"Awesome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Botticelli felt them, and to paint sad subjects. To him the visible world was good and beautiful, and the invisible world lovely and happy likewise. His Madonnas are placid or smiling mothers. The fat and darling babies they hold are indeed divine but not awesome. Yet the extraordinary sweetness of expression, nobility of form, and beauty of colouring in the Madonnas make you almost hold your breath when you ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... witching eyes and plaintive sighs, and looks of love and tender words— Love's tricking arts - Are poison'd darts, More awesome ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... fascination at the rocks opposite. Here was a little woolly puff of smoke, and there was another one, but never once had they caught a glimpse of the attackers. To him there was something weird and awesome in these unseen, persistent men who, minute by minute, were drawing closer to them. He had heard them cry out when the kettle was broken, and once, immediately afterwards, an enormously strong voice had roared something which had set Scott shrugging ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Morning whose task was finished. On the knife-edged skyline appeared the silhouette of slim-legged little Tommies, flirting their rails, sniffing at the dewy grass, dainty, slender, confiding, the open-day antithesis of the tremendous and awesome lord of the darkness that had roared its way to its lair, and to the massive shaggy herald of morning that had thundered down ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... I ever beheld! Thinkest thou the Bethlehem Star could have been more beautiful than yonder Lucifer. Indeed it seems, Janet, we see in all nature the reflection of the Christ; the birth of dawn; the presence of the star; these black waters. 'Tis awesome! Listen, Janet, thou must acknowledge thou hearest something more than plaint of ocean. 'Tis something more than sound. It fills me with an exultation I cannot ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... they are deep level excavations. The Kimberley mine, for example, goes down 3,000 feet. To see this almost grotesque gash in the earth is to get the impression of a very small Grand Canyon of the Colorado. It is an awesome and terrifying spectacle for it is shot through with green and brown and purple, is more than a thousand feet wide at the top, and converges to a visible point a thousand feet below. You feel that out of this color and depth has emerged something that itself ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... Awesome pallor tinged the eastern horizon, gaining strength, spread in imperceptible yet rapid gradations toward the zenith. Stars faded, winked out, vanished. Silver and purple in the sea gave place to livid gray. Almost visibly the routed ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... black upon the white expanse palely lighted by the moon; trunks of birch trees standing against the dark background of forest were like the skeletons of living creatures smitten with the cold and stricken by death; but the glacial night was awesome rather than affrighting. ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... utterly honest, that it revealed far more than she intended and opened a wide door into Madam's sympathies. As she stood looking down at the girl with grave kind eyes, Mary suddenly became aware of a strangely comforting thing. This was not an awesome personage, but a dear adorable being who could understand. The discovery made the second part of her explanation easier. She plunged into it headlong as soon as ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... or may not have been Shaughnessy's intention. It was certainly the effect. We have all gone through the era of profound respect for the cold autocrat of the twentieth century, as some of us did that of awesome veneration of the railway giants of the nineteenth. We have read newspaper stories—some of them buncombe—about this man's all-seeing eye as he travelled over the system, as we did of the peripatetic ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... are sounded, and the Ballade of Love and War is over. Who conquers? Is the Lady with the Green Eyes and Moon White Face rescued? Or is all this a De Quincey's Dream Fugue translated into tone—a sonorous, awesome vision? Like De Quincey, it suggests the apparition of the empire of fear, the fear that is secretly felt with dreams, wherein the spirit expands to ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... in the extreme. Evil spirits might sometimes achieve success by practising deception. They might appear as beautiful girls or handsome men and seize unsuspecting victims in deathly embrace or leave them demented and full of grief, or come as birds and suddenly assume awesome shapes. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... evening Mr. Terry commonly read some scenes from a play, to which Mr. Scott listened with delight, though every word must have been quite familiar to him, as he occasionally took a part in the dialogue impromptu; at other times he recited old and awesome ballads from memory, the very names of which I have forgot. The night preceding our departure had blown a perfect hurricane; we were to leave immediately after breakfast, and while the carriage was preparing Mr. Scott stepped to a ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... from this, I must hide myself. I lay down, very slowly, deep in the ditch. I now felt that I had been long, long dead and that I was lying here alone, waiting for I forget what. That keeper: was there such a person? He now seemed to me an awesome clod of earth, which came rolling down, slowly but steadily, and which would fall heavily upon me. Then he turned into a lovely white ashplant, which stood there waving its boughs in a stately manner. I would let him go past and then would go ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... with a groan, and Joseph pursued his way with somewhat modified feelings, half elated at being in the thick of so much that was terrible and awesome, and yet beginning to understand somewhat of the horror that was possessing the minds of all. He found himself walking in the middle of the street, and avoiding too close contact with the passersby; indeed all seemed disposed to give strangers a wide berth just now, so ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of the machine—its engines—are the crux of man's mechanical wisdom and skill. Their marvelous reliability and intricacy are almost as awesome as the human anatomy. When both engines are going well, and synchronized to the same speed, the roar of the exhausts develops into one long-sustained and not inharmonious boom-m-m-m-m! It is a song of pleasant melody to the pilot, whose ear is ever pricked to catch the first semblance ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... of graves he passed. He would take a flag from one of the girls, slip it in the staple back of the cross, stand a moment at salute, then pass on to the next. It was very still that May morning, broken only by the awesome boom of battle just over the hill, but to that sound all had grown accustomed. The people stood with that hush of sorrow over them which only the majesty of death can bring to the hearts of a crowd, and there were tears in many eyes and on the faces of ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... pillars was as though it were made of black marble, and the other like to molten gold. Between them ran a road of light ending in a glory, and in the midst of the glory the round ball of Ra, the Sun, burned like the eye of God. The spectacle was as awesome as it ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... depict the feeling of desolation, homesickness, uncertainty, and anxiety with which an emigrant makes his first voyage across the ocean? I proved to be a good sailor, but the sea frightened me. The thumping of the engines was drumming a ghastly accompaniment to the awesome whisper of the waves. I felt in the embrace of a vast, uncanny force. And echoing through it all were the heart-lashing words: "Are you crazy? You forget your place, young man!" When Columbus was crossing the Atlantic, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... awesome in its tenseness. Every eye was fixed on the preacher, necks were strained forward, lips were parted—the people held ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again it was to see poor Marut higher in the air than ever he flew before. I thought that he would never come down, but he did at last with an awesome thud. Jana went to him and very gently, now that he was dead, picked him up in his trunk. I prayed that he might carry him away to some hiding-place and leave me in peace. But not so. With slow and stately strides, rocking the deceased Marut up and down in his trunk, as ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... had slipped down and was walking rapidly outward along the narrow plank footway. As he advanced he looked about him with an anxious gaze, but it was at the unfloored substructure of the bridge, not at the awesome spectacle of the swift-flowing, ice-covered stream a hundred and fifty feet beneath. Once he paused and stooped over to look closer at ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... soberly we went out of the forest of Elche in the night on mules lent us by Sidi ben Ahmed, with a long cavalcade of mules charged with merchandise for embarking on board the pirates' vessel, and an escort of some half-dozen fierce-looking corsairs armed with long firelocks and a great store of awesome crooked knives stuck ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... cellar. The trees especially, all frosted with shining filigree, were a wonder to look upon; and Beth would wander about the alleys in Kensington Gardens, and gaze at the glory of the white world under the sombre grey of the murky clouds, piled up in awesome magnificence, until she ached with yearning for some word of human speech, some way to express it, to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... explain the mystery, and his mind is filled with confusion and his heart is a prey to sudden alarms. The light of day dissipates the agitation of their minds, they fancy themselves the victims of vain hallucinations, and, arming themselves with heroic valor, they make plans for unravelling the awesome mystery. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... Beth's birth was a grey day, a serene grey day, awesome with a certain solemnity, and singularly significant to those who seek a sign. There is a quiet mood, an inner calm, to which a grey day adds peculiar solace. It is like the relief which follows after tears, when hope begins ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... shining faces, lilies, prayer-books, unearthly joy, white skirts, gold harps, black coats, wings. He saw flowing garments, clean shaved faces, a sea of light—a lake of pitch. There were sweet scent, a smell of sulphur—red tongues of flame licking a white mist. An awesome voice thundered!... It ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... close quarters. It was about thirty feet long. Its bright-coloured skin was shining, slippery, and leathery; a mane of black hair covered its long neck. Its face was awesome and unnatural, with its carnivorous eyes, frightful stiletto, and blood-sucking cavity. There were true fins on its ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... cosmic times and spaces of modern science are more impressive and more mysterious than a Mosaic cosmogony or Plato's crystal spheres. Day is just as mysterious as night, the mystery of knowledge is more wonderful and awesome than the darkness of the unknown."[2] It is significant that such men as Newton, Pasteur, and Faraday, giants of modern ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Slosh diminished my lead by fifteen. Then I got in a really fine serve, which beat him. 'Vantage In. Another Slosh. Deuce. Another Slam. 'Vantage out. It was an awesome moment. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken by the flood—I served. Fault. I served again,—a beauty. He returned it like a flash into the corner of the court. With a supreme effort I got to it. We rallied. I was playing ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... his mornings in study, or in dictating or writing English letters and despatches. His breakfast, though a repast sufficiently frugal for Oriental royalty, was served with awesome forms. In an antechamber adjoining a noble hall, rich in grotesque carvings and gildings, a throng of females waited, while his Majesty sat at a long table, near which knelt twelve women before great silver trays laden with twelve varieties of viands,—soups, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... servant lifted his voice in praise of his own deeds at Phineas Striker's that she became acutely aware of the close proximity of the speakers. Gradually she surrendered to the spirits of mirth and mischief. The result of her awesome moan,—even though it narrowly escaped ending in a shriek of laughter,—has already been revealed. The manner of Zachariah's flight sobered her instantly. Too late she ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... It was nearly midnight now. The little cottage—this little second floor bedroom where death was hovering—was heavy with brooding silence. It was awesome; almost frightening. He bent closer to the bed. Was she dead? No, there was still a faint fluttering breath, but it seemed now that there would be no strength for her to speak to ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... himsell, ane wad think; and he was a young, weel-faured, weel-dressed lad, like an Englishman. And I tell ye he had as gude a hat, and boots, and gloves, as ony gentleman need to have. To be sure he DID gie an awesome glance up at the auld castle, and there WAS some spae-wark gaed on, I aye heard that; but as for his vanishing, I held the stirrup mysell when he gaed away, and he gied me a round half-crown. He was riding on a haick they ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... stone, had it struck anything, was large enough to have set the echoes of that weird place, whispering for an indefinite period. Even as it was, the cavern had given back the sounds of my footfalls, multitudinously. The place was awesome, and I would willingly have retraced my steps, and left the mysteries of its solitudes unsolved; only, to do so, meant ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... conducing thereto. He hung over her, watching her breathing with a merry look, which gradually became a broad grin. It was a real shame—she would be just mad when she woke up. But mermaids were all stuff, and Jenny Crum would 'skeer' her to death. Just in proportion as the adventure became more awesome and more real did the boy's better self awake. He grew soft for his sister, while, as he proudly imagined, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to Paul as a footballer appears in The Alleynian's report of a match, "Boarders v. School," played on September 25, 1912, when the School won by 32 points to 21. "Jones," says the reporter, "presented an awesome sight." His first appearance in the 1st XV was against London Hospitals "A" in October. Singling him out for honourable mention, the critic says: "Jones displayed any amount of go." He was awarded his 1st XV colours after the match against Bedford School at Bedford ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... clear, and though the moon as yet was only faintly yellow, every arch and cloister was clearly visible. Paul gazed down at them, as he had done all his life, with reverent eyes. There was something almost awesome in the graceful yet bold outline, and in the great age of those rugged, moss-grown pillars and arches, so ecclesiastical in their shape and suggestiveness,—as indeed they might well be, for they were practically the ruins of the old monastery chapel. But, as he ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... indecision, of awe even, elapsed before Mr. Gryce recovered himself. The dim light, the awesome silence, the unexpected surroundings recalling a romantic age, the motionless figure of him who so lately had been the master of the house, lying outstretched as for the tomb, with the sacred symbol ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... seen. Only a few moments before, this limp, pitiful object had been speaking to her—calling her by name. It seemed incredible that Pell was powerless now to harm her. Brute though he had been, he gained, in this awesome instant, a strange glory, as the dead always do. The splendor of that universal experience was suddenly his; and, even lying there like a discarded meal-sack, he took on something of the pomp of a cardinal who had died. Never, of course, had she respected ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... of danger and all lingered to watch the splendid yet awesome spectacle of the burning ship alone on the wide sea, reddening the night and casting a lurid glare upon the water, where floated the frail boats filled with pale faces, all turned for a last look at the fated Brenda, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... upon the expectant ones, I knew it could have emanated only from the idol-like being who had filled the place with her awesome personality. ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... last Finn saw of any foster-mother. That was the end of babyhood, and the beginning of childhood for Finn. He slept alone that night, and found it rather awesome during the few minutes in which his eyes were open, between the last lapped meal at ten o'clock and the first of the next day, when the Master came to him at five-thirty. The Master held that if you would ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... herself upon the stone with them so soon as she saw it commence to move. She was too late, and feeling herself slipping forward, she grasped despairingly at the first thing that came to her hand, which chanced to be Leonard's ankle. Now she must accompany them upon their awesome journey; only, while they rode upon the stone, she was dragged after them ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... critical historian does not give close heed and honorable mention to the men who wrote the articles which kept the millions of America thoroughly and honestly informed. Think what it would have meant had their influence been thrown into the scale against the Allies! By that awesome imagining alone can the extent of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... the magnitude of his position in their eyes. He was now not merely, "friends wid de perlice;" he was held in fear by that awesome body! ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... Einstein, by his other work, had shown he knew it was a fallacy; that, tongue in cheek, he inserted it into his equation in full knowledge that his fellow scientists of his day could not even bear to think of the awesome concept of things without orientation to an absolute; that he knew they would reject him entirely, refuse even to consider his thought unless he catered that much ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... send a disintegrating current through that massive copper cylinder, and gave the word. Dunark threw in the switch with a vicious thrust, as though it were an actual sword which he was thrusting through the vitals of one of the awesome crew, and the very Universe exploded around them—exploded into one mad, searing coruscation of blinding, dazzling light as the gigantic cylinder of copper resolved itself instantaneously into the pure energy from which its metal originally had come ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... Stephen Wentworth, who held the chair of astro-lithology at Hartford University. It was as their guest at the observatory last night that he had seen 1947, IV at close range, as the earth passed through her golden train with that awesome, unparalleled display ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... place, as I have already mentioned, in the shadow of one of those strange stone hillocks which abounded here, and it was at this point that I received a warning which might have deterred many men, since it was inexplicable and strangely awesome. ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... shows the irresistible passion of Siegmund and Sieglinde, brother and sister, from whose union sprang the mighty hero Siegfried; and in Gengangere (Ghosts), 1881, Ibsen threw, by the sickly craving of the fibreless Oswald Alving for Regina, a lurid light across that awesome tragedy of shadows, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... attention to him. Somewhat astonished and unutterably relieved he gazed down at the body of the school marshaled below, at the enormous fifth-formers who seemed—and never was that illusion to fade—the most terrifically immense and awesome representatives of manhood he had ever seen. The benches were hard, decidedly so; but he lost himself pleasantly in the vaulted roof, and gazed with respect ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... as before, sat in the stern, an awesome figure, upon which the moon shone with a white radiance that seemed to lift his face out of the surrounding darkness and set it like an image of frozen horror before their eyes. Against his breast he held ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... so gently shines to make romantic a lover's smile! But the reality of the Lunar night is cold beyond human belief. Cold and darkly silent. Grim desolation. Awesome. Majestic. A frowning majesty that even to the most intrepid human beholder is ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... it lay, pale emerald behind the uneven ramparts. As our train halted in the last of the dusk, and the rails glowed dull red, I caught the deep surge of it, and seven miles across the purple levels saw the low, restless aurora of its lights. It is rather an awesome thing to listen to a vanguard of civilisation talking to itself in the night in the same tone as a ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... hostile criticism. It has been criticised for the lengthy conversations and "arguments" of its characters; for its materialization of the Divine Being; because of its subject; because of Milton's vagueness of description of things awesome and terrible, in comparison with Dante's minute descriptions. But the earnest spirit in which it was conceived and written; the subject, giving it a "higher argument" than any merely national epic, even though many of Milton's, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... of hair to keep its proper place, but as soon as he took away his hand up jumped the hair again. He blushed deeply, realizing that the attention of the party, and especially of the doctor, who, to him, was a most awesome personage, was fixed upon himself; but in the end he joined in the laugh against his appearance as ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... in with a telegram. Mr. Vandervelde paused in his dictation, tore open the envelop, and read the message. And then the horrified secretary saw an amazing and an awesome sight. Mr. Jason Vandervelde bounced to his feet as lightly as though he had been a rubber ball, and performed a solemnly joyful dance around his office. His eyeglasses jigged on his nose, a lock of his sleekly brushed hair fell upon his forehead. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... sensible and calm people. We do not get greatly excited nor is our peace of mind disturbed, whether we be businessmen or workers or farmers, by awesome pronouncements concerning the unconstitutionality of some of our measures of recovery and relief and reform. We are not frightened by reactionary lawyers or political editors. All of these cries have been heard before. More ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... along the Lierre-St. Catherine-Waelhem sector, against which the Germans at first focussed their attack, were impressive and awesome beyond description. Against a livid sky rose pillars of smoke from burning villages. The air was filled with shrieking shell and bursting shrapnel. The deep-mouthed roar of the guns in the forts and the angry bark of the Belgian ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... of the wolves. He did not hear Celie when she came out of her room. So intently was he straining his eyes to penetrate the thickening pall of gloom that he was unconscious of her presence until she stood close at his side. There was something in the awesome darkening of the world that brought them closer in that moment, and without speaking Philip found her hand and held it in his own. They heard then a low whispering sound—a sound that came creeping up out of ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... nervousness. He had held the line many a bad night at the Front while Death spat out of the darkness on every hand; he had smoked in the faces of his men to cover his own fear and to shame them out of theirs; he had run the whole gamut of the emotion of the trenches, but tonight something more awesome than any engine of man was gathering its forces in the deep valleys. He shook himself to throw off the morbidness that was settling upon him; he laughed, and the echo came back haunting from the ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... This died as we slid farther from the Rosa. At length it was hushed entirely, cushioned by the springy length of steel. There was no stir, no sound of any kind. As far as our senses could tell us, we were hanging motionless in the pressing, awesome blackness. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... over in one's sleep?' said Ken with a slight shiver as he peered over into the awesome ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... He remembered his poem about the "awesome amphitheatre nature wrought," and wondered if Marietta also recalled it and would quote some of ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... would not trouble the authorities more—His last breath had been drawn as she stood there listening to those awesome sounds. ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... may count himself altogether free from the subtle power of the old mystery with its fantastic imageries, when the spirit of unrest is abroad? Who is not moved by it in the awesome stillness of night on the plains, or in the silence of the mountains or of the somber forest aisles; in wild winter nights when old tales are told; in fireside visions as tender memories come and go? And who, when listening to the echoes of the chambers of the restless sea when deep calleth ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... creeping slowly up over the river and the sloping meadow; the distant woods looked desolate, and almost awesome. Kitty could nut picture them now peopled as they had been in the morning, and her efforts to do so were soon interrupted by a ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... negotiation lasted some time, for Dthemetri, as in duty bound, tried to beat down the wizard as much as he could, and the wizard, on his part, manfully stuck up for his price, declaring that to raise the devil was really no joke, and insinuating that to do so was an awesome crime. I let Dthemetri have his way in the negotiation, but I felt in reality very indifferent about the sum to be paid, and for this reason, namely, that the payment (except a very small present which I might make or ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the man stoop over the litter of his goods. He saw him disentangle some garment from the rest. When he came back the furs he had been clad in were either abandoned or hidden under fresh raiment. The man towered an awesome figure in the firelight. He was clad in black from head to foot, and his garment possessed the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... and others of the suite had smiles and quips for humbler girls than princesses. I saw one of the awesome whiskerandos from Paris, haughty and secretive toward the French, lighting the cigarette of a blanchisseuse at the Pool of Psyche, his arm about her, and his black bristles nearer than necessary to her ripe mouth. A merchant dining away from home slapped caressingly the hips of the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... opportunity for mischievous daring at the very beginning of their ramble, our jovial hero and heroine proceeded to cross, with all the breathless, silent, and awesome delight that surrounds half-suspected wickedness—for they were quite old enough to know that ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... his horse and began tearing the packs from the backs of the led animals. He worked with mad haste, and there was an awesome, insane glare in ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... lines of sorrow seemed to fade, leaving the peaceful, transparent purity of the dead. I could not but associate the branched shadows on the wall with legends of death keeping guard over the dying. The shadow by his pillow gradually assumed vague, awesome shape. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Was this an illusion, or was I, too, going mad? The filmy thing distinctly wavered and receded a little into ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Heaven knows it is not the principal's fault, and if the janitor hadn't been standing right there—but it really makes little difference what would have happened; for the janitor in every school building, as every one knows, is a fierce and awesome creature who keeps more dreadful things from happening that never would have happened than any other single ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the idea that the interior tract he was approaching was nothing more than a dead and stagnant marsh — a huge dreary swamp, within whose bounds the inland rivers lost their individuality and merged into a lifeless morass. A more melancholy picture could not be imagined, and with such an awesome thought constantly haunting his mind there is no wonder that he became morbid, and that the dominant tone of his journal, whilst on the Lachlan, is ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... the phantom of false morning died" that I always dreaded the lion. Indeed, in the early part of the night, when the awesome voices were audible often in several directions at once, there was little or no danger. But just before dawn the silence suggested sinister possibilities. An examination of the ground after day had broken ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... very unwise, sitting there in the sunshine side by side, tremendously impressed with the catastrophe of life and with each other—still young enough to be in earnest, to take life and each other with that awesome finality which is ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... up the headland rode. — "Now the willing-giver to Weder folk in death-bed lies; the Lord of Geats on the slaughter-bed sleeps by the serpent's deed! And beside him is stretched that slayer-of-men with knife-wounds sick: {38b} no sword availed on the awesome thing in any wise to work a wound. There Wiglaf sitteth, Weohstan's bairn, by Beowulf's side, the living earl by the other dead, and heavy of heart a head-watch {38c} keeps o'er friend and foe. — Now our folk may look for waging of war when once unhidden to Frisian ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... dirlin' on the thatch. There was the bleezin cairn, and the craig that lowped and dinnled i' the dead-mirk dail, the burn in spate and the rowin flood o' the Taiping dinging their looves thegither at their tryst i' the glen—ane gran' an' awesome melee. But I don't like these effects, so I buried myself in red blankets, and as the rain thundered down, thought of our coolies; I expect they got from under their hats and went below the floor of our bungalow. The atmosphere, after an hour, grew suddenly pleasant and cool—a ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... Abbot of Canterbury, and the three questions that the King did ask at the Abbot's gardener (he playing his master), and the witty answers he made unto him. Then would Master Armstrong tell a tale; and an awesome ghost-story it were, that made my flesh creep, and Milisent whispered in mine ear that she should sleep never a wink ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... elocutionist and declaiming schoolboy. Schiller himself had never seen the sea, nor any body of water remotely resembling the Charybdis of the poem. Observation, as he humbly confessed, had given him nothing more awesome than a mill-dam,—the rest was Homeric and imaginative; wherefore it no doubt gratified him when Goethe reported from Schaffhausen, after a visit to the cataract, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... life, all it has learned. That which automatically becomes the Law at the dawning of newborn consciousness remains, to its understanding, the Law of Being, the Law of the Universe. To the cautious of responsibility this at times wears the aspect of an awesome thing, suggesting, however remotely, that it might seem well, perhaps, to remove the shoes from one's feet, as it were, and tread with deliberate and delicate considering of one's steps, as do the reverently courteous even on the approaching of ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... tapestries is sprinkled with the loved common flowers of every day, of the field and wood. This is one of the charming touches in early tapestry, these little flowers that thrust themselves with captivating inappropriateness into every sort of scene. The grave and awesome figures in the Apocalypse find them at their feet, and in scenes of battle they adorn the sanguinary sod and twinkle ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... recklessness—thin ice and thick ice were all one to him, but he skated along, dashing in and out, and sweeping away up and down the river in a whirl of vigor and daring, like a black marauder. Yet he was best and most awesome in the swimming pond in summer—though it was believed that he dared go in in the bitter winter, either by breaking the ice or through an air-hole, and there was a story that he had ventured under the ice as fearless as a cold fish. No one could dive from such a height as he, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... burned, black and horrific, upon the face of every newspaper in the country. He was not allowed to read the journals of the day and his family's indignation over the sacrilegious coincidence of the name had not been expressed in his presence. But he saw that it was an awesome name to Penrod Schofield and Samuel Williams. Even Herman and Verman, though lacking many educational advantages on account of a long residence in the country, were informed on the subject of Rena Magsworth through hearsay, and they joined ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... continued to peer with a questioning eye in the awesome brew which he had prepared for ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... nothing so much as a great flaming flower rising out of the black water. Below was the straight stalk, a foot or more thick, and above the dreadful bloom. And as for the fearfulness of it and its fierce and awesome beauty, who can describe it? Certainly I cannot. Although we were now some five hundred yards away, it, notwithstanding the steam, lit up the whole cavern as clear as day, and we could see that the roof was here about forty ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... Bewick's career further. With habits of hard work deeply ingrained, he kept at his bench until his death in 1828, engraving an awesome quantity of cuts. But he never surpassed his work on the Birds, although his reputation grew in proportion to the spread of ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... awesome sight," Mollie agreed, as she and Amy spread the cloth. "I wonder," she added as a sudden thought struck her, "if the boys have had ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... rage. Suddenly he hurled the body to the floor, and, placing his foot upon the upturned breast, raised his head. Then through the palace of the Count de Coude rang the awesome challenge of the bull ape that has made a kill. From cellar to attic the horrid sound searched out the servants, and left them blanched and trembling. The woman in the room sank to her knees beside the body of ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... into that awesome pit, and Witred followed him. Then went our three thanes, and Selred and I stood alone in the room. I handed the torch down to the last man, and so saw that from the place where the chair was set a low stone-arched passage led westward into darkness. It was ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... upon a chair of ebony-wood. Now whilst they were in converse the Warlock turned round and beheld arear of the Caliph a hanging of sendal whereupon stood figured lions twain: so he signed with his hand to these forms which were mighty huge of limb and awesome to look upon, when each put forth his paw upon his fellow and both roared with roars like unto the bellow of ear-rending thunder. Hereat all present were perplex in the extreme and were in admiration at that ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... It was an awesome spot. Many a splinter of wreckage had been tossed in over the Spear Point as though flung in sport from a giant hand. And when the water was high there came a hollow groaning from the inner caves as though imprisoned ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... this battle was but a small affair, yet I think that few have been more terrible, at any rate in modern times. The aspect of those plumed and shielded Zulus as they charged, shouting their war-cries and waving their spears, was awesome. They were mown down in hundreds by the Martini fire, but still they came on, and I knew that the game was up. A maddened horde of fugitives, mostly natives, began to flow past us over the nek, making for what was ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... the bateau, and Joe Clamart started again the everlasting song of the allouette bird that was plucked of everything it had. Carrigan found himself grinning. They were a queer people, these bred-in-the-blood northerners—still moved by the superstitions of children. Yet he conceded that the awesome deadness of the forest passage had put strange ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... Malay language, "man of the forest," while orang-outang, the name which we incorrectly apply to the great red-haired anthropoid, means "man in debt.") The Bornean jungle is a place of indescribable dismalness and dread, its gloom seldom dissipated by the sun, its awesome silence broken only by the stirrings of the unseen creatures which lurk underfoot and overhead and ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... the vision of isolation "outside of it all" was too painful. The presence of God had grown awesome and the light of His eyes intolerable, but outside was darkness unbearable. She flung herself down beside the bed where many a time she had "said prayers" ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... of Coral Island or Out on the Pampas, we needs must steal a candle from the pantry stock and furtively read by its flickering light. Our own sense of danger, together with the imaginative effect wrought upon our excitive minds by the dancing candlelight and the awesome shadows of the still house, gave a strange ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... awesome figure to up-state politicians, and Shelby approached his place of business with a trepidation not wholly owing to his tangled fortunes. It was his first visit. There had been meetings between them at Saratoga conventions, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... That awesome plunge created tremendous excitement among the bystanders on quay and ship. It was seen by hundreds. Men shouted, women screamed, not a few fainted. A sailor on the lower deck ran with a life belt, but Fenley never rose. His body was carried out by ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... wood. It was just an ordinary hill road of Lorraine, but the fact that it was the direct road to the trenches invested this climbing, winding, silent length with extraordinary character. The gate of the zone of violence, every foot of it bore some scar of the war, now trivial, now gigantic—always awesome in the power and volition it revealed. One passed from the sight of a brown puddle, scooped in the surface of the street by an exploding shell, to a view of a magnificent ash tree splintered by some projectile. It is a very rare thing to see a sinister ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... sound it reached the ears of him who stood in front of her with drawn fist and threatening mien. He started back and she, with her arm before her face, did not see the awesome look that leaped across his countenance. His arm dropped and for a moment his face was the battle-ground of fierce, contending wills and furious passions. Then his whole body writhed as if in a convulsion, his arms sprang straight up in the air and a cry of mortal agony, of defeat, despair ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... monastery, where, upon hearing the Abbot's story, it was enthusiastically welcomed and its wounds attended to. At dawn it was restored to its natural shape, and the monks, one and all, were startled out of their senses to find themselves in the presence of a stern and awesome dignitary of the Church, who immediately began to lecture the Abbot for his unseemly conduct the previous day, ordering him to undergo such penance as eventually, robbing him of half his size and all his self-importance, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... them approached the cabin. Joan had never before seen two such striking, vicious-looking, awesome men. The one was huge—so wide and heavy and deep-set that he looked short—and he resembled a gorilla. The other was tall, slim, with a face as red as flame, and an expression of fierce keenness. He was stoop shouldered, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... abode there in the wabster's house. You may be sure they likit it little; but it was a means of grace to severals that stood there praying in to themsel's (for nane cared to pray out loud) and looking on thon awesome thing as it cawed the shuttle. Syne, upon a suddenty, and wi' the ae dreidfu' skelloch, Tod sprang up frae his hinderlands and fell forrit on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "is that the dragon? What an awesome creature! Is he really like that? How splendidly you have done his scales! And what frightful claws! Why"—she turned upon him—"you ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... enough," said Lockhart, looking about approvingly at the prim horsehair furniture that gave an awesome dignity to the parlor. ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... "There's something awful sad about the evening sometimes. I've got an end of the world feeling." And indeed there was something awesome and unnatural about this quiet hour in which there was so much light and so little heat, in this furnace of the skies from which there flowed so glacial a wind. "Supposing the end of the world is like this," said Ellen, nearly crying. "A lot of beefy, red-faced angels buying us up and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... this lute at his death was placed in a shrine erected to his honour, and at his funeral music and plays were performed during seven days within the palace, by the special grace of the Emperor. The scene is laid at the shrine. The lonely and awesome appearance of the spot is described. Although the sky is clear, the wind rustles through the trees like the sound of falling rain; and although it is now summer-time, the moonlight on the sand looks like hoar-frost. All nature is sad and downcast. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... awesome place came the herd that Milo drove before him; and not a man among the hardened crew was hardy enough to carry his bravado into the Grove. Blacks and whites alike, no matter what their inmost thoughts might be, yielded to the spell of the place the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Lawanne commented. "I may go down and see him in the morning. I am not very keen on two or three weeks alone in these tremendous silences. This valley at night now—it's awesome. And those Siwashes are like dumb men. You wouldn't ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... things in the Beryl, for she had read the hint of a vast, awesome secret in the eyes of Sarka—and wondered if he dared ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... consent they waited to hear its voice for the first time. Margaret took the little key from the envelope tied to the frame, unlocked the cover, and, sitting down, began to play. The rough men who had brought it stood in awesome adoration around the platform; the silence that spread over that room would have done honor to ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... and become the recognised head of Wanley society. He would discover the necessity of having a lady to share his honours and preside at his table. Persistent inquiry seemed to have settled the fact that he was not married already. To be sure, there were awesome rumours that Socialists repudiated laws divine and human in matrimonial affairs, but the more sanguine were inclined to regard this as calumny, their charity finding a support in their personal ambitions. The interest formerly attaching ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the night, so protracted and awesome was the quiet, that it would seem to the girl's preternatural sensibilities as if the life of the world had come to a dead stop, and that only she and the little one within her were alive. Then she would wonder how many other girls in London were ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Boyd said simply. He jammed his head under a pillow and began to snore again. It was an awesome sound, like a man strangling to death in chicken fat. Malone sighed and poked ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... here, from eleven to twelve, just praying, praying in silence for the passing soul of John Brown. And as we prayed we knew that others were also praying, for a church-bell tolled during that entire hour, and its awesome boom went sadly sounding ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... not banish her," my sister confidently asserted. And then she said, softly: "Have you thought what a lonely, awesome thing it must be to be so newly dead? Pity her, Allan. We who are warm and alive should pity her. She loves you still,—that is the meaning of it all, you know—and she wants us to understand that for that reason we must keep ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... noo-a-days, for they gang wi' the tide jist like the lave; but i' my auld minny's buiks, I hae read jilt as muckle as that, an' waur too. Mony ane 'at spak like that, had nae doot a guid meanin' in't; but, hech man! it's an awesome deevilich way o' sayin' a holy thing. Noo, what better could puir auld Martin do, seein' he had no ae word to say i' the kirk a' his lifelang, nor jist say his ae word, as pithily as might be, i' the kirkyard, efter ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... knows—aye, all Egypt knows why she hath come to court, and yet they meet—she salutes him with bewildering grace—he inclines his proud head with never a tremor and they pass. Or, if they tarry to talk, it is an awesome sight to see the determined encounter of two mighty souls—tremendous charm against tremendous resistance—and Io, I know that they have sounded to the deepest the depth of each other's strength. I long to see Ta-user conquer—and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... that he had no inclination to go much into detail. He had never had the habit of entering into the details connected with his strange charge. She believed it was because he felt the subject too abnormal not to seem a little awesome to her sympathetic timidity. She did not ask questions because she was afraid she could not ask them intelligently. In fact, the knowledge that this unknown man was living through his struggle with his lost past in the remote rooms of the west wing, almost as though ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the people shrank a little, even while they cheered, it was rather from awe of his bearing and the recognition of that sense of apartness which underlay his smile than from any perception of the man's real nature or of the awesome purpose which at that moment exalted it. But had they known—could they have seen into this tumultuous heart—what a silence would have settled upon these noisy streets; and in what terror and soul-confusion would each man have slunk away from his fellows into the ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... troop up silver paths of sea, The flood disported round them as they came. With one wild cry they floated up; it rang, A sound as when fleet-flying cranes forebode A great storm. Moaned the monsters of the deep Plaintively round that train of mourners. Fast On sped they to their goal, with awesome cry Wailing the while their sister's mighty son. Swiftly from Helicon the Muses came Heart-burdened with undying grief, for love And honour to ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... a strange lady as is lying at the 'Chequers,' and not expected to live. She be mortal bad, sir, and do run on awesome." ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ye lass and trousered kid, From prisoned mischief raise the lid, And lift it good and high. Leave grave old Wisdom in the lurch, Set Folly on a lofty perch, Nor fear the awesome rod of birch When dawn illumes ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... But Faith was not thinking of her clothes at all. She was feeling suddenly nervous. What had seemed easy in imagination was rather hard in reality. Confronted by all those staring questioning eyes Faith's courage almost failed her. The lights were so bright, the silence so awesome. She thought she could not speak after all. But she MUST—her father MUST be cleared of suspicion. Only—the words ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Dr. dear, he was sitting out on the back steps this afternoon. It was just after the news came that the Armistice had been signed and he was looking his Hydest. I can assure you he was an awesome looking beast. All at once, Mrs. Dr. dear, Bruce Meredith came around the corner of the kitchen walking on his stilts. He has been learning to walk on them lately and came over to show me how well he could do it. Mr. Hyde just took a look and one bound carried him over the yard fence. Then ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... worthy lieutenant during my reading of the white, red, black, and pale horses of the Apocalypse and their awesome riders, and the others following her lead, my voice was drowned by the "Hum-hums!" and "Glorys!" and "Hallelujahs!" and "Bless de Lords!" arising ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland |
