (wonder) 870; find to one's cost; laugh on the wrong side of one's mouth; find one a false prophet. not realize one's hope, not realize one's expectation. [cause to be disappointed] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... authority? Colonel West, I command you! Search the prisoner! [GERTRUDE turns suddenly towards KERCHIVAL, facing him defiantly. He looks across at her aghast. A moment's pause. ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... plunged suddenly into the bushes to see the origin of the terrifying sounds. His action was wholly unexpected, and chance brought him to the very point where Robert was. The lad leaped to his feet and the pirate sprang back aghast, thinking perhaps that he had come face to face with a ghost. Then with a snarl of malignant anger he leveled the pistol that he held in his hand. But Robert struck instantly with his clubbed rifle, and his instinctive impulse was so great that he smote with tremendous force. The ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... gloom The tyrant strides in haste; And, powerless, to his dreadful doom The victim followeth fast. The dazed captives quake and stare At the sullen torch's blood-red glare, And the lover starts aghast At the deathlike ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... Nell?" he asked, in so changed and strained a voice that Dick started, and gaped at him, aghast. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... notorious Michigander, Who launched the now exploded solar slander, Whereat ten thousand negroes stood aghast, In one short month into oblivion passed, But PICKERING'S momentous lunar screed Proves the persistence of this wondrous breed. Yet this in PICKERING'S favour let us state: He has no scare or scandal to relate— Nothing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... unrestrained—hysteria was loosed in a mad ungovernable orgasm—men clutched at each other and cowered, hiding their faces with their hands—women dropped to their knees and, sobbing, screaming, prayed. Loud it rose, the turmoil of human souls aghast and quailing before a manifestation that seemed to fling them face to face, uncovered, naked, before the awful power and majesty and might of ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... sounded Burton. He stared at me aghast. I was relieved to find that he was not going to be sentimental about it. He ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... they gaze at spectre so white, As softly it beams in silvery light, 'Mid silence it pleads—they pause all aghast— 'Tis Jesus who calls, His Cross in their path, Cross misty with tears, with sacrifice fraught, While deeply inlaid with sorrows 'tis wrought, Divided from world by widening stream It leadeth through pain ...
— Poems - A Message of Hope • Mary Alice Walton
... thee; Spain, aghast with anguish, cries to thee; where art thou? Spain puts trust in thee; lo, the dust that soils and darkens her prostrate brow! Spain is true to thy service; who shall raise up Spain for ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... often break out again. I hardly know what to say, sir. If you think that money will do good,—money, that is, in moderation,—I will advance it. He and I started together, and I am sometimes aghast with myself when I think of the small matter which, like the point on a railway, sent me running rapidly on to prosperity,—while the same point, turned wrong, hurried him to ruin. I have taken my glass of grog, too, my two glasses,—or perhaps more. But that which would ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... Even in the Five Towns a public meeting is seldom bullied as Councillor Barlow had bullied that meeting. It was aghast. Councillor Barlow had never been popular: he had merely been respected; but thenceforward he became even less popular ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Llewellyn homeward hied, When near the portal seat, His truant Gelert he espied, Bounding his lord to greet. But when he gained the castle door, Aghast the chieftain stood: The hound was smeared with drops of gore; His lips and fangs ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... aghast. The women were startled, and pressed toward one another as for safety. The ki-sang released the cunies and shrank away giggling apprehensively. Only the Lady Om made no sign nor motion ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... sensation. He began with his critics, notably the unfortunate Simpson, and, pretty much in Westbury's language to the herald, called them silly old men who did not understand their silly old business. But it was the reasons he gave for this abuse which left his followers aghast. He attacked his critics not for being satraps and reactionaries, but because they had dared to talk second-rate Western politics ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... uttered, the door of a recess was thrown suddenly open, and Herne, in his wild garb, with his antlered helm upon his brow, and the rusty chain depending from his left arm, stood before them. His appearance was so terrific and unearthly that they all shrank aghast, and Mat Bee fell with his face on ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fears, From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!" Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay, 10 As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array. Stout Gloster stood aghast in speechless trance: "To arms!" cried Mortimer, and couch'd his ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... hadst not the right one; Thy combat, friend, prov'd that. Near then had Balder crush'd thee and my design. Aghast I saw him Brandish the Jotun's bane—I'm well acquainted With Balder's strength; but ha! the fool prov'd tender; He saw thy bride, and spar'd thee. Then up mounted My courage ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... present inclinations, ignoring the consequences. They are like children who think it would be sport to see a little cataract falling over a Holland dike. Therefore, when the tide is in they open a small channel, but are soon aghast to find that the deep sea is ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe |
