"Prodigious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bring to tell that's new! "Nothing that's either strange or true. What a prodigious school! I'm sure You've got a hundred here, or more. A word, Sir, if you please." I will— You girls, till I ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... the pleasant fragrance of the fields. And when in the gathering gloom, which hides the signs of decay, there appear suddenly, above the little houses, so lavishly ornamented with mushrabiyas and arabesques, the tall aerial minarets, rising to a prodigious height into the twilight sky, it is still ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... does not take out more than one-half the coal, leaving the less easily mined or lower grade material to be made permanently inaccessible by the caving in of the abandoned workings. The loss to the Nation from this form of waste is prodigious and inexcusable. ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... speech, "a piece of finished villany" in the eyes of true patriots, appeared in Philadelphia on the same day as "Common Sense". Thus Paine was as lucky in his time of publication as in his choice of a subject. All contemporaries admit that the pamphlet produced a prodigious effect. Paine himself says,—"The success it met with was beyond anything since the invention of printing. I gave the copyright up to every State in the Union, and the demand ran to not less than one hundred thousand copies." The authorship ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... that a howdah may be subjected to the most severe strain, especially should a tiger spring upon the head of an elephant, and the animal exert its prodigious strength to throw off its assailant. The irons for fastening the girths should therefore be of the toughest quality, and, instead of actual girths, only thick ropes of cotton ought to be used. A girth secured ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... extreme excitement, hissed, "Baloo, sahib, baloo!" and began aimlessly running to and fro, apparently hoping to meet the bear somewhere. It was truly gay for a few minutes, but as nothing further occurred, and the beaters grew very hoarse with their prodigious efforts, I hurried on to Walter's post ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Collingwood; where they embarked on the steamers Algoma and Chigora; and proceeded 300 miles to Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior; thence by land and water through a dense wilderness, several hundred miles, to Fort Garry, at Red River. A prodigious undertaking, indeed, involving a vast amount of labor and privation; nevertheless the majority of the troops endured it tolerably well. During the first two or three weeks Fred Charlston stood the hardships and inconveniences with a brave spirit, and enjoyed ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... confined himself to the career of a violinist. He died at Lysoe, near Bergen, on the 17th of August 1880. Ole Bull's "polacca guerriera" and many of his other violin pieces, among them two concertos, are interesting to the virtuoso, and his fame rests upon his prodigious technique. The memoir published by his widow in 1886 contains many illustrations of a career that was exceptionally brilliant; it gives a picture of a strong individuality, which often found expression in a somewhat ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... enterprise of Lycurgus was a new division of the lands. For he found a prodigious inequality, the city overcharged with many indigent persons, who had no land, and the wealth centred in the hands of a few. Determined, therefore, to root out the evils of insolence, envy, avarice, and luxury, and those distempers of a state still more inveterate and fatal, I ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... was both. He was massive in intellect, colossal in culture, prodigious in memory, weighed nigh three hundred pounds, and had prejudices to match. He was possessed of a giant's strength, and occasionally used it like a giant—for instance, when he felled an offending bookseller ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... loved with a passionate tenderness. He, from a very early age, manifested that he was a child of quick parts: he seemed to master in a short time, with consummate ease, lessons that would tax the brains of others for hours; and he had a prodigious memory. He was also a general favorite, because of his chivalrous character and amiable disposition. In fact, this last element of character was his weakness, for he was so amiable as to sometimes be persuaded to enter into engagements against the dictates ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... cast down on the floor of the House of Commons during his speech of 28th December. The dimensions exactly tally with those named by the biographer of Lord Eldon, who retained that dagger, though Bland Burges also put in a claim to have possessed it. The scepticism which one feels about this prodigious order of daggers, which others give as 3,000, is somewhat lessened by finding another letter, of 2nd October 1792, addressed to Dundas by James Maxwell of York, who stated that he highly disapproved of the "French" opinions of his younger brother (specimens ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Great numbers were killed; others were driven headlong across the bridge or were drowned in the stream, which is said to have been literally choked with dead. But for a time the advance of the English was stayed; for one Norseman, a man of great stature and prodigious strength, took post in the middle of the narrow bridge and barred the way to the English host. But one foe could attack him at a time, and so great was his strength and prowess that it is said forty Englishmen fell under ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... for large colliers or coal-ships employed between Newcastle and London. Also they built the biggest ships and the best, for the said fetching of coals of any that were employed in that trade. They built, also, there so prodigious strong, that it was an ordinary thing for an Ipswich collier, if no disaster happened to him, to reign (as seamen call it) forty or fifty years, ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... required to pass with lateral motion from its perpendicular 100,000,000 miles, so that it may be in advance of the nucleus and again rest on its orbit. This orbit is an impassable line, and therefore instantly arrests the prodigious lateral velocity of the tail. That impassable orbital line is to it as solid and inflexible as a wall of adamant. The motion so instantly arrested would be disastrous to any tail, whether composed of gas, meteorites, or electricity, whatever ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... where there are hundreds upon hundreds of works ten times as big as ours. Nearly everybody is either forging, or casting, or grinding. The place is full of steam-engines, while the quantity of coal that is burnt here every day must be prodigious. Aha! Here's ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... look upon her sorrows, and her smitten fields, and her ruined cities, and her desolate homes, we can firmly and confidently proclaim that the breath of that divinely planted aspiration, her passion of freedom, will prove to be mightier than all the materialistic strength and all the prodigious armaments which seem to have laid her low. It is a reality ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... weight of his rider, seemed encouraged to renewed exertions, and after prodigious efforts, emerged from the quicksands, and uttered a neigh, as though rejoicing ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... "These prodigious catastrophes," I said, "had numberless causes; but when we have slowly traced our way through all the more or less unforeseen circumstances, and have marked the gradual change in Napoleon's character, have noted the acts of imprudence, folly, and violence which this genius committed; ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... we began to coast along this new sea. On the left huge pyramids of rock, piled one upon another, produced a prodigious titanic effect. Down their sides flowed numberless waterfalls, which went on their way in brawling but pellucid streams. A few light vapours, leaping from rock to rock, denoted the place of hot springs; and streams flowed softly down to the ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the prodigious success of that adorable piece, a success in which Agar and I had our share, Chilly thought more of me, and began to like me. He insisted on paying for our costumes, which was great extravagance for him. I had become the adored queen of the students, and I used to receive little ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... adventures of Joseph Rouletabille. Down to the present time he had so firmly opposed my doing it that I had come to despair of ever publishing the most curious of police stories of the past fifteen years. I had even imagined that the public would never know the whole truth of the prodigious case known as that of The Yellow Room, out of which grew so many mysterious, cruel, and sensational dramas, with which my friend was so closely mixed up, if, propos of a recent nomination of the illustrious Stangerson ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra. It is no breach of charity to call these Fools; it is the style all holy writers have afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonical scripture, and a point of our faith to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude do I only include the base and minor sort of people: there is ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... with simple cunning. He had remained talking pugilism with Keggs in the pantry till a prodigious yawn from his host had told him that the time was come for the breaking up of the party. Then, begging Keggs not to move, as he could find his way out, he had hurried to the back door, opened and shut it, and ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... over when the detachment reached the scene of action. Folkmar, governor of Prague, had fallen, Henry had fled, and the Bohemians were routed with prodigious slaughter. The fugitives rallied under the walls of Wartburg. But they were speedily dispersed and pursued, until nightfall ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... support for their own apparently useless avoirdupois, picked up the local gems before his eyes and had them hired out at interest to supply the new family with bread and butter. And all this in the face of the fact that he was one of the most prodigious admirers of womankind that ever left his footprints on ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... the old soldier embraced Amelie and kissed her cheek with fatherly effusion. She was a prodigious favorite. "Welcome, Amelie!" said he, "the sight of you is like flowers in June. What a glorious time you have had, growing taller and prettier every day all the time I have been sleeping by camp-fires in the forests of Acadia! But you girls are all ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... thirty-nine months was completed the great undertaking of the draining of the lake of Haarlem, which measured forty-four kilometres in circumference, and forever threatened with its tempests the cities of Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Leyden. And they are now meditating the prodigious work of drying up the Zuyder Zee, which embraces an area of more than seven ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... nobody entirely by surprise; that much was obvious. Before we reached the top step two women opened a door and ran to meet us. One woman threw over King's head such a prodigious garland of jasmine buds that he had to loop it thrice about his shoulders. Then each took a hand of one of us and we entered between doors of many-colored wood, treading on mat-strewn marble, their bare feet pattering beside ours. There ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... did not feel it necessary to enlarge on this point to Timothy, I had conceived a prodigious fancy myself for the sweet little soprano, and should have been glad to learn more of her and less of her fraternal blessings. I afterward discovered why she surrounded herself with these as with a garment. It was from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... for a Discharge, but Remanded on Account of Extravagance and False Schedule, and was published by Fores on the 29th of March, 1817. John Bull, a bankrupt, is being publicly examined as to the causes of his failure: "Being desired by the court to give some explanation [on the subject of the prodigious difference between his debts and his assets], he said that he had been persuaded originally to join with some of the parishioners in indicting his neighbour, Mr. Frog, for keeping a disorderly house; ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... would not find anywhere else an ensemble of ideas, works, acts and instruction so suited to your artist-nature, and, consequently, so favorable to the full development of your fine powers. Thanks to M. de Bulow and his prodigious activity, on a par with his intelligence, Munich is becoming the new musical capital of Germany. You will therefore do well to stay some time there, in order vigorously to prepare yourself for the task which has devolved on ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... walk abreast. So smooth and perpendicular are the supporting walls that scarcely a shrub or tuft of grass has grown upon the aqueduct in all these years. And yet the huge fabric is strengthened by no buttress, has needed no repair. This lightness of structure, combined with such prodigious durability, produces the strongest sense of science and self-reliant power in the men who designed it. None but Romans could have built such a monument, and have set it in such a place—a wilderness ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and placed it beneath his head as he lay down on the grass. I stretched myself prone on a velvety carpet of moss, and gave myself up to a profound investigation of the one square foot of ground which lay beneath my eyes. The number of blades of grass was prodigious. A few, already awned, stood above their fellows, waving like palms-meadowgrass, fescue, foxtail, brome-grass—each slender stalk crowned with a tuft. Others were budding, only half unfolded, amid the darker mass of spongy ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... reigned in most unseemly quiet; Not that he had no cares to vex; He loved the Muses and the Sex;[256] And sometimes these so froward are, They made him wish himself at war; 140 But soon his wrath being o'er, he took Another mistress—or new book: And then he gave prodigious fetes— All Warsaw gathered round his gates To gaze upon his splendid court, And dames, and chiefs, of princely port. He was the Polish Solomon, So sung his poets, all but one, Who, being unpensioned, made a satire, And boasted that he could not flatter. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... signature and Nevill's indorsement. The lad hesitated briefly, then wrote his name in a bold hand. He resisted the allurements of some jewelry, offered him in part payment, and received the amount of the bill, less a prodigious discount for interest. The Jew servilely bowed ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... Dukes, the Hickmans, the Hobbses, the Morgans; The Ormsbys, the Thompsons, the Hikes, the Williamsons, Murrays and Hardins, The Beynroths, the Sherlays, the Hokes, the Haldermans, Harneys and Slaughters— All famed in Kentucky of old for prowess prodigious at farming. Now surged from their prosperous homes to join in the hunt for the truant. To ascertain where he was at, to help out ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... thresholds, that one beholding it all might well fancy himself upon some Italian calle or vicolo. Of course the illusion does not hold good on a Sunday, when the Dubliners are coming home from church in their best,—their extraordinary best bonnets and their prodigious silk hats. It does not hold good in any way or at any time, except upon the surface, for there is beneath all this resemblance the difference that must exist between a race immemorially civilized and one ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... great fuss over a strange and wild-looking beast that looked as if it ought to be killed. They had forgotten the bear. And Miki, wildly joyous at finding his beloved master and mistress, had forgotten him also. It was a prodigious WHOOF from Neewa himself that brought their attention to him. Like a flash Miki was back at the pen smelling of Neewa's snout between two of the logs, and with a great wagging of tail trying to make him understand what ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... This last prodigious exhibition of strength inspired the Irishman with a sort of respect for the stranger. Teddy had found very few men, even among frontiersmen and Indians, who could compete with him in a hand-to-hand struggle; ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... made prodigious fires on these cairns, which being every one in sight of some other could not but afford a glorious show over a whole nation. These fires were in honor of Beal, or Bealan, Latinized by the Roman writers into Belanus, by which name the Gauls and ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... to tell. With my two dogs and my pony, and riding a horse I had managed to capture, I crossed the San Joaquin and went on to a wonderful valley in the Sierras called Yosemite. In the great hotel there I found a prodigious supply of tinned provisions. The pasture was abundant, as was the game, and the river that ran through the valley was full of trout. I remained there three years in an utter loneliness that none but a man who has once ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... your better view. It is Asmodeus's show improved. I went to a Paris theatre with a friend. The play began with half a dozen milliners chattering and sewing round a table. After a few moments, my friend gave a prodigious yawn, and declared he was going home, "for you might as well sit down and see a parcel of real milliners at work as this play." Tastes differ; and I did not find this an objection. But what a compliment that was to the whole corps,—actors, actresses, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... yet the action of the poem seemed confused. Nevertheless, like Prior later, Wesley was inclined to suspend judgment on this point because the poem had been left incomplete. To Spenser's "thoughts" he paid the highest tribute, and to his "Expressions flowing natural and easie, with such a prodigious Poetical Copia as never any other must expect to enjoy." Like most of the Augustans Wesley did not care greatly for Paradise Regained, but he partly atoned by his praise for Paradise Lost, which was an "original" and therefore "above the common ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... flapping garments, his unlaced shoes, his stubble beard, in his indecent carelessness in expectorating the tobacco he was ceaselessly chewing. But these, after all, were some of his minor traits. I was soon to get an inkling of one of his major ones—his prodigious meanness. For when I rushed about and finally found a lorcha that was to sail for Bacolod and asked him to chip in with me on ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... unwearied benevolence, his generosity, his systematic forbearance? And still less is his vast superiority in intellectual attainments sufficiently understood—his sagacity, his clear understanding, his learning, his prodigious memory. All these as displayed in conversation, were known to few while he lived, and are ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and placed Wellington in the front rank of generals. Napoleon was now more than ever compelled to act on the defensive, which does not suit the genius of the French character, and he resolved to make the Elbe the base of his defensive operations. His armies, along this line, amounted to the prodigious number of four hundred thousand men; and Dresden, the head-quarters of Napoleon, presented a scene of unparalleled gayety and splendor, of licentiousness, extravagance, and folly. But Napoleon was opposed by equally powerful forces, under Marshal Blucher, the Prussian general, a ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... man-animals went back hastily several steps. The she-wolf stood over against her cub, facing the men, with bristling hair, a snarl rumbling deep in her throat. Her face was distorted and malignant with menace, even the bridge of the nose wrinkling from tip to eyes so prodigious ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... when he saw the procession coming; of how a minute later he advanced into the space in the centre of his wari, where in the olden days the populace was wont to gather for its cannibal orgies; how he greeted his distinguished visitors with the most prodigious rubbing of noses seen in those parts for many a day; of the feast that followed; of the fowls and pigs that garnished the festive board, not omitting the keg of Three Star ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... patrons and propagandists of Buddhism, and to transform indigenous Shint[o] gods into Buddhas elect, or Buddhas to come, or Buddhas in a former state of existence, were tasks that might appall the most prodigious intellect, and even strain the capacities of what one might imagine to be the universal religion ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... a somewhat peculiar incident. With the game standing at 75 all Herbert made a stroke that left the red hovering on the brink of a pocket. He waited anxiously, but with no result. At this point one of the crowd emitted a prodigious yawn, and it was the intense vibration set up from this act, so James declared, that induced the ball to topple over into the pocket. In support of his contention that no score should ensue he pointed to a framed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... a total eclipse is due to the sunbeams which have just grazed the edge of the earth. In doing so they have become bent by the refraction of the atmosphere, and have thus been turned inwards into the shadow. Such beams have passed through a prodigious thickness of the earth's atmosphere, and in this long journey through hundreds of miles of air they have become tinged with a ruddy or copper-like hue. Nor is this property of our atmosphere an unfamiliar one. The sun both at sunrise and at sunset glows with a light which is ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... could never perceive the prodigious improbability of the arrival of that boat. She did not seem to be thinking of it. Perhaps she had already forgotten the fact herself. And Heyst resolved suddenly to say nothing more of it. It was not that he shrank from alarming her. Not feeling anything definite himself he ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... says Mr. Lamon, he would appear at his office and go about the labors of the day with all his might, displaying prodigious industry and capacity for continuous application, although he never was a fast worker. Sometimes it happened that he came without his breakfast; and then he would have in his hands a piece of cheese or bologna sausage, and a few crackers, bought by the way. At such times ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the Judge, "all taste. Why, I have a great mind to wear a beard myself. It would be a prodigious comfort to dispense with the razor in cold winter mornings, to say nothing of the ornament. And now that I think of it, it is just the season ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... moment contained. And sure enough, even as I spoke the door opened, and the venerable head of the college, somewhat blown with climbing the steep stairway, stood on the threshold. With a sensation of prodigious relief, I fell back on ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... as being so much prettier and so much more village-like than any other through which we had passed, and near here perished the unfortunate aeronauts Pilatre and Romain, falling from their balloon when at a prodigious height from the ground and in sight of many spectators. They were buried in the churchyard, in which a monument has been erected commemorative of the event. About two miles from this hamlet Boulogne appears in sight, cheering ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... janissaries whenever they please to seize upon it. We had a guard of five hundred of them, and I was almost in fears every day to see their insolencies in the poor villages through which we passed.... I was assured that the quantity of wine last vintage was so prodigious that they were forced to dig holes in the earth to put it in. The happiness of this plenty is scarcely perceived by the oppressed people. I saw here [Nissa] a new occasion for my compassion. The wretches that had ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... came ashore near to a little creek, into which, by prodigious haulings and shovings, she was turned; and here, in a rude way, they succeeded in mooring her ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... near the Castle-gates, Dwelt certain stickers in the Devil's skirts; Who, with prodigious fervour, shave their pates, And shew a ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... was nigh splitting, while Amelie, perching stiffly on the bracket seat, was bidding them be quiet, for she was horrified to be sitting idly by, watching her mother being kissed. In the next carriage Mignon, in order to astonish Lucy, was making his sons recite a fable by La Fontaine. Henri was prodigious at this exercise; he could spout you one without pause or hesitation. But Maria Blond, at the head of the procession, was beginning to feel extremely bored. She was tired of hoaxing that blockhead of a Tatan Nene with a story to the effect that the Parisian dairywomen were wont to fabricate ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... amazed at the prodigious amount of knowledge of classical lore which they display. Lawyers declare that their author must take rank among the greatest of lawyers, and must have been learned not only in the theory of law, but also intimately acquainted with its forensic practice. In like manner, travellers feel certain that ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being then about nineteen years of age, the Maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was conducted before mid-day, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, constructed of wooden billets supported by occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces in every direction for the creation of air-currents. The pile "struck terror," says M. Michelet, "by its height;" ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the only one who got anything was Wade, and his was a nice dose of fever. We towed out with the whale-boat, and ran along the coast to Langa Langa, a large village of salt-water people, built with prodigious labour on a lagoon sand-bank—literally BUILT up, an artificial island reared as a refuge from the blood-thirsty bushmen. Here, also, on the shore side of the lagoon, was Binu, the place where the Minota was captured half a year previously and her captain killed by the bushmen. As we sailed in ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... near. How these smoke-signals gave an idea of the white man and his wonders I am utterly at a loss to imagine. In the meantime Yamba had prepared a great feast for the visitors, the principal dish being our remaining big turtle, of which the blacks ate a prodigious quantity. I afterwards told them that I was in need of a prolonged rest, my long journey having wearied me, and after this explanation I retired, and slung my hammock in a shady nook, where I slept undisturbed from shortly before noon until late ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... out, with prodigious force. "Everybody git into his place!" Then, lifting one huge foot, he put the fiddle under his chin, and, raising his bow till his knuckles touched the strings, he yelled, "Already, G'LANG!" and brought his foot down with a startling bang ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... E. 'We hear prodigious[655] complaints at present of emigration[656]. I am convinced that emigration makes a country more populous.' J. 'That sounds very much like a paradox.' E. 'Exportation of men, like exportation of all other commodities, makes ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... sight was seen, and these direful noises were heard by him for a long while together; and coming to a place where he thought he heard a great company of fierce opponents (as it were a numerous and influential Deputation, or a prodigious Procession) coming forward to meet him, he stopped, and began to muse what he had best to do. Sometimes he had half a thought to go back; then again he thought he might be half-way through the Valley. He remembered, also, how he had already vanquished many a danger, and that the peril ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... swallowed; the public hiatus will be prodigious. All the enormities will pass away. The old fly-catchers will disappear and make room for the swallowers ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... paradoxical as it may seem, the more we produce, the less we have, and the richer we get, the poorer we are. Your pseudo-civilization is of that quality which defeats its own ends, so that notwithstanding the prodigious mechanical aids we possess in the production of all forms of wealth, the struggle for existence is more savage, more ferocious to-day than it has been ever since the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... rose and was seen hanging in the horizon: such was the popular notion. The Hy-Brasail of the Irish is evidently a part of the Atlantis of Plato; who, in his 'Timaeus,' says that that island was totally swallowed up by a prodigious earthquake." (O'Flaherty's "Discourse on the History and Antiquities of the Southern Islands of Aran, lying off the West Coast of Ireland," ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... species which rise to a greater magnitude within the tropics. Many specimens of this family are found in the coal beds; it is thought they have contributed more to the substance of the coal than any other family. But, like the ferns and equisetaceae, they rise to a prodigious magnitude. The lepidodendra (so the fossil genus is called) have probably been from sixty-five to eighty feet in height, having at their base a diameter of about three feet, while their leaves measured twenty inches in length. In the forests of the ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... for one moment that Colonel Joyce wrote the poem in question—the poem entitled "Love and Laughter." Colonel Joyce is an incorrigible practical joker, and his humor has been marvellously tickled by the prodigious worry his jest has cost the Wisconsin bard. The public understands the situation; there is no good reason why Mrs. Wilcox should fume and fret and scurry around, all on account of that poem, like a fidgety hen with one chicken. Her claim ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... new sense, a new faculty, as it were, created within him. He worked industriously. Every hour seemed to condense the labour and experience of years. He made prodigious advances. His master came daily at the same time, and at length his term of instruction drew to a close. The last morning of the month arrived; and Conrad, unknown to his neighbours, had attained to the highest rank in his profession. His paintings, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... to his spoken name, there came a scuffling sound from the corner where Pa was sleeping. All at once the empty bottle dropped from the unclenched hand, the mouth fell open in a prodigious yawn, the eyes became wide, burned-out wells of drunkenness. And as she watched, Rose-Marie saw the room cleared in an amazing fashion. She heard Mrs. Volsky's terrified whisper, "He's wakin' up!" She heard Jim's harsh laugh; she saw Ella, with a fiercely maternal sweep of her strong arms, gather ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... scarlet cloak as a signal for commencing an assault, when they saw that the city was entirely surrounded by the multitude of their comrades; and then they emptied their quivers and threw them down at their feet, and with loud cries shot their arrows among the citizens with prodigious skill. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... maidens, as pre-arranged, addressed them to catch some of the finest fish, and cast them on to the table before the King, and Count Guy, and their father. The fish wriggled about the table to the prodigious delight of the King, who in like manner took some of them, and courteously returned them to the girls; with which sport they diverted them, until the servant had cooked the fish that had been given him: which, by Messer Neri's ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... little he had been daunted by ill success, and how his prodigious imagination had not been overcome by sorrow and evil fortune. Meantime, writing almost savagely, and with a feeling combined of ambition and despair, he had begun, very slowly indeed, to create a public. These ten years, however, had loaded him with debts; and his struggle to keep himself ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... well known to have been carried a considerable distance between low and high-water mark." "A little way from the Brough," says Dr. Patrick Neill, in his 'Tour through Orkney and Shetland,' "we saw the prodigious effects of a late winter storm: many great stones, one of them of several tons weight, had been tossed up a precipice twenty or thirty feet high, and laid fairly on the green sward." There is something farther worthy of notice in ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... charge was to be supported—for the laudable purpose of giving the parties notice of the particular facts from which the crown intended to deduce the existence of the alleged conspiracy. They consisted, almost unavoidably, of a prodigious number of writings, speeches, and publications; and these it was which earned for the indictment the title of "the Monster Indictment." It occupies fifty-three pages of the closely printed folio appendix to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... to rouse the game, but their first drive resulted in nothing beyond a prodigious noise. When they started for the second drive I followed the doctor in a temporary visit to the ladies. During this absence from duty a large gazelle passed within ten steps of my station. I ran toward my post, but was not as nimble as the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... to make the attack, but without waiting for him, Baldy sprung like a panther upon him and bore him to the earth. There was a silent but terrific struggle for a few moments, but the prodigious activity and rower of the trapper prevailed, and when he withdrew from the grasp of the Indian, the latter was as dead as a door nail. The struggle had been so short that neither Mickey nor Ethan knew anything of it, until Baldy dropped down ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... to Rotterdam. The approach to the town was indicated by the multitude of boats and vessels that were passing to and fro, and by the numbers of steamers and wind mills that lined respectively the margins of the water and of the land. The wind mills were prodigious in size. They towered high into the air like so many lighthouses; the tops of the sails, as Mr. George estimated, reached, as the vanes revolved, up to not less than one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet into the air. It was necessary to build them ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... us all acquainted with one another and thinkin' about somethin' else but pains and troubles. It'll seem awful lonesome with you gone," and the woman beyond heaved a prodigious sigh. ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... yards, began at his leisure to knock holes in the walls. Meantime, twenty guns, anchored out in the river, played on the broad face of the fort and swept the Commandant's lunette out of existence. And with all this prodigious waste of powder but five of the garrison had fallen, and three of these by the bursting of a single shell. The defenders understood now that they were fighting for time, and told each other that when their comedy was played out and the inevitable moment came, ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... accumulated interest: all that experience has amassed, accompanied with the consoling promises of the future, which Revelation has unfolded. The extended empire of speech, and its perpetuating characters, embrace this prodigious range; but their comprehension is exclusively limited to the human race. When words can represent all that is evident and all that is conjectural—the works of Omnipotence, and the fabrications of man—we need to seek no further for the necessary materials of thought. The difficulty that has perplexed ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... directed by Signer Cesare Dondini. He played in the Edipo of Nicolini—a tragedy written expressly for him—and achieved a great success. Next he appeared in Alfieri's Saul, and then all Italy declared that Modena's mantle had fallen on worthy shoulders. His fame was now prodigious, and wherever he went he was received with boundless enthusiasm. He visited Paris, where he played Orasmane, Orestes, Saul and Othello. On his return to Florence he was hospitably entertained by the marquis of Normanby, then English ambassador to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... greatly diminish the difficulties of the journey. As for Luka, he became greatly attached to his pupil. The Tartars were looked down upon by their fellow-prisoners, and the terms of equality with which Godfrey chatted with them, and his knowledge of the world, which seemed to the Tartar to be prodigious, made him look up ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... been plenty in our Southern States; so there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is almost an unknown thing—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... British, having subjugated the whole of Hindustan, caused it to be openly taught in the colleges which they established for the instruction of their youth in the languages of the country. Though sufficiently difficult to acquire, principally on account of its prodigious richness in synonyms, it is no longer a sealed language, - its laws, structure, and vocabulary being sufficiently well known by means of numerous elementary works, adapted to facilitate its study. It has been considered by famous philologists as the mother not only of all the languages of Asia, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... university combining the ideas of the two kinds of schools. The support insured to these state institutions promises their perpetuity. The amount of work which they have done for the education of the masses in higher learning has been prodigious, and they stand to-day as the greatest and most perfect monument of the culture and ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... burrow at the hours of his jailer's visit, lest his work should be detected, and to stamp the rubbish into his floor. But while they talked, Humfrey and Philip, with their knives, scraped so diligently that two more stones could be displaced; and, looking down the widening hole through the prodigious mass of wall, they could see a ghastly, ragged, long-bearded scarecrow, with an almost piteous expression of joy on his face, at once again seeing familiar faces. And when, at his earnest entreaty, Berenger stood so as to allow his countenance to be as ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rather bewildering labyrinth of arches and passages in the cathedral walls, and it was not without a feeling of relief that we reached the door we had so carefully locked behind us. We returned the key to the caretaker, and then went to our hotel, where we loaded ourselves with a prodigious breakfast, and afterwards proceeded to walk across the Mainland of the Orkneys, an ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... stifling a prodigious yawn. "And now, Mr Carter, with your kind permission I will go below and lie down, for I feel pretty well ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... black gave a prodigious leap, which Tartlet could not but admire from a choregraphic point of view. Then repressing his fear, and seeing the bird with broken wing running through the grass, he started off and swift as a greyhound ran towards it, and with many a caper, half ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, to which we were afterwards conducted, whose exterior front is covered with alternate slabs of black and white marble, which were brought, either in whole or in part, from Jerusalem. Within, there was a prodigious richness of precious marbles, and a pillar, if I mistake not, from Solomon's Temple; and a picture of the Virgin by St. Luke; and others (rather more intrinsically valuable, I imagine), by old masters, set in superb marble frames, within the arches ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... great personal and mental powers had scarcely any other field for their exercise than this. He entered upon his career with great ardor, and the position in which he was placed gave him the opportunity to act in it with prodigious effect. ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the village crank came to hear me, honoring the occasion by wearing a new stove-pipe hat of prodigious proportions, which he deposited on the seat as he arose during prayer. When the amen was pronounced, perhaps paralyzed by the fervor, he sat down upon said stove-pipe, crushing it to a pie, then leaped from the wreck ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... city with peculiar indulgence. It was the sentinel at the seat of government to give them notice of the approach of danger, [335:1] and the kind friend to aid them in times of difficulty. The wealth of Rome was prodigious; and though as yet "not many mighty" and "not many noble" had joined the proscribed sect, it had been making way among the middle classes; and there is cause to think that at this time a considerable number of the rich merchants ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... nor did he spare himself. His career, indeed, presented a remarkable example of how much a man of comparatively moderate powers can accomplish by means of assiduous application and indefatigable industry. During the forty years that he held a seat in Parliament, his labours were prodigious. He was a most conscientious man, and whatever he undertook to do, he did thoroughly. All his speeches bear evidence of his careful study of everything that had been spoken or written on the subject under consideration. He was elaborate almost to excess; ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... ordinarie accidents, they are ouerpassed and nothing regarded. [Sidenote: Luc. lib. 1.] Howbeit Lucane maketh a great matter of eclipses, and of other strange sights preceding the bloudie battels betweene Pompeie and Cesar; intimating hereby, that prodigious woonders, and other rare and vnaccustomed accidents are significations of some notable euent insuing, either to some great personage, to the common-wealth, or to the state of the church. And therefore it is a matter woorth the marking, ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... cut a prodigious figure in life. Traversing the older countries, especially Spain, the most illustrative, the wayfarer is met at all points by what seems not merely the logic of events, but the common law of the inevitable. The Latin of the Sixteenth century was a recrudescence ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... are doing most of the complaining are not deliberately striving to sabotage the national war effort. They are laboring under the delusion that the time is past when we must make prodigious sacrifices—that the war is already won and we can begin to slacken off. But the dangerous folly of that point of view can be measured by the distance that separates our troops from their ultimate objectives in Berlin and Tokyo—and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... trout-stream compared with what was soon to be seen here. In brief space there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools one by one disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... neither pastor nor people, age nor sex; while gross transgressors, and deluded enthusiasts, as Gib and his faction, were screened from condign punishment, though some of them had arrived at that prodigious length in wickedness as to commit the Holy Scriptures and Confession of Faith ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... advocate. He showed perfect mastery of his profession, and he exhibited his own great and innate qualities. Who that ever beheld him on the Munster circuit, when he was in the height of his fame, but must have admired his prodigious versatility of formidable powers. His pathos was often admirable—his humor flowed without effort or art. What jokes he uttered!—what sarcasms! How well he worked his case, never throwing away a chance, never relaxing his untiring energies. How he disposed of a pugnacious attorney may ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... the musket to the morion; of the Moharum, when the Mohammedan celebrates the New Year. But what would you have? A sketch is a sketch. We have got only to the heart of India: the head and the whole prodigious eastern side are not yet reached. It is time ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... assembled together at Spithead, and made sail for the French coast, while the armies of the Grande Monarque advanced across the Rhine into the heart of the United Provinces; and the consequence was, such a prodigious addition to the power of France, as it took all the blood and treasure expended in the war of the Succession and all the victories of Marlborough, to reduce to a scale at all commensurate with the independence of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... and on, without a moment's pause, with the quick, bustling, breathless sort of tramp of the engine—all these things, and forty others, put me in such a state of intense activity that I felt as if I kept a shop—or was a prodigious man upon 'Change—or was flying up to make a fortune—or had suddenly been called to form an administration—or had become a member of the prize ring, and was going up to fight white-headed Bob. However, on this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... "Siecle de Louis XV," ch. XXXI; "Siecle de Louis XIV," ch. XXX. "Industry increases every day. To see the private display, the prodigious number of pleasant dwellings erected in Paris and in the provinces, the numerous equipages, the conveniences, the acquisitions comprehended in the term luxe, one might suppose that opulence was twenty times greater than it formerly was. All this is the result of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... nothing in nature, but to give free scope to the gay illusions of fancy, to the chimeras of fairy magic, and to transport the mind by every means beyond the boundaries of human action. He was crowned with prodigious success in his time, and perhaps there never existed an author more congenial to an Italian imagination; but to know with certainty what degree of perfection Tragedy and Comedy can reach in Italy, it should possess a theatrical establishment. The ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... Parliament Square during the ceremonies of Wednesday, September 24th, was prodigious. From the hotel windows the whole of the great green space before the Parliament buildings was seen black with people who stayed for hours in the hope of catching sight of the Prince as he went from ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... the great Mogul, commanded his generals, Khan-Khana and Rajah Mansing, two great commanders, to invade and conquer all the kingdoms of the south to Cape Comorin, for which purpose a prodigious army was assembled. In order to resist this invasion, the three great kings of the south combined their troops, making head near Bramport, (Burhampoor or Boorhanpoor,) on the Mogul frontiers, where both armies were in camp, waiting the end of winter. These three kings, Malek Amber, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... which have descended to us of the prodigious banquets given on special occasions by our early kings, prelates and nobles, are apt to inspire the general reader with an admiration of the splendid hospitality of bygone times. But, as I have already suggested, these festivities were occasional and at long intervals, and during ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... received the astonishment of his life. He pictured to me the whole affair—Bellett, up at the chancel gate, going for the prayer book, and absolutely alone; and then the blow, out of the Void, he described it; and the force prodigious—the old man being driven headlong into the body of the Chapel. Like the kick of a great horse, the Rector said, his benevolent old eyes bright and intense with the effort he had actually witnessed, in defiance of all that ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... Then followed that brief death grapple, fatal to the leader on each side. Fraser and his Highlanders, we are told, rushed at the enemy with their broadswords in such irresistible fury that they were driven with a prodigious slaughter into the town. The Highlanders suffered as much after the battle as in it, for General Murray led them to reconnoitre in the direction of the General Hospital and a good many were shot by the French from bushes and from houses in the suburbs of St. Louis and St. John. ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong |
