"Thunderclap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thunderclap. No one expected it, least of all the youth himself. Every eye was turned toward him and his face flushed scarlet. He quickly rallied from the daze into which he was thrown at first, and with his old swagger, looked at the teacher and replied with ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... august, number. You took your honors in precisely the spirit I should have expected of you—sweetly, modestly, without any undue sense of pride or hateful self-righteousness. Then, a few days ago, there came a thunderclap; and teachers and girls were alike amazed to find that you were no longer a member. By the rules of the club we were not permitted to ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... burst over the slumbering town like a thunderclap. The inhabitants in the neighbouring streets, roused from sleep by this terrible fusillade, sat up in bed, their teeth chattering with fright. Nothing in the world would have induced them to poke their noses out of the window. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... which followed he found himself looking into her ardent face with a wonder not unmixed with awe. To his rather cynical view of the Fletchers such an outburst came as little less than a veritable thunderclap, and for the first time in his life he felt a need to modify his conservative theories as to the necessity of blue blood to nourish high ideals. Maria, indeed, seemed to him as she stood there, drawn fine and strong against the curtains of faded green, to hold about her something better ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... gruff, sarcastic tones of Wilhelm Mencke, burst upon the lovers like an unexpected thunderclap, and, starting to her feet, Violet turned to find her sister's husband standing not ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... succeeded in pacifying her. The letters were evidence that Edith and himself believed that Althea was in Galloway at the time. Maria's denial had come upon them like a thunderclap, bewildering, stunning. If Althea was not in ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... increased. In the autumn of that year Savonarola delivered a famous course of sermons on Noah's Ark, warning all to take refuge from the coming flood in the mystical Ark of mercy. The flood came indeed, for suddenly all Florence was startled as if by a thunderclap by the news that a foreign army was pouring over the Alps for the conquest of Italy. The terror was overwhelming. Italy was unprepared, for the princes had no efficient ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... sport or break a life in jest, But swells the ripenin' cocoanuts an' ripes the woman's breast." An' there it stopped: cut off: no more; that quiet, certain voice — For me, six months o' twenty-four, to leave or take at choice. 'Twas on me like a thunderclap — it racked me through an' through — Temptation past the show o' speech, unnameable an' new — The Sin against the Holy Ghost? . . . An' under all, our screw. That storm blew by but left behind her anchor-shiftin' ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... in later and said the whole thing was to him like a thunderclap—as it was to her poor father. To me it followed closely on the presentiment that in some measure prepared me for it. Here I sit with empty hands. I have had the little coffin in my arms, but my baby's ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... seemed to embrace the entire heavens. At length, Vassili got up and covered over the britchka, the coachman wrapped himself up in his cloak and lifted his cap to make the sign of the cross at each successive thunderclap, and the horses pricked up their ears and snorted as though to drink in the fresh air which the flying clouds were outdistancing. The britchka began to roll more swiftly along the dusty road, and I felt uneasy, and as though the blood were coursing more quickly through my veins. ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... seemed to shake and a thunderclap burst in my ears. I opened my eyes,—I was splashed all over with sticky mud, and men were picking themselves up from the bottom of the trench. The parapet on my left had toppled into the trench, completely ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... through the room a thunderclap of memory. There had been words drawled there the night before that now detonated in Ellen's mind.... "What am I to do, Ellen, to keep my sons ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... awakening this fancied security was foredoomed. Suddenly, like the breaking of a terrific thunderclap above the city, came the awesome cry: "Fort Donelson ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... it wonderful?" he whispered, pink to the tips of his ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. "I didn't know; I didn't think—it came like a thunderclap." ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... may be secured in three ways: (1) It is demanded by some sudden or intense sensory stimulus or insistent idea, or (2) it follows interest, or (3) it is compelled by the will. If it comes in the first way, as from a thunderclap or a flash of light, or from the persistent attempt of some unsought idea to secure entrance into the mind, it is called involuntary attention. This form of attention is of so little importance, comparatively, in our mental life that we shall ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... observed them. He said he had met them; that the man seemed bewildered, and inquired the way to Boston; that he was driving at great speed, as though he expected to outstrip the tempest; that the moment he had passed him a thunderclap broke distinctly over the man's head and seemed to envelop both man and child, horse and carriage. "I stopped," said the gentleman, "supposing the lightning had struck him, but the horse only seemed to loom up and increase his speed, and, as well as I could judge, he travelled just as ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... to move backwards and forwards, until at length, with the startling of a thunderclap to the {27} affrighted mountaineers, the bubble burst; officers of justice appeared, the stranger was easily intercepted from flight, and, upon a capital charge, he was borne away to Carlisle. At the ensuing assizes he was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... the thunderclap. "Gweng says Bad people told you bofe Lies heaps longer ago than dolly's birfday, so you bofe thort you was dead and buried." Straight to the heart of the subject, as perhaps none but a child could have phrased it. Granny Marrable's sight grew dim as she read:—"Gweng says you will be glad, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... thought better to wait a little, for fear of accidents, and especially for the purpose of using it instantly after the first reverse should occur, and thus to give it the force of prophecy. The Battle of Waterloo came like a thunderclap. The article was suppressed, and one on "Gall and his Craniology" substituted. "I think," says Ticknor, "Southey said he had seen the repudiated article." [Footnote: "Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor "(2nd ed.), i. ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... intelligently; the sound meant fire, and fire meant need of being extinguished. I bump into a stone, and kick it to one side purely physically. I put it to one side for fear some one will stumble upon it, intelligently; I respond to a meaning which the thing has. I am startled by a thunderclap whether I recognize it or not—more likely, if I do not recognize it. But if I say, either out loud or to myself, that is thunder, I respond to the disturbance as a meaning. My behavior has a mental quality. When things have a meaning for us, we mean (intend, propose) what we do: when they do ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... classical building of the Exchange, was so crowded that he was compelled almost to fight his way through to the steps of the magnificent Ionic porch. A word would have sufficed to have opened a way for him at once. But guile moved him to keep silent. He would come upon that waiting multitude as a thunderclap, precisely as yesterday he had come upon the mob at Rennes. He would lose nothing of the surprise ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... thousand yards away, and their guns were busy in the night, so that the shells came overhead, and lads who had heard the owls hoot in English woods now heard stranger night-birds crying through the air, with the noise of rushing wings, ending in a thunderclap. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... poetry. We can, indeed, no longer call the sun a god and construct myths of Phoebus, nor can we seriously picture the moon descending to dally with Endymion. We can no longer see Hamadryads in the oaks or Naiads in the streams. We do not hear Zeus or Thor in the thunderclap, nor recognize in volcanic eruptions the struggles of imprisoned Titans breathing flame. But what of that? Does the essence of poetry lie at all in myths and superstitions? Because we know of what the sun is made, and how many miles distant he ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... The thunderclap of the European war shattered the uneasy calm in China, not because the Chinese knew anything of the mighty issues which were to be fought out with such desperation and valour, but because the presence of the German colony of Kiaochow on Chinese soil and the activity of German ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... men would you like? He had everything. He was complete. He had in his brain the sum of human faculties. He made codes like Justinian, he dictated like Caesar, his conversation was mingled with the lightning-flash of Pascal, with the thunderclap of Tacitus, he made history and he wrote it, his bulletins are Iliads, he combined the cipher of Newton with the metaphor of Mahomet, he left behind him in the East words as great as the pyramids, at ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Montgomery halted his men. Scouts returned with word that all was quiet and in darkness—the English evidently asleep; and uncovering muskets, the Congress fighters dashed forward at a run. But it was the silence that precedes the thunderclap. The English had known that the storm was to signal attack, and guessing that the rockets foretokened the assailants' approach, they had put out all lights behind the barricade. Until Montgomery's men were within a few feet of the log, there was utter ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... her breath, expecting a thunderclap or some other outward token of the sudden death of Belvane's muse. Instead she was struck by the extraordinary silence of the place. She had a horrid feeling that everybody else was dead, and realising all at once that she was a very ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... by her manner for some dire Calamity, it came upon them like a thunderclap. The awful calm manner of the chieftain's widow impressed them more than if she had thrown up her hands in wild despair and given way to the ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the cry, 'Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord,' there follows, swift as the thunderclap on the lightning flash, the rousing summons, 'Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem!' Wheresoever it is obeyed there will follow in due time the joyful chorus, as in this context, 'Sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem; the Lord ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... long time fortune favored him. His mother's reputation for wealth, the knowledge that he was her sole heir, the high position of the family, shielded him from suspicion. Then came the thunderclap. He was caught in the act of "dealing a second" in the English Club, and driven from the club as a blackleg. Other reverses followed: a public refusal on the part of an officer to play cards with him, followed by a like refusal to give him satisfaction in a duel; a second ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... had scarce issued from Caspar's lip, when a crash was heard like the first bursting of a thunderclap, and then a deafening roar echoed up the ravine, mingled with louder peals, as though the eternal mountains were ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... like it, Skip?" The words from Perry's previously silent lips broke upon the stillness like a thunderclap. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... fast and loose before our eyes, and was eternally negotiating with them, deceiving and being deceived in his turn. The consequence of all this was a great, thick cloud, wherein the Frondeurs themselves were at last involved; but which they burst with a thunderclap. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... such publications only as flatter their wishes, conceive that the contest is at an end and that to regulate the government and police of their own State is all that remains to be done, but it is devoutly to be wished that a sad reverse of this may not fall upon them like a thunderclap that is little expected. I do not mean to designate particular States. I wish to cast no reflections upon any one. The public believe (and if they do believe it, the fact might almost as well be so) that the States at this time are badly represented and that the great and important concerns ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the excommunication by Pope Alessandro VI. (Borgia) fell like a thunderclap, and the Medicean youths marched in triumphant procession with torches and secular music to burlesque the Laudi; no doubt Albertinelli was one of these, while Baccio grieved among the ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... sweeter fell the music upon his ear, till suddenly, like the silence after a thunderclap, the organ ceased to roll, the choir was silent, and out of the quiet rose a single voice—that of Laurence the Scot singing in a tenor of infinite sweetness the words ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... the winds, making a loud roar and agitating all the oceans, brought together masses of clouds in the sky, charged with torrents of rain. Those masses of clouds began to vomit thunder and terrible flashes of lightning charged with the thunderclap. Then Arjuna possessing a knowledge of means, hurled the excellent weapon called Vayavya with proper mantras to dispel those clouds. With that weapon the energy and force of Indra's thunderbolt and of those ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... vivid. Each flash appeared to fill the world for a moment with lambent fire, leaving the painful impression on observers of having been struck with total blindness for a few seconds after, and each thunderclap came like the bursting of artillery, with scarcely an interval between the flash and crash, while the wind blew ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... everything!" But best of all was for the parties to be married outright, by a justice of the peace, without a word of public warning, and then to enjoy the pleasure of outwitting the neighbors, and coming down like a thunderclap on a social sunshine unsuspicious of banns, which had been published on some three literally public days, but when nobody was hearing. That was something worth doing, and very much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... text in the 104th Psalm means something more; it means that God makes His angels spirits, (that is winds) and His ministers a flaming fire.' So shewing us that in those breezes there are living spirits, that God's angels guide those thunder-clouds; that the roaring thunderclap is a shock in the air truly, but that it is something more—that it is the voice of God, which shakes the cedar-trees of Lebanon, and tears down the thick bushes, and makes the wild deer slip their young. So we read in the psalms in church; that is David's account ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... about him, and listened to their abuse with keen satisfaction. Gleams of ambition must have been shooting in upon him by this time. It was impossible that he had not thoughts of a bigger future for himself, and yet it came as a thunderclap to him when he heard that he, a youthful free-lance, had been adopted by the Liberal associations of the district to be their candidate for Parliament at the next election. It may be imagined with what zest under this stimulation he carried on his preparations for the ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... it hung for a moment, as if unwilling to exert itself, it seemed to awake to the reality of its position. Making a lively rush, that seemed tremendously inconsistent with its weight, it shot over the edge of a yawning crevasse, burst with a thunderclap on the opposite ice-cliff, and went roaring into the dark bowels of the glacier, whence the echoes of its tumbling masses, subdued by distance, came up like ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... public proclamation of intimacy, as it were, was doubtless premeditated, and had its special object, yet Evgenie Pavlovitch at first seemed to intend to make no show of observing either his tormentor or her words. But Nastasia's communication struck him with the force of a thunderclap. On hearing of his uncle's death he suddenly grew as white as a sheet, and turned ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... powder magazines. Hawkins roared "to cut the cables." It was a hand-to-hand slaughter on decks slippery with blood. No light but the musketry fire and glare of burning masts! The little English company were fighting like a wild beast trapped, when with a {138} thunderclap that tore bottom out of hull—Hawkins's ship flew into mid-air, a flaring, fiery wreck—then sank in the heaving trough of the sea, carrying down five hundred Spaniards to a watery grave. Cutlass in hand, head over heels went ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... answered shortly. "I couldn't myself. I'd have given the lie to anybody who had dared so much as to hint at it. It was like a thunderclap to me." ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... in every direction. It was supposed that the outlaws had gradually stolen away through the thickets and taken to the open country, intending to scatter to their homes, or other distant hiding-places; and the news that they had by a ruse captured the castle, came as a thunderclap. ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... made up. I will speak as soon as I have seen Zinca Klork. The poor girl must be told with consideration. The death of her betrothed must not come upon her like a thunderclap. Yes! To-morrow, as soon as we ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... me, there and then,— Me, out of a world of men, Singled forth, as the chance might hap To another if, in a thunderclap Where I heard noise and you saw flame, Some one man knew God called his name. For me, I think I said, "Appear! "Good were it to be ever here. "If thou wilt, let me build to thee "Service-tabernacles three, "Where, forever ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... lowerin' frown The dull sky wore; and the lightnin' glanced Tel my old mare jest MORE'N pranced, And tossed her head, and bugged her eyes To about four times their natchurl size, As the big black lips of the clouds 'ud drap Out some oath of a thunderclap, And threaten on in an undertone That chilled a feller clean to ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... news of Cacama's arrest and imprisonment came like a thunderclap. He was in the habit of frequently seeing Malinche, who still retained the warm feeling of friendship for him that had originated at Tabasco, and with whom he often had long talks of their life in those days; but she had ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... sincere word that had been spoken, where every tone had been wrong, every gesture false, and it fell on the company like a thunderclap. John Storm drew his breath hard, looked up at Lord Robert by a strange ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the tree-branches for a moment, passed onward, then swept back again rustling, then came a roll of thunder closer than the last. Another pause—fateful it seemed, as though the garden trembled before the coming storm. A white flash played intermittently upon the fountain, followed by a thunderclap directly overhead, and a torrent of rain poured down. The Duke stood still a moment, the rain beating upon him. The storm delighted him, it answered to his tempestuous mood. He turned away from the castle and walked in the direction ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and execution of John Brown was another thunderclap. And Abigail showed me what was being said about it. A certain Henry Thoreau, a strange, radical soul living in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, had compared John Brown to Christ. "Some eighteen hundred years ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... death for disobedience to one of the prison regulations. Is this, then, a caprice, or an access of ill-temper, on the part of an officer who has no authority in this matter, since prisoners awaiting trial are only responsible to the representatives of our so-called justice? Like a thunderclap this explanation drives away my hesitation and sadness, which are now replaced by indignation and a limitless horror; and while Nadine, sick and worn, throws herself upon my bed, I mount to my window in order to communicate the news ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... I began to be a little cheerful; but I was knocked down again as with a thunderclap, when turning to the captain's wife, and discoursing of me, she said to her, "Sister, I cannot but think my lady to be very much like such a person." Then she named the person, and the captain's wife said she thought so too. The girl replied again, she ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... the light. He stood now almost at the forward poop rail, with his arms raised above his head; and he sent his voice forward in a stentorian hail, a cry that was like a thunderclap. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the first; and so on, until the one holding the spirit can lift him into Bullimah. As the spirit is hoisted in, one of the Mooroobeaigunnil, knocks the lowest one in the ladder of spirits down; thud to the earth come the rest, making a sound like a thunderclap, which the far away tribes ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... twenty-three years old his weak will sulkily gave way to their wishes. In obedience to his father he began his studies in medicine at Paris. One evening he heard Les Danaides of Salieri. It came upon him like a thunderclap. He ran to the Conservatoire library and read ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... able to recall it again in its entirety. For the genius of modern progress is contemptuous of old landmarks and impatient of delays. And swift as its race is elsewhere, it is only in that part of the South which has become "industrial" that it came as a thunderclap, with all the intermediate and accelerative steps taken at a bound. Men spoke of it as "the boom." It was not that. It was merely that the spirit of modernity had discovered a hitherto overlooked corner of the field, and made haste to ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the roaring of an awful sea, the wind grew to a shrill long scream, the elm-tree was riven and split with the crash of a thunderclap. To Lucian the tumult and the shock came as a gentle murmur, as if a brake stirred before a sudden breeze in summer. And then a vast silence ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Henri Lothiere was himself the sorcerer causing the thunderclaps, he was watched and on the third day of June was seen to go in the early morning to the unholy spot with certain instruments. There he was observed going through strange and diabolical conjurations, when there came suddenly another thunderclap and the said Henri Lothiere did vanish entirely from view in that moment. This fact ...
— The Man Who Saw the Future • Edmond Hamilton
... away, saue onely the dunge. Wherefore he returned thence into his owne land, and there he ordayned lawes and statutes, which the Tartars doe most strictly and inuiolably obserue, of the which we haue before spoken. [Sidenote: The death of Chingis. His sonnes.] He was afterward slaine by a thunderclap. He had foure sonnes: the first was called Occoday, the second Thossut Can, the third Thiaday: the name of the fourth is vnknowen. From these foure descended all the dukes of the Mongals. [Sidenote: His graund children.] The first ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... by the child—I could not watch her for four— My brain had begun to reel—I felt I could do it no more. That was my sleeping-night, but I thought that it never would pass. There was a thunderclap once, and a clatter of hail on the glass, And there was a phantom cry that I heard as I tossed about, The motherless bleat of a lamb in the storm and the darkness without; My sleep was broken besides with dreams of the dreadful knife And fears for our delicate ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... expect to get from him? He had been a little perplexed by their attitude when he asked them if they expected him to carry a lot of money on him—a fugitive. Was it possible—the thought came to him like a thunderclap in the darkness—that they knew, or had some idea, of what he really had on him? That Miss Pett had drugged him every night he now felt sure—well, then, in that case how did he know that she hadn't entered his room and searched his belongings, ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... on him with a fierceness which astonished himself. It was a show to see the way in which Gosse collapsed under this thunderclap of righteous indignation. He looked round at Dick out of the corners of his eyes, very much as a small dog contemplates the boot that has just helped him half-way across the road, and positively forgot to ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... looked into his inner state, and the magnetic outward splendor disappeared, and his inner wretchedness and distress were manifest, and he could not stand any longer before me, and, with an explosion like a powerful thunderclap, he left me and took the direction to Europe. The title of my third volume, if we translate it from German ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... light shone plainly at the top of the stairs. Someone was coming down. Ricky's breath was warm on Val's cheek and she moved with a faint crackling of her cape which sounded as loud as a thunderclap in his ears. ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... he, "for this intelligence from week to week, with the fullest expectation that it would come; and yet, when it has come, it strikes like a thunderclap. This is the third night that I have sat in this hovel, at this table, unable to go to rest, and looking for the despatch from hour to hour.—You see, sir, that our life is at least not the bed of roses for which the world is so apt to give us credit. It is like the life of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... totally unprepared for the girl's timid avowal. To Wrayson, however, after the first mild shock of surprise, it was of no special import. To Sydney Barnes, although he made a speedy effort to grapple with the situation, it came very much as a thunderclap. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... add: "Now, then, Tartarin!" Whereupon Tartarin of Tarascon, with crooked arms, clenched fists, and quivering nostrils, would roar three times in a formidable voice, rolling like a thunderclap in the bowels of ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... this would not have come all of a sudden, like a thunderclap; there would have been some rumors of it beforehand. The deuce! an old reputation does not fall to pieces in ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... said the same thing. Two uprights flashed up above their heads—the arm of the priest making the sign of the cross, and the sabre of the commander of the shooters, glistening at the same instant. . . . A dry, dull thunderclap, followed by some ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... humiliated in 1908 by the forcible annexation of Bosnia, could not possibly submit a second time to the Caudine Forks. She laid her hand upon her sword hilt. Germany sprang to the side of her ally. France ranged herself with Russia. Like a thunderclap the war of the ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Dedlock had suffered much. The knowledge that Hawdon had not been drowned as she had supposed, had come to her like a thunderclap. And the news of his death, following so soon after this discovery, had unnerved her. She felt Mr. Tulkinghorn's suspicious eyes watching her always and began to tremble in dread of what ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... there came a rap at the door; it was a soft, low tap, yet it startled the viscount like a thunderclap. He dropped the hand of Faustina ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... hills the sky showed slate-hued, with pallid feathers of cloud driven across. Lightning tore it, the thunder was loud, the trees upon the hilltops began to move. Some raindrops fell, large, slow, and warm. The lightning ran again, blindingly bright; the ensuing thunderclap seemed to shake the rock. As it died, the cataract sound of the wind was heard among the ranked trees. The ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... he would have ruined me. If I had given myself to an ardent and pleasure-loving young man, perhaps I could not have retained him; he might have left me, and I should have died of jealousy. For I am jealous!" she said, in a tone of excitement, which was like the thunderclap of a passing storm. "But Monsieur de Mortsauf loves me as much as he is capable of loving; all that his heart contains of affection he pours at my feet, like the Magdalen's cup of ointment. Believe me, a ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... naturally had the effect of a thunderclap on the village. They had scarcely shown themselves from among the trees when their presence was discovered. A chorus of sharp cries was raised, and there was much aimless running about like ants when the hill is disturbed. The cries did not suggest a welcome, but excitement purely. Men, women, and ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... Nimrod,—in Scripture, the 'mighty hunter' and builder of the tower of Babel,—in Dante, a tower of a man in his own person, standing with some of his brother giants up to the middle in a pit in hell, blowing a horn to which a thunderclap is a whisper, and hallooing after Dante and his guide in the jargon of a lost tongue! The transformations are too odious to quote: but of the towering giant we cannot refuse ourselves the 'fearful joy' of a specimen. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the night in our sophomore club when the news came like a thunderclap that one of our members had been killed pole-vaulting at a track meet in New York. It was our habit, in our new-found manliness, to eat with our hats on, shout and sing, and speak of our food as ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... thunderclap announced ever-fresh legions pressing into the sky and obscuring the sun. It seemed as if the earth were cowering in their presence, as a partridge cowers before the hovering hawk. The blackthorn and juniper bushes ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... sheet of flame, at the same instant that an ear-splitting crash of thunder resounded about us; there was a violent concussion; and when, a few seconds later, I recovered from the stunning and stupefying effect of that terrific thunderclap, it was to become aware that the foremast was over the side, and the stump of it fiercely ablaze. There was no necessity to pipe all hands, for the watch below now came tumbling up on deck, alarmed at the shock; and in a few minutes we had the ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... the bath. As he held he closed his jaws tighter and tighter, for he made sure he would be banged to death, and, for the honor of his family, he preferred to be found with his teeth locked. He was dizzy, aching, and felt shaken to pieces when something went off like a thunderclap just behind him. A hot wind knocked him senseless and red fire singed his fur. The big man had been wakened by the noise, and had fired both barrels of a shotgun into Nag just ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... Christ as a bad man, and believed that the story of the Resurrection was a gross falsehood; and that at the next moment he knew Him to be living and reigning, and the Lord of his life and of the world. Hallucinations do not come thus, like a thunderclap on unprepared minds. Nor is there anything in the subsequent history of the man that seems to confirm, but everything that contradicts, the idea that such a revolutionary change as upset all his mental furniture, and changed the whole current of his life, and slammed in his face the door that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... small-pox was declared, the princes had not been admitted to Meudon. The Duchess of Burgundy alone had occasionally seen the king. All were living in confident expectation of a speedy convalescence; the news of the death came upon them like a thunderclap. All the courtiers thronged together at once, the women half dressed, the men anxious and concerned, some to conceal their extreme sorrow, others their joy, according as they were mixed up in the different cabals of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... this query to himself, Juve shook from head to foot. Like a thunderclap he thought he grasped the truth he had followed so eagerly. What had become of Lady Beltham? Must he not come to the conclusion that this woman whose face had been crushed out of all recognition by ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... promontory, the weird, giant chestnut tree, the open plateau, and beyond, the stormy heavens, were all luridly clear in the flash of lightning. She fancied it was possible to see a tall, dark figure emerging from the thicket. As the thunderclap rolled and pealed overhead, she strained her eyes into the blackness waiting ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... the passion of the mood, the fierce indignation, rises and breaks, as it were, in a dreadful thunderclap:— ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is a melancholy story, and I can scarcely persuade myself to tell it. (It is really delicious wine this-six-and-twenty years old last birthday—to say nothing of its age before I bought it.) Ah! well, sir, the blow came at last like a thunderclap: my lady, finding disguise was in vain, went off with Sir Clinton. Letters were discovered which showed that they had corresponded for years; that he was her lover before marriage; that she, in a momentary passion with him, had accepted my lord's offer; ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... extraordinary had occurred. The incident was closed—that abrupt swoop of terror and impending death dropping down there from out the darkness, cutting abruptly athwart the gayety of the moment, come and gone with the swiftness of a thunderclap. Many of the women had gone home, taking their men with them; but the great bulk of the crowd still remained, seeing no reason why the episode should interfere with the evening's enjoyment, resolved to hold the ground for mere ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... there was the very faintest noise heard—a whisper, a mutter, a noise so slight that it might have passed a hundred times unnoticed. But to the architect's ear it spoke as loudly as a thunderclap. He knew exactly what it was and whence it came; and looking at the crack, saw that the broad paper strip was torn half-way across. It was a small affair; the paper strip was not quite parted, it was only torn half-way through. Though Westray watched for an hour, no ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Hiram's nut cakes really held an assortment of firecrackers and pinwheels for which Warren Sloane had sent to town by St. Clair Donnell's father the day before, intending to have a birthday celebration that evening. The crackers went off in a thunderclap of noise and the pinwheels bursting out of the door spun madly around the room, hissing and spluttering. Anne dropped into her chair white with dismay and all the girls climbed shrieking upon their desks. Joe Sloane stood as one transfixed in the midst of the commotion and ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... came all were heavily committed to the bull side. It was a bad slump. It was so unexpected—by the lambs—that all of them said, very gravely, it came like a thunderclap out of a clear sky. While it lasted, that is, while the shearing of the flock was proceeding, it was very uncomfortable. Those same joyous, winning stock-gamblers, with beaming faces, of the week before, were fear-clutched, losing stock-gamblers, with livid faces, on what they ...
— The Tipster - 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" • Edwin Lefevre
... well out in the lake, however, the same terrible wind that so often blew upon its waters arose with the swiftness of a thunderclap and threatened to overwhelm them all. Tell lay bound in the boat, calmly watching what he could see of the storm, when one of the Governor's servants told him that Tell himself was the most skilful boatman in that part of the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... stabbing the aching stillness as vivid and sudden as an unexpected thunderclap, came a clang and rattle as though great gates of metal ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... the wood in thuds, "God, God." The cry of the rook, "God," answers it The crack of the fire on the hearth, the voice of the brook, say the same name; All things, dog, cat, fiddle, baby, Wind, breaker, sea, thunderclap Repeat in ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... and Yule left Calcutta late in March, 1862; at Malta they parted never to meet again in this world. Lord Canning proceeded to England, and Yule joined his wife and child in Rome. Only a few weeks later, at Florence, came as a thunderclap the announcement of Lord Canning's unexpected death in London, on 17th June. Well does the present writer remember the day that fatal news came, and Yule's deep anguish, not assuredly for the loss of his prospects, but for the loss of a most noble ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... room, to deliver to the crowds that resorted to him his last paternal admonitions. He continued without interruption till mid-day, and at that hour precisely, turning to the lay-brother that assisted him, said, "Shortly a thunderclap will lay me prostrate on the ground, you will have to raise me thence, but this is the last I shall experience." Accordingly, at two hours and a half after sunset, an apoplectic stroke threw him on the ground. At first the nature of his disease was mistaken. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... her nose under and sat down on her stern; and it was not till late afternoon that the storm broke in one last and worst mad gust. For a full five minutes an absolute dead calm prevailed, and then, with the suddenness of a thunderclap, the wind snorted out of the southwest—a shift of eight points and a boisterous gale. Another night of it was too much for us, and we hove up by hand in a cross head-sea. It was not stiff work. It was heart-breaking. ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... him. And she had so little time to brood, being convinced of the sinfulness of sitting still, that if the clouds came suddenly, they never stayed long save once, and then it was, mayhap, as well. The thunderclap was caused by Tommy, who brought it on unintentionally and was almost as much scared by his handiwork as Grizel herself. She and he had been very friendly of late, partly because they shared with McQueen the secret of the frustrated elopement, partly because they both ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... At the first thunderclap lady Margaret fell on her knees and prayed in an agony for the little soul that had gone forth into the midst of the storm. Like many women she had a horror of lightning and thunder, and it never came into her mind that she who had so loved to see the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald |
