"Overwhelm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sufficiently declare, that there is no real good which you should desire too ardently, or the possession of which you should allow to transport you: and that there is no evil that should be able to overwhelm you, or the suspicion of which should distract you? and that all these things assume too melancholy or too cheerful an appearance through our own error? But if fools find this error lessened by time, so that, though the cause ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... and numbed, glad of any passing occupation that would prevent the aching sense of desolation at her heart from gaining force to overwhelm her; courting employment, and shunning pity and condolence, but she could not escape when her uncle took her hand, made her sit down by him, with 'I want to speak to you, my dear;' and told her briefly and tenderly what her mother's effort had been, and of the message and ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... proportions almost took away Mrs. Mumpson's breath. Here certainly was much to superintend, much more than had been anticipated. Mrs. Wiggins was undoubtedly a "peculiar female," as had been expected, but she was so elderly and monstrous that Mrs. Mumpson felt some embarrassment in her purpose to overwhelm Holcroft with a sense of the impropriety of ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... to be known, new classifications to be made. The world is so full of a number of things that no man with a grain of either poetry or the scientific spirit in him has any right to be bored, though he lived for a thousand years. Terror or tragedy may overwhelm him, but boredom never. The infinity of things forbids it. I once heard of a tipsy young artist who, on his way home on a beautiful night, had his attention called by a maudlin friend to the stars, where they ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... distinct from the substance. 'The reasons', he says, 'which our modern philosophers have employed to demonstrate that the accidents are not beings in reality distinct from the substance are not mere difficulties; they are arguments which overwhelm one, and which cannot be refuted. Take the trouble', he adds, 'to look for them in the writings of Father Maignan, or Father Malebranche or M. Calli' (Professor of Philosophy at Caen) 'or in the Accidentia profligata of Father Saguens, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... solid, for their purpose, which they relinquish, and go to a fresh spot that works more freely ? Or may they not in other places fall in with a soil as much too loose and mouldering, liable to flounder, and threatening to overwhelm ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... is certain?' the Candidate will inquire—he grows impatient, shrugs his shoulders, goes to his writing-table, and leaves me to combat it out, although, for my part, I would gladly have nothing to do with it. Should I, however, for awhile carry on the contest boldly, the scholar then will overwhelm me with learned words and arguments, and then I too flee, and leave him maitre du champ de bataille. He believes then that I am convinced, at least of his power, which yet, however, is not the case; and if fortune do not bestow upon me a ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... first overwhelm of astonishment at what had befallen her—made fully to understand that which she had a right, and was in duty bound to do—entered upon the preparations for her work with the same unaffected readiness with which she would have done the bidding of her living mistress. It was so evident that her ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... New and strange sacrifices and pleadings wherein I am untaught may be needed to pierce the denser ether of this land. Truly, lords, as ye have not failed in piety, neither have I erred in divination, for Melkarth has spoken many times, telling me of the unnumbered woes that would overwhelm the army if it marched upon Rome unbidden, and he hath spoken truth, and I have saved you to revile me for it—only I would learn if there be yet speech better fitted to his ear.' I paused, and they were ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... least I feel it to be, more especially where there is no immediate object to be gained by a reference to them; let me therefore turn from any inquiry into the causes which plunged South Australia into difficulties that threatened to overwhelm her, to those which raised ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... humiliation at this discovery. I set my lips hard and straightened my limbs; raised my voice to a shrill, defiant pitch, and struggled in the dimming horror to select my adversary in the monkey-jacket and overwhelm him with bitter apostrophes. In vain! The novelty, the excitement, the enervation of that long, consuming fever, mastered my overtaxed physique. I knew that, if I did not cease, I should fall senseless to the floor. Only in the last bitter instant did I confess my disability ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... because I can only lead you to my discovery step by step," replied the other steadily. "I wish you to be thoroughly prepared for anything that may happen, so that you can deal intelligently with results that might otherwise overwhelm you." ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... but within that palace wall, not many roods removed from the royal suite, was one heart struggling with its lone agony, striving for calm, for peace, for rest, to escape from the deep waters threatening to overwhelm it. Hour after hour beheld the Countess of Buchan in the same spot, well-nigh in the same attitude; the agonized dream of her youth had come upon her yet once again, the voice whose musical echoes had never ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... under his sway a horde of trained warriors, whose numbers defy calculation, and he has year by year pushed into Kapchack's territory till now it seems as if he must utterly overwhelm and destroy that monarch. This he would doubtless have achieved ere now, but there is one difficulty which has considerably impeded his advance, as he came farther and farther from his native ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... me with a feeling unutterably sad. I could not bear it, at last. It seemed as though another deep was rising and breaking in my heart, the flood of proud, half-stifled passion waking in one awful moment to overwhelm me. No light upon that sea—but hope wronged, the mockery of death for yearning love, the unguided clash ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... now: all the falsehood and treachery and corruption. He realised that Imshi Pasha had given him his hand that he might ruin himself, that his own schemes might overwhelm him in the end. At every turn he had been frustrated—by Imshi Pasha: three years of underground circumvention, with a superficial approval ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hand on the cheek-bone Of one, his fellow-spirit, and his jaws Expanding, cried: "Lo! this is he I wot of; He speaks not for himself: the outcast this Who overwhelm'd the doubt in Caesar's mind, Affirming that delay to men prepar'd Was ever harmful." Oh how terrified Methought was Curio, from whose throat was cut The tongue, which spake that hardy word. Then one Maim'd of each hand, uplifted in the gloom The ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the consular troops fell, after the field was won, than during all the previous combat. No lances, no long weapons, no missiles were at hand, wherewith to overwhelm the desperadoes; no horse wherewith to tread them under foot; hand to hand, man to man, it was fought out, with those short stabbing blades, against which the stoutest corslet was but as parchment, the hardest shield of brass-bound ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... we're going to save Penelope, my boy—somehow. It's a mighty queer world. I don't know but we are all more or less possessed by evil spirits, Chris. What are these brainstorms that overwhelm the best of us? Why do good men and women, on some sudden, devilish impulse, do abominable things, criminal things, that they never meant to do? We doctors pretend to be skeptical, but we all come ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... vizor down, upon the slightest rumour of wrong or cruelty. No woman suffering, or alleged to be suffering, from the cruelty of a husband, would ever call for his sympathy in vain. It was, however, cases of cruelty to little children that most tended to overwhelm his judgment. His burning horror at the mere idea of such deeds knew no bounds. A wife might to some extent be able to protect herself from the brutalities of her husband, but what chance had a helpless, friendless, terrified child, incapable even of running away from its tormentors, or of making ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the turn in affairs was what chiefly struck Constance, though it did not overwhelm her. Less than twelve hours before—nay, scarcely six hours before—she and Sophia had been living their placid and monotonous existence, undisturbed by anything worse than the indisposition or death of dogs, or the perversity of a servant. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Had she been privileged to be within the same four walls as a peer at a bazaar or missionary meeting, she would have revelled in a great opportunity; but to find Lord Blandamer under her own roof was a grace so wondrous and surprising as almost to overwhelm her. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... who delight to wrap up themselves, warm and cozy, in their curtained and downy repose, lulled to deeper slumber by the blustering cold in which others are shivering, or, haply, contending with the winds and waves so soon to overwhelm them. And in our more ordinary everyday humour—if it chance to rise above what in our humble opinion ought to be its maximum, a gentle refreshing breeze, just enough to waft sweet woodland sounds, or ripple the quiet stream—why, it discomposes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... was restored to tranquillity. The king, therefore, issued forth with his cavaliers and took the road to the tower, followed by a great multitude, for he was anxious once more to close the iron door, and shut up those evils that threatened to overwhelm the land. But lo! on coming in sight of the tower, a new wonder met their eyes. An eagle appeared high in the air, seeming to descend from heaven. He bore in his beak a burning brand, and lighting on the summit of the tower, fanned the fire with his wings. In a little while the edifice ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... undaunted defender of the Catholic faith against the errors which in his day threatened to overwhelm Gospel-truth, Athanasius (the last of those ante-Nicene writers into whose testimony we have instituted this inquiry), was born about the year 296, and, after having presided in the Church as Bishop for more ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... yet our boat, with the wind about two points free, rushed gallantly along, rising on the waves like a sea-bird, and sinking into the hollow of the waters as if she had no fear of any attempt on their part to overwhelm her. Thus did we continue to run on during the night, every hour the gale increasing, the billows mounting up until they broke in awful and majestic crests, and often so near to us that we presented our backs in a close file against the weather bulwarks ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... denounced, turning away his head to wipe a tear hastily; and I wondered and thanked God that I should be a comfort to that tender young girl, whose lot on earth had been difficult, whose sorrow was great but could not overwhelm her indomitable spirit, which held a promise ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... where he assists Creon, the governor of a helpless city, to Pentapolis, where, shipwrecked and a stranger, he wins the tournament and the hand of the Princess Thaisa, the waves of chance carry the Prince. They overwhelm him in the great storm which robs him of his wife, and gives him his little Marina; but they bear the unconscious Thaisa safely to land, and in after years their wild riders, the pirates, save Marina from death at the hands of Creon, and bring her to Mitylene. Here, upon ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... deserve it! Wait until you have borne the burdens of life in chastity and honor for thirty years, and have endured sorrow and death and every human adversity with uncomplaining patience; then let your son, who ought to stuff a soft pillow for your old head, come and so overwhelm you with disgrace that you would like to cry out to the earth: Swallow me, if it does not sicken thee, for I am muddier than thou! Then you may utter all the curses that I suppress in my bosom, then you may tear your hair and beat ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... will be seen that she is schooner-rigged, and very coarsely rigged too. Gigantic flags and streamers overwhelm her masts, but fourteen of us on her deck seemed to sink the buoyant life-raft only an inch more in ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... which of the kings amongst men we choose, we find that his kingship was only gained and kept after he had passed through the school of grief. It is a glad world for most of us—else indeed we might wish that one cataclysm would overwhelm us all; but our masters, those who teach us and guide us, have all been under the dominion of a nameless something which we can hardly call Melancholy, but which is a kind of divine sad sister to Melancholy. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... than a rush would be made by the people collected "in thousands" behind the village, either upon the railway station or upon the convoy in motion. I had no opportunity of getting round behind the village to review the supposed thousands who were to make the ugly rush and overwhelm the redcoats, but I have a strong impression that the Palladian army might have been dubbed the "Mrs. Harris" brigade. With the respected Mrs. Prigg, I disbelieve in its existence absolutely. Two arguments will destroy it. On the one hand, it is incredible that thousands ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... Georgia; but it is almost certain that not one man would ever get back again, as by that time the people would have been roused and excited, armed and sufficiently disciplined; and their numbers, independent of their bravery, would overwhelm three or four times the number ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... your idea that the Marinere should have had a character and profession. This is a Beauty in Gulliver's Travels, where the mind is kept in a placid state of little wonderments; but the Ancient Marinere undergoes such Trials, as overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory of what he was, like the state of a man in a Bad dream, one terrible peculiarity of which is: that all consciousness of personality is gone. Your other observation is I think as well a little ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the stream at its source three drops of holy water, for him, and for him only, the river shall turn to gold. But no one failing in his first, can succeed in a second attempt; and if anyone shall cast unholy water into the river, it will overwhelm him, and he will become a black stone." So saying, the King of the Golden River turned away, and deliberately walked into the centre of the hottest flame of the furnace. His figure became red, white, transparent, dazzling,—a blaze of intense light,—rose, trembled, and ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... has no such hope as Martha had expressed. Her more passive, meditative disposition had bowed itself, and let the grief overwhelm her. So in her we see a specimen of the excess of sorrow which indulges in the monotonous repetition of what would have happened if something else that did not happen had happened, and which is too deeply dark to let a gleam of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... explaining to Jimmie the inner significance of terrific world-events. Russia was in the midst of a gigantic offensive, which was meant to overwhelm Austria; England at the same time was hurling in her new armies on the Somme; for these two giant movements they wanted shells—millions and millions of shells from America, which alone could make enough of them. The railroads were clogged with them, they were piled mountain-high at ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... the same black gown, annoying with her "my dears" and her gossip the great ladies whose maids were richer and ate better than she and her daughter. If some old gentleman took refuge beside her, the diplomat's wife tried to overwhelm him with the majesty of her recollections. "When we were ambassadors in Stockholm." "When ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... our heads, and the waves of shame and sorrow seemed fairly to overwhelm us; and while our sobs filled the little room, Mr. Ellsler rose and laid two playbooks on the table. Then, while standing there, staring into space, I heard his far, faint voice saying: "So great—so good a man destroyed, and by the hand of that unhappy boy! my God! my God!" He ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... the farce, the purely American performance of Miss MARGARET MOFFATT at the opening of the First Act was as good as anything in the play. But happily this is not one of those imported creations that overwhelm my uninstructed intelligence with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... liberty, but he has since destroyed it by the reestablishment of the nobility and by the Concordat. The society of the 'Philadelphi' has as yet no well-defined plans for preventing the evils with which ambition will continue to overwhelm France; but when peace is restored we shall see if it is impossible to force Bonaparte to restore republican institutions, and meanwhile we are overcome by grief and despair. The brave chief of the 'Philadelphi', ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... ignore the struggle, or treat it as mere rioting, definitely declared for 'the Friends of Order,' and joined to their bands whatsoever of the regular army they could get together, and made a desperate effort to overwhelm 'the rebels,' as they were now once more called, and ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... English Protestant church since she had last sat in it, there, with Mr. Carlyle. Can you wonder that the fact alone, with all the terrible remembrances it brought in its train, was sufficient to overwhelm her with emotion? She sat at the upper end now, with Lucy; Barbara occupied the place that had been hers, by the side of Mr. Carlyle. Barbara there, in her own right his wife; she severed from ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... growing almost twilight, but still she kept up that dreary promenade, struggling bravely with herself, and trying to restrain the agonizing thoughts which threatened to overwhelm her forced composure. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... seven feet in an hour. At such times the pressure becomes so prodigious that the dikes along the bank of the river are burst, and water, sand, gravel, and ice, all pour over together upon the surrounding country, and overwhelm and destroy every thing ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... rule, consisted entirely of cavalry. Such swiftly moving assailants as the Northmen and the Magyars could best be dealt with by mounted men who could bring them to bay, compel them to fight, and overwhelm them by the shock of the charge. In this way the foot soldiers of Charlemagne's time came to be replaced by the mailed horsemen who for four centuries or more ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... subsequent periods affirm their own contemporaries to have attained. Every decennium is regularly worse than that which precedes it, until the mind is perfectly confounded by the Pelion upon Ossa which must overwhelm the last term of the twenty-five. It is the mere necessity of a logical sorites, that such a horrible race of villains as the men of the twenty-fifth decennium ought not to be suffered to breathe. Now, the whole error arises out of an imbecile self-surrender to the first impressions from ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... effected but a short distance from him, though he knew nothing of it. Monk Tooley and four other men working near him in a distant part of the mine received no intimation of the outbreak of waters and the disaster that was about to overwhelm them. Their first warning of trouble came with the stoppage of the air-currents that supplied them with the very ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... he said, "and he makes some objections, says it can't be done—ten to one, as you are now, you will begin to cry. A nice termination for your whole winter's work! You must go to him just as you came to me in the beginning—overwhelm him, take him whether or no. And you're not right for that now. It's just because I'm bound this thing shall go through, that I insist you ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... Varta's voice sounded rusty in her own ears. She had spoken so seldom during the last lonely months. "Evil has risen to overwhelm our world, even as it was prophesied in Your Revelations, O, Ruler of Worlds and Maker of Destiny. Therefore, obeying the order given of old, I would depart from this, Thy house. Suffer me ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... human foresight cannot provide against the envy of the gods and the tireless machinations of Fate. The widening circle of prosperity grows weaker as it spreads until the antagonistic forces which it has pushed back are made powerful by compression to resist and finally overwhelm. So great grew the renown of my skill in medicine that patients were brought to me from all the four quarters of the globe. Burdensome invalids whose tardiness in dying was a perpetual grief to their ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... have two tails, those new beasts—a little tail behind, in the usual place, and a very big tail in front, which they use as a hand. They are very many, and very terrible. Do you think it is they who are driving all these other beasts upon us to overwhelm us?" ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... is evenly excited, and the local signs of all are simultaneously felt. This equable tension, this balance and elasticity in the very absence of fixity, give the vague but powerful feeling that we wish to describe. Did not the infinite, by this initial assault upon our senses, awe us and overwhelm us, as solemn music might, the idea of it would be abstract and moral like that of the infinitesimal, and ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... Barry exclaimed, preparing to overwhelm the big Hollander with a rush of questions long sizzling in his brain. "You can tell me a lot of things now. But what's the gateman doing? I thought he was shadowing Leyden; and hoped to find him to get some dope on Miss Sheldon's whereabouts." ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... was a leader of spirit, not to be hustled with impunity. Having several thousand burghers with him, it was evident that if he threw himself suddenly upon any part of the British line he might hope for a time to make an equal fight, and possibly to overwhelm it. Were Smith-Dorrien out of the way there would be a clear road of escape for his whole convoy to the north, while a defeat of any of the other columns would not help him much. It was on Smith-Dorrien, therefore, that he threw himself with great impetuosity. That General's force ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they could be used was also a small one; their opportunities for hiding were consequently reduced; the chances of their emplacement being immediately spotted from the fortress were correspondingly high, and the big gun in the fortress was pretty certain to overwhelm the majority of them at least. It is evident that the circumference {GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA} offers far more chances of hiding than the circumference ABC, but a still more powerful factor in favour of the new big howitzer ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... and the axles fitted with iron scythes so that they can charge straight into the ranks of the foe? [18] And suppose you heard that they have camels to ride on, each one of which would scare a hundred horses, and that they will bring up towers from which to help their own friends, and overwhelm us with volleys of darts so that we cannot fight them on level ground? [19] If this were what you had heard of the enemy, I as you, once again, you who are now so fearful what would you have done? You who turn pale when told that Croesus ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... and body that were to play so large a part in his subsequent career were still only beginning. His liver and his gastric juice, his wonder and imagination kept up a fight against the things that threatened to overwhelm soul and body together. Outside the regions devastated by the school curriculum he was still intensely curious. He had cheerful phases of enterprise, and about thirteen he suddenly discovered reading and its joys. He began to read stories voraciously, and books of travel, provided they were also ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... approach that it seemed almost to fly upon the wings of the wind, and as it came near the fisherman saw that it was manned by fearful-looking black demons, and knew that they were on their way to overwhelm the ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... Scotland. The occasion was one in which gallant bearing and kingly demeanor would have gone for much, and indeed it is not at all impossible that a leader of a different stamp from James might even then have so inspired the Highland clansmen, and so made use of his opportunity, as to overwhelm Argyll and the Hanoverian forces, and turn the whole crisis to his favor. But James was peculiarly unsuited to an enterprise of the kind. He had graceful manners, a mild, serene temper, and great power of application ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... spectacle was to see him in the drawing-room, 'dancing,' as Danjou said, 'before the Ark.' He stretched and bent his unwieldy person in all directions. He would challenge to a philosophic duel the young critic, a confirmed pessimist of three-and-twenty, and overwhelm him with his own imperturbable optimism. Laniboire the philosopher had one particular reason for this good opinion of the world; his wife had died of diphtheria caught from nursing their children; both his children had died with their mother; and each time that he repeated ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... welded most of Arabia into one, and now challenges King Hussein of Mecca for the caliphate. Hussein is only kept on his throne by British gold, paid to him from India. Ben Saoud also receives a subsidy from the British, who must continue to pay it, because otherwise ben Saoud will attack Hussein and overwhelm him. That, it is believed, would mean a rising of all the Moslem world against their rulers—in Africa—Asia—India—Java—everywhere. It began as a religious movement. It is now political—although it is held together ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... wind was blowing fiercer than ever, and the waves broke more fiercely nearer the shore. They had lost their dirty yellow colour when the light died, and were rolling after us like great black mountains, with a combing white top that seemed as if they must overwhelm us every minute. Twice they pooped us, and we were up to our waists in icy water, but still held to the wheel for ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... groaned continually, as much from her moral as from her physical sufferings. "It is horrible," said Marie Louise, "to see her suffer so." It rained in torrents, and the thunder roared as if to foretell all the misfortunes which were about to overwhelm the country. The roads, made still worse by the bad weather, were abominable. When the fugitives reached Buda, after a long and difficult journey, they were wet through, and ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... moment full of terror to both of us; the strange sensation of rising in the air, the quivering muscles of the athaleb at the working of the enormous pinions, the tremendous display of strength, all combined to overwhelm me with a sense of utter helplessness. With one hand I clung to the stiff mane of the monster; with the other I held Almah, who was also grasping the athaleb's hair; and thus for some time all thought ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... world would evidently lose the chance of guiding their souls to this unknown abode. They would draw no profits from the hopes with which they feast them, and from the terrors with which they take care to overwhelm them. If the future is of no real utility to the human race, it is at least of the greatest advantage to those who take upon themselves the responsibility of conducting ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... time to prove that the American people know the difference between liberty and license, by their support of the party of order and constitutional government, and by administering a thorough rebuke to those licentious men who are seeking to overwhelm the country and its Constitution in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Sayest thou our good lord is fulfilled of all nobleness? Amen, and so be it—he has the more need to have those about him who are unscrupulous in his service, and who, because they know that his fall will overwhelm and crush them, must wager both blood and brain, soul and body, in order to keep him aloft; and this I tell thee, because I ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... lamentation and sorrow? Yes, my Rinaldo. The cloud will quickly vanish, but such is the fate of mortals. The events, which, when sunk in the distant past, affect us only with a calm regret, in the moment in which they overtake us, overwhelm us with sorrow. ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... requires. The part of a man of sense and virtue is to make his past errors of use to his future conduct. Whilst I had nothing to say that could give you pleasure, I forbore to answer your letter; I forbore to overwhelm a mind sinking under remorse. My sacred duty is to waken the sinner to repentance, not to shut the gates of mercy on the penitent. Now, I can relieve your mind from part of the load by which it has been justly oppressed. You know that nothing can palliate ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... have just detailed. The unpleasant impression which these conferences were calculated to leave upon my mind was fast wearing away, when there occurred a circumstance, slight indeed in itself, but calculated irrepressibly to awaken all my worst suspicions, and to overwhelm me ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... And because they were all listening so earnestly—especially the "Rajah," whose large brilliant eyes were fixed upon Engelhardt—the little lawyer was once more seized with fear. He felt as if his legs were sinking through the floor, as if in a swamp, but just when this fear was about to overwhelm him like black darkness, a bird lit on the window-sill and chirped, and ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... again to the slow chant and the constant measured beat of the flat-toned, vibrant drum. Something in its rhythm searched and penetrated and swayed and seemed to overwhelm him. It came as the measured, insistent beat of fate itself, relentless, inexorable; and all the time it was stirring in him vague, latent instincts of savagery. He wished it would stop, so that he might reason, yet dreaded that it might stop at any moment. Fascinated by the weird rhythm and ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... fictitious state of prosperity for a season exists, and, in the language of the day, money becomes plenty. Contracts are entered into by individuals resting on this unsubstantial state of things, but the delusion speedily passes away and the country is overrun with an indebtedness so weighty as to overwhelm many and to visit every department of industry with great and ruinous embarrassment. The greatest vigilance becomes necessary on the part of Government to guard against this state of things. The depositories must be given distinctly to understand ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to be true, and all difficulties in regard to moral justice vanish. If a man be born blind, deaf, a cripple, a slave, an idiot, it is because in a previous life he abused his privileges and heaped on his soul a load of guilt which he is now expiating. If a sudden calamity overwhelm a good man with unmerited ruin and anguish, it is the penalty of some crime committed in a state of responsible being beyond the confines of his present memory. Does a surprising piece of good fortune accrue to any one, splendid riches, a commanding position, a peerless friendship? It ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... cried. "One thing at a time, if you please. Positively you overwhelm me with surprise. In one breath you tell me you are 'John Kennedy,' and then, without giving a poor girl a chance, you say you are ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... were men of experience in the art of warfare. Sir William Howe had served in America during the French War and was accounted an excellent officer, a strict disciplinarian, and a gallant gentleman. Nevertheless he loved ease, society, and good living, and his expulsion from Boston, his failure to overwhelm Washington by sallies from his comfortable bases at New York and Philadelphia, destroyed every shred of his military reputation. John Burgoyne, to whom was given the task of penetrating New York from Canada, had likewise seen service in the French War ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... at last, with strange gentleness, "insult me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn! but come, come. Let us make haste. It is to be to-morrow, I tell you. The gibbet on the Greve, you know it? it stands always ready. It is horrible! to see you ride in that tumbrel! Oh mercy! Until now I have never felt the power of my ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... eagerness to bring matters to a conclusion, and as every hour reinforcements poured into the enemy's camp the scanty patience of the English was exhausted. They declared that the legate's talk about saving the effusion of Christian blood was only a blind to gain time, so that the French might overwhelm them. Edward broke off the negotiations, and, retiring to a position more remote from the enemy, passed the night quietly. Early next morning the cardinal again sought to treat, but this time his offers were rejected. On his ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... wide, Returning battle wakes on ev'ry side; And rolling on with full and threat'ning sound, In wildly mingled fury closes round. With bellowings loud, and hollow deep'ning swell, Reiterated hiss, and whistlings shrill, Fierce wars the varied storm, with fury tore, Till all is overwhelm'd in ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... existence to any one. Financially beggared, his ancestral home covered by mortgages which Mrs. Laurance held, and utterly hopeless of arousing her compassion or obtaining her pardon, he was too proud to endure the humiliation that would overwhelm him in the divorce suit he knew she intended to institute; and resolved never to return to the United States, where he could expect ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Mr. Jennings was at Ewhurst everybody was half-asleep. "At the post-office a woman and a girl turned out in some consternation to look at me, thinking, perhaps, that I had a letter concealed about me, and was about to post it, and thus overwhelm them with work." Such a village would be desirable anywhere. But Ewhurst, although it can be sleepy in the sunshine, as everything in the country ought to be, has an eye for country business. At ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... but the name of this woman was found upon no heroic roll, nor is it on the page of any history that men have since written, although she made heroes of cowards, and helped to stay the wave of desolation which, in the dark days of '76, threatened to overwhelm the land. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... o'clock to tea. After tea they dance till supper. Supper is all gaiety and gallantry, and the latter perhaps of a kind, which in England would not be deemed very innocent. The champagne then goes round, and the ladies drink as much as the gentlemen, that is to say, enough to exhilarate, not to overwhelm the animal spirits. A French woman with three or four glasses of wine in her head, would certainly make an English one stare; but France is the land of love, and it is an universal maxim that life is ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... pontnik was again terror-stricken. He knew, that he could threaten and say what would tame and overwhelm Jurand, but he was terrified lest, before saying a word, something dreadful would happen to him; he therefore remained silent, with dilated eyes, as if petrified with fear, fixed on the threatening face ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... has likewise faults, and faults sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall shew them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious malignity or superstitious veneration. No question can be more innocently discussed than a dead poet's pretensions to renown; and little regard ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... not speak, and Lord Montacute continued — "I greatly fear that thou hast undertaken more than thou canst accomplish; and that, instead of drawing thy brothers from the paths of peril, thou wilt rather be led by them into treacherous waters, which may at last overwhelm thee. You are all young together, and many dangers beset the steps of youth. Thou art true and loyal hearted, that I know well; but thou art ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... at first, that the enemy, reinforced from Caimanera or Guantanamo city, would assemble in force on the slopes of the eastern hills, creep up through the scrub until they were within a short distance of the camp, and then overwhelm the marines in a sudden rush-assault. They were known to have six thousand regulars at Guantanamo city, only about fifteen miles away, and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that they might detach a large part of this force for offensive operations ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... most casual eye; and, from the anxious care with which Barbara looks away from me, when she addresses me, I can perceive that she has observed it, as, indeed, how could she fail to do? If Tou Tou were here, she would overwhelm me with officious questions—would stare me crazy, but Barbara averts ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... of fibre he needed in a helpmate. She dwelt with a woman's fascination upon the prospect of exercising a creative influence—even while she acknowledged the fearful possibility of his power in unguarded moments to overwhelm and destroy her. Here was another incentive to resist the gusts of his passion. She could guide and develop him by helping and improving herself. Hope and ambition throbbed within her, she felt a contempt for his wife, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... some reason for Mme. Mauperin's uneasiness. Her feeling of constraint was certainly justified. Everything in the house to which she was going was calculated to intimidate people, to set them down, crush them, penetrate and overwhelm them with a sense of their own inferiority. There was an ostentatious and studied show of money, a clever display of wealth. Opulence aimed at the humiliation of less fortunate beings, by all possible ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... of place in any sort of gardening." We do not actually speak all this, but we imply it, and we often find that the mere utterance of the one word, "toy gardening," has a magical effect to suggest all the rest and to overwhelm with contrition the bad taste and frivolity of many a misguided attempt at adornment. At that word of exorcism joints of cerulean sewer-pipe crested with scarlet geraniums, rows of whited cobbles along the walk or drive like a cannibal's skulls around his ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... punishments, and hope of rewards (which are the Nerves of it,) otherwise than by the Civill Power (which is the Soule of the Common-wealth) they ought to be moved; and by strange, and hard words suffocates the people, and either Overwhelm the Common-wealth with Oppression, or cast it into the ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... it definitely in your eye, so that from the sentiment with which you regard it curiosity and surprise are almost completely, and perhaps deplorably, absent. Admiration remains, however—admiration of a familiar and even slightly patronising kind. The Maison Carree does not overwhelm you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the great sensations of antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spite of having been put to all sorts of incongruous uses, marvellously preserved. Its slender columns, its delicate proportions, its charming ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... circumstances might permit. The expression is so luminous that it can scarcely be doubted that the words are substantially those of the admiral himself.[65] First, the great combination, which necessarily for the moment neglects a part of the enemy in order to disconcert and overwhelm the rest; afterwards, the unremitting pursuit, which ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... me; I will advise you and direct you. I should not be a man if this womanly helplessness did not just give you a double attractiveness in my eyes. You must not think anymore about the hard things I said in my first moment of consternation, when I thought everything was going to overwhelm me. I have forgiven you, Nora; I swear to you I ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... united with, the sacred and exhilarating interests of the Gospel to arouse all that was noble, and divine in every heart. The Moderator reverently led the Assembly in prayer and constituted the court most solemnly in the name of Jesus Christ. Such a prayer should overwhelm the soul with God's presence, burden the conscience with responsibilities, make the spiritual world dreadfully visible, and bring God's servants close to His ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... the gun and felt better. With it I could easily handle the members of my own watch, and I did not doubt that with the assistance of Percy Darrow even a surprise would hardly overwhelm us. I did not count on Dr. Schermerhorn. He was quite capable of losing himself in a problem of trajectory ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hearts And bringing reassurance of God's power To one who listens below in silent prayer and praise. Great peace of God, be with us all! Great peace of God encompass us! Speak to the waves tonight, Father, that they stand. Stretch forth Thy hand and stay their power, Calm them, that they overwhelm not. For Thy voice is "mightier than the noise of many waters, Yea, than the mighty waves of the sea." This Thou canst do, O ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... temple. The pediment and moulding of a column lay at my feet,—around and opposite across the valley were numerous sepulchres hewn in the solid rock; yet the infantry of the Syrians were sufficient to overwhelm the gallant defenders. Judas in this emergency resolved to come to their relief, raising the siege of the citadel and outflanking the enemy. For this purpose he "pitched at Bath Zacharias over against the king's camp," (ver. 32.) This was seventy stadia, or nearly nine Roman, or ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... white sails, Dim coasts, and cloud-like hills, and shoreless Ocean— It seem'd like Omnipresence! God, methought, Had built him there a Temple: the whole World Seem'd imag'd in its vast circumference: 40 No wish profan'd my overwhelmd heart. Blest hour! It was a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... maritime supremacy. The great military machine of the French army was then turned eastward against the armies of the coalition which England, under Pitt, was forming; and in a series of astonishing campaigns it was used to beat down the Austrians in 1805 at Austerlitz; to overwhelm the Prussians in 1806 at Jena and Auerstadt; and to force the Russians, after {190} a severe winter campaign in East Prussia, to come to terms in 1807. Napoleon and the Tsar, Alexander, meeting on the bridge at Tilsit, July 7, divided Europe between them by agreeing upon a ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... who has just arrived home, the eager expectancy of his folk awaiting him, this autumn sky, this world, the gentle morning breeze, the universal responsive tremor in tree and shrub and in the wavelets on the river, conspire to overwhelm this lonely youth, gazing from his window, with ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... and thereupon I appeal thee to answer before the judgment-seat of Christ:" By this time the fire was kindled, and the noble martyr yielded his soul to God, crying out, "How long, O Lord, shall darkness overwhelm this realm? How long will thou suffer this tyranny of men?" And then ended his speech with Stephen, saying, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Mr. Barrymore's word that we'd nothing to declare, but poked and prodded at our hold-alls and bags, and even sniffed as if he suspected us of spirits, tobacco, or onions. He looked so comic as he did this that Maida laughed, which appeared to overwhelm him with remorse, as if an angel had had hysterics. He flushed, bowed, motioned for us to pass on, and we sailed into a ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... honour for me to act with a gentleman whose ancestors figured honourably in the crusades," said she, "and I only hope that my profound respect for him will not overwhelm me, and spoil my acting; fortunately I have become pretty well accustomed to the society of people of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... unbroken triumph, carrying the star-spangled jacket to victory in every race in which she ran. Then he had brought her home to England, her reputation already made, and growing hugely all the while, suddenly to overwhelm the world, when she crowned her victories on three continents by winning the Grand National at Liverpool—only to be disqualified for crossing amid one of the stormiest scenes in racing history. After that Mocassin ceased to be a mare. She became a talisman, ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Whitewing tells me there is no one at their backs. If our foes discover their mistake, they will turn again, and the contempt which they ought to pour on themselves because of their own cowardice they will heap on our heads, and overwhelm us by their numbers—for who can withstand numbers? They will scatter us like small dust before the ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... loved," said Keats, "the principle of beauty in all things." It is that to which all I have said has been leading, as many roads unite in one. We must try to use discrimination, not to be so optimistic that we see beauty if it is not there, not to overwhelm every fling that every craftsman has at beauty with gush and panegyric; not to praise beauty in all companies, or to go off like a ripe broom-pod, at a touch. When Walter Pater was confronted with something which courtesy demanded that he should seem ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... down at once and without respect of persons: and next, that a vent is given for the escape of all those evil humours which, from whatever cause, gather in cities against particular citizens; for unless an outlet be duly provided for these by the laws, they flow into irregular channels and overwhelm the State. There is nothing, therefore, which contributes so much to the stability and permanence of a State, as to take care that the fermentation of these disturbing humours be supplied by operation of law with a recognized ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... wish was father, Harry, to that thought; I stay too long by thee, I weary thee. Dost thou so hunger for my empty chair, That thou wilt needs invest thee with mine honors Before thy hour be ripe? O, foolish youth! Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee. Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity Is held from falling with so weak a mind That it will quickly drop; my day is dim. Thou hast stolen that, which after some few hours, Were thine without offense; and at my death, Thou ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... evidence shows the extraordinary expansion of Lesbian love in prisons. The mujeres hombrunas receive masculine names—Pepe, Chulo, Bernardo, Valiente; new-comers are surrounded in the court-yard by a crowd of lascivious women, who overwhelm them with honeyed compliments and gallantries and promises of protection, the most robust virago having most successes; a single day ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... some intricate way with others, and suggesting others unseen; and if it were the reality, instead of my drawing, which he had to deal with, he would find the infinity, in a little while, altogether overwhelm him. But even in this imperfect sketch, as he traces the multitudinous involution of flowing line, passing from swift to slight curvature, or slight to swift, at every instant, he will, I think, find enough to convince him of the truth of what has been ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... contrary, to one going to sea in vessels as small as those with which Columbus made the voyage when he discovered America, the loftiest billows would rise and swell, and toss their foaming crests far above his head, as he clung to the deck to gaze at them. They would seem at times ready to overwhelm him with the vast and towering volumes of water which they raised around him. Then, when the shock which was produced by the encounter of one of them was passed, and the ship, trembling from the concussion, ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... perhaps, the least selfish war of which history tells. It was not a war of aggrandisement or of conquest: it was waged to deliver not merely Spain, but the whole of Europe, from that military despotism with which the genius and ambition of Napoleon threatened to overwhelm the civilised world. And on what a scale Great Britain, when aroused, can fight, let the Peninsular war tell. At its close the fleets of Great Britain rode triumphant on every sea; and in the Peninsula between 1808-14 her land forces fought and won nineteen pitched battles, made or sustained ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... at them as we think how small were their causes. Well, they were great to us. We were little creatures then, and little things were relatively very great. 'The sports of childhood satisfy the child:' the sorrows of childhood overwhelm the poor little thing. We think a sympathetic reader would hardly read without a tear as well as a smile, an incident in the early life of Patrick Fraser Tytler, recorded in his recently published biography. When five years old he got hold of the gun of an elder brother, and broke the spring of its ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... His enemies. Such is the protection of God. Billions of prayers have been uttered; has one been answered? Who sends plague, pestilence and famine? Who bids the earthquake devour and the volcano to overwhelm? ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the first thing, after all; and next to that, good sense, respectability, and moderate wealth. If you should marry the handsomest, and most accomplished and superficially agreeable man in the world, you little know the misery that would overwhelm you if, after all, you should find him to be a worthless reprobate, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... people have need of but one King' wherefore it beseemeth that he be well acquainted with their natures, that he reduce their discord to concord, that with his justice be encompass them all and with his bounties overwhelm them all. And know, O King, that Ardeshir, styled Jamr Shadid, or the Live Coal, third of the Kings of Persia, conquered the whole world and divided it into four divisions and, for this purpose, get for himself four seal rings, one for each ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... are patent, no less apparent are our springs of power. Here in Doom and here alone will you find that unity of action which makes for empire. Were the Stockaders and the House People to join hands they could overwhelm us in a night, but they will not, since jealousy digs an ever-widening chasm. Moreover, it is a strong position that we hold here in this wilderness of stone, when every brick is a man. There is no need for boasting; this is ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... returned, tired out with ceaseless wandering. He had eaten nothing all day and looked very old and haggard. She had expected a tender scene of confidence and was ready to overwhelm him with the consolations of her love; but even now he said nothing to her, and she dared not take the first step herself. From his silent misery she gathered that Gabrielle had not told him that she knew of the secret. Evidently, and very wisely, she ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... after years of devastation and occupation. And, on humanitarian grounds and in support of our friends in the region, we have worked vigorously with international organizations to arrange relief and resettlement for the exodus of Indo-chinese refugees which threatened to overwhelm these nations. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter • Jimmy Carter
... "You overwhelm me with grief," cried Delvile, "by finding you thus distressed, when I had hoped—Oh cruel Cecilia! how different to this did I hope to have met you!—all your doubts settled, all your fears removed, your mind perfectly composed, and ready, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... down at a turn in the path, just out of sight of the house, and waited. Soon she saw, with a certain grim satisfaction, Zora and Bles emerging from the swamp engaged in earnest conversation. Here was an opportunity to overwhelm both with an unforgettable reprimand. She rose before them ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... probable, in fact, that but for the exasperation caused by so many bitter shafts, Jesus might long have remained unnoticed, and have been lost in the dreadful storm which was soon about to overwhelm the whole Jewish nation. The high priesthood and the Sadducees had rather disdained than hated him. The great sacerdotal families, the Boethusim, the family of Hanan, were only fanatical in their conservatism. The Sadducees, like Jesus, rejected the "traditions" of the Pharisees.[1] ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... thou who disturbest the happy estate of the Egyptians, and gavest us the opportunity of flying away from our under them, and madest the dominion of Pharaoh inferior to my dominion; thou who didst make the sea dry land for us, when we knew not whither to go, and didst overwhelm the Egyptians with those destructive waves which had been divided for us; thou who didst bestow upon us the security of weapons when we were naked; thou who didst make the fountains that were corrupted to ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... scene she shows that a few tears might overwhelm her in his absence. She raises her mother beyond weeping them, yet her soft purity she ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Lewisham stared at the issue she had laid bare. He sought some crashing proposition, some line of convincing reasoning, with which to overwhelm and hide this new aspect of things. It would not come. He found himself fenced in on every side. A surging, irrational ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... arms; and I do not think (if I were to predict now) that six months hence the Senator will indulge in the same tone of prediction which is his favorite key now. I would ask him what would you have us do now—a confederate army within twenty miles of us, advancing, or threatening to advance, to overwhelm your Government; to shake the pillars of the Union; to bring it around your head, if you stay here, in ruins? Are we to stop and talk about an uprising sentiment in the North against the war? Are we to predict evil, and retire from ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... expression, and his whole manner evidenced the strain he was enduring. Gorham noted all this, and in a measure it surprised him. If Covington was so constituted that he could play the hypocrite, he would not have supposed his sensibilities acute enough to overwhelm ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... Courage, and wither Resolution! To your patronage, as a man of some genius, you have allowed me a claim; and your esteem, as an honest man, I know is my due: to these, Sir, permit me to appeal; by these may I adjure you to save me from that misery which threatens to overwhelm me, and which, with my latest breath I will say it, I have ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... representatives of a race which had robbed him of his bride; and there were times when the giant's spirit chafed so fearfully at the sight of the red men, that nothing but the remembrance of his promise to Stanley, to offer them no injury, prevented him from stirring up his tribe to overwhelm and destroy them. It was, therefore, with a feeling of relief that Maximus beheld them march single file over the rocky platform, and disappear in the ravine that led ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... administration] has difficulties ahead, but it must meet them boldly and fairly. There is a surplus revenue which must be disposed of and the tariff reduced to a legitimate revenue standard. It will not do to allow the surplus to accumulate in the Treasury and thus create a pecuniary revulsion that would overwhelm the business arrangements and financial affairs of the country. The River and Harbor question must be met and decided. Now in my opinion is the time to put those great interests on a more substantial and secure basis by a well devised system of Tonnage duties. I do not know what the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... to be bound up with the fate of Nelson Smith, and evil which might threaten his career would overwhelm hers also. She spent dark moments in striving to plan some brilliant yet safe coup which would ruin him and Annesley, in case she should find out that he had tired ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... driven at a speed that seemed to her nearly incredible, a smother of foam at its stern, long purple ripples widening away from the jet of white water at the stem, a smooth, high swell of dark water pursuing as if it meant to catch up and overwhelm the boat and its occupants. These latter occupied the extremes of the little vessel: Ephraim astern, beside the motor; the slighter figure at the ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... continue to accept what he had willingly given his wife's adopted child, and Kitty no longer needed me. It is a fearful feeling, this sense of belonging to no one, of having no one belonging to you. Lest it overwhelm me, I went at once to work upon the house in Scarborough Square left me by Aunt Matilda, together with an annuity of a thousand dollars. Already it means much to me. For a while, at least, it is a haven, a shelter, a home. ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... of Olivia? Was she dead to feeling at this strange mysterious moment? Did no rushing torrent of ideas suddenly overwhelm her? The man whose loss she had lamented not in his grave; that man again her saviour, her guardian genius in the dark hour of dread and danger; acquainted in a way the most extraordinary with her thoughts, and favourable wishes; or, as she ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the beaten, common-sense, road of duty, and make her the prey of a fatal instability and its attendant mortifications, follies, and sorrows. Her acute feelings, and tender affections need a moral counterpoise. The sudden sickness of the loved will else overwhelm her, and unfit her for the service she owes them. In this world of casualties, if her heart be not braced by the power of good judgment, she will yield to disaster and grief, with a hopeless inefficiency. Her virtues must be the result of reflection, inherent, and not ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... the pure descendants of Adam and Eve? What crimes had they committed, that had not been before committed by the pure descendants of Noah? What iniquity had the little children and nursing infants been guilty of, that such a terrible fate should overwhelm them? There must have been some good cause for such entire destruction; for the Lord of the whole earth does right, and only right. Let us see how God deals with Adam's children, how bad soever they ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... of a stately Elm, Close sate I by a goodly Rivers side, Where gliding streams the Rocks did overwhelm; A lonely place with pleasures dignifi'd, I once that lov'd the shady woods so well, Now thought the rivers did the trees excel, And if the sun would ever ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... presence of the air-ships, holding at their mercy the arsenals and the richest cities in the Eastern States, proved that tremendous and all as it was, this was only a phase of some vast and mysterious cataclysm which might as easily involve the whole civilised world as it could overwhelm the United States ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... not the great gate shut? They are thronging in to vespers—half the town. We shall be overwhelm'd. Seize him and carry him! Come with ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... this, O King! is sent On thee a double chastisement: Thee and thine, thy crown and realm, One last wreck shall overwhelm. Woe ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the haste and confusion of her departure, had not thought of anything, and, stifling with rage, she watched all these people placidly eating. At first, ill-suppressed wrath shook her whole person, and she opened her lips to shriek the truth at them, to overwhelm them with a volley of insults; but she could not utter a word, so ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... aroused. He sent an officer to the Dey with a letter, informing him that if the prisoners were not released and the captured vessels instantly restored, and promise given to respect in future the flags of France and Italy, he would send a fleet and an army and overwhelm him with ruin. The Dey had heard of Napoleon's career in Egypt. He was thoroughly frightened, restored the ships and the prisoners, implored clemency, and with barbarian injustice doomed to death those who had captured the ships in obedience to his commands. Their lives were saved ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... prudent among us, I thought that we should trust entirely to men who came in a small number, and who, in fact, confided their own safety to us; though it would have been so easy for them, to come in sufficiently large numbers to overwhelm us. We did so, and experience proved that ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... And as we find our passions do rebel, Encounter them with reason, or divert them, By giving scope unto some other humour Of lesser danger: as, in politic bodies, There's nothing more doth overwhelm the judgment, And cloud the understanding, than too much Settling and fixing, and, as 'twere, subsiding Upon one object. For the incorporating Of these same outward things, into that part, Which we call mental, leaves some certain faeces That ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... dear one lies dying; when we have struggled through a night hideous with the phantoms of ruin and disgrace, then the dawn comes, and the sun. We lift our seamed faces to the bright sky and hope again. For if there is still harmony in the heavens, how can the discord of the earth overwhelm us? So we comfort our hearts, foolishly exalting our troubles to the plane of ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... themselves in misfortunes they often bring upon themselves. If you would only think of the absurdity of what you are saying. You have admitted your prosperity; and the other troubles, home troubles, which I know are very trying, need not overwhelm you. You are much less manly, Walter, now you are a man, than I expected you to be. You have quite disappointed me, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... I left the shop, determined to overwhelm the unbeliever with proof, and put him to shame before his own soul, whence, I thought, would come even more good to him than to his son. For there was a great deal of self-satisfaction mixed up with the man's honesty, and the sooner that had a blow the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... years of struggle to make ends meet, Mr. Alcott was obliged to face the fact that the experiment had been an utter failure, that he had exhausted his resources of mind, body and estate. It was a black time for the gentle dreamer, and for a while it seemed as if despair would overwhelm him. But with his brave wife to help him and the children's welfare to think of, he shook off his despondency bravely, and decided to make a fresh start. So Mrs. Alcott wrote to her brother in Boston for help, sold all the furniture they could spare, and went to Still River, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... got within five or six feet of the bottom of the ocean. There the metal was still clearly visible, but even the most hardy miners would scarcely have ventured on an attempt to win another grain from the rock overhead, lest the water should rush in and overwhelm them, ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... in a man's life when the female element in his household asserts itself in dominant forms that seem to threaten to overwhelm him. The fair creatures, who in most matters have depended on his judgment, evidently look upon him at these seasons as only a forlorn, incapable male creature, to be cajoled and flattered and persuaded out his native blindness and absurdity into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... "You overwhelm me with your compliments," said the Idiot. "I am sorry I am so young, but I cannot be brought to believe that that is my own fault. One must live to attain age, and how the deuce can one live when ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... through all the details, as I might, and write how Crittenden's brigades pressed on, and captured Rebel batteries; how the Rebels tried to overwhelm him; how the tide of battle surged from hill to hill; how the Rebels tried to cut McCook to pieces; how Wallace's division flanked the enemy at Owl Creek; how Rousseau's brigade fought in front of ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... evils overwhelm you as thousands have suffered, and thousands have surmounted; but turn your thoughts with vigour to some other plan of life, and keep always in your mind, that, with due submission to Providence, a man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself[1124]. Your Patron's weakness ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... or through long, rank grass, waist-high and water-rotted with sea-fog. Here they launched their boat of sea-lion skin on a bone frame, and pulled across a bay of ten miles to the farthermost hunting-grounds. Again, the natives overwhelm Drusenin with kindness. The Russian keeps his sentinels as {91} vigilant as ever pacing before the doors of the hut; but he goes unguarded and unharmed among the native dwellings. Perhaps, poor Drusenin was not above swaggering a little, belted in the gay uniform Russian officers ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... anxious night, the wife of one of the caciques, who had taken a great liking to Donna Marina, came secretly to visit that lady, informing her of the plot, invited her to take refuge in her house from the danger which was about to overwhelm us, and proposed to give her for a husband the brother of a boy who was along with her. Donna Marina, with her usual presence of mind, agreed to every thing proposed with a profusion of thanks, and said ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... centuries was no longer the Roman Empire of the great Antonine and Augustan age; that it had lost its hold over its territories and its economic cohesion and was menaced by the barbarians who were in the end to overwhelm it. The territory of the Roman Empire had at its height stretched from the lands bordering the North Sea to the lands on the northern fringes of the Sahara, and from the Atlantic coast of Europe to the central Asiatic Steppes; it comprised most of the ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... necessary for man's thorough spiritual health. Perception of cause and effect, generalisation of law, reduces the universe indeed to what man's intellect can grasp; but in the process of such reduction to the laws of man's thought, the universe is shorn of its very power to move man's emotion and overwhelm his soul. The abstract which we have made does not vivify us sufficiently. And the emotional communion of man with nature is through those various faculties which we call aesthetic. It is not to no purpose that poetry has for ever talked to us of skies and mountains and waters; we require, for ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... parents; but, alas! from the time I quitted the paternal roof not one stone was added to the building, and even the traces of what existed were nearly obliterated by the deluge of vice which threatened soon to overwhelm me. Sometimes, indeed, I feebly, but ineffectually endeavoured to stem the torrent; at others, I suffered myself to be borne along with all its fatal rapidity. I was frank, generous, quick, and mischievous; and I must admit that a large portion ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in the fragrant east, Like the fair Phoenix from her balmy nest; But yet thy fading glories soon decay, Thine's but a momentary stay; Too soon thou'rt ravish'd from our fight, Borne down the stream of day, and overwhelm'd with night. Thy beams to thy own ruin haste, They're fram'd too exquisite to last: Thine is a glorious, but a short-liv'd state: Pity so fair a birth should ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... of nuts came tumbling down, which they often had difficulty in avoiding. To the right was the burning mountain, towards which they cast many an anxious glance, for at any moment it might send forth a shower of stones and ashes, which might overwhelm them. As they reached the sea-shore, near the cave, they saw that their worst anticipations had been fulfilled. At the further end of the reef lay the wreck of a fine ship. The larger portion had been torn away ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... suggestion—one he himself believed in—for the last. It would help lift the dead weight of bitter anxiety which was sure to overwhelm his visitor in the wakeful ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... family's food absorbs all of the energy I care to put into gardening. So my yard is neat but shaggy. Motivated by what I consider total rationality, my lawn is cut only when it threatens to overwhelm the lawnmower, and the lawn is not irrigated, so it browns off and stops growing in ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon |
