"Colossal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Francois I. was, in those days, terminated by an enormous unfinished tower which was intended to mark the colossal angle of the building when the succeeding wing was built. Later, Gaston took down one side of it, in order to build his palace on to it; but he never finished the work, and the tower remained in ruins. This royal stronghold served as a prison or ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... still, racking her brain for some expedient, for she was determined that Eustace Meeson should not lose the chance of that colossal fortune if she could help it. It was but a poor chance at the best, for Mr. Meeson might not be dying, after all. And if he did die, it was probable that his fate would be their fate also, and no record ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... upon the training of American engineers. Being obliged to do a great deal with a little money, they have steered clear of those enormous extravagances which have characterized the works of such engineers as the late Mr. Brunel, colossal less in proportions than cost. It has been well observed, that there was more talent shown on a certain division of the New-York and Erie Railway, in avoiding the necessity for viaducts, than could possibly have been exhibited in constructing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... splendid sights which we can never see on earth. The walls and the ceiling of the large ball-room were of thick, but transparent crystal. May hundreds of colossal shells, some of a deep red, others of a grass green, stood on each side in rows, with blue fire in them, which lighted up the whole saloon, and shone through the walls, so that the sea was also illuminated. Innumerable fishes, great and small, swam past the crystal ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... resumed, "was the madness of a man whose brain and soul were overwrought in one colossal hatred—a hatred of divorce and the laws that made it possible. It was born in him in a day, and it lived until his death. It turned him from the paths of men, and we became wanderers upon the face of the earth. Two years after the ruin of our home my mother ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... with tragic austerity. In none of his plays does he discover less of leaning upon pre-existing models, or a more manly negligence, perhaps sometimes carried to excess, of those lighter graces of manner which none but the greatest minds may safely despise. His genius is here out in all its colossal individuality, and he seems to have meant it should be so; as if he felt quite sure of having now reached his mastership; so that henceforth, instead of leaning on those who had gone before, he was to be himself a leaning-place for those ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... antiquity of a great number of the houses. The modern parts of the town are handsome, and there is a pleasant inter-mixture of trees and grass plats in some of these more recent portions. There are some pleasing public walks, after the English fashion; and a public garden, where a colossal sphinx, erected by the late philosopher Gleichen, has a very imposing appearance. Here is also an obelisk erected to the memory of Gleichen himself, the founder of these gardens; and a monument to the memory of Keplar, the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... restaurants—imitations of those in Paris, but on a much larger scale. The women who in Paris might be counted by the dozens appeared here in hundreds. The scandalous drunkenness here never came by chance, but always by design as an indispensable part of the gaiety. All was grandiose, glittering, colossal. The libertines diverted themselves in platoons, the public got drunk in companies, the harlots presented themselves in regiments. He felt a sensation of disgust before these timid and servile females, accustomed to blows, who were so eagerly trying to reimburse themselves ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... gigantic, long, ample, colossal, grand, massive, big, commodious, great, spacious, broad, considerable, huge, vast, bulky, enormous, immense, wide. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... importance, you must have an umbrella spread over your head. Fortunately, the ever-provident doctor had two in his possession; which two of our men held over our respective heads. The Tarjum himself was shaded by a parasol of colossal dimensions, held in position ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... completion. The one hundred and seventieth life-size figure in the frieze was chiselled, the granite pillars arose, the mosaics were inserted in the allegorical pediments, the four colossal statues representing the greater Christian virtues, the four other colossal statues representing the greater moral virtues, were hoisted into their positions, the eight bronzes representing the greater ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... of the Tigris brought the army to a second deserted city called Mespila, nearly opposite to the modern city of Mosul. Although these two cities, which seem to have formed the continuation of (or the substitute for) the once colossal Nineveh[54] or Ninus, were completely deserted,—yet the country around them was so well furnished with villages and population, that the Greeks not only obtained provisions, but also strings for the making of new bows, and lead for bullets to be ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... had been in the habit of visiting undesirable persons; and finally she informed him that Jacqueline had gone to Italy with an old Yankee and his daughter—he being a man, it was said, who had laid the foundation of his colossal fortune by keeping a bar-room in a mining camp in California. This last was no fiction, the cut of Mr. Sparks's beard and his unpolished manners left no doubt on the subject; and she wound up by saying that Madame ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... into Russia, had to be collected at Dantzig and the fortresses of the Vistula. No mercy was shown to the unfortunate countries whose position now made them Napoleon's harvest-field and storehouse. Prussia was forced to supplement its military assistance with colossal grants of supplies. The whole of Napoleon's troops upon the march through Germany lived at the expense of the towns and villages through which they passed; in Westphalia such was the ruin caused by military requisitions that King Jerome wrote to Napoleon, warning him to fear ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... could see. In the great chateau she would have fancied herself a prisoner in one of those enchanted dwellings where sleep seizes you in the fulness of your joy and does not leave you for a hundred years. Here at all events the peasant woman, who had never been able to accustom herself to that colossal fortune, which had come too late, from too great a distance and like a thunderbolt, felt in touch with real life by virtue of the going and coming of the laborers, the departure and return of the cattle, their visits to the watering-place, all the details ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... colossal many-tabled dining-saloon of the Lithuania Edward Henry sat as usual to the left of the purser's empty chair, at the purser's table, where were about a dozen other men. A page brought him a marconigram. He opened it and read the single ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... regime, political, social or religious, which was doomed to utter destruction. It became known among us that the sentence was about to be carried out on a colossal scale; but we remained in absolute ignorance as to the place and method of the intended execution. Thus far my dream gave me no intimation of the horrible scene which next burst on me,—a scene which strained to their utmost tension every sense of sight, hearing and touch, in a manner ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Benedick, (Of all your names I scarce know which to pick,) Colossal relic of the nobler time When great JOHN PHILIP trod the scene sublime; Ay, true Colossus, for like that which strode From shore to shore, while seas beneath him flowed, You seem to stand between two generations, High o'er the tide of Time and its mutations; Be not alarmed; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... Elder after the order of Melchisedek, unsullied product of the temple priesthood, it was a time of wondrous soul-growth. In that mysterious realm of pathless deserts, of illimitable prairies and boundless plains, of nameless rivers and colossal hills, a land of dreams, of romance, of marvellous adventure, he felt strange powers growing within him. It seemed that in such a place the one who opened his soul to heaven must become endowed with all those singular gifts he had longed for. He looked confidently ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... any confidence when I say that both the King and the Minister were in favour of a surrender. They saw no possibility of standing up against the colossal power of Great Britain. The Minister had drawn up an acceptance of the British terms, and the King sat with it before him on the table. I saw the tears of anger and humiliation run down his cheeks as he ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... moment when man's power to achieve good or to inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of all ages. We can turn rivers in their courses, level mountains to the plains. Oceans and land and sky are avenues for our colossal commerce. Disease ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... tint, and all were flooded and enriched with the mellow, tropical sunlight. Fort Morro, to the left, beetled over the waves like some sombre and impregnable defence of the Middle Ages. Its golden-brown and colossal walls sprung like a master-piece of feudal art from the dark, wave-washed, slippery rocks below. The tall, slender light-house connected with it greatly added to its attractions. Soldiers in bright uniforms ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... out of the benign and simple elements of the Scripture he conjured up for himself a fanaticism quite as gloomy and intense. He lost sight of God the Father, and night and day dreamed only of God the Avenger. His vivid imagination was perverted to raise out of its own abyss phantoms of colossal terror. He shuddered aghast at his own creations, and earth and heaven alike seemed black with the everlasting wrath. These symptoms completely baffled and perplexed Cleveland. He knew not what remedy to administer—and to his unspeakable grief and surprise he found that Ernest, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are likely to say and do; for this reason, that to invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do, requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of somebody ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... a countryman so colossal, that it seemed as if he would never have done getting up, and gives his experiences. He informed the company, in a broad Yorkshire dialect, that he did a bit in furniture, and at first starting these brokers buzzed about him like flies, and ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Church, Coventry, has, however, been very carefully preserved, and the coat of whitewash which tended to conceal it probably ever since the Reformation has been judiciously removed. The legend of St. Christopher, represented by a colossal figure with a beam-like walking-staff, carrying the infant Christ on his shoulders through the water, was generally painted on the north wall of the nave or body of the church. A fresco painting of this subject, half obliterated, is still apparent ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... slave himself must be paid for, and thus his labor is all purchased at once, and for no trifling sum. His price was, in the first place, paid mostly to your countrymen, and assisted in building up some of those colossal English fortunes, since illustrated by patents of nobility, and splendid piles of architecture, stained and cemented, if you like the expression, with the blood of kidnapped innocents; but loaded with no heavier curses than abolition and its begotten fanaticisms have brought ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... other tombs and monuments in this chapel, chiefly wall tablets of not exceptional interest. At the north end, however, is a colossal statue of the last of the prince bishops, Bishop van Mildert, who died in 1836. The monument is of white marble, the figure seated on a throne and holding a book. It was erected by public subscription, the sculptor being John Gibson, R.A. Near this monument is a blue ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... his spirit, and the only one of the Italian poets I should care much to see. There is a fine portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand than Titian's; light, Moorish, spirited, but not answering our idea. The same artist's large colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the only likeness of the kind that has the effect of conversing with 'the mighty dead,' and this is truly spectral, ghastly, necromantic." B—— put it to me if I should like to see Spenser as well as Chaucer; and I answered ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... as he saw all were waiting for something further, "there can be no doubt that Tintoretto was a great painter and a notable man. To read the story of his life,—his struggles to learn the art,—his assurance of the worth of his own work, and his colossal ambitions, is as ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... few good. The Cicero is fine and celebrated: the Marius I think still finer. The rest are Scipios, Cincinnatus's and the Lord knows who, which have lost more of their little value than of their false pretensions by living out of doors; and there is a green-house full of colossal fragments. Adieu! Have you received the description ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Colossal in nearness a blue police sits still on his horse Guarding the path; his hand relaxed at his thigh, And skyward his face is immobile, eyelids aslant In tedium, and mouth ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... declared that although much of the contraband had been disposed of, this was only done as a blind, and that there were tons beneath the iron ore and in the peaks and bunkers, and all over the vessel. The story spread, and grew as it was passed along, until it became the most colossal smuggling enterprise ever known in the country. The captain came on board at noon on the day following the arrival, and found a large number of Custom-house officers on board. Some were in the holds digging vigorously at the ore with picks and shovels. Their coats were off, ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... general and moral world may be measured in accordance with their present deviation from or conformity to this suppositious pyramidal standard in their modes of national measurement.[253] "For the linear measure" (says Professor Smyth) "of the base line of this colossal monument, viewed in the light of the philosophical connection between time and space, has yielded a standard measure of length which is more admirably and learnedly earth-commensurable than anything which has ever yet entered ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... Missourian led his guest inside a small private office, handed him to a chair and stood up before him, big, colossal, dominating the younger man, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... subtle. "Granted," he said, "that the poor chap was mentally irresponsible, and that he actually did steal the picture. But you must take into account his colossal vanity, his monumental egotism. Richmond never admitted for a moment that he was a failure as an artist; there was a cabal against him, and that accounted for everything. This affair was simply his revenge upon his critics ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... his work was done and smoke a meditative pipe. It was a quiet spot, which had once been busy enough, but was now superseded by new quays and more convenient landing-places. All over it were scattered great rusty anchors, colossal iron chains, deserted melancholy boilers, and other debris which are found in such places, and which might seem to the fanciful to be the shells and skeletons of strange monsters washed up there by the tide. To whom do these things belong? Who has an interest ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that the notary had already put to himself: "If Dumay's share in the profits is six hundred thousand francs, and he is going to be Monsieur Mignon's bailiff, then Monsieur Mignon must certainly have a colossal fortune. He arrived at Marseilles on a ship of his own, loaded with indigo; and they say at the Bourse that the cargo, not counting the ship, is worth more than he gives out as ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... people. The sailors and cadets on Drake Island poured out from the casements like rabbits from a warren. With our glasses we could see the dense crowd on the Hoe, which is now a public park. We could see the colossal statue of Sir Francis Drake towering aloft over the Hoe, speaking trumpet in hand, as if welcoming us, for certainly this was a great Armada that was entering the Sound, a peaceful Armada, greater than that of King Philip; this second ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... red plaster of the wall, over against the candlestick which shed its strong rays upon the fearful sight, the fingers of a vast hand moved and traced letters. Only the fingers could be seen, colossal and of dazzling brightness, and as they slowly did their work, huge characters of fire blazed out upon the dark red surface, and their lambent angry flame dazzled those who beheld, and the terror of terrors fell upon all the great throng; for ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... altogether rural in suggestion—like the tinkle of many sheep-bells. Even in that first week of December I could sit in the open air there, where the mild winter sunlight flashed the huge crucifix and the colossal Christ of painted wood, which poise above the toy chapel carved out of the live rock. The chapel and the crucifix are at one end of a lime-tree avenue a third of a mile long, and the trees are aged beyond strict local knowledge, gnarled and warty and bulbous and ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... to find at Pompeii? At a distance, its antiquity seems enormous, and the word "ruins" awakens colossal conceptions in the excited fancy of the traveller. But, be not self-deceived; that is the first rule in knocking about over the world. Pompeii was a small city of only thirty thousand souls; something like what Geneva was thirty years ago. Like ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... courageous man passed through such innumerable dangers from shot and shell without receiving a single wound. I must also mention some other instances of courage and devotion in officers belonging to this brigade; for instance, it was Colonel MacDonell, a man of colossal stature, with Hesketh, Bowes, Tom Sowerby, and Hugh Seymour, who commanded from the inside the Chateau of Huguemont. When the French had taken possession of the orchard, they made a rush at the principal door of the chateau, which had been turned into a fortress. MacDonell and the above officers ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... Man's colossal egotism is rudely shaken before the Procession of the Ages. Aghast, he discovers that the billions of years which have wrought this earth from star dust were not merely God's laborious preparation of a habitation fit for so admirable ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... first in the slanting light of a redly setting August sun; the little tuft of green shrubbery that crests its summit was black against the crimson of sea and sky, and its colossal base of grey stone gleamed ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... a tableau which would have been comical but for the pressure of its tragic possibilities. Hamilton, stern and sententious, stood frowning upon M. Roussillon, who sat upon the ground, his feet and hands tightly bound, a colossal statue of injured innocence. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... the mechanism of animal locomotion, recognize the fact that our knowledge is not yet advanced enough to hope to succeed in making real walking machines. But they conceive that the time may come hereafter when colossal figures will be constructed whose giant strides will not be arrested by the obstacles which are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... so, with my eyes blinded to the real facts, I revelled in happiness. But yesterday morning—no, to be precise, it was yesterday afternoon—the eyes of my mind were opened wide, and the first thing I realised was the colossal stupidity of the authorities—. (Uproar, shouts and laughter, MRS. ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... They were collected by the diligence of the Saracens, and sold to a Jewish merchant of Edessa, who is said to have laden nine hundred camels with the weight of the brass metal; an enormous weight, though we should include the hundred colossal figures, [95] and the three thousand statues, which adorned the prosperity of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... columns, pillars, vaulted ceilings, platforms for their idols and pulpits for their priests. The nearest of these wonderful examples of stone cutting is on an island in the harbor of Bombay, called Elephanta, because at one time a colossal stone elephant stood on the slope near the landing place, but it was destroyed by the Portuguese several centuries ago. The island rises about 600 feet above the water, its summit is crowned with a glorious growth of ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... numerous officers, who drove back all who crowded into or ran across the main avenue. This triumph lasted three days. On the first, which was scarcely long enough for the sight, were to be seen the statues, pictures, and colossal images, which were taken from the enemy, drawn upon two hundred and fifty chariots. On the second, was carried in a great many wagons the finest and richest armor of the Macedonians, both of brass and steel, all newly polished ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... to-day: it requires a clique of commentators and a brotherhood of artists equally infected to develop that. But just so far as he tried to put his mighty self into his work, just so far he failed of artistic perfection; and not every one is Michael Angelo to make even failure beautifully colossal. In architecture, which in his day was already a dead art to be galvanized, not alive and manly like the art of the painter, his self-consciousness shows most strongly and his failure is most conspicuous. Here he did not create, but avowedly composed—set himself deliberately to study ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... authority of those passages. But although the Sadducees regarded the books which contained these passages as sacred, it is more than doubtful whether any of the Jews regarded them as sacred in precisely the same sense as the written Law. To the Jews Moses was and is a colossal form, preeminent in authority ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... "You are a colossal ass," he growled. "You forget how strong I am, how much I can still hurt you. I have offered you a chance to get ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... interests, community of institutions and ideals, and a flourishing commerce. All these bonds will be greatly strengthened as time goes on and increased facilities, such as the great bank soon to be established in Latin America, supply the means for building up the colossal intercontinental commerce ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... Sir James) Macdonell [d. 1857], "a man of colossal stature," who occupied and defended the Chateau of Hougoumont on the night before the battle of Waterloo. (See Gronow, Reminiscences, 1889, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... world of Greece acted, a political world which even to-day by its voting majority controls these seats of Government, it is natural, I repeat, that such a Government should be unable to adapt itself to the great, the colossal problems which have risen since Greece, ceasing to be a small state, and enlarging its territories, has taken a position in the Mediterranean which, while exceptionally imposing, is at the same time peculiarly subject to envy, and is on this ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... experienced; to see what impulses had moved her; to make allowances for her; to come to read aright what lay in her heart. He must see clearly into two human hearts! Task for the gods! As though the wilderness about him were a colossal malevolent entity endowed with the power to look into human breasts, it jeered at him with its ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... general visitor is the statue marked 128, known in architecture as a Caryatid, which was used in the temple of Pandrosus instead of columns. Hereabouts also, amid the miscellaneous fragments, the visitor should notice a colossal headless and heavily-draped figure, marked 111. This is the wreck of the great statue of Bacchus which surmounted a monument erected three hundred and twenty years before the Christian era, by Thrasyllus of Deceleia, to record the victory of a ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... a colossal labour must have been the preparation of the above Dictionary. How it reminds us of the words of poor, patient Antony Wood: "What toyle hath been taken, as no man thinketh, so no man believeth, but he that hath made the trial." Yet it has often occurred to us that the compiler, or editor, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... somewhat extravagant and self-conscious. The drapery, too, is rather fantastic, flung about their figures, leaving arms and legs bare. Were the picture taken out of its surroundings it would scarcely suggest a Christian subject. These colossal beings are like Titans moving through the figures of a sacred dance, and murmuring the mystic incantations of some ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... conscious satisfaction which accompanies any sustained effort of the faculties. I deny that in fact it does yield this satisfaction, for the reason that the man is too busy ever to examine the treasures of his soul. And what else does it yield? For what other immediate end is the colossal travail being accomplished? ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... in particular who loves books must be proud to partake of our great literary tradition. If it is difficult to decide precisely what East Anglia is, it is perhaps equally difficult to speak for a few minutes on so colossal a theme as the literature of East Anglia. It would be easy to recapitulate what every biographical dictionary will provide, a long list of famous names associated with our counties; to remind you that we have produced two poet-laureates—John Skelton, of Diss, the author of Colyn ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... wanderings, frequenting taverns and spending whole nights in carousals, with the lowest company. Paracelsus believed that it was reserved for him to indicate the right path to the medical practitioners of his day. In carrying out this idea, he exhibited such colossal conceit, and indulged in such virulent abuse of his medical brethren, that he became the object of their ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... it is the hand of what must be a colossal statue, of gilt bronze. On one of the fingers there is a ring with a stone which I believe to be a ruby. If it is, it is worth a great deal, perhaps as much as the ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... garnered, and the land ploughed for a new crop. There was Indian corn standing, but I saw no pumpkins warming their yellow carapaces in the sunshine like so many turtles; only in a single instance did I notice some wretched little miniature specimens in form and hue not unlike those colossal oranges of our cornfields. The rail fences were somewhat disturbed, and the cinders of extinguished fires showed the use to which they had been applied. The houses along the road were not for the most part neatly kept; the garden fences were poorly built of laths or long slats, and very rarely ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... occasion the secret passages were avoided, and they passed up a broad avenue though the centre of the amphitheatre, to seats that had been prepared for them on that side of the pool which was furthest from the colossal idol. As before, the temple was crowded with human beings, and their advance through it was very impressive, for the priests chanted as they walked, while the multitude preserved an ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... twenty years. Though no one could believe it of me, perhaps, it is the truth that I am a man both timid and tender-hearted. I never dared in the early days of your hope, or the central days of your supremacy, to tell you this; I never dared to break the colossal calm of your face. God knows why I should do it now, when my farce has ended in tragedy and the ruin of all your people! But I say it now. Wayne, it was ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... l'emeute, Ainsi qu'un elephant au milieu d'une meute; La bordee a ses pieds fumait comme un encens, Ses flancs engloutissaient les boulets impuissants, Il allait broyant tout dans l'obscure melee, Et, quand, epouvantable, il lachait sa volee, On voyait flamboyer son colossal beaupre, Par deux mille canons brusquement empourpre. Il meprisait l'autan, le flux, l'eclair, la brume. A son avant tournait, dans un chaos d'ecume, Une espece de vrille a trouer l'infini. Le Maelstroem s'apaisait sous sa quille aplani. Sa vie interieure etait un incendie, Flamme au gre du ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... greatly: it looked as if the solid earth had been indulging in some curious transformation pranks during those moments or minutes of insensibility. Another singular circumstance was that I had a great mass of small fibrous rootlets tightly woven about my whole person, so that I was like a colossal basket-worm in its case, or a big man-shaped bottle covered with wicker-work. It appeared as if the roots had grown round me! Luckily they were quite sapless and brittle, and without bothering my brains too much about the matter, I set to work to rid myself ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... quite an unprecedented amount of thinking as he hurried into his evening clothes; but the thought occurring most frequently was that, whatever happened, all was well in one way, at any rate. He had the twenty pounds. There would be something colossal in the shape of disturbances when his uncle learned the truth. It would be the biggest thing since the San Francisco earthquake. But what of ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... you," says Emerson, "and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... FISHMONGER, keeping a shop near Temple Bar. By embarking in this speculation he laid the foundation of the most colossal fortune that ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... and makes interruption or inattention impossible, and imposes veneration and credulity on all but the strongest minds. He is known in the medical world as B. B.; and the envy roused by his success in practice is softened by the conviction that he is, scientifically considered, a colossal humbug: the fact being that, though he knows just as much (and just as little) as his contemporaries, the qualifications that pass muster in common men reveal their weakness when hung ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... nether world of the Vikings, was also depicted as a cavern of colossal size, furnished with poisonous serpents and unlimited sources of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... technical meaning in the use of the period. Tristezza often meant wickedness. It was a duty to be cheerful and gay.[2244] "Terribleness was a word which came into vogue to describe Michael Angelo's grand manner. It implied audacity of imagination, dashing draughtsmanship, colossal scale, something demonic and decisive in execution."[2245] Virtu meant the ability to win success. Machiavelli used it for force, cunning, courage, ability, and virility. "It was not incompatible with craft and dissimulation, or with the indulgence of ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... altered in deference to the prejudices of the Sulaco landowners. The chief engineer believed that the obstinacy of men was the lesser obstacle. Moreover, to combat that they had the great influence of Charles Gould, whereas tunnelling under Higuerota would have been a colossal undertaking. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... somewhat startled and amazed at the colossal dimensions of the sleeping hero. The scale was magnified in proportion to the height of the canopy, and the roughness of the plaster exaggerated the anatomical emphasis characteristic of Vedrine. Rather than smooth away the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... its capital was three million five hundred thousand, and that its total resources amounted to forty-seven million three hundred thousand dollars, his breath came in shorter gasps of excitement. He began to realize the colossal wealth which lay guarded behind the great porphyritic granite pillars. He also began to realize some new and as yet undefined responsibility. The mere thought of the magnitude of the movement in which he was being made ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... its upper part, with vision-slits in two bulbous sections at its end. There were gun-ports visible here and there, and already a monstrous protuberance was coming into view midway along its back, as if forced into position from within. Where the bow of the tramp had been there were colossal treads now visible. There was a sort of conning-tower, armored and grim. There was a ghastly steel beak. The thing was a war-machine of monstrous size. It emitted a sudden roaring sound, as of internal-combustion engines operating at full power, and lurched heavily. The steel plates of the tramp ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... The colossal clearance which the wind had made of that cloudy sky grew clearer and clearer; chamber within chamber seemed to open in heaven. One felt one might at last find something lighter than light. In the fullness ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... you all about them," said the Baron. "This family is one of those whose existence astounds the Continent much more than any of your mighty dukes and earls, whose fortunes, though colossal, can be conceived, and whose rank is understood. Mr. Fitzloom is a very different personage, for thirty years ago he was a journeyman cotton spinner. Some miraculous invention in machinery entitled him to a patent, which has made him one of the great proprietors of England. He has lately been returned ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... alternative method of celebrating the tercentenary of SHAKSPEARE would be the execution on Shakspeare Cliff, at Dover, of a colossal portrait of the immortal dramatist, somewhat on the scale of the famous "White Horse." Once the outline had been marked out by a competent artist the rest of the work could be easily completed gratis by the Volunteers, and the total cost would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... to dawn the hermit arose, took Mazin with him, and they ascended the mountains, till they reached a structure resembling a fortress, which they entered, and proceeded into the inmost court, in which was an immense colossal statue of brass, hollowed into pipes, having in the midst of it a reservoir lined with marble, the work of magicians. When Mazin beheld this he was astonished, and began to tremble with fear at the vastness of the statue, and what miraculous power it might contain. The hermit now kindled ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... of which her form is, in the more exact sense, the centre of attraction and the climax, to substitute for Titian's conception anything more diaphanous, more ethereal? It is only when we strive to replace the colossal figure in the mind's eye, by a design of another and a more spiritual character, that the difficulty in ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... its opponents. "But after fortune had done everything for her ungrateful bosom-child; after the Corsican master of war had arrived to such a degree of glory and power as no mortal had attained before him, he wantonly overthrew by his insatiable ambition the colossal edifice of his grandeur." Some of the acts which tended to his final downfall have been recorded in previous pages: this year added to their number. In the first place, the territory of the Prince Primas was augmented by Hanan and Fulda, and elevated to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Britain by the activity of American privateers was colossal. For the first year of the war the Continental Congress was unwilling to take so belligerent a step as to encourage privateering; but, in the summer of 1776, the issuing of letters of marque and reprisal was begun, and in a short time all New England had gone to privateering. The ocean fairly ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... colossal work, originally in eight Books, survives as to the first four Books in Greek and as to three more in Arabic, the eighth being lost. From Apollonius's prefaces we can judge of the relation of his ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... centuries of floods caused by rain and perhaps by melting snows, to carry away the loosened mould; then centuries upon centuries more of flowing and of rainfall to wash the debris clean and complete the colossal work. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... had in it, I know not what of uncouth but colossal,—like the chant, in the old lyrical tragedy, of one of those mythical giants, who, proud of descent from Night and Chaos, had held sway over the elements, while still crude and conflicting, to be crushed under the rocks, upheaved in their struggle, as Order and Harmony subjected a brightening ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with the dangerous consequences of using copper vessels[E] in their kitchens, as may be seen in this collection, where there are a great many for that purpose; but all strongly gilt, not only within, but without, to prevent a possibility of verdigris arising. There is also a bronze head of a Colossal statue, found not many years since near the fountain of Nismes, which merits particular attention, as well as a great number of Roman and Greek medals and medallions, well preserved, and some which are very rare. The natural curiosities are ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... each other, as might have been expected, though as much regularity as possible has been observed. The most central spot is the Admiralty Square, a vast, irregular, open space, with the river on one side of it; and near the river stands, on a vast block of granite, a colossal equestrian statue of Peter the Great, with his arm stretched out in an attitude of command. Forming the different sides of this vast open space are some of the finest public buildings in the city: the Admiralty with its golden ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... fatherland; In rock-like phalanx stand, Cowards no more. Rise in colossal might, Rise till the storm of fight Wrap us in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... sitting on a chair rocking a tiny baby, while five others were quietly sleeping wrapped up in bits of brown paper and newspapers in other parts of the room. How she managed to look after all these children, and to do the colossal work she did my comprehension." The joy of the people at her advent boundless. Her bairns had done wonders; the congregation numbered 350, all devout, intelligent people. "To-day," she wrote, "as ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... treated her as a plaything, a fragile toy to be teased and petted. And in his hands she had developed from an innocent child into a woman—with a woman's capacity for devotion and self-sacrifice. She had given everything, with trust and gladness. And he had taken all she gave, with colossal egoism, as his right—accepting lightly all she surrendered with no thought for the innocence he contaminated, the purity he soiled. He had stained her soul before he had killed her body. His hands ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... The costermongers lifted a large banner on which were inscribed these words: "I was sick and in prison and ye visited me." The boys from the ragged schools lifted these words; "I was hungry and naked and ye fed me." All England felt the force of that colossal character. To-day at that central point in Piccadilly where the highways meet and thronging multitudes go surging by, the English people have erected the statue of Shaftesbury—the fitting motto therefor; ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... behind them; the paddock with a patch of bright green oats above the huts, and the yards and wool-sheds down on the flat below; all seen as through the wrong end of a telescope, so clear and brilliant was the air, or as upon a colossal model or map spread out beneath me. Beyond the downs was a plain, going down to a river of great size, on the farther side of which there were other high mountains, with the winter's snow still not quite melted; up the river, which ran winding ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... selfishness—namely, that it was every one's duty to support him, for to support him was only to help art and the fatherland. It is all very charming, and it makes one rather glad not to be a German. Without Wagner's colossal egotism he never could have got through the difficulties he had to face, and his selfishness is the defect of his quality; but it is pitiable to find writers—Glasenapp, Ashton Ellis, Chamberlain and Wolzogen—sunk so low in abject flunkeyism ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... mountains, regardless of ravines, reckless of rivers, oblivious of oceans. Last night, Forty Centuries looked down upon him whilst he showed how, in Egypt, Mr. G. is wrong, and DILKE, who criticised Ministerial policy, is not right. To-night he stands on the Roof of the World, a solitary, colossal figure upright on the lone Pamirs. His attitude is of manifold mien. Defiant of Russia, suspicious of ROSEBERY, patronising towards Afghanistan, he takes young China familiarly by the elbow, and bids it be of good cheer, for TOMMY BOWLES is its friend. Since NAPOLEON crossed the Alps, and was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... beautiful, absurd—anything you wished to call it. Look away from the near-by guns where the faces of the gunners were illumined and you could not conceive of the scene as being of human origin; but mixing awed humility with colossal egoism in varying compounds of imagination and fact, you might think of your little group of observers as occupying a point of view in space where one planet hidden in darkness was throwing aerolites at another hidden in darkness striking ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... ago, who was desirous of attaching to himself the ancestors of this line of embroiderers, as master chasuble-makers and furnishers for the Cathedral clergy. On the southern side, the narrow garden was barred by the colossal building; first, the circumference of the side chapels, whose windows overlooked the flower-beds, and then the slender, long nave, that the flying buttresses supported, and afterwards the high roof covered with ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... cool!" the Colonel urged. "It is colossal, metaphorically. You see, I was over there in Europe, promoting a South American mine, when I happened to see in a Kentucky paper that the Georgetown Midland was to be put through these mountains near the land your father bought. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the boast of the Germans that their building constructions are going on as usual. I have myself seen plenty of evidence of this, such as the grading of the Isar at Munich, the completion of the colossal railway station at Leipzig, the largest in Germany, the construction of the new railway station at Gorlitz, the complete building since the war of the palatial Hotel Astoria at Leipzig, also two gigantic new steel and concrete palaces in the same ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Philadelphia whither he had gone for medical treatment. A handsome statue of him by Story adorns the west grounds of the Capitol at Washington, and his is one of the six colossal bronze figures around the Washington Monument in Richmond. See Life, by Story, and ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... as pure as the serene heavens in which its summit is lost. But, indeed, though a fit, it is an inadequate emblem. Towering high above the column which our hands have builded, beheld, not by the inhabitants of a single city or a single State, but by all the families of man, ascends the colossal grandeur of the character and life of Washington. In all the constituents of the one, in all the acts of the other, in all its titles to immortal love, admiration and renown, it is an American production. It is the embodiment and vindication of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... overlooking the confluence of the Saulteau River with the Lesser Slave—a bold and beautiful spot, the woods at the angle of the two rivers, down to the water's edge, showing like a gigantic V, as clean-cut as if done by a pair of colossal shears. ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... Universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, is bent on demonstrating, with crushing force, to me, the little, earthly, German Aristophanes, how my wittiest sarcasms are only pitiful attempts at jesting, in comparison with His, and how miserably I am beneath Him, in humor, in colossal mockery." ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... no means witnessing a simple volcanic eruption. It was something far greater. The suggestion of it all was so colossal that he could find no concrete form in which to express his belief. In his mind there had formed an idea that here was a whole wide territory forming one great vent to the subterranean fires demanding outlet. It seemed to ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... began at the river below the Aventine, and included that hill, on which there have been brought to light recently (1855) at two different places, the one on the western slope towards the river, the other on the opposite eastern slope, colossal remains of those primitive fortifications—portions of wall as high as the walls of Alatri and Ferentino, built of large square hewn blocks of tufo in courses of unequal height—emerging as it were from the tomb to testify to the might ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... muzzle in resentful affright. He lowered his palms in appeal to her wisdom. "It's the right thing, Anna, the only safe way! I've known it was, ever since Steve Mandeville's wedding. Oh! it takes a colossal assurance to talk to you so, Anna Callender, but I've got the colossal assurance. I've got that, beloved, and you've got all the rest—my heart—my soul—my ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... man and woman was in a measure established when home wielded a strong enough attraction to make men accept its obligations. But at last the time has come when the material ambition of man has assumed such colossal proportions that home is in danger of losing its centre of gravity for him, and he is receding farther and farther ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... colossal intellect, like the elephant's trunk, can grapple with the most minute objects. Yesterday it was the shortage of sausage-skins; this afternoon it was the grievance of Scottish bee-keepers, who are deprived of sugar for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... only when we reach the Anitchkoff Bridge, with its graceful railing of sea-horses, adorned with four colossal bronze groups of horse-tamers, from the hand of the Russian sculptor, Baron Klodt, that the really characteristic part of the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... 4th of December is the most colossal dagger-thrust that a brigand let loose upon civilization has ever effected, we will not say upon a people, but upon the entire human race. The stroke was most monstrous, and struck Paris to the ground. Paris on the ground is Conscience, is Reason, is all human ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... bit, Mr. Bombarnac. Imagine a colossal workshop, immense buildings for the mounting and adjusting of the pieces, a steam engine of fifteen hundred horse-power, ventilators making six hundred revolutions a minute, boilers consuming a hundred tons of coals a day, a chimney stack four hundred and ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... coquetted heavily with her husband. At twenty she had been addicted to baby talk when endeavoring to coax something out of someone. Her admirers had found it irresistible. At forty it was awful. Her selfishness was colossal. She affected a semi-invalidism and for fifteen years had spent one day a week in bed. She took no exercise and a great deal of soda bicarbonate and tried to fight her fat with baths. Fifteen or twenty years had worked a startling change in the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... class are the cause of the poverty of the masses."[114] "You make the automobile, he rides in it. If it were not for you, he would walk; and if it were not for him, you would ride."[115] "Colossal poverty is the foundation of colossal wealth; he who would eliminate the poverty of the masses assails ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... Leonardo had striven for, which was to decorate the hall of the Grand Council with pictures. At last, in 1506, the Pope was in Bologna, and again sent for Michael Angelo. He went, and was forgiven for his offence, and received an order for a colossal statue of the Pope in bronze. When this was finished in 1508, and put before the Church of St. Petronio, Michael Angelo returned to Florence. He had not made friends in Bologna; his forbidding manner did not encourage others to associate with him; ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... had the mistaken feeling (as Dr. Benson intimates) "that hymns were expected to be commonplace," it was owing both to his mental breeding and his mental stature. Genius in a colossal frame cannot otherwise than walk in strides. What is technically a hymn he never wrote, but it is significant that as he neared the Shoreless Sea, and looked into the Infinite, his sense of the Divine presence instilled something of the hymn spirit ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... it appears that they have been greatly disappointed by the moral effect produced by their heavy guns, which, despite the actual losses inflicted, has not been at all commensurate with the colossal expenditure of ammunition, which has really been wasted. By this it is not implied that their artillery fire is not good; it is more than good—it is excellent. But the British soldier is a difficult person to impress or depress, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... Rydal Mount. It was a joy to see them there, reminding one that God was still in his heaven, whatever might be wrong with the world. It was a joy to be alive, a joy which one could share unselfishly with friend and enemy alike. The colossal stupidity of war was never more apparent to me than upon that day. I hated my job, and if I hated any man, it was the one who had invented the murderous little weapon known as a ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... exist vast remains of well-constructed colossal buildings, as palaces, fortresses, and temples. The walls of these edifices were built of square stones, so finely cut, and joined so closely together, that between any two there is not space sufficient to insert the edge of the thinnest paper. In the royal palace of Cuzco, and in the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the Sea, with what is probably the best modern account, Junghuhn's: "Among the forest trees (of Tapanuli adjoining Barus) the Camphor Tree (Dryabalanops Camphora) attracts beyond all the traveller's observation, by its straight columnar and colossal grey trunk, and its mighty crown of foliage, rising high above the canopy of the forest. It exceeds in dimensions the Rasamala,[3] the loftiest tree of Java, and is probably the greatest tree of the Archipelago, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... roll along the drives leading to Rotten Row, and all London was in the streets. I was assured that at this hour I should find a big but father clumsy giant on post; and there he was, sure enough, sitting like a colossal statue on his coal-black charger, the crest of his helmet almost touching the keystone of the arch under which he sat, his accoutrements shining like jewels, and he looking every inch a British cavalryman. I walked past on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... colossal (though perhaps not much more so than the mountainous Doctor himself) and looks down upon the spectator from its pedestal of ten or twelve feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity of aspect, very like in feature ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of dawn the beetles decamped, and the fray ended. The work of devastation had been colossal. Corpses were strewn everywhere—and it took the combined household hours, before all evidences of the slaughter were obliterated. As for Gladys, she had not slept all ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... Vauxhall Bridge and stood for a time watching the huge black shapes in the darkness under the gas-works. A shoal of coal barges lay indistinctly on the darkly shining mud and water below, and a colossal crane was perpetually hauling up coal into mysterious blacknesses above, and dropping the empty clutch back to the barges. Just one or two minute black featureless figures of men toiled amidst these monster shapes. They did not seem to ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... that of the Northern Pacific also contained an extensive land grant. From the modern viewpoint, such land grants look colossal, but in those days the general opening up and development of the Western country had progressed to so slight an extent that the significance of giving away millions of acres of the public lands to encourage a precarious railroad enterprise was ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... iron cage inthralls His folded limbs, and hems in marble walls. 385 —Touch'd by the patriot-flame, he rent amazed The flimsy bonds, and round and round him gazed; Starts up from earth, above the admiring throng Lifts his Colossal form, and towers along; High o'er his foes his hundred arms He rears, 390 Plowshares his swords, and pruning hooks his spears; Calls to the Good and Brave with voice, that rolls Like Heaven's own thunder round the echoing poles; Gives to the winds his banner ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... frankly owned that if the decisive battle should have resulted in a Prussian defeat, he had resolved not to survive the shipwreck of his hopes and schemes. And there was a period in the course of the colossal struggle of Koeniggraetz, when to many men it seemed that the wielders of the needle-gun were having the worst of the battle. An awful hour for Bismarck, conscious of the load of responsibility which he carried. With great effort he could indeed maintain a calm visage, but his heart ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... excited the wonder and admiration of the world is the colossal pile known as the Metropolitan Building. This occupies the entire square or block as we call it from 23rd St. to 24th St. and from Madison to Fourth Avenue. It is 700 feet and 3 inches above the sidewalk and has 50 stories. The main building which has a frontage of ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... obelisks of one piece of granite. A road is cut in the mountain of red marble, having on the left a parapet wall about five feet in height. At equal distances there are solid pedestals, upon the tops of which stood originally colossal statues of Sirius, Litrator Anubis, or Dog Star. There are 133 of these pedestals, but only two much mutilated figures of the Dog remain. There are also pedestals for figures of the Sphinx. Two magnificent flights of steps ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... mile westward of the town of Junnar there rises from the plain a colossal hill, the lower portion whereof consists of steep slopes covered with rough grass and a few trees, and the upper part of two nearly perpendicular tiers of scarped rock, surmounted by an undulating and ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... never have imperilled the life of this nation had it not been for the colossal industrial revolution sketched above. Cotton had been grown here since, 1621, and some exportation of it is said to have occurred in 1747. Till nearly 1800 very little had gone from the United States to England, for by the old process a slave could clean but five or six pounds ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... these men came the present advisers of the Emperor. Their chief object at that time was the thorough unification of Japan. Why, then, should they longer trouble themselves to uphold feudalism, this mother of sectionalism, this colossal sham? ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... with the other groups were those of the Dutch-African boers who had brought the waggons to the Bay. Most of them were men of colossal stature. They sat apart, smoking their huge pipes in silent complacency and comfort, amused a little at the scenes going on around them, but apparently disinclined to trouble themselves about ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... I went out into Perleberg,—a ricketty old place, full of rats and legends. There is a colossal figure in the market-place of an armed knight, eighteen or twenty feet high, gazing eternally into the fruit baskets below. He has his head uncovered, his hand upon his sword, and is made of stone; but who he is nobody ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... "our universe"? Why not the universe? It is now believed by many of our most distinguished astronomers that our colossal family of stars is only one of many universes. By a universe an astronomer means any collection of stars which are close enough to control each other's movements by gravitation; and it is clear that there ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson |
